Posts filed under 'Web Stuff'
Jeff J. Snider
General, Web Stuff
I think I’ve always known this in the back of my mind, or perhaps in the cockles of my heart, but I never really thought about it until now. “Rantings & Ramblings” is, well, a stupid name for a website. Or more to the point, it is a stupid name for MY website.
I didn’t realize it until Craig over at Shysterball linked to me the other day, and he said, “…Jeff Snider over at Rantings & Ramblings….” My exact thought was what you see in the title of this post.
You see, I don’t really rant all that much. When you look up “rant” in the dictionary, you see words like “wild” and “tirade” and stuff like that. I do occasionally get passionate about things, but I like to think that I generally avoid the incoherence and irrationality that “ranting” implies.
And I really hope I don’t ramble too much, at least not in a bad way. I think rambling can be a beautiful art form (Joe Posnanski’s blog, to which I am a recent convert, is a great example). I also think that when left in the hands of amateurs, rambling is a sign of weak thoughts and/or weak writing skills. Blogs especially lend themselves to this kind of rambling, because hey, no editor! You don’t have to begin with the end in mind; you just start typing, and whatever comes out is your own special artistry. Only excepting that kind of writing, you know, sucks. With very few exceptions, I start writing knowing at least approximately what I want to say; and in those cases where I DON’T know where I’m going, that is a deliberate part of the process, and that lack of a road map becomes my road map. Freaky, eh?
So if I don’t rant much and I rarely ramble, the title “Rantings & Ramblings” ceases to have meaning and is left with just alliteration. Don’t get me wrong — I LOVE alliteration. But if I’m going to give my personal website a name based only on alliteration, I can surely come up with something more creative and less juvenile than “Rantings & Ramblings,” no? It just sounds so faux-edgy and pretentious, like something Lewis Black would come up with.
So with that said, I am officially announcing that I will be changing the name of my site as soon as I think of a better one. I don’t know if it will be something boring based on my name (which, you’ll notice, is also the domain name), or if it will be something that creatively describes me. Heck, it might even be alliterative. But whatever it is, it will be, at a minimum, accurate.
If you have any ideas, feel free to throw them in the comments.
April 21st, 2008 at 11:44pm
Jeff J. Snider
General, Sports, Web Stuff
You wanna know what bugs me? People who fling around superlatives like they have no meaning.
Example 1: Greg Anthony, a former NBA player and now a basketball analyst on ESPN, was asked who he thought would win the Western Conference Finals series between the San Antonio Spurs and the Utah Jazz. In (correctly) predicting that the Spurs would win, Anthony said, “Not that the Jazz haven’t had an unbelievable season — they have — but…” and then went on to explain why the Spurs would win. I’m sorry, Greg, but what exactly is “unbelievable” about going 51-31? Sure, they had a good season. I’d even go so far as to say that they did significantly better than they were expected to do. But unbelievable? Not unless you have a VERY weird standard of believability.
Example 2: On May 26, Manny Ramirez had a great game, going 4-for-4 and having a key hit in the game-winning rally. In the ESPN.com article about the game, Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell had this to say:
Manny really looks like he’s in a groove. When he’s stinging the baseball like that, when he’s going up the middle, that’s when he’s the most dangerous. It seems like he’s done nothing so far, but he’s still on pace to have a great season.
So Mike Lowell said Manny was on pace to have a “great” season. Now, where I come from, “great” means “really, really good.” In fact, A-Rod proved last season that even a season that would be considered great by normal standards can be considered less-than-great when compared to an individual’s past performance. I certainly think that Manny Ramirez would fall in that same category, having averaged 40 homers and 127 RBIs a year over the past nine seasons (not to mention his .314 career batting average and 1.006 career OPS). So let’s take a look at Manny’s season as of May 26 and see if Mike Lowell was correct. At that point in time, Manny was on pace for:
–24 home runs
–103 RBIs
–.272 batting average
–.798 OPS
All four of those numbers would be far lower than Manny has put up in any full season in the Majors, and none of them really stand out as “great” even for an average player. Simply put, Manny was NOT, on May 26, “on pace to have a great season.” I’m just sayin’.
