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I was sitting quietly at work last Tuesday afternoon when Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” came on the radio (a “classic rock” station, if you can believe it). I had somewhat of an epiphany, as if I were hearing it for the first time. It had probably been in the back of my mind since the mid-eighties, but Bon Jovi was never a band that I was really attached to.

I really didn’t listen to pop radio in my grade school years (mostly just oldies), and I have never been that big of a fan of eighties music. I was a teenager in the nineties — it was that decade’s music that provided the soundtrack to my life growing up. Hearing Bon Jovi again on Tuesday forced me to reconsider the cold shoulder I’ve been giving eighties music.

When endeavoring to develop and create an interactive system, one must consider the diversity of people who may potentially interface with said system. All too typically, developers of interactive systems design for themselves. Their designs may seem perfectly logical to them, but may appear cumbersome — or even downright unusable — to certain segments of the population. Developers must be perpetually cognizant of the diverse needs, skill levels, handicaps, and mindsets of potential users.

When undertaking something as vast and complicated as, for instance, an operating system, the developers must consider the lowest common denominator — not in a strict numerical sense, but in terms of the skill-levels and competencies of a potential user base. Developers must leverage coding for this lowest common denominator with meeting — and even surpassing — the needs of experienced “power” users. A novice user shouldn’t have to spend minutes wading through documentation in order to accomplish simple tasks. The functions of an interactive system should be intuitive and fundamentally logical.

In addition to developing to a potential user base’s levels of expertise, systems developers must consider the physical and mental handicaps of users. As the Baby Boomers age, a growing number of computer users find themselves with less-than optimal vision. Crucial applications, such as web browsers and operating systems must be accessible to people with poor vision.

Correlatively, software programs and Internet content must also be accessible. In creating web content, web developers can ensure accessibility by 1.) Using relative (as apposed to fixed) font sizes, 2.) Using plain text instead of image-based text when possible, 3.) Providing alternate text for images, which is crucial for audible screen readers. (Screen readers cannot reliably determine the content of an image and must fall back to alternate text.), and 4.) Being cognizant of the contrast ratios of text color(s) and their corresponding background color(s).

The subjunctive mood is not limited to the hypothetical. For instance, the clauses “it is important that you tell the truth” and “I suggest that we open the windows” express the subjunctive mood in the subordinate clauses. The subjunctive mood is still used frequently, albeit obliviously.

Hypothetical subjunctives are necessary to delineate from the past tenses of verbs. For instance, the If-clause “if I were a carpenter” expresses the hypothetical, while the If-clause “if I was a carpenter” expresses uncertainty about the past.

The Bedford Handbook notes that “in the subjunctive mood, there is only one past-tense form of be: were (never was).” (342) Bedford also acknowledges that the subjunctive “causes problems for writers” (342) (because at first, they don’t appear grammatical), is used less often than indicative or imperative moods (341), and was “once more widely used.” (343)

Examples of subjunctive mood

Source: Hacker, Diana. The Bedford Handbook – sixth edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002.

Derek Powazek‘s article “Embrace your bottom!” brings up some good points regarding the usage of sidebars that “compete” with a page’s main content.

Some designers prefer sidebars that “compete” with main content for attention because 1). it reduces the need for additional vertical scrolling and 2). it may have something to do with the mindset that the web is not linear, i.e. there typically does not have to be a proper sequence to pages — disparate or not. Derek said that

Those sidebar items are great for readers who just aren’t engaged in whatever they’re reading. They can skim down a paragraph or two and then link away to the next thing.

But sidebar items aren’t the only places for readers to “link away”. Contextual links in main content also serve to distract the reader and encourage linking away to other content. Don’t get me wrong — one-column layouts can be effective. But well-written content that “competes” with sidebars often wins out over said sidebars. Added to the mix are browsers with tabbing capabilities, which enable users to “link away” to sidebar content without taking their eyes off main content.

Derek has a good eye for design — I especially like his 19th century German-looking font he uses in his header images.

Wow. John Roberts totally cleaned Senator Kennedy’s clock this morning. Says Will Malven from Men’s News Daily:

On one side we have the soon to be new Chief Justice Roberts sitting with no notes or props and on the other side we have eighteen Senators the various staff members, and all of their accumulated paper work, notes, letters and the like. The results, no contest. For two days now Judge Roberts has taken the Senate Committee to law school.

Listening to excerpts of Roberts over the past four days has made my jaw drop on numerous occasions. Consider Kennedy’s pathetic excuse for a question, and Robert’s answer:

KENNEDY: You mentioned in your memoranda that we should — you’re familiar, I think, with these words. They’ve been written up in the journals and you can probably recognize them. “We should ignore the assertion that the EEOC is unAmerican, the truth of the matter notwithstanding.” Is there anything — is there some reason that you would make a comment like that..

ROBERTS: Well, Senator, you do have to read the memo, I think, in its entirety to put it in context. That was not my language. That was the language — the unAmerican reference was the language that was employed by an individual who had a case before the EEOC. He actually won his case before the EEOC but he didn’t like the difficulty and the time involved.

He wrote to the president. He said two things: one, that his treatment at the hands of the EEOC was unAmerican; and, two, that the president had promised in the campaign to abolish the EEOC, and he wanted to hold the president to that promise. It was my responsibility to figure out how to respond to this complaint that had been received. And how we responded was by protecting the EEOC from interference by the president in any political way, by protecting the EEOC from this sort of complaint.
. . .
And the point of the letter — when you read the whole memorandum, you see two points. The first is that I was unable to determine, in the short time I had to respond, whether or not the president had made such a pledge to abolish the EEOC. I simply didn’t know. And I said that in the paragraph, if you read it. And that’s what the truth of the matter notwithstanding is referring to: the question of whether or not the president had promised to abolish the EEOC.

