Rachel's World

Final Project

2005-12-15T03:19:00.000-08:00

So, I posted my assignment in the class wiki, but just to be sure, I thought I'd put it here as well. So, if you feel like learning about Ease, click here.

Another Great Day (Read Sarcasticly)

2005-12-03T20:50:00.000-08:00

Well, I can't say this has been the best semester for me. Besides feeling sick most of the time, and being behind in almost all my classes, bad things just seem to keep happening to me. My latest joy? A broken mount and strut on my neon. That means $525 taken from my checking account. So, I'm 24 years old with $17 to my name. Oh, and a car that will be ready next Thursday. At least there's not an important holiday coming up where I will be expected to buy gifts for all my loved ones. That would suck. Anyway, I haven't not had a car since I was 15 and bought a ford festiva for $250. I forgot how annoying it is to rely on others for rides. Almost as annoying as walking in cold weather and snow for 30 mintues just to get milk to make mac and cheese. Almost. So, I'm excited for this semester to be over. My plans: Sleep for a week, work for a week, visit Steph in California for a week, and of course, going to Green Bay for the Packers vs. Seahawks game on January 1st. Section 113, ROW 4!!! Added bonus-the tickets were free and staying with friends will provide free food and lodging. I'm loving my schedule and classes for next semseter, too (taking an editing class with Dilger) and I already have a job after I graduate, so I really just have to make it through this semester alive and I'll be okay. Okay, I'm done venting now. I'm going to go watch a movie with some friends, where I'll fall asleep after the first 10 minutes.

New Media

2005-11-30T06:59:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a while since I've posted. I missed class on Monday because of car problems, so I may be a little behind everyone, but I find the topic of "new media" to be interesting. As a soon-to-be journalist, I found the Weblog article to be especially interesting. I agree with the article's overall point that blogging is not journalism.

"It is unrealistic to apply the standards of journalism to bloggers who rarely have the time or resources to actually report the news."

It was good to hear that bloggers won't be taking all the journalism jobs, but it was also something new for me to think about how blogging is effecting journalism. I agree that most bloggers don't have the resources to report news adequately, but it was interesting to explore the impact they are having and think about how things may develop further in the future. It was weird to think about staying in the journalism field for fifty years and the changes I would have to go through to adapt to developing technology and media.

The other articles were interesting as well, just not as personal. It was interesting to see how many components of "new" media have been around for quite a while.

Assignment #1-Standards

2005-11-18T04:43:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally finished assignment #1. CLICK HERE if you would like to see my thoughts on standards. I find it ironic that after spending so much time reading about standards and talking about how great they are, I'm not even sure if I followed them in making my site. I couldn't get the validator thing to work. But anyway, I think I'm done. As for assignment #2, I think I would like to explore the topic of "Ease" and how it relates to how web sites are created and used. People always want to find the easiest way to do something and if it's not easy, they just move on. I think ease goes with several of the topics we have already covered, but I would like to explore it a bit more. Anyway, I am SO ready for break.

Quesenbery vs. Nielsen

2005-11-15T20:09:00.000-08:00

There are definately differences in the definitions Quesenbery and Nielsen use for usability. Nielsen uses a more philisophical definition, saying there are two main parts of usability-a quality assurance methodology and a belief system that aims to ensure human mastery of the constructed environment. Quensenbery, on the other hand, breaks usability into five parts-effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant, and easy to learn-where all these together help guide creators to the goal of usable products. Though both of the definitions are useful in helping me understand usability and its importance, I appreciated the Quesenbery definition and article more. The Nielsen article got me thinking about why usability was so important and why it's needed to ensure user rights, but Quensenbery was more helpful because it gave a definition of usabilty that showed me how to check for usability. It seemed much more straight-forward to me and was more useful. As for what technologies we can think about in terms of usability, I think pretty much everything is up for grabs. It seems that everything can always be done better or easier.

Usability

2005-11-14T07:04:00.000-08:00

This week's readings on usability were interesting and easy to read so I enjoyed them. The Quesenbery article helped me understand what elements are involved in usability (effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant, and easy to learn) and ways to check and see if they are used well. I think it made a good point about how you should just see how things are being used to see if they are functioning well or if people are having problems or see an easier way of doing something. The Nielsen article was interesting as well and helped me tie usability into other topics we've covered like interfaces, simplicity, and design. While it talked about whether usability was empiricism or ideology, the main point I got out of it was that usability testing is incrediblly valuable. It helps to see if an idea works in the real world and will be a success, and it helps ensure human rights. I never thought about things like people being superior to technology, empowerment, simplicity, and respect of time to be human rights, but I definately see how they are part of usuability and will make things more effective. It's true that there's always another site to visit if the one you're on is annoying or dificult. The larger Quesenbery article went much more in debt on the topic. It explains how the meaning of usability is much more than "easy to use" and goes into detail on the 5 E's of usability mentioned above. It also goes on to explain how to find the balance between the 5 E's and incorporate them all into an effective website. This article made me realize how much work goes into making sure a web-site is "user-friendly" and deals with the 5 E's. It sounded pretty simple in the beginning but I had no idea how much planning, testing, and evaluating were used for it. I can see how it's a very important area though.