Example 3: On my brother’s website, he has a recurring feature called “Children’s Letters to Raven-Symone.” I won’t go into too many details; suffice it to say that Eric gets lots of emails from people who think he is Raven-Symone, and he publishes some of the funny ones. A recent edition included this tidbit from a letter:
I am of Spain i and seen your video of the cheetah girls a good pile of times
Lots of people enjoyed the phrase “a good pile of times,” and for good reason. But one commenter said this:
“I am of Spain” is quite possibly the greatest thing I’ve ever read.
For real? The second-best thing in that sentence is the greatest thing you have ever read? We all have different standards for greatness, but I feel safe in stating that this guy’s standard is all sort of screwed up.
Example 4: This one is only tangentially related, but I’m putting it here anyway. People on the Internet (at least the corners of the Internet I frequent) have a tendency, when they read a clever or funny phrase, to say something along the lines of, “I need to remember to use that.” (In the previously cited Reven-Symone blog entry, Eric himself did it when he said, “In other news, ‘a good pile of times’ is my new favorite figure of speech.” He even used the phrase in his very next humor column, when he said, “I’d been to this place a good pile of times for various reasons and had never seen the same doctor twice.”) I don’t really mind that; in fact, I am often incorporating things into my regular vocabulary that I read somewhere, either in a book or in a magazine or on the Internet.
But sometimes it just doesn’t make sense. Case in point: on my message board, there was a discussion about the latest Harry Potter book (caution: SPOILERS in that link), and one fellow said this about the word “Horcruxiness,” which another poster had just created:
…Horcruxiness (a great word, by the way, and one that I need to find a way to incorporate in my everyday life)…
So let me get this straight: you are going to find a way to discuss a very specific aspect of the Harry Potter books every day, just so you can use a made-up word? That seems a bit overboard to me. I guess if you wanted to incorporate it into every discussion you have about Harry Potter and Horcruxes, okay. But your everyday life? I don’t think so.
So there you have it: four (or three) examples of something that bugs me. Enjoy.
July 31st, 2007 at 01:11am
Jeff J. Snider
Web Stuff
An article by Kevin Hale over at Particletree about the pain of dealing with subdomains got me thinking, and I realized I actually have something very applicable and helpful to say on the subject.
I don’t think I have ever written here about the stuff I do 40+ hours a week for DigiCert. I work as Director of Web Development for DigiCert, and there are some things we do that I am pretty proud of. But this is the first time I have been moved to write about it.
Some background on DigiCert, and then I will tie it in with what Kevin wrote. We sell SSL Certificates, which doesn’t mean anything to a lot of people. Here’s the layman’s version: when you go to buy something online, the address will usually start with https instead of http. The “s” stands for “secure,” and it means the data you are submitting is being encrypted by an SSL Certificate.
There are two basic kinds of SSL Certificates: single certificates, which secure one “common name” (one specific fully qualified domain name); and wildcard certificates, which secure every first-level subdomain on a given domain. So for example, with a single certificate, you could secure “www.jeffjsnider.com” OR “mail.jeffjsnider.com” OR “secure.jeffjsnider.com.” A wildcard certificate would be issued to “*.jeffjsnider.com,” which means you could secure all three of those domain names (and as many other first-level subdomains of the “jeffjsnider.com” domain as you wanted).
Wildcard certificates do have one major limitation, though, which Kevin touched on:
One thing that we don’t like is that, since that certificate only works with subdomains, we have to do things like https://secure.wufoo.com/login/ to get an encrypted login url rather than having a simple url like this https://wufoo.com/login/ for our users to follow (and we’ll be damned before having to pay for two different certificates just for this kind of functionality).
The problem is, while a certificate issued to “*.jeffjsnider.com” would secure all those first-level subdomains, it wouldn’t actually secure just “jeffjsnider.com.” More and more of the web is subscribing to the idea that “www” is deprecated, which means it is becoming more and more important to be able to secure the base domain along with any necessary subdomains. As Kevin mentioned, the solution has always been to buy a wildcard certificate for all the subdomains AND a single certificate for the base domain.
