I was talking with Andrew Ling the other day, and I told him that I had never made an html table before. Though I’ve been playing with html for a long time, I’m part of a CSS generation. In my web design class, tables have never even been mentioned. They’re a nightmare from the past.
fruit, my fictional smoothie restaurant, needed nutritional information presented in a simple, clear way.
I made a table.
fruit, at the location for critique: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~wilhelma
I went to Mexico two weekends ago. This picture was taken from that weekend.
This screenshot is taken from a new project that Adam and I started together.
I’m sure you’ve been well versed on all the hype from the media, warning us young college kids to keep our social website pages clean because potential employers and professors can dig up a lot of dirt through them (Oh, you didn’t hear anything about that? Look here, here, and here, for starters).
Well I’ve discovered my English teacher’s Myspace page. Let the dirt digging begin!
One of the things that I really appreciate about the University of Arizona is the fact that they are almost paperless. Advisers, recruiters, and professors alike tout, “Sorry, you can’t use a pen to fill out that form. We’re paperless.” Being paperless has really helped me out a lot.
Every student gets access to their very own Student Link. It has everything on there. Class registration, book buying, what forms you need to fill out and where to find them, just to name a couple things. My class schedule for this fall is on there.
Now that may look confusing, and it is. Thankfully they provide an alternate view.
Much better. Now, to find where the classes are located on campus, Google maps is integrated into the schedule.
I don’t think that it could get any easier.
If you have visited this site more than once, you are probably aware of the ever changing theme. Truth be told, I’m not really sure about what I’m looking for, and I have a hard time making up my mind about these types of things anyways. I’ve tried out so many themes that I’ve lost track of where I got them and why I even liked them in the first place. A word to the wise: not keeping track of these things is not good practice in life.
So today I went to Barnes & Noble and looked in the CSS Design section. There isn’t a whole lot of (Holy crap! I’m hearing gunshots! I love living in the ghetto…) good material out there. What I did find led me to the CSS Zen Garden. Tonight I looked at every single design that the Zen Garden has to offer. I gathered a lot of ideas, and now I have to sift them together to do what I want.
For a long time now I’ve known enough about CSS and HTML to let me tweak the code to do things that I want it to do. I’ve never known enough to make something, say a Wordpress theme, from scratch. I guess I’ll make that my summer goal.
To do:
I’d also like to learn more about graphic design, but that’s something that I need to learn at the University.
Usually, I do all of this thinking and saying, but I don’t ever follow through with it. To get myself to follow through, I will be using this theme (I guess) until I make myself something that I am satisfied with.
Let the summer goal reaching begin!
A couple weeks ago I got a Joost invite. I won’t tell you how I got it (it involved ninja skills), but I have it installed on my Macbook.
Joost a little different then what I thought it would be. I suppose that I need to keep in mind that it is still in beta. I thought that prime time networks like NBC, FOX, etc., would be streaming things on there. I guess I really didn’t read what it was all about.
I like choosing to watch whatever I want, whenever I want. I don’t watch that much t.v. (about 45 minutes a day), but I do watch some sitcoms on TV Links whenever I’m doing light homework. On Joost I mostly watch the IndieFlix channel. I LOVE Indie Movies. Thing is, they’re hard to come by. Especially short films. Joost provides the opportunity to watch great, I mean GREAT, films that I couldn’t normally see anywhere else. I think it also helps out the budding producers/writers/actors. It is a win-win.
I also watch National Geographic on Joost. I know, I’m a nerd, but it’s good programming to have running in the background when I’m supposed to be studying Spanish verbs.
Alright, I’ll pop the question:
Would you like a Joost invite?
If so, leave an email address in the comments.
p.s. I think it would be really great to have the 2008 Summer Olympics on Joost. I’m going to be working all summer, and I would like to watch as much as I can. Or whatever I can. I don’t really want to watch the running. Except for the hurdles. But I would like to watch the Summer Olympics online, even if Joost doesn’t give it to me.
I made the switch from Blogger to Wordpress. I did it. It was quick, relatively easy, and about as painful as a light shower in Seattle.
I had been looking around at hosting plans for a while; trying out themes; reading other bloggers’ cross-over stories. I would go to sign up, and then I’d pull back out.
Tonight I decided that I don’t have any hobby right now. I quit World of Warcrack, I don’t collect stamps anymore, I don’t really buy clothes (I’ve spent a total of $45 on them this year)… It just made sense to me that it might be okay if I spent some money on what I like doing. So I did.
Things about Blogger were just getting under my skin.
1. This new “Blogger Beta (oh we’re just kidding, we’re not in beta any more but now we’re going to make web design a royal pain in the rear for anyone who likes to code in html)” didn’t work with me. Originally I made the switch, then I switched back to Old Blogger, then I switched to the new Blogger, and then I found out that some bugs were still there but I couldn’t go back to Old Blogger any more. It was frustrating and confusing.
2. Blogger has served me decently well since 2004. In 2004 I tried lots of different platforms (livejournal, xanga, even geocites to name a few), and found that I like Blogger best. I wasn’t interested in paying for anything. I didn’t know what CSS was. All I knew was that Blogger looked the best and acted the best. But now I do know how to use CSS. And I do know more about MySQL, Apache, etc., and I think that I would like to further my education. The best way to do that is by hands on playing around. You can’t learn html out of a book. Basically, I was feeling Blogger’s limitations.
3. I was constantly aware of the fact that Blogger owned my site and not me. Stupid Blogger logos are plastered everywhere. There’s the infamous navbar uptop. The credits in the footer. The .png on the sidebar. It was like a bad disease.
4. I wanted to take the next step and use a website as more than just a blog. In the future I would like to put my website on a business card. Or perhaps develop a photo page. Or post a resume. Or anything, really. But Blogger just wasn’t giving me that (plus, .blogspot.com looks tacky on a business card).
We’ll see how this Wordpress thing goes, but I’m keeping my eye on the Habari Project.
Today I made a Myspace layout that looks like the standard Twitter profile. I felt quite accomplished.
To compare:
Myspace.com/alisarae
Twitter.com/alisa
F.A.Q.’s (okay, so they’re just normal Q’s)
Q. How did you integrate the twitter updates into your myspace page?
A. I didn’t. Myspace is anti-javascript, and I don’t like the standard Twitter flash badges, so I decided that I can manually update the status as needed. Too bad it won’t be as up-to-date as my twitter page.
Q. Are those Flickr images I see? I thought you said that mysapce is anti-javascript?
A. You’re right! I did say that! But, lucky for me, someone has made some javascript-free flickr badges. Visit http://flickrbadge.theducky.com/ for more info.
Q. Did you get permission to steal those Twitter images?
A. No… I hope they don’t mind. I linked back to their site, and I’m a big promoter, so…..
Q. Can I have your code?
A. Right now, no. I haven’t decided if I’m going to release it or not. But I probably will. So keep checking back.