Design Thoughts

2005-11-09T07:06:00.000-08:00

Well, the readings on design were refreshing because, unlike everything else we've read, I already knew alot of the information. Using Text Organizers was a good article that reminded me you don't always need to find photos or clip art to make things look nicer, you can just do cool things with text. The weird fake articles within the article were interesting as well. The Web Design from Scratch article was pretty basic as well. I thought it made a good point that when you're designing, you need a better goal than "I want my webpage to look neat" because you never really know when you're done with it then. The rest of the article seemed like things we have already talked about when covering other topics like accesibility and interface-they stress that you have to design a web page in a way that will be most beneficial to the way actual people use the web. Nielsen's article was also pretty basic stuff about the differences between print design and web design. It talks about dimensionality, nativagation, response time, resolution, and canvas size and how print designs have the upper hand in this area but I agree with the article that even though that's true, the web is still more popular because it's more interactive. I found this article a bit depressing though, especially while reading that all the benefits of getting an actual newspaper will be gone in about 10 years when pages download faster than you can turn a page to a newspaper (I think that's already happened), screen resolution sharpens, and we have huge screens the size of a newspaper spread (which seems a little too large to really be practical-especially with the growing popularity of laptops). As a journalism major, it's sad to see declines in the amount of actual papers printed-I know you have to change with the times and online newspapers are very popular and cheaper, but there's just something about an actual newspaper that I love. And as a future journalist, I would feel much "cooler" if I saw an article I wrote in actual print instead of online. Everyone can write online these days-it takes the specialness out of it. Anyway, I'm rambling-but I think the article did a good job of pointing out that designing a web page is completely different than designing a newspaper and if you don't use the right design, your publication isn't going to be very effective. The Web Style Guide had alot to say on design but it was all pretty much review. I also noticed how in it, design was tied to pretty much every other topic we have covered in our class. As far as the WIU Library search thingy, I'm not sure what the design problems are. I think it's weird that you can check a category and then it atomatically checks things in the individual resources section. It's also annoying that you can't just type in a keyword at the top and then it automatically searches everything, you have to pick out specific databases. I know I personally don't care what database I get it from, I just want the information. Anyway, maybe we'll talk about that more in class today so I may have more comments later.

Assignment #1 Outline

2005-11-06T19:08:00.000-08:00

Well, it's 7pm Sunday night. I'm still at home because my friend who was supposed to drive me back to school this morning decided we would just go back Monday morning in time for our 8am classes. Besides having to get up at 5:30am to get back in time, that also means I don't have all the info I need to finish my rough draft for Eng480. I haven't started making my website yet anyway, but a disk at school has most of the info I plan to put into my final web-page. I did bring my USB drive home and it has a more detailed outline of what I'm doing than my abstract did. So, I'm going to just post that here and hope it works for now. The outline doesn't include the links that will be on my website or even my complete thoughts, but I already developed them somewhere and am too frustrated to do it again. But this is a general layout off how my site is going to look-it's going to be pretty basic. So, please feel free to give me any advice at all-or tell me if I'm doing this completely wrong-or if you know any articles that would fit well with what I'm doing (I have several sites and articles already, but there's so much out there, I feel like I could easily be missing the perfect article on standards). Well, that's it for now-my parents live in the ice-age, where the internet is dial-up and uses their only phone line so every second they're yelling at me to sign-off. Believe me, I'm not at all dissapointed at not spending Thanksgiving with them this year. Read on about standards:

Outline

Explain what I am researching and why-my blog abstract says, “I want to research standards because it's such a broad topic and I would like to explore a little more about how they apply to technology like the Internet. I especially want to see how standards help a community run efficiently and then explore how those standards are developed and if standards for the Internet could be formulated in the same ways standards for "real-life" things are developed.” – So make that better and just have a short intro before going into giving information.

