Site Redesign

so the homepage entries mostly work, and they’re readable in older versions of netscape. but i have to say that the layout is pretty ugly. for some unknown reason, the template has padded out the vertical space. i’m not sure if it’s the stylesheet or something that i’ve put in the html. either way, i’m not going to do anything else till i look at this thing on windows. (so kind of microsoft to give me reasons to procrastinate)

i’m guessing that it will take a while to convert the entire site to the new design, but perhaps i can get at least the main pages listed in the menus on the right done by the end of the month.

the one thing that i’m still unable to figure out is how blogger is deciding what a week is. i can find the settings to tell it what i want it to do, but it is including 9/14 info twice. maybe it’s because i have so few entries? for now, i’m not going to worry about it. just note that it’s happening.

1/24 Journal Update

and now i’ve applied the new template to these entries, using tables rather than layers so that it works on older versions of netscape. still working on the details, but making progress.

Another 1/24 Journal

ok, so after a little over an hour, i redesigned the lists of tens page to use the new design. i also tried dividing the lists into categories. listing them chronologically worked, but wasn’t necessarily the best idea now that there are so many. i hope that this subject-based index will be more useful.

9/24 Journal

it feels like it’s been weeks, but i realize that it’s not even ten days. so what i’ve done is work on a table-based layout of my own that mimics the look that I want.

that, and i organized all my files, well, the paper files anyway; and i wrote a TechNotes entry on Microsoft’s decision to require credit cards from anyone who wants to participate in their Chat.

but now to get on with working on this template so that I can use it throughout the site. i’m so tired of the layout as it is.

Cross-Browser Complications

so i’ve just figured out that this looks like hell on netscape/mac so um, back to rethinking things i guess.

Converting to WordPress

so far, so good, though it did take annoyingly long to get to the archive bit to work and even then i had to do trickery on my side rather than letting it work as it is apparently supposed to. the sftp doodah that they’ve added does make this whole thing a lot smoother, and i think that managing the length of the page will be easier. still things to figure out, and we all know that i’m really just procrastinating because i don’t want to get my life in order. i’m always avoiding my life.

blog versus blogger

so i’ve gotten really tired and annoyed by my site, especially this homepage part. i’m trying this, which may be no better but at least it’s different—and there’s not enough here yet for anything to be broken.

that said, i really hate the word blog; so using blogger does seem like a really stupid choice. we’ll see. not too hard to get rid of it if i can’t make this work.

01/14 Journal

one month to valentine’s day! whatever shall i do with all the flowers and chocolates i’ll receive? yeah, right. ok. back to reality.

not
sleeping through the night really sucks. have i mentioned that before?
at least i slept for three hours before waking up. can’t complain too
much though as it’s given me the chance to find more photographic evidence
that cooki is the devil. clearly this evidence is irrefutable. is it any
wonder i cannot sleep when i know this creature inhabits my mother’s house?

i’m reading what seems like the lamest book ever written. well, not counting
those horrible, thick, late victorian novels by eliot and trollope. gad,
the very thought of it makes me carry on in long, stupid sentences that
really don’t have any true content, but oh, the truth of the indignities
of the horrors of the social uproar, of the trollopes traipsing through
the attics and cellars, oh for the way we were, for the pure who march
down the middle of the street knowing the true heart of kindness gains
the just reward of neverending sorrow and punishment in the upheavals
that humankind heaps upon the, oh dear, merciful Lord, dare i say it,
oh for it was the jest of times, and the wurst of times, for she saw sage
not and yet, heaving upon the ebbing tide of wastrels that lurked upon
the shore, tempests tossed forth by the gerry meandering that left the
country divided and yet singularly unified in the tampering mischief against
which they could hold no course in wide opposition and defense, for the
colours of the night they bleed into the streets, tearing at the hearts
and eyes and very fingers of those who…oh, good lord, how did that happen?

um, i’m reading a friends of ed book. i thought all foe books had a reputation
of being really good, but this one is trying my patience something fierce.
it’s Learn Design with Flash MX (for Absolute Design Beginners). the
premise was to explain design concepts (e.g., how hue and saturuation
work, why shadows are darker where they are darker and lighter where they
are lighter, how the eye flows over a page of text) within the concept
of saying how you’d do these things in Flash MX. ok, sounded like a good
idea. i figured i could kill two birds at once, brushing up on my design
skills while figuring out some of the mysteries of Flash (which i’m to
use for a lot of the interactives i’m building). but…the book is set
up to follow the class sessions of a representative class who encounter
this information. and by that i mean the book is a supposed narrative
of the class sessions these people have:

"Oh!" Zed almost leaped out of his chair.
"You’re drawing cartoon frames! That’s how some comics show action
without showing every single movement. It’s just like watching Lisa
under that strobe light at the theater, too. We knew she got from
one movement to the next, and we knew how she got there, even if we
couldn’t actually see it."

