I visited the town of Lanesborough back in 2001 merely by chance, travelling back from Roscommon to Dublin with a bit of extra time sitting in the backseat. I had no idea this lovely place existed, but once I crossed the border, entering county Longford, it was there, waiting for my astonished eyes to behold. I was used to bustling Dublin, and picturesque Galway, and the tranquillity of the Arans, but about the midlands I knew little.

I certainly had crossed the River Shannon several times before, down in Athlone (Co. Westmeath), Ireland's geographical centre, but never had I ventured that far North, off the main routes, before. Like many an Irish and practically all of the tourists, I kept using the well-trodden paths to and from Erin's hot spots.

Clonmacnoise (a few kilometres south of Athlone) I had been looking for; it's not as easily found as its famous name would have you expect. Yet Lanesborough, it had been waiting for me, hiding out in this lovely scenery, in a county most tourists wouldn't easily recognise by name or place on a map, aiming at the heart of the unsuspecting passer-by.

Unexpected as this encounter was, I had not prepared myself properly. I should have arrived long before the night drew nigh to capture a lot more of the environs to show you. I should have rented a boat to visit the islands located in Lough Ree and pay due attention to the churches and ruins there. I should have strolled through the woods, or sat at the shore and enjoyed the Shannon's easy flow.

Alas, what extra time I had merely sufficed for a few moments of contemplation and some quickly taken photos before the darkness enclosed the scene entirely. So far away from Ireland's main lines it is easy at times to feel like the last of a kind, to enjoy a solitude that is not draining the heart but feeding the mind.

It becomes so easy to give up one's stubbornly held position and blend into the greater picture. Rich as these moments are, they tend to be rather short-lived, sometimes lasting for hours, but often enough gone after a few seconds already.

I hadn't met a living soul in hours, but as I took to photograph the bridge connecting Longford and Roscommon, I instantly spotted them: the man and his dog standing beneath it, silently watching the River flow, just as I had done, only minutes ago. How could I not have taken their picture?

They say this section of the Shannon, the Lough Ree area, is a fisherman's paradise. Being no angler myself, I don't care much for that kind of interaction with mother nature. Nevertheless, I have to give them that they definitely know how to keep their mouths shut for a lot more than just a couple of seconds at a time. Even if they arrive in groups, flying in from all directions to take on unsuspecting creatures, they at least keep silent and their environment tidy as best they can. That's a lot more than can be said of many other tourists today.

A lot of water has run underneath this bridge since the 24th day of August in the year 1664, but every time I behold this picture, I find it easy to imagine Lord Lane himself standing there, his favourite dog by his side, watching the River, enjoying a moment of solitude that feeds the mind.

Justice For Anna was published by Fortitude. To avoid information redundancy, the above link points to the full article.

“Fortitude publishes a rich variety of articles, essays, and literary works targeted at human beings. Not search engines: human beings,” that's what Locust Swarm had in mind, when they started the project. It sounds like every writer's dream, be they professionals or amateurs. That's what the web is about, after all: a collection of information made by users for users.

Unlike many other “citizen journalism” projects, “Fortitude” requires neither a show of skills nor any special qualification to participate. No one cares whether you make a living developing space shuttles or collecting bin liners. You may write about either, or whatever you please, as long as you are serious about it. To prove it, you will be asked to pay a small amount (USD 1,99 per month) for a full account. In return, you will have your work reviewed democratically. That's to say, the more reviewers appreciate your work, the higher it will score. The higher it scores, the more you will get paid. If your work happens to make the magazine's front page you will receive between USD 10 and USD 100 for the piece you submitted.

This so far unique form of paid publication holds a great potential for every kind of writer, yet it depends on a greater number of contributors to really take off. With nearly 150 active writers (at the time of writing), it will remain a niche product, unlikely to survive the next couple of weeks. To keep democratic publishing going, you have various options:

• If you like to write: sign up for a full account, and submit your work
• If you know people who like to write: spread the word
• If you have a website: link to “Fortitude”

Still undecided what to think about it all? Then you may want to follow the links below and do a bit of reading.

• The current front page of “Fortitude”
• More answers about “Fortitude”
• Articles submitted by this author
  • How Social Networking May Jeopardize Your Promising Career
  • Bloody Sunday: A Tragedy Goes Satire

Take heart and give democratic journalism wings to fly!

The Netherlands vs. Spain vs. Referee: 0-1-2

Assuming that soccer rules do still apply to World Cup Finals, Howard Webb should have brought red and yellow stickers instead of the traditional cardboard, it might have saved him a lot of writing and some confusion too. What certainly would have helped was a parental advisor running along to and fro, holding his hand. It was due to the Spanish kids' proper rearing rather than Mr. Webb's efforts that the encounter ended without blood-shed.

Mr. Webb recently revealed in an interview that at home his wife is to take charge of the kids, as he is “too soft with them” — things are no different on the pitch, it seems. At least Nigel De Jong and Mark van Bommel profited from this softness early in the match, as they both had deserved to be sent off to bed without supper, after kicking one of the neighbourhood kids in the chest (Alonso) and the other in the legs (Iniesta), like the over-enthusiastic rascals they are. Quite logically, letting both attacks pass, merely handing out a yellow card to each of the boys, Howard Webb lost any authority with the “Elftal”. They ran wild, and he increasingly lost grip of the match. This way, he failed fair play and the audience who was looking forward to more than just twenty minutes of the Spanish teams' already legendary tiki-taka. What's more, he failed to appear impartial, and such is the worst one can say about either a parent or a referee.

It's entirely incomprehensible that the FIFA delegates a head referee to each match, if this person is apparently not in the position to instantly overrule obviously wrong decisions. Yesterday's cup final should have been interrupted after thirty minutes (at the latest), and both teams and the referee given a good talking to by the FIFA official. The last thing any sports fan wants to see is a lost referee blowing the whistle and playing cards. The match was in parts rather entertaining, but it could have done with a firmer go-between — perhaps, Mrs. Webb had been the better choice this time around.

“How Social Networking May Jeopardize Your Promising Career” made the Fortitude front page. To avoid information redundancy, the above link points to the full article.

“Bloody Sunday: A Tragedy Goes Satire” made the Fortitude front page. To avoid information redundancy, the above link points to the full article.