1) What are standards in general and how are they simular to/different then web standards?
a. first give the definition of standards and then give the specific definition I’m using in my research, dealing with standards for making a web-page
b. List a few other definitions of standards, add a link to goolge definitions, link to the wiki, link to another site on computer standards

2) Is it possible to make universal standards for something as large as the Internet?
a.A paragraph about my own thoughts
b. Links to 2 articles that imply yes, and 2 that lean towards no

3) How strict should enforcing standards be? How do you balance personal freedoms and creativey in creating websites with enforcing standards that make the site accesbile to everyone?
a.paragraph of my own thoughts-standards of some sort are needed for the internet to function at all-some standards we naturally follow, without even realizing they are standards-give examples of how standards make things more accesable
b. links to 1 or 2 articles supporting fairly strict enforcement
c. explain how some leanancy is needed in some areas-give link to articles with examples

4) How do community standards benefit that community? How would universal standards for the web benefit the internet community?
a. Give “real-world” examples about how standards in communities help them function the best- just a paragraph of examples and/or links to examples or articles
b. Parrallel how universal standards for the web benefit that community and include artcile about how standards are needed for an effective internet community

5) What are the drawbacks of enforcing standards universally?
a. Acknlowledge that though I believe standards are nessasary and should be enforced, I see problems both with the who and how of enforcing and people’s concerns with personal freedoms.-maybe mention or re-link #2 links and additional.
b. List some problems or drawbacks concerning standards

6) Conclusion
-even though there are problems with universal web-standards, I think that if they were followed by everyone, the internet would be a more productive and effective place-it can be a standard to have open source type stuff going on-explain how if standards are too controlling are strict, they will become ineffective, but general standards that exist to make the web better for the community as a whole just makes sense. – list additional links about standards that didn’t fit neatly in a specific section

Barthes Essay

2005-11-01T20:50:00.000-08:00

Well, the article entitled Rhetoric of the Image by Barthes was long but interesting. I was wondering how old it was. Anyone know? It also made me stretch my vocabulary-alot of big and complicated words. But it made me think about things in a way I haven't before. I've never thought about how meaning gets into an image-much less that they have linguistic messages, denotations, and connotations. It all makes sense, I've just never thought about it before.

We always here the saying "A picture is worth a thousand words", so I thought it was interesting when the article talked about how we are very much a civilization of writing-that we use images-but we almost always use words to bring meaning to those images (title/caption/article etc.). I noticed how true it was that the linguistic message serves as an anchorage to how we feel about an image. An example from my own life is some pictures my friend Steph just sent me-first I got the hard copies in the mail-then she emailed me some she had edited and added text to. When I got the photos in the mail, I thought they were okay, but the same images my friend sent me seemed so much better because she had stamped text like "Friends Forever" or "Timeless Fun in the Sun" on them. The photos with text seem so much more meaningful and sentimental, even though they are the same images as the originals.

Anyway, I found the comments about the difference between a drawing and a photograph a little confusing. How exactly does a drawing display its coding? And how is it so much different than a photo? I'm not talking about a little kid's drawing, but real artists can draw pictures that look just like photographs. So, how is the denotation of the drawing less pure than that of a photograph? Like the article says, a photo can be taken from different angles and distances, but a picture can be drawn from those same angles and distances. Maybe I missed the point of that section, but it just didn't make sense to me.

I thought the part of the article about how meanings of an image are seen through a cultural code (different lexicons) was pretty interesting and very true. For instance, the ad that Barthes mentions throughout the article is supposed to make you feel a certain way, but my grandma had a mesh bag just like the one in the picture that she would use to shop with and things were always falling through the holes and I would have to pick them up and hold them-so instead of feeling the Italianicity of the picture, I just felt annoyance as I envisioned the ingredients falling through the bag.

Well, that's all my main thoughts on the Barthes article. It was tough to read but I think it does a good job of analysing the Panzani ad and showing that there is a lot more to images than you may at first think.

Images Readings

2005-10-30T19:47:00.000-08:00

Well, I was unable to get to Simpkins in time to get the Barthes article for this week's Eng480 readings, so I won't be able to comment about those right now. I did read the Web Style Guide and poked around with Flickr stuff. I love photos and whenever I get film developed, I always get a CD so I can email my friends pictures, so Flickr sounds interesting, but I didn't get too into it because I can see myself spending alot of unessasary time with it. I don't do much with other images or graphics though, so I'm sure this is going to be a big learning week for me. It's sounds a bit complicated with 8-bit screens and pixels. And I never really knew there was a difference between JPEG and GIF files. Anyway, I don't have much else to comment on now, but I probablly will after I get the main article we're supposed to read.

Funny Stuff

2005-10-26T01:04:00.000-07:00

Okay, so maybe I'm just really tired, but I thought this T-day E-card was hilarious. Thought I'd spread the joy. Speakers on helps. Props to Bree for sending it to me.

