stargirl-designs.com Blog

One of my co-workers lent me an interesting book recently. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug. It’s a short and easy read. The basic premise (and hence the title) is that you shouldn’t make the user work too hard to use or understand your website. I think the website I maintain at work, the AA Dept. website, does pretty well in that regard. And even if someone can’t find what they want, we have a link to the sitemap and a searchbox on every page. Hopefully that cuts down on user frustration.

Another usability rule Krug has is “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.” I don’t think we can really apply that to our site. There’s no way to really cut down our explanations of various astronomical phenomena and algorithms.

In the next-to-last chapter, he mentions his three-second accessibility test for websites: increasing the size of the type. And he says almost every site he goes to fails. Ta-da! We don’t. You can increase the size of our type with your browser, no problem! Cool. Must be because I love Cascading Style Sheets to death.

Reading – The Pagoda

Originally uploaded by etacar11

My friend Rob took me on a whirlwind tour of all the places he’s lived. This meant visits to York, Reading, and Mechanicsburg, PA. Not exactly places with great sightseeing, but he had told me about the pagoda on the mountain overlooking Reading. So we checked it out.

The view of the city was nice, though it was an overcast day. And it was cold and windy. And there were loud, annoying kids running around. If I ever get back to Reading and the weather is nicer, I will have to check it out again.

The Pagoda sits on Mount Penn, and the road leading up to it has a series of sharp turns. Early automobiles were tested there by Charles Duryea.  We just had to deal with the aforementioned annoying kids, who hogged the road with their bikes on the way back down.

My mom and I have been doing the Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization’s Walk to Empower for the past couple of years. The first two were at Bull Run Regional Park in Centreville, Virginia. This year the walk, which takes place on Mother’s Day (May 11th, 2008), is moving to the National Mall. It’s 3 miles and non-competitive, which is about all my mom and I can handle.

This walk means a lot to me, because my mom had breast cancer when I was 4.  It’s coming up on 30 years since she beat the disease.  I can’t even begin to imagine what my life would have been like if she hadn’t.

Donations:

• My page
• My mom’s page

I have a not-so-secret ambition to see all the National Parks in the Lower 48 states. And I’m a total sucker for historical sites, especially those to do with the American Revolution. Now, what about the rest of the world?

I probably won’t get the chance to see all the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in my lifetime, but it’s still fun to dream. And I’ve already seen a few.

• Historic District of Old Quebec – Went to the city on a high school trip, I think we wandered through it.
• Paris, Banks of the Seine – Yep, train trip to Paris when my family lived in Madrid in the early Eighties.
• Vatican City – On our trip to Rome, also when we lived in Madrid.
• Piazza del Duomo, Pisa – We had to do the funny pictures where it looks like you are holding up the Leaning Tower with your hands.
• Historic Centre of Rome – That Rome trip.
• Venice – We went there twice when we lived in Madrid.
• Pompeii – I was terrified that Vesuvius was going to erupt while we were there (Hey, I was about seven years old at the time).
• Monastery and Site of the Escurial, Madrid – Well, duh.
• Old Town of Avila – It’s not far from Madrid.
• Historic City of Toledo – One of my favorite day trips from Madrid, I think we did it more than once.
• Tower of London – We took the plane to London when we lived in Madrid (all our other trips were by car).
• Independence Hall – Philly? It’s practically next door. I’ve been there twice!
• Mammoth Cave National Park – My grandfather was from Kentucky, so we went there once so my dad could do genealogical investigations.
• Statue of Liberty – What a horrific trip, love the statue but it definitely was not worth it.

Hmmm, still so many to see…

Clara Barton House

Originally uploaded by etacar11

Montgomery County does have some lovely historical sites. For a long time I had wanted to see the Clara Barton National Historic Site. My friend Rob wanted to go to Glen Echo Park and the C&O Canal Towpath near there. So this made for a nice little daytrip.

You can only see the inside of the house while on the NP Ranger-led tour. It was just us and a mother and daughter, so that was nice.

Barton lived in the house for the last 15 years of her life and it also served as the headquarters of the American Red Cross (she was its founder) at the time. The central hallway of the house was lined with closets filled with medical supplies ready to be sent to disaster areas/war zones.