PlanetUSF

The upgrade has been approved by the Courseware Advisory Committee, all technical concerns have been addressed, the documentation has been created, and we are go for upgrade to Blackboard 8.

The upgrade will begin at 12:01 a.m. on Monday December 29th, and will be done by the end of business Tuesday December 30th. During this time, Blackboard will be completely unavailable. Please plan to have any work completed before this time.

All course gradebooks will automatically be updated to the new Grade Center. No actions are required on your part. All other course content will be unchanged by the upgrade.

The documentation is complete, and ready to be distributed. It centers (pun intended) on the new Grade Center, as that is the biggest and most visible change in this upgrade. You can view the online version at this URL
http://wiki.acomp.usf.edu/index.php/Grade_Center

A demonstration instance of Blackboard has been setup and made available to all instructors so that you can experiment with the Grade Center in a copy of your real courses. Instructors who taught in the Fall 2008 should receive an email with instructions on how to get to this demonstration server.

If you have any questions, please send email to help@usf.edu

http://www.smartwebby.com/web_site_design/default.asp Smartwebby is a great final website to review. It offers just about everything for the designer. Tutorials, templates, roll over images, pop up menu ideas, etc. Particularly useful for Dreamweaver users.

http://bestwebgallery.com/ Great collection of websites. Check out the Brazilian WWF graphics. Best Web Gallery offers some mindboggling resources for site design. The 3-D wall link has a spiral photo gallery that can be rotated for selections- amazing!!!
http://www.botwg.com/ similarly to the above the best of the web gallery shows some beautifully crafted sites. The Klinkov site is executed with great clarity- necessary for the artist to best display his paintings. The Brecrest children’s clothing link is an example of appropriate design for a particular audience.
http://www.cssmoon.com/index.php The CSS moon site doesn’t offer any explanations of it’s ratings of other websites and the homepage doesn’t make clear what the purpose of the site is in the first place. Not as impressive as the above critiques.
http://www.csselite.com/ Again this site shows some impressive designs using CSS without any introduction. The assumption here is that if you are visiting a CSS site you probably don’t need an explanation of the site’s intentions.
http://oriental-gallery.com/ More fantastic websites to make my inferior site look even more pathetic. The DCM entertainment site is most inspiring lots of amazing Adobe Flash animation.
http://www.coolhomepages.com/ Finally!! This site not only has web site ratings, it has loads of resources for you to create your own. Look at the “proyectiva”. Very impressive use of Flash and design. Cool Home Pages has links to stylish templates, stock photos and logos.

A continuation of the topics, starting with the 27 best places for incredible web design:

• CSS Gallery has some really neat websites in their links. Definitely a good place for a very broad concept range of “cool”.
• DesignUS: I love all the sources on here. I’m enjoying just looking at all the vectors and brushes, even though I don’t have Photoshop. Neat stuff.
• Over and over, I come across 21 Ruby Lane, which intrigues me. I must try out making a website that has a left-to-right scroll frame in its structure sometime.
• Oriental Gallery: I hate their layout; it’s not difficult to use, but its navigation annoys me. Although the sites linked are pretty neat, I don’t like the way they are previewed.
• One Page Love: What a great concept– one page can be great if you’re just giving people a glimpse at what you can do. Ethem Budak, Dave Adams Photography, Design Freedom, and Giant Creative use the “one page limit” quite well, while some of the others leave me wondering about what happened. It’s a good option if you want a “short and sweet” website that exhibits the best of a small collection of stuff; on the other hand, if you’re planning on exhibiting a large amount of stuff, it’s not the best idea.

SmartWebby
• Although it’s very text-heavy, it’s easy enough to navigate. There are a lot of little tutorials, and I’m most interested in the little tips and tricks that I haven’t exercised in my CSS-based layout. I looked specifically at drop-down menus, which was explained pretty well. I think I could probably adapt it to a future website, but I’d also have to be interested in header-based navigation to do it. Between the free tutorials and the paid services on the page, there is a lot of information out there for both the people who’d want to buy the technology and the people who just want to learn to do it on their own. Overall, not a bad guide.

I’ve been a bit random in my postings, and never got around to talking about the various lessons on advanced topics, so I’m going to end up compiling it into one big post here, separated by topic.