Interface Readings

2005-10-25T21:29:00.000-07:00

Our newest topic in Eng480 is interface. Basically, interface is a point where things connect (Interface, User Interface). In class and in the readings, we're focusing on how people connect to technology, specifically computers.

Well, the Anti-Mac Interface article certainly was a doozey. I'm not sure if I was just really tired or if it is really boring, but I had trouble keeping up with it. I think it makes excellent points about how computer interfaces haven't really changed, and I understand we might be missing out on opportunities to do things a better way, but the way things are going now seems pretty easy and well-run to me. It talked about how the new generation (people my age I guess) will be taught to use computers to do office work more than the traditional work in a real office, and how things like folders and desktops and trash cans won't be nessasary or relevant to the work we do. Which is true-when I hear the words desktop, folders, and sometimes even trash can or recycle bin, I think of aspects of my computer-not things in my room.

Just the other day, my roomie told me she had a paper she wanted me to proofread and it was on my desktop. I assumed she had saved the paper to my computer, but it turned out she had seriously printed out the paper and put it on my desk. This lead to a heated discussion on whether or not people still call the top of a desk a desktop, or if it's now just a term for the stuff you see on your computer screen. I know I never call the top of my desk a desktop-but anyway, my point is that maybe the article is right in saying the old school office terms and forms aren't relavent to the new generation, but I think the old terms have just taken on new meanings and I think they work pretty well. Sometimes I have trouble thinking outside the box, but I can't really imagine an easier or better way to organize a computer-I know how to find things through folders and the desktop and the menu. It seems natural and I think I would have a hard time adjusting to new interfaces.

The article talked about how stability in interfaces isn't really nessasary once people have a general idea of how things work-that stability is boring and interfaces should be changed often to keep people's interest. I can see the point, but I think I disagree with it. I love stability-and it helps me get things done in a more comfortable way, if not an exciting way. If I left my computer and came back and saw that someone had moved all my desktop items, that my folders had been saved on different drives, and all my favorite websites had rearranged their formats and tabs, I would definately NOT be excited. Yes, I could easily figure out where everything was and how it worked, but I don't think I would like it-I guess I don't really understand the benefits of "shared control in user interfaces". I like having control of my interfaces-I guess I'm just wondering-what would some of the benefits be of having other people change them without my knowledge or consent?

Anyway, I kind of feel like I'm rambling about this article, but I guess I'm just trying to make sense of it. We were asked if the article is relevant for today and I don't really know the answer to that. I can see where computer interfaces haven't really changed a great deal, but I think some of the problems from interfaces have been patched up-for example, it talks about how you used to have to empty the entire trash can to get rid of one program, but now you can go in the trash can and delete specific items. It talks about all these problems that are caused because there's not enough space on floppy disks, but with USB drives that's not really a problem anymore. A lot of the problems associated with using old interfaces listed in the article don't really seem to be problems to me-at least not problems that effect me in my personal computer-using life.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on interface for now.

More Creative Commons Comments

2005-10-19T09:03:00.000-07:00

After talking about copyright laws in class and thinking about it some more, I think Dvorak is probablly correct in saying Creative Commons doesn't really have any power. However, I'm not sure it's completely useless like he says. I think it's a good way for people to say, "Yes, I know this is my stuff and I automatically own the rights, but I'm going to put it out in the public and give you the freedom to do whatever you want with it." Maybe CC isn't the best system for people who are hard core about copyrighting their stuff and don't want anyone using it in any way, but for people who believe in open source, it's a good way to go. Also, like someone mentioned in class, alot of people (like me) know next to nothing about copyright laws and aren't sure what they can legally do, so it's just convenient to have something on a site that says, this is what you can do.

So, I think CC is a cool idea, but I'm not sure if it will really catch on because it really is an open source idea and I'm not sure our capitalistic society likes open source. The introduction to the McLeod article we had to read for class talks about how our society has only benefited from open source type stuff, but at the same time it points out ways that both business and individuals are trying to keep their stuff to themselves because they want to make all the profit from it and don't want others to profit. I like the example of the VCR that it uses to show that something that was once thought would end the movie business has helped it so much. Even though the article is arguing that freedom of expression requires less rigid copyright laws, I don't see big money-makers backing down. It's just not the way our world works. Anyway, I only had time to read the introduction and the beggining of Chap. 6, but I'll probablly have more thoughts on McLeod by Friday.

