PlanetUSF

Just figuring out the development of my own blog YAY!

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.

From: http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=Ch0316/SEC2952.HTM&Title=-

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.

Contact the USF PTS office:

ONLINE comments: http://usfweb2.usf.edu/parking_services/survey/comment.asp
USF PTS Telephone Number: 813-974-3990

Thanks for reading, please comment,
Chris Chow
Society of Automotive Engineers
Student President 2001-05

Lesson one’s read was great!

From my readings I learned how important that employing excellent web design techniques will result in a successful website. Principles of Beautiful Web Design’s website was extremely informative because it briefly describes the physical characteristics of creating beautiful webpages (layout, color, texture, etc). I also learned of the free design software that exists such as Nvu, Komposer, and several others. However, may favorite reading was on the website called “Web Pages That Suck”. This is where I gained great insight on the examples of poorly-designed webpages such as Teacher’s Express, We Sell Coffee, and many others. My personal pick of a horrible website will be craigslist.com because it is not organized, clear, and easy to use. In addition, there are NO graphics or color are used on the homepage!

Sunday morning , August 17th, starting at 6:00am and ending by 6:30am, Information Technology will be upgrading the software on the two backbone routers in the SVC Data Center. For the Libraries, it means that web and EZProxy access will be affected.

There is both far too little and far too much going on right now. I just started a new job doing tech support for USF, which is turning out to be an incredibly sweet gig. The pay is horrible, but the fact that I’m doing tech support and helping people (yay) without the soul crushing stress and monotony (nay), more than makes up for it. If I had to look really really hard for a downside (aside from the pay, which actually isn’t too bad for a uni staff position) it would be that I’m confined to a desk for 8 hours a day. The flipside to that is it’s a desk with a comfy chair, dual monitors, and a light workload that has me dealing with unique and interesting problems and not with irate customers who have been sitting on hold for 45 minutes after being bounced around to several different departments.

I’ll try to get Tweets on this blog page.

You now have a new option in the catalog when looking at a particular item. Among the little icons underneath the location (the ones saying “Add”, “Print”, “Email”, etc), you will find a new one showing a cell phone and the wording “Text”. This can be used to text yourself the call number of a book as well as it title and location - no need for scrap paper and pencil. Be careful if you don’t have a text messaging plan for your phone - carrier charges may apply.

I’m finally back from an exhausting week at Camp Boggy Creek. Walking back from the firework show, I caught a glimpse at the beautiful moonlight on the lake. There is something about being in a place like Boggy that makes you want to love everyone around you. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone gave hugs regularly?

And so, when I left my Apartment in Tampa, I broke the room 304 fellowship. I must admit, we did have a decent year. The guy who lived next to me was evicted and someone else moved in for the summer…forming the sequel to the story. I wonder how the place will be when I get back. Will the place be clean for a change? or will they leave the cleaning for me? I sure miss all of the times we hung out on the balcony and had random trips to places like Walmart and Walmart or Target on occasions. We did cook a lot when we had the time and that was always a cleaning party. With all the good times and the bad times, I sure had an interesting year at an apartment I hope to never live at again.

I was afraid of audacity, but it was very straight-forward and easy to use. I had fun with this one! I played with some music files on freeplaymusic.com. I ended up using a file titled “Beyond the Bookshelves”. I could not resist it from the title alone! I had to use the envelope tool and make the track very quiet. I could only hear some mumbling under the music. I was even able to tweak the code in Front Page and include it on my portfolio page.
Michele Dick

Karen Geis
Instructional Graphics
LIS5315.721C08
Dr. Simon

I started this course with no experience in developing web sites. I did not have any web design software on my home computer. I initially thought I’d use one of the free Web design sites but changed to Frontpage. I used the computers at the Sarasota USF campus. With a great tutorial from Alex, in our class, and a microsoft tutorial, I was able to get started with page layout, color combinations and content. I thought it was important to iron out the content before going to far with the site’s look.
I collect books about Florida and love American and Florida History. I have a B.A. in History from USF. I thought the Florida Booklist could be a great educational site. These books are loaded with information about Florida and some interesting facts would be helpful as well. I have seem many sites with top or left-sided navigation bars, so I thought this was perfect time to use a right-sided navigation bar. Along with my finally color combination choice of tan or light yellow for sand and blue for water and that right-sided navigation bar, I hope it all conveyed the look of the State of Florida. The tan area to the right looking very much like the shape of Florida with the site’s content floating out in the blue Gulf of Mexico.
My site is very simple! No animated dancing manatees or scary pirate ships moving across the site. Just a bit of clip-art which I hoped fit well with the whole look. It’s not like me to play it this safe, but my lack of time (summer semester) and experience made me feel like keeping it simple. I felt as if trying something too difficult could mess up the whole site, and there was not enough time for that. Much praise goes out to my fellow classmates for daring to use all those fancy gadgets!!!
I normally would have learned the software first and then set-out to do a project like this. When I first use Power Point or Excel, I quickly found some wonderful courses at my local community college. It took all the struggle out of learning the software. Yes, you are always learning with all software but it’s nice to comfortable up front.
Some 0f my problems were with linking pages together, making sure graphics/clip-art was compatable with different browsers and an issue with loading the site to my web space. Alex helped me work through these technical problem. There was a issue with Mozilla and microsoft clip-art, and I had too many index pages on my web space.
I learned a lot in this class. I liked developing the look of the site most. The colors and where everything was positioned seemed so important to me. The gadgets would be a secondary issue for me even if I was more experienced.