Flash
• Flash Vista: I looked at one of their video tutorials and it’s very straightforward, if not a bit annoying that I can’t reliably skip ahead like I would with text and screenshots. Otherwise, the site is a bit busy, but overall, the tutorials are helpful if I had Flash.
• Flash Explained: the main tutorial that I came upon was neat, except for the fact that the finished product and the screenshots of the finished product did not match up. I’m guessing an error in coding or updating of the system has caused the issue, as some of the images are misaligned and difficult to read. I looked at the tutorial for an ActionScript drop-down menu and that worked quite a bit better in addition to giving straightforward text and screenshot instructions.
• SitePal: talking menus are creepy. Very creepy. The demo, however, was fun to play with and brought out the immature teenager in me; there’s something about a computer text input that makes one want to write silly things. I really would not recommend the “talking website” concept to anyone, as I find it really disturbing.
• Adobe Flash: it seems like most people are familiar with this program if they’re familiar with the concept of flash. Apparently there are a lot of new features that make components of the flash animation independent of each other, and they’re including metadata support as well. Neat.
• Swift 3D: Never heard of this one before, but it’s got an interesting demo on it. The newest version also has a lot of new features, including HTML w/SWF support; definitely a tool that makes your high tech aspects of the site more accessible. How many people use it, though?
• Swish: With screencast tutorials, templates, and effects samples, there’s a lot to look at on this program’s site. Like Swift 3D, I have no clue as to whether it’s ubiquitous or something random and not well-known in the industry.

27 design sites: my favorites
• The FWA: The layout is easy to use, pretty straightforward, and likes the scroll function, which apparently is hidden. I tried out a few of the sites that they linked to, and I was really inspired. Now if only I had a Flash program, I could try out some ideas…
• CSS Dance: This is more my speed; now that I’ve got the basics of CSS down, I want inspiration like 21 Ruby Lane to inspire me, and that’s what this site gives me. From what I recall, I saw a tutorial for the “left to right navigation” somewhere online during this course that I liked. I will have to revisit it sometime and see whether I can incorporate it simply into another site.
• DesignSnack: I like their “browse by color” function– if I’m looking for inspiration with a certain hue, this would be really neat. There are a TON of design studio websites on this and every other site; it’s as if they’re marketing to each other with all the multiple links.
• CSS Nature: I am put off by their description:
  

  CSS NATURE is a showcase of well designed eco green and organic CSS based website designs.

  It really doesn’t make any sense, especially considering the terms they’re using. Visually, all the sites involve some sort of “natural” element to their look, but none of them really appear to be eco-conscious websites. Besides, if it were more about being “eco-conscious”, using simpler and darker layout schemes would be the way to go. (Google at one point in time did 24 hours of a front page with a black background in an effort to raise awareness of the fact that darker backgrounds use less energy because of light output from the computers… or something. Either way, they were doing it to save energy.)

• CSS Design Yorkshire: I’m mentioning this one mostly because of their link to a website called Brain Fart. Apparently it’s a Ukranian company that does IT services and writes the content for their websites, as it’s got some interesting uses of English on there; I would never have guessed that this was an IT firm from either the name or the layout, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. I’m also amused by Dr. Burnorium’s Hot Sauce Emporium: the layout is fun and quite a bit like what my SO envisions for his portfolio.

More stuff in the next post or two.

I think I got all the kinks fixed in the coding, and I updated with more images on the site and an update on the knitting project that I showcased in the “knitting” section. I made a screenshot of the resume page so there’s at least one record of what the “intended” font combination was:

I picked a second script style font to coordinate with the overly decorative banner image to each page, and tried to coordinate most of the images with the “grungy/noisy” theme that I’d set up. The only exception were the food images, as I think that adding visual “noise” to food images might make them look really unappetizing. The coding shows up in the latest versions of IE and Firefox, which make up a large portion of the web browser market these days, and I’ve given up on trying to find out why IE5.5 and IE6 don’t like my images.

All in all, I learned a lot about how to make layouts look decent, that there are a ton of different ideas and trends out there dealing with colors and design, and that it’s really easy to take advances in website coding and make your website be a competitor for the top spots on Websites That Suck. This will all come in handy within the next year, as I’ll be revamping the layout on my fiancé’s website and I’ll also be creating a wedding website for us. It doesn’t seem so scary at this point, but now appears totally manageable if not simple.

http://www.kopozky.net/ There are undoubtedly worse people to pick on than Bill Gates considering his foundation is one of the largest philanthropic organizations ever. Maybe i’m just missing the joke here.

http://www.ok-cancel.com/ sorry folks. Maybe I’m just in a morning funk, but this comic hasn’t done the trick either.
http://www.bugbash.net/ Ok. Finally. You got me. It is sad to see where the Star Wars prequels have gone. A Star Wars Icecapades would be a travesty for sure. However, an Imax porn episode could be interesting as long as Jabba the hut is not involved.

IMG_2093-2, originally uploaded by paulltran.

I love the feeling of the warmth of a fire against the biting cold of the winter air (yes, Florida does get cold). Things that come to mind: 1) S’mores 2) praise and worship songs 3) hot dogs 4)Burning logs on the balcony of Monticello apartments 5) the smell of smoke on your clothes and in your hair

IMG_2401-2, originally uploaded by paulltran.

