Back in 2001 Tantek Çelik dreamt up a little polygonal CSS hack, using the bevels of borders to create angles in-browser. Eventually, Lasse Reichstein Nielsen made the technique accessible. Back then, I was thinking about CSS and wanted to try my hand at unobtrusive DHTML.
So I was inspired to implement simple rendering of HTML lists as area charts. Naturally, once it mostly worked I lost interest, and let it rest assuming someone would have the same idea and take it much farther.
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John Gruber has called attention to Digg’s shameful revival of site framing, and I share his disgust. Though I’ve no expectation of Digg traffic to my little blog, on principle I feel compelled to participate and block the DiggBarr from obscuring my URLs.
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After Shannon and I proposed Bus Driver Appreciation Day, Bus Chick picked it up and reminded everyone, and word spread from Seattle to Virginia and DC.
We gave out four nice “merci beaucoup” cards with Starbucks gift cards. All were well received, so we’ll call this year a success and try publicizing more in 2010.
Since moving to Seattle, Shannon and I have found public transportation suffices for most trips that cannot be walked. We still use taxis to get the airport (until Link opens) and walk to work, but excursions more than 2 miles from home usually involve Metro or Sound Transit buses. Two months after selling her car, we’ve only used Zipcar once.
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What really matters for mutual understanding of two people are such things as having similar responses to music (not just shared likes but also shared dislikes), having similar responses to people (again, I mean both likes and dislikes), having similar degrees of empathy, honesty, patience, sentimentality, audacity, ambition, competitiveness, and so on. These central building blocks of personality, character, and temperament are decisive in mutual understanding.
…It is these sorts of aspects, these innermost aspects of a soul (as opposed to such relatively objective and transferable items as countries visited, novels read, cuisines mastered, historical facts known, and so forth) that make for soul-uniqueness.
Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop, p. 235
Shannon and I are engaged!
Reactions have run the gamut from “already?” to “finally!” To us it seems not a dramatic event, but rather a formal social recognition of intertwined personalities. Just before proposing I was asked whether I was nervous, and realized that I simply was not. I now understand how natural a relationship can be. Instead of social obligation or lifestyle, I am motivated by enthusiasm for today and the future.