HOME :: sweet home
Glad you’ve stopped by for a visit at my “home away from home.” Walk around, take a look, see if anything grabs your fancy! This site is a labor of love that I have long wanted to bring into being; I’m pleased as punch that the site has finally become a reality, and I hope you enjoy your visit and find something here that helps you in some way.
Here at viaDigita I share my many varied passions—reading on a wide variety of topics; playing, listening to, and collecting classical music on CDs, LPs, and in digital format; learning and thinking about design; musing over puzzles, board games, and other mental challenges, as well as enjoying various types of digital entertainment; discovering incredible online resources from all corners of the internet; and working with all sorts of software that makes available many possibilities in this life that could only be dreamt of in science fiction when I was a child.
So what’s here? A brief description of each subject on the site follows below.
BLOG :: daily life
My thoughts, ideas, writings…anything that doesn’t fit in the other sections of the site. This is my space to ruminate about life. And the world. And to share neat things I come across, whether online or in “real” life. Short posts. Long posts. Whatever takes my fancy.
Will you like it? I don’t know. Will it even be worth looking at? Again, who can tell?
Only one way to find out…take a chance on my BLOG.
BOOKS :: great reading
I never read a great deal when I was a kid, so when I got to college and my very first class was Comparative Literature, I really began reading: T.S. Eliot, Mikhail Bulgakov, Nikos Kazantzakis, Bernard Shaw, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Ayn Rand, Kurt Vonnegut, J.D. Salinger, Franz Kafka, Shakespeare…it was great!
I started another wild reading ride 6 or 7 years ago, when my son and I both signed up for the local library’s summer reading program. That summer I read 26 books, and I haven’t yet stopped.
If you want to know what I think is a good read, go to BOOKS.
CLASSICAL :: great music
There has always been music in my life. My parents both played piano, and my mother taught it. There were records and concerts to attend, then lessons, rehearsals, and performances of my own. Although I am no longer a “professional” cellist, I still play.
Most of this section, however, deals with recordings…glorious recordings. Collecting classical recordings has been my lifelong disease, for which there is no cure. I just love listening to this great music; to me, it is as important as breathing.
If you like classical listening too, try out my CLASSICAL section.
DESIGN :: great inspiration
Since 1992, I have worked in digital publishing of various sorts. I began by learning the “cadillac” desktop publishing of that era, Xerox Ventura Publisher, a really great program (still).
As the years have progressed, I have become more and more fascinated by design of all sorts. Everything man-made is designed, by someone, for some purpose. If you get thinking about it, it’s really rather remarkable what man has designed.
If you are likewise fascinated by design, visit my DESIGN page.
ENTERTAINMENT :: great fun
All work and no play makes David a royal pain in the…so anyway, entertainment! This word means lots of different things to lots of different people. I tend to like entertainment that is not completely passive: board games, cards, puzzles, table tennis, air hockey, pool. I do enjoy a good movie or television show too. We haven’t had cable TV for nearly 20 years, though, so what I do see comes mostly on DVD or via video-on-demand.
In this section, you’ll find all sorts of fun stuff in all of the above-mentioned categories, and more. If you like good, clean fun as much as I do, get yourself some ENTERTAINMENT.
ONLINE :: great resources
Online life is amazing in its vastness, and its marvellous variety is very nearly beyond imagining. It’s remarkable, too, how fast this transformatiion from analogue to digital has all happened.
Part of the fun of the online life is the constant discovery of amazing new resources. So here I just share some of the cool things I’ve come across while zipping ’round the web.
Want to see something neat? See if you’ll find it ONLINE.
SOFTWARE :: great tools
Growing up, I never thought I’d use a computer. I later swore that I wouldn’t. When given the chance at work, I chose not to learn how to use the office computer. Then came the moment of truth, when I finally broke down and gave it a whirl: “hey, this is pretty fun!”
Now I enjoy playing the computer, and it’s easier than playing the cello by a mile. What I really love is trying out new software, because there’s always something new, always something to figure out.
If you like computers too, check out my SOFTWARE page.
Your host: blogger, cellist, computer guy.
Have a comment? Here’s a nice old typewriter for you to WRITE TO ME.
It’s Web 1.0 All Over Again
You may have noticed that, unlike many bloggers, I don’t use Wordpress or Drupal or ExpressionEngine or any other Content Management System. This may change someday, but for the time being I persist in enjoying the Web 1.0 handcoding habits of yore…for me it’s like playing my cello: this is the way it has been done for centuries, but I still find it beautiful and rewarding. So too do I enjoy typing code into this laptop and seeing it come to life before my very eyes. It makes me want to shout, “Look Ma, no database!”
How I Built viaDigita
I recently found this wonderful software package called <oXygen/> XML Author, and it comes with a fantastic Subversion client that has opened wide to me the doors of version control. So far, it’s been a lot of fun! I should also note here that I utilize the excellent YAML framework as the foundational XHTML+CSS codebase for this site (thank you, Dirk Jesse, for an incredible resource!). If you wish, you can read the whole long list of software I use by visiting my Credits page.
Testing, Testing…
As I build pages, I test them in various web browsers:
Google’s Chrome 2
Mozilla’s Firefox 3.5
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8
Opera’s Opera 9
Apple’s Safari 4
Naturally I test on the platform I use, Windows XP. The site will undoubtedly look slightly different on a Mac or Linux operating system, perhaps even another Windows system, but I have tried to make the site as widely usable as possible. The site seems to look its best in Firefox and in Internet Explorer, but is very similar in the other browsers (usually just a few pixels difference).
Have Fun!
If you find any aspect of my site to be lacking, please go easy on me—I’m only human, and my day job and family and other obligations limit the time and energy I can devote to viaDigita. If you disagree with anything here, or you find my opinions or thoughts objectionable, please remember that they are just that: merely opinions and thoughts. I don’t claim that I’m “right” on any given subject, only that I’m trying to learn as I go.
Enough about me—enjoy viaDigita and, as I said earlier, I hope you find something here that will benefit you. Feel free to write and let me know what you think!