Sarasota is quite interesting this time of year. After a weekend camping trip with the Catholic Student Union, I realized that Florida can get quite cold during November. Disregarding the cold, I find spending time with new friends as moments well spent.

You can see pictures from the camping trip on my flickr page. If you would like to see all of the pictures, friend me!

Hey everyone,

I got a random text message from my friend Laura, which said: “Great quote heard about an awful movie - Twilight: And when in direct sunlight, he wasn’t dying, he was just wearing body glitter.” I was in no condition to question or mock this text message for a number of reasons. First, I was drunk and watching High School Musical 3. Second, I was completely unfamiliar and uninterested in Twilight. From an outsider’s perspective, it seemed like Emo Buffy the Goth Vampire Slayer. Plus, I wasn’t particularly interested in Twilight, because vampire movies have been terrible since “Interview with the Vampire” simultaneously killed the genre and began Tom Cruise’s crazed descent into Oprah’s couch.

Vampire movies had always been horrifying, like Nosferatu; drenched in camp, like Blacula (”Dracula’s Soul Brotha!”) or “Blood and Donuts”; or both, like From Dusk Til Dawn. In all of these movies, the vampires chased after human prey. But “Interview with the Vampire” presented a twist: the vampire as victim. They were still dark and foreboding, but they were emoting instead of killing. The vampire also became hyper sexualized, so they become horny emo guys. This is why I was intrigued by the “body glitter” comment, because - as we all know - the only vampire to walk during the day is Blade, and he’s now in jail for tax evasion charges. I feared that this was an angle to make the vampires more empathic, and therefore more cliche.

Well, as it turns out, the vampires in Twilight do not die when they see the sun. Instead, their skin shines like diamonds when the sun hits - just like Michael Jackson! The concept of vampires not fearing the sun is not unique; it was already done in Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. And the vampires consciously choose to not go outside because the glowing skin gives away their position. They are vampires; they are much stronger, much faster and EAT PEOPLE! I am pretty confident they would control the world if they decided to emerge from the darkness. And I don’t think people could run away from them, even if they glow. Velociraptors could glow all them want, but if they are chasing me, I’m not getting away.

I don’t buy the logic. The real reason, in my opinion, these vampires don’t go into the sun is so they have an excuse to be sad and pout around while shopping at Hot Topic and Trader Joe’s. They can’t go out during the day, and society hates them, which makes them forbidden… and therefore sexy to teenage girls.

I hadn’t figured out this dynamic of the popularity of the film when I posted this as a Facebook status: “how is Twilight popular? I am the only person who realizes how dumb the premise is?” As you can probably tell, I set off a firestorm of teen angst. I got about 30 e-mails separate from that thread from people telling me why I am an idiot for not recognizing that Edward is sexy and I am jealous because I don’t glitter in the sun (I don’t glitter, I burn because I’m Irish) and that I don’t appreciate people who love brooding, dark loners in movies who then go to school and pick on brooding, dark loners in real life.

My personal favorite e-mail was from my friend Becky Reyno, who writes, “ok let’s have this out right now. It’s about forbidden love, instant chemistry and the perfect man who could crush you with his hand. How HOT is that? and by the way YOU’RE a dumb premise….oooh snap! although I’m not into it like the 15 year old girls. I don’t scream and cry and cut my neck…. Yikes. That being said, I would do Robert Pattinson, Edward and Robert Pattinson as Edward in a hot second.”

Forbidden love, instant chemistry and the perfect man who could crush you with his hand… it’s Ike Turner! So let me get this straight: the perfect man is a guy whose skin condition makes him look like Michael Jackson when he goes outside and says lines like, “Do I dazzle you?” Seriously? Think about it for a second; if somebody came up to you and said, “Do I dazzle you,” exactly how fast are you trying to find an exit? (Or in this case, since he’s a vampire, a stake).

I suppose I don’t get it. I’m not a brooding loner, I am usually liked by my girlfriend’s parents and I am not particularly forbidden. Maybe I am just out of touch with reality. Maybe I’m a hater.

It’s still a stupid premise.

Hope you enjoyed,
Matt Morrison

Part III
Technological Information
Information as Reality

Chapter 11
Elementary Measures

The Electron
The greek word for amber is electron and the heraclean stone is a magner. The complex and reciprocal processes that underlie
electricity and magnetism remained concealed for two and half milenna, and the kind of scientist who investigates them properly
did not appear until the beginning of the modern period.

The Bit
The first signs of writing were logographs, and logographic writing developed into large and complex systems. However, to have
thousands of indivisible and unresolvable logograph is, it seems, to miss something crucial about systems of signs and vehicles of information.

Chapter 12
Basic Structures
Division

Division principle of generation as well as the basis of structure. In genesis, god’s first creative act
amounts to a gesture of dividing.

