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Samford

Samford / site / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
5
May 10

Cinco de “Eh man!”

On campus today students were trying to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. A guy worked his way up a tree, wrapped a rope around a big limb and then lowered it down to his friends. They tied the rope to a pinata. There was difficulty getting it attached.

Finally, they were ready to hoist. The guy up in the tree pulled the rope, hoping to elevate the pinata to a good swinging height. Two tugs later the pinata came loose, crashing to the ground. One of the girls in the crowd rushed it and kicked the pinata down the hill. The candy was delivered unto the masses. No one had to take a swipe at any paper mache.

The rest of my day, a beautiful, warm, sunny day, was spent inside. I tinkered with this or that. Straightened up the office, prepared for class. I read the paper.

Ended up reading it twice.

I tinkered with websites. I added a few things to Tumblr and then spend 10 minutes trying to make that site and this one work together. There must be a way. I have a very clear idea of what it should do, but haven’t yet figured out how to do it. It should be easy, a strip of code, automatic.

Instead I’m loading things in here manually. For now.

Taught my first last class of the semester today. The students have been working, as I’ve mentioned here, for several weeks on building their first websites, using Dreamweaver. It is a good program; it is a frustrating program. The pages, the students are making, though, look very nice. They’ll present them as part of their final grade next week.

Some of the students, working hard, stayed 30 minutes after class wrapping up their projects. They’re quite ambitious.

And then I recycled newspapers. It is a thankless job, but I saved a tree this afternoon. Possibly two.

It is odd. I studied forestry in high school, considered it for about two weeks in college and know a fair amount about what we get from each tree, and the parts that aren’t of much use. I know how the newspaper process works. I’ve no idea how many trees this is. So it could be that I saved a quarter of a tree today, or 40.

Straightened up at home and then The Yankee and I ordered out for Chinese. I have leftovers. My fortune cookie promised me an opportunity tomorrow. There was a statement of opportunity making a fist and knocking on my door. The fortune cookie then suggested I open the door.

It was unclear what I should do next. Should I be accepting? Frightened? Relieved? Time will tell, one supposes.

Oh. The title? This was on when I started writing:

(Sponji Reggae, by Black Uhuru.) Love that living room scene.

Extra. This is freaky:

Yeah, sweet dreams.

And have a great Thursday. Follow along on Twitter and Tumblr and here.

Samford / site / Tuesday — Comments Off
4
May 10

Last paper of the spring

Learned a few things this morning. It is terribly difficult to get out of the house when there’s a Star Trek Next Generation marathon running on SciFi. I have forgotten a great many episodes from this show, it seems. I’m OK with that.

There’s a certain moral philosophy going on in the dialog. I suppose it has always been that way. Perhaps at 13 I was took young to appreciate some of it. Perhaps that means it did not rub off. You’d hate to think the great philosophies of as yet unborn fictional characters did not take hold because you were so easily distracted. On the other hand it is something of a relief to think that I don’t recall episodes and scenes and scripts from 20 years ago.

I remember, about that same time, watching an episode of the original series with people who grew up with it. The syndicated episode ended abruptly — we needed more commercials, I guess — and the last scenes were left unfinished:

Not to worry, someone in the room remembered and recounted it from their childhood. That’s just the tiniest bit depressing. What an odd thing to remember with clarity. But, then, I remember that he’d remembered it. That’s little better.

Anyway. Another day, another class. I have two sections doing lab work on Dreamweaver and learning a bit of HTML and design. They are down to their final hours of classwork now. Next week they present the finished product. For the rest of this week they have to concentrate on making sure their product is finished. Some of the sites are incredibly thoughtful, I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s reaction when they share them with the class.

Meanwhile watching them design makes me think of my own site.

In this new version of the blog there are all of four or five design elements. Those have been with us for some time now — longtime friends might recall when things changed here constantly — I suppose this means I’ve settled into my style. The picture at the top changed again this week. We’ve been on a recent trend of things I photographed in Las Vegas last month. First there was the Flamingo, then the top of a slot machine. This one is fairly straightforward, and also from Vegas. There’s one more from Vegas for next week.

This page, altogether, is as aesthetically as basic as I care to make it. The bulk of the pages throughout my site are pretty basic with respect to their coding. I went through a phase of trying to strip everything down to as little as possible. After that life got busy with work and still more school. This prompted the still current phase of less change, using the old as templates and copying and pasting in new material. It works. What’s important, as I tell the students, is the content. Is it clear? Organized? Readily obvious what is going on?

I’d give myself a B if I were grading my site.

Please don’t grade my site. Oh why not, it is a Tuesday. Alexa and Grader say this site is in the top 6.296 percent of all websites. This makes me think Alexa is broken.

Picked up dinner for the student-journalists tonight. This is their last paper of the term and they deserve a little Roly Poly reward. One platter gave us leftovers. They wrote and edited and designed. I cleaned up my office. I started recycling leftover papers.

And then I created a Tumblr because, it was a Tuesday, why not?

So now I have the blog here for the long form material, Twitter for the stuff you must know right now and Tumblr for, I guess, things that don’t go anywhere else. We’ll see what becomes of it. I have the feeling that I’ll be doing a lot of scanning this summer, so much of that may get filtered through Tumblr.

At some point all of these things just become competition for one another. I realize that. I’m a big holdout against it — which is why I’m three years behind on the Tumblr party line. I don’t feel one has to be everywhere. The online brand should be a.) findable (and thanks to search engines and the tiniest bit of SEO, that’s no problem) and b.) where the masses are (achieved via social media). After that, we’re all just competing to see who will be the next post-2008 version of MySpace.

The question is, to import or not import the Tumblr here?

Oh, and yes, what to put on the thing.

