Things have escalated beyond imagination: “The footprint of Katrina was about 400 miles when it hit. Gustav currently has a footprint of 900 miles and continues to grow.”
Video of the mayor’s official press conference is here.
My parents are staying in Picayune, Mississippi, for the time being. I’ve gotten in touch with nearly all my NOLA friends and they’re all leaving or have already left. Not sure about the few who just flew into town for Southern Decadence, but it looks like the rest of those scheduled events have been canceled so I would think that if they’ve got their plane ticket, they should be getting out asap.
Several NOLAbloggers have turned to twitter to set up their alerts so we [at least the people already following them, I’m not sure how many will use hashtags] know how to find out how they are and where they will be for the next few days. What’s most fascinating to me is that here’s even a GustavAlerts twitterstream to follow now as well as an all-encompassing Gustav Information Center & Social Network.
I hate that I’m watching this from afar again because I feel so helpless, but all I can do is pray. Everyone’s much more prepared this time, which is great, but I really hope that this storm doesn’t ruin all the rebuilding efforts I’ve seen my friends spend so much time, money, and energy on over the past couple years.
My first interaction with the Lively environment was ok I guess. It was not difficult to get in a room, but the choice of avatars was pitiful! Once in a room I could walk around and I saw some other people talking. I said “Hello” but no one seemed to notice me. I tried another room with the same results.
Lively seems very simplistic. I am familiar with Second Life and it is a much richer environment. However, SL is much more complicated to use. My first visit there it took me 40 minutes to sit in a chair!
I will have to use Lively regularly to see what it offers.
I did not have trouble getting Lively up and running. I created a new Gmail account just for this. Very few avatar choices! I’ll do the questionnaire next.
Since my Instructional Graphics class is now over (earned an A) I need to clear out this USF blog area for another class. As of the fall of 2008 I’m enrolled in two classes this time. Organization of Knowledge I and Human Computer Interface. It’s for the later class I need this blog.
One assignment is to use Google Lively and write a journal about the experience. Even though the instructions don’t say to, I am going to use this blog for that purpose. That way I can just post the link to the instructor and the class whenever needed.
One issue I know I’ll have is the instructor mentioned that spelling and grammar are important in this assignment. Wordpress does have a spell check plug-in but last semester I could not get it to install. I think because I do not have sufficient rights. Oh, well, I’ll do it another way.
This is my first post. This blog will document my journey through LIS 5315, Instructional Graphics. Posts will include summarizations, critiques and more on my readings, websites and other material the professor assigns. I know next to nothing about web design so each week will include new learning experiences in which I hope to keep up.
I have ordered my textbooks but they have not arrived yet so I am unable to do my textbook readings at this time.
I have decided to start the blog assignment with the USF server. I currently have a personal blog at another website but I wanted to start a new one that focuses just on this class. So far I have spent some time exploring the website and trying to figure out all the different settings and options.
After going through the websites listed in the weekly assignments I have decided to go with Kompozer for designing stuff for the class (I just learned how to make a word link to a website). I currently have no programs for design on my computer and this site looked to be the simpiliest and most user friendly for beginners.
This class will be a huge challenge and I plan to work hard to keep up. In the end I should learn some skills that I desperately need to keep up in the internet world.
As today is the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I’m honored to have been asked to reflect on my own experiences over at the Open Society Institute’s Katrina: An Unnatural Disaster blog.
Some information about the site is as follows:
Katrina: An Unnatural Disaster was named the best nonprofit website of the year in the 12th Annual Webby Awards. OSI was chosen from nearly 10,000 entries from across the United States and more than 60 countries.
Katrina: An Unnatural Disaster features the Katrina Media Fellows’ investigative reporting on the Hurricane’s continuing devastation across the Gulf Coast. The site combines never-before-seen video, photography, print, and radio with previously published work to spark a national discussion on race, poverty, and government neglect.
So far just my biographical post is up, but a longer narrative should go up today.
I hope you explore other parts of the site too because there is a lot of informative and revealing text and video.
