Archive for June, 2006

Håkon Wium Lie, Opera’s CTO and the creator of CSS, respons to nearly 20 questions on Slashdot last Friday. For those of us that live and breathe CSS, there are some interesting tidbits. Well worth a quick read.

http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/23/1443203

I particularily enjoyed his example, about half way in, illustrating why padding is measured outside the width of a box.

Well, I’m still not home yet. Was supposed to be home on Sunday, but I guess thunderstorms and airplanes don’t mesh well.

@media in London was my first stop on this trip. After the conference (which was excellent - I’ll post more soon), I went to Germany for a few days to catch some World Cup action. From Germany I flew to Albany, NY. Aimee and I arrived about 10pm. She stayed in NY to prep for her best friend’s wedding, but I caught a 9am flight out the next morning bound for a family reunion ourside Cleveland on the Lake Erie shore. Reunion was great. I left the family reunion a day early to fly back to NY (Syracuse) on Saturday afternoon to be at the evening wedding there. That was Saturday.

So far so good.

I’m a lucky guy in general, but it sorta ran out. Sunday I was scheduled on an evening flight home: Syracuse-Atlanta-Oakland. Aimee and her Mom dropped me off at the airport and I went inside to check in. After just a few minutes I realized that things weren’t looking good. I called Aimee and told her to pull over in case I needed to be picked back up. (This was a good instinct.)

Turns out ATL was shut down due to severe thunderstorms. All flights were canceled. To make matters worse, it was the end of Syracuse graduation weekend so I wasn’t the only one trying to get out of town. All Monday flights were full. For some reason they don’t fly the route on Tuesdays. They were able to book me confirmed for Thursday, and I got placed at the top of the standby list for Wednesday.

Aimee and her mom picked me back up, and I tagged along with them to their summer place on the St Lawrence Seaway about 90 minutes north of Syracuse.

So here I sit. Current Status: Working From Hundred Yards South of the Canadian Border (WFHYSOTCB).

I called back the next day, and learned they canceled all flights on Monday too. Because I was already on the standby list for Wednesday, the new array of people hunting for flights should have minimal effect on me.

It’s Wednesday now. I’m off to the airport in a couple hours for a late-evening flight to Oakland. Scheduled to arrive about midnight.

I don’t mean to complain; All and all it’s been an outstanding trip. Many great experiences. Many great people and conversations.

It’s just that, really, I’d really like to be home soon please.

Wish me luck.

UPDATE: Well, it’s about 1:30 am local time and I just got home. My bags didn’t - they’re still in Atlanta I guess - but I did and it feels good.

Several of you pointed out that my feed link has been broken recently. Thanks for the tip. Apparently, some WordPress tweaks I made recently broke the feed.

It’s fixed now: http://nate.koechley.com/blog/feed

Thanks!

I’m excited to be speaking at two great conferences this summer. On June 16th I’ll be speaking at the @media 2006 conference in London, and on July 21st I’ll be making a return to the WebVisions conference in Portland, Oregon. If you’re not already planning to attend, allow me to extend an invitation to both events. If you will be there, please shoot me a message [nate at koechley dot com] or drop a comment.

I’m preparing a unique talk for each conference, so you’ll have to come to both to hear it all. I’m wearing my Developer hat in London, and my Designer hat in Portland. For the more technical talk, I will discuss DHTML and Ajax best practices under the title Yahoo! vs. Yahoo!. Three cutting-edge Yahoo! products will be case studies as I share best practices and highlight the importance of weighing key application attributes when you make technical architecture decisions. In Portland I will discuss Usability for Rich Internet Applications. I’ll be describing and sharing communication instruments and toolkits that have proved helpful to us as we strive to bring desktop richness online.

Both these events are top notch, and I’m humbled to be a part of them. WebVisions is the perfect blend of design, technology and business, attracts an amazing and varied array of speakers and attendees, and in its sixth year is firing on all cylinders. I missed last year, and am happy to be back (plus, Portland is georgeous in the summer). @media is only in its second year but already the premier web design conference in Europe. When I look at the design and development books on my desk, nearly all the authors will be presenting during @media’s two packed days.

Here’s a bit more information on each of the conferences:

WebVisions

WebVisions explores the future of design, content creation, user experience and business strategy to uncover the trends and agents of change that will shatter your assumptions about the Web. Be ready to network, share ideas and be inspired by an all-star lineup of speakers.

Over the past six years, we’ve built a loyal audience of designers, developers and industry leaders. I invite you to join us for an event that’s seen as “the creative conference for the Web.”

@media 2006

The @media conference returns to London on 15th-16th June, bigger and better than before. It’s the event of the year for anyone interested in learning about and discussing the latest approaches to web design with some of the world’s most highly respected experts.

See you there!