Rapid Fire Thoughts

Posted on August 15, 2007 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com
  • I’m sitting in one of Purdue’s undergrad computer labs to work on my teaching portfolio (the draft of which is below–I’m going to play around with that Dali-esque scheme). The reason I’m using a gen-pop lab: the new Adobe Creative Suite. Our pathetic College of Liberal Arts computers (the one’s delegated to the English Department) don’t have the new tricked out software package (nor do they have IE 7.0 yet–but that’s a good thing for me, I want to beta test my sites with IE 6.0 and the ancient English department is fast becoming one of the few places around Purdue I can do so). To my chagrin, Fireworks is gone–so now I have to start using Photoshop. I new this day was coming, but I just didn’t think it would be so soon…
  • Speaking of soon, Meg’s still pregnant. Very, very pregnant.
  • The Red Sox will be fine, so long as Schilling can stay healthy. Starting pitching wins in the regular season, and the Sox have plenty of that. Great starting pitching wins in the post-season, and I’m not sure how Dice-K and Lester will fare. I’m also not sure how Big Big Papi will be in October, but he deserves respect for playing all season with a bum shoulder.
  • I finished my upcoming 106 website, and am quite pleased with the results. I really like how the typography came out–expect this blog’s typeface to change quite soon. In the end, I took a closer look at how Dave Shea sets up his fonts over at Mezzo-Blue, and sytled something similar:

    font-family:”Lucida Grande”, “Lucida Sans Unicode”, “Gill Sans”, “Tw Cen MT”, Arial, sans-serif;
    font-size:12px;

    I was trying to set the font-size through ems, but found that the different browsers (Safari vs. IE & FF) just interpreted them way to different. Pixels seems more precise to me. The headers are done in a different family, one that looks a lot better on Safari than on PC (I’m still working this out):

    font-family:”Abadi MT Condensed Light”, “Gill Sans”, Arial, sans-serif;

    I know that the Web2.0 aesthetic calls for rounded everything, but I am more and more liking the simplicity and contrast of straight lines. Course, from a coding perspective, straight lines are a lot easier to pull off! I’m going to try to make sure that my new site has rounded corners, but I’m not yet sure if I am going to use a background image (effective, but old-fashioned) or if I am going to get a bit more fancy. I really like this png technique over at Schillmania, but am not quite sure if it will work on a large scale. Experimentation forthcoming.

Posted in 106blog, CSS, design, redsox, teaching, typography | Comments Off on Rapid Fire Thoughts

Content v. Copy

Posted on August 13, 2007 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Here’s one of the problems that comes with creating a syllabus. You carefully arrange each reading and budget out your (and your students’) time. Then, checking up on your RSS feeds, you come across an article far better than most of the things you put into your coursepack (which is already at the printer–Wishydig, I put your name on the coursepack but wasn’t 100% certain that you were going to require it–the printer is initially going to run 60 copies but told me its no problem to run an additional 20).

Today I’m referring to an article by Amber Simmons over at A List Apart. While obnoxious at points (she links to another of her articles as an example of thoughtful writing–a little humility and generousity please). Putting that aside, she offers an interesting classification of information on the web: copy and content. Copy is the hollow, substance-less, corporate, commercial crap that fills our span filters and junk folders. Content is the thoughtful, insightful, often user-generated stuff that we RSS, cut ‘n’ paste, blog about [its is, after all, the audience who deems whether a post is insightful by their sustained attention], and forward. Here’s some snippets:

The kind of writing we encourage is lifeless, insipid, and calorie-free. If we want to get back on track—to allow writers to write wonderful user experiences—we have to change our expectations and our rules.

And

As our culture becomes increasingly digital, the art forms that support it must be constructed with the same care, deliberateness, and gusto as our traditional media. Intelligent content is the literature of our time. It is not enough that our printed books and magazines are ardently written and meticulously edited. Our culture loses much if we encourage online writers to sacrifice grace and personality on the altars of pith and scannability. Perhaps better advice is to encourage writers to say exactly what they mean with precisely the words required, however many they may be.

One of the reasons for our teaching this version of introductory composition is to increase our students ability both to recognize copy and generate content. As members of the digital collective, components of the now living and constantly evolving information filter, we are all responsible for our new information ecology. We need to be conservationists, dedicated to upkeep. I see no reason why this shouldn’t start in University, why a basic understanding of not only HTML but also social bookmarking and group think.