I’ve already been on the phone with several NOLA friends who are ready to get outta dodge, although today the maps showed a slight westerly turn:
Still, a lot of people are on edge, and with the 3-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina tomorrow, this new storm is taking me back to my very first Katrina-related blog post where I quoted a lighthearted musician: “I’ll be here tomorrow, I’m not leaving,” said trombonist Eddie “Doc” Lewis. “I’ve been through typhoons, monsoons, tornadoes, hurricanes and every other phoon, soon or storm. I’m not worried.”
Well, things have certainly changed since then, as documented in this NYTimes article “No, We’re Not Nervous. Are We?”: “In Broadmoor, David Brouillette, a musician, was making plans to leave should the storm threaten. ‘A little freaking out,’ he said, ‘in a town where nobody really freaks out about anything, is O.K.’”
What: The Ybor City Museum Society’s Cigar Heritage Festival is a celebration of the rich cigar-making history, culture and heritage that once helped make Tampa the “Cigar Capital of the World.” This year the Society will celebrate their 10th annual festival on Saturday, November 15. A poster competition will take place in commemoration [...]
I also learned today that Iraq has a designated timetable for the removal of US troops from Iraq by 2011. You know the shit is deep, when you overthrow a maniacal dictator and install a puppet government which overshadows the peoples interest in order to further your own agenda. And then after having followed your form of government and surviving the continued and constant bombing and destruction of their country, the son of a bitch of a president and his people say they want you to leave so they can get shit done on their own. What a traitor, we should probably hang him to, because we definitely do not desire to have a leader oppose use, becasue god forbid a leader actually leads his people.
Today tried to get into an organic lab class. Which is basically impossible at this school. What kind of university structure allows their to more seats in a lecture class than their are lab seats. Wouldn’t the learning process for theses difficult and necessary classes be improved by merely supplying the same number of seats in both.
I also learned today that Iraq has a designated timetable for the removal of US troops from Iraq by 2011. You know the shit is deep, when you overthrow a maniacal dictator and install a puppet government which overshadows the peoples interest in order to further your own agenda. And then after having followed your form of government and surviving the continued and constant bombing and destruction of their country, the son of a bitch of a president and his people say they want you to leave so they can get shit done on their own. What a traitor, we should probably hang him to, because we definitely do not desire to have a leader oppose use, becasue god forbid a leader actually leads his people.
Welcome back to school everyone! So lets get to the topic on hand. So starting this semester, Fall 2008, USF Parking and Transportation Services decided to phase out the parking hang-tag and replace it with a “re-movable” sticker. The sticker is about 3″x4″ mostly opaque white with black text and a bar-code. My guess for the change, was that the sticker is a lot cheaper to produce. Its less plastic being thinner but larger in area than the old hang-tag. The official USF PTS stance is that they had “issues” with the hang-tag and the sticker makes it easier to check tags on campus.
THE GRIPE:
The instruction from USF is to place the sticker on the DRIVER SIDE lower part of your WINDSHIELD. DRIVER SIDE! The side that I need to see through. Its hella annoying! It really interrupts my field of view. Its distracting, and its probably DOT illegal to have the sticker in the driver side windshield.
What to DO?
Why not have the sticker on the passanger side? Why not on the upper middle part of the windshield? Why not on the rear windshield? How about ANYWHERE BUT THE MOST UNSAFE PLACE ON THE GLASS, IN THE WAY OF ROAD VISION.
Legal:
Although Florida statue doesn’t have a specific law regulating stickers on the windshield, there are provisions and exceptions. So your not supposed to have anything attached to the windshield except a sunpass and/or legal certs etc. They don’t mention specifically where they can or cannot go. However, exemtion B leads you to think that you should not have stickers in the field of view. (scroll down, I copy pasted the statute) Also read CA’s statue for a better version.
Title XXIII
MOTOR VEHICLES
Chapter 316
STATE UNIFORM TRAFFIC CONTROL
View Entire Chapter
316.2952 Windshields; requirements; restrictions.–
(1) A windshield in a fixed and upright position, which windshield is equipped with safety glazing as required by federal safety-glazing material standards, is required on every motor vehicle which is operated on the public highways, roads, and streets, except on a motorcycle or implement of husbandry.
