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.

all things texture

I really enjoy this part of the design process. I think for the most part that it's all really beautiful and it reminds me of how much art is in nature.
The sites we were to look at this week were:
1) urban dirty
one of my favorites out of this whole group. I really really enjoyed it and I loved the simple but very effective set-up, layout. Its purpose is clear, which I appreciated. The tagging was easy to use. I spent an obscene amount of time here.
2) best texture flickr group
Not really impressed by this. I find it less interesting on an artistic level, but also, I don't like anything I have to register for. It's just one more thing to keep up with. I do give them credit however for their creativity with the concept and it is really clever that users can sign in and make comments (with the idea being that these will be friends and family). It is an awesome way to stay connected to people.
3) Torley textures
really beautiful. I love the tiling. It shows wonderful creativity! But again, its flickr with all the things that I did not enjoy about that. LOVE the pictures though!! No ads, or anything like that, I can at least say that for flickr.
4) Deviant art textures
gorgeous pictures. Read the creators profile. Don't understand a word of it. At least all the "boring" stuff is at the bottom of the page with the pictures at the top. That's a plus. The ads are not bad, not very invasive. Each of the artists have links under each picture with their "rules" which is both nice and confusing at the same time. I am still unsure about all this material, what exactly you can do what with unless it specifically says, like in urban dirty.
5) Texture king
clever site, no ads in the way, cute little t-shirt and easy updating news sections. Easy to navigate and well layed out. Again, spent a lot of time here and really enjoyed it.
6) Grunge Textures
loved it! I actually followed the link from urban dirty. I can say all the same good things about this site. It's easy to use, well layed out, and, (my favorite) very clear about what you can do with it.
7) Grunge Style
I hate the set-up (scroll down). I had a hard time figuring out what the point of it all was. Not to say that I did not like it, it had a lot of good information on it, but it seemed more like a teaching tool. My other complaint is that for the pictures, there was no description, you had to click on each link, making it very time consuming. And (just to be picky) somewhere in there they were fussing about people having ads on their sites and I just have to point out,,, they have ads on THEIR site!!!!

HTML and thoughts on blogs

I am thinking a lot this semester about the whole HTML thing. I keep hearing that it is going away and that with all the technology that will just do it for you, those that know how to do it will be gods, etc. I find it all deeply confusing, the whole mathematical language. I am finding it fascinating to play with it but, will I ever use it?
Blogs are another adjustment for me. I feel guilty not blogging more often but then I feel guilty for blogging so informally. That's the only way I know how to blog.
Anyway, I'm off to spend some more time on Frontpage....

CAIDA and PEW

I really love some of these sites! We are instructed to look for content first, and then design. Some of these sites are certainly more user friendly than others. Some are not clear at all on purpose, and most particularly, funding!
1). First, was ICANN.
I do not understand the content. Too much jargon being used. Are these people internet police? Are they campaigning for something? I don't actually know who this site is directed at. I have read their "about" section and, what do they have the power to do? Who polices them? How do I know what qualifications they have? I also found it interesting that the about section says they "promote competition" on the internet. Excuse me??
I would possibly like them if I had a clue why they exist.

next

2) Internet Traffic Report
At first, I did not understand why anyone would ever have a need to know this, but I confess, they made a believer out of me. I found the information quite interesting but had a few questions...
Why is Asia so low? Does China have something to do with that? I'm surprised South America is so high. I really like the FAQ, it was full of good information. I really appreciated that they explained confusing terms for me (like packet loss)
what a clever concept!
3) Internet World Stats
The first thing I see is a pop up. There are ads on this site. I cannot see who maintains this. I do see that it was recently updated (3 weeks ago) but I see no link to e-mail anyone.
thumbs down!
4) CAIDA
This may have been my favorite. I have to scroll across to see it all- I hate that. I really like the papers! How exactly do they "investigate practical and theroetical aspects of the internet"? I have questions about their funding. They do explain in a pie graph how they are funded and how their money is spent- which is great. However, they do not explain who their funders are except in acronyms, which I do not understand. I still have no idea who really pulls their strings. The site is also not maintained very often (August of last year). I found that surprising. Still, this was full of excellent information that I very much enjoyed.
5) PEW
My other favorite site from this weeks picks! fabulous concept. I was very impressed also by the pedigree of the staff listed. I need to spend more time reading about these projects.
6) Neilson
I don't understand their accredidation process. I am not sure how they are funded. If I did not already know who Neilson was, I am not sure this site would have told me. I did not find it particularly clear.

As for textbook readings and web stuff...
Principles had some information that was a little complex for me. And then it had information that was a little basic. What I decided was: use the principles I learned in scrapbooking and I should be fine.
I spent time this week in frontpage as I have now decided not to go buy the programs that I had planned to go buy, as several people have complained to me that they are too confusing. In the interest of time and money, I spent several days last week playing with frontpage and I plan at this time, to try and make that work.

Initial thoughts and observations

During this week one of class, I am feeling very out of my league with this material. As a result, I'm sure I'm over-reading and I feel that I am just confusing myself even more. I spent several days reading over HTML and feeling more lost by the minute.
I do not have my textbooks yet as they are on backorder, will be the end of the month. I am not pleased about falling that far behind in readings. One is around locally, I am trying to get my hands on it.
I have consulted with my work IT professionals about their recommendations for software for this course. Their opinions are invaluable to me as I know nothing about any of these programs.
* I spent time on the W3 consortium site.
I like the new visitor page. It is very easy to use and well organized. I particularly like the "where do I find what I need" section. It looks like it is very well thought out.
more later....