ENG 480 IP Readings

2005-10-16T18:50:00.000-07:00

Let me just start by saying I love the Creative Commons comic strips (http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/comics1, and http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/how1). I thought it was a very clever way of sharing the information and keeping readers interested. They were very readable and made the whole process of copywriting online works seem so simple. It seriously took my less than a minute to go to the Creative Commons site and get a license for my blog. It was almost too easy. So much so that I'm afraid I did it wrong or missed something. But hopefully I did it correctly and it's just an example of how easy technology is making things these days. I always thought you had to pay something to get something copyrighted. Does anyone know if copyrighting is free all the time or just for the Internet? Like if I wrote a book, would the copyright come free? Just wondering.

So, after reading about Creative Commons I thought it was a pretty cool system, even though I know nothing about copyright law or anything like that. I took a few seconds to add a CC tag to my blog and moved on. When I read our last assigned article by Dvorak I began to question though and even thought about removing the tag in case it was worthless and showed my ignorance about copyrighting. I decided to wait until we discussed it in class though to see what people are thinking about this. Dvorak was very sarcastic in his article, which I enjoy, and seemed to know what he was talking about. Is creative commons really needed? Even if it's not, I think it's a convenient way for people to express to others how they would like their content to be used and spread. Or maybe it's all nonsense like Dvorak states.

I found the Open Source site interesting as well, though not quite so entertaining. I did find a few dorky lines like:
"Developers call their anti-restrictive use of copyright copyleft."
I feel like these smart people should be able to come up with something more clever. Anyway, I think the open source stuff can be connected with the networking stuff we were talking about last week, in that it's an example of how programs/software/hardware can be improved by getting feedback from the communities that use them. I thought the article made good points on the way the acedemic research model has both simular and different aspects of the open source model and about how journals should be published electronically to save money and make them easier to use in research. Everyone's using the internet to research these days anyway so besides being cheaper and more accessable, it's just more convenient. I also could relate to the discussion about how composition classes are simular to the open source method. In my experience, writing classes where we use peer editing and the multi-draft process are the ones where I write my best papers. They're also the ones that I work hardest in though and get more nervous about. For some reason it's tougher to write for my peers and for many people than for just one person who grades it. Even though it's more work and I worry about it more, I have to admit that feedback and input from peers does have a positive effect on my writing, which is the whole point. I was very familiar with the "assembly line" projects the article talks about that groups do. I agree that it keeps each member of the group from fully knowing all the information, but with schedule and personality conflicts, it's almost always the easiest way to go. I thought it was cool that our own Prof. Dilger was mentioned in the article and I see alot of ways he has implemented open source stuff into our Eng480 class, including the class wiki, our blogs, and our first assignment. I'm really not used to the open-source method in classes so it's taking me awhile to adjust, but through these articles I can see how it could lead to a greater learning experience.

Anyway, those are my initial thoughts on the readings for the week.

Welcome Olivia!

2005-10-16T18:33:00.000-07:00

So, this was my first non-wedding weekend in a while and I was looking forward to catching up on sleep and homework. Fate had other plans though because my friends Tim and Jesse had their baby a few weeks early. She's a cute little thing named Olivia. I've never seen Tim so giddy. She was born Friday night around nine and I visted them Saturday. I also called a bunch of people for them to spread the good news. They all came home today and Jesse's mom in flying in from New Mexico to help out for a while. Here's the first family photo that includes Olivia. Congrats Tim and Jesse!

Update on My Standards Abstract

2005-10-16T18:25:00.000-07:00

So, after reviewing it a little more and getting some input from my Prof., I decided to focus on answering less questions than I was originally looking into about standards. I think I will focus on the following:

1) What are standards in general and how are they simular to/different then web standards?

2) Is it possible to make universal standards for something as large as the Internet?

3) How strict should enforcing standards be? How do you balance personal freedoms and creativey in creating websites with enforcing standards that make the site assesbile to everyone

4) How do community standards benefit that community? How would universal standards for the web benefit the internet community?

5) What are the drawbacks of enforcing standards universally?

This is a smaller focus, so it will probablly be more thorough. Does this look like a more focused approach than my original abstract? Is there an interesting area of standards that I'm missing out on completely? Any comments or suggestions are appreciated.

My Abstract on Standards Research

2005-10-13T15:11:00.000-07:00

I want to research standards because it's such a broad topic and I would like to explore a little more about how they apply to technology like the Internet. I especially want to see how standards help a community run efficiently and then explore how those standards are developed and if standards for the Internet could be formulated in the same ways standards for "real-life" things are developed. There are several questions I'll hopefully look at and explore in my research:

1) What are standards in general and how are they simular to/different then web standards?

2) Is it possible to make universal standards for something as large as the Internet?

3) How strict should enforcing standards be? How do you balance personal freedoms and creativey in creating websites with enforcing standards that make the site assesbile to everyone?

4) Who developes standards?

5) Who enforces standards?

6) How do community standards benefit that community?

