Month: October 2002

okay, with a little more detail: I can’t say that I wasn’t eagerly anticipating the arrival of this book. I ordered it on December 11, 2001, according to amazon, and it shipped on October 20, 2002. I’ve been reading Clark’s (Joe’s?) stuff for a little while now…probably about six-eight months before ordering the book, and I’ve always enjoyed the clarity and wit of his writing.

I even got interested in the admittedly arcane field of captioning just because of his lively writing. (now our TV is set for captioning while muted, so I can either watch commercials be horribly mangled, or enjoy my shows while C. plays excruciatingly loud spanky-death-games.)

I followed the progress of the writing of the book on Joe’s bookblog, and then followed the progress of my own copy via UPS tracking. I picked it up on a Friday, and read it partially on the way home, the rest over the weekend.

the verdict: an excellent book. everything that I’d expected or hoped for in the tone – a little bit tongue in cheek, a little curmudgeonly, and all Joe Clark. the longest colophon I’ve ever fucking seen, and entirely enjoyable for all that. dry humor that speaks to the assumed audience in wonderfully knowing tones – I kept wanting to read passages aloud to C., to the point where he had to tell me to just keep reading, since he didn’t know what the hell i was talking about.

to be fair, I must admit that there were a few typos (an entirely missing graphic that I’m sure would’ve been illuminating among them), and that I found the two photos of adaptive devices a little dark. I found the Braille machine utterly baffling, but I don’t think any amount of explanation would’ve helped.

but even in a heavily covered field, this would be a standout book for its approach – practical to the point of cynicism, detailed w/out being overwhelming, and as previously mentioned, entertaining to read. much in the book was familiar to me, as I’ve been soaking myself in accessibility issues over the past year, but there were a few a-ha! moments, notably in those places where theory and principle slam headlong into reality. and he covers the topic that I’ve personally found most overwhelming – HTML data tables, I had to do several rather large & complex ones before I really understood what I was doing – as clearly as I think is humanly possible. (I think I even understood a point or two that was still unclear before.)

in a field that is almost empty, Building Accessible Websites is a necessity for anyone writing/programming/designing/whatever-they-call-it-this-month for the Web. you will learn something, or unlearn something, or have something to think about.

I’m waiting for my DNS to propagate, which sounds like something that happens in a bad sci-fi movie.

before you continue, please read the following:
– Mental Illness (by Dorothea)
– mental illness (by Anil Dash)

I’ll take this as seriously as it’s intended.

now, I don’t know if everything that I’ve been through in the last 20 years is because of the psychological traumas that I suffered in my girlhood or because of some underlying chemical discontinuity that would’ve made me fall into the abyss regardless. I doubt that it matters.

(re: the question of nature vs. nurture. my mother and both sisters have suffered depressive episodes for many years. one sister was diagnosed as “borderline manic-depressive.” I’ve gotten glimmers that other family members have suffered from depression as well, and alcoholism is quite notable in one branch of the family. then again, there’s been enough traumas and dramas to make even a fully stable person a little wiggy.)

I seem to recall writing in my timeline (on a disk I don’t care to take the time to look for) that at age eight, my family vanished into a black hole…or something to that effect. when I was eight – 20 years ago next February 8 – my father died of a heart attack. some of my earliest journal entries (age 10) were deeply lonely and unhappy. there was a lot of family therapy, of which I was never the focus. (I didn’t exhibit quite as colorful a set of disturbances as my sisters, at least not most of the time.)

I’ll second Dorothea’s description of high school, and append junior high onto that. (actually, I’ll just second Dorothea’s whole entry; it very much speaks to me.) as for me, I had an extremely bad spell my senior year, mostly set off by some bad interpersonal ju-ju among friends. (the constant squabbling & stress at home didn’t help much.) I finally went in for counseling, by myself, at the constant urging of my then-sweetheart. (I’ve been lucky in my life to have been involved with two people who were (and are) real troopers through my ups & downs.) it was okay, mostly I got by through skipping school, writing, and daydreaming about going away.

and while my first year had its share of intense loneliness, and some serious mom-trouble (related to aforementioned sweeheart), the darkness was abated.

but sophomore year was, in some ways, an endless nightmare that sent me skittering into one of the deepest depressions it’s been my misfortune to experience. I slept, cried, fought with sweetheart, other lovers, roommates, bounced between not eating at all and overeating sugars. I barely made it to class, and in fact flunked american politics outright. (I’ve always been regretful of that one…it was a pretty good class, but I just couldn’t get out of bed in the mornings.) I had thoughts…well, thoughts that I don’t want to think again. (I’ve been known to joke that the only reason I lived through it is that I’m too squeamish to have done anything.)