I say right in the memo that we cannot determine that. And whether his treatment was unAmerican or not is beside the point; we don’t interfere with the activities of the EEOC. That was the conclusion and that’s what we did in that case.

I couldn’t have come up with a better answer had I had months to research and prepare! Totally astounding. Later, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) asked a question which amounted to “Will you do anything to extend freedoms and correct injustices?” The slam-dunk answer from Roberts:

I had someone ask me in this process — I don’t remember who it was, but somebody asked me, you know, Are you going to be on the side of the little guy?

And you obviously want to give an immediate answer, but, as you reflect on it, if the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy’s going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy’s going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution. That’s the oath.

The oath that a judge takes is not that, “I’ll look out for particular interests, I’ll be on the side of particular interests.” The oath is to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States. And that’s what I would do.

Be still my beating heart! The Supreme Court will be in good hands when Roberts in confirmed.

Eric Meyer recently posted an entry about his apparent unpolished skills answering interview questions:

I have to be honest: reading the full transcription of the interview was a deeply shocking and humbling experience. In the past, when reading transcripts of news interviews and commentary shows, I’ve winced and clucked over the mangled syntax of the people being transcribed. False starts, weird shifts, strange commas, unfinished sentences, mind-number repetition, long rambling assaults on syntax and coherence —what was wrong with these people? Are these the best minds our society can produce? Can none of them do so much as utter a sentence with a clear point and progression? How many “you know”s does one person really need?

Some people just have a knack for proper diction during interviews. Consider John Roberts, answering a question yesterday during his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing:

Senator, you did not accurately represent my position. The Grove City College case presented two separate questions, and it was a matter being litigated of course in the courts. The universities were arguing that they were not covered at all by the civil rights laws in question simply because their students had federal financial assistance and attended their universities. That was their first argument. The second argument was, even if they were covered, all that was covered was the admissions office and not other programs that themselves did not receive separate financial assistance. Our position, the position of the administration, and, again, that was the position I was advancing, I was not formulating policy, I was articulating and defending the administration position.

None of the dreaded “filler words”. Totally unscripted, unprepared, unrehearsed — the man is a machine. Some people take comfort in others’ inability to speak in public (Thomas Jefferson’s problems come to mind). Somehow, Roberts’ eloquent words likewise give me comfort.

Eric’s admission to poor interview-giving doesn’t make him any less of a “CSS god” in my eyes. I’d be just as bad at it if I were important enough to be interviewed.

Pictured: the rear of my audio-video devices. I had the opportunity to dismantle this monstrosity during my recent foray into interior painting. What you see is only about 60% of the total conglomeration. I’m hoping that one day all of these date transmission wires will be supplanted by infrared technology or some other wireless means, perhaps. If it can happen to routers, it can happen to audio/video devices.

Oh, the irony: so I’m cruising down the road in my $3.79 gas blasting Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” with nary a care. A sampling of the eerie lyrics:

…If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
When the levee breaks I’ll have no place to stay.
…Don’t it make you feel bad
When you’re tryin’ to find your way home,
You don’t know which way to go?
If you’re goin’ down south
They go no work to do
…
Cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
When the levee breaks, Mama, you got to move.
All last night sat on the levee and moaned,
Thinkin’ ’bout me baby and my happy home.
…
Going down, going down now, going down.

How quickly he forgets. Muhammad Yousef Al-Mlaifi, a director at Kuwaiti’s Ministry of Endowment, believes that Hurricane Katrina was a “soldier of Allah.”

“But how strange it is that after all the tremendous American achievements for the sake of humanity, these mighty winds come and evilly rip [America’s] cities to shreds? Have the storms joined the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization?

…I began to read about these winds, and I was surprised to discover that the American websites that are translated [into Arabic] are talking about the fact that that the storm Katrina is the fifth equatorial storm to strike Florida this year… and that a large part of the U.S. is subject every year to many storms that extract [a price of] dead, and completely destroy property. I said, Allah be praised, until when will these successive catastrophes strike them?

“…I opened the Koran and began to read in Surat Al-R’ad [‘The Thunder’ chapter], and stopped at these words [of Allah]: ‘The disaster will keep striking the unbelievers for what they have done, or it will strike areas close to their territory, until the promise of Allah comes to pass, for, verily, Allah will not fail in His promise.’ [Koran 13:31].”

What Muhammad is failing to remember is last year’s Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami which killed 200,000 people — about half of which were Muslims from Indonesia. I’m willing to bet Muhammad didn’t call that disaster a “Christian soldier” or a harbinger from the United States. Muhammad is also forgetting about the chronic earthquakes in Turkey and Iran, two countries that are about 99% Muslim.

From a narrow, personal-budget perspective, I don’t give a left-handed flying farkle about crude oil prices. Reid put it best the other day about how many of us are whining about nothing:

But right now, [Katrina survivors] need our help. They need your help, and luckily, they need it from the one thing you control.

And what are a lot of us doing? Whining. Yesterday in Atlanta, we had a full-fledged gas scare, complete with price gouging. People waited up to two hours in line to pay $4-$6 per gallon for gas, yet today there are no lines, and gas is below $3.50 per gallon. So people are whining about price gouging.

Look at the reports from New Orleans and Mississippi. If the sole effect Katrina has on you is some time in line to buy pricey gas, how freakin’ lucky are you?

Gas prices don’t matter to me. Why should I worry about them? Is there anything I can do to make them go down? No.