7) How would universal standards for the web benefit the internet community?

8) What are the drawbacks of enforcing standards universally?

9) How have web standards developed thus far?

10) Would universal standards make the internet a better, more efficient community?

I'll hopefully answer these questions with my research and maybe even add to them as I begin to work with information. I would appreciate any comments or suggestions on my research idea.

Network Thoughts

2005-10-10T09:16:00.000-07:00

The network readings for English 480 were pretty basic. I thought the Does Internet =Web article was interesting because I have never made the distinction between the internet and the web. Sometimes it's still hard for me to tell the difference between content features and functionality features because they seem the same to me, but I guess that's the point-that they work together well.

I opened a Digg account but didn't have much time to dig. I did enjoy the movie link though, and was surprised at how some of the "stories" had collected clips and trailers from movies, which I always enjoy watching before heading to the theatre and deciding how best to use my movie money. Instead of surfing through several websites to learn about movies, I could just open one link in Digg and get all the info I want about a movie. Pretty cool. I'm sure Digg has alot more to offer, too.

Anyway, I thought the Wikipedia stuff about social network conflicted a bit with the Nardi and O'Day article. The article talked about how only the people in an ecology can understand the technology in that environment and how we all need to work together to make technology that works for a diverse group of people but that everyone in a certain environment can use and understand. Then the social network stuff talks about how a genuine social network is limited to 150 people. So, how does this apply to something as big and universal as making web standards? That's certainly a form of technology that is used by many people, so if the Nardi article is right, everyone who uses the technology of the internet should colaborate to make standards. However, if an effective community can only consist of 150, how can the whole internet community work together efficiently? It just makes me wonder if it's impossible for effective, universal standards to be created for something as big as the internet. Or maybe internet users aren't really an ecology because it's not really a local environment? I'm not sure-any thoughts on the subject?

Another Wedding Weekend

2005-10-09T22:20:00.000-07:00

So my weekend was full of wedding activities as a videographer and personal attendant to the bride. I've been looking forward to the wedding for months because the bride and groom are two of my best friends and I'm so happy that they're together-but it was an exhausting weekend. First of all, I was just getting over the flu, so I wasn't planning on drinking or having too much fun, but I barely got to sleep. Friday night was the rehersal dinner-and we had to decorate the reception place and decorate some things outside (it was an outdoor wedding). Then, I made the mistake of telling Megan I would take care of her powerpoint of photos(I didn't realize she hadn't done anything with it) so I spent the rest of the night (until 4am) scanning 80 pictures she had picked out and timing them to three of their favorite songs. The file was so huge and the computer kept pausing forever-it was a huge pain. But anyway, I got 2.5 hours of sleep on a lumpy couch and then went to the hairdressers with all the bridesmaids-I was in charge of donuts and drinks. The wedding didn't start until 5pm, but it seemed like we barely got stuff ready in time. The wedding was beautiful (only a bit cold) and the reception was alot of fun-I got really tired during one point, but woke up again when I had to film some of the dancing. After cleaning up the hall, I got back home at 3am, for another relaxing night on the couch-I got up at 7 to go to the gift-opening and breakfast, then took gifts to Meg and Zach's new house, and then drove them to O'hare to catch their 6pm flight. I got back to Macomb at 9pm today, and I have a Media Law midterm tomorrow at 8am that I need to study for-especially because I missed the review days because of the flu. I also need to get some sleep eventually, but that may have to wait for a day or two. I was going to write my abstract for Eng480, but I'm trying to decide between a few terms and I may wait until later in the week, when my brain is working more effectively. So that's it for now.

Playing in the Sandbox

2005-09-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

So, for Eng480, I had already registered for a Wiki account and today I tried to "play" in the sandbox a little. Just so you know, Google defines play as "participating in games or sport", or to "amuse oneself in a way characteristic of children". I wasn't really amused as I tried to make sense of the class Wiki. I know we're going to be learning more about it and will learn to appreciate all it has to offer, but right now I feel like it's pretty confusing and a little pointless. Hopefully, we will be able to mess around with it in class and be shown exactly why it's so cool. I'm really trying to be a computer geek but it's harder than I thought.

Standards

2005-09-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

"Since the dawn of time (1984), we have known that consistency is one of the strongest contributors to usability."

The coolest thing I learned from this week's readings for my Eng480 class was that I was born before the dawn of time. It was good to learn since I've been feeling old because I'm almost 24 and still working on my undergrad.

Actually, all the readings made sense to me, even though I felt like alot of the information has come up in class already. It makes sense to have these standards to follow when you're making webpages and I think it makes it easier for people like me who don't know what they're doing and need at least a little direction.

