All posts by bogeywebdesign

magicthegathering

Pre-release Fever

So it looks like I will be traveling to the magic pre-release tournament tomorrow.  I’m excited.  The last time I was in a magic tournament was around the time Uzra’s Saga came out.  I’m actually curious if my DCI number even works anymore.

A few hot new cards that I can’t wait to get my hands on:

  1. Pact of negation – a showstopper right here.  There’s been a few times when I’ve had a killer combo ready, my cousin is in “dead man’s hand” and somehow he pulls the one spell that can mess me up.  No more.  Early prediction – next tournament champion is fielding 4 of these.
  2. Judge Unworthy – so I get to stack my deck and wipe our your creature?  For 2 mana?  Sold.
  3. Glittering Wish – another wish card and you can pull any multi-color card you want for 2 mana.  Being green/white that can grab some powerful stuff.
  4. Magus of the Vineyard – cheap mana acceleration and green.  Enough said.
  5. Heartwood Storyteller – lets go stompy on the annoying control deck.  Now, I love a good control deck – but stompy is fun.  This card will be headhunted.

So hopefully I do well – I’ve never done this type of tournament – and I get some cool new cards.

Random Tidbit: With the iPhone and all the clones of that coming out, be careful disposing of your old phone.  It could come back to bite you.

accessibility, css, web design, webstandards

Merits of Good Web Design

Good web design is about reaching the widest possible audience. To reach the widest possible audience you must design with two thoughts in mind web standards and accessibility.

Accessible designs allow users to resize text even non-compliant browsers like Internet Explorer 6. They provide alt tags for images, in case someone is using a text browser, and those alt tags are descriptive of the images so that those users can gain value from them. They offer a design in which the user can skip navigation and get right to the content both for ease of use and for someone using a text browser. Many people don’t realize when they’re designing a site that the source code is how text browsers will read their site so if you have the header, navigation ads and all other non-content related items before the content in the source code than people using those browsers will have to navigate through that on each and every page. Offering them an alternative to that is one of the keys to accessibility.

What many people don’t realize is that is also how search engines read their sites. So by making your site more accessible you are making it easier for search engines to decipher what exactly is important on your site increasing your rankings and making it easier for them to understand the keywords that your site should rank for.

Web standard based designs function in much the same manner. Designing with web standards means separating content from appearance. Anything that does not deal directly with the content or present some semantic value to your site should be relocated to the CSS. You place all your non-semantic images backgrounds, bullets, etc, colors, font sizes and faces into the CSS. Then your (X)HTML contains only the relevant markup in semantically correct tags H elements for headers, strong for important text, p for paragraphs, em for text you want emphasized, ul/ol for lists, li for list items, dd/dl for definition lists and items, etc. You can then use additional classes and ids on those elements to style your site and match almost any design you can come up with typically with additional div and span tags used sparingly to help provide additional hooks for your CSS.

Designing with web standards also allows you to optimize your site for search engines since you are now declaring to them what your header elements are including hierarchy, what the title of each individual page should be using the title tag, one of the highest ranking SEO tags; and laying out the content with semantic tags so it is able to electronically “read” your content and make keyword associations like the human eyes does naturally.

So by practicing good design you are not only naturally increasing your audience by allowing the largest number of users to view your site but also helping to improve your rankings in search engines for terms relevant to your content. In addition, by separating content from appearance you can easily update the look of your site by changing the CSS and potentially adding a few more hooks cutting redesign time drastically.

In conclusion, good design means using accessible designs and standards compliant code. This brings you the largest possible audience, the lowest possible redesign time for future updates, lower bandwidth (because CSS is cached), and search engine optimized code.

Random Tidbit: The Google maps flight sim is pretty cool.  Though I wish they had more cities.

family, ferret, life

Remembering A Friend

3 Comments

Today will be six months to the day when I lost my last ferret Mugsy. Sometimes, I find it hard to even realize that she is gone. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized being sad will not honor the memory of my furry friend. Ferrets are a misunderstood pet and many people are misinformed about them. So I decided to post the top 5 reasons why you should welcome ferrets into your life.

5. No other pet will be more loyal or make you laugh more. I’ve had dogs. I had a very good dog. But my ferrets were the best. They knew me by name and face. They were always happy to see me. I was the best thing in their eyes. Their antics and the stories I have still bring a smile to my face.

4. They are always happy. When I let them out of their cage it was like I was giving them the greatest gift in the world. When I chased them, they only liked it more. My only regret is that I thought I would have more time and didn’t do more of either.

3. The only thing more fun that one ferret is two. Or three. Or four. I had only planned on getting 3 ferrets and ended up taking a fourth one in. He proved more work than the other 3 combined. But he was awesome.

2. You can’t help but smile when ferrets get going. I have so many stories of them tackling each other, of the smallest dragging the largest by the scruff after he tackled her, of them getting so agitated by my sister putting their toys away that they’d actually come over and dook (scold) me, and of them teaming up on my cat that I can’t even go into detail on them. I still smile whenever I think about it.

1. You can’t say you’ve lived a complete life until you’ve seen a “weasel war dance.” When a ferret gets extremely happy and/or excited they hop around, tossing their head and expending energy frenetically. It’s extremely hard to explain the weasel war dance. But I dare anyone but the most cold hearted among us to see this in action and not want a ferret in their life.

I cannot get more ferrets at this time. But after much thought I’ve decided that when I do get my own place, I think I will get more “carpet sharks.” I’ll never be able to replace my original foursome, but that’s not really the point. I hope after reading this you give ferrets a chance. They’re not stinky rodents – it’s more like having a kitten that never grows up, but many times more energetic.

Random Tidbit: A collection of weasel war dances found on YouTube: one two three

My ferrets in a happier time:
My ferrets in a happier time

life, web design

Great Geek Job

I had seen a recent article about 8 things intelligent people, geeks and nerds need to work and I began to realize that my job has nearly all of them.  They’re pretty flexible as long as you get your work done, they have good benefits, most of us share our iTunes (legally on the local network) so we can jam while we work – though some of my co-worker’s collections are questionable, they let us work from home when we need to – the big winter storms we had for example, and they dress code is pretty lax.  Plus it’s a small company, so you pretty much know everyone else and I can’t name one person that I don’t like.

So if you’re a developer looking for a great company, feel free to come on over.  We could use the help and we’re definitely going places.  You won’t be sorry you did.

Random Tidbit:  I found an interesting article about how Microsoft is dead after fighting with a Vista box that wouldn’t behave (or maybe it was and the behavior it’s supposed to have is illogical, who know’s right now.)  This article takes a different slant than others in that they still make a lot of money, but they’re no longer the big scary monster they used to be – Google is – and the only way to get back up there is to acquire a lot of the top quality startups.  Pretty interesting.