"See how smart you are without that scarf?" I asked.

(Goin 389)

when i picked up the book, i thought that the paragraphs
looked short and choppy, but i trusted the publisher. now i realize that
those short, choppy paragraphs were paragraphs and paragraphs of inane
classroom chatter interspersed between actual content about design and
Flash. even the relevant content takes on this horrible interplay between
teacher and students:

Wes retrieved a toy from his pocket. "Look what
I have," he announced. "The eye of light!"

We all looked at the glass prism he held between his thumb and forefinger.
He moved it around until a rainbow of light shot from the side of
the prism onto the brick wall of the theater.

"Wow!" Zed bent forward to get a better look. Steve ran
his hand through the rainbow of light. [The reader vomited].

"Hard to believe this little prism can capture so much energy,"
Wes stated. "Waves of light are bombarding this glass at a speed
of 186,000 miles per second. The light waves are captured, bent as
they enter the prism, and then bent again as they leave the glass.
The energy is converted into visible color."

"Thanks for bringing in that prism, Wes, that’s the perfect intro
for today’s lesson." I talked as the students passed the pyramid
of light around. [ok, i’m sure i’ve made my point, but this passage
is so absurd, i’m typing it to the end so that someone else has to
experience this schlock with me.] "The discoveries Isaac Newton
made with his studies of prisms and light in the late 1600s formed
the basis of modern physics," I added. "However, color theory
now has its own place within the arts, and that’s what we’ll focus
on today at this theater."

Bonnie shivered. "If I”d known how much science and math played
a part in design. I’m not sure if I would have come to this class."

Steve put his arm around Bonnie, "Aw, don’t let it worry you—I’ll
bet you didn’t know that if you sent those beams of colored light
through another prism, the beams would turn into white light again."

Zed arched his eyebrows. "Don’t let her play that game on you,
Steve. She’s mad about this kind of stuff. Every time we meet to work
on our design, she’s got some book or other about physics and art
with her."

Steve grinned, and Bonnie looked flustered. "Well, don’t we look
silly, out here on the street passing a prism around. When are we
going to see the theater lights?"

"Let’s get in there then!" Lisa grinned. She unlocked the
front door, and we entered the lobby, ready for our adventure with
color.

(Goin 322-23)

dear lord, don’t we look silly indeed? who thought that
this was what a class sounded like? and who thought that this was a good
way to teach design and software? i’m all for getting at alternative learning
styles, and i’m sure that there are folks out there who find this sort
of narrative approach more, well, approachable than the traditional sorts
of pedagogical documentation. but i’m just left wondering how this representation
of classroom instruction, for all its efforts to provide a transcript
of class interaction, has really created a sort of PC classroom where
the students always seem miraculously to have prisms in their pocket at
just the right pedagogical moment and the banter of the classroom devolves
into a transcript where the real trials and errors of teaching are censored
from the picture.

it’s not just that i find the style annoying and the information
in the text hard to ferret out between the supposedly comical classroom
asides and narrative structures. it’s that i find this representation
of the classroom really violates what i know about how we teach, about
how a "real" classroom works, and about what being a student
and teacher in a classroom feels like. on second thought, maybe i would
rather read middlemarch. i’m certainly bored enough by this text
to try sleeping again anyway. it does have that value.

Broken Links

wow. it’s been over three whole hours since i found an excuse
to do this instead of doing something else. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

wrote the report on the fascinating broken links. checked all the pdfs
on the site for the logo, and added
lots of cute graphics to the latest lessons (my favorite is the goose
on the Mother
Goose lesson. i mean, how could you not like a goose? well, actually,
now that i think of it, you could not like a goose. when
my younger brother was three, my grandmother had some geese penned up
behind the barn and when no one was watching, Noel was apparently doing
some animal behavior study. he came running, crying loudly, but wouldn’t
tell us what was wrong. when we finally calmed him down, he tells us,
"goose bite my finger." i guess in these instances, one might
have good reason not to like a goose. but really, a little goose never
hurt anyone.)

hmm, eric has written that he’s reading this. hmm. i fear that he stands
before his computer in the Dwight
D. Eisenhower Statuary Stance (TM) scowling. he’s probably just getting
jealous of rich though. as soon as i return to writing about him, he’ll
be ok.

oops. my officemate just asked what i’m working on "because you’re
typing like a mad woman," she says. um. guess that’s a sign to get
back to work, before she finds out what i’m really working on.