A few months ago, I started a category on here of “Worst Website of the Week”. I come across so many horribly-designed websites that I thought I should start pointing out the worst examples, listing exactly what was wrong with them; in this I was following the example of Web pages That Suck, which does just that. Naive idiot that I am, I was trying to do my bit towards raising web standards.
I only got to three entries. The reaction, from two website owners, was overwhelmingy awful and negative. One of them dug up the old Yahoo Geocities Oakleaf Circle site that I had forgotten about, put it through an online validator and gloating emailed the results, with a “call yourself a webdesigner?” sneer; the fact that the page in question clearly stated “…next year, in 2003, we hope to…” apparently didn’t give him a clue that the site was a very early effort of mine and not current. (Fully half of the dozen validation errors listed were, in cany case, due to Geocities’ own ad coding.) Additionally, he didn’t even have the courage to sign his own name, but wrote anonymously as “A Wellwisher” from a Hotmail addy; it was perfectly obvious who he was, so Paul, if you’re reading this – I have a Scorpio Moon.
The other one (who at least did sign his name) posted about me and my criticism of his site on a message board and dozens of his charming, literate young friends emailed me with their own thoughts on the matter. I still have their comments somewhere – full of obscenities, misspelling, garbage txt-speak and oh-so-clever criticisms of my own website designs. Thank you Neil, for introducing me to such lovely people. (Although, if I had friends like those, I wouldn’t want to admit to it.)
What was depressing about all this was that neither of the people who were so offended by my comments conceded that there was anything at all wrong with their sites, and were totally dismissive of the needs of disabled users. (One of Neil’s pals even said “But blind people don’t read websites, stupid!” He probably thinks that blind people don’t read newspapers or watch TV either.) And they felt the need to pick at small faults in my own designs, like minor misspellings, for instance, and “boring colours” (?!) and “too much text” (this was one of A Wellwisher’s comment on the current Oakleaf Circle site; hey, it’s an information and listings site, buddy – unlike your own site, it doesn’t need fancy Flash animations and gargantuan graphics to get people to look at it.) And they got personal as well – the discovery that I am a practising pagan bought comments like “Stick to dancing around stones, you [blank] old cow.” “Old cow”, usually with one of two or three qualifying expletives, was their main term of abuse for me; considering that they were on a designers’ board, they showed a marked lack of imagination. One of them, posting on the forum, wittily suggested that I should be signed up to some porn sites; the little twit obviously thought that I was some strait-laced old spinster type who’d faint away at the sight of hot pr0n action. I found his assumption almost amusing. Almost.
Anyway, just a week of this hostile, negative, sexist, agist, mysogynistic, bullying abuse was enough. So I deleted the offending posts. (“Can dish it out but can’t take it!” crowed Neil. Wrong, wrong, wrong, young man; I have never “dished out” anything like the kind of expletive-filled, ignorant, hateful abuse that I got from your little pals.)

So, anyway, what bought it all back? Well, I’ve just come across this post from I Never Knew about the personal abuse that some bloggers have experienced:

I think a lot of the bad behavior we have been seeing is due to people not knowing the current ‘web medium’ that well. Some people don’t realize what blogs are or that they are even on one. They often treat blog writers the way they do someone in the next car, speeding along and not hearing them, not realizing the comments are going straight to email, right next to mom’s hello and hitting the bloggers right in the jaw, not bouncing off the windows of a car you’ll never see again……some people are just vicious uncivilized dumb arses.

Quite.

PS: I mentioned that I posted about three badly-designed websites, and got negative reactions from two of them. Well, I got a reaction from the third also – a nice email thanking me for pointing out the faults in the design and asking for advice on correcting them. Two of the website owners were men, one was a woman. Guess which one sent the postive reaction…..

…I’ve got to myself. For some reason (maybe to do with trying to come off the Ibroprufen?), I’ve been sleeping very badly for the last few nights. So I’ve been feeling tired, cranky and my arthritis has been giving me hell. So, this morning, when B & Son went off to Ayre to buy some bathroom stuff, I cried off and stayed behind.
I finally gave in and swallowed a dose of Ibuprofen and felt a lot better after an hour. And now I’ve decided to put my new computer together!
🙂

Later:

New computer is still lying eviscerated in the kitchen. I’d forgotton the real joy of assembling one – all those dozens of little leads to be plugged into the right places on the motherboard. My b*ggered eyesight couldn’t read the tiny jumper labels, so I had to scrabble through the house for my magnifying glass; I then had to try to hold the magnifying glass and the mobo diagram whilst plugging in each fiddly little lead. Eventually I had to give up – I got the beginnings of a headache and the constant bending over was making it difficult for me to get in enough breath, so that an angina attack was threatening.
Then B and Son came home and I had to do family stuff anyway. But I’ll do some more on it tomorrow. I vividly remember the last time I built a computer for myself – I got it all finished and plugged in, then very carefully switched it on; when the screen lit up and the OS logo appeared, I screamed “It lives!! It lives!!” and danced around the room, whooping and laughing.