Until now.
There is a little-used (but ridiculously widely supported by browsers) feature of SSL certificates. It is a field called Subject Alternative Name, and it allows multiple common names to be specified. We at DigiCert first put this to use a couple months ago, when we launched our Unified Communications Certificates, designed primarily for use with Microsoft’s Exchange and Live Communication Servers. DigiCert UC Certificates use the Subject Alternative name field to allow the customer to specify up to 50 common names to secure with one certificate.
Well, we were thinking about it, and we realized that the number one complaint about wildcard certificates was exactly what Kevin said: they do great on subdomains, but they miss the boat when it comes to NO subdomain. So we put the Subject Alternative Name to use in a way no one ever had before, and what we came up with was WildCard Plus, a simple and elegant solution to an irksome problem. As of May 14, 2007, every DigiCert WildCard certificate is issued with the base domain in the SubjAltName field, which means your certificate will work not only on all your first-level subdomains, but also on your base domain with no subdomain at all.
Like I said, it’s simple and elegant. And it’s included in the price of a regular WildCard certificate. I love being a part of a company that listens to its customers and develops solutions based on their needs.
May 25th, 2007 at 11:56pm
Jeff J. Snider
Web Stuff
I recently completed (mostly, anyway) work on the website for Metropolis Design, a Utah-based product-development firm. We kept their existing design, but we re-did it with Web Standards and search engine optimization in mind. There is also a lot more content up, which was one of their main issues with regards to search engines. I am excited to see how it moves up in the Google rankings.
April 12th, 2007 at 11:35pm
Jeff J. Snider
General, Web Stuff
To everyone I have ever referred to Dreamhost for all your web hosting needs, I offer a sincere apology, and I promise to never do it again.
I didn’t mean to lie to you. The fact is, for the first 18 months I was with them, they really were great. Sure, their support was slow and lousy, but I figured, if I never need support, who cares how slow and lousy it is? Unfortunately, no one NEVER needs support. And boy oh boy, have I ever needed support the last few months.
(more…)
September 23rd, 2006 at 12:39am
Jeff J. Snider
Web Stuff
Regular readers of my blog (both of them) may be surprised to learn that I enjoy talking about anything other than baseball, but every once in a while I like to talk about web development. After all, it is what I do for a living, and on top of that, I love it! So today, we will talk about web development. Specifically, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
CSS is the most wonderful front-end web development technology in the world. (By the way, “front-end” refers to (X)HTML, CSS, Javascript, and anything else that shows up when you go to “View Source” in your browser; the opposite is “back-end,” which includes the server-side scripting language, the database, and everything that goes on behind the scenes to determine what information is sent to the browser in the first place.) CSS allows (encourages) you to separate the content of your site from the design of your site, allowing you to change one without ever thinking about the other. There are a ton of great CSS resources on the web, but I will just link to one that links to many others: Veerle Pieters’ links page.
So anyway, the reason I am writing about CSS today is a column in PC Magazine entitled “Why CSS Bugs Me.” Author John Dvorak could have written a much shorter column with the same title, because the text just needed to say: “Because I am an idiot.” But instead, he spent several hundred words pointing out “flaws” in CSS that ultimately add up to, “I don’t know how to use it, and it’s not easy to learn, and not all browsers support it correctly, so it sucks.”
John Allsop and Andy Clarke have already voiced their opinions on the matter, and they are both much more significant than I am in the world of web standards, but I wanted to add my two cents. John said it pretty well when he said:
CSS, like any non trivial technology, or skill set, has a non trivial learning curve. But, it’s also not rocket surgery people.
It’s true. CSS is not the hardest thing in the world to learn. In fact, it was no harder for me to learn than HTML was back in 1998. One problem lies in the fact that so many people have been trained in the wrong way to do things (misusing HTML tables, HTML’s <font> tag, and other other elements to create your design), so part of the learning curve for CSS includes unlearning all that other crap.
