On the BBC: Pompeii of the East

On the Guardian: Jowell denies bribe

Apparently acting irresponsibly has consequences to pay, at least outside Italy..

On UX Magazine:
The Layers of Design: the style layer

I was browsing around the National Geographic
megastructures web site and I saw the episode about a hi-tech prison, NBCI - Maryland.
I searched around a bit and this is what I found.

I cannot help but wonder how come that in the 21st century we, humans of every nation, most intelligent form of life, are still building steel and concrete cages instead of schools and hospitals, why we keep trying to fix the effects rather then the causes. It's incredible that we just don't seem to learn, we appear socially stuck into the 12th century and unable to change way of doing things. What are we going to the Moon for if we are not even able to manage ourselves? We create poverty and then say that we want to eradicate it. We have brilliant technology and science but we still use it to make weapons. We destroy the environment that we need to exist and then say that we want to preserve it. The dichotomy is obvious but the solutions don't appear to be up to the problems. We only try to deal with the effects of our actions instead of act responsibly in the first place. If it wasn't dramatic it would be ridiculous.

On Web-Grapics: OOJS - overhyped and overcomplicating.

Color Theory for Digital Displays:

• A Quick Reference: Part I
• A Quick Reference: Part II

W3C character encodings in the Internationalization activity section:

• Character encodings
• Character sets & encodings in XHTML, HTML and CSS (tutorial)

MySQL Fulltext indexing: Dissecting MySQL Fulltext Indexing and
Implementation and Application of Term Weights.

Since the posts search on this site works using MySQL Fulltext indexing I found myself trying to delve a bit deeper into it. I cannot say that everything is as clear as it could/should be, for me anyway..

Update - 2006/02/19: Italian Quits Over Cartoons and
Italy cartoon row minister quits

On the Guardian: Nine killed in Libya over cartoon

The Italian minister that said is going to wear the T-shirt with the cartoons shouldn't be a minister at all. To work for a Country requires historic knowledge that that guy doesn't have, requires a degree of professionality that that guy never even knew existed. I'm Italian which unfortunately means it's also my fault for having people like that representing me, altough I did not vote them. Not that I think the rage sparked in February 2006 by some cartoons published in September 2005 (a decision that shows a serious lack of understanding and responsability from the newspaper editor, anyway) has anything to do with the cartoons really, it's just an excuse to manipulate opinion and create unrest used by people with the usual personal power agenda. I don't see any difference between the Italian minister and the manipulators, they are all the same, just trying to get whatever is it that they want through deception and violence. The same old scheme, repeated over and over all along human history...will we ever learn and change? The difference in the World is between people that have too much and people that have nothing. That's the same in the West, East, Middle-East and wherever else. Religion is a personal choice that should not prevent people from coexist peacefully and together create a better division of wealth and resources to assure dignity to everybody.

On the BBC: UN calls for Guantanamo closure
(link to full UN report in PDF)

Finally..although I doubt it's going to make a difference.

Update 2006/02/17: US attacks UN Guantanamo report and
Judge's anger at US torture

On Digital Web Magazine: Practical Usability Testing

On Evolt: SEO For The Big Three

Beautiful Earth images:

• Blue Marble explained
• Blue Marble, next generation
• Visible Earth
• Earth Observatory

On Clagnut: Variable fixed width

Garret Dimon: Front-End Architects

On BBC:"I am like Jesus"

It's a difficult one to comment..Napoleon, Jesus..one thing is for sure, the man's ego is incredibly large which means he must have something else incredibly small to compensate for..

On BBC: Pharaonic tomb find (in pictures).

Update 2003/02/13 : Greek tomb find.

On Meyerweb: unitless line-heights.

I added two tags search "forms" for del.icio.us and technorati. Since the functioning of the "forms" is based on Javascript, the "forms" are created using the DOM so that, if Javascript is not enabled, they just don't appear.

I use Firefox and I have the del.icio.us search form in the toolbar but when I'm not using my computer I have to go to the web site or type the full address for the search. Now I can do it from anywhere as long as I have access to my web site.

On Digital Web: seven accessibility mistakes - part 2
link to the first part

On the Guardian: Brothers in arms.

Metroblogging is the largest and fastest growing network of city-specific blogs on the Web.

Joel on Software:

"Over the next weeks and months, if all goes well, I'm going to write a series of articles right here, on this website, on UI design for the modern age. The whole series will be, tentatively, named Great Design."

On A List Apart:

• Home page goals
• Use cases

Simple points that need to be remembered because it's easy to underestimate their importance.

Design Melt Down on the use of Blue on the web.

On Digital Web: seven accessibility mistakes - part 1

Also, it's now possible to download a pre-release software of Internet Explorer 7 : Beta 2