Dan’s Blog (2.0)

This is a little coffee “Hut” on wheels thing that sits outside the Tube station here in East Finchley. They make a surprisingly good latte.

Filed by Dan Appelquist at 23:19 under Misc

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Ok — This blog is not going to be predominantly political, because there are plenty of other blogs out there doing this (such as the highly recommended Shrillblog.) I will, however, say that I am really hoping we can kick this jack-ass out of the Whitehouse. Why? Because he has made the world a more dangerous place. For me, it’s primarily a personal issue: my family is at greater risk because of this nut-bar and his Iraq misadventure.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 23:21 under Politics

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Good BBC News article today, capturing some of the American expat experience during the election.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 17:15 under Politics

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With all the political partisanship in the air, it was refreshing to see this release from Amnesty International, admonishing both presidential candidates to condemn torture and abuse of human rights.

We (the U.S.) are just not doing a good job here, as you can seem from Amnesty’s more detailed report, condemning the U.S. for all sorts of abuses and failures.

If we want to “lead the world” with “transformational liberty” (or whatever), this is not the way to do it.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 14:20 under Politics

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So a friend of mine from the States was surprised to hear that they have Ikea here in London.

My sister is in St. Petersburg (Russia) this year getting her Master’s –
and she reports that there is an Ikea there too.

Ikea is like a state unto itself. I think they own whole south-pacific
islands where they grow forests of particle-board-trees under huge yellow
domes.

The Ikea in London is like every other Ikea I’ve ever been to. Keep in mind
as well that the last time I was in an Ikea was about 6 years go. They are
a constant throughout space and time.

Filed by Dan Appelquist at 18:50 under Misc

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Yes! This blog is now XHTML and CSS compliant. I find it doubly ironic that in order to do what I wanted to do (align images to the right in the posts) in this new “easier” way to publish on the Web, I had to go back and learn CSS and XHTML syntax. All images now have alt tags as well, which is at least a start at accessibility.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 14:35 under Blogs, W3C

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So I’m fiddling around with the Blogger template, adding links and such, and I think to myself: “I wonder if this thing produces HTML that is at all accessible?” (As in conforms to the W3C’s accessibility guidelines.) So I test it against a W3C HTML checker for starters. Bzzzt! Thanks for playing! Actually, it’s got basic, across-the-board HTML problems. Too bad, because it’s kind of nice looking. I may try fiddling with it to get it into shape, but the problem seems to be that you can only do so much — there are server-side inclusions that you don’t seem to have any control over. For instance, Blogger seems to be putting in a meta tag claiming that the page is in UTF-8 encoding, when in fact it’s not. Oops!

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 21:24 under Blogs, W3C

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There is nothing like a good hot cup of Joe. And this freeze-dried stuff I’m drinking is nothing like a good hot cup of Joe. What I wouldn’t give for a good old cup of American-style drip coffee.

Filed by Dan Appelquist at 15:57 under Misc

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So tonight — apart from starting this blog — I am taking care of “the kids” while my wife goes out to a friend’s shower (at a Pub — this is London, remember). The 3-year-old (Alex) is no problem — he’s asleep upstairs. The 4-month-old (Emily) is another story. She’s asleep right now in her car seat. She has never been this far apart from her mother for this long — and Allison only left an hour and a half ago. If Emily wakes up, she will be cranky — she will demand to be fed. Because she is 4 months old, this demand will be in the form of long, anguished wails that, if a passerby were to hear them, might sound like I am in here torturing her with cigarette butts. In fact, I will be calmly walking her back and forth in the living room, singing softly to her and patting her on the back. She is going to be really pissed off when she realizes that her milk supply has gone out on the binge. Of course, I have some expressed milk in the fridge, but I know this will go in 2 seconds. My only hope is to keep watching and whenever she moves, even a twitch, run over and immediately lull her back to sleep by rocking her gently back and forth in her seat. Wish me luck!

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 20:12 under Kids

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Doesn’t anyone have “home pages” any more? Whatever happened to “home pages?” Whatever happened to finger files, for that matter? You know — time was that you could find out about anyone on the internet by typing (yes typing) a command like “finger user@something.something” and it would come back with some useful information. I say bring back Finger.

Filed by Daniel Appelquist at 20:07 under Blogs

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