But every problem that Dvorak mentions is not a problem with CSS; it is a problem with the people implementing it. Yes, Internet Explorer has some major CSS issues, although IE7 will address most of them and any decent CSS coder can work around the problems for IE6 and earlier. That is not CSS’s fault at all. And the best thing is, you get to choose your own browser!!! If you hate the way IE renders CSS — and let’s face it, that is one of the Big Three Reasons to Hate IE (along with security issues and no tabbed browsing) — then download a real browser like Firefox or Opera!
The biggest problem with CSS — and again, this isn’t REALLY a problem with CSS — is that most people don’t know how to use it effectively. Any high school kid to took an HTML class at school can slap together a website with a tables-based layout. It will be ugly, it will be bulky, and it will suck, but he can do it for you. But if you want a site that is standards-compliant and doesn’t hog your bandwidth, you need someone who actually knows what he is doing to use CSS.
There are a lot of things that are a matter of personal preference. I use PHP as my server-side language of choice, but a case can be made for ASP, JSP, Ruby, Python, etc. But let me make this perfectly clear: no web developer worth his weight in moldy tangerines can make a solid case for using (X)HTML instead of CSS for the presentation of your website. (X)HTML is used for content, CSS handles the presentation, and never the twain shall meet. Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong, even if he writes a column for PC Magazine.
July 20th, 2006 at 03:16pm
Jeff J. Snider
Web Stuff
Over on Andy Budd’s website, he asked the question: “What three things do you wish your clients knew about the web?” There were some pretty interesting answers in the comments, and it made me want to slap together a list of my own. Some of these come from those comments; others come from my own experiences. Keep in mind that Andy’s website is geared towards Web designers, and my focus is more on overall Web development, so my list comes from a slightly different perspective. So without further ado, here are some things I wish people knew when they ask me to do their website:
(more…)
July 2nd, 2006 at 12:07am
Jeff J. Snider
Web Stuff
A few months ago, my father-in-law emailed me about a cool little utility called Synergy. I looked at it briefly, thought, “I bet I would like that a lot,” and then forgot about it. Then Jonathan Snook blogged about it, and I downloaded and installed it, and wow. Absolutely amazing. I sit at my desk all day with my laptop in front of me and my desktop just to the left of it. I have the keyboard and mouse for my desktop on the keyboard tray of my desk, with the keyboard and mouse for the laptop on the desk above that tray. I have gotten used to this setup, but let’s face it, it’s not the most convenient.
With Synergy, all of that is gone. I no longer have any need for two keyboard/mouse sets. I can share them between the two computers, and it works absolutely seamlessly. It is as if the two computers were just one computer with a multi-monitor setup. Oh, did I mention that you can copy and paste from one computer to another? Oh, and did I also mention that it is absolutely free? As Snook said, this is software that I would actually pay for, but I don’t have to.
The only thing I don’t love about this so far is that the configuration is not the most intuitive. One thing that wasn’t clear to me, which made me unable to connect at first, is that you sometimes have to identify computers by IP addresses and not just names. I figured that out by reading this great tutorial, which took me step-by-step through the configuration. (It is based on an older version of Synergy, so the screenshots are slightly different, but they are close enough that you can figure it out.)
What do you think?
March 23rd, 2006 at 10:43am
Jeff J. Snider
General, Web Stuff
Well, really, it was never gone, but it was pretty stagnant for several months. That’s right, the site that my brother made famous and I made great, We Made Out In A Tree And This Old Guy Sat And Watched Us, is back with a new design and fresh new content. Here are some of the highlights of the new site:
(more…)
February 17th, 2006 at 12:12am
Jeff J. Snider
Web Stuff
I believe in Web Standards. I believe that Andy Clarke was mostly (or completely) right when he said:
While I understand that for many, learning standards based development is difficult, particularly for creative people who have not been required to work with code before, I believe that the time has now passed for those working with old fashioned methods to be called web professionals. There are now so many web sites, blogs or publications devoted to helping people learn standards and accessible techniques that there are now no excuses not to work with semantic code or CSS. Those people still delivering nested table layout, spacer gifs or ignoring accessibility can no longer call themselves web professionals. (Source)
(more…)
February 13th, 2006 at 02:11pm
Previous Posts