APA Award

A website I designed and programmed while at my last job (it went live over two years ago) won a First Place Award in the 2003 Arkansas Press Association Awards (award results not on their website yet).

That site got second place in 2001, third place in 2002, and, finally, first place in 2003. I’m sure it would mean more to me if I were still at that job, but I’m still pretty happy with it (the award, not the site).

The sites at my current job were not submitted for the awards this year, so I had no chance of winning. Next year, based on the redesign I’m working on now, I think I’ll have a good shot at another First Place. And the sites will be submitted next year.

XHTML 1.1

As of today, this site is coded in valid XHTML 1.1. There may be a few individual entry pages that don’t due to poorly coded links, but the template validates and several randomly-sampled pages do, too. I realize this is of little or no interest to many of my readers, but I wanted to start practicing what I preach here.

My next step is to tweak each page (or template) so that the code is all semantic, with no presentational code. We’ll see how that goes. It’s not too far off the mark right now. Then I’m going to work on my 508 accessibility. I think most pages are there now (or close).

Sushi fabric!

This sushi fabric would make some awesome pillows for the new couch for the newly-redesigned den/library/office/place.

#$%&* ing HAIL!

This morning, we had a brief but damaging hailstorm that saw up to quarter-sized (though most was nickel-sized or so) hail fall on our neighborhood. Unfortunately, I park my new car (a 2003 Subaru Forester, which I LOVE) outside our one-car carport (where Wife parks her car). I realized too late that I could pull Wife’s car way up into the carport and then pull mine in up close behind hers and still cover 3/4 of my car. So, I did that (getting popped hard in the head a couple of times in the process), but too late. The hood of my Forester is covered in very shallow dents (there are only a couple on the top, and luckily the sunroof was spared any damage). You don’t notice them at a glance, but I can see them, and, more importantly, I know they’re there, dammit! I’m going to call some places tomorrow and see how much it might be to get it fixed.

All CSS news/weather site

Adrian Holovaty (personal site) has launched an all-CSS redesign of the weather section of Lawrence Journal-World’s family of websites. It’s great to see an online news site embrance forward-compatible markup (it’s all done in CSS with semantic markup for the content).

While the sites I manage are mostly CSS-powered now, my forthcoming redesign will move more toward all semantic markup and separation of content and presentation. Adrian’s new weather site is a good example of the direction I’m working toward.