It's actually nothing really; a lot of your visitors won't even recognise the difference — but, you know, either you are into standards or you aren't, right?

So what's the story? If you happen to run a so far standard-compliant Wordpress-based website, you might be frustrated by the HTML-Validator suddenly throwing errors at you, without you having done anything to deserve the shame. It cannot be: You worked for hours (or even days, perhaps), keeping your source code tidy, and now this.

If all you have done was installing the “Share And Follow” Plugin, the solution is near. The little bugger hides in the “Setup share image” section of the plugin. (In the backend: Settings > Share And Follow) There, you have the option to “Add the share image metadata to the head section of your web pages”. What it does is actually adding a reference to your “Gravatar” (Globally Recognised Avatar, if you have one) within the metadata section of your web pages. What it also does is having your pages instantly falling from standard; there is a tiny typo in the responsible function.

What you can do about it is simply adding four characters to the file in question. Walk down the file path until you get to: http://your-domain.tld/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/share-and-follow/functions.php (or so). Open this file with your ASCII text editor (not the one from your office suite), and go to line 363. There you will read: “&size=” . $size;, change it to “&size=” . $size;. If you can't find this line, look up the term “gravatar” (Ctrl-F), it's towards the end of the file. Done.

What's happened? The web standard requires special characters in URLs to be masked. If they aren't, the validator throws errors. If you haven't been into this stuff a lot yet: The ampersand (&) is used to add parameters to dynamic URLs. In the address line of your browser, it will always look like this: &, but in your source code, it needs to be written like so: &

Unfortunately, my power to ignore stupidity is not developed well enough; I really need to avoid supermarkets on Saturdays at any rate.

While I waited in line to pay for a quarter-pounder of Feta and a bottle of olive oil, an apparently well-off fellow presented his sorry better half (and a great many slightly bewildered customers) with what he considered a sound economic plan to get done with the “bloody Greeks and their situation”. It's an amazing show of nature's power that so big a body can speak and breathe and move with so small a mind.

According to my newly found supermarket hero, we (the European Union, I suppose) should simply let them starve to death, for that is actually what they deserve for robbing us (people of his likes, I assume) of our money.

I don't mean to give political idiocy a platform, but we definitely need to talk about such world-views in earnest, or we will get stuck in that mud sooner or later.

The European Union itself, and therefore each of its members, is — one way or another — responsible for the present economic situation of the entire political body. It is the sorry result of Malthusian laissez-faire combined with absurd expansionism. Given that three founding members of the European Union — Portugal, Italy, and Spain — have been in poor health for a while already, looking for the seat of disease in Greece is an embarrassing attempt to shift the blame.

Today is not the time to bemoan our misery, or to throw out the bad apples. What we need is an elegant way to make up for the Union's shortcomings of the past, and provide a working agenda for the years to come — and we need it now. We are in on this together, and together we will have to find a way out. Leaving even a single member-state behind is not an option. If we fail one of us, we will have failed all of us. Either we stand in for our fellows, or dissolve the Union immediately, and give everyone a chance to seek new partners.

Now, that this is out of the way, it is time to address the core issue: how to make hay without wilting the grass? Quite obviously, forking out such a large sum of money for the sake of it, was highly irresponsible, and only gave others funny ideas. Yet we will have to open the wallet to pay for the debt; it's been us who conducted colonialism at its worst for decades, looking to economically lesser developed countries for cheap labour and other resources. A rather sound economic approach was to put Greece in the position to pay off their debts themselves, by introducing them more prominently to the European market; a bit of Feta here and some olives there will not suffice to cover it all, sorry to say.

It's time we turn to sensible economic engineering, at least for a while, to keep the motor turning. It's time to establish a balancing system for the inner market, rather than blaming our contenders on the global market for every self-induced failure. If we keep going like this, we will have turned the ideals of the Paris Treaty (1951, signed by “The Inner Six” — France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and Belgium —, in order to establish the European Coal And Steel Community, later European Community) upside-down before long, without a suitable emergency plan at hand.

Greece is not the villain who might bring the Union or its currency down; they simply joined the game, looking for a way out of their misery, and we watched them getting along for too long. With a mere 3% of the Union's economic power, they are not in the position to pull the plug on the Euro. Yet they may cause enough commotion to make some of their neighbours tumble. If we can't even save so small a market, we will definitely fail to catch the bigger apples in the wake.

Every time I hear someone insisting that we need to eventually start fighting the climate change, I have to laugh. This laugh has a rather sad ring to it, actually, but it is an expression of amusement, nevertheless. It makes no sense to raise a hand, and inform this person that “fighting the climate change” is about as promising a venture as is dividing the ocean with bare hands. We are not the Fantastic Four, mind you. Even if we were the Fantastic Seven Billion, we would fail heroically.

So why is it I keep telling you that “fighting the climate change” is a worthy goal? Well, I wouldn't hesitate to tell you otherwise, if that helped further the movement. We modern people tend to be rather unreceptive to new concepts. So, for want of a more intriguing battle-cry, I keep howling with the wolves, and say: let's fight for a brighter planet. What I am really looking for though is a planet populated with brighter people. There is none in sight, I know. For now, we'll have to go with what we have at hand: our individual skills and common sense.

Common sense makes me realise that we will neither delay nor stop the climate change. We may be able (or at least try) to destroy this planet with a sweep, but we won't be able to save it. It is a physically dependent system within a cluster of other physically dependent systems. It is not populated with (what we consider) complex life-forms because it needs to be, or to obey a greater plan. It's populated because it happens to provide the bare necessities for certain life-forms to develop. To say it more clearly: This planet does not need us, but we are highly dependent on this planet. Consequently, it is us who need to adapt to the situation, however it may develop. We may try and bring the planet down by force, but there is no way we will outlive it.

As for the climate change itself, what do you expect to happen? If we turn to be nice, the universe will make up its mind, and generously pardon our former stupidity? Is that what you are hoping for? I don't mean to cruel, but would you please gather your wits, and get off the romantic idea that whatever we do will impress any one — individual or system — outside our own little selfs.

Neither this planet, nor the galaxy or the universe care for any one of us. Each of these systems will properly function with or without human intervention. If all of us Earthlings got together, took each other by the hand, and heavily stamped our right foot on the floor, all we would cause was a faint mark on the surface of the spot this ridiculous event took place in.