I'm not planning on starting a business or working on websites, but I'm not sure why a business, especially one who sells online, wouldn't use the standards. The only arguement I could come up with is that it takes away the authors independence and creativety, but one of the articles pointed out that you can still be as creative as you want, it will just make it easier for people to see your creativety.

That being said, I'm not sure how these standards can be inforced. Yes, they make life online easier, but who can really inforce them? People who don't know about the standards or don't care to follow them don't really have to. One of the articles mentioned that webpages should follow standards so visually impared people, etc. would still be able to use the site. I guess I can see a day when a handicapped person sues a website for being unaccessable to them, but I see it leading to all kinds of arguements about the internet being "free" space and everyone having personal freedoms to create a webpage however they want. Which is true, isn't it?

Anyway, I'm surprised I even got the readings done. My friend Meg had a bachlorette party on Friday that I went home for and I ended up staying longer than I had anticipated. Her wedding is not until next weekend, but I guess we had to get the partying out of the way so she can focus on the wedding. I'm the official video-ographer. I think Meg felt bad that I wasn't in the wedding, so now I'm in charge of filming it, which I have absolutely no experience in. It's an outdoor wedding and there are going to be horses and all kinds of stuff and for some reason Meg and Zach think I'm qaulified to film it all because I was messing with a camera at a birthday party once. Anyway, I told Meg I wasn't making any promises that it would turn out well, but she says she doesn't really care and she's sure I'll do fine. I'll keep you posted on that. Anyone have any tips on taping a wedding?

Del.icio.us

2005-09-20T19:49:00.000-07:00

So, I registered for del.icio.us even though I'm still not really sure what the point of it is. Go to this site if you want to see it. My del.icio.us

2005-09-18T21:23:00.000-07:00

Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.

"Looking at the proliferation of personal web pages on the net, it looks like very soon everyone on earth will have 15 Megabytes of fame." ~M.G. Siriam

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers. ~Sydney J. Harris

There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's being off the network. ~Guy Almes

I Miss Reggie White

2005-09-18T21:18:00.000-07:00

Wow I was dissapointed with the game today. I knew it would be a tough year for the Packers but I was so confident that we would win today. It looked like we could come back towards the end there, but it just wasn't happening. I don't know what we're going to do without Walker-I have a feeling Sundays may be my grumpy day this year. I really thought that having the ceremony to retire Reggie White's number would really energize the team and build some momentum, so that was sad. Anyway, I read the "Filing Frenzy" article and spent two hours cleaning up the files on my computer. I have so many photos, old papers, tax info, and random school stuff-it's crazy. I also save to my desktop alot, so I had way too many icons and crap saved to my desktop. I feel much better now that my computer is cleaned up, but I also feel like I may have wasted quite a bit of time. Then I read "7 tips" and spent 30 mintues creating new files and moving documents around. Then I spent 30 minutes saving old papers and junk to a cd. I also read about del.icio.us but I'm not sure I'm going to like it that much. I don't really see the need for being able to list lots of links-i don't spend much time just surfing the web-if I need information I'll use google, but I rarely just click on website links for entertainment. Do people really care which websites interest me? I didn't register for del.icio.us because I was scared and wouldn't have time to do anything with it tonight anyway. What's with all the disclaimers by the way?-"The API may change at any time, be careful. "-"Please don't write anything that causes one hit to the API for every pageload on your site; this will be considered abusive. "-"This system is pre-pre-alpha; many features have yet to be added. Additionally, many, many bugs remain. Please be careful. "-"We reserve the right to take appropriate measures if you misbehave. " I was afraid I would accidently misbehave or write something that would cause one to hit the API for every page load, so I thought I'd wait for class. I started reading the article on Ontology and got to the part where it said that ontology, like pretty much everything we're learning about in class, has many definitions and decided I definately need a break before I can finish up the readings. So I wrote this and now I'm going to go eat something.

Blah

2005-09-15T20:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I just downloaded Firefox, the Web Developer Extension, and WinSCP on my computer. It took me a while but luckily I was able to watch Futurama as I waited for it all to download. I used to hide my love for futurama, but no longer-I think it's hilarious. Anyway, my Eng480 class seems to be getting more and more comlicated. I'm pretty sure that CSS is from the devil. Maybe if I just had more time to mess around with it I would catch on quicker, but for now I'm sure it's evil. Speaking of evil, I went to see the Exorcist of Emily Rose Tuesday night. It was freaky. It was so scary I almost wish I hadn't seen it. I don't want to give anything away, but my housemate and I had to sleep in the same room and we both were a bit nervous when 3am came around. Anyway, I was going to use style sheets to make a Word document, but I figured we might learn how to do that tomorrow in class. So instead I'm going to bed. I haven't gone to bed before 12:30am since school started and it's starting to catch up with me.

