November 2009 Update

For the past year or so, satterlee.com has been Patricia's professional internet home.

satterlee.com - as times gone by

Luigi hooked me up with the Internet in 1997. I remember going to the ISP and marvelling at the mickey-mousery of modem racks painted black and whacked together with 2x4s. This was the future? I also remember feeling very unsettled looking a web pages. The computer screen seemed so flat (still does), flatter even than a piece of paper, yet each page was but a representation of one facet in a giant multi-dimensional structure. I had this very real, visceral, gut feeling that if I could rip away that thinnest layer of screen skin, I would be able to climb through the box into another physical reality - a cross between Bladerunner, Wonderland, and Silver Surfer.

Luigi schooled me about domain names we looked up some obvious ones, such as satterlee.com, which were, unfortunately, taken. A couple of months later, when I decided to start a site, I hunted around for suitable domain names and, just before logging off, checked to see if satterlee.com was available. Damn, it was. Seems someone had let the registration lapse. So that's how I acquired the domain name.

(Keep in mind that back then, Network Solutions did almost no record maintenance. If you registered a domain name and didn't pay, chances are they wouldn't notice. But for them to actually delist a registrant was almost unheard of. A couple of months later I was called by someone at the law firm that had owned the registration. I immediately called Network Solutions to pay my bill.)

The technology of the site has followed the developments of the industry. Originally, I designed the site with static html pages, with each page or section of pages a new design. Then I began using CityDesk, a desktop content management application. This allowed me to use a design template for the pages, so I didn't have to design each page from scratch. At the same time, CityDesk let me tweak the design of each page within the confines of the template. Then I turned to dynamic scripting to generate pages. Content is kept is a data store,such as a database, separate from the template and page design. When someone wants to view the page, the scripting pulls together the correct template, images, data, etc. and presents a finished page view.

The problem that I confronted when putting together this archive is that dynamic sites and page views are a real pain to put into storage. Not only do you need to keep track of the content, but you also need to keep track of the scripts and have the technology to run the scripts. It's clear that keeping pages, particularly for small sites like this, in static html pages makes life a whole lot easier. The only thing needed to present the site is a web browser.

The key is to develop applications that use the power of scripting for content creations and editing and templating and tracking, but that then save the final as an html page. There is very little content, other than shopping sites, that changes so often that it needs to be dynamically driven. This may make more work for the server during content management, but is should decrease the load for presentation.

A second conundrum hit me, particularly working with my photos and designs. Dynamic template-driven systems can be visually boring because everything looks the same. Again, for a large site with lots of authors, that probably can't be helped. But for a small, personal site, I think the hand-crafting of pages has real value.

This raises a question about the nature of content. I think that it's a mistake to treat all digital content the same. In the same way we distinguish between physical and digital content/objects, there is value to making a distinction between static and dynamic digigal content/objects. For instance, treating a photograph as part of a dynamic data stream does a disservice to the image. It leads to page views which are driven by the efficiency of dynamic scripting rather than presenations that take into account the aesthetic context of the image.

I'm going to do two things as I go forward. First, I'm going to work on the Personal Document System (see Plainsaw.org for more) so that the pages are saved as static html files. Second, I'm going to work on a workflow for creating photo albums that melds auto-generation of pages with static design flexibility. Most of this will be documented over at Plainsaw.

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	November 2009 Update For the past year or so, satterlee.com has been Patricia's professional internet home. satterlee.com - as times gone by Luigi hooked me up with the Internet in 1997. I remember going to the ISP and marvelling at the mickey-mousery of modem racks painted black and whacked together with 2x4s. This was the future? I also remember feeling very unsettled looking a web pages. The computer screen seemed so flat (still does), flatter even than a piece of paper, yet each page was but a representation of one facet in a giant multi-dimensional structure. I had this very real, visceral, gut feeling that if I could rip away that thinnest layer of screen skin, I would be able to climb through the box into another physical reality - a cross between Bladerunner, Wonderland, and Silver Surfer. Luigi schooled me about domain names we looked up some obvious ones, such as satterlee.com, which were, unfortunately, taken. A couple of months later, when I decided to start a site, I hunted around for suitable domain names and, just before logging off, checked to see if satterlee.com was available. Damn, it was. Seems someone had let the registration lapse. So that's how I acquired the domain name. (Keep in mind that back then, Network Solutions did almost no record maintenance. If you registered a domain name and didn't pay, chances are they wouldn't notice. But for them to actually delist a registrant was almost unheard of. A couple of months later I was called by someone at the law firm that had owned the registration. I immediately called Network Solutions to pay my bill.) The technology of the site has followed the developments of the industry. Originally, I designed the site with static html pages, with each page or section of pages a new design. Then I began using CityDesk, a desktop content management application. This allowed me to use a design template for the pages, so I didn't have to design each page from scratch. At the same time, CityDesk let me tweak the design of each page within the confines of the template. Then I turned to dynamic scripting to generate pages. Content is kept is a data store,such as a database, separate from the template and page design. When someone wants to view the page, the scripting pulls together the correct template, images, data, etc. and presents a finished page view. The problem that I confronted when putting together this archive is that dynamic sites and page views are a real pain to put into storage. Not only do you need to keep track of the content, but you also need to keep track of the scripts and have the technology to run the scripts. It's clear that keeping pages, particularly for small sites like this, in static html pages makes life a whole lot easier. The only thing needed to present the site is a web browser. The key is to develop applications that use the power of scripting for content creations and editing and templating and tracking, but that then save the final as an html page. There is very little content, other than shopping sites, that changes so often that it needs to be dynamically driven. This may make more work for the server during content management, but is should decrease the load for presentation. A second conundrum hit me, particularly working with my photos and designs. Dynamic template-driven systems can be visually boring because everything looks the same. Again, for a large site with lots of authors, that probably can't be helped. But for a small, personal site, I think the hand-crafting of pages has real value. This raises a question about the nature of content. I think that it's a mistake to treat all digital content the same. In the same way we distinguish between physical and digital content/objects, there is value to making a distinction between static and dynamic digigal content/objects. For instance, treating a photograph as part of a dynamic data stream does a disservice to the image. It leads to page views which are driven by the efficiency of dynamic scripting rather than presenations that take into account the aesthetic context of the image. I'm going to do two things as I go forward. First, I'm going to work on the Personal Document System (see Plainsaw.org for more) so that the pages are saved as static html files. Second, I'm going to work on a workflow for creating photo albums that melds auto-generation of pages with static design flexibility. Most of this will be documented over at Plainsaw.
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