“Going green” does not mean to save the world, for this world might be gone before you have finished this paragraph, and nothing you could do would stop it. It rather means to preserve your own world: to protect your personal freedom, to live in mental peace, and keep your emotional state sound. It means actively taking care of your life and your environment. It means escaping the shadow of the muted masses, making your own decisions, and thinking your own thoughts.

Forget the notion of delaying or even reversing the climate change, that's a waste of resources. You are not out to bid the universe stand, are you? All you really hope for is the chance to live your life in decency, right? To do so, you will need a decent environment. You can't live happily, if everything within sight is wilting or already rotten. You can't breathe polluted air (not beyond a certain extent, at least), you can't drink intoxicated water — and you can't go without either water or air — for if you could, you were not from this world.

Your “going green” will not prevent a natural disaster, it's simply a means to make the man-made disaster a little more bearable.

We definitely need to learn to use our resources (the natural, personal, and global ones) more efficiently. We need to adopt mechanisms that prevent the unreasonable waste of rather limited goods. We also need to find a balance between have and have-not, or we will never see the end of the struggle.

“Going green” means to accept one's own position within the universe, and refusing to disturb the natural order.

Only a very small part of us nearly seven billion individuals is willing and able to actually make this decision. You might be one of them. Being in the position to take charge is a privilege; standing the challenge, and assuming responsibility, is the obligation that comes with it.

Even the most civilised peoples saw no other way of ultimately putting an end to important or lesser matters at some point in history than taking up arms — and we must not think less of them for it.

To be honest with you, I don't care who in particular was slaughtered that day in New Baghdad, or how many (for details, see here: http://www.collateralmurder.com/; but be warned, it's not for the faint of heart). Every single innocent victim is one too many, and a tragic loss to someone. Whether they have a lobby, like the Reuters staff members, or simply a voiceless family to bemoan their death, like the others — neither of them has actively taken side in battle, and thus were not to be engaged in action. This is one of the fundamental principles of civilised warfare, governed by the law of armed conflict.

It is no secret that we, or at least some of us, happen to live in decadent, uncivilised times, with rotten ideals and a vanishing sense of ethics, but still: disregarding the fundamental principles of conduct is a major crime, even in open battle. To say it more clearly, the killing of civilians in New Baghdad was murder in the first degree.

It is quite clear that none of the involved soldiers has enough sense of honour to resign immediately, or they hadn't pulled the trigger so happily in the first place. That none of their senior officers is man enough to assume responsibility is yet another sad story. That none of their commanders can bring themselves to immediately decommission the entire platoon and have its members tried by general court martial is downright scandalous.

Soldiers (of whatever rank or mental ability) who have obviously lost every sense of humanity, and commanders who are quick and ready to talk ugly dealings pretty, are an incalculable risk to everyone else, friend or foe.

People like the ones you heard in the videos above will be hero veterans of tomorrow. They will return home, and be welcomed as the glorious defenders of your freedom and life style. People, who think it tolerable, and even enjoyable, to pull the trigger at the sight of unsuspecting people who are obviously unarmed and not involved in any clandestine action whatsoever, let alone battle of any kind. People, who won't stop at killing in cold blood, but also kill those who came to rescue and collect the bodies. If such are your “Rules of Engagement”, you may well keep them to yourselves.

I have always been one to advocate any nation's right to forge their own destiny, and make themselves home in any place they happen to live in. Who's to judge any nation's structure or world-view or social framework when all these depend so heavily on essential natural aspects that are beyond human might. In other words, a people that decides to settle for good in any particular environment needs to adapt to the given situation. They will have to take on the challenge, and learn to go with what they have got. This process will leave its mark on any people; the longer the way, the deeper the notch.

After several hundred years of cultivating the soil, even the least adaptable people has come to terms with its destiny. Once learned how to cover the bare necessities, they turn to develop skills less essential but more beautiful. This process we came to call a nation's culture. The further they have managed to develop their skills, the higher we tend to estimate their cultural achievements. Yet how far they actually get is merely a matter of time and possibility. With the vast majority of nations it is not a matter of mentality.

The only exception far and wide are the United States of America. With no neighbours constantly threatening their national progress, they were free to develop at ridiculous speed, skipping several rungs on the rise. They developed on the surface, but they never had the need to take shape.

Quite certainly, every immigrant since the founding fathers brought along a vast heritage, but these memories never actually made it into a national pot to boil down to a joint heritage.

Smirking at the (admittedly extreme) political mood-swings of the United States, stating they were simply lacking history, is by no means acceptable. Being able to look back on several hundred or even thousand years of national heritage is not making any people superior. Yet having had the time to take in and reasonably process the mistakes of our ancestors is clearly an advantage.

A friend has sent me a copy of Brett Michael Dykes' article on the attempted alteration of U.S. history textbooks in order to “adding balance in the classroom”, as Don McLeroy of the Texas Board of Education would have it.

According to Mr. McLeroy, “academia is skewed too far to the left”, which has been typical of the academia, ever since the days old Plato created it. That, of course, is hard to notice, if you never get out of the reactionary swamp out yonder on the far right.

It's hard to make progress as an artist or a scientist, if you cling to conservative ideology. Consequently, the farther rightist your administration turns, the farther leftist you lean yourself. That's what adding balance means.

The obvious apart, it's not quite comprehensible what McLeroy hopes to gain from such a venture. Your man is 63 years old. By the time his mind-boggling ideas drive home to future opinion leaders, he'll be a very old man.

Some of the proposals are uncomfortably reminiscent of the ideas that helped establish the Third Reich. If creating a new order is what he is looking for, he might want to catch up a bit on not-so-ancient history, and perhaps make up his mind, rather than making his own children live through the Middle Ages their ancestors never had.

Such a harsh statement needs to be backed with a solid example, or you won't take it so well, right? Fair enough. Here goes: A still popular argument is “If they are a minority, why should I bother?” It is often used by those who can't see anything but trouble addressing accessibility issues. Why should any poor web designer care for web standards and the likes, if it's only for the good of (at most) 20% of all users?