Posted in 106blog, internet, teaching | Comments Off on Content v. Copy

Time for a Change

Posted on August 9, 2007 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Since just about every person I know has some distaste for this blog and my homepage’s design, I’ve decided its time for a redesign before I hit the job market. The problem: I have no inspiration. None. This is a first for me, usually when I need to create a website, an idea just pops into my head. Poof. Then its just nuts and bolts. This time, however, I’m coming up empty.

Needing some inspiration, I picked up an oversized compendium of Dali’s work (on the cheap–only 20 bucks for a 770 page, high quality tome–score). Here’s the plan–I’m going to dissect some of Dali’s painting, paying special attention to what kind of color schemes I can generate. Hopefully, in the process, some kind of layout will poof into my head. Let’s get started.

Today’s painting is “The Old Age of William Tell” (1931):

I planned on creating a five color scheme, but ended up generating seven colors:

Generally, I’m pretty cautious with color schemes, so I wanted to try something a bit more adventurous and to stay away from anything too monochromatic. Now to try this scheme out on a sample website.

I didn’t use all the colors–too much clash for me to handle, but I did generate a non-monochromatic, three column layout:

I’m going to try to use this as a template for my teaching portfolio. The main navigation will include course titles. I’ll put them in the orange stripe as you roll over them, they will open sub-directories in the green stripe (theoretically). I’m not sure if I’ll keep the slight overhang of the white content area into the orange–I like it because it implies that the content area has some kind of shape, and keeps with the rounded corners motif. More on this tomorrow night (assuming my wife doesn’t go into labor!)

Posted in color, dali, design | Comments Off on Time for a Change

So Crazy it has to be True

Posted on August 8, 2007 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Sigh. Just when I thought intellectual property issues couldn’t get worse, this story passes through /. the other day. As reported, media broadcasters want you to pay to port media to different devices. This might not sound like a big deal, but this would in a sense contradict the Sony rule, and would seriously impact our ability to personalize how we consume media.

For those unfamiliar with the Sony rule, it is the Supreme court decision from the Betamax case in which Sony survived a crucial lawsuit brought on by the MPAA (the VCR’s version of the RIAA). The Motion Picture Association of America sued Sony for copyright infringement, arguing that the VCR encouraged piracy. The underlying issue was also that the VCR allowed people to tape programs and thus fast foward through commercials (although I never did this with my VCR, I now start watching most TV programs 20 minutes late so I can fast foward through commercials with my DVR). In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court agreed with Sony’s defense: that the primary function of the VCR wasn’t copying for distribution, it was for time displacement–that is, most people were using their VCRs to watch a program when it was most convienent for them. This was deemed to be perfectly legal. And since the VCR had a legitimate primary function, it was not responsible for people using it for inappropriate activity (piracy). Thus the Sony rule: demonstrate that the primary function of your technology was not illegal and you are good as gold.

Since then, a few other digital technologies have tried to invoke this defense, and lost miserably (Napster, Grokster) since they could not demonstrate that their primary function wasn’t to exchange copyrighted material. Napster tried to argue that it was a kind of spatial displacement–that people uploaded their music files to the network so they could access them anywhere. Nice try. Of course, they lost.

Way I see it, the media companies are looking to restrict, revoke, or bypass as much of the Sony ruling as possible. Lost in the piracy war is the growing restrictiveness of DRM–think of Sony’s attempt to limit how many times a CD can be copied or Apple’s restricting iTunes downloads to iPod players. When Sony attempted to limit CD burns, people rebelled. Sony was so disgraced by the public outrage (even if it was driven by a small, /.-segment of the population) that they scrapped the venture. While technology increasingly allows us to take culture anywhere, in any form, industry increasingly expects us to pay for the content multiple times. If I spend 50$ for Madden Football 2008, shouldn’t I be able to play the game on my PS2 and my PSP? On my computer? If I purchase a DVD from Walmart, shouldn’t I be able to rip it to my laptop for a long plane ride?

The media companies have become increasingly adept at climbing the ethical highground and framing DRM as a response to piracy. Blah, blah, blah. We have to counter this by arguing that 1) DRM is an unfair attempt to control media, 2) that some piracy is simply civil disobedience, and 3) that if we purchase content, then we should be free to control what platforms we use to access that content.

