Vanderbilt University today unveiled an iPhone optimized version of its website. If you go to vanderbilt.edu on an iPhone or Touch, it will automatically reroute you to vanderbilt.edu/iphone/.

And what a handsome page it is. The University Web Communications team has done an excellent job. It’s not your usual blah gray or blue mobile site. While maintaining the minimalist style best suited to an iPhone, it manages to look very Vanderbilt — black with touches of gold and dark red.

As well as the home page and admissions, the top layers of the news, calendar, athletics, and several other sections have been optimized, and I expect more will come soon. It’s a great start and a very pleasant surprise.

Vanderbilt has three telephone exchanges which consistently resolve to 5 digit extensions within campus. Numbers that begin with 322- have an extension that starts with 2-; 343- begins as 3-; and 936- begins as 6-. Recently I was asked to display phone numbers from a database where the numbers were entered inconsistently. To do this, I leaned on the PHP string token function — strtok.

For those who might need it or are learning how to use strtok, here are the gory details.

// Start phone number expansion
if ($row['telephone'] != "") {
$phone = $row['telephone'];
$phonestart = strtok($phone, "-");
switch ($phonestart) {
case '2':
$phone = '32' . $phone;
$phonestart = strtok($phone, "-");
break;
case '3':
$phone = '34' . $phone;
$phonestart = strtok($phone, "-");
break;
case '6':
$phone = '93' . $phone;
$phonestart = strtok($phone, "-");
break;
default:
break;
}
if ($phonestart != '615') {
$phone = '615-' . $phone;
}
echo $phone;
}
// End phone number expansion

Do you have certain sites you search routinely? For me, it’s php.net, mysql.com, and Vanderbilt (as well as the usual suspects like Wikipedia and Google Images). If you’re using Firefox or Opera, here’s an easy way to speed that up.

When you’re on a website you search frequently, right click in the search box, give it a name (e.g. “php.net”) and, more importantly, enter a keyword (e.g. “php”). This adds it to your bookmarks, but with a twist.

The next time you want to search the site, all you have to do is type your keyword followed by your search terms in the browser address box at the top. You bypass Google and the site’s home page. So, if I wanted to search for the PHP strtok function, I’d just type “php strtok” and go right to the page.

[Hat tip to Patrick Norton and Tekzilla Daily.]

What started my blogging about cancer is a small website I posted recently for the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. It’s just a few pages — no big investment in time either to post or to read — but it’s packed with great information. Specifically, it’s on Cancer and Women, with a focus on prevention.

Given my family, the lung cancer page in particular caught my attention. I’ve never smoked a day in my life, but for years I’ve had this nagging sense that I’m more susceptible to lung cancer than most. That’s because my maternal grandmother, who never smoked a day in her life, died of lung cancer, and now my mother, who never smoked a day in her life, has COPD (or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). As for me, I’ve always been, as my mother puts it, “a bit chesty.” In other words, I’m inclined towards things like asthma and bronchitis.

But that lung cancer seems more likely for me than say breast cancer has always been just a gut feeling. I’d never read anything to indicate that lung cancer might be hereditary — until I posted this site. And there, in a few short sentences, it says, more or less, that researchers have the same feeling I do. Of course they say it in a much more scientific way. “Researchers are finding that lung cancer in women is biologically different from lung cancer in men, according to the American Society of Clinical Oncology. There may be genetic and biologic differences that affect lung cancer development.”

Having said that, I don’t know what to do about it. Early detection of lung cancer is rare. I get mammograms routinely and don’t mind having colonoscopies either (though my family has no history of either breast or colon cancer). I’d be happy to be screened for lung cancer if there were as easy a way to do this. But there isn’t. I just hope some of the amazing researchers I’m so fortunate to work with discover something. And maybe I can help them by finding a clinical trial on lung cancer prevention to participate in.

The bottom line is I’m happy to help in whatever way possible to eradicate this horrible disease. And right now, one easy thing I can do is to spread the word. I can speak up by blogging. So I commend to you VICC’s Cancer & Women site.

“I’m one of the lucky ones.”

That’s how survivor Dwight Lewis begins his very moving recent column in the Tennessean. He wrote it because Brian Todd of the Metro Health Department reports that, “in spite of living in the information age, cancer is still a fearful, stigmatized disease in communities of color, and people simply don’t talk about it.”

I’m one of the lucky ones too — but for very different reasons. Not only have I never had cancer, I’m less likely to get it. And if I do, I’m more likely to catch it early.

The reason is quite simple. I’m informed. And once I understand what can be done, I’m more likely to do it.

In my case, I’m surrounded by fabulous information. That’s because I’m the web coordinator for the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. But it’s almost as easy for others to get access to this information, and I’m going to make it even easier by doing a series of tips in this blog.

Todd reports that people aren’t talking about it. While this is more of a problem in communities of color, death and cancer still aren’t exactly popular subjects in my non-work circles.

So, it’s time to get talking about cancer. For now, let me suggest you read Lewis’ piece: Barriers to progress against cancer begin with silence.

I started this blog for a rather peculiar set of reasons. They aren’t worth belaboring, except to mention the sense of adventure it gives me. The reality of blogging seems to me quite different from most people’s preconceptions, including my own.

It’s hard to explain, but somehow it makes me feel more alive. It reminds me of when I took a photography class.  All of a sudden I really saw things around me — in a way I never had before. And so it is with blogging. Somehow I engage a bit more fully than I otherwise would.

There’s one ground rule, though. That’s that I have to let go of perfectionism. It’s quite an exercise for me. I have to remind myself of it repeatedly while keyboarding. But I know that if I start laying my perfectionist standards on this blog, it will grind to a halt. I simply don’t have time. And I know this is all very good for me.

Good enough is a glorious thing.

Forget PowerPoint.  And Keynote too.

Friday I’ll be doing a presentation using my favorite simple, but elegant, presentation application. It’s Eric Meyer’s Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System (AKA S5). I happened across it a few years ago and have used it ever since.

What I love about S5 is that it’s mostly one HTML file which tidily holds all of your links, graphics, etc. If you’re going to be showing webby things, why not use a webby tool? Best of all its look-and-feel is powered by CSS, so customizing it is a breeze for those of us who design web pages day in and day out.

For those who don’t and work for Vanderbilt Medical Center, here’s a zip file to download and a quick demo. To go through the demo, just hit the space bar or arrow keys a few times.

Following in the footsteps of Kevin Clarke’s blog, here is this blog’s mission haiku.

Words twine in hypertext,
Peeking through cascading code.
SELECT * joy LIMIT null;

Perhaps suffering sounds off-topic for a blog on happiness. While it’s certainly not my focus, I believe that a fundamental part of true happiness is having looked suffering squarely in the eye and learned from it. If you’re like me, suffering is going to have to beat you over the head a few times before you listen up. Of course even when you have learned, it’s no guarantee you won’t suffer again. But the astonishing thing is if you really have learned from it, you’ll happen into moments of grace — or happiness if you will.

What sent me down this track was an unusual New York Times book review: Heartbreaking Work — described in its newsfeed as, “Essays on the isolation, pain and heroics that come with ministering to loved ones.” So much in it rings true to me. I share the fury of the father about “New Age pests, overdosed on media mythology.” Far too often I hear those suffering with cancer told it’s their own fault — that if they get a good attitude, they’ll get well — or other mushy-minded, selfish nonsense. I echo to Virginia Woolf’s floodgates of “extreme reality” loosened by the death of a child, a bitter divorce, the debilitating illness of a loved one, or the many other vicissitudes of life.

However, what really got me blogging was that despite the use of the word “ministering” in its description, the article never touched on religion. Not that I think any religion can solve extreme reality. But shouldn’t they be there to help? Isn’t that the heart of any religion? In the end, don’t they all speak to the question “Why?” In my experience, the urgency of this question ratchets up the more extreme the reality.

But as the author notes, “Our society would rather not focus on this area of experience and makes little provision for it.” If religion is even considered, it’s probably quickly dismissed — and probably with good cause, since so many churches have failed so many so miserably.

That said, the failure of organized religion isn’t universal. After maybe a decade of poor ministry, my church got its act together and now strives valiantly to provide much-needed pastoral care. It’s at the heart of the duties of our professional ministers, and extends beyond them into many other forms of ministry. Are we rare? I don’t know, but I fear our healthy ministry is more rare than our previous unhealthy one — and articles like this add credence to my concern.

Where is organized religion for those lost in “‘a black hole of time and energy,’ a ‘Black Balloon,’ ‘our own little prison,’ ‘Planet Autism’”? What does it mean that there isn’t there any mention of it in this context? And in the final analysis — why?

“The greatest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.”
– George Bernard Shaw

This morning my church sponsored a most helpful “Getting the Word Out” workshop for church leaders (board members, committee chairs, staff, etc.). Based on introductory comments, here is a “Cheat Sheet” of things to consider when you want to communicate your church event.

• Remember the number seven. If you want the majority of your congregation to hear about your event, you’re going to need to publicize it seven times. Saying it once doesn’t even begin to get the word out.
• Cover the basics. It seems obvious, but you’d be amazed how easy it is to forget some of these, especially if you’re in a hurry.
  • Who?
  • What?
  • When?
  • Where?
  • Why?
  • How?
• Be clear about your audiences. Possibilities include:
  • Current congregation members
  • Newcomers
  • Prospective members
  • Visitors
  • The larger community
  • The media
  • The denomination
• Pick your communication methods wisely. Keep in mind your audiences, your message and that number seven. These will affect which methods are best. At my church, the primary possibilities are:
  • The newsletter
  • The church website, particularly the announcement blog
  • The weekly email
  • The order of service
  • An announcement from the pulpit
  • A press release
  • The bulletin boards
• Remember: effective communication is not simple. In fact the technology I adore is making it ever more complicated, or so it seems. What, I wonder, would George Bernard Shaw, make of Web 2.0?