Why CSS should not be used for layout

“I would rather spend my allotted time skiing or making love to my wife than worrying about whether or not I need to define a virtual destructor in my base class.”

That quote really sums up the argument pretty succinctly, but you may need additional persuasion depending on your circumstances.  It also comes from his second post on the topic.  A follow-up to the masses that commented on the original post with sundry opinions.  Some simply stated that the author was an idiot while others took the time to tear him a new one proper-like.  As the author states, many that would condemn have forgotten to add their own supporting cases; a common problem with these antagonistic debates.

For my part, I see the logic in the author’s comments.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that I agree with him, but it at least gives me some ideas of how to defend his method.  We all have to do things we don’t like to do, and sometimes we do things that compromise our abilities.  Web development is no different – in fact, it’s probably one of the defining cases for compromise.

Being a casual web developer myself, I have the luxury to code for standards and play with some of the latest methods available in technology.  Not everyone gets that luxury, and indeed at times, I don’t either.  I have to analyze the amount I can make on a given job versus the time spent on it.  As a hobby along side two children, a wife, and a few other hobbies, I’ve really got to make the most of my time.  As such, if I’m not going to get paid the amount I want, then something else is going to suffer.  At my day job, we’ve talked about Price, Quality, and Time as being the defining parts of a project.  Together, they all make up a circle and have to adjust dynamically as the others get larger or smaller.  If you sacrifice price, and there’s a time limit, then the only thing left that can slide is quality.  It tears at my nonsensical work ethic, but it’s reality.  On the otherhand, a lesser quality job doesn’t have to look like it.  We web developers have the benefit over some other industries because we can hide most of architecture mess behind a beautiful presentation layer.

So back to the conversation at hand: CSS versus Tables.  To bring this all together for you – and I trust you’ve either read the linked articles above or already know about the discussions surrounding the virtues of CSS and table design for XHTML layouts – let me settle the argument for myself.

I am an Arts and Crafts of Olde appreciatist.  I love my work as a craftsman; that is to say, I love the process of reaching a goal through creative and oft eccentric means.  I am learning to be a more pragmatic person in my work habits – at least when it’s necessary.  It’s a slow process, but I’ve made headway in little ways throughout my life.  It’s about compromise and keeping in mind the circle of Price, Time, and Quality.

It’s simple enough to imagine I could always remain vigilant on this circle of project specification goodness, but I wouldn’t.  Sometimes you just want to do a project.  So when either I have no boundaries per the specification, or I’m just personally driven to work at a project for my own reasons, I’m going to use CSS and standards-based coding practices.  When time and/or money are the object with which I am to contend, then I might use tables, or worse yet, a WYSIWYG editor.  The later approach ultimately saves me the most time and a customer’s money, but will ultimately take more time should the customer want some specific types of feature modifications to the code later.  I tend to view cheap and/or quick projects as being throw-away because of this.

I hope this insight has helped you to shed some light on your own dilemna in whatever craft it is that you persue – ever-mindful of the art in your craft, while carefully weighing the cost to your lifestyle (whether monetary, socially, or time management).

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Zack de la Rocha
A current collaborating member, Zack de la Rocha, of One Day as a Lion. Zack has a well-known history of anger-infused music enraged by kick-your-pathetic-ass rock. Zack can excite things while still maintaining the credibility of legitimate hatred.

Justin Timberlake
To balance out the party, Justin Timberlake can hang with us. This dude lives a life of fame and doesn’t take himself too seriously. Timberlake is good for comix relief while still cranking out albums that, while not necessarily my demographic, continue to amass the fans.

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All of you will surely recognize the man on the left.  His biblical image comes at you in all of its hair and puffy-shirtness like a thunder clap.  Yanni stands as the hairiest, women-loving man I know [of]…though Hugh Jackman must be at the top of this game too!  And on his right is the much subdued version of the eighties visage, also Yanni.  When did this happen?  No ‘stache to whisper its childhood stories to concert viewers.  No curly locks of Grecian do to reveal the arcane secrets of musical composition.  It’s a transitive state of Yanni’s image much in the same way we all saw Metallica shed their fettered styles of 80′s heavy metal.

So Yanni will be coming to Duluth in April at the Gwinnett thingy (Arena, perhaps?).  I know most of my known world will simply abuse me verbally for going to a Yanni concert (which will actually be my third or fourth), but I couldn’t give a crap.  If you’ve never seen one of these concerts, you really don’t know what you’re missing.  It’s a phenomenal appreciation of the musical arts, internationally complete.  I suppose many of you only like your music for its pop artist front [wo]man, but I really enjoy the instrumental musicality of it all.  I would compare what Yanni conducts on his stages to that of the Cirque du Soleil band (on a small scale) and Dream Theater / Liquid Tension Experiment.  You could draw comparisons with Phish and Wide Spread Panic.  All of these bands have two things in common: they’re killer jam bands and composed of some very talented musicians.