Posted in ip, politics | Comments Off on So Crazy it has to be True

Good Deal… Two Months Ago

Posted on July 31, 2007 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Every sportscaster from Boston to Beijing is telling me I should be estactic over the Celtics move to acquire Kevin Garnett. And, as a fan who hasn’t sniffed relevancy in a few years, I am. But someone explain this to me. Here’s what Garnett cost before this year’s draft:

  • First-round draft pick (#5 overall)
  • Al Jefferson

As I wrote back then, a very reasonable deal. Here’s what Garnett’s going to cost us if the deal is completed as reported:

  • Al Jefferson
  • Gerald Green
  • Ryan Gomes
  • Theo Ratliff
  • Sebastian Telfair
  • Two future first round picks

Um… I understand the two first round picks since a team with the nucleus of Pierce, Allen, and Garnett should finish pretty high in the standings–those picks aren’t going to be lottery picks. I understand why Minnesota would want Ratliff, since his large, expiring contract is perfect for a team openly rebuilding. Jefferson is the best young talented player on the C’s roster. Fair.

But it begins to get a bit insane (read: Herschel Walker, Ricky Williams) when you add Green and Gomes–both of whom, if memory serves, are first round picks. And both showed solid progress that season–Green averaged over 10 points, coming on late in the season; Gomes averaged 12 points and 6 boards. Its Gomes for me that really pushes this over the edge–I mean, don’t you have to start five players (not, as the Celtics seem to assume, 3)?

KG is great, and assuming three 30+ year olds can stay healthy for 82+, the Celtics become an instant favorite in the East, who hasn’t seen an inside presence as dominant as KG since the first time Shaq played in Florida (yes, I’ll go on record, Shaq in Miami is among the most overrated athletes ever). But the Celtics are trading away a young, and with exception of Telfair, solid starting five for one player who hasn’t committed to a long-term deal. I am a Bostonian. I understand the win now mentality. But don’t we have to at least think of the future?

Respected Boston columnist Bill Simmons (who’s consistently entertaing, BTW), disagrees with me as to the “talent level” of some of these “young stars.” Go Boston. Go relevancy. Go not sucking for another year. Kevin Garnett just might walk through that door.

Posted in celtics, sports | Comments Off on Good Deal… Two Months Ago

Sliding Header

Posted on July 31, 2007 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve created a “sliding header” technique: a CSS method for handling screen resize. Since buying a mac and regularly using Safari, I’ve been a bit more sensitive to the need to create pages that handle different screen sizes. My newest solution involves sliding a background image under the regular header text. My new course website shows the technique in action (try viewing the page at full screen and then at half screen–though I haven’t tested it in Firefox or Explorer yet).

Here’s how the trick works. First, the HTML code:

<body>
<div id=”container”>
<div id=”header”>
<h1> English 106 </h1>
<p>Fall 2007 <br />
Instructor: Marc C. Santos</p>
<h2>Composition 2.0: Rhetoric Goes Digital</h2>
</div>

Essentially, we have two divisions to work with, a header division, which contains some relevant information that we want to display on every page, and a container division, which contains not only our header, but also several other divisions: navigation, content, footer, etc. Whenever I code a site, I have one “catch-all” division called container which houses all of the page’s content.

Next, the image file

the sun shining through some clouds: a metaphor for an english class (?)

Notice that the image file, which is 200 pixels high, includes the border (7pixels). This means that, if you want to duplicate my CSS code below and insert your own image, then your original picture must be 186 pixels high. I downloaded this image from Flickr and then cropped it to the size I needed.

O.k., now the CSS for div#container (its only two lines):

div#container {
min-width:520px;
border:1px solid #12385D;
}

While the “min-width” command won’t work in IE 6.0 and earlier, all modern browsers (including IE 7, if memory serves correctly) won’t allow the page to shrink below 520 pixels, the requisite size we need for our sliding image.

The CSS for div#header:

div#header {
height:200px;
overflow:hidden;
background-image:url(headerimage.jpg);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-color:#12385D;
background-position:right;
padding-left: 12px;
color:#ffffff;
border:2px solid #FFFF00;
}

The “overflow” property will keep everything contained just in case someone needs to increase the page’s text size (CTRL + +), the postition-right technique pushes the image to the right side of the header division. Everything else above is pretty straightforward. Presto, easy way to code a clean page that can resize to fit a user’s browsing style. In case you’re looking to borrow the code, here’s the source.

