Vos Virtual Network

Archive for November, 2008

Students in the Web Application Design and Development course at Bryn Mawr College wear blue beanies in support of Web Standards!

This photo is one of many from the 2008 Blue Beanie Day collection at Flickr.

You can read more about the history and purpose of Blue Beanie Day 2008 here on vvn.net, Jeffrey Zeldman’s recent post about Blue Beanie Day, or Marshall Kirkpatrick’s Read-Write-Web news article about Blue Beanie Day 2008 and web standards.

Paul Cripps posted this cute photo to the Blue Beanie Day 2008 collection on Flickr.

The book cover shown is from Cascading Style Sheets – The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition, by Eric Meyer. You can see Eric Meyer wearing a Blue Beanie here also.

Jason Beaird of Refresh Columbia recently quipped that Zeldman’s Blue Beanie image “is now the Che Guevara icon for web standards revolution.”  The Blue Beanie Day symbol (in the context of Web Standards) was made famous by the original Standardista ( Jeffrey Zeldman ) and his book covers.

Blue Beanie Day 2007 - Photo in Doug Vos basement library

The second annual Blue Beanie Day will be celebrated on Friday, November 28, 2008

Thousands of Standardistas (people who support web standards) will wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for accessible, semantic web content.

It’s easy to show your support for web design done right. Beg, borrow, or buy a Blue Beanie and snap a photo of your mug wearing the blue. (Or get creative with Photoshop). Then on November 28, switch your profile picture in Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, (and any other social network) and post your photo to the Blue Beanie Day group at Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/bluebeanieday2008/ .

It’s easy to participate:

1. Make a personal commitment to fight Web Standards apathy. Show solidarity with the Standardistas on Friday, November 28th, 2008.
2. Buy, beg, or borrow a Blue Beanie (blue hat or cap, even a black or grey one will do in a pinch.)
3. Take a photo of yourself wearing the Blue Beanie. Or take a cool group photo of you and your friends wearing Blue Beanies.
4. Post your photo, or photos to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and other social networks on Friday, November 28th, 2008. Remember to switch your Facebook profile photo that day.
5. Promote Blue Beanie Day in your blog or wiki starting today, and tell all your friends to get ready for Blue Beanie Day. Start by inviting all your Facebook friends to this event.

Historical notes and relate links:

1. Flickr photostream from Blue Beanie Day 2007
2. Twitter tweets (comments) on the topic of Blue Beanie Day.
3. Background on Designing With Web Standards (DWWS) group on Facebook.
4. My blog entry on the original Blue Beanie Day – 2007.

St. Augustine of Hippo

St. Augustine was born on this day, November 13th, in the year 354 AD.  Augustine wrote many great writings (including City of God), but most revealing of his personal views (his blog about life), is his Confessions, which is an  account of his earlier life.

There are many online editions of Augustine’s Confessions, including the versions offered by Bartleby,  CCEL, Fordham University, and Google books. What follows is a brief excerpt from St. Augustine’s Confessions, the second book.

I WILL now call to mind my past foulness, and the carnal corruptions of my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my God. For love of Thy love I do it; reviewing my most wicked ways in the very bitterness of my remembrance, that Thou mayest grow sweet unto me (Thou sweetness never failing, Thou blissful and assured sweetness); and gathering me again out of that my dissipation, wherein I was torn piecemeal, while turned from Thee, the One Good, I lost myself among a multiplicity of things. For I even burnt in my youth heretofore, to be satiated in things below; and I dared to grow wild again, with these various and shadowy loves; my beauty consumed away, and I stank in Thine eyes; pleasing myself, and desirous to please in the eyes of men.

And what was it that I delighted in, but to love, and be beloved? but I kept not the measure of love, of mind to mind, friendship’s bright boundary: but out of the muddy concupiscene of the flesh, and the bubblings of youth, mists fumed up which beclouded and overcast my heart, that I could not discern the clear brightness of love from the fog of lustfulness. Both did confusedly boil in me, and hurried my unstayed youth over the precipice of unholy desires, and sunk me in a gulf of flagitiousness. Thy wrath had gathered over me, and I knew it not. I was grown deaf by the clanking of the chain of my mortality, the punishment of the pride of my soul, and I strayed further from Thee, and Thou lettest me alone, and I was tossed about, and wasted, and dissipated, and I boiled over in my fornications, and Thou heldest Thy peace, O Thou my tardy joy! Thou then heldest Thy peace, and I wandered further and further from Thee, into more and more fruitless seed-plots of sorrows, with a proud dejectedness, and a restless weariness.