I am reading a new book. It’s called Headfirst HTML with CSS & XHTML by Elizabeth Freeman and Eric Freeman. It is part of a series created by Kathy Sierra and it is described as “brain-friendly” So far I love it and would have read much later if my attention hadn’t been distracted by the storm that came through last night. More about this later but in the meantime you can visit the website Creating Passionate Users to learn more. I will highly recommend these books. I am at a beginners level – I have learned enough to get by and skimmed a lot of information. I often end up having to research a problem because I skimmed over something I later needed. This book is presented in a way that causes you to stay focused and UNDERSTAND! I hope to move up a tiny bit past beginner.
Monthly Archives: March 2006
A Clean Install
I used to wonder at the purpose for all the dietary laws that the Jewish people of the Old Testament had to observe. Then I heard a pastor talk about how much easier it is to make friends and exchange viewpoints when you have the type of relationship with people that allows you to sit and eat a meal with them. The Lord knew how easily we would make spiritual accommodations with people they made friends with and in Old Testament times sharing a meal was more of a covenant experience than it is now. When you had a guest you were responsible for him while he was in your home. It indicated a certain level of trust. Once you have established a relationship with another person you are at the least more willing to listen to their point of view. God wanted his kids to be separate to keep their spiritual beliefs intact.
Once you listen to another person’s point of view it is not that big a step to have that point of view change your own in some minute way. This is not a bad thing in most cases but I think where our faith is concerned it is tragic and down through the generations those little increments add up.
Now here we are in a society that throws children away for the sake of convenience and material things, accepts a culture that is polluted with pornography on every level and we find ways to evade accountability. We stay busy and we “see†but don’t “discernâ€. One definition I found for discern was “recognize: detect with the sensesâ€. We need to be using more that our eyes to take a quick glance around these days. We need to be using all our senses to recognize that we no longer have a common accepted “yardstick†by which to measure right and wrong or true and false. We have let every idea people can express be made acceptable in the name of tolerance. The worst of it is that these things affect each successive generation more deeply so the legacy that we leave our children is a bigger mess that the one we started with.
I recently took my computer to a friend for repair. He told me that there was way too much stuff on it and the best thing to do at this point was to back things up and do a clean install. Too bad we can’t do that with life. I think we have let in too much stuff (junk) and we can no longer sort through and recognize (discern) what we should keep and what we should toss. We need a clean install.
Some years ago I read a book co-authored by Chuck Colson and Jack Eckerd titled, “Why America Doesn’t Work.” Here is the opening quote from the book:
“Perched on the brink of the twenty-first century, we look out across a land where our families are disintegrating, our streets have become drug- war zones, our classrooms are turning out thousands of functionally illiterate and morally bereft young people, our economy looks like it’s on a roller-coaster, our government deliberately keeps millions idle, and our work force produces second-rate products while demanding first-rate benefits.
I was, at the time a mother of two toddlers and trying to look ahead to raise them with the tools they would need to be thinking, feeling, compassionate people; capable of making their own decisions in a world that tries to sway us every which way and this book caught my attention.
One of the stories was about a Nazi camp where the Jewish prisoners were ordered to move a huge pile of rocks from one end of the yard to the other. Even though these people were starving and in desperate circumstances they encouraged each other and accomplished the task. When the task was complete they were ordered to move them back. At this stage they stopped encouraging each other, stopped trying and some quit eating or threw themselves at the fence basically committing suicide. The difference? The second move they knew this was a meaningless task. The authors contend that people need meaningful work to survive. Without meaningful work, we as humans have no sense of accomplishment and we, like the Jews in that Nazi camp can sink into despair. I searched for the root meaning of the word despair and found this: from Latin desperare (de- `without’ + sperare `to hope’ People with no hope have nothing to lose or gain. They care about nothing and no one. They have no purpose.
The way I see it, the only way to motivate people with no hope is to give them hope. That gives us several tasks. How do we give them hope? What do we give them hope for? How will they continue to be people of hope?
We had better figure out those answers soon if we are to survive as a culture. We need a clean install.
Boundary Issues
Life overlaps, or at least mine does. I would like to keep work, home, and church all in their own little boxes but they don’t seem to want to stay there. Not only do parts of my life squish around into areas they don’t belong but they are never in proportion. My life has boundary issues.
Some days I have too much to do at home but I’m at work where I have too little. Somedays I have too much work stuff to do and home stuff interferes. Today was one of those days. I had unexpected things to do at work – a computer that I spent way more time trying to fix than I thought I would and then still had to call for help which always frustrates me. I had to leave work on time because I had committed to picking up some files from the church for their website. I thought I had plenty of time to do that and still make it on time to pick up my daughter from school not knowing that the pastor’s laptop is having troubles too. Then there is the debacle of the miracle communication tool of our time (said skeptically) – the cell phone. I rarely use mine and only for keeping in contact with my kids when they need me to pick them up from various activities. I tried every cell number I had and got nothing but voicemail boxes, then tried our home number and got the internet answering machine. I was late picking up my daughter and when we got home my son had already left to pick her up. It was a Chinese firedrill day. I accomplished very little of what I started out to do this morning but in the end we all had dinner together and I’ll start over tomorrow.