In real life, history has taught us more than one hard lesson as to what comes of stubborn indifference. In the virtual world, the masses have yet to rise and claim their title, it seems.

It is really annoying to hear the same complaints and excuses over and over again. If you don't like to care for minorities, then go ahead with what funky plans you have, and see how far you get with them — but stop bitching already. “Someone needs to do something about it” is no approach to any matter!

Of course, you are perfectly right: somebody needs to do something about it. The one I'm talking about is the one who reads this article right now: You! Now, that the body is identified, let's focus on the thing. What is it you need to do?

First off, I would recommend to see whether 1 and 1 is still giving 2. I'm assuming you to be the average modern, multi-media person, the proud owner of a personal Internet experience — be it a vanity site, a blog or whatever.

If that is what you are, you did consider doing something about your claim to fame already. You wouldn't have come forward to remain invisible and unknown; I refuse to believe anyone being that unreasonable. So chances are, you have been working on your site's popularity with search engines in particular, and every other visitor in general.

Oh, wait a minute! If that was the case, you would have realised that search engines are visitors (of sorts). Of course, you have, and like many other proud owners of Internet presentations you would agree that search engines are among the most valuable visitors to have.

Those nice and curious robots that never complain about your design or content, that never post silly comments, or send ugly e-mails. All they ever do is spreading the word, telling the world of your site's existence. So, let's not tarry, and optimise our sites for the search engines, right?

Here, me, I have a question? What do you think you are doing by optimising your Internet experience for search engines? Are you possibly trying to get the attention of a minority?

Oops, stupid me, you are, of course, trying to address the majority of Internet users — the more the better. Your efforts to make search engines happy leaves no time to care about blind users, or deaf ones, or those who can't use a mouse, or those who find it hard to fully comprehend what they are reading, sorry to say.

Well, we can't have it all, can we? Those who might gain from accessible web sites make up only around 20% of Internet users, as the myth goes. Surely, a minority compared to the vast number of relevant search engines (which is at least ... Two, or even Three?).

All right, stop it. I'm not completely out of my head, I'm just trying to make a point. I know to appreciate a mighty multiplier just as much as you do. So, what is my point then?

My point is: a search engine is a severely disabled visitor. It is blind, it is deaf, it can't use a mouse, and it has no clue as to what to make of your content. You may not have realised it so far, but now it's out, and you can't say no one told you. If you seriously want to optimise your web experience for search engines, there is no way around accessibility.

Have you ever personally approached the Minister supposedly in charge of your affairs, asking this person to please intervene on your behalf? Oh, my bad, that's what you actually did by casting your vote on election day, right? By the way, I wouldn't hold it against you, if you forgot to say “please”, you are paying this person a lot of money to act in your name, after all.

If such has been your understanding of political delegation, you may want to read the following lines very carefully. I'm going to quote a (female!) Minister for Women's Affairs and Public Service. [Please note: This author has not conducted the interview; all information was taken from the quoted Minister's governmental website, and dutifully translated.]

Asked why she thought wearing the burka was not a matter of concern in her country, she replied: “based on estimation, we assume around 100 women in Austria to wear a burka. No woman wearing a burka has yet applied for a position in public service, and we haven't received any complaints so far.”

The interviewer, obviously set to hear clear statements, offered: “You do massively oppose the burka yourself, don't you?” — “The burka is cloaking the entire body, therefore I personally consider it a symbol of oppression. They have to walk with bowed heads, so they can see the edges of the pavement; the hands are often bandaged [she probably meant gloves]. The burka is a women's prison.”

“If [you think] the burka's a women's prison, shouldn't wearing it be generally prohibited, even with only a 100 women imprisoned?” [another generous offer to keep her face] — “I see no immediate cause for action, as no oppressed women have turned to me as Women's Minister, asking for help yet. I have no cause to react for no reason at all, right now. I wouldn't prohibit wearing a burka in the street, but restrict the probihition to official buildings.”

If you haven't had enough yet, here's the link to my source: Minster for Women's Affairs. The interview was given to “profil”, a political weekly magazine.

Now, a day later, I still don't know what to think. Should I collect money to buy the Minister a burka? Uh no, it might be too painful an experience for her. Just imagine her standing in the cloak-room of her Ministry, realising what incredible rubbish she had spread. She might decide to never taking off her burka again.

Or should I donate some award for the politician annoying us with the dullest comments on any of their concerns? The “Golden Burka”, perhaps? No, such is bad style.

Or, perhaps, I could just lean back and be happy there is no Minister for Men's Affairs — and hope, the one corrupting women's matters would finally step down voluntarily.

I certainly welcome every attempt to reduce our ecological footprint, but I cannot agree with any attempt to take me for a fool. Let me give you a random example:

A lot has be said about the infamous energy saving bulbs of late. While I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, I tend to assume the tin foil hat-community is not far from the truth this time: it is a disgusting scheme. If you want to give the industry a boost, just say so. Don't make me feel like a bloody environmental terrorist for still using traditional bulbs. If these unheard of wonders of energy saving are so incredibly useful, why haven't you forced introduced them on us already years ago? We could have saved electrical power like mad, meanwhile — it's not like exaggerated energy consumption was any new issue.

Well, of course, if you had, we could have already experienced that they are more of a problem than a solution. At the price of ten traditional bulbs, they would have to last at least ten times as long (twenty to a hundred years) for the user to be an instant economical win.

On the average, my bulbs used to last six years. So, with a bit of luck, I won't have to ever touch this energy saving bulb again. Yet what will I do, if I should live to see it die? Just imagine a 101 year old fellow entering ... the kind of store that will do electrical devices (if such should still exist then) 60 years from now ... with an ancient bulb in his hand, asking for replacement.

They might think I am some environmental separatist. They might even call whoever will be in charge of elderly people who unattendedly enter tidy stores, scaring unsuspecting shop assistants, holding suspicious devices in their face, demanding impossible service.

I can only hope there will be someone present who will be nice enough to call their grandma, describe mentioned device with great difficulty and figure out what it is, before I get arrested for unorderly behaviour.

Oh yes, this scenario, funny as it is, lacks two important aspects. Number one is the incredible reduction of power consumption (of less than twenty percent, compared to the average bulb of old), and the other being the ... er, well, the other advantage, which is ...

