It’s not often that one gets to witness history this up close. Obama has just become the first African-American president of the US and I was here to see it all happen.

No, I was not at some sort of election party. Yes, I am Canadian and damn proud of it. No, I’m not American and also damn proud of it. But when a momentous event like this takes places, it makes you feel good to be around to witness it. The technology involved in this year’s US election has made it incredibly easy to follow the election race. Twit, my favourite tech programming on the Internet broadcasted live, a discussion of not only the election but also how technology has made it possible to feel so involved, all from the comfort of my couch. And I never even scratched the surface of it all! If I were closer to the US elections, if I were an American citizen and were involved in voting, I would have sucked it all in. There’s a hidden side of me that tremendously enjoys politics, and who does it on a grander scheme than the Americans?

I’m glad the results came in the way they did. I hope this will put the Americans on a better path for the future and since so much of US policy affects or gets copied by our Canadian government, I am glad that at least there is now a US president that seems to have a better understanding of the things that matter to me. I did not get my wish in our latest Canadian election but I am hopeful for changes in the US that will eventually trickle down to us across the border.

Congratulations to Barack Obama and the American people for making the choice I would have made. I am proud to have lived during these exciting times.

Apple just announced its new laptop lineup, including a newly styled 13″ Macbook, a couple new Macbook Pros and Macbook Airs. Since these things are so damn expensive, the only one I’ll ever have a hope in hell of affording is the Macbook. I would really love a light 13″ laptop, and this one’s just a beauty:

New 13" Macbook

I can’t be the only web developer that gets frustrated with the intricacies of developing something that can be viewed on so many different platforms.

Working on a website tonight I was checking my work in 5 different browsers! I was mainly developing in Firefox 3, while checking in Internet Explorer 7, Opera, Google Chrome, and Safari for Windows. There is nothing more frustrating than having it look perfect (aside from Safari’s totally different font rendering) in 5 browsers except for Internet Explorer. And all that because it doesn’t understand how to properly render the following style statement

float:right

Looks harmless enough, right? Well it cost me a few hours of fighting with my code, leaving no time for GTA IV.

To add insult to injury, when I shared my frustrations with my better half, she couldn’t understand and, while doing her best to help, only caused more frustration and distraction away from the real issue at hand.

I finally got it solved and hope for dear life that Internet Explorer 8 will do a better job of interpreting CSS.

As a final thought, I was too chicken to even take a look at how IE 6 is displaying it.

photo credit: Yo Mostro

I came across this on the “Hot Now” list of sites at Blinklist and wanted to share. Montastic, the free website monitoring service that doesn’t suck. It really doesn’t. It’s free and you can add up to 100 websites that it will keep track of. You get an email when your site goes down and comes back up, and it provides the current statuses via an RSS feed. The designers of the service also have a sense of humour. For example, in one place you get the option to save or save not.

photo credit: premasagar