9-11
Note
You might
be noticing that the Raging 'toon for 9-11
is very late today. Needless to say, this
is an important anniversary and I'd like
to do the very best I can, so bear with
me until I get this sorted out. Thanks!
=Lefty=
----------
Jumbo
Shrimp
I'm
begining to hate smartphones, and I'll tell you why.
Back in 1995 I added web design to my portfolio
of artistic vocations. It paid well and was honestly
fun at times. Any time, that is, that didn't include
Internet Explorer (Fucking IE!) but that's another
rant altogether.
The biggest challenge in the 90s was designing and
building web sites that performed adequately within
the limited bandwidths
we all
endured, while at the same time playing leapfrog
with the constantly expanding monitor landscape.
You see, when
I started building
web sites 15-inch color monitors were hot shit,
then along came 17-inch, 19-inch and, eventually,
'monstrous'
21-inch
monitors. It naturally became part of my job to
chart the acceptance rate of these bigger monitors
and,
once
the larger sizes became
the norm, made it my "sad duty" to inform
my clients that a rebuild of their sites was necessary
in order to keep
them from looking puny and outdated. For which I
got paid again, naturally.
This scam worked great until about 2010 when iPhone
acceptance reached critical mass and it suddenly
became important that a site work as well on
a 30-inch monitor
as on a 5-inch phone. (Yes, seriously.) My clients
understand the problem but haven't yet been willing
to write a check for a rebuild as the current one
"works fine", even though their sales are falling.
Google looked the other way for about five years
but a few months ago
they began penalizing sites that weren't mobile-ready.
They swear on a stack of C++ handbooks that only
mobile searches are affected but you only have
to look at my log files to know better.
A slight digression: I think there's a secondary
explanation why Google made this decision. It's that
the web is cluttered with old sites that are never
updated
and offer little useful information. What better
way to save bandwidth and deliver more salient information
than by relegating such sites to the back cybershelves where
they'll never be seen again? Digression over.
So now, like every other web monkey, I have to grit
my teeth and learn a whole new set of skills to update
my personal sites in order keep up with
the iPhoneses. I don't know how I'm going to make
a graphic-intensive destination like my web
portfolio cooperate
but I'll figure something out. I have to.
------------
One more thing.... I posted new
comic over at the Friendly Atheist last Friday. If
you're intrigued
by the teaser below just click this
link or the image to see the hilarious
punch line.
=Lefty=
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