some final thoughts

some final thoughts:

well, the project is finished and I have to admit, I am really, really overwhelmed by the whole concept. I was frustrated and I feel out of my element. I stayed with a (very) simple project and now I am concerned that it will look quite simple next to my classmates. I had a million questions and it was difficult not to have this as a face to face class. I wanted the experience though and I can definately say that I have learned a great deal about setting up pages, etc. I hope that this does not look too basic and I want you to know that I really did get a good deal of information out of this class.
Until this summer!!

Bridget G

some thoughts on advanced topics

most advanced topics are beyond me at this point (like you don't know that). But I'm always happy to have an opinion, so here goes:
flash vista: Flash is intimidating to me. Some of these sites are irritating and don't work. And no, its not my computer, because the rest of them come right up. And these are just strange links. Just strange. I went under several things (like art and movies) and I see just, bizarre stuff. Really, this is mostly dissapointing. There is little to interest me here.

flash tutorials: now this is neat. I don't know if I would be brave enough to try this.

SitePal flash avatars: I had never considered this concept. I don't know how I would feel dealing with an avatar as a representative of a company. I guess it seems more strange than it would actually be.

adobe flash: I like the tutorials- which are at the bottom of the page! Right away I feel out of my depth on the site, at the top of the page they are talking about basic motion tween.
?????????
no explanation given anywhere that I see for exactly what that might happen to be.

swift: I like it already. Its clear, its concise. Who they are and prices are listed right at the top of the page. really, that's all I ask.

swish: this is not as plainly set up as swift- but still not bad. Tutorials are a little confusing. I feel that this is not a beginner site.

hotscripts: ok, but even this is way confusing. None of this is written in plainspeak. I went to Java to play with it and I still don't understand any of it. Javascript is a lot more understandable. Maybe I'm getting numb.

basic info about MP3s: This was actually quite good. I knew none of this about MP3. Since I knew nothing about this, I'm sure I was underwhelmed by all the background information. I don't know what I don't know, that kind of thing.

How to create M3U and streaming audio: This seemed well written and taught me a lot about streaming. I'm not looking to do that for this project, but I will earmark it for future consideration.

audacity: This was simply written and easy to understand. It seems clear and spells out simply what they do and how to download.

musicovery: awesome!! How do I bookmark it?

Pandora: never mind. I like this one way better. It is bookmarked and playing. Love it!

amaya: This sounds great. It irritates me that it doesn't say that its free. I know it is because you said so and I did finally find it in their "about us" section, but I don't like to have to look that hard.

Trellian: See,, it says free in 2 places right there at the top of the page. Very simple and easy to read. I will spend time with all of these before I decide who to use.
no, I have not decided who to use yet. I know, I know. I should have already, but this is all so confusing. I would be in a panic if I did not have IT upstairs that I bounce questions off of all the time.

Seamonkey: Keeping in mind that I am a nontechie- if I did not have an idea of what they do, I don't think that this would tell me. I went under the "about" link and even that had very little clarity. Not impressed with the site, maybe their services are better.

free text editors: This is a good site! Even though most of the jargon is beyond me, I can see enough to begin a comparison of the different recommendations. I love the links at the bottom of the page, I will come back and spend a lot of time here. Yes, I'm impressed with this one.
whew!

Imagery

I really like some of the concepts in the books. Most of them are not things that I have not seen before, but they are things that I never gave thought to before. I still say that most of the idea concepts are better represented for me in my scrapbooking. The only difference (and this is the hard part) is putting it on the web and finding programs to do what I am used to doing with my own hands. None of the sites this week impressed me. Perhaps I just lost site this week of what I am supposed to be looking for.
wiki- once I got a feel for what this was, this is pretty neat. Looked through the urban landscape digital image project. What I did not like, is that it kept knocking me back to blackboard instead of taking me back to its main page. Irritating. That kept me from looking through it nearly as long as I would have.
ReadWriteWeb- Fresh hot radio is neat. I have saved it as a shortcut now although it is tricky to listen to it here at work. I'm afraid my itouch has me everywhere else.
I am so sick of twitter. I see twitter first thing here. I won't even talk about it.
I do like the trends section. I will come back and spend some more time reading these articles.
footnote.com- cool idea. I love the concept of footnote pages. You have to pay for this though and that's a shame. I love geneology, I can see the applications here for that. This would be a neat site to explore.
adobe photoshop- are they trying to see me this? ok, if I needed for anything other than your project, I would consider, but honestly.
adobe fireworks- saving the shortcut to the free trial.
gimp- I don't understand this at all. I went to screenshots download and I understand none of it. I saved the free download and will discuss this with the IT staff upstairs to see which they recommend I try.
If I do the free download to try something, is that going to translate into you being able to see my pages the way I design them during the "free download"???
confused.

fun with creating web sites

I have been having fun with the creating web sites book and frontpage learning these formatting things. I have never done anything like this before, as much as I am not into this subject, this really could be fun.
This is something I really want to learn, programmers have all the power.

the rest of typography

the rest of the sites:
ABC typography- Is there really a virtual museum about this!! It's a pretty site and well designed. More than you ever wanted to know about typography and each style. I enjoyed the "complete id cards" though. Now I think of the little fonts as regional along with everything else.

A list apart- This seems to be geared toward designers and people more proficient than me. Honestly, I liked the ABC site a little better, although I see this site referenced in several places.

Typographic- Cute page!! I really like the style a lot. I really like the way it is set up, I like the gallery. It tells you all the same info as A list apart, but I like this one better. They even have a typography timeline if you can believe it!

Digital magazine- Good links here. Its kind of long and not eye catching, but there is a lot of good data here. A Gorgeous site by Rob Weychert- whoever he is. Love the site!! I'm actually going to earmark it so I can come back to it, and I'm going to try to model my blog colors on his.

noupe.com- Oh boy. This one is way over my head. You would have to speak a lot more computer than I do to have a use for this- although I can see that it has a use. I actually found the graphics part of the site the most interesting.

designer snips- Enjoyed this site. It was great to see all these terrific sites in one place here to really compare and notice details. Some of these sites are beautiful. And some of them I don't see anything special about. Sorry. But the ones I loved, I really loved. That's what I need to see, more of what I really like (and don't). I need to perspective.

typography

I never knew there was so much to know about the art of typography! Several of these sites were way beyond me, I just did not find them interesting because they had so much data, and I just did not really understand that much of the current issues.
This was the case with the I love typography site, and some of the fonts featured here,, are just NOT that special. I did really enjoy reading how to create a font however, and may do this, probably when I finish grad school (haha).
Typographica also had a great deal of information, it seems to be more of a commentary site. I may order that calender though!
now Microsoft topography I did like. It seems more designed for the lay person and has no commentary on it. I felt more at home here. It is simply but effectively layed out and easy to use. A lot of good information here.

more tomorrow....

this week, I have been taking digital pictures and trying (unsuccessfully) to create a web page to get started in earnest with my project. It is just as difficult as I was afraid it would be. The college was not able to provide assistance so in the end, I went to the IT of the college that I work at and threw myself on their mercy. I notice that it took him 10 mins or showing and explaining to do something that I tried and failed to do in 3 days.
As an interesting aside, I asked him what he thought about HTML going the way of the dodo (following up on a conversation I had about that with the library director here a few weeks ago) and he responded, "Oh, absolutely not".
Love that guy!!!
However, by tomorrow, I will have my web space and will begin uploading the things I have been collecting. I will do a mock digital library.