Weirdbook.org

Colophon

I've seen several sites with colophons. These typically describe the site's content in greater detail for the curious and delve into the nuts and bolts behind the bits and words. So, here's my attempt.

The Author

All content on this site was created by Brad Mills (that's me). I've been working and playing with computers since 1981, making money at it since 1995, and doing assorted web stuff since about 2002.

Hosting

This site is hosted at NearlyFreeSpeech.NET. I've hosted sites with them for the last four years. They are an awesome host, and I dig them on multiple levels — price, philosophy, and performance being a few of those. If you're looking for a "no bullshit" hosting company that gives you what you need, assumes you know what you're doing, and then gets out of the way, you can do no better than NearlyFreeSpeech.NET. And since they have no affiliate program, you can be certain of the sincerity behind my recommendation.

Platform

The software running this blog was written by me. All told, it took about four weeks of sporadic work. You may ask why I didn't just use WordPress or Movable Type or some other ready-made solution. Well, I didn't want to. It's easy to make a dime-a-dozen blog with existing software, and there is definitely a time and place for that. But in the time it would take me to tweak one of these into something minimalist enough for me to focus on the content instead of the platform, I could just as easily roll my own and have it do exactly what I want. So that's what I did.

Besides — I enjoy a good challenge.

Large portions of the site's backend were written with SciTE on a laptop running Kubuntu 8.04. Parts were written at various places in Charleston, WV and at Summerhill Cottage in Emerald Isle, NC. As for the content, it could be coming from anywhere.

Standards

Adherence to web standards is good. This site makes a brave attempt to do so — specifically, XHTML, CSS, and RSS. Reliance upon proprietary browser technologies applies vendor lock-in to the web and forces a dependence upon companies which may not exist in five years. Given the fickleness of the technology industry (anyone remember WordPerfect?), it's best to stick with something backed by a consortium instead of a single vendor.

There is no JavaScript or Ajax on this site and I don't use cookies. The pages degrade gracefully for people using text-based browsers and download quickly over old analog modems, and the site remains 100% functional. That means just about anyone anywhere can read this site even with a computer from 1997 and a dial-up connection. This, in my opinion, is a good thing.

Typography and design

I'm telling your browser to use its default sans-serif font. If it looks weird, it probably means other sites do too and you'd be wise to check your settings. The layout of this site is based on "The Perfect 3 Column Liquid Layout" by Matthew James Taylor. The calendar is based partially upon "PHP Calendar 2.3" by Keith Devens.

The Golden Ratio is used in multiple design elements across this site. Artists and architects have used the Golden Ratio in their works since about the 1300s because it's believed to be aesthetically pleasing. Its mathematical properties are rather complex and have been studied since about 500 BC. These two disparate fields combine in a single number. As I, too, have tendencies both mathematical and creative, it was the perfect choice for me to use as a basis in the design of this site.

Beyond that, you may have noticed there isn't much to the way this site looks. I'm a strong believer in minimalism, form following function, and substance over style — it's only natural that this would carry over onto the web. I tested this site in Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera on Windows, Firefox and Konqueror on Linux, and Safari on a Mac. It looked the same on all these, and I was pretty happy with that result.

Copyright

Copyright law in the digital world is a slippery slope. It has become trivial to duplicate and distribute others' content, and archaic copyright laws written in the 1700s were seemingly not designed to account for the march of technology. Thus, Creative Commons was born — a means for authors and content creators to retain the rights to their work while allowing it to be copied, distributed, and used under the terms they dictate.

This blog is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. Basically, you may distribute the content anywhere you like and remix it in a manner of your choosing provided that:

1. I, Brad Mills, am properly credited as the creator of the original, and
2. it is not used for commercial purposes.

When crediting me as the creator of the original work, you must incorporate my name (Brad Mills) and the site name (Weirdbook.org). If you're publishing your work to the web, you must make Weirdbook.org a link back to this site, preferably to the specific post you're referencing.