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Under Construction | August 27, 2006

Over the next few days I’m going to be gradually moving everything on nebulose.net over to a new host. Since the site is cobbled together from about a dozen different installations of various content management packages, it’s highly possible that portions will be lost in transit, temporarily unavailable, or otherwise confusing during this transition. Try to bear with me and hopefully everything will be normal by the end of the week.

Posted 12:27 PM
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An ending | October 3, 2005

Farewell, 1000 Photos.

Posted 5:06 PM
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Version 5 (Pastel) | May 19, 2004

Everything except the photo pages has been converted to the new look now; leave a comment if you experience any problems (or notice any pages that don’t validate).

My main goal this time around was a tighter, more professional look. Look for a design portfolio to become part of the site later this summer. Some notes:

Starting Monday I’ll be working 35 hours a week doing web design elsewhere. As a result I may not have time to implement all of your suggestions right away, but I’ll certainly be listening. Send me an email.

Posted 12:45 PM
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Pause | March 15, 2004

I guess you could say this part of the site is on sabbatical.

Don’t hold your breath, anyway. (Could I maybe interest you in some photos instead?)

Posted 8:55 PM
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Too Brief | January 27, 2004

I redid the about page and added a syndication info page. The latter was inspired by talking to Dave about newsreaders yesterday — I explained them to him, helped him set up SharpReader and find some feeds to subscribe to. I’m not kidding when I say I plug syndication to everyone I know; discovering aggregators really changed the way I use the Internet, in a way that I think everyone should experience. I know that evangelizing posts are boring (why am I telling you all what to do?), but if you’ve never tried a newsreader before: trust me on this one.

Posted 12:11 AM
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Commons | December 19, 2003

After several months of equal parts deliberation and procrastination, I have made up my mind to license this site under a Creative Commons License. I have long been an advocate of the public domain, and the many recent abuses of intellectual property law have only solidified my beliefs.

I don’t claim that my offering is particularly grand. As of today my site contains 200-odd pieces of writing, about twice that many photographs, and some XHTML/CSS templates for Movable Type and PhotoStack. I haven’t been writing on the web for eight years, nor have I written and given away for free two books, nor do I play jazz guitar (though I’m working on it). But I do feel passionately about the importance of sharing my modest contributions with the public, and I want to make it official that you all are allowed to reuse, redistribute, remix, reproduce, mock, abuse, and/or create a shrine from anything and everything you see here.

You may be wondering why any of this is necessary. The Creative Commons site has a good overview, but I’d like to offer a different example.

Megaman sprite in the spotlight.This animation has been making the rounds over the past couple months. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a “music video” of some of the characters from the video game Megaman 7 singing the Queen song Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s funny, if you (like me) are the kind of person who has nostalgia for old Queen songs and old Nintendo games.

It’s also illegal, under the current system. Both the Megaman sprites and the Queen song are copyrighted—current law is such that every creative work is copyrighted upon creation, even without a © symbol, even without the creator’s knowledge or intent, unless specified otherwise—and using them in this new way is not allowed. We imagine that we are safe because Queen and the creators of Megaman are probably reasonably good-natured, and an animation circulated on the Internet is not a credible threat to their image. But this security is at best a hypothesis. The law is so unwieldy that the sensible course of action is to ignore it and enjoy our illegal animation; but shouldn’t there be a better way?

Megaman waving.The Creative Commons project is that better way. A Creative Commons license is a way for an artist to make it clear that he doesn’t mind his work being used in new and innovative ways. It is a nod to the fact that all artists have influences, and we want to encourage, not forbid, further derivation. It is about increasing the pool of freely-shared information, and hundreds of thousands of licenses have been created with that goal in mind.

If you found all of that boring, you can hear audio of one of Laurence Lessig’s speeches on the same topic mixed into a Trance/Ambient-esque song (MP3, 3.39MB). It’s exactly the kind of creative reuse that Creative Commons is working to promote.

Posted 2:30 PM
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Updates | October 30, 2003

The sidebar links are now handled through a separate blog. There is an RSS feed available, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Bigger changes are on their way.

Posted 11:53 PM
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1000 | October 19, 2003

If the formula holds, this will be worth a million words someday.

Posted 9:48 PM
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Photos Section | September 10, 2003

The Photos Section has its own spiffy new look now, instead of using the Textism model. Kindly report any bugs or rendering issues.

