Serguei Alleko Blog

It appears that sci-fi shows are popular again!

As every ner… (sorry, person with engineering education) I love science fiction and TV-shows.

Year 2009 had very interesting ones:

Battlestar Galactica has finished with 4th season and a movie. You may hate it for liberal approach (if you’re not liberal of course), but the setting was amazing

Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles was unfortunately cancelled after 2nd season.  Unfortunately it’s typical for the sci-fi shows, apparently not enough people are watching them. In this show Summer Glau has earned permanent position in the pantheon of Nerd Goddesses.

Jess Windon (autor of cult show Firefly) is busy with Dollhouse. It was also cancelled and we’re waiting for the last episode. A little bit boring at the beginning, but has a very interesting finale. And, of course, cameo of Summer Glau!

The Day of the Triffids - mini-series about end of the world in teeth of human-eating plants! Ooh, how I hate Joely Rechardson after her performance in Nip/Tuck! Looks like she’s fully recovered after the mercury poisoning

Of course I can not stop watching Lost. One more season and may be we’ll finally understand what is happening there

Fringe from the same guys is OK, but also it’s not clear what exactly is there. Already 2nd season and still a number of almost non-related cases.

Flashforward has made a very nice start. I just don’t understand why there are so many alcoholics in Hollywood films!

V – they told me it’s a remake of an old show. Interesting, but so full of chicle’s that I think they made it on purpose. For the 100th time a blond FBI-agent and young muscular priest are fighting the whole word. But when the blond is Julietta from Lost, it makes the show worth watching!

I think I didn’t forget anything. I’m really glad there are so many talented people doing these shows for us!

After a sad summer with only occasional “Defying Gravity” episode we’ve again in September. The shows I’ll be following closely:

• LOST Season 6 and last (everybody must watch LOST, no questions, no options)
• Fringe Season 2(1st episode was aired, “This time it’s WAR!!!”, funny show from the creators of LOST)
• Big Bang Theory Season 3 (for all the geek.. sorry engineers) Has everybody seen Sheldon with beard?
• House M.D. Season 6 (Everybody wants to be like House, even in a mental institution!)
• Caprica Season 1 (Pilot was interesting, I really hope they’ll make it in the style of Battlestar Galactica)
• Californication Season 3 (1st and 2nd episodes were already aired, very, very nice)

Those I hope to follow occasionally:

• Lie to Me (like House-2, which is good, nice show to relax)
• Dexter Season 4 (1 and 2nd episodes were already pre-released, looks promising, better than season 3)
• Dollhouse Season 2 (first one looked promising, nice geek show)
• Grey’s Anatomy Season 6 (for the wife, I can’t believe they’re already Season 6!)
• Desperate housewives Season 6 (for the wife, I can’t believe they’re already Season 6!)
• Nip/Tuck Season 6 (for the wife, I can’t believe they’re already Season 6!)
• 30 Rock Season 3 ( nice Comedy about New York, good to watch with Mad Men)
• Mad Men Season 3 (nice Drama about New York, good to watch with 30 Rock)

Hm, I think I’m fully hooked now.

Some time ago I’ve written that webmaster is an obsolete profession. For any website bigger that 5 pages there is no persons who can manage everything – from content to software installation. Even if we’re taking about information website without e-commerce or huge database, there are still several steps, which one needs to follow in order to set information online.

Those are the typical steps in current a simple website management:

Step 1. Content copywriting.

Copywriting means you’re writing marketing BS and know about it Normally managed by marketing people without serious technical knowledge. This is where your ideas are.

Step 2. Content delivery.

This is mostly technological part.

• Hosting with fat connection to the Internet
• Hardware and software, required for the website, for example LAMP.
• Content Management System, software required to implement your texts in a menu-based hyperlink structure with your design
• Configuration of this CMS, like web analytics, forms, email connections, user logins, etc
• This could be done by engineers with knowledge of Internet technologies. Normally managed by IT departments.

I’ve seen in a lot of organizations that stop at with these 2 steps and they have a lot of problem. Marketing people and technical people speak different languages. They have different work agendas. In marketing they’re mostly managers and technical people are mostly makers. Click for a great article about  managers and makers it by Paul Graham

There are a numerous cases when it’s not completely clear who should do semi-marketing, semi-technical tasks, like for example check texts for HTML-compliance or upload images on the web. Linux system administrator could say it’s not his problem, he has installed the CMS and it works perfect. Marketing lady doesn’t quite sure, what “upload” means.

Actually the picture should look like this

Step 2.5 Content Publication

This a very important step, which is not completely technical or marketing. The goal of this step is make sure the text written by marketing becomes web content and ready to join the Internet sea.

• Design – your CMS must have appropriate design
• Menu structure – this is how websites structure the texts – they put them in the menu tree. It should not be very deep, more than 3 layers and people get lost
• HTML-coding. There are 1001 rules on how to set the HTML-tags up. The pages must be viewed normally in major browsers
• SEO-optimization. This part is much more important that people think. If a page is good optimized for SEO, it’s good optimised for the Internet.
• URL – very important that your page has short fixed URL, not the one, which CMS generates and changes from time to time
• links, outgoing and incoming – needed to be checked. Its one of the biggest pains of content publishing. Internet is a sea, and it’s always changing. Keeping your links updated is a complex problem.

What kind of knowledge is required for this step. Obviously a lot of technical background but with a hint of marketing. The person must understand why we’re putting this on the site, not only how. Also he must be punctual, resourceful and stress-resistant. Publishing of 300-pages site can drive you mad.