web-goddess

Man, is this day turning out crappy or what? I figured as long as I have to sit here NOT at the Dahl Open House, I might as well answer some of the e-mail I’ve received at the site. So fifteen minutes later I pointed my browser to Waterstone’s to verify some information for a kid. (If you’re not from the UK, Waterstone’s is a big chain bookstore like Barnes & Noble.) And what greeted me on their home page? A big honkin’ orange screen informing me that my browser wasn’t good enough to see their crappy site. (I should pause here to remind everyone that I use an iMac at home, and currently my favorite browser is OmniWeb, which is free, small, and fast. It doesn’t do all the fancy-schmancy stuff, but IE for Mac OSX is slow as a three-legged dog.) So annnnyway, some hotshot wank designer managed to convince the Waterstone’s people that forcing punters to download and install a new browser is a good way to foster customer relations. They were wrong. I fired off a flaming e-mail that’d curl your hair, being sure to mention that not only were they not receiving my business, but I would never recommend them to any of the 15000+ visitors I receive at my Dahl site each day. (A slight exaggeration, but it was necessary for effect.) Bastards.

I’ve come across these “Web Standards” people before and I thought they were nuts. Zeldman and co. envision themselves as some kind of benevolent internet gods, (con)descending from the mountain to inform the brainless masses of their browser inadequacies. Why can’t they just leave it alone? I’m a web developer and I have no problem making my sites backwards-compatible. And in the few cases where a client has demanded something that would break in one browser, we didn’t ban users of that browser from visiting the site. That’s just ludicrous. That’s fine for a personal site, but businesses like Waterstone’s are going to find out that people don’t like being told what to do. I mean, hasn’t every usability expert for the last five years been saying to get rid of those “Resize your browser to 1470×376 to fully enjoy this site” messages? You know why? Because nobody ever does it! I cannot fathom why a retail company would agree to such a proposal. I can only conclude that the owners weren’t computer-savvy enough to smell the BS their wank web designer was shoveling at them.

Rant off. I need a beer.

Roger Ebert’s Answer Man column attempts some answers at what the 9/11 tragedy means with regard to film, entertainment, and irony. Personally I thought Ebert could’ve responded with a little more. I wanted him to really defend the need for escapism and humor right now. Instead he gave some quick answers that seemed to indicate that he didn’t really think the studios were going to magically change, and that he thought audiences wouldn’t respond to special effects in the same way anymore. I guess I’ll cut the guy some slack though; his family was in New York and he’s probably been as preoccupied as the rest of us.

Bloody Railtrack bastards! I’ve been waiting all summer for today, which is the Roald Dahl Foundation Open House. It’s up at his home Gipsy House in Great Missenden. It takes forty-five minutes to get there on the train. Well, normally, that is. But today, fifteen minutes before leaving the house, I fortuitously decided to check Railtrack’s website (no link because I hate them) to see what time the next train would leave. It informed me that due to work on the line, my journey would now start at Paddington and take three hours, encompassing two train changes and a bus trip. I couldn’t believe this, so I called their damn number to verify. AARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH. It was true. And even if we left right now, we probably wouldn’t get there before it ended. So now I’m not going, and I may never get to go again. I hate British Rail. When I hung up the phone with the woman, I felt like Jeannie in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, where she screams in frustration, calls the person a dickhead, and slams the phone down. Bastards.

Prince William starts college. How cool would it be to be at school with him? Just to, like, hang out and stuff. Not that I’d be one of the girls ordering wedding dresses or anything… 🙂

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was good. I saw a production of it at ND my senior year and therefore thought I knew what to expect. I was pretty shocked to discover that the version I saw was heavily censored. (Not that that’s a real surprise, considering some of the the subject matter – homosexuality – and the venue – American’s preeminent Catholic university.) Anyway, the story made a lot more sense this time. I thought Brendan Fraser and Frances O’Connor were fine in their roles, but Ned Beatty really stole the show as Big Daddy. I sat there for 15 minutes trying to remember where I’d seen Gemma Jones, who plays Big Mamma, before. Eventually I managed to sneak a peek at my seatmate’s program while they were out at the bathroom. Of course! She was Bridget Jones’s mom. The best part of the whole show, though, was the fact that they closed off the balcony (where our seats were) and upgraded us all to the stalls (on the floor). So we got to sit in £35 seats fifteen rows from the stage despite paying £17.50 for seats in the nosebleed section. Kickass. Here are some more in-depth reviews of the play if you’re interested: Variety, Brendan Fraser fansite, and London Theatre Online.

Well, Notre Dame is 0-2 for only the fourth time since 1900. That sucks. But on the other hand, my Mets are only 3 1/2 games behind Atlanta. That rules. Come on, Piazza!

Hair shorter and redder (thanks to a fifty quid visit to the salon), I’m about to head into central London with my sister and Snookums to see “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”. Hope everyone’s having a good weekend…

It appears that Channel 4 are going to be airing that Tribute to Heroes thing tonight live at two in the morning. Given that John Cusack is going to be manning the phones, my sister may well stay up to watch it.

The R2 Project talks to Fox about the Buffy Season 3 DVD. I can’t wait to get it! One more month…

Somebody left ten pigs’ heads outside a mosque in England. Nasty. I’ve gotta wonder, though, how the miscreant even procured them all. I mean, how many people have access to pigs at all, let alone nearly a dozen with the means and wherewithal to chop off their heads? That’s gotta narrow down the field of suspects for the cops, right?