Seriously Cracking Down

2005-09-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

Okay so I missed class again on Monday. My brother and his wife had a baby so I went to Iowa-I got to the hospital 5 minutes after my new nephew was born. He's so cute. Now my brother has two girls and one boy. I think they want two more kids-so crazy. Anyway, my nephew is cute, but there's one problem-his name. This adorable little boy is named Frederick George Steinbron the Third. Isn't that horrible? And the weird thing is my brother's name is Ben-My grandpa is Frederick the First, my dad is Jr. But can you just skip a generation like that and call him the Third? My mom wanted him to be named Luke, so the whole time I was in Iowa, she kept calling him Luke anyway. My brother was getting pretty mad. Oh, and two days before Little Freddy was born, my cousin Dan had a boy and named him Thadius. I'm not sure what's up with my generation in my family. Anyway, two days back in Iowa was plenty for me and now I'm hoping I won't have to go there for Christmas. But back to school things-I know my last post said I was cracking down on schoolwork and then I skipped class the next day, but now I believe I'm serious about things. I've been keeping up with the readings farely well and think I have a decent understanding of what's going on. I'll admit that some of it seems like a foreign language to me-which I guess maked sense because most of the stuff I struggle with is about code. I'm sure I'll get it eventually-just taking one step at a time like they recommend. The "CSS from the ground up" scares me because I already realize I don't really know what I'm doing and then it starts talking about my WYSIWYG editor and I get confused and then it's like don't panic and don't be frightened. For some reason that doesn't comfort me-I feel they wouldn't be telling me not to panic unless the normal reaction to learning code was confusion and terror. But it does seem like I'll be able to take it step by step and get 'er done. I just don't understand who first came up with coding. But I don't understand a lot of things-my roomate and I were just talking about glue and how someone thought to make glue out of horses. Who comes up with these things? If people like me were responsible for all inventions, we wouldn't have coding or glue. I think I could have figured out the wheel though. Anyway, it's almost time for Eng40 class so I'm going to refresh myself on this weeks readings. Oh-in the article that talks about how people read differently on the web and just scan, I noticed it was true because I was just scanning through the reading assignments-I had to print them out to actually make sure I read them thoroughly. Veeeeeeeeeery interesting. Sorry for the long post-pictures of Frederick George Steinbron III coming soon.

Cracking Down

2005-09-11T17:30:00.000-07:00

So I'm back from the wedding-it was a blast. So fun to see old friends and catch up and the wedding was beautiful. Anyway, now that I'm back, I'm trying to catch up on schoolwork. I still have to make a powerpoint for our last assignment in ENG480 but I've decided to go over the stuff I need for tomorrow first. But Shawna did use powerpoint several times at her wedding and I was reminded of the powerpoint article. Several songs were sung by everyone that came and the words were displayed on powerpoint and then after the ceremony they had a powerpoint slide-show of pictures with Shawna and her new husband. It was really cool and it really illustrated what the article was saying about how powerpoint is everywhere these days. Anyway, I've read the writing for the web articles and the Microsoft Word styles stuff and it's a little more complicated than I was expecting. I've been using Word since junior high and as an English major I felt pretty competant with the knowledge I had about it but I've never done anything with changing the styles or anything. I thought it was funny when it talked about how the enter key was not the "I need more space here key" because I always just press enter when I need more space and am trying to format something. So, yeah, I was surprised about the complexity of it all, but I think I'll get the hang of it after using it a bit. That's it for now.

A Surprise Wedding

2005-09-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

So I am having problems getting myself together this semester. This morning I just remembered that I have a wedding this weekend in Milwaukee and I was suppose to be there this afternoon. I skipped two classes to get stuff together and I'm still going to be a little late. I was hoping to catch up on homework this weekend because I've missed several of my classes several times because I was trying to work my out schedule but I won't have much of a weekend left after the festivities. Hopefully I'll be able to crack down after this weekend. For now, I'm off to Milwaukee for yet another of my friends weddings. Maybe I'll put some pictures up if I get any good ones. Congratulations, Shawna!

2005-08-29T12:23:00.000-07:00

This is my best friend Steph and I in a picture booth at Walt Disney World.

2005-08-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

These are my hot roomates that I've lived with for the past year or so. We all went to Elise and Steve's wedding about a month ago and had a great time.

Apology for a boring blog

2005-08-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone. I'm taking a computers and writing course and was assigned to create a blog. I'm new at this so please be patient as I try to figure things out. Hopefully things will get more exciting as I learn how to do this better.