Strangely enough, not even the most fervent advocate of energy saving bulbs could name another advantage yet. Holy Bulb, is it possible that we are going to impose tons of hazardous waste on future generations in order to feel better for having saved twenty percent of energy a bloody light bulb consumes? Are we as dim as our bulbs already? Well, I'm not a nice person, but what is your excuse?

Why Should You Care?

Of course, some people will never learn to use a computer properly, but a lot of the others are simply too nice to ask you to “stop sending us that rubbish, for ef's sake”.

I'm sure the first question coming to mind was: why bother? You are actually going out of your way, converting your wonderful “Word” documents to PDF files. Clearly, there can't be a problem, your documents look just perfect on your system. Well, let's face it, not everyone is as skilled as you, right?

Yes, probably — but still, something of what was said so far kept you reading beyond the teaser. So, let's not waste time, fooling ourselves, you are bothered already.

Here's my first question: If you randomly picked a file off your desktop, and sent it to me, would I be able to open and process it without difficulty? How sure are you about it? Will it do, no matter what?

Not sure, huh? And, what's even worse, you don't know what I'm referring to in the first place. Then let's see what a really useful document looks like:

• The document does not rely on a particular system environment or program version
• The document provides accurate metainformation
• The document may be used in more than one way
• The document is readable and legible
• And, of course, the document's content is useful to the reader

So I'm one of those guys who care least for the content they send? No, not at all (otherwise, I had used an ordered list). A document's content should always be useful to the reader. Yet if you fail any of the first four criteria, your precious reader might never learn just how useful your content is.

It is pretty obvious that no one of us will be able to convince everyone else to use the same software configuration. Consequently, there will (probably) never be universal compatibility. Your average computer will easily outlive three or four upgrades of your average software. With a number of software factories stubbornly attempting to establish their very own standards, things get even more complicated.

I have no idea who managed to make the world believe a PDF file was universally processable, but this person was so wrong. All your average document can hope for, is to look very, very similar to the original.

Let's do a bit of testing, you'll immediately see what the story is. Open one of the larger files stored on your computer. How long do you take to get the gist of information it contains? Will you have to read all of its content to figure out? If so, welcome to the world of useless documents.

That is (most certainly) not what the author (you?) had in mind. Nine out of ten authors are simply wasting time, prettifying their documents. And, what's worse, they waste their readers' time, sending them ridiculously bloated files that fail to work as intended. If only they knew that their efforts are in vain.

The 64000 Byte Question

What's the point of a digital document that lacks the advantage of being a digital document? You have no time for philosophical discussion? Well, then let's try a real-life example:

I downloaded two PDF files from the same source, the other day. One was very large (around 2200 pages), the other considerably smaller (13 pages). I opened the smaller one, it promised a bit of extraordinary information. I had to read through the entire document, only to learn that there was nothing to learn for me. I feared the worst, thinking of the other document's size; 2200 pages of technical literature are not read within a matter of minutes, right?

I hadn't realised that these two files, even though coming from the same source, had not been written by the same author.

Two minutes later, I knew what the file was about in general. Another twenty minutes later, I was sure to have read all relevant information, and stored it in a safe place for later reference. Good information is so good!

How To Not Win The Pot

The 13-pages piece was written by your average computer user. Someone had opened their word processor and hacked away. Here and there, they had selected a bit of text, painted it in some colour other than black, and increased the font-size. That's what (too) many people call a head line.

After a couple of pages, they can't remember what their various head lines looked like so far. So they start flipping pages like mad to find out. Before they know it, they spend (a lot) more time on font-colour and -size than on actual content.

As a result, the poor reader (who usually has no idea what to expect) receives an inconclusive heap of words, some painted in this colour and large, some smaller and differently coloured, but all of it rather incomprehensible.

Some recipients are nice (and skilled) enough to reformat the sorry piece of software to make it usable, at least to themselves. Some others won't (or can't) be that caring. These will call to ask you “please send us this document again, we couldn't open it (and we are sick of trying)”.

How To Win The Pot

The 2200-pages piece was written by someone who adequately appreciates the fact that a bunch of programmers had spent some quality time on developing formatting features, and knows how to use a word processor as intended.

They opened it and hacked away, paying a lot of attention to provide their content with a conclusive structure, and formatted it properly (rather than hitting the funky buttons in the menu bar). Then they selected one element of a type and designed it to their heart's content. A couple of minutes later, the entire wad of information was conclusively formatted, and a charm to read.

Clever & Smart

I have yet to meet a user who wouldn't care to make their documents look smart. Granted, not every word processor is equally prepared to support your efforts. Some are ridiculously complex, but some others simply appear to be. To use any of them successfully, you will have to read the documentation they ship with. Once you know how your software works, you will be done with a clever concept for your documents within short.

Your preparations may last from a couple of minutes to a couple of days (but only once), depending on your personal beat, but they will pay off. I bet you haven't saved so much time and money and other resources (of your own and others) so easily in years.

If you want to know just how compatible and standard compliant your own software is, try this: Copy and paste this article into a new office document (word processor, of course). And now convert this new document into a PDF file. If all goes well, you will have three documents of different format, reading the same properly structured content, inside of ten seconds.

Not sure, how to tell? Open the side bar of your PDF reader software. It should show a tree of head lines with a page number next to each. In your office document, select some content. Your software should recognise what type of element you selected.

Divide and Conquer

Yes, martial arts. The spammers strike? We strike back! Seriously, a working strategy is a working strategy — what you work it on, is secondary. First off, I want you to learn to trust your allies. What's that mean? Your e-mail agent (the program that handles your mail traffic) is a professional little soldier. If you don't use it to advantage, it's your own bad luck.

Whatever program you happen to use, at the very least, it knows how to properly file mails, and how to answer quick orders. That's a big win, because we humans (well, most of us) don't. What you have to do is: get to know how to properly charge your orders. Here's how I do it:

The first thing I see to figure out, every time I meet a new program, is the most important keyboard-commands. With e-mail agents, the most important one is “download all e-mails from all connected mail-servers at once”. If you haven't more than one address to watch, that's not much of a trick, I know. But still, doing this with a keyboard-shortcut wins every time over wandering with your pointing device across your screen to find and click some funky icon.

