Monthly Archives: July 2008

The Survey for People Who Make Websites 2008

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The guys over at A List Apart have posted the Survey for People Who Make Websites 2008. Despite the awkward name, this survey is worth your time if your job has anything whatsoever to do with the web. The results from last year’s survey were really interesting, and now that they’ve refined the questions a bit, this year’s should be even more informative.

Calling all designers, developers, information architects, project managers, writers, editors, marketers, and everyone else who makes websites. It is time once again to pool our information so as to begin sketching a true picture of the way our profession is practiced worldwide.

This year’s survey corrects many of last year’s mistakes, with more detailed and numerous questions for freelance contractors and owners of (or partners in) small web businesses. There are also better international categories, and many other improvements recommended by those who took the survey last year.

Zoe is Walking

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Zoe started walking a few weeks ago. She’d been building up to it for quite awhile, and it’s suprising how quickly it’s become her primary method of getting around. For the first week or so, walking was a novelty — a game she would play with us, or something to make people clap — but as her stability increased, she’s started crawling less and less until now she’s on her feet 90% of the time.

One of the funniest things is that she waited long enough to start walking that she’s very aware of her sense of balance. She doesn’t faceplant very often because most of the time when she walking, if she’s even a little unbalanced, she immediately drops to the floor. She’ll sit there for a second, and then when she feels balanced again, she stands up and goes about her business. So most of our videos of her walking have this funny up-and-down thing going on.

These two videos were taken at the park last week, where she spent her time trucking around following Milo and Oskar, with regular detours back to the picnic blanket to get more chicken from Annie. In the first video, at the end you can hear her ask Annie for “more” and make the sign language gesture for “eat,” and in the second video, as she walks away at the end, you can hear her say “bye-bye” without looking back.

The X-Files: Fight the Future: One Paragraph Review

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I Want to Believe

Last night, KT and I rented the firstX-Files movie so we could get caught up for the sequel. Given that it came out ten years ago, I wasn’t sure how well it would hold up, but it was fun, and now I feel like I’ve got enough of the storyline back in my head that I’ll be able to appreciate the sequel. Both KT and I remember being confused when we first watched the movie in the theater. This time, it was much clearer. (“Oh, that’s what they were doing with the bees!”) The only things that took me out of the story were the size of their cell phones and getting used to the way they speak to each other again. Honestly, I had forgotten how much Mulder likes the sound of his own voice.

Scully: (impatience) Mulder… when a terrorist bomb threat is called in, the logical purpose of providing this information is to allow us to find the bomb. The rational object of terrorism is to promote terror. If you’d study model behavioral pattern in virtually every case where a threat has turned up an explosive device. If we don’t act in accordance with that data — if you ignore it as we have done — the chances are great that if here actually is a bomb we might not find it. Lives could be lost –

Scully, engrossed in her own argument, realizes she’s been the only one speaking for the last short while. She stops walking.

Scully: Mulder…?

Mulder: What happened to playing a hunch?

Scully almost JUMPS out of her own skin. The voice has come not over the phone, but from two feet away where:

ANGLE TO INCLUDE AGENT MULDER

Standing in the shadow of a large air conditioning unit. Cracking a trademark sunflower seed between his teeth. Clicking his cell phone off. Moving out.

Scully: Jesus, Mulder…

Mulder: The element of surprise, Scully. Random acts of unpredictability. If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced…

The Dark Knight: One Paragraph Review

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The Joker

Wow. I expected this to be like most sequels: good, but not quite living up to the original. I was completely blown away. It’s pretty long (two and a half hours) but it actually uses that time well, and the story is great — dealing with the logical consequences of Batman’s actions. My favorite thing is that there’s no back story for the Joker. He doesn’t need one, because he’s a force of nature. He’s an agent of chaos that the other characters react against. Heath Ledger dominates the movie. His take on the Joker is completely convincing, and as Graeme points out, “For the first time outside of the comics — and perhaps just the first time anywhere — the Joker actually is scary and disturbing.”