Amen sister!
I read about someone turning 100 years old the other day and thought about all the changes they have seen in their lives. New inventions certainly, but I’m thinking about cultural changes. I’m a part of the generation that still remembers when married couples in tv shows had to have single beds and romantic displays of affection were limited and pretty chaste. My generation loved “Saturday Night Live” (back at the beginning when it was FUNNY) partly because it pushed the envelope with language, sexual references, and the irreverancy of it all. It seems to me we have pushed the envelope all the way off the cliff. I guess I could be stuck in “the good old days” rut but I think it is more than that. It is hard to find value these days, whether it be music, movies, or books. The media is owned by a few major companies who compete for our attention with what they think the public wants to hear. I would prefer to get objective news, and stories (whatever the media) that lift humanity up or educate us, or make us think.
Cecelia Weckstrom on her blog http://www.digitaldigressions.net said this about technology: “To me the prospect that all this technological development is resulting in one thing dominating it all – porn everywhere, is a sad reflection on the state of our society. If all the various forms of expression (humour, satire, prose, poetry, music, painting, photography etc.) are all eclipsed by this subject, then I am inclined to think that civilisation truly is an oxymoron. Spam too – whoever thinks it works? I mean, who is the nitwit who thought that sending loads of rubbish to people’s inboxes would result in sales rather than uncontrolled fury?” Amen sister!
And Then She Said
I have been learning XHTML and CSS . Learning the two of them at the same time has been a challenge. I was able to get a background image to not only show in the correct place, but to not repeat itself all over the page in IE and I was so proud that I had to show my teenage daughter. She took a look at my CSS file and then she said “oh yeah, you have to say no repeat” I stared at her in disbelief. She told me she had been working on her Xanga theme the other day and figured that out when she couldn’t get her page to look right. I have a little bit different view of Xanga and my daughter now.
After spending hours searching out blogs on the sxsw conference, I have some different views on learning too. I was fascinated by notes on the presentation by Kathy Sierra “How to Create Passionate Users” It impressed me most because it seemed universal. People learn when they are excited or passionate about something. The question then becomes how to get them excited. How do we maintain that level of passion to keep learning. I’ve now added the book “Headfirst Design Patterns” to my wishlist at Amazon. Some of the ideas that have caught my mind are showing a picture of what success looks like and then providing a series of steps to get there. I know that when I am trying to complete a task that involves something I am new and unsure about, it helps to have an attainable goal in sight and to know I have the tools I need to get there. The phrase “being in the flow” was mentioned as well. We all have that one thing we do that causes us to completely lose track of time and the rest of the world. According to these “patterns” gradual growth is better than a big payoff. We need to see that while we still have further to go we have gone from point a to b and each level thereafter and we need to have that sense of achieving progress at each level. “Give users an I rule experience” I have definitely become a “passionate user” What could happen if we applied these principles to staff development? To raising and educating our kids?
Interesting Times
Thanks to Tony for setting this up for me!
There is an ancient Chinese proverb that goes “May you live in interesting times”
I spend a lot of time reading on the Internet . I also spend time reading articles I have printed from the Internet . I used to run out and buy a book whenever I wanted to learn something new. Now I just google it (yes I’m a google addict) and start distilling the piles of information down to the details that I need. This changing from books to Internet has been a slow process for me and don’t get me wrong, I still need my books. I can’t sleep at night without reading first. But now when I want to know the weather forecast, the latest news, the definition of a word, the author of a quote and a myriad of other things, I turn to the computer first. Recently I discovered blogs and now I find that reading, an activity I always found relaxing, has become another source of stress. What if my favorite blogger posts something important and I miss it?
Now with the advent of so many web-based applications, we can read, write, keep our contacts, calendars, and links, listen to music, and create spreadsheets and presentations, all online. The design of web sites has become an art form. There are communities on-line which for my generation totally re-defines the word community just by their existence.
I like the idea of instant information access. Working in the public school system, I see the web-based applications as a wonderful equalizer for students and teachers to accomplish tasks without worrying about software compatibility. This article for example, is being written on ZOHO Writer and will be posted later to a blog. I have been watching to see which applications will survive on their own and which will be snatched up by larger companies, and how these applications will be used. With some creativity, the possibilities are remarkable for education, for small business, and for the individual. I think it will also be interesting to see how these changes affect our long-term use of the Internet. Will my grandchildren still carry schoolbooks in a backpack?
The new web accessibility standards make the Internet easier for folks with disabilities to accomplish their online tasks and with many smaller towns looking into citywide wi-fi and public libraries providing Internet access more people will be able to utilize information and applications. Will we keep up with these developments in the public school system by providing information and training to our students and teachers on the availability and use of all these new things?
The Internet used to be about looking up information and email. Now instead of just a reference or communication tool, we can interact constantly by writing our own blogs, creating documents online and making them public, participating in wiki’s, and subscribing to news services that allow us to vote for the stories we think are most relevant and in doing so causing them to migrate to the front page. We no longer are just bystanders, we are actually creating the Internet as we interact. Contemplating the implications of that are enough to make me believe that we do live in interesting times!