Posted 2:28 PM
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Comments | August 15, 2003

This post is an official solicitation for comments on the “Noteworthy Links” section I’m playing around with. What do you think?

Posted 2:44 PM
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Things People Have Googled for Recently to Arrive at This Site | July 27, 2003

(Because humorous site statistics never get old.) If one of these was you, leave a comment.

sylvia1.jpg (31 searches - huh?)
becca bathing suits (11 searches)
poo face (10 searches - these people were probably very disappointed.)
freaky deaky (4 searches)
spiderman made me gay (2 searches - I’m sorry.)
seeexx (2 searches - is your keyboard stuck?)
warm n chewy (2 searches)
princess sylvia sex (Sorry again.)
shizzle (Too much free time on your hands, chief.)
orlando bloom phone number (Yes, I have one, and you can’t.)
retin-a-micro doesn t work (I guess not.)
gay grandpas (No comment.)
hear the super mario theme song now (NOW, damnit!)
dankey sex (Google says: Did you mean donkey)
orlando bloom erotic story (Wrong place, sorry.)
horrible things (Indeed.)
for shizzle (Die.)
seeexx net (You again?)
erotic elf (Dag.)
kim possible having sex (Does your mother know about this?)
disorganized filing cabinet photos (That’s an interesting fetish.)
today sucked (Google will make you feel better. Tell Google your problems.)

Posted 9:36 PM
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Gone | July 12, 2003

I realize things have fallen by the wayside around here. Taking a break, working on other projects.

Posted 3:54 PM
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SF | June 25, 2003

Going to San Francisco until July 5/6. Entries unlikely.

Posted 12:23 PM
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Anniversary | May 31, 2003

I’ve had my website for a year now. What follows is a brief chronology.

May 30, 2002: First entries. Site made entirely in Notepad, the interface based on a sketch of a hand I made in Poser/Photoshop.
Pencil sketch of a hand.

June 2002: I port the site to Movable Type, using a very slightly modified version of what was then the default template. It’s renamed to “AaBlog 1.0”, and hosted for 4 dollars a month on a budget webhost.
Movable type default template for AaBlog 1.0

July 2002: My first home-brewed CSS design.
Early site design.

August 2002: I catch the accessibility bug and redo the whole site again to be XHTML compliant and accessible.

October 6, 2002: My father starts reading the site.

October 20, 2002: I make the first post about this girl I kind of maybe like a little bit. She sees what I wrote and gushes back in her own online journal. (She didn’t, however, know that I read her journal, and was later a little embarassed.) Isn’t geeky romance adorable?

November 2002: I decide it’s time for some change and do yet another rehaul, including upgrading the name to “Aablog 2.0”. The design is Antipixel-inspired and the colors are autumn-y.
Site design version 2.0; blue, maroon, and parchment colored.

February 19, 2003: I make 100 entries in one day. People start to look at me funny.

March 2003: My host organism runs out of blood, and I decide the site is important enough to invest in a domain name and a quality host. Naturally it’s not possible to do such a thing without also getting involved in a total redesign, so that eats up a couple days of free time.

May 2003: The site gets 1276 visitors (55,040 hits).

Last sunday: My grandfather discovers the fun of looking people up by searching for their names on Google, and arrives at the site.

Yesterday: Exactly one year of blogging. I’m a big boy now.

Posted 11:22 AM
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Colophon | April 9, 2003

This site is designed and maintained by one Aaron Schutzengel. It is accessible.

Every effort has been made at standards compliance.

Credits

Templates are hand coded (so to speak) in the absolutely fantastic EditPad Pro, and rendered through Ben and Mena Trott’s Movable Type. The entire site is hosted by phpwebhosting.com, who I recommend highly.

Typography

The stylesheet specifies, in this order, Verdana, Geneva, Lucida, Helvetica, Arial, or sans-serif. Verdana is Matthew Carter’s designed-for-screen masterpiece (alongside Georgia). Geneva is the substitute for Mac users who might not have Verdana installed, and Lucida should cover any Unix machines hiding out there in the audience. Barring any of those, a generic sans-serif kicks in.

Recently, I’ve started using Dean Allen’s Textile for entry formatting, in a port written by Brad Choate, plugin master supreme. Quote “education” is done by John Gruber’s Smarty Pants.

