How To Rule the Web: Learn It

You probably don’t need to know everything, but it sure couldn’t hurt.

You may not need to know, for example, that Jesse James Garrett coined the accronym AJAX because “XML HTTP request” is too much of a mouthful to easily say. But wouldn’t it be cool to use Asynchronus Java script And XML on your blog to add sexy features and functionality?

Lynda.com is a fee-based library of online tutorials. The fee, however, is a very reasonable flat rate — paid monthly, tri-monthly, bi-annually or annually — which gives you unlimited access to Lynda.com’s voluminious library of video tutorials. Everything you could ever want to know about producing, editing, programming, generating, posting and hosting multimedia content for the Web is taught at Lynda.com.

Fifty one subject areas cover topics ranging from establishing the most basic WordPress or Blogger accounts to using advanced tools like AJAX, which is the technology behind Google Maps’ capability to allow you to scroll around, zoom in and zoom out of the map box without refreshing the page or otherwise interrupting the other actions of your browser. Subjects at Lynda.com include:

• Audio
• Digital imaging
• XML
• HTML
• CSS
• Podcasting
• AJAX
• Blogging
• Web design
• Web development
• Content Management Systems
• Digital Photography
• and more

The Audio stable, for example, includes 24 courses ranging in duration from 30 minutes to 12 hours. The courses cover a litany of major production tools like Audition, Garage Band, Pro Tools, Soundbooth, Soundtrack Pro, Reason and Logic Pro, as well as general subjects like “Digital Audio Principals” and Podcasting.

You can pay as little as $25 per month or as much as $250 per year for standard access. A premium membership costs $375 per year and gives you access to a host of training exercises to go along with each video. But they’re really not neccessary.

Lest you mistake this as paid advertising for Lynda.com, be aware also that there are free ways to get training in some of the same areas.

W3Schools online, for example, provides free, hands-on, step-by-step tutorials for the entire gamut of programming languages. You won’t find software tutorials like Photoshop, Pro Tools or Dreamweaver at W3Schools online. But you will find exercises in CSS, HTML, Java Script, XML, AJAX, PHP and more. These make for handy supplments to the clearly elucidated video lectures found at Lynda.com. Or, if programming languages are all you’re after, W3Schools online might be all you need.

This is not a factoid

I wonder where factoid came from, anyway?

I overheard the question and couldn’t help wondering too. I’ve never liked the word. Most people bandy it like a synonym for fact, with the qualification, perhaps, that it’s a rather small one. But if that’s the case, an obvious word like fact or statistic would do.

That’s not the case. A factoid is “an invented fact believed to be true because of its appearance in print” or it is, at best, a trivial piece of information, according to Merriam-Webster online.

The American Heritage Dictionary goes so far as to concede factoid‘s faddish popularity as a synonym for a smallish fact, but it says that’s a usage problem. The primary definition is: “A piece of unverified or inaccurate information that is presented in the press as factual, often as part of a publicity effort, and that is then accepted as true because of frequent repetition.”

According to various online sources, Norman Mailer coined the word in his biography Marilyn Monroe (Grosset & Dunlap, 1973) by cobbling the word fact with the suffix -oid, which “normally imparts the meaning ‘resembling, or having the appearance of’ to the words it attaches to” (American Heritage).

Mailer’s book, however, is out of print and is neither available at my local library nor my local bookstore. I’m not interested enough to pay $3.99 for shipping that I may hold the artifact of, as my friend who first posed the question observed, “another one of Mailer’s dubious contributions to Western Civ.”

Avian Eulogy

By Paul Harhar

The Gazeitgeist

ASH TRICKLE — A wild turkey struck the windshield of a car going west on Highway 30 Wednesday, Ash Trickle Police said.

Four vehicles crashed because of the errant fowl, which was probably hungry and looking for dinner, police said, citing the bird’s tranquil but weathered visage.

It lay motionless on its side, one wing unfurled under its head in the snow. Three distinct splatters of red on white were the only reminders of mortality about its pristine carcass.

A few yards away sat the turkey’s victims, two mangled cars, an SUV and a pickup. Each bore visible anguish from the avian slaughter: crumpled doors, smashed trunks, twisted metal; all fouled up.

Traffic passed slowly, stirring the air. Malaise settled in like a fallout.