Flashvista has a pleasant blue color around the main site content. It is a combination of search engine and directory for flash sites and resources. Navigation leads to tutorials, news, templates, games, books and the newest cool site.
Flash Tutorials has a great color combination of blue and pink. The site contains many tutorials, resources and a forum. This site as well as several other sites this week have an area to donate to the site.
Sitepal-Flash Avatar is a site that customizes speaking avatars for websites. The avatar is an animated person that delivers any kind of message. The site has many demo’s, all its features and pricing. I really liked the photograph converter for making an avatar of the sites developer.
Swift has a blue top navigation menu and lettering. I know I said this early on in the semester, but blue is a very popular color in web sites. The site promotes flash software for MAC andf Windows. It contains product information, tutorials, resources, forums and downloads. The inspiration has award winning site and many examples of incredible animated graphics. The butterfly was great.
Swish is more software for flash with all its product information, templates, tutorials, a forum and many links for resources.
Hotscripts is a well laid out site with a industrial look to it. A category listing, new listings, most popular, top rated, a discussion area, stats and many links.
Creating MP3’s and streaming audio has links, web site and flash templates, articles archvies, forum, internet and webmaster tools and a place to submit articles.
Audacity is free sound editing software. It has links, a forum, downloads, job listings, feedback area and a place to donate to the site. All available in a wide variety of languages.
Musicovery Internet Radio has incredible graphics!!
Amaya has templates, FAQ’s, users and developers sections, publications and features. It did not have a pleasing color combination for the navigation area.
Trellian is software for creating free web pages. It has downloads, an awards section, testimonials, FAQ’s, tips and a printable manual for the software.
Seamonkey has a great blue banner and logo. The site has downloads, news, support, features, add-ons, merchandise and an area to donate to the site.
Free text editors is a free HTML and web editor. WYSIWYG web editor and site builder with many article links, tutorials, and an area for programming and webmasters. A nice color combination of blue and yellow. The yelow is on a very prominent navigation bar.

After being several month’s away from Tampa, I discovered that going to mass at the Catholic Center has not changed a bit. I took my violin and my music to church. Surprisingly, the music was in the same place where I left it two months ago. When I got to church, Steve, the music director there, arrived at the same time as usual. He was glad to see me and after exchanging some words, he got back into picking the music for the weekend. After mass, I called my mom as I usually do and had a little chat. It almost seems as though my Tampa life has shifted back to the old times of college life. I know, I won’t be here for long. Just another day, maybe.

This lesson includes some very great websites. Out of all of these web sites, I actually downloaded the audacity site and created my own mp3. However, I do not know how to add it to this blog as of yet but I will continue to work on it. Audacity is great and I will use it in my classroom. It will allow me to record a brief summary of my lesson and I can also include music. Then my students can actually downlowd my lesson because it will be in an mp3 format. This will be a helpful tool, especially when a student misses an assignment.

Also, I looked a the adobe flash site because I actually purchased the software for this class but was unable to use it for the project. This site will help guide me through the learn more about it for the next time I create a web site.

Finally, I scanned the rest of these sites and they can all be used in the web design process.

WEBSITES -

FLASH:

FlashVista http://www.flashvista.com/

Flash Tutorials http://www.lukamaras.com/tutorials/cool-design/hitech-floating-menu.html

SitePal - Flash Avatars http://www.sitepal.com/

FLASH SOFTWARE:

Adobe Flash http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/

Swift http://www.erain.com/Products/swift3d/

Swish http://www.swishzone.com/index.php

SCRIPTS:

HotScripts http://www.hotscripts.com/

MP3S:

Basic info about MP3s http://www.soundstageav.com/mastersonaudio/20050201.htm

How to create .M3U files and streaming audio http://www.selfseo.com/story-13698.php

Audacity - Free audio editor http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Musicovery Internet Radio http://musicovery.com/

Pandora Internet Radio http://www.pandora.com/

FREE WEB EDITORS -