Starring Howard Dean

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Kirsten mentioned this a couple days ago, and today Wired posted an article, so I figured I’d head over to check out Howard Dean TV. My first three thoughts were…

“Cool idea!”

“Ick — Windows only (sigh).”

“Oh, wait — Quicktime videos too!”

So it looks like us oddball Mac users won’t be completely left out in the cold. I don’t have time to actually watch the videos right now, but I’ll definitely be checking them out in the future.

With stripes!

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Xander: Hey! Buffy!

Willow: You missed it!

Buffy: Missed what?

Xander: We just saw the zebras mating, thank you, very exciting.

Willow: It was like the Heimlich — with stripes!

— Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ‘The Pack‘

I missed the next few lines of the show after that, I was laughing so hard.

Alaska questions Patriot Act

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This is absolutely wonderful to hear — Alaska has become the second state, after Hawaii, to pass a resolution “expressing concern over the federal USA Patriot Act.”

“When we stand on this floor and we salute that flag, the final words that we use are ‘One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” said Sen. Robin Taylor, R-Wrangell. “I take it deadly serious when we start removing groups of people from ‘justice for all.'”

Many congratulations to Alaska, and to every legislator who sponsored and supported this resolution.

(via Kirsten)

Postscript: Think there’s any significance to the fact that the only two states to take such a step so far are the two that aren’t part of the “Lower 48”, but instead are seperated by many miles of land or sea? Just a thought….

Winerism of the day

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There are many people far more qualified than I to comment more in-depth on this, but I’ve got to wonder — is Dave Winer actively trying to piss people off?

Movable Type’s new TypePad service is unveiled. It appears to be what UserLand had working (for free) in 1999.

It’s good Dave’s around to keep reminding us that he invented everything. I’d hate to forget.

Navigation – left or right?

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I breezed through a usability study comparing left- and right-justified site navigation this morning.

I had the standard left-justified navigation for a while, and at one point had a three column layout with sidebars on both sides of the page, but in one of my redesigns I decided to go with the current right-justified navigation, and plan on sticking with it.

My basic reasoning is that this layout emphasizes the content over the navigation. As English speakers read from left to right, the content area has dominance. It also (I think) makes it a little easier to track your position on a page when reading a long post. With left-justified navigation, when you reach the end of a line on a page and move your eyes back left, you need to account for whatever space is taken up by the navigation bar. Using a right-justified navigation scheme, you just let your eyes snap all the way to the left of the page, and no searching is necessary.

Now, these are my opinions only, and I’m not schooled in usability at all, so I could be completely off base with that, so take my reasoning with a grain of salt. It’s just my thinking on an admittedly not very important matter. ;)

(via WebWord)

XXX

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Okay, yeah, so everyone told me it was a bad movie. I just wanted to find out for myself. And whaddaya know — they were right! A willing suspension of disbelief is one thing, but when the fight scenes in both Matrix films pay more attention to the laws of physics than the stunts in XXX, it’s really not a good sign (and that thought hit me in the first twenty minutes of the film).

Ah, well. It killed a couple hours, and there were plenty of scantily-clad women scattered throughout the film to ease the pain a little bit. Too bad the female lead looked like a strung out Juliette Lewis, though.