deep gray sea
privacy, security and accessibility
privacy
I'm not nosy. I'm happy for you to visit this site, but don't want to know all your secrets. You can contact me and tell me useful, interesting, chatty, friendly things and it will please me, but nothing on this site turns on your webcam and watches you sitting there in your Spongebob Squarepants PJs, typing away while you paint your nails. Frost Pink is it this time?
This website does use cookies, which are small text files saved on your computer. These are used for things like noting which silly Amazon.com pot scrubber you saw last so you can see an egg topper next time. If you want to learn more about how and why this is done, all the JavaScript code used on the site is available for you to study and use. Visit the design section to learn more.
security
The Nefarious Computer Scientist Right-To-Work Act of 2002 (NCSRTWA02) was a great success. Now thousands of formerly idle seriously geeky people have found rewarding employment with the expanding businesses of spammers, virus exploit crafters and Iron-Curtain Mafiosi. They would like to share their work with you. If you are sensible, you will politely decline, like when people try to sell you life insurance over the phone at dinner time.
Some of the delivery vehicles for the little packages they lovingly create rely upon web browsers, cookies, and JavaScript. Funny, but much of my personal and professional work also relies upon web browsers, cookies, and JavaScript. This website has a Bit-O-JavaScript on every page, and a couple of cookies too. Should you be worried?
I don't think so. I'm pretty good at this stuff, and wrote it carefully, so that you could have fun and enjoy all the silly features and not fret about them. All the client-side code used on this website is explained in detail in the design pages. You are encouraged to examine and use any of the examples yourself. Feel free to contact me if you have security-related questions about any of the code used on this site.
Finally, as a further sign of our commitment to your security during your visit, we are proud to present the official deep gray sea Security Level. This color-coded indicator is the result of intensive consultation with our sources all over the world. As always, in the interest of full disclosure, it is explained in the design section of the site.
accessibility
An important design requirement of this site was to be accessible to disabled visitors. Some of the implementation details that help make this goal real include:
- "Skip Navigation" links at the top of the page to allow visitors using screen readers to scoot past all the menu stuff if they want to.
- Descriptive alt text for images.
- Titles for links, especially describing when clicking a link will cause a new window to pop up.
- Clean structural XHTML styled using Cascading Style Sheets.
- Text-resizing links on every page.
- Stuff that works with JavaScript generally does something if you have JavaScript turned off, even if it's not quite as much fun.
If you have difficulty using this site, please contact me and let me know, and I'll do my best to help.