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I have also recently attended a drum building workshop (mental note: blog about the workshop), and built my very first drum.  I should say, finished my very first drum shell – that is where the workshop begins.  It has been several weeks since the workshop, but I have only just been able to dedicate proper time and attention this evening to the tuning of said drum. Since I was trying somewhat to be good to my neighbors, I kept the energy attenuated.

To kick off my eager anticipation of the H2 and Thunderhead, I’ve recorded my first moments using both.  It’s completely raw and unedited.  There are also some distinctions in the three recordings that are really only meaningful to me.  Suffice it to say, I’m still working with the tuning of my drum and the use of a new electronic gadget.

Soft Saidi:[See post to access streaming content!]
Saidi, Short:[See post to access streaming content!]
Masmoudi:[See post to access streaming content!]

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I worked with one of the more difficult teaching challenges in my experience yesterday at my drum circle. A gentleman joined us with a peculiar short-coming – he had no current musical interest and an unclear memory of the interests from 30+ years ago when he called it (music) quits. I see many people that claim to have “no rhythm.” At face value, it’s true. However, everyone has rhythm whether they recognize it or not. Your heart beat has kept a rhythm for your entire life; surely one can learn to keep one externally for a few minutes. As it turns out, there are some people that this may seem even less possible for. This guy that I worked with seemed to have a real mental block to rhythm, or to something even more fundamental – frequency. In his words, he had trouble with numbers in that they held no relevance. I believe the problem was actually that he assigned no frequency to numbers. In order for counting to assist you in musical timing, one must use a consistent spacing between the numbers. Without it, counting does us no good. I attempted to teach this concept in many styles; visual, tactile, and aural. Each of them seemed to provide a glimpse of what he was missing, but none of them resonated completely. Having thought about it more sense the drum circle, I have some additional ideas of how to get this message across.

For one, utilizing the old method of counting seconds may be helpful (e.g. one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, etc.). Forcing yourself to say one thousand between every second counted manages to keep many of us attuned to a consistent frequency. There is also the issue of matching patterns, which I think people can more easily grasp than timing. My five-year-old is learning about patterns in kindergarten as an introduction to math. Following this course, I may be able to explain frequency in terms that a potential drummer can understand. In the end, I want this guy to grasp the concept of the wave. Hear the noise of each crest. Feel the silence at each trough. Of course, the goal is anticipation. Without that – and this is something that he struggles with – one can never ride the wave!

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Seaside
by

gradinDotCom

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I retitled it for Zazzle (Tribal to the Core), so go take a look (click the image to be taken to my zazzle.com store):

Tribal to the Core (Long Sleeve)
by

gradinDotCom

Create Custom T-Shirts On Zazzle
Browse Graphic Design T-Shirts

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For lack of better alternatives, I bring to you the current meme on my plate.  Young whipper-snappers may be unfamiliar with this word, but it is essentially an Internet chain-letter.  Spazzmanda passed this on to me from her blog, where she refers to such activities as “tagging.”  I always thought that was a cultural art of defacement by way of graffiti, but what does an old fart like me know.

The Rules: Rules are posted at the beginning. At the end of the post, the player tags 5 people and posts their names. Then the player goes to each of the “named” people’s blogs and leaves a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. If you’ve been tagged, you do the same, letting the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer. Your answer, of course, is the answer to the following questions. Here we go!

1. What was I doing 10 years ago? One decade ago I was two months from my 2nd wedding anniversary with my lovely wife, Amy.  We had no children, though we had pets.  We were in our first year at our first house together (and current house).  Amy was still in school at North Georgia College and State University (though it may not have been a State University at the time), and I was working for…Whittman-Hart, perhaps.  I was a consultant beginning to cut my teeth on information systems security.  It would be my primary job and objective for the next several years.  I registered gradin.com for the first time – it was a standard 2-year registration and cost me $70.00 (I think my last registration was $8.95 for a year).  I was finally able to access my awesome Mindspring account web space using my rocking X2 US Robotics Sportster (externel) modem via www.gradin.com.  I was working in Allaire’s Cold Fusion, though I couldn’t afford a license for the server to host my own site using their technology.  I used Allaire’s Homesite as my primary editor with Photoshop and Fractal Painter as my graphics packages.  I think I was trying to get onto Bellsouth’s xDSL beta program, but with no luck due to my distance from the carrier.  I was, however, involved with Wachovia’s beta online account access.  It was a glorified BBS – awesome!

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today? I’ve got ESX hosts to convert to 3.5i, installable.  SAN storage to attach, and VMs to migrate both through traditional migrations, as well as the new and improved Storage VMotion.  I also have some process proposal documentation to get done for the collected efforts of the Norcross lab engineering team, as well as that of our Hillsboro office.  I hope to get some ping-pong in at lunch, ride my bike 10 miles back to my car, and then facilitate a drum circle for 100 people in northeast Georgia with some friends.