Transistor and Computer
The nucleus of an atom silicon is surrounded by four electrons. In a silicon crystal, the atoms
pool their electrons with their neighbors.

Chapter 13
Transparency and Control

Perspicuity and Surveyability
Historically considered, information technology has resulted from the convergence of two technologies the transmission
of information and automation of computation.

Transparency
Gave GIS its sweepingly penetrating power was not so much the digitizing of traditional infomation as the collection of masses of new novel data through satellites that capture and relay the information contained in the way.

Transparency, Control, Prosperity
To be sure, this ambiguity of transparency lies, uneasily perhaps, in the farther recesses of contemporary culture.
The instability of transparency is held in c heck where cognitive and cultural interests.

Chapter 14
Virtuality and Ambiguity

The Resolution of Information
The concepts of resolution is accurate and helpful in well defined technical circumstances like those of remote sensing, it is
misleadingly preceise when applied to Weaver’s Illustration.

Virtual Lives
If the actual world its merely a subregion or substratum of cyberspace, ambiguity is resolved or has at
any rate evaporated.

Real Gravity
The well virtual ambiguity casts around cyberspace can be more or less dense. The more permeable
the veil the more instrusive the burdens and barriers of ordinary life. To secure the charm
of virtual reality at its most glamrous.

Chapter 15
Fragility and Noise

Physical and Social Fragility
Technological information seems uniquely robust and resonant. Digital structures are more enduring
than material ones because they allow for faultless copying.

The Origin of Noise
The fragilities that beset technological information should be easy no accept. They are far from invalidating or
endangering the astrounding accomplishment.

Conclusion
Information and Reality

The Lightness of Being
There is still a period of information expansion and integration ahead of us. What has been impounding information to
some extent are the partitions between different carriers of information.

Digitization will expand until it has breached the structural dams. Integration of hardware will advance as it already
has in the convergence technology that fuses television sets with telephones and personal computers.

Adjusting Balance
The succeeding kinds of information accomplish and in some ways surpass what their predecessors provide,
and so it may seem as though technological information could give us the bes of theree worlds.

We talked a while ago about a web page you can use to submit suggestions directly to Blackboard on how they can improve their product. Your ideas are being heard. At last check they had received almost 200 suggestions from USF. Good job.

Additionally, the recently completed Photo Roster tool was the direct result of your suggestions. We never would have built that if you hadn’t told us you wanted it.

Taking a cue from that, we’ve built a simple form right into myUSF so that you can make suggestions directly to us about how we are running Blackboard at USF. If there’s some way you think we could be doing things better, a tool or function that would make your life wonderful, or something that’s currently driving you nuts, please let us know about it via this form.

There are three ways to get to the suggestion form

1. Students

   In every course, in the Course Tools menu, you’ll find a link to the Suggestion form.
   
   

2. Instructors
   In every course Control Panel, in the Tools area, you’ll find a link to the form.
   

   

3. Everyone
   When you first log in, a module with a link to the form is available by default on the Welcome tab.
   
   

Looking forward to all your great ideas.

By popular request, we are pleased to release the first version of our Photo Roster tool. Available to course Instructors and organization Managers, this tool simply presents a roster of the students in your course along with basic contact information and a photograph supplied by the ID Card Center. The tool is available now by going into your course Control Panel and clicking on the Photo Roster link.

If a student as enabled privacy, or we don’t otherwise have a photo from the card center, a picture of Rocky the bull is used instead.

If you are wondering about the value of such a tool, please listen to this anecdote from a student

My undergraduate organic chemistry professor required all 100 students to submit to him a note-card after the first lecture. The note-card had to include a passport photo, name, hobbies and career interests. Amazingly, within two weeks he had memorized everything. When we raised our hands in class, he would address us by our first names. When we visited him during office hours, he would talk to us about our hobbies and if solicited, offer us career advice. This certainly made me feel very good that my professor actually CARES about me as a person!

Students

If you are concerned about having your photos available to the Instructor, Students have the right to have this suppressed. You can update your privacy settings in OASIS. The University Registrar provides an online tool for understanding and updating student privacy settings (https://www.registrar.usf.edu/privacy/).

USF considers photographic image to be “directory information” from a student privacy perspective.

For details, please see the USF Regulation USF2.0021 at:
http://usfweb2.usf.edu/usfgc/ogc%20web/currentregs/USF2-0021.htm

This is in compliance with state and federal privacy requirements.

FlashVista http://www.flashvista.com/ Tons of tutorials and flash categories. This site seems like it would cover most of your needs.

Flash Tutorials http://www.lukamaras.com/tutorials/cool-design/hitech-floating-menu.html very cool futuristic menu design. Worth learning soon.

