This afternoon (via Camworld)
I discovered an
unintentionally amusing article on
making web pages accessible for disabled readers. Unfortunately for the author, his web
designers chose to set his font to “x-small sans-serif”. On Netscape, “x-small” corresponds to
an 8pt font at best. Not so readable for disabled people… or non-disabled people,
for that matter.

The interesting thing is that just a few hours later, I find that the site’s code has changed:
they are using a new stylesheet class that bumps the font size up a notch. I can only imagine
the number of snarky emails that these people must have received over the last day or so. (No,
I didn’t send one.) But really, I’d rather they adjusted the article’s content —
it’s really just a lazy pile of assertions at the moment.

Everyone and their mother is a “usability guru”, I suppose.

On the advice of Russ Nelson,’97 (congrats Russ on the engagement!), I’m rethinking my
staunch opposition to attending my college reunion.
Maybe it won’t be a tacky schmooze-fest. Or maybe I can avoid the people who
will make it a tacky schmooze-fest, and just hang out with my old friends. Or maybe the
my old friends and the people who will make it a tacky schmooze-fest will not, as I fear,
turn out to be the same people. Maybe, maybe.

Finally, I had to share this story about what the noxious British technology tabloid
The Register calls,
“the CAPS-LOCK Defense“:

During what was to be a routine proceeding to set future court dates, Heckenkamp challenged
the indictment against him on the grounds that it spells his name, Jerome T. Heckenkamp, in
all capital letters, while he spells it with the first letter capitalized, and subsequent
letters in lower case.

The judge was impressed neither with this nor with Heckenkamp’s motion to subpoena the “United
States of America” as a witness. And to think I was just about to send notice to friends and family
that I was changing my name to “eVA3n GOeR”
(the “3” would be silent, you see). Pity.