I want to do that again!

I’ve spent hours and hours trying to make the Oakleaf Circle site work with PHP. And I’ve just not managed it. So I’ve given up for now and put up the HTML version. You should be able to see it here. If anybody knows of a free, simple, lightweight PHP-driven CMS that would be suitable for a listings site such as this, pleeeeeze let me know.
I just haven’t got the time for fiddling about with it at the moment – the Transit deadline is Monday and I haven’t got anything laid out yet.

And B is wanting to start on the bathroom makeover.

And our adult Son has decided to live with us for a while.

And I have a computer to build (yippee!)

So – no time for gossiping at the moment…..

But it was a bloody good Camp!!!

Only a few days to go to the Camp! I’m answering emails, sending out tickets, answering the phone, helping B get the caravan ready…
And flopping with exhaustion and pain. I’m not up to all this physical activity any more. My body is wearing out – angina, arthritis, blood pressure….. Cleaning the carvan on Thursday morning put my knee out once again, so that I had to spend the afternoon on the sofa, unable to walk. And I was tired and aching all day Friday.
Gahhh.

Still, finances are looking more cheerful – it looks like I can at last get that new computer! I’m determined to have a drawing tablet with it – I’m neglecting my artwork these days. It’s just too much work to drag out my boards and paints. Painting on a sreen is much more my style nowadays.

And I’ve decided to give up trying to make Mambo work on the new Oakleaf Circle site. It’s a good program, but it’s far too heavyweight for what I need – it’s too complicated, there are just too many modules and sections to add and change, and every change takes an age to execute on dialup. The next version of Mambo, will, I read, be much simplified. But I can’t wait that long.
I’ve decided to go with WordPress Yes, it’s blogging software, but with just two plugins and a fairly simple bit of recoding, I can turn it into a basic CMS that will do what I want. It’s dead easy to install (unlike Mambo – installation was a nightmare, even with the manual and expert help), so easy that it doesn’t have or need a manual, and I’m already familiar with it.
But there’s no time for that now – got to get on with the Camp. So I’ll tackle it afterwards.

To the person in the Dept of Labor in Washington DC, who got to this site with the search term “crossword wigglesworth”:
It’s probably too late now – you’ve either completed the crossword or thrown it away in disgust – but the cryptic crossword answer you were looking for is “Air Commodore Cecil George Wigglesworth”.

You know, I always avoid prophesying beforehand. It is much better policy to prophesy after the event has taken place. – Winston Churchill

And wouldn’t you know it, here come all the post-bombing “predictions”. All the “I posted on such-and-such that the UK would face a terrorist attack/disaster/massacre/emergency/news event this year!” idiots are coming out of the woodwork.
Take this one:

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 12:41 pm Post subject: England bomb threat again
Premonition that England — London, I think — a bomb threat, time frame now to end of July at most, but I feel it more toward end of June. Two hot spots — an area near the Prime Minister office, wherever that is, and also somewhere just outside the airport not in the airport itself, but perhaps at a gate or just outside of that. Yes, I know. London has bomb threats all the time. Yes. It’s what I’m picking up, though. Youngish caucasion guys, early 20’s, skinhead looking types, terrorist type activity but not sure what it relates to, kind of think it’s Al Qaida, but it’s caucasion guys. I think they are not from England and are German, or another part of Europe like that. They are carrying the parts in briefcase or leather type bags that have handles, and they are wearing overcoats that are dressier than they normally wear.

[Emphasis mine]. Not all the information about the bombings are public yet, but already you can see that practically every detail of this ‘prediction’ is wrong (we don’t yet know what the bombers were wearing, but it’s pretty safe to assume that none of them were wearing overcoats – however ‘dressy’ – on a day when the temperature was in the low thirties).
However, follow the thread – which is currently at 11 pages – and you will see that the poster – and all her friends – are claiming her prediction as an accurate ‘hit’. How? Well, the bombings happened before the end of July; it was a bombing carried out by youngish men possibly linked to Al Quaida; one of the bombings occurred closed to Aldgate station; the bombers’ car was found at Luton, which is close to an airport! Wow – what stunning accuracy…..