I managed to pull out of it. I had excellent counselors…thankfully it was a free service of the college, and they had some great folks.

bad spells here and there; a hard time shortly after the big breakup with Raul…although that had as much to do with the anxiety about leaving school & trying to figure out what came next as it did with him & our relationship. Kat talked me through that period, god love her…a few days when I had trouble leaving my apartment, she got me to at least walk the 3 blocks over to campus to sit & talk in the cafeteria. little bursts of blackness, but nothing that didn’t pass.

until a very bad spring a couple of years back…when I was totally and entirely unhappy at work…and the blackness just kept coming. it’s hard to describe, when I’m not there…just the feeling that everything is terrible & useless. I tried therapy, and this time didn’t click at all with the counselor. thought about trying antidepressants, ended up not going there; quit therapy because I couldn’t afford physical therapy (oh my aching hands) and mental therapy at the same time. (was broke enough for a while that I just quit both & haven’t gone back to either, more’s the pity.) gradually, it got better, even before I got my current job.

I still have black moments, and reading The Noonday Demon (warning, gratuitious flash) was a difficult but illuminating experience for me. I suppose depression (which I sometimes see in my mind as an abyss that I walk beside and occassionally into) is something that I’ll be watching for forever.

sometimes, in a really good space, like I’m in tonight with the music rattling away in the background and the words scrolling effortlessly down the page, it takes a genuine effort to bring that other state to mind, to acknowledge it, and to acknowledge that it’s damn good to be alive.

yes, it’s good to be alive. there are lots of blessings to count, not the least of which is finding this medium, and all the blessings that have come from that.

they’ve been searching a house in Tacoma for info about some guy who has something to do with the sniper thing. weird. (why is it that Tacoma only ever shows up in the context of crime in the news?)

I decided to sign up for National Novel Writing Month…probably a bit of insanity on my part, but I think it’ll be good for me. I’ve been writing some “fluff,” as Dorothea calls it, over the last few days, and I think (I hope!) I can keep it up for a while. we’ll see. (there may be a blog.)

Maddy is wrapped up in a rug over at the other side of the room…I’m a little concerned that she might attack the network. 🙂

– why do I always connect things that happen (to whomever) to other things that happened (to me) in the past?
– is it a good thing?
– do I pay more attention to events (world events) when someone I know (or something like that) is involved?
– is that a good thing?

while surfing around for links to reference re: a weblogging foundation, I turned up this. An End to Pain.

stavros (somehow, I can’t write Chris and think of the same person), I am so sorry for your loss. reading about Rick’s experiences, and the experiences of those burned in the Bali blast, has turned my mind to someone I haven’t talked to in a very long time. (must find postcard stamp….)

my best friend in junior high, and someone who has remained a very dear friend since those days, was a severe burn victim. at the age of six, she was in a car accident that killed her father and one brother, and left her and another brother with burns over large portions of their respective bodies. when I met her, we were eleven years old and we were both in special ed gym. (why I was in special ed gym I’ll leave either for another time or as an exercise for the reader.)

we didn’t talk a lot about the burns, not directly anyway. it’s not as though they were something that could have been forgotten, really: the worst of the burn scars were on her face, and they were quite severe. but they were just part of the background, at least for me. we talked about her surgeries, sometimes, and how she felt about surgery & her surgeons; she had surgery at least once a year up through high school.

most of the time, we talked about what we wanted to do with our lives, things in school, our families, books we were reading. we played a lot of Othello; it was something of a metaphor, tho I couldn’t say of what. I loved spending the night at her house, because her family was calm & quiet, her house was clean and cool, and we could stay up really late w/out being disturbed. her mom seemed really happy whenever I came over, and made us great food. I remember playing poker with her and her siblings (who were all much older than we were), and watching Rebecca (still one of my favorite movies & books) with our other two best friends at her house.

(here’s how many times I visited…I wanted to send her a card to let her know about the move, but couldn’t find her address – I knew she was back at home while doing her residency – I asked Mom if she still had the address; she didn’t, but she found it by driving there…by memory from at least 10 years ago.)

anyway…the gist of it, for me, is that through all of my psycho-dramas of junior high & high school, I counted on her to be my rock, to talk me down from my more emotional moments. and while I knew that she’d gone thru a lot, I didn’t know much about it.

then I read that article on stavros’ site, about the Bali burn victims, and in my mind’s eye I could see my friend, as a very little girl, in that place. god, I’d never wish that on another soul. her brother died like that, never leaving the hospital.

I’m incoherent, thinking about it, feeling sorrow for stavros, for his friend Rick’s family and friends, and for my own friend and her family, tho it’s entirely too late for that sort of thinking, and I don’t think she’d appreciate it anyway.