And what to put here. Long abandoned projects will soon return to see the light of day. I’ve probably said that 45 times since last fall or so, but next week they’ll become reality. The Glomeratas will return, hopefully with a rapid end to that project. The black and whites will soon make their triumphant comeback. There are a few other things on the drawing board.

All of this really is a fine hobby, and I’m proud you’re willing to take part in a bit of it with me. We’ll get to all of that soon.

In the meantime, tomorrow, there’s the final paper of the school year, a class, cleaning and Twitter and Tumblr and who knows what else.

Have a great Wednesday!

errands / memories / Monday / Samford — Comments Off
3
May 10

Jack Bauer doesn’t have time for Dreamweaver

Clouds over Hoover

The days are starting to slow down. I was home before dark tonight. That’s a tremendous moral victory. Never mind that it is still daylight after 7:30 in the evening. That still means I’m home before 7:30 in the evening.

Today, despite the feeling of a slowing of the Pace of Things, was a full one.

There was a termite inspection. (There are no termites.) A very nice gentleman walked around, through and under every thing, just to be certain. He gave me his paperwork, “I’ve been here, the termites haven’t” to sign and off he went, into someone’s home for half an hour.

You wonder if he wonders about these people whom he meets briefly each day. As I might have mentioned here before I worked at Stanley Steemer during high school, cleaning carpets, complimenting people on their pets and the fine pictures of their children and selling things. It must have looked odd. “Nice picture of your son and daughter there, sir. You must be proud.” I am 16. His kids were older than me.

I always wondered about these people, whom I got to meet. I often think of the guy who told me, between puffs of his cigarette, that he’d just been diagnosed with cancer. The lady that was obviously in a bad domestic situation, what ever became of her? The wealthy family with two kids in college? What achievements of their children are they boring their friends with down at the country club? People’s photographs say a lot, of course, and they are often willing to brag about this or that. It was an always changing adventure to meet five or six families a day.

This guy though, the termite guy? He’s more concerned about a snake falling on his head. In all of my tales from the high school carpet cleaning days — and I’ve got great stories — none of them start with “One day this snack just dropped out of the rafters … ”

There was the purchase of a gift card. (The only way to shop.) Walk in to Best Buy, wave off the gentleman who’d like to give you a flier. Pick up the appropriately themed plastic card. Tell the cashier how much you want on it, zip, beep, done. The cashier and I were both on the phone during the entire transaction. It was beautiful.

There was the picking up of a handsome framed piece for the Crimson’s outgoing editor. We took the newspaper plate from one of the year’s issues, had it matted and framed and gave it to her tonight. The people at the Framin’ Shoppe know me. We do this project, and a few others together every year. They notice the subtle changes in the order before I do. We don’t do a great deal of business with them, but they have a great eye for detail.

I love framing things. I wouldn’t mind if it were a bit cheaper. If I could afford it I would cover every inch of wall space with neatly framed photographs and profoundly important looking shadowboxes. I’d have more floorspace because everything would be hanging up. People would come visit us and think “This is a life invested.” Or “Quick! Invest in matting stock!”

I placed an order for the catered dinner I’m throwing tomorrow night. I visited Roly Poly, as that is the tradition I established. Order a platter, share it with the student journalists.

This is a very hard order for me to place. I’m not fond of even picking restaurants — my reasoning is sound, whenever I pick a place something goes horribly wrong with the dining experience — and now I must order for a group of people with different tastes.

Fortunately Roly Poly names their platters. Since they don’t have the Roly Poly Platter (when in doubt, order the thing named after the restaurant, you know that dish works) they have the All American Platter. Problem solved.

I taught a class for two hours. The students have been laboring away in our sweltering Mac lab (I wonder if they have given it a creative name this spring) learning how to build themselves a portfolio website in Dreamweaver. Some of these pages are really quite impressive.

And then we had the annual Journalism and Mass Communication Barbecue Picnic Awards Banquet and Hootenanny. They just call it a picnic because that fits on the program better.

We give out awards and honors and scholarships. Students are recognized. We eat. The dean tells great jokes. The students then make fun of the faculty. Everyone has a nice time.

And after all of that I still managed to make it home before dark. I had to help The Yankee find her cell phone. This took about 35 seconds. For my troubles I was able to remind her to not lose her cell phone for the rest of the night.

We watched 24 a couple of characters didn’t see that coming, did they?

There is a reasonable discussion going around that this is the best season of 24. I’m not sure if I have a favorite — and the common subplots of the series are too rampant at this point for me to pick this as my favorite — but it is an entertaining ride, these last few weeks.

I’m being vague in case you are behind, dear reader.

I almost wish I didn’t know that a Jack Bauer movie was forthcoming. That’d let the danger and the ambiguity and the concern over Jack’s stability linger in the air. Since a.) Kiefer Sutherland is the executive producer b.) Jack Bauer does the clock narration c.) We see him in next week’s previews and d.) there is a movie coming we know that nothing fatally bad happens to our hero. A little suspense at the end wouldn’t hurt.

My (this week’s) prediction: The series ends with Jack soaring down a zip line into Vladimir Putin’s office and screaming at him. Putin, or his composite character facsimile, pulls off a rubber mask to reveal that he’s Charles Logan. Logan pulls of his mask to reveal that he’s Logan’s ex-wife. She pulls off a mask to reveal that the person really throwing the switches is Teri Bauer.

Jack will have an emotional breakdown, black out and wake up on the set of Lost. He quickly deduces that the smoke monster is really just the steam from the Hot Tub Time Machine movie. He will be transported back to the set of Lost Boys, but with all of his knowledge intact, so that he can avoid making The Cowboy Way and Cowboy Up.

Write it down.