Milt Reynolds: Thinking Out Loud

Faded Glory: On Being an Ex-Firefighter, Part 1 I used to be a volunteer firefighter. I wore a pager on my belt. I had a radio by my easy chair, programmed to scan dozens of local emergency frequencies. Every Tuesday night was drill night. Alarms frequently interrupted my weekday evenings at home and family activities on the weekend. I could imagine the location of virtually any address in my town and I often roamed the rural areas, looking for odd addresses. I scanned the horizon often, looking for the first faint plumes of dark smoke that indicated a brush fire. I ignored the huge billows of white smoke erupting from controlled burning of wheat field stubble. Every siren caught my attention instantly. I could distinguish between police and ambulance calls just by the sound. Police prefer the yelp...medics favor the wail. I became anxious during hot afternoons if more than four hours passed quietly without a call. Hot weather seems to ignite the trash-burning instinct in

The Start of a New Website, Part 3 Time to write code! I prefer to write my own HTML and CSS code from scratch. I've tried using online generators. I've tried using MS Word and OpenOffice to convert to webpages. They work, and they work fast, but they've all got two serious drawbacks . First, any conversion software takes control away from the designer. Everything I type or enter must be converted into an HTML equivalent, and many, many times, the equivalent is not what I was expecting. Image positioning especially is difficult to generate. Using the online editors available for Wordpress or Blogger seems very confusing if I try to slightly change the positions or sizes. I've rarely been pleased by the results . Second, if I do want to tweak the code after a program has converted or generated a webpage, the HTML coding is incredibly confusing and complicated. Line breaks and division tags are used indiscriminately. Every instance of deleting something in the o

Writing a Guest Post What a thrill! Peevish Penman asked me to submit a guest post for her blog! And she's posted it! I feel like I've been published , or that I've been chosen to represent all the struggling, lackadaisical, and aimless writers of the world! Really, peevishpenman.blogspot.com is a very encouraging, informative, and interesting blog about the art and skill of writing. My small contribution to this fount of knowledge and inspiration is about how to kickstart your creative juices when your mind is saying, "I just want to vegge out and surf the internet... I have nothing interesting to write ." I heartily commend Peevish Penman for your reading pleasure and writing encouragement. Read my guest post here: http://peevishpenman.blogspot.com/2010/06/writing-is-hard-part-one.html .

The Start of a New Website, Part 2 A good way to start thinking about the design of a new website is to challenge your mind to open up, consider colors, big ideas, and potential themes . I wrote about this in The Start of a New Website, Part 1 . Here's some examples of the process. I met with my clients and they showed me printouts of websites, screenshots, and brochures. The discussion allowed me to choose some examples that seemed to be close to what they were envisioning . I took all the samples home, reviewed them briefly, and then put them to one side. Grabbing my granddaughter's crayons and some manila drawing paper, I sketched out a design . This design roughly followed that of a related website. The name of the organization is most prominent , large space for a welcome box and news, with navigation menu on the left and photos on the right. I included a lightly drawn background image based on a map of the organization's region. The advantage of usi

Journalistic Integrity I believe we should not be sacrificing our own personal ideals and our own internal moral compasses in a never-ending battle for position, for status, for scoops, or for access. I believe we should treat those we interact with online with respect and an adherence to high standards in the way that we would like to be treated - and I don't think we are doing enough as content consumers and producers to do a great job. ( Louis Gray ) Not too long ago, a writer whom I respect mightily said that he would continue to write, even if there were none who read his work, even there were no internet to which to publish. Finally, there is an inner impulse that I cannot explain that drives me to write. I would write if there were no possibility of publication. I have hundreds of pages that no one has ever seen but me, and it would not matter ultimately if they were destroyed. I wrote them not to be published but because there is an impulse from within. ( John P