As per the request of one of the DanceNet readers, here are copies of the past ramblings of the DanceNet Webmaster.
He said that he'd need 4 hours of swing music and that he had one CD of Cherry Poppin' Daddies.
I told him he'd need *20* hours of swing music (and that's probably low) and that, contrary to popular belief, Cherry Poppin' Daddies is not swing music. In addition, I told him he needed to learn to dance so he'd know what music was appropriate for swing, lindy hop, balboa, and west coast swing.
There are a lot of general information websites out there who need to go through their links and make sure the URL's are still good. I've been working on my Dancing Outside New England pages this week and I've been checking to see who has links to this website. I also check what other websites are linked, which is how I found out about a new Boston lindy hop group , and I find out how many websites have stale links. It doesn't seem to be worth the effort to maintain a links page if most of the links are going to be bad anyways. At least some websites like Jitterbuzz realize this and link to websites that are more likely to maintain those local links (such as this website).
Sometimes I wonder what path some people take to get to their conclusions.
I was in Connecticut picking up Powerball tickets on the way home and I noticed this guy had avoided parking in the Handicap space in front of the convenience store. Instead, he parked in the cross-checked space beside the handicap space. Note that *no one* is suppose to park in that space...because that's where the handicap *ramp* is located. Why is parking in handicap space bad while parking in front of the ramp okay? (Well, I think the ticket for the ramp is only about half of the handicap space, but still!)
Is there anyone else who thinks that they should come up with a special drivers' license test for people drive SUV's? I was trying to get into the parking lot of CompUSA in Brighton and the driveway was *completely* blocked by a SUV trying to get out into traffic. It was pretty obvious that the guy couldn't see that the right side of his SUV was about 4 feet away from the edge of the driveway ramp and he obviously didn't care that he was blocking the whole driveway. I think that people should be required to learn how to drive a large SUV or pickup truck, like people with Class 1 licences learning to drive semi's, so they'd know how to drive without endangering or rudely affecting other drivers.
Some people just say the sweetest things.
Dom V and the Swing Out Big Band did a great job at the BSDN/IC/Watertown dance this past Saturday. Clearly from the start, there was a new attitude and a new energy and they kept it up during the entire evening. Dancers commented on the fact that there were danceable songs all the time, nothing too fast and nothing too slow, keeping the dance floor filled the entire night. This is not your daddy's ol' Saturday night big band.
Sometimes less is more.
In the world of website design, sometimes people get carried away with trying to create the coolest looking website using all the possible features available to them in HTML.
And sometimes it's the simplest design that shows us why webpages exist in the first place.
The previous incarnation of the Shoreline Swing Dance Society's (CT) website looked like it had been thrown together by someone who had just woken up and didn't have their coffee yet (which kinda explains some of my pages occasionally) and I had been waiting for them to redo their website (I even threw together something for them to use while they were redesigning it).
They finally uploaded their new version and I think it's a work of genius. It's simple, with no graphics, but someone clearly spent some time thinking about it. The only color on the website are the in-line links which highlights them nicely. The menu is identical at the top and bottom so there's no hunting for the menu whether you're at the top or the bottom. It reminds me of a newspaper: "nothing but the facts, ma'am."
This website is easy to read and visitors can come in and *quickly* get the information they need and leave. There's no thinking about what links to click to get the information they're looking for. The deliberate and judicious use of fonts make it easy to draw attention to the important information without having to use too many colors, hundreds of font changes and sizes, and silly things like blinking text or graphics (and nothing like "Harvest Gold" or "Pea-Soup Green for me!) The lack of graphics, and especially the lack of sound and animation, means this website will be downloaded quickly, even for those people still on dial-up.
The design of their website reminds me of the renovation of my bathroom. My previous bathroom had a baby-blue theme, including the tub, toilet and sink. When it was new, it was probably nice...and it was probably good for about 5 years before it started looking stale (I hated it). Some of the longest lasting bathrooms are those that use simple, few, and normal colors. Look around in other people's bathrooms: the ones that use just black and white tiles can stay "fresh" for 50 years. That's what I think of when I see the new Shoreline Swing website.
These people get it right. Webpages are for communication, not for presenting your web-authoring and artistic skills. This website is not going to waste your time and the design won't get "old" anytime soon.
I finally got around to making up a Cascading Style Sheet for this website. It's about time since there are so many pages on this website and there's a need for a "consistent consistency" in the way the pages look. If you're anal about such details, you'll probably notice as I switch more pages to the new style.
A peculiar idea just came to me. My friend's a vegetarian (mostly anyways) and one thing I collected from her kitchen was a bottle of Worcestershire Sauce. What is a vegetarian doing with...steak sauce?!??
Arleene in Florida asks....
"Do you remember a funny video that was fashioned after the Budweiser "Wassup" commercial featuring Frankie Manning, Ryan Francois, and other Lindy greats and Duke Ellington? Do you know where I can locate it?"Any help would be appreciated.