SitePal - Flash Avatars http://www.sitepal.com/
Wow!! This one is way too cool! You can get an animated character or avatar to host your website. Check out the overview film. Prices range from $100 to $2500 a year depending on how many features you want. You can have a photo converted to an animated version but the features seem to get lost. The asian guy in the intro film looks very little like his cartoon avatar.
FLASH SOFTWARE:

Adobe Flash http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/ Ouch!! at $699 I won’t be purchasing Adobe Flash anytime soon. I’ll have to wait a few years.

Swift http://www.erain.com/Products/swift3d/ Swift is offered at half the price of Adobe Flash and is compatable using “smartlayer technology”

Swish http://www.swishzone.com/index.php And Swish wins the price war at $149. This could mean that your not getting all the bells and whistles of Adobe Flash but it describes most of the standard Flash features.

SCRIPTS:

HotScripts http://www.hotscripts.com/ This site might be helpful, but I had no succes finding visual examples of scripts. That would be more informative.

MP3S:

Basic info about MP3s http://www.soundstageav.com/mastersonaudio/20050201.htm hey, this explanation gives a clear history of the MP3 format. Makes you wonder what audio technology is looming around corner.

How to create .M3U files and streaming audio http://www.selfseo.com/story-13698.php
Very cool and concise explanation of the pros of streaming audio, like not having your copyrighted materials downloaded onto anyone’s hard drive or having to wait for a rather large file to completely download before you can here it. The .M3U file is a simple “go between link” that feeds the .mp3 without having to download- and it’s a simple process that can be done in notepad!!
Audacity - Free audio editor http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
As a musician, I was mesmerized by Audacity. I used to record on a Yamaha 4 track which cost me over $300 at the time. I can do so much more with this free audio editor than I could then. With a seemingly unlimited number of tracks and built in special effects like phaser and delay I could easily get lost creating sound collages.
Musicovery Internet Radio http://musicovery.com/
I gave the word music genre a listen and wow no interruptions!! I often listen to Radio 360 but a tranquil track can rudely find a disruptive Walmart ad breaking through.
Pandora Internet Radio http://www.pandora.com/
Check out the Music Genome Project link at the top of the homepage!! Rather than pigeon holing musicians into specific genres, these guys are analyzing individual tracks. Therefore, you could hear Coldplay’s “Ring of Fire” cover under country or Ween’s “Dancin in the Show tonight” under childrens (scary). Pandora has a member login so that you can save your personal settings and access them anywhere.
FREE WEB EDITORS -
Without actually downloading and using the following editors it’s kind of hard to critique them. Over all, these editors are striving to offer multiple functions. Instead of serving solely as web editors they are offering chatroom, e-mail, and web browsing capabilities. Sea Monkey seems to be the better of these three.

Amaya http://www.w3.org/Amaya/Amaya.html

Trellian http://www.trellian.com/webpage/

SeaMonkey http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

FREE TEXT EDITORS:

http://www.thefreecountry.com/webmaster/htmleditors.shtml#htmleditors This site gives a good general overview of both free wysiwyg and text editors.

During semester break I can’t wait to go back home to see and visit my family and friends. I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time with them. I’m most looking forward to celebrating Christmas with them. Because everyone on my mom’s side of the family is Polish we will get to celebrate Wigilia, on Christmas Eve. I’ll get to eat my mom and dad’s homemade Kiełbasa (Polish sausage), Potato and Cheese Pierogi (like dumplings), Golumpki (stuffed Cabbage), and sauerkraut along with a variety of cookies, pies, etc. Before eating, we will get to share a Polish wafer called oplatki. We offer a piece to each person wishing them well for the upcoming New Year. We will also get to decorate our house inside and out with red, green, and clear lights, inflatables, wreathes, and more. The best thing is when we put on Christmas music, pick out a live Christmas tree and decorate it with lights, ornaments, and tinsel. We also set up our nativity scene and stockings. Presents are opened Christmas morning.

My family is like the typical American family I guess, in terms of which holidays we celebrate. I was raised Catholic, so we have Christmas and Easter of course. I would have to say that my absolute favorite holidays of the year are Thanksgiving and Christmas. For Thanksgiving, there is always a huge get-together at either my house or my grandma’s house with lots of family members. I like this especially because I get to spend time with family members I don’t see too often. Thanksgiving is one of my personal favorites also because of the food my family makes every year. We have the turkey of course, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and all kinds of pie for dessert. The food itself is a tradition because we use my grandma’s awesome recipes. My favorite holiday of all time to celebrate, however, is Christmas. To me, the best parts about Christmas in my house are the little things we do as a family because it is one of the only times in the year where my family spends lots of time together. We always get a real Christmas tree, help decorate it, watch the classic movies, and have quality time spent together. My sister and I used to wake up at 4 AM to look at the presents and now we try to sleep in, but it never works. Christmas definitely means the most to me out of any holiday because of the time I spend with my family.

