Posted by jewel
Wed, 25 Oct 2006 02:18:00 GMT
Here’s a few things that I think are worth mentioning but don’t necessarily need their own posts.
First, you know ads are going to reach the News Feed of Facebook users any-day now, when you see flyers all over your campus asking students to join the Crest WhiteStrips Facebook group.
Here’s a link to a picture of the ad: Smile State
I read an interesting article on Web accessibility today. I’ve been running into the topic fairly often recently (as to be expected for web designers of any skill level), and I haven’t really been confident in what the concept really entails. This article helped point me in the right direction, though. One commenter said it best: “Make something accessible and you’re making it easier for everyone, not just ‘disabled’ people.”
The website for Interactive Media I is coming along nicely. Rails is still pretty frustrating for me, but I think I’m picking it up little by little. No designs have been implemented yet, though – it’s becoming critical that we work on that. Adam and I were playing around with the CSS layout yesterday and applied a three column fluid layout with both 100% height and width. It works and it looks good – however it won’t support faux columns and therefore, more than likely, will not work with the type of design that we’re aiming at. So we may have to look at some alternate options.
Well that’s all I’ve got for ya.
Jewls
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Posted by jewel
Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:35:52 GMT
You should have seen this one coming – it’s the fourth of five IDM posts for my Interactive Media I course!
This week on the class chopping block: Rustboy, a Flash site for the Brian Taylor short film project.
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Posted by jewel
Wed, 18 Oct 2006 02:53:26 GMT
So for the last week and a half, I’ve been building a Rails application for my HTML course – Interactive Media I. The Final Project for my class is to create a “significant” website by manually coding HTML and CSS, in a small group. Well, we are definitely shooting for “significant.” I’m not going to spoil the surprise – but I’ll tell you it’s Web 2.0ish, and our professor was really excited about the idea.
I’m coding (with much help from the b/f) a lot of Rails for this, and at first it was extremely frustrating. But, I’m starting to get the hang of things and we’re making a lot of progress. My teammate, AJ (a computer sciences major), is struggling to get MySQL functioning on his XP system – but once that’s up, he is going to try and help out with it as well.
At the moment, I’d say a good portion of the back-end is good to go. Now, we need to begin focusing on and implementing the actual design of the site. So, it’s time for all of us to do some Photoshop explorations.
We’re all pretty excited about the site and I think it will turn out pretty well for my first Rails/HTML/CSS project. Stay tuned for the launch, which should be around early December.
Jewls
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Posted by jewel
Fri, 13 Oct 2006 18:13:53 GMT
Well the bad luck of Friday the 13th started a day early this year. On Thursday the 12th (of October!), it snowed. This is the earliest snowfall Michigan has seen in somewhere around the last 125 years. I like snow…but not until the end of November, and only until the middle of January. Any sooner or later then that and I’ll probably not be too thrilled. Luckily, I live in Michigan where the temperature goes from 30 degrees to 60 in a weekend. So you can be sure that come Monday, I’ll be wearing a t-shirt and enjoying the sun.
Aside from the Friday the 13th induced bad weather, I’ve discovered that both of my cats have fleas. And, Gibby has a hole poked into her abdomen. So they’re both on flea medications, and I get to vacuum all the carpets and furniture, and wash all of the sheets and blankets, and spray to kill all the eggs. And, I have to give Gibby antibiotics and keep her from licking her wound. If she keeps licking it – we have to buy her one of those white plastic shields that go around the head. She’d love that.
I can only assume that this bad luck will continue through tomorrow, I will keep you all updated.
Maybe since the Spartans are already having a horrible season, the bad luck of Friday the 13th will have a reverse effect and we’ll beat #1 Ohio State… I could also be dreaming.
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Posted by jewel
Sun, 08 Oct 2006 16:09:42 GMT
Here it is, the third of five IDM posts for my Interactive Media I class. This weeks website is Jason Santa Maria, a personal weblog/portfolio for a graphic designer in Philly.
UPDATE: Jason has commented on the collection of critiques by our class and I urge you all to read his response. He’s obviously a very intelligent and humble designer and I’m grateful to have had his feedback.
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Posted by jewel
Thu, 05 Oct 2006 20:14:00 GMT
It’s been a few weeks since Facebook first started making tsunamis in the sea of social networking sites. We’ve seen the emergence of the News Feed (and the massive backlash that followed), the implementation of an open admissions policy (not so huge, but still a major area of debate – check out the comments on this digg story), and recently announced – a new advertising plan that places ads (either banners or video clips) inside the News Feed will be launched within the next few weeks.
When launching the News Feed without proper privacy options exploded in Zuckerberg’s face, written protest showed its power. Interestingly enough, the venue of our demonstrations was Facebook itself. User-made groups shot up all over the site and within hours had thousands of members. At this moment, the Students against Facebook News Feed group still has 642,000 members.
When Tracy Schmidt suggested that this was Generation Y’s “
first official revolution,” I proposed that this first revolution could be the
beginning of many:
Maybe now that we’ve got our activism juices flowing, we’ll find the inspiration to work at other issues we feel strongly about but have never had the courage to act on.
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