Not-So New Year

So, how's that whole New Year thing working out for you?

Mine hasn't been so good.

I'm preparing a series of training videos that explain how to use the new Content Management System we are going to be rolling out, soon. I've got a couple dozen done so far, showing how to log in and how to log out. How to create a page and how to delete one. How to edit your page navigation and the various page elements like footers and related links and so on.

The thing is, in order to explain how any of this works, I have to know, myself. So, I'm busy learning the In's and Out's of this new beast, while at the same time keeping an eye on how to distill some of this new-found knowledge in two- and three-minute chunks.

I haven't done anything like this, before. The closest was my radio career, when, after my air shift was done I had to report to Production, and spend however much time was needed to create any new commercials that needed to be done. But even then, I never had to synchronize my audio with anyone's video, before. Play a few records, put them away, walk down the hall and speak glowingly for thirty seconds exactly about Johnson Lawn and Garden. Boom-boom... Boom!

This has been a whole lot of fun, and I think it will eventually be a really good way to pick up how this all works. Instead of having to juggle your schedule to find two hours to come and listen to me talk about it, you can get started right away, catching the how to log on/how to log off series and working your way from there. Later on, if you can't remember how to edit page footers, you don't need to schedule another two-hour session and wait for a week or two... you can just revisit the little movie about page footers and get on with things. Over time, I expect our initial two dozen or thirty movies to expand into three-dozen, or four-dozen or even more. Each one devoted to just a single, molecular aspect of how the greater system works.

I'm learning all kinds of things, this semester. I'm learning a lot about home ownership. This morning, I took the garbage out. Three steps from the garage, I was just hanging on, until the giant receptacle made it down hill to the sidewalk. I wrestled it over into the grassy/snowy area between the curb and the sidewalk and turned around. Two steps later, I was doing one of those cartoon motions where I'm okay from the belt up, but from there down everything is just a blur. I fell onto (mostly) my left hand and wrist. I spent a few minutes there on the ice, in front of maybe thirty cars, trucks and minivans and at least one StarTran bus, when an older gentleman approached on the sidewalk coming from the west.

He had seen me fall and immediately turned north on 38th Street and parked, got out and walked back to make sure I was alright! By the time he got to my house, I was up in a newborn-colt sort of way and making my way up the yard, walking on the traction-rich front lawn. He escorted me back up to the little sidewalk connecting the driveway to the front door. There, he turned, bade me farewell and encouraged me to be more careful.

This old man stopped on his way to work to help me get up and make sure I wasn't hurt. What a sweetheart, right?

I spent about an hour worrying if I'd ever play guitar again, the left hand being rather important in that endeavor, and wondering I'd broken anything. The whole thing took about as long and felt about as bad as when I'd broken my foot, on Hallowe'en. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. Hmm... that's going to be—Boom! There I am, flat on the ground, and in front of traffic again, too.

At work, I've spent most of the last week restarting my computer. I can maintain a network connection for only between three and twenty minutes. It's like a giant arm goes across the entire network every, say, twenty minutes, pulling errant networkers offline. If I happen to come on right after it passes, I can get fifteen or twenty minutes of work done, and saved and uploaded. If not, well, so far today alone I have restarted sixteen times, and it's only 2:30pm.

How's your New Year, so far?

The Naming

Okay, something has to be done about product names in this country. It's getting out of hand. Maybe toward the end here we'll tie this into Web pages, somehow, but even if not, this is important.

When I was a kid, names meant something. You could focus your attention on a Mustang or a Nova and everyone knew what you meant. But we have so many names today that don't mean anything, or mean the wrong things, or mean something different than what's actually going on. It's stupid, it's wasteful and it has to be hurting our general productivity in some way.

Consider the iMac. The iMac is a model of Macintosh. And the Macintosh is a line of computers from Apple. But here's the thing, it's been more than twenty years since Apple offered a computer other than the Macintosh. In the 1980s, if you told someone you were buying "an Apple computer" they didn't know if you were getting an Apple II, a Lisa or a Macintosh. Apple was GM. Apple II and Lisa were Oldsmobile and Pontiac. Macintosh was Chevrolet. Within the Macintosh line there were several models. Macintosh II, Mac SE/30, Macintosh LC/II, etc., roughly corresponding to Camaro, Impala and Malibu, let's say. But today, every computer Apple builds is a Macintosh. So is it helpful, or necessary, to have to indicate Apple Macintosh iMac? Apple themselves noticed less and less of their income comes from Macintosh, in an era of telephones and iTunes and so on. They thought it over and dropped "Computer" from their name. Apple Computer is now just "Apple". It's a start.

