I’ve created a new web design project as a giant learning experience. As a result, I’m making progress learning simultaneously a new language (Ruby) and a new framework (you guessed it, Rails).

I like learning new programming languages; To be honest I’ve lost track of how many this makes, but it’s over 20 now. I haven’t done it for a while and those skills have atrophied a bit. Still, the knack is coming back to me, and I’m enjoying myself immensely.

At the same time, I’ve let myself get talked into writing a book (for chess coaches, if you simply must know). So for part of everyday, I’m immersed in two completely different disciplines.

Or so I thought

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Just ran into an interesting quirk with Inman positioning.

I was using it with Safari 3, and noticed the same bug in Firefox 2.0.0.11 while testing. I loaded the javascript file in the document head and when the document started to load,, apparently it loaded a document and triggered the script before the body had loaded. The script failed, claiming document.body was null.

After ripping out handfuls of hair (“Whaddya mean null? I can see the tag right there! Open your eyes you stupid machine!”) I realized the timing issue and moved the script deeper into the document, so it would be triggered after the body tag was loaded.

Success.

Every now and then, someone comes up with a solution that seems so obviously wrong you immediately open your mouth to object. But by the time your mouth opens your brain has done some more processing, and you realize what you’re about to say isn’t really an objection. Nor is the next thing. And you realize he’s thought it through a little more than you have. And you’re left with your mouth hanging open and nothing to say.

Derek Powazek just did that to me. On first hearing, his proposal to put images in pages as div backgrounds is just so wrong that my tongue trips over my teeth in its haste to make the declaration. My lungs fill, my mouth opens.
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