A1: HTML website

i finished thursday morning at 2 am.  and this is not because i procrastinated.  i am somewhat of a perfectionist.  so i spent valuable hours formatting spacing and placement.  but this is what my schedule looked like:

thur (wk 1) – tues (wk 2)

after three practice websites, i finally started on my official one.  i decided to document my obssession with Cirque du Soleil.  Cirque du Soleil is a higher class of modern circus with tickets ranging near $100.  so you can see that there is definitely an obssession when i tell you that i have gone to at least 8 shows, 5 of them being in the past five months.  so i most certainly had material to work with.

wed (1/16)
11:30 – 3 pm,  5 – 8 pm

went to Geisel library with my trusty Mac Powerbook.  began making pages, using HTML and i’m sure a hybrid of methods.  i used CSS text style- i guess an internal style sheet.  anyway, it was a smattering of things i picked up.  mostly from w3schools.com.

from previous websites, i realized that i did NOT want to use frames.  the linking looked too complicated.  so i heard from people that tables were much more preferable for structuring, etc.  so i set out to learn about tables.  my entire website is a table within a table.  i had a lot of fun finding and photoshopping images from the Cirque website and Google images.  i had done some graphic work before so it was actually a joy to work with images.  and it went in seamlessly to the black background.  i already had experience with the black hole of photoshopping images so i restrained myself from making all the text into graphical images.  i decided to stick to simply text and font changes.

there is the “home” page, a page “about cirque”, a “chronology” of my history of cirque shows i’ve seen, and a page “about me”.   a single table row provides the basic navigation.  i had fun making different colors for hovering and clicking, etc.  the “chronology” page, i suppose, is the main bulk of the website.  it was also the most ridiculously difficult page to program.  first, i didn’t have a clear grasp of tables.  so i actually had a lot of help from a friend.  we had to draw out the table on a piece of paper to understand where we were in the programming- especially after spanning rows and columns- it gets tricky.  and then, the table would do crazy random things such as pushing perfectly fine texts into another column or some such nonsense.  anyway, i put pictures of the show titles and where i saw it and when and linked the pictures to a little description of my experience at the show- NOT a description of the show itself.  i thought that was a nice personal touch.  hopefully, i didn’t give anything away.

but there are stories worth telling.  one was Corteo and it was a surprise birthday gift.  we sat in the front, on the aisle.  so the performers messed with us, one handed me his business card and told me to give him a call sometime, another serenaded me- haha!  and the crowning moment of the night was realizing that Kevin Bacon was sitting directly across the aisle from us.

it was an infinitely practical assignment.  though commenting was a little weird.  i didn’t know what was supposed to be commented on.  like, is the font tag supposed to have a comment saying that it designates a font?  or do i have to specify that one had to close all tags?  also, i guess there are areas where one shouldn’t comment or it messes up  the code.  and though the scope of what i did was manageable, it definitely pushed me.  i don’t even want to think about how to make things animated and pop up and fade out and all that other fancy stuff.  at least not right away… it is nice to know that they are all within my grasp.  it’s a simple google search away.

my plan…

so for some reason, i’m dreading this stretch before thursday. it’s almost as if i know that once i start, i will not want to – or CAN’T – stop. and so i’m preparing myself for the final lap.

i decided that i want to work with all tables to organize everything. i’m going to go for simple. i also want to make something a bit different and crazy… but i don’t know if i have enough time to experiment and be creative. i sorta don’t want to do a website about me anymore… some other ideas are websites about cats, a storybook perhaps, that one might flip through… or some interesting juxtaposition of random information. i don’t know. maybe something eclectic like the Dangerous Book for Boys… things that are useful but people never really thought of doing.

anyway, i need to MAKE it first. maybe i can get creative for later projects.

possibility: past, present and future

week 1
the readings for this week were thought-provoking.

“As We May Think” by Vannevar Bush

it is strange to read Vannevar Bush’s article, knowing that it was written before the onset of so many technologies. it was strange because it seemed as if he was writing for us, for the technologies of today. the same concepts, the same sound advice, the same endless possibilities are still available today even though we have mastered the widespread, established internet that he envisioned. i had had the attitude that “everything worth inventing has already been made or thought up”. but as i read his article, i found that there are still many things left to do. there is never an end. of course, i can think of nothing concrete and practical at the moment. but vannevar bush doesn’t seem to be asking for the do-able or the practical. his article seemed to say, “dream big dreams. impossible dreams.”

the details that he goes into regarding photography and recording information makes me realize just what amazing feats people have already done. surely enough, Bush’s faith that things will always get better and improve- exponentially faster and better processes will be discovered. the constant doubling of computer storage and processing speeds, the digitizing and projecting images, the ability to do everything on a computer… it stirs up an appreciation for just how many resources we have available to us. and the mind-blowing thing is that all of this is not the end of it. only the beginning. as we gain more resources, all of the tools we have at our disposal are pooled in an effort to do more. each new technology, each new concept is but an addition to our toolkit.

the history of the web is a testimony to the power of teamwork and innovation. and it is beginning to sink in that i can be a part of this. it is a definite possibility. these were people, simply people with a passion. it is not only giants who do these things.

“Web 2.0″ by O’Reilly

at the same time, after reading about “Web 2.0,” I realize that there is definitely some work and effort to be made in trying to participate in this exciting world. i didn’t know what half of the words meant. rather, i understood the words but couldn’t quite grasp the concept. it was there, slipping away at the edges of my mind- i could understand the power and gravity of it but i didn’t confidently possess the idea as much as i would like. words such as “the long tail,” “platform vs. application,” “decentralization”… i didn’t even really know how the internet is set up over many servers. does that mean every computer that has ever logged on to the internet has a chunk of a random website in its system? it seems like an invasion of privacy… but there seems to be no problem or outcry from the general public, so it must be alright.

they are wonderfully simple and impossible concepts. trust people? open source? free service? participation? i like where this trend is going. i just can’t understand why it works. the companies are competing for popularity? i suppose that Google and Amazon are successful because they have the most people. it is like gravity. the more dense of a user population there is, the more it attracts more people. i like one phrase in the O’Reilly article. it is when it is talking about Amazon’s success compared to Barnes and Nobles websites. the difference is that amazon added “layers of value”. it is styled and modified to exactly what people are interested in. so when you go to the site to look up something, someone else has most probably done the same thing before and has left you a nice trail to follow. then you can add whatever modification you want, kindly helping out the next person to come along.

rudimentary attempts at making a website

during the time between classes, i went to the geisel library’s dark and murky computer lab. a few days before, i had experimented with html when i had difficulty falling asleep. i looked up sites on google and created very basic pages. i’ve been meaning to perhaps create a website where i could store my resume and projects for employers to look at. however, for this project, i want to experiment and relax so my vision for it is a whimsical, quirky little website about me- the academic side, the fun side, and whatever side…

so today i expounded on my review of html. i had learned html in an art class before- sorta weird. but i am familiar with the process. the tags, the color values, the images. but today, i found a CSS style editing thing. i read on one website that one should use it because it’s more recent and easier to organize…? i’m not sure. but it reminds me of java. especially with the java scripting of classes and calling things.

i was thinking of creating an outline first. like, i want a heading in here, a picture here… a menu link here. but on second thought, i realized that making an outline at this point would probably only limit me. i wanted to flow with whatever tools, whatever code i learn.

my strategy will probably be to look at increasingly complex website source codes and attempt to glean what they do. it seems to work well so far. i’ve been finding w3schools.com very helpful. i will probably try the other websites mentioned in class today. though i won’t make a very sophisticated and accomplished site, i would like to make it look composed and elegant.