I’ve seen this idea bouncing about the blogosphere (see references at bottom), and yesterday I saw Mark’s comment about how RSS is eating his bandwidth, and this morning I was mentally doodling while in the shower, and this is what came to me.

the weblogging foundation
“promoting personal publishing efforts to encourage communication among the people of the world and the promotion of the useful arts and sciences” or something like that.

goal one: digital divide issues
work with other organizations that are working on digital divide issues – as access is brought to rural and/or impoverished communities, evangelize for weblogging, provide subsidized hosting (esp. for third-world bloggers), provide weblogging training, etc. – to ensure that as people come to the Internet, that they can become not just consumers but also producers.

goal two: promote quality blogging
mini-grants to webloggers who have demonstrated artistic and/or educational merit in their blogging efforts – for subsidized bandwidth/hosting, access to conferences & events, technology upgrades, etc.

goal three: promote the technology of weblogging
(this is the most nebulous in my head) encourage consortiums and conversations in standardizing and/or improving the technology. could host a weblogs.com style service, RSS validator, that sort of thing – or could host mailing lists, discussion boards, and/or conferences for vendor-neutral discussion – or could provide mini-grants to develop unique tools (thinking of an idea from a conversation with C yesterday).

who would I want to see on the board of directors? oddly enough, I’d rather not have any of the tool providers (ie: Ev, Dave Winer, the Trotts, etc.), just to avoid the appearance of bias. or conversely, it’d be interesting to have a “toolmakers advisory board”, and include as many of those folks as possible…not just the big 3, but also John Hiler, somebody from LiveJournal, some of the homegrown tool makers….

I’d also want to make sure that as many of the weblogging subcultures (even including the warbloggers, who personally give me the creeps) are represented as possible, again to avoid bias. of the bloggers I know (of) well, I’d love to see Mark Pilgrim, Dorothea Salo, Rebecca Blood, Matt Haughey, or Dave Weinberger get involved. (which begs the question: “celebs” or nobodies? probably some of both.) Dan Gilmore? Kottke? RageBoy might be intriguing, if not necessarily useful.

the place to start would be in-kind donations – of hosting and tools, primarily. grants would be funded either by soliciting the usual foundations grants and by gathering individual donations.

references:
embedded obliquely in this (rather snarky) BlogRoots post
apparently, this proposal (from a warblogger?) seems to have kicked things off back in May
reactions from: Burningbird and MeFi

and for now, I’m just going to say…to hell with it all. I just saw BB’s post about stav’s friend Rick.

(more later, I imagine.)

Oliver Willis thinks it means that blogging has jumped the shark. Mark Pilgrim marvels at how he can manage to stay on top of things after all these years. I’m just gonna smile: Doonesbury takes on blogging.

didn’t know about this tech bookstore, and I really want this book….Bookpool (thanks, K!)

fyi: best value notebooks.

an interesting read: David Weinberger’s take on Stephan Wolfram – I read the article about him (SW) in Wired, very intriguing. this guy’s take cracks me up: “Remember the “big bang” theory? Well, what’s happening is really God running a deific version of WinZip Pro.” maybe it’s not even WinZip, but just hello world.

I have no comment, but must quote:

Getting towards midnight, with beer: Damn it, I want to drink and dance and sing, with my friends, Rick’s friends; I want to burn wood and smell the smoke and piss in the sea, shout at the moon, cry at the beauty of this world and swear eternal opposition to those who would paint it with blood, again, I want to hold you my friends in my arms and circle around our wounded brother and sing and weep and shout and break the shell of the words. I’m drunk again, by god, and I’m typing with tears running down my rugged goddamn manly cheeks, and I feel so useless. I want to bellow in pain like some big dumb beast, and I want to hold my friend and tell him that he has nothing to fear.

– For Richer – 11 page story in the New York Times about inequality in America, and how it’s grown over the last 20 years. quite disheartening.

today I returned a pair of lopping shears that I’d borrowed from our friends around the corner…and returned with a tray full of plants. (I have only a vague idea of where I’m going to plant them.) I’ve never been a gardener, and I’m fascinated to watch Dani work in her garden, which is beautiful in an unrestrained/unplanned way.

and to her, these are extras, and something that’ll get me started in going from a vastness of lawn to an actual garden…but I’m blown away, because I’m not yet in a place where I have that sense of abundance.

in some parts of my life, I can feel that richness of spirit that comes from having more than enough. I have web knowledge to spare, for example. but in some ways I’ve been hampered by my own feelings of anxiety, worrying about whether I even have enough for myself.

last night I had a horrible anxious dream, in which I found myself arguing that I’m doing much better now. (that’s the short version; I really don’t feel like going into more detail.) and so I am. I just have to keep telling myself so.

there’s a link that should go with this entry, but I don’t have it right here, so I’ll come back & add it later. probably.