In article <SzOH3I25mSaW092yn(at)supernet.ab.ca>,
jerome(at)supernet.ab.ca (Jerome Yuzyk) wrote:
> In article <371C9087.683F(at)cris.com>, "jumpin'jan" <servaij(at)cris.com> wrote:
> > Russell Maddock wrote:
> > >
> > > I see in the latest Horn that the SAOC have their official website up and
> > > running: http://www.saoc.demon.co.uk/
> >
> > Russ, Did you find the background pictures make it hard to read the
> > contents? I'm not sure why the webmaster put in very cluttered
> > background pics.
>
> Classic rookie mistakes, along with a window title that is uninformative
> (and thereby any bookmarks made from it) and a past-ancient SUNI address
> (spelled wrong too). "Anyone can make a website" just like "anyone can
> rebuild a car." Yeah, well...
>
> But, it beats its predecessor...
OK, I'm a wank. A sorry wank now.
Forty lashes with a blue-gooed valve cover gasket for me, I should not
have commented as I did on what is a volunteer effort by some honourable
people for our common advancement.
But, while not excusing in any way my own total foolishness with the Send
button, here's the point that never quite made it out.
Just as I've seen people here say "Whoa! Stop and think a little!"
whenever someone new talks about R&R on their car, I guess I get a
little touchier than most when I see a website that's dived into with
little regard for the same concepts. This is partly the seduction of
various "HTML-wordprocessor" tools that really only do 1/10th of the
real work involved in a site, and smother that with a thick sauce of
various bells and whistles and distractions that tend toward the
negation of the real point of the site: to deliver information. Both
cars and websites have to look decent and carry a payload.
We're all busy people, we want to make our time count. Why waste it on
chroming the bumpers if the bodywork has holes and the exhaust is thick?
Websites, like cars, are bastards to get correct without a rebuild if
you just jump in and "get something together," moreso if you spray a
whole bunch of stuff around. Then it becomes a drag, and then the things
you didn't do (like using the spell-checker or reading your stuff later
[especially your intro paragraph]) stand out that much more against the
fuzzy dice and fatboy tires. The difference between cars and websites is
that there's no magic way to make one "for only 99.95!" The temptation
to play with all those software knobs "at your fingertips" usually
overshadows any interest in starting small, getting the basics, and
adding on from there. After 18+ years doing computer forensics, I
believe it's a "guy thing" to just jump in. Beware: the people that take
your money for their "website in minutes" product know this, just as do
back-alley mechanics and bodyshoppers.
But that doesn't mean I'm not still a wank for not saying so in a better
way. My apologies to you, David and Rob.
--- J e r o m e Y u z y k | jerome(at)supernet.ab.ca - - BRIDGE Scientific Services | www.tgx.com/bridge - - Sunbeam Alpine Series II #9118636 | www.tgx.com/bridge/sunbeam - - I'm going to SUNI III... Are You? | www.newsource.net/suni3 -
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