Your program should have some support file that lists all its shortcuts. If you happen to use Evolution or Mozilla Thunderbird, I can give you the answer right now: F9 (Evolution) or Cmd+T (Thunderbird) will collect all mail in a single turn.

If you happen to communicate through a larger number of channels, you may want to defend your system against the incoming wave. Before we do that, let's discuss what the point of this command is.

Why Is That Little Mailman Faster Than I?

Say you have one e-mail address, then all you do is downloading mail from a single server in a single sweep. So far, so good. If you have more than one address, on the same or on different servers, you will have to start that process once for every address. Depending on the number of processes you will have to start manually, this will take some time. You have to select the address you want to collect from, then start this process, select another address, start another process, and so on, and on, and on.

By doing it automatically, you hand the entire job over to your professional little software slave. While he's at it, ever so busily, you can do really important things, like preparing coffee. That's at least what I do: F9 and off to the kitchen. By the time, coffee's ready, my mail is collected from ten different addresses, and properly filed. Here's how that works:

Needles And Pins

Quite logically, the more often you collect your mails, the less you will have to handle at a time. After a while of testing, I figured out that two or three times a day is perfect for my needs; a private individual would probably feel ridiculously diligent, doing it at that rate. People are different, and so is their mail traffic.

The really important part at that stage is the filing. It's probably no secret to you that your computer is, let's say, a bit particular about handling files and directories (folders). The only obstacle for it to keep your system tidy over a longer period of time, is the human being in front of it — you, in other words. Keeping a bit of order will do you a lot of good — Promised!

Creating a directory within your e-mail program for every person you happen to converse with rather frequently, and applying an according filter rule is a really profitable time investment. Taking only about twenty seconds once, it pays back in abundance. One folder for Suzie, one folder for Tom, and so on.

Open one of Suzie's incoming mails, and tell your mail agent to put through all mails containing this sender address to Suzie's directory. Then do the same with one of Tom's mails. Once you got in the swing, you will have a remarkable tree of directories, before you even know it.

Next time you order your agent to fetch the mail, you will be pleased with the result. Only the generic mail and the first-timers will be left in your general inbox. The regulars will have been ushered into their prepared directory. (The tiny figure next to it will indicate how many unread mails you received from this person so far.)

Don't Spice My Ham

The wider your e-mail addresses are spread, the more unsolicited mails you are bound to receive. It is a nuisance, but one I can easily do with. What really annoys me, is that most spammers seem to believe their potential victims (me in particular) are downright silly.

Therefore, I created two more directories to take care of that. One catches all the rubbish that comes with a subject line reading “Re:”, and the other swallows all the “Fwd:”. This is a bit tricky though, you better take good care of these two directories. Here's why:

If someone who already has their own folder on your machine happens to send you a reply, or forwards a mail to you, from a different than their usual server, their mail will end up in one of these two “catch-all” folders.

Your agent, how sophisticated a piece of software it may be, is not comprehensively reading a mail's content, it simply follows patterns. Consequently, it does the logical thing and files the mail according to the only known filter, which reacts to the subject line.

Why not telling it to pick only those mails that come with a blank subject line, or one that is blank except for “Re:” or “Fwd:” — either appears to be very popular among spammers? Good question, I've thought of that too. Unfortunately, there appears to be a threshold of minimum digits for the filter rule to catch reliably; at least with the agents I tested, the results did not quite convince me. Sometimes they would stop the rogue, sometimes they would yield.

I said your agent is a professional, it didn't say it's perfect. Yet there is another feature that will help you separate the good from the bad in the catch-all folders: Use the sort filter within the folder. If you sort them by subject, you will get all the blank lines gathered at the top or bottom of the window, and all the rest in alphabetical order. There won't be too many anyway, I suppose. You will know best, if you had sent out mail with silly subject lines. In that case, you must not be surprised to get silly replies, right?

All right, I do hope this little workshop will get you on track, and helps saving some quality time.

None of us had made their mother stay in a particular place when she gave birth, and none had messed with their own DNA during their prenatal development. We all started the voyage from the same point, unclad and unshod. So stop bitching already, and get a life!

Words Are Mere Sound And Smoke

It's good to see that we, as a nation, have no more pressing things on our political agenda these days than discussing the lyrics of the national anthem. Some unsuspecting reader might believe we are all not quite right in the head.

Well, to be honest, I couldn't seriously disagree with them. Is that what makes you Austrian? Your love for the mountains, the river, the fields, and the industry? Is that really enough to describe you as a people? “Oh Nation, ofttimes thou makest me weep for thee!”

Are we, once again, really talking about simply “neutering the anthem in order to adequately honour the achievements of the homeland's daughters”? All right, then let's proudly rise, and sing. Let's prove there is some intelligentsia left in this country, and some talent other than the gift of causing commotion every so often. Let's abate the nuisance rather than making a nuisance of ourselves.

You can not be seriously thinking any woman in this country would be particularly honoured, or saw her “sexual identity acknowledged”, by being expressly mentioned in a song that mainly describes the soil and abstract values. If that is what really made them feel equal, they were easily had. If I claimed feathers like Valie Export and Christina Stürmer, I would certainly muster the guts to wear them.

You're The Man, Lady

Christina Stürmer's interpretation of the anthem was a grand show of her remarkable talent, reminiscent of the immortal words of another of this “homeland's great sons”, Gustav Mahler, who said: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire”. I bet he and Mozart had enjoyed the show of “their great daughter”.

Great Children And Lesser Ones

Making her break her stride to replace “great sons” with “great sons and daughters”, shows both a poor sense for language and the lack of a sound concept. Neither is a promising sign in a Minister for Education.

Complementing the tune with a series of portraits of famous (and not yet so famous) Austrian sons and daughters was not bad an idea, actually. It was the silly slide show that made the clip appear like a cheap home video. You are perfectly right: our land has got talent — but I wonder if she will ever learn to use it.

To prevent further commotion, I will stand clear of repeating the entire lyrics here, as most of it is beyond discussion, it appears. Just let me say this: if all you ever learn and sing are first verse and chorus, you keep sounding like a bunch of tourist agents.

(...) zukunftsreich!
Große Töchter, große Söhne,
Volk, begnadet für das Schöne,
Vielgerühmtes (...)