The USF Polytechnic Library (as well as the HelpDesk and Open Use Lab) will be closed on the following dates:

Thursday, November 27th
Friday, November 28th

We will reopen Saturday, November 29th at 9:00 AM.

This may well be my last visit to Lively, especially after finding out it will shut down on December 31. It will be interesting to see if there are more or less visitors this evening.

I’m going to the most popular room, Jen’s Coffee House. There are several others here; I’m interested in what they think of Lively shutting down. So I’m talking with a girl and someone throws me onto the floor! Oh brother!

Now I’m chatting with a reasonable dude. There are others popping in and out but not much going on right now. Rider is from Italy and we had a good conversation. He asked an interesting question. What will I use to communicate when Lively is gone? I think this shows the chat function is primarily the main reason people are here. It is great to be able to chat with people from other parts of the world. Anyway, I left to eat dinner.

I returned to Jen’s Coffee House. There are several people here but no one wants to talk to me. I’ll try a room called “Dark Shelter”. Just a few people in here. They did talk some but then the network had problems and the interface got very slow.

One more try! The “lovely room”. There are people here but they are not interested in talking to me, jus body slamming each other and laughing. Maybe one more room.

More network problems. A message comes up under the Lively screen about this. Perhaps Google is already pulling server/bandwidth from this project. Ok, I think I have had enough of this place. I don’t know what Google was up to with Lively but I be we will see some of this technology reappear under the Google name in the future.

I’ve been out of town for a week, and at work to make up for it for the past week and a half. So, I got most of the coding fixed up, but there are two things that are causing issues: the knitting page and why IE5 doesn’t like the coding I used for my images. I may have to copy all the knitting page code from Amaya into a notepad document and play with it by hand until I get it all figured out. The first image (which is terrible and I should replace it, if only I could find the scarf in question) just doesn’t show up, even though it’s uploaded and coded properly. I may have to delete it and do something else or find a similar image to what I did… which apparently exists in abundance on the web.

As for the IE5 issue, I think I need to hit the books and see what’s going on; I recall in one of the books a mention of Internet Explorer 5 not liking certain coding practices, which may include image coding. Ugh.

Hey everyone,

- I am pretty sure kids hate those big Hannah Montana birthday cards that say, “You’re SO cool!” Most kids are smart enough to know that these cards are mass produced self-esteem boosters. But all they’ll really do is remind kids of how much money Miley Cyrus is rolling in, which will make them bitter and angry on their birthday. Did you ever think 9 years ago that millions of children would be saying, “I wish I will Billy Ray Cryus’ kid?” Me neither. I was certain that his kids would be hiding that fact, like Vanilla Ice’s kids or Detroit Lions football fans.

- Speaking of embarassing, it makes me sad that AC/DC is selling their CD’s exclusively at Wal-Mart. Not because I have anything against Wal-Mart. It’s just that Wal-Mart is also selling AC/DC t-shirts… right next to their Hello Kitty merchandise. “For those about to buy embarrassingly cute backpacks, we salute you!”

- What exactly are young boys watching now-a-days? When I was a kid, you had G.I. Joe, Transformers, ThunderCats and He-Man. Now, where are those kind of cartoons? Pokemon? Yugi-oh? Dragonball Z? Is this how we are making young men now? Instilling the desire to capture weird creatures and dye their hair neon colors? I know this a weird “back in my day” argument considering my father barely had a television and walked to school through the snow. But considering how easy my generation had it, I’ll take what I can get. And in this case, it’s “back in my day, we had real cartoons and no internet.”

- Speaking of old, I imagine it would be frustrating to be the person who has to explain internet fads to parents. “OK, your son likes a website called I Can Has Cheezeburger. No, it’s not porn! What kind of porn has cheeseburgers? Wait, don’t answer that question. I Can Has Cheezeburger has pictures called LOLCats. Yes, LOL does stand for laughing out loud! No, the cats the aren’t laughing out loud because cats don’t laugh… Why is it called LOLCats? Because the pictures of the cats have captions with deliberately poor grammar. Why? Because cats wouldn’t have good grammar, and the idea of a cat talking with poor grammar is endearing… Ugh, I don’t know why the cats can speak English. I didn’t make the website… I quit! I am not explaining 4chan and YTMND…”

- You know those yellow caution road signs that say, “Slow Children at Play?” I saw one of those signs that said CHURCH. As if to make things more surreal, the sign on the church said, “Baptist” Church. Why the unnecessary quotes around Baptist? Are they being sarcastic? Do they “pray” to “God?” Are they being sarcastic about being Baptist? Are they really Christian Scientists or Catholics? Do they worship Hannah Montana or Xenu? Is this why there needed to be a caution sign on the road?

