collisionbend.com

Writings, issues and observations from Cleveland, Ohio by Will Kessel

Archive for May, 2006

Just Breezin’ Through…

May 06
27

Filed under: Food | General | Local Stuff | Miscellaneous | Web Notes

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My bride and I went to Bahama Breeze, specializing in Carribbean food, for dinner tonight (warning — this web site is loud, and the music annoying!).

I have to admit that this is probably one of the best restuarants we have been to, even though it’s a chain. The service was prompt and polite, even though I took a dim view of our waiter, Ryan, constantly leaning on our table while explaining the menu.

The food was excellent, and a nice value for the money. My bride had the Chicken Margherita, lesser portion, while I had the Chicken Santiago, also lesser portion.

Did you note the menu choice of “lesser portion”? Yes, dieters can take advantage of their generous portions and still feel full and satisfied with half the dinner, even though the price isn’t halved.

Trust me, the lesser portion is quite enough. In fact, it’s more toward a proper, healthy serving size, although the chicken serving was about 8 ounces (still twice the proper size). Sadly, it’s not offered on every menu item.

Both selections were outstanding, properly done, tender, juicy, and drooling with flavor.

And I mean –drooling– with flavor.

The Chicken Santiago (grilled) comes with a creamy roasted red pepper sauce that is a little spicy and downright delightful; the Chicken Margherita (also grilled) was marinated in fresh lemon, lime, honey and tequila, which made for a tasty delight.

The shocker was the alcohol, which I paid for before we took our table: 2 pints of Bass Ale and 2 Diet Cokes ran up a pricy $12.75, more like New York pricing than Cleveland. The rest of the tab consisted of our dinners, complete with two Breeze Salads (tossed salad with a dynamite citrus vinaigrette), for a tolerable $28 and change.

We gave a generous 20% gratuity, even though Ryan annoyed me by leaning on my table: at least his heart was in the right place, so we decided to give him credit for his effort.

All in all, I would recommend Bahama Breeze for lunch or dinner: the food is quite tasty, the atmosphere is pleasing — nowhere near as annoying as their web site — the prices are agreeable, and the service is excellent and cheerfully delivered.

I know we’re going back there — and soon.

(73.8 — 54.2 — 19.6)

Posted in Food, General, Local Stuff, Miscellaneous, Web Notes | No Comments »

Whose property is it, anyway?

May 06
18

Filed under: General | Local Stuff | Miscellaneous | Rants & Raves | Web Notes

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Recently, a local entity asked me to create a web site for them. Needing the work, I agreed to enter an approval process so that their parent company would approve my payment.

At the end of the process, I was presented with a letter of approval which also stood as a contract. The contract contained this clause:

The Contractor (that’s me) acknowledges that any and all products delivered to the Corporation (that’s them) under this Agreement, including without limitation, any reports, are works for hire. All documents, reports, analyses, drawings, designs, blueprints, photographs, sketches, software (including without limitation, enhancements, modifications, customizations, fixes and workarounds to software) and other materials (the “Work Product”) prepared by or for the Contractor in the course of the Contractor’s Services shall belong to the Corporation, and the Contractor grants, the Corporation all right, title and interest, including copyright and trademark, in the Work Product.

Ahem.

What this means is that the “Corporation” owns everything, lock, stock and barrel. Any bits of CSS coding, including that which creates a certain look and feel, the use of any and all images, belong to the Corporation, right down to the last (God forbid I ever use one) spacer GIF.

Consider this bit of code, of which I am particularly fond:

#content a:link { text-decoration: none;}
#content a:hover { text-decoration: underline;}

(This piece of code clears the regular underline from a text link within a content

of a HTML document, and then when you hover your mouse over the link, the underline appears, a visual cue to the link itself.)

If I were to use this bit of code on the next client’s site, and the the first client finds out, they have the right to take me cease and desist. They can even sue me and my new client — which would put me in one hell of a pickle, both client-wise and financially.

In short, the above Intellectual Property Rights clause of the contract could prevent me from re-processing individual bits of code that are my “bread and butter.” If I can’t use similar code from one client to the next, I would only have one client.

I mean, what am I going to do? Tell the new client, “I can’t use that code — I sold it to so-and-so — try something else”? That client is going to try a new designer/developer.

In my line of work, Intellectual Property rights run something more like this: 1) anything the client creates as content, either through a submitted content document or through a provided third-party Content Management System such as Joomla! or WordPress, belong to the client; 2) any third-party software supplied is bound by its usage agreement (EULA) that the user agrees to when they install the software, and that property belongs to the creator of that software: no one single person or agreement can dissolve that without the expressed permission of the software owner; and 3) any code beyond third-party software that gets my client from blank pixels to a web site that works, through any method I choose, through any style I choose, through any language I choose (such as PHP, MySQL, XHTML, CSS, or more) — and my style of use — are strictly my property, because my mind created it, my mind implemented it.

While it is true that I may use techniques that I have learned from others, the fact remains that I perceived both the problem and its solution through my lens, my style and skills — style and skills that the client doesn’t have.

As an independent designer, I have to be able to point to my work in order to attract clients. I have to be able to reuse and recycle code as necessary, as it would be pretty silly to have only one web site on the entire Internet that has the links styled in the example I gave! While there many different ways of producing this desired effect, it still boils down to the basic lines of code that I present here. Some clients want that look and feel, while others don’t; the point here is that I have to retain the right to use it as I see fit, not some greedy corporation.

Needless to say, we couldn’t come to an agreement (this wasn’t the only reason, but it was primary), and the client has gone on their merry way, looking for some desperate idiot that doesn’t care about his career — or his rights — to code their web site to their specifications. It’s unfortunate, to be sure, but we’re all better off for the choice.

(73.8 — 49 — 24.8)

Posted in General, Local Stuff, Miscellaneous, Rants & Raves, Web Notes | 1 Comment »

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