Posted in 419, CSS, design, howto, XHTML | Comments Off on Sliding Header

Victory-is-Mine: New Website

Posted on July 29, 2007 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

I’ve finished the draft for my fyc course this fall. I’m particularly pleased with the sliding image header technique I “invented” for this site–tutorial coming soon. I still have some touch ups (applying a min-width to the content area, thinking about subheading font size, and touching up the definition and unorderlists in the syllabus), but most of the design decisions are finalized.

Posted in 106blog, design, victory-is-mine | Comments Off on Victory-is-Mine: New Website

Standards Compliant URLs

Posted on July 27, 2007 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

I haven’t put up a technology-oriented post in awhile, but, then again, I haven’t been doing much web design this summer. This week I’ve started working on my course website for the fall, and thought I might share a cool, free web2.0 tool that really helps with standards compliance: tinyURL.

Next semester I am requiring my students to read one book on the social / economic / cultural / political / legal impact of technology. I created a list of possible books (and am looking for more–please leave suggestions in the comments) for my syllabus, creating a link to the amazon page for each suggestion. Since students will end up writing a review of the book for amazon, this seems like a good place to have them start. The problem: Amazon uses hideously long URLs full of the kind of code that drives the w3c (x)HTML standards validator crazy. As in 150 errors crazy. Solution: tinyURL. TinyURL creates a redirect that it stores on its servers–users will never know that they’ve clicked on this redirect. Amazon looses the page rank benefits of the link, but, hey, that’s what they get for not providing standards- compliant URLs in the first place.

Posted in 106blog, education, howto, internet, standards, teaching | Comments Off on Standards Compliant URLs

Google’s Candidate?

Posted on July 19, 2007 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

TechCrunch recently published an article on congressman Ron Paul, a presidential candidate who is running a digital campaign. Paul is gathering support through all the Web2.0 usual suspects: a typepad blog, digg, eventful, flickr, meetup, MySpace, and YouTube. The article highlights the fact that Paul is gaining internet popularity despite the fact that he has been ignored by (and in turn is ignoring) the mainstream media. While he probably doesn’t have a chance to win, the fact that he’s getting attention in online polls show the growing power of the digital community. I’m waiting for a candidate to lay down a digital platform [for net neutrality, against DRM, for creative commons, etc.]

In his interview, Paul has a slight libertarian bend–I like him because he’s for voluntary contracts (meaning the government should not have a hand in regulation), and includes gay marriage as a kind of contract. I get a bit queezy when he’s against federal regulation of consumer activism. And his comment that anti-gun laws are in part responsible for 9/11 is insane (around 15 minutes in): if people could carry guns, then they could shoot terrorism. Gun laws prevent poor inner city blacks from properly defending themselves. He’s also against the department of education, stressing that education should be a private enterprise open to the market economy. While I might be against NCLB, I’m more against the idea that education should have anything to do with profit margins. He’s also got an isolationist bent–essentially American troops shouldn’t be anywhere but in America. That seems a bit too idealistic for me in this age, to be a leader in a global economy probably requires a global presence. Umm… I won’t be voting for you.

So, there’s probably a reason why this guy hasn’t shown up on the mainstream radar. He’s a wee bit crazy at times. But it is interesting to see a candidate gathering attention [21st century gold] through strictly digital means.

Posted in education, politics | Comments Off on Google’s Candidate?

Ehh…

Posted on July 18, 2007 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

This sounded a lot cooler than it played, but if you have 15 minutes and a bit of nostalgia, check out Simsponize Me. The program is a bit picky about what photos it will accept (I ended up cropping another photo of me) and I have a funny feeling that everyone ends us looking quite similar. But, as viral Web2.0 marketing goes, this is a pretty good idea by Burger King and the Simpsons crew (although after BK included the King as an unlockable coach in the last version of Fight Night, I am skeptical toward any of their marketing ploys…).

Anywho, here’s the finished product:

Santos in Simpson form

Posted in ehh viral-marketing simpsons | Comments Off on Ehh…