(...) und hoffnungsreich.
Höre uns in einig Chören,
Heimatland, dir Treue schwören,
Vielgeliebtes (...)

If such is what you actually had in mind, then, by all means, go for it — no strings attached. Just stop the cackle!

So I spent a while in that forum, right? They discussed one not so poorly developed content management system (CMS). One good-natured user asked the forum whether any one knew of a tableless template (I'll explain that later on) to this particular software. You simply have to give such individuals kudos for preserving the fire of progress, and their readiness to rekindle good thoughts in their fellows.

More often than not, such efforts are instantly rewarded with a show of good vibrations, kind words, and sometimes even drafts of someone else's former efforts. That's one of the nice sides of open source: people are convinced that sharing is caring.

Bad Luck, Old Chap

Not this time around. No one had ventured that far yet. Everyone appeared anxious for content and optical design, structure was a secondary matter. Before we had a chance to dig into the matter any deeper, things turned really ugly. The poor fellow had his fur ruffled in a way that made my ears bleed.

Some self-satisfied “expert” stood (well, I didn't actually see it, but I'm convinced that he stood to give us his piece of mind) to have us speechless listeners know: “Some people are really obsessed with this entire tableless design thing. I for one don't see any use in it. Layout tables are clean, and fast, and good. Period. Just leave me alone with that crap already!”

Hmm, there is little to reply to this without sounding a bit desparate; keeping your cool is too much of a challenge sometimes. Any attempt to defend those who fight the abuse of tables has you instantly appear obsessed.

Clearly, you have to admit that cases of “tablefree obsession” do exist. Someone might have listened to some Standardista with only half an ear (or paid too much attention to some Standardista who lost every sense of reality). This might have a person develop some kind of “table angst”. They might browse for weeks through every bit of code they had ever written, trying to find and get rid of the “tagged evil”.

A Massive Lack Of Understanding

Most programmers think in terms of technical stability, overall program security, and funky features, in the first place. Accessibility, usability, and web standards are not their turf. That's what you have developers for, after all. From their point of view, there is still nothing wrong with that approach.

A lot of software is far older than the idea of accessibility. But even the most conservative of programmers are usually open to new ideas. They welcome any kind of feedback and input. Thought-food for future versions, you know.

Now, several minutes later, I tend to bear with him. I know quite well that he meant no harm, actually. He was not quite telling us, he wouldn't care for accessibility. He simply displayed a massive lack of understanding what the whole matter is about. And that is what really bothers me. This kind of ignorance is partly the result of our own sorry communication.

Confusion Ain't Sexy

It simply isn't enough to tell everyone, “web standards are good for you”. We also need to be prepared to instantly provide examples that make sense to the recipient of the Gospel. We need to give examples that are easily understood and picked up. Otherwise we leave everyone with a bad feeling who has no idea yet how to apply them. We need to tackle the ignorance, not the lack of standards, or we will never see them come through. We need to make accessibility more accessible — or to quote Chris Heilmann: “We need to make accessibility sexy.”

I'm still undecided which are more of a nuisance: these who stubbornly use layout-tables, or those who go tableless with great effort.

There are quite a number of developers out there (and I'm afraid not all of them are amateurs) who can't tell a data-table from a layout-table. Consequently, they are anxious to get rid of all kinds of tables, for their websites to become accessible. That's what I'd call a serious case of table-free obsession. It is hard to fight, and very persistent. But an attitude of submissiveness is not what brought us this far. Returning to early 90s' web design for the sake of some confused souls is not an option. We'd rather take on the challenge and fight the confusion.

Let me try this: Yes, good web design needs tables. But no, good web design has no use for table-layouts. Yes, table-layouts are (usually) clean, and (relatively) fast, and (may be) good. But tableless layouts are cleaner, faster, and better — and, not to forget, way more accessible too.

Am I trying to tell you “become obsessed with tables” in order to get you off the table obsession? Am I fighting the fire with fire? Yes, in a way, this is exactly what I'm doing here. I say: go table, but go it all the way. Use tables for data that is best be presented in a tabular way. And make these tables linear. That is to say, use the tags provided for tables properly. Make a summary, use table-heads, and align these to the corresponding table-cells. In other words, make sure that what you call a (data-)table is a (data-)table. In return, you may forget about the annoying (layout-)table altogether. You don't need to build an invisible grid to keep your pages in shape. You will be faster using CSS to shuffle around your elements. It's easier to do it this way, and more reliable too. Period.

Accessible By Default

Oops, I forgot those who don't know how to create tables? See, that's what I meant with poor communication. We always tend to forget the basics, that's what happens when you are into it up to your ears. Alright, if you don't know how to build tables, then go use your web editor. No one says you have to write everything from scratch to get some accessible result.

HTML is accessible by default, so to speak. As long as you use it the way it's supposed to be used (and apply a good measure of common sense), you will remain within earshot.

The same goes for your web editor. If you don't want to learn the markup language, then at least learn to use your editor properly. Most of what's on the market today comes with all the features you will ever need. You may have to roam its menus, but you will find them. The table editor is just one of them. (Er, ... I just figured out that mine has neither this nor any of the other features you might find useful. But then, I never missed them. Anyway, there are so many web editors out there, it'd be hard to find none that suits you.) Just use it!

A series of rather irrelevant open discussions, whether or not this man actually deserved it, had all kind of media busy for days. Yet the most relevant question, it wasn't raised in public this far: Who do you think will give a ... er, I mean ... will care?

The Dice Was Cast

There is no serious telling as to how descisions are actually made up north. To be sure, ever since 1901 the committee has tried to make a point, to extend a message to the world and her people. Whether they came by it through thorough discussion and weighing of solid facts, or by casting a dice, is not known. But “the dice was cast”, as Gaius Julius would have put it. It's their decision, it's their money, it's their show. Or has anyone received a questionnaire to please tick off who they thought the most peaceful person of the past year had been? Well, I for one haven't.

It was rather predictable that the committee would come forward with an affordable explanation why they thought this particular candidate deserved the prize most of all. Mr. Nobel's will is very clear about the criteria to be applied:

(...) and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses. (...)

