9/13/01
Reprinted from my original post of 9/13/01. You can still visit the original, if you wish, but the stylesheet disappeared during a server migration, so it’s plain text only. 11 September My part of...
View ArticleI stayed.
My insight into corporate legal disputes is as meaningful as my opinion on Quantum Mechanics. What I do know is that, when given the chance this week to leave my job with half a year’s salary paid in...
View ArticleI Remember, Part 1
Her voice, when she spoke to us from the doorway, was strange. I was in 3rd Grade. Our teacher went away for a few minutes, then came back, crying. She was a tough public school teacher of the old...
View ArticleWeb Design Inspiration
If you’re finding today a bit stressful for some reason, grab a respite by sinking into any of these web design inspiration websites. Gathered from conversations on Reddit and elsewhere, each site...
View ArticleVeterans Day Remembrance
Writing on this website on November 11, 2002, one year and two months after 9/11, my late father Maurice had this to say: My wife Catherine held up an Annenberg report on World War II, written by...
View ArticleUnderstanding MARTI: A New Metadata Framework for AI
At its core, MARTI is a bridge. It harmonizes with existing metadata standards like the Content Authenticity Initiative, Anthropic’s Responsible Scaling Policy, and the W3C’s PROV. It anticipates the...
View ArticleA List Apart contributors list on Bluesky
I’ve started a Bluesky list featuring some of the brilliant writers, designers, coders, editors, and others who’ve contributed to A List Apart “for people who make websites” from the magazine’s first...
View ArticleLessons from Cats: Jasper’s Clever Cleanup Routine
My daughter and I have three cats—all rescues: There’s Snow White, our 16-year-old queen and my daughter’s consigliere, who, despite requiring thrice-a-week medication injections to keep her kidneys...
View ArticleHow to Join Blue Beanie Day: Wear and Share!
Saturday, 30 November 2024, marks the 17th annual Blue Beanie Day celebration. It’s hard to believe, but web standards fan Douglas Vos conceived of this holiday way back in ’07: The origin of the name...
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Of Books and Conferences Past
Just as nobody who marries spends their wedding day planning their divorce, almost nobody starts a business contemplating what rocks it will eventually splinter and break upon, and how to build a life...
View ArticleDomain harvesting and the Twitter long game in retrospect
If you have a website that gets steady but diminishing traffic, and whose domain registration dates back at least a decade, you may encounter offers to buy your domain. These used to come mainly from...
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Valediction.
I started using Twitter before the dawn of the iPhone. Back then, in 2006, it was a fun, funky, fully functional (if barebones) beta messaging service used mainly by The People of the Web—the kind of...
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My weekend project
It’s Sunday; I’m playing with my music collection, content as a fed-and-burped babe. Let me explain. I realized last night that, in tracking my shifting musical tastes via my Last.fm Pro account, I’m...
View ArticleFar from the bullying crowd
The bullies who beat and mocked me in eighth grade were cruel and stupid. They despised intelligence and worshipped violence, although they would settle for athletic ability. The school blessed their...
View ArticleA Jewish Joke
Two Jews are standing in an open cattle car en route to Auschwitz. The train pauses on a bridge overlooking a river. Directly below them is a transport ship. “Look!” the first Jew excitedly tells his...
View ArticleMy Glamorous Life: The Unexpected Samples
A whinnying horse. A blaxploitation sample. A female instructor saying Chinese is the easiest language to learn. These three brief audio samples regularly interrupt my late-night headphone music...
View ArticleYour opt-innie wants to talk to your opt-outtie.
Here’s a fact: “Opt-in” is great for programs a platform controls, but meaningless when that platform has no control. Take, for example, oh, I don’t know, let’s say AI companies scraping web content...
View ArticleThis Years Model
There’s a new AI model that can render photorealistic people and products, including text and logos. Geisha With Walkman is something I tried to draw 40 years ago, but my rendering skills were simply...
View ArticleWho turned off the juice?
Beloved reader, I spent 90 minutes on hold with Con Edison yesterday, getting my power turned back on after a billing contretemps. The whole 90 minutes, my brain’s shrieking, “You’re having a panic...
View ArticleForever
The first website my colleagues and I created was for “Batman Forever” (1995, d. Joel Schumacher), starring Val Kilmer. That website changed my life and career. I never saw “Top Gun,” but Val Kilmer...
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