So, uh, yeah... after that long-winded diatribe the other week denouncing Apple's product lineup, I, for some reason, got it into my head that I would buy a Mac Pro. To be honest, I can't really think of the reasons why... they were basically a lot of small things that added up (i.e. just got on salary, work in a Mac shop, nice virtualization software). I figured I'd sell the PC and use the laptop until I had some cash squirreled away to devote to a $2.5k machine. Well, I told my employer that I was seriously considering getting the Mac Pro, and he went ahead and bought me Photoshop CS3 and VMWare Fusion today. Plus I'm going to get his 20-inch Cinema display as a hand-me-down. Well, that was enough for me to take the plunge and buy this stupidly freaking expensive computer. I did get a refurb, which netted me about 15% off the list price for the Quad 2.66 GHz system. A pretty big justification was the fact that I can probably use this machine reliably for at least 3 years (barring component failure); it's just that overpowered. So anyway. You guys (read: Andy) can make fun of me now.
Of course, I was locked out of my house when I got back from the second. Jerks. I was getting so dehydrated and hungry, all I could think about was what I was going to eat when I got back. I ended up buying a box of Golden Grahams, and destroying half of it. I fell asleep in my clothes, woke up at 4:00AM, ate another bowl, and went back to sleep.
I finally got my new bicycle, too. The frame is a 56 cm Surly Steamroller, which I am really liking so far. I didn't ride it to work today due to overexertion yesterday, but it handles nice. It has a front brake this time...
My roommates and I are getting possession of our new house on Friday, but I'm not sure how much stuff I'll be able to move due to the annual Xenos College Ministry Holden Beach Trip Extravaganza. No one else in my homechurch is going, 'cos, like, they're too old, or something. Actually, that's not quite true... the only "real" (i.e. non-married) girl in my group is going, too. I bought two books that I'm saving for next week: Spook Country by William Gibson, and After Dark by Haruki Murakami. Awesome! I think I'm going to bring my Game Boy and get some oldschool handheld action in as well.
Recently I built some pages for a client, and one of the client contacts came back wanting to use validated XHTML. The guy in question was all, "It looks weird in IE!"
I cursed under my breath, and then looked at the pages he sent back to me. All he had done was add an XHTML doctype to each page. Running them through a validator produced millions of errors. That's when I decided to read a bit on what XHTML actually does.
Benefits of XHTML
Stricter syntax rules - always have well-formed documents
Detriments of XHTML
Stricter syntax rules - more difficult to update
Needs to be served with proper MIME type; not "text/html"
XML declaration causes "quirks" mode when document is served as "text/html"
IE doesn't handle MIME type "application/xhtml+xml"
"Unless the document is recognised as XHTML, you cannot use any of the features XHTML offers over HTML."
Sadly, after reading about all this stuff, I realized that I had been making some unwitting mistakes in my HTML for quite a while now, such as inserting a space and slash at the end of single tags (i.e. <br /> instead of <br>). Plus, I haven't been validating my code... mostly just due to laziness on my part.
Anyway, the long and short of the story is that I learned a lot about doctype declarations, and that XHTML is mostly hype, in terms of accessibility and features. Using the HTML 4.01 Strict doctype will probably ensure that your document will be accessible in its' original presentation for years to come (if you even care that long).
Sometimes I disgust myself. I have (personally) owned one Apple computer (G3 iBook) in my life, yet still follow Apple product announcements like a blind, gibbering sheep. This is in spite of some pretty decent reasons not to like the platform. For one, Macs're expensive — and the "added benefits" of included software like iLife don't really apply to me, since I don't use 'em. For another, when I tried to buy a "refurbished" MacBook Pro last year, both units Apple sent me were physically defective... I was on the receiving end of some crap customer service there. Plus, Steve Jobs is kind of a douche. Still, though, in spite of everything, I do like MacOS X. It's got a familiar Unix shell under all the eye candy nonsense, and there are a lot of great programs for it... I would love to use TextMate and Transmit or Coda. And to be fair, for the extra money you pay, you do get the benefits of a closed hardware/software platform... everything usually just works, which is what I'm desiring now-a-days.
The big thing, though, is that there's a gap in Apple's product lineup: a huge gap between the Mac Mini and Mac Pro. I need two monitors for development work (which nixes the Mini), but don't need the two dual-core CPUs that drive the price up on the Mac Pro. Some dude wrote an article about the issue, which I endorse wholeheartedly. When I went into the local Apple store for a "hiring event," I was the only person who didn't own a Mac — I cited the fact that Apple didn't offer what I needed from a professional standpoint, but it didn't go over well with the zealots at the store.
Until something changes at Apple, I'm sticking to the tried and true platform of Wintel.
If you've ever had to do "print" stylesheets, I'm sure it's been exasperating. I mean, seriously... who prints web pages (Aside from people in my office, who print everything)? I saw a post on 37signals' blog regarding print stylesheets that inspired me. That link isn't actually the original article, but the gist is similar: set display: none for each extraneous element. Easy!
These guys also inspired me with another little bit of labor-saving information: the 'Home' and 'End' keys. In your browser, Home takes you to the top of a page, while End goes all the way to the bottom. Amazing how often I use these keys now, in addition to the 'Page Up' and 'Page Down' for scrolling through pages. Plus, in your (non-Emacs) text editor, Home moves the cursor to the start of a line, while End goes to... you guessed it... the end of a line.