- Remember, when these banks and companies are getting billions of dollars in bailout money, it is to help the people. That is, unless the people owe any money. Then the people are screwed. Take Eileen Wilbur, a 74-year old blind woman who was threatened by the federal government with a lien on her house over a debt of 1 cent. There was an uproar by local citizens, yet she was still required to write a check for a penny. They probably spent hundreds of cents – nay, entire dollars - on sending out the letters to her telling her that she owed a penny. Can’t one of these companies donate a penny? Can’t GM send in one cent? Can’t Bush or Obama empty their pockets for loose change?Couldn’t 50 Cent donate a kidney? Tell me where to send a penny! This is outrageous.

- I find it strange that people exclaim, “Jesus Christ!” when an athlete screws up. No need to tell Jesus. He knew the Chicago Cubs would lose all these years and he let it happen anyway. Also, I find that many people use Jesus’ name either in a pretentious or ironic manner. For example, when they emphasize the second syllable, it’s pretentious. (Thank you Je-SUS for blessing us with this JetSki). However, when they emphasize the first syllable, it’s ironic. (Thank you JE-sus for the herpes). The only other name people generally use in a pretentious or ironic manner is George W. Bush. “President Bush should be impeached?” Pretentious. “President Bush is the greatest president ever?” Ironic.

- Woah! A shark had a virgin birth! You know what that means? SHARK JESUS! He gave the Sermon on the Reef. He is able to turn water into chum, feed 5000 with just one surfer and swim on dry land.

- I recently had a discussion on whether LSD should be legal. I thought about all the potential cultural changes, such as Surgeon General’s warning on LSD packages. “WARNING: That is not a real snake.” Plus, imagine the customer service representative just after taking a 10-minute LSD break. “Your car isn’t running because the giant spider is laying eggs in the carburetor.” And I hate to see a teacher trying to teach when their students slipped an LSD pill in their coffee.

- Dustin Pedoria just won the American League MVP, and everyone talked about how amazing it is that he won despite how tiny he is. He’s 5′9”! I’m 5′9”! I am tiny? Then, there is a wide receiver on Texas Tech who is 5′9” whom they call “The Elf.” Weird how people my size are referred to as midgets, dwarves and elves.

- I get amused by method actors who act like the character they are portraying at home, to the point where they make their spouse refer to them by their character’s name. Sometimes, I wonder what an actor would be like if they were doing method acting for bizarre roles that serve no purpose in real life. For example, Ice-T’s acting debut was as a half man-half kangaroo in Tank Girl. First off, Ice-T isn’t even his real name, it’s Tracy Lauren Marrow. No wonder he’s so angry, he has a girl’s name! Anyway, his wife/ho must come home one day and say, “Tracy, can you take out the trash?”

“Don’t call me Tracy!”
“Sorry” [Rolls eyes] “Ice-T.”
“Don’t call me Ice-T! I’m T-Saint!”
“Umm, why are you dressed like a giant kangaroo with dreds?”
“I am a kangaroo! Feed me some sticks!”

- I saw part a movie called Fluke that was so bad, it wasn’t even redeemable with unintentional humor. The reason I watched this movie was because of the character Rumbo, a St. Bernard voiced by Samuel L. Jackson. We came up with great potential Sam Jackson dog quotes such as, “Woman, if you don’t take me outside, I will pee on your rug!” “Do I look like a bitch?” “I’ve had it with these muthafuckin’ dog treats in this muthafuckin’ bowl!” Alas, it was a kids movie. There has probably never been a kids movie where more people were disappointed that there wasn’t mass profanity.

- Sex is weird. At one point, there were two people on Earth who had no idea what sex was and they managed to figure it out anyway. Most of us had the luxury of having an awkward conversation with our parents to figure this out where they tried to compare sex to birds and bees. (Well, not my dad. My dad said, “when a mommy and daddy love each other very much, the daddy sperms the mommy.) Not the first two humans. Where did they come from and how did they figure the sex thing out? I realize there is a religious can of worms that is opened with that question, but that still doesn’t answer how they figured it out? The first woman must have been like, “you want to do what? Why? You think that if we do that, there will be another one of us? Where will that person come from? WHAT? And what pain do you go through? None? You didn’t think this one through, did you?” Sex is weird.

- I went to this guy’s house, and there were 8 men living there with a one-eyed cat named Moses. I’m pretty sure that I had more teeth than all the rest of them combined. The moral of the story? Craigslist is shady.

- I recently heard on the news that the President can not eat anything unless the Secret Service visually sees the food prepared. This was recounted by former Presidential advisor Dick Morris, who told a story of how all the aides ordered pizza, and taunted Bill Clinton with it since he couldn’t have any. That puts the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal in a different perspective, no? She went into his office the first time with a box of pizza. Bill Clinton had not eaten a slice of pizza in six years, and this woman starts flirting with him while holding the forbidden box with the odor sweet, sweet pepperoni emanating from inside. “Mr. President, do you want a slice… of pizza?” He must have been like, “do I want happiness, or more happiness?” He didn’t stand a chance.