(2) A person shall not operate any motor vehicle on any public highway, road, or street with any sign, sunscreening material, product, or covering attached to, or located in or upon, the windshield, except the following:
(a) A certificate or other paper required to be displayed by law.
(b) Sunscreening material along a strip at the top of the windshield, so long as such material is transparent and does not encroach upon the driver’s direct forward viewing area as more particularly described and defined in Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards No. 205 as the AS/1 portion of the windshield.
(c) A device, issued by a governmental entity as defined in s. 334.03, or its designee, for the purpose of electronic toll payments.
(3) The windshield on every motor vehicle shall be equipped with a device for cleaning rain, snow, or other moisture from the windshield, which device shall be constructed as to be controlled or operated by the driver of the vehicle.
(4) Every windshield wiper upon a motor vehicle shall be maintained in good working order.
(5) Grove equipment, including “goats,” “highlift-goats,” grove chemical supply tanks, fertilizer distributors, fruit-loading equipment, and electric-powered vehicles regulated under the provisions of s. 316.267, are exempt from the requirements of this section. However, such electric-powered vehicles shall have a windscreen approved by the department sufficient to give protection from wind, rain, or insects, and such windscreen shall be in place whenever the vehicle is operated on the public roads and highways.
(6) A former military vehicle is exempt from the requirements of this section if the department determines that the exemption is necessary to maintain the vehicle’s accurate military design and markings. However, whenever the vehicle is operating on the public roads and highways, the operator and passengers must wear eye-protective devices approved by the department. For purposes of this subsection, “former military vehicle” means a vehicle, including a trailer, regardless of the vehicle’s size, weight, or year of manufacture, that was manufactured for use in any country’s military forces and is maintained to represent its military design and markings accurately.
(7) A violation of this section is a noncriminal traffic infraction, punishable as a nonmoving violation as provided in chapter 318.
California State Statue regarding the Windshield:
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d12/vc26708.htm
Examples from other schools:
What to do???
Call parking services and tell them what you feel. I placed my sticker right in front of my rear view mirror, essentially, where the old hang tag used to be. Everyone seems to be just as annoyed as me and have been placing the sticker there anyways. Put the sticker on the passenger side or upper mid part of the windshield.
I lost all my input with the slip of a finger last time, so now I am cutting and pasting using Word.
The first website of exploration this week is the one devoted to one of our three texts: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird. While I am writing this in New Times Roman, black-on-white, Beaird exemplifies the five basic elements of design graphically. (That makes sense!) The words “layer,” “color,” “texture,” “typography,” and “imagery” are handwritten across the section heading the regular, old text. You can place the curser on any one of these words and see an example in the page you are looking at. For example, scroll each word, and you will see the following concepts pointed out in red:
Layer
Isolation
White space
Fixed width
Color
Desaturation
Intensity
Complementary colors
Texture
Point
Line
Shape
Shadow
Proportion
Pattern
Imagery
Choosing formats
.gif, .png
Finding the right images
Edge treatments
Contrasting my awful looking list with a visual counterpart does emphasize the importance of design, both aesthetically, and in terms of integrating concepts and information. Excellent!
I’ve spent my day sifting through and deleting a lot of old e-mails- some saved purposefully and some saved by happenstance. Here are a couple of links to great resources that I’d long since forgotten. Hope you enjoy:
Archivos Virtuales: Papers of Latino and Latin American Artists
URL: http://www.aaa.si.edu/guides/site-archivos/index.cfm
Description: “Based on the published [...]
The Ybor City Museum Society (YCMS) seeks Board members for three year terms beginning Fall 2008. If you are interested in applying for a Board position, please review the application form at http://titaylor.blog.usf.edu/ycms-board-application/. Contact the Museum Society at info@ybormuseum.org for a blank application.
More information about the Society and the Ybor City State [...]
I am pleased to announce that the USF Tampa Library’s Associate Director of Reference and Instruction, Nancy Cunningham, will be assuming the post of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Librarian beginning Fall Semester 2008. It has been my pleasure to serve ISLAC and affiliated members of the USF community as the LACS Librarian for [...]
