Web standards for life

Someone asked me how we can take the lessons we've learned in the field of web standards and apply them to the physical world around us. I decided to investigate. Here are some of my findings:

Separation of content and presentation

I strapped my good-looking friend with a small speaker that carried my voice from the other room, and I told him to stand there and let me do all the talking through the mic. Among the female demographic we were attempting to appeal to, our traffic bounce rate jumped to an all-time high.

CSS Naked Day

I thought my traffic levels were low enough that it wouldn't be too big a deal, but the overwhelming negative response I received indicated that perhaps I should think twice before impairing the user experience in this way. It also appears to be illegal.

Semantic markup

The following is spoken in U.S. English. I, David Hammond — a male born October 3, 1986; who can be found in Chico, California, United States; who works at the CCC Technology Center at Butte College, Oroville, California, United States — attempted from July 28, 2007, at 1:23 PM PST through July 28, 2007, at 3:47 PM PST to verbally communicate with Phil Sharon — a male born 1976 — Carly White — a female born 1982 — Justin Roseland — a male born 1989 — and Mario Woodruff — a male born 1984 — while using the most verbose descriptive sentences I, David Hammond (see above), could provide to the respective recipients (among Phil Sharon [see above], Carly White [see above], Justin Roseland [see above], and Mario Woodruff [see above]). Significant data loss occurred for an unaccounted reason, and traffic quickly fell.

Progressive enhancement

“Hi, I'm David. I'm content with just talking with you and getting to know you. However, if you would agree to make out with me, let's go ahead and do that. If you'll have sex with me as well, I'll take my pants off now. If you're fine with a one-time fling, I can bypass any further conversation and get right on you.”

Unfortunately, I forgot to consider graceful degradation in the event that she refused my most basic option and dumped her drink on me instead.

Twitter

In my room, amazed at how innovative Twitter is.

Clarification

No, virgin olive oil does not bleed when you pop it open.

World Affairs

Every once in a while my readers ask for my opinion on world affairs. I for one am against them. Having sex with other planets is wrong. We should instead focus on what we do best: screwing our own planet.

What is RSS?

RSS is a kind of Internet that you can register for free. You use Google Reader to manage your Internets so you can surf them all up lightning-fast.

AT&T owns the Internets, so you have to buy their service before you can start using Google Reader.

Registering RSS is easy. First, you will need to upgrade to Internet 7.0 from Microsoft. Then when you go to your favorite home pages, click on the orange square you see at the top. That probably registers the Internet with Google Reader (I'm not sure because I'm still using Internet 5.5).

Lucky Star

As the series goes on, Lucky Star is including more and more references to Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. By the end of the series, it will be Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and it will be a seamless transition to season 2.

Anonymous

I didn't realize posting pictures of Konata Izumi to an online message board was an act of terrorism until Fox News told me so.

↑ This is terrorism.

Hay Fox News, lurk moar.

Blanket statements

Quilts suck.

Don't sell your friends short

Goodbyes are always sad. In economics, we learn to always bye low. So when we say "goodbye", our spirits are low. That's why when I part with someone, I always say "good sell!"

Call for a cardiopulmonary recess

"Mister Heart, this is the police. You're under cardiac arrest!"

"*Pant pant* I'm beat."

"You've been charged with two accounts of defibrillation. How do you bleed?"

"Huh? I'm not in court yet."

"Dammit, you ruined it!" (Walks away)

Stand-up folklore

Ever hear of the comic who cried "but seriously"?

Diversity of logic

Hy isn't a choice; it's something you're born with.

That's why we have a hygene.

Unsuccessful cover-ups

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows has been leaked onto BitTorrent, and no amount of scary e-mails from Scholastic to blog owners can rewrite that history. Welcome to the Internet.

Points of view

Looking at girls through the bathroom window is a crime.

Looking at your reflection in the bathroom window is not.

If angels had beaks

Birds of a feather are mostly naked.

Losr

My startup Web 2.0 company dives into an innovative new social networking paradigm in which users define the content model, leveraging wisdom of crowds. It's basically an empty MediaWiki install with AdSense. Acquisition bidding will begin at $60 million.

Book pirates

The Book Publishing Association of America (BPAA) is finally going after book pirating groups. Known in pirating circles as "libraries", these institutions specialize in distributing copyrighted materials to large numbers of pirates who read the books without paying for them. "These libraries are running rampant," said the director of the BPAA. "It's time we went after these networks of thieves and help protect the profits of our authors."