3. Snacks I enjoy: Have you tried my nuts?  They’re salty and dimensionally variant.  I enjoy the texture especially, though others are just happy I am able to share – there’s more than enough for everyone to enjoy!  I also like beef jerky and granola bars.

4. Places I’ve lived: I’ve had a good spread in my life, though as of late my homestead has been very static.  I began in Ocean Springs, MI; moved to Plano, TX, and then jumped to San Diego, CA shortly thereafter.  We moved a couple of times there, but finally moved out the state to Tuscon, AZ.  From there, we departed for Waycross, GA, and then onto Gainesville, GA where I live now.  I’ve moved several times throughout both of these places in Georgia, and I’ve been here the longest amount of time so far.

5. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: This is actually the title of a post I’ve been working on for a while now.  It’s a recurring theme throughout our decade+ of marriage, and one that will most likely continue to develop and mature in time.  The most boring thing I think of from our list is to pay-off debt and acquire some commercial real estate to lease.  There’s money accumulation prospects in that, so we would do well to set ourselves for the inevitable loss of said billions through the frivolous purchases from our list.  There are two more intriguing opportunities: 1) Develop a waterfront district on Lake Lanier – a boardwalk with shops and dining – that aids in the lake’s restoration efforts, as well as providing some awareness about the lake’s ecosystem.  2) Convert an old mill on the outskirts of town into a turn-of-the-century arts and crafts guild.  History tells us that these guilds are mere congregations of passionate people in the arts and crafts and generally have no ability to sustain themselves financially.

5 “Tagged”

1. Sean Williams
2. Jason Darling (Bleh.  MySpace)
3. James Palmer
4. Israel Lawson
   
5. Steve Tucker

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From the outside, looking in, the culture seems muddied with the intermingling of past and present times.  Between incomplete reports from the news agencies, history, and modern documentaries, it is difficult at best to discern the true sociology for a given place and time.  My interpretation of the events that have transpired in the Middle East, especially those concerning the Taliban, were that I was getting a one-sided story and that the culture in general seemed very foreign – even hostile – to my Western upbringing.  I didn’t have a real appreciation for the victims, primarily because I felt as though the victims were only really victims because the U.S. government told them they were.  Because I didn’t have the contacts to speak to in the Middle East and I’ve never been to evaluate the situation for myself, I could only trust what I’m told for so far.

The Radio Lab podcast, Pop Music, went into a segment regarding one man’s experience in Afghanistan with his accordion.  The piece is really quite good and I encourage you to listen to it for my post to have it’s full impact.  At any rate, this novice accordion player discovers that some forms of music cross the boundaries – or preconceived boundaries – of our world’s cultures.  There are ideas that translate to sounds in music that are echoed through every civilization and tell the same story.  Afghanistan had just crawled out of very long period of silence during its war with Russia, then Taliban rule.  Music is one of those mediums that can insight such raw emotions in people and the Afghans were no exception.  After the cultural bans experienced through the previous years, this accordion player steps timidly onto a bar stage where prompted by his new audience and supported by his translator, performs Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire to “the best audience [ever].”  It wasn’t particularly well done, but the crowd goes wild.  At a certain point during the program, I was awashed with a feeling of joy, triumph, grief, and camaraderie.  There’s probably a more succinct way of stating that, but it isn’t anything that’s happened to me often enough to find the proper word for.

It was this last bit that really stuck with me.  I finally understood what it must have been like to live in such a stifled society as to be allowed no cultural displays; no music, no dancing, no art.  It’s an incredible feeling of sadness and hopelessness that I feel when I try to imagine it.

The Taliban were not the first to run a people in this way, and it’s doubtful they’ll be the last.  I just hope that I’m always in a place where I am free to explore my culture, or anybody else’s for that matter.  I really hope that people being oppressed in the world today find liberation and the strength to reunite with their forgotten past.

Further Reading: Afghanistan, Ahmad Zahir, Taliban

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I have noticed over the past several years that home-schooling seems to have risen in popularity. Initially, I was impressed at the number of people involved in the home school method. I later learned that many of these home school students actually get together on some routine frequency to develop socially, as well as to share the responsibility of teaching across multiple parents. I can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing this is a bit of a regression. Didn’t school systems start this way? Finally,there seemed to be an ulterior motive to home schooling. There have been a rash of parent vs. government cases over the last decade regarding the use of faith-based programs in school systems. Of late, Darwinian Evolution and Intelligent Design are the major contention points. Home schooling seems to be the concerned parents’ answer. A parent that disagrees with the educational system – perhaps also disagreeing with private systems, or unable to afford them – can pull their child back into the home where teaching is at the discretion of the family. From a Little House on the Prairie ideal, this seems like a charming social shift in America. However, I see it as a disaster for our future. If children are taught through home school primarily to reinforce religious perspectives on science, then our legacy’s potential for critical thinking is severely limited. The views of the parents will extend through to their children, and while not obviously as detrimental as racism, will inevitably give rise to ostracism.

See: Twin Cities Creation Science Association Sponsors Home School Science Fair

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