A lot of model designations don't mean anything, any more. Again, there was a day when your grandpa could say he was going to buy a new Chevy and everyone knew what kind of car he would have in his driveway. When more and more models were developed, Chevelles and Corvairs and so on, you had to add those names to the first to convey the complete idea.

So it wasn't just a Cadillac, any more. It was a Cadillac El Dorado. But then these designations were fractured, as various trim levels were developed. This wasn't so bad at first. A full-sized Chevrolet could be a Biscayne, an Impala or a Caprice. So now we're up to three names to adequately describe the product. Pontiac Firebird TransAm. And then it all went to Hell.

This morning, on the way to work, I followed a Pontiac. On one side of the trunk lid it said "G6". On the other side, it said "GT". Well, which is it? What does "LE" mean to, say, anyone? And how does it differ from "GLE" or "SE" or "SEL"? And why should anyone care if your car has a V6 or a V8 engine, a 5-speed or an automatic transmission? Sport-tuned suspension? Is there a badge that indicates you bought too much of a radio, too? These started out innocently enough. European brands added "i" to model names to indicate fuel injection, but who is doing the bragging, here, BMW or the new car owner? In the Mercedes-Benz family, "SL" meant Sports Light. But American brands applied these letters to cars that weighed 5000 pounds.

Then marketers noticed something about those numbers and letters. People didn't bond with them the way they did real names.

And, as if it was a Good Thing, the alphabet started to appear all over. The focus wasn't on the minutia any more, it was back on the brand, where the marketers wanted it. You weren't supposed to love a DeVille, you were supposed to love a Cadillac. So today, Cadillac sells CTS and DTS and STS vehicles. Conjure up any images for you? Me, neither.

It's at work at Acura, too. Fancy a new TSX or ZDX or MDX or RDX in your driveway? Uh, no. I miss the old Acura Legend, Integra and Vigor. I knew what those were. This year, the Lincoln catalog is just as confusing. MKZ, MKS, MKX, MKT? I got nothin'.

Adam allegedly spent a while naming all of the animals. Despite similarities and differences, Africa and India both got "Elephant" while one has big ears and the other doesn't. We don't have a Elephant GL and an Elephant GLE.

I guess we can be glad of that.

The New Start

First things, first. I hope everyone will take a moment or two and update their footer.html documents to reflect the new year for copyright dates (and no, I still haven't done all of mine).

It happens every year.

I spend the first week of every year steeped in awe and wonder and just full of the sheer possibilities every new year affords. It's like being a school kid and heading off for that first day with all of those clean, empty pages in my notebooks. I could write stories in those pages. I could do homework. I could sketch out some new idea for a submarine or a jet fighter. I could write a tentative love letter to The Little Red-Haired Girl. I could do anything.

Of course, the reality is a little less lofty. But here at the beginning of the twenty-first century, version 1.1, I think it's still a Good Idea to spend a few calories at the beginning and ending of any arbitrary period of time and decide what you expect out of it. Think about what actually got done. Think about the difference between the expectation and the reality. And to wonder a little about how to improve the situation in the next arbitrary time period, whether it's a day, a week, a month or a year.

Years ago, I learned HTML. And when HTML v3.2 gelled, I picked up on the changes, there. HTML v4.01 was a snap for me. And I remember thinking I could spend a few dollars and a few calories working-up JavaScript or I could work on Cascading StyleSheets and choosing CSS, because it seemed like everyone was saying JavaScript was on the way out. And for years, I was right. JavaScript was on its way to becoming Web Latin, our first popular "dead" language. And then AJAX happened. And then JQuery happened. And now I'm behind the curve, again. For the last several years, I have vowed that this next one would be the one where I, finally, learned JavaScript. I wouldn't put any money on a bet like that for 2011, though. It may happen, but I think my focus will be more on HTML5 and Adobe's CS5 suite and Drupal, with a smattering of iPad thrown in there, too.

Folks made fun of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld when he said "…as we know, there are known knowns; there are some things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know." But if you parse it out, he was right.

And so this year, I want to focus on the things I know I do not know. Drupal and HTML5 both have a beginning and an end. You can start at <a> and learn all of the tags and how to use them and when you get done, you will have learned all of the unknowns in HTML5. Same with Drupal. That's not to say you'll know everything about how the pieces work together, or all of the best practices and theories behind the best deployment—everyone knows the alphabet, but not everyone can write like Stephen King or Tom Clancy. But you will have a good, complete foundation and you can work from there.

So what about you? What are you working on, this year?