Equally predictable was the reaction of the yellow press creatures all around. Yet the self-satisfied critics are well advised to hold the horses. Calling this decision “downright absurd”, is a spectacular show of ignorance and disrespect. Read the above paragraph again, and you will recognise that the laureates are actually not expected to have “achieved” anything, let alone succeeded in any of their ventures.

Giving The Dove Wings To Fly

Would I have nominated Mr. Obama? Yes, probably. But he hasn't accomplished anything peaceful yet? Well, at the very least, he has shown the world that a muslim may gain what he has set his mind on by simply asking. Mind you, I'm saying this without cynicism.

Making him President of the United States was perhaps one of the smartest political moves in known history. Mr. Obama is the ideal choice to show some good intentions. Just as the prize he won, he is a symbol for an effort to the better.

If there is some dry land left, he's the dove most likely to return with a twig. The world as we know it today needs two things more than anything else: hope and sound concepts. Of course, he isn't the person to give us either; our world has become too complex for a single human being to achieve as much. Notwithstanding that he is probably a decent bloke, he's most certainly not the political saviour some of us seem to long for, and all of us might need.

With A Single Spell

Those who keep demanding for him to earn the prize he won should be reasonable. If we really want to see him succeed, we need to see him for what he is: a single man with a single spell. We aren't looking at the most powerful man in the world, not even nearly. We aren't looking at the most peaceful man either. If he was any of that, he would have never been made President and given so vast an audience, neither in his own nor any other country on this planet. If he was any of that, he wouldn't have to take the trouble of showing publicly. The idea that he might exist would definitely suffice to make us support his notions. His is the gift of speech, and he has made good use of it this far. To expect any more, is asking for too much.

The Legend Of The Glorious Peacemakers

In terms of global impact, not one of the considerable number of historic award-winners has given the world enough peace to write home about. As individuals, some of them may have been remarkable, but their efforts did not quite inspire the world to turn better.

For the sake of making a point, name five former Nobel Peace Prize winnners and their achievements (without looking them up in a search engine or something). I bet, you can't. And the sorry reason for that is: however big their ideas and ideals may have been, too few of their contemporaries proved ready to give them a hand.

So far, Mr. Obama is one more man in that line. And, unless the world should turn backwards, he won't be any more than that come tomorrow morning. He could agree to unconditional surrender, to making a clean sweep, or to watch the river flow, unless all of us decide to make a move, he will end up a footnote of history. He can't win, neither the world nor peace. It simply isn't within reach for a single man. But we could already quit moaning, open our mind, and see how we can help. That is within reach.

What Is It You Really Want?

Have you forgotten the global hopes and wishes that accompanied his campaign and subsequent election? Haven't you recognised the slight recovery of political affairs? That is the spirit we need. Get off your fancy ideas already. What's the point of likening him to John F. Kennedy? What political message are you trying to convey by this? The ideas he proposes would rather take another Thomas Jefferson, Konrad Adenauer, or Éamon de Valera to see them through.

The Language Of Inveiglement

My adult, professional self knows quite well that most of what's said to promote software are empty slogans, nothing but elaborately finished marketing language. But the childish monster dwelling in the spacious dungeons of my brain barks “Me wants proof”, while gnawing away on the remnants of wisdom, strewn about.

Is everyone who gets stuck in the first stages of approaching some application, that's promised to be “as easy as pie”, simply too ignorant to count? I guess not. As a novice, you don't have to know anything relevant (on a particular subject) at all. That's what novice means: the new one, the one without any experience whatsoever. You may be an expert in some other field, but to this particular matter you are new.

Have you ever read “[Fancy Name Of Product] works intuitively”? I guess you have. That's probably the most popular tag-line in software reviews; I read it all the while. So, in other words, I should be able to use [Fancy Name Of Product] successfully without ever reading help files (that often enough fail to come along with [Fancy Name Of Product], anyway). I should be able to solve every possible issue without consideration. That's what “intuition” means, after all: immediate understanding — feeling the way rather than knowing it. And that is how your software works? Says who? I mean, beside you?

The Inflation Of Terms

If “intuitive” is the most popular adjective, “free” and “open source” have to be the most inflationary ones of our days. And I can't remember having read either as often as in reviews of Blogging Software or Content Management Systems. To the professional, open source usually means you “are free to customise it to your liking or needs”; the average user-to-be is inclined to understand: “you may have it free of charge”.

Fine as both sounds, neither has to be true. Like in the cold, hard, real world, virtually nothing is for free in the virtual world. You may not have to spend your own hard-earned dough to obtain or use it, but there is a lot of money flowing in all directions (not all of it being virtual) — otherwise all marketing efforts were completely useless. The coin may be real (all kinds of sponsoring) or virtual (contribution of time and knowledge), but (literally) every single bit of it has its price.

The Definition Of Success

“You may have a professional website within minutes (fully customisable, of course)”. Oh, that's a good one. I still have to meet a professional web developer who would agree to have a website out in a matter of minutes. How come, I wonder? If it's so easy, even a novice can manage it, why don't we?

Of course, you may be able to display some content in a browser. Such takes neither advanced skills, nor sophisticated software, and it may be done in less than a minute, actually. But you won't ever call the result a website, and most certainly not a professional one. Even as a novice, you'd rather join a band of hungry wolves than admitting to be the creator of such a sorry piece of work.

Especially as a novice, you are set to carve out a unique piece of the internet. You want your website to shine, and enjoy the light it casts on you. The very last thing you want is a run-of-the-mill website. But this is the best you may hope for in a matter of minutes. Actually, I tend to bow my head to every novice who manages as much.

Before you go and grab your bottle of make-me-forget, let me say this: You may be a novice, but you are no idiot! You may feel like one, though, for believing so readily what was said about your software. But then, we are all that kind of idiot every now and again, that's nothing to get excited about.

You didn't get your website up and running in a matter of minutes? So what? I haven't heard of a single website yet that was set up inside of a month. And even those taking much longer started out with a sound concept, some thorough planning, and a lot of late-night coding to be seriously called a website. And, of course, there was a bit of enhancement done, even after the relaunch.

What's Good For The Goose

I wouldn't waste a prayer for a piece of software that is suitable for the novice and the professional alike. Even hoping for it is absurd. That is not to say a novice won't be able to work with professional software, or a professional won't make use of easy applications. Both is certainly possible, but most likely not to the same extent.