- I have a solution to the Guantanamo Bay situation. We should just open the gates and say, “be free, my pretties!” Then, they will realize that they are stuck in Cuba and will probably want to go back to prison. Too bad, now they live in Cuba.

Hope you enjoyed,
Matt Morrison

This will be my last entry into my journal for the semester. I started off by going into my rooms and practicing everything that I have learned to date. I changed the appearance of my avatar by changing the clothing he was wearing such as adding sweaters, pants, boot, etc. I also practiced how to move furniture and finally figured out how to create a cave or hole in the ground. I did this by using a poster and typing a jpg link through the gadget options. I then put a pole over top of the poster and then was able to add a second pole underneath the first pole by using the control up and down arrows. After repeating this step several times I was able to create a room underneath the original chat room. After completing the room I practiced using my different views such as avatar view, birds eye view and view finder. These different views really do make a difference in seeing everything that goes on in the room. At this point I got kind of bored and started to go around to other peoples rooms and tried out my animations on new users. It is still funny to see my avatar kick and punch some other avatar especially when it is a new user and they do not know what they are doing. In one chat room I went to I was unable to perform animations on the avatar who had created the room. I asked him how he was able to delete this option but he would not say. At this point I got bored again and started chatting with the other users about how lively is about to shut down but nobody knows why. I personally think that the creators of lively want money from the users/members to run the system and that this was probably a trial. It has been fun up until this point but lively is not something that I would pay to use and if it requires money for membership than I will probably pass on that option.

I’m back. Having Lively, Blue Mars, and USF Blackboard open at the same time was too much for my PC. I’ll check out some other rooms.

I’ll try “Trapped Under Ice”, that should be interesting. There is ice, there is a giant screen showing the Earth from space, Bette Midler is playing. Walking around I see a tent, a campfire and the bones of a T Rex.

I met a person named Wenly Lively who wanted to chat. She must have owned the room and was trying to do something with a couple of screens. She helped me with jumping around (which she did too much) and I got her instructions fine but Lively kept lagging and not doing anything. Lively is still not impressing me. The environment and avatars are too “cartoony” and it really just seems like a glorified chat room. Unlike Second Life, there does not seem to be much to do other than chat. One thing I can do in SL is find live entertainment to listen to and interact with the folks at the event. With SL if you want to dance, you do not have to keep repeating the command it just keeps dancing until you stop. In Lively, you have to repeat the command over and over.

I’m not sure if Lively will be a big part of my life after this class.

Another Lively session. I would like to see if anyone has visited the room I created. It did not make it on the first screen, Let’s try screen two. Nope. I searched and found Z’s Conversation Pit and found I had one visitor. That was likely me.

I’m going to try Google and see if I get any hits on “Promoting your Lively room”. No direct hits, I’m not sure how one can up the visitor list on Lively but maybe it would come down to old fashioned promotion. Taking it up in forums, IM sites, Myspace, Facebook, etc. No listings in the help section of Lively, either.
I get the feeling looking at the thumbnails of various popular rooms, that these may be created by the approved developers I saw mentioned. They seem very well crafted and it could even be that some of the initial visitors are other Google employees.

I’ll check out a Science Fiction Underwater room. Well, the have a cool Youtube video on a screen that talks about a place called Blue Mars 2150. I Googled that and found a website describing a virtual photo-realistic universe. What’s it for? Hard to say. It’s owned by VSE – Virtual Space Entertainment. It’s like the teraformed Mars and made into a playground/entertainment/business hub. National Geographic has a video on China. The University of Arizona has a College Store. There is a section on something called Cryengine, looks like it creates environmental effects for game developers. Here is the link to this place http://www.virtualspaceentertainment.com/ very interesting!

I personally cannot wait for the winter break. I moved down here leaving my dad, stepmom, sister, brother and other family behind. Besides all of the family that I had to say goodbye to was my closest friends. I’m excited to just go back home and spend some time with all of those people. I plan on moving into the kappa sigma house in the beginning of the month which should be a pretty positive move. I like being around all of my brothers and plus I would be sharing a room with my big brother who has very similar interests as me. After i get settled in there I’m going to spend about two weeks up in Georgia. I’ll be there for my birthday (which is two days after Christmas) and obviously for Christmas. I’m just hoping that I wont be too bored up there because everyone else has their own schedule. well, if worse comes to worse then I could always get my old job back at the car wash…yeah right not in the north Georgia wintertime. I plan to just kick back and relax up there and have time to catch up with all my old friends. Theres a lot thats happened to me in the 6 short months that I have been down here at South Florida.