Reclaiming Content: A Manifesto

I've been thinking for a while now about trying to get away from using a hosted blog, but I wasn't satisfied with WordPress — I found it too complicated to do what I really wanted with it, plus it opened me up to all kinds of comment spam and malicious attacks of other sorts. Yes, I realize that I could keep it patched up and minimize my attack profile, but it would still be there. That's the hazard of using something that's widespread: it makes an attractive target.

Beyond that, I'd also like to archive the URLs to things I share online, e.g. on Twitter. There are services that help with this sort of thing: del.icio.us, bit.ly, etc etc etc. But anytime I'm giving my data to someone else, I'm a little uneasy, for a couple of reasons:

1. What are they going to do with that information? Google and Facebook have both gotten really good at targeting ads at me, and I don't like it.
2. What happens if their servers suddenly dump my data, like Twitter recently did to my @-replies, or like Google Buzz did a few weeks ago to Leo Laporte?

So, here's what I'm going to do about it.

Manifesto of the Independent Voice

I reject the notion that free on the Internet can only be achieved through selling one's soul to corporate interests. I declare that search engines and blog services do not own the rights to my voice and my words; I do!

I hereby declare my intention to divorce myself from all third-party content management systems. If I cannot find a suitable open-source blogging platform or content management system, I will build my own.

Small.

Fast.

Simple.

Free and Independent.

Mine.

IE9: Microsoft Strikes Back

After pretty much ignoring Internet Explorer for the last few years, I'm surprised to find myself using the latest and greatest version this morning. And so far? I like it.

The first thing I did once I got the new browser beta up and running was to check out my own site, where I've got a pretty good idea of what previously didn't work well (or at all) in IE. What I found surprised me:

What Works

• Surprisingly, Canvassa! IE9 runs my little HTML5 Canvas game quite well, in fact.
• My resume looks great. The only advanced feature it doesn't do right is liquid columns, but that's relatively minor, really.

What Doesn't Work

• My portfolio doesn't work. Time to revisit some of that code.
• The new "pinning a webpage as an app" functionality doesn't look very good for my site yet; I need to figure out what <meta> tags to include to make it look better.

Everything else seems to be working well. The new developer tools are nice, addon-disabling feature was pretty sweet, and the minimal browser chrome gets out of the way on my tiny netbook screen and lets the Web shine through. Overall, I've got to hand it to the IE team: this is a great step in the right direction, and I for one welcome the return of the Browser Wars... because Competition = Innovation.

One-page resume in CSS3

Recently, I came across a really nicely done one-page resume on Scribd, and wanted to try to recreate it using the latest web technologies (no Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Word, or OpenOffice allowed). Turns out with a few sprinklings of CSS3, it's pretty straightforward. Let's peel back the covers and take a look.

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