Posted 9:04 PM
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Accessibility Statement | April 8, 2003

This is the official (accept no imitations!) accessibility statement for http://nebulose.net/blog/. It borrows heavily from Mark Pilgrim’s Accessibility Statement, which is the definitive work as far as accessibility statements go.

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Windows, you can press ALT + an access key; on Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key.

From any page on the site, use Access Key 4 to jump to the search box. Go on, try it now. Amazing! Jumping cursor! (Access Key 1, likewise, returns you to the home page.)

Standards Compliance

The homepage, all archive pages, and the master archive index all validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. If you don’t want to take my word for it, there is a “Validate Me” link in the footer of each page.

Semantic Markup

Pages use structured headers: h2 tags are used for the date of an entry, h3 tags for entry titles, h4 and h5 for lesser divisions within an entry. JAWS users can skip to the next day using ALT+INSERT+2, or the next post with ALT+INSERT+3.

In cases where list-like content is displayed, such as the Links page, appropriate XHTML list markup is used. Tables are used only for tabular data, not for layout.

Navigational Aids

All archive pages have rel=previous, next, up, and home links to aid navigation in text-only browsers and screen readers. Netscape 6 and Mozilla users can also take advantage of this feature by selecting the View menu, Show/Hide, Site Navigation Bar, Show Only As Needed (or Show Always).

Links have title attributes, where appropriate. Whever possible, links are written to make sense out of context. Many browsers (such as JAWS, Home Page Reader, Lynx, and Opera) can extract the list of links on a page and allow the user to browse the list, separately from the page. There are no javascript: pseudo-links. Links will not be opened in new windows unless the user specifies so.

Images

All content images used in the home page and all archives include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes. If ALT text is insufficient, a LONGDESC attribute is used in addition.

Visual Design

This site uses cascading style sheets exclusively for visual layout, and degrades gracefully where CSS is not fully supported. The default stylesheet uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified “text size” option in visual browsers. For example, if you’re using Internet Explorer, you can make your default text size larger under the “View” menu, “Text Size”, “Larger” (or “Largest”). If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

There is no style switcher. There will be no style switcher. Style switchers are stupid.

Further Reading

Posted 7:49 PM
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Redesign(ed) | April 7, 2003

I think I’m done now, so at this point it’s okay to tell me about any lingering 404s or glitches. I’ve tested it in IE6 and Mozilla/Phoenix; let me know if it looks strange in your browser. Things that changed:

Things that haven’t changed:

Changes yet to come:

Posted 3:25 PM
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Redesign | April 6, 2003

It has begun. Consider this an official solicitation for comments.

(If you’re wondering: I plan to change the photo to the left regularly, which is why there’s a link that says “Previous Photos”)

Posted 4:13 PM
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I stole this: | March 31, 2003

Speed 3: The Blog. If I don’t make an entry every day, the bus will blow up.

(Source)

Posted 8:43 PM
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Warning | March 22, 2003

About to try some crazy importing. If it gets screwed up, you know why.

Update: Success! More information later — now I’m off to play some frisbee.

Posted 11:41 AM
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Frequently Asked Questions | March 21, 2003

Aaron, what’s up with this new site?

Well, last week the hosting provider for my old site decided to die in a most horrible way: the static pages were kept intact, but the underlying database and CGIs could no longer be accessed. Basically, to the casual observer, everything appeared fine, except that I couldn’t add any new entries. So people started to wonder why I wasn’t writing, not knowing that the site was broken at all. In many ways, a plain old “404 Not Found” would be better, since at least that way people would get the message - “IT’S BROKEN, STOP LOOKING ALREADY”. As it is, I can only hope that somehow everyone finds this newer, more dependable page.

So where are all your entries?

I had a backup that covered the entries from May 30, 2002 to January 4, 2003, so those entries are restored on the new site. The others I have copies of locally, but they need to be formatted correctly again, which could take a while. Trying to learn the subtle ways of regexes so I can automate it, maybe by this weekend it’ll get done. Then again, maybe not.

And the, uh, unfamiliar look?

I have backups of my template from the old site, but I thought that the move to my own domain would be a good excuse for a redesign. Until I get that done, it’ll be the default Movable Type template. After? Well, I can’t tell, but it’ll be something nebulose.

Huh?

Nebulose. It means cloudy or hazy, or lacking definite form or limits. You know, like a nebula.

Oh, clever.

I’m glad you approve.

When can we expect all this nebulosity to solidify?

I’ll post updates here as I work, but don’t hold your breath.

Thanks, Aaron! You sure are a swell fellow.

Say, anytime.

Posted 5:07 PM
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Fear not… | February 18, 2003

…the lack of updates. I am preparing myself for a grand spectacle of human achievement.

Posted 12:00 PM
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Updates Galore | January 19, 2003

Changes I’ve made today, instead of studying for my exams:

Posted 12:00 PM
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Apology | November 29, 2002

The astute reader will notice that I expressed a desire to post new content every day, a goal which I succeeded in for a mere four days. I apologize for this short-lived fantasy coming to an end; yesterday I was, as today, busy (ahem) applying myself to other pursuits. With any (ahem) degree of luck my applications will be finished and sent out by the end of this weekend, and we will return you to your regularly scheduled garbage.

Posted 2:45 PM
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List | November 26, 2002

I have a little pad that I carry around with me at all times, because I’m not so hot at remembering things these days. (Was I ever? Can’t remember.) The last page of the pad is reserved for ideas of pieces to write for this site, as I have resolved to write new content each and every day, and would not want to be caught without an appropriate topic at the last minute. Most of the things written on this reserved page are barely legible — I have the nasty habit of thinking of ideas when I’m walking down a crowded hallway (or similiar), and my handwriting is pretty bad to begin with.

I’ve got a little notation thing going on, to help me subdivide the list when the time of reckoning comes and I need to pick a subject, like, pronto. Ideas I’m skeptical about are in parenthesis, denoting their lesser status; ditto for a question mark. I use || for “or”; that’s the code junkie in me coming to the surface. Topics I absolutely must write about have a vageuly star-like symbol next to them. In the upper right corner, surrounded by a truncated box, I have written: “Meta: this list” — and here we are.

pad_ideas.jpg

Posted 9:07 PM
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About | November 24, 2002

Your host in days of yore. I am a person. This is a personal site. I write about, photograph, and link to things that interest or excite me. If any of those things interest or excite you too, I’d love to hear from you.

Some History, Inexplicably Written in the Third Person

Aaron Schutzengel was born at a very young age (thanks, Jeremy) near Sacramento, California. Today he is a student near Boston, Mass. He hates writing little blurbs about himself, because he vainly imagines himself to be more interesting than a little snippet can convey. He enjoys rock climbing and Ultimate Frisbee, but rarely both at the same time. He plays the piano well, the harmonica poorly, and the recorder frighteningly. He has long memorized his Social Security number, his credit card number, and his ICQ number, but would probably forget your name. His favorite book is Humboldt’s Gift. His favorite city is San Francisco, but you shouldn’t take that as an indication of his sexuality. His handwriting is atrocious. He is fluent in Pig Latin. He drinks his milk, but once had his index finger broken during a pillow fight. He has absurdly large hands, and a chronic intention tremor. Years ago, he closed a Swiss Army Knife on his pinky; his father, a physician, stitched it for him. He is by no means ticklish — don’t even go there, pancake.

An ‘-ose’ By Any Other Name

Nebulose means “lacking definite form or limits; cloudy.” Surprisingly not just a misspelling of “nebulous.”

Both Nitty and Gritty

I use Movable Type, with MTTextile, Smarty Pants, and MTRegex. There is also an accessibility statement.

Posted 9:23 AM
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New and Improved | November 5, 2002

A list of changes for this version of the site, in approximate order by importance:

  1. New stylesheet. Colors that remind me of autumn.
  2. Changed the site search feature from using Google to an internal site-search CGI, courtesy of Jay Allen.
  3. Automatic validation checker link on every page. Please e-mail me if you find a page that fails validation - it’s important!
  4. Impossible to remember numeric permalinks no more! Now using semantic permalink URLs based on the entry date and title. (Not only is it righteous, but it helps my search engine rankings.)
  5. Semantic page layout - actual header tags used for the dates, titles, and navigation subsections, and actual list tags used for navigation and link lists. This makes zero different in an ordinary browser, but is a world of help for people using screen readers, PDAs, or other alternate browsing devices.

I’ve tested the site and it looks as it should in Mozilla 1.1 and IE6/Win. The semantic aspects of the design mean that it should degrade very gracefully in older browsers - even ones with no CSS support - but if you find an issue, please let me know and I’ll do my best to fix it.

Long live version 2.0…

Posted 4:11 PM
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