Vancouver's saltiest woman attacked by horses > ‘They were everywhere, I’m so bitter; says woman Klara Woldenga Humour Editor H2 Ridder, local Vancouver resident, has lived in the Kitsilano for over 40 years. She has spent the last 30 of those years running her successful salt lamp store, Sacred Salt. “I’ve been told over and over that I’m just so salty,” said Ridder. “So I thought, ‘Why not surround myself with what Tam?’ I’ve made quite a living selling my stupid salt lamps to stupid idiots.” Ridder’s peaceful, salty existence was interrupted last Wednesday when, around 3 p.m., a large team of horses—brown in colour and hungry in motive—flooded into her small store. “Suddenly, they were everywhere!” said Ridder. “They shoved their way into my store through the windows and through the front door. They even bust in through my Employees Only door, which didn’t make any sense to me since | haven't even hired any horses.” The horses then began licking every salt lamp in the store, absorbing their mineral content while simultaneously freaking everybody out. Customers quickly fled the scene, An interview with the man who designed leaving Ridder to solve the problem herself. However, despite her efforts, the horses refused to budge. “I tried so many ways to get them to leave; I was swearing at them, trying to shove them with my stupid salt broom, but their dumb faces just kept on licking the dumb lamps,” said Ridder. “I thought once they finished the lamps they would leave, but they just started licking me after all the lamps were gone.” Ridder tried talking shit behind their backs by ranting about horses on social media, but they refused to take the hint to leave her alone. “T even blocked all the horses on Facebook and Twitter, but that did nothing. They’re just too smart for me.” Eventually, Ridder got a reply on her Facebook post; a friend suggested that she call a horse whisperer. “My first thought was ‘Who is this stupid person, I don’t remember having any dumb Facebook friends,” said Ridder. “But then I thought it was actually a good idea.” Ridder contacted Jackson Stradtler, local horse guy, and within 10 minutes he was on the scene. “Luckily, I was already in the area,” every college website ever > The beauty, grace, and practicality behind the online school experience Greg Waldock Bitter Student had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Chuck Branksy, founder of web development company Convolution Inc., and designer of every single college website on the entire planet. We arranged to meet in a quiet New Westminster café to talk about his life as one of the most successful (and loathed) developers ever. Greg: Hi, Chuck. Take us through your design philosophy—what drives the website layouts? Chuck: Hey, great question. I really wanted college websites to capture the art and elegance of school bureaucracy. First, we looked at what students want. After all, they are the people we're building this for. G: What do students want the most? C: Stock photos of people in white shirts throwing a Frisbee on the quad. Underneath that, we have a link to the alumni donation page, a picture of volleyball players mid-jump, and exam cancellation alerts from two years ago. The stuff real students care about. G: What about course listings? Tuition fees? Clubs? C: Oh right, those. I don’t know why anybody would care about that kind of thing, but we had to add them. Course listings are behind three drop-down menus with vague names and organized by department. There is no convenient search engine, and course summaries are as brief and unclear as possible. Tuition fees really aren't a priority. People only pay those once a semester, so obviously we don’t need to clearly and openly show the many different expenses colleges tend to have. Clubs are to never, ever be listed, anywhere, under any circumstances. We don’t want to accidentally start a school community. G: How else do you decide what to put on a college website? C: We like to use key phrases students enjoy reading over and over again. “Small classrooms,” “one-on-one instruction,” “active campus life,” and “orientation week volunteer opportunities” are the best ones. Throw any number of them (¥ Ottawa man suffers hypothermia after holding door open for several hours (¥ Entertainment page! (¥ Comics! And more! said Stradtler. “I had just finished shooing a bunch of hungry horses away from a Kitsilano grocery store.” Upon arrival, Stradtler forced his way into the store and quickly got the large animals’ attention. “T yelled ‘Hey! Horses!’ and they listened,” said Stradtler. “They always listen when you say that. They know what they are.” Stradtler then proceeded to use his highly-trained horse skills to J into every single page of the website and you've got yourself a winner. We never go into actual detail, though, like explaining the realistic class sizes for each course, or what kind of activities the campus has. It’s not the website's job to accurately display relevant information—lazy students can hunt it down for themselves. G: What do you do on your downtime? C: When I’m not designing college Photo illustration by Lauren Kelly get them to exit the building by telling them to “Get the hell of the building.” The horses listened, pouring out of Ridder’s store and onto the unsuspecting Kitsilano streets, leaving the store saltless, but still standing. “Stupid goddamn horses,” said Ridder, “Now my windows are broken, and the salt lamps are gone until my next shipment comes in. I guess Pll just go back to arguing on the internet until I get everything fixed.” websites, I skin endangered animals for fur coats and sell ecstasy to high schoolers. It’s so important to have hobbies. At this point, Chuck began to smell strongly of brimstone and sulfur, and cackled deeply as he ripped open a portal to the black Hell from whence he came, leaving behind only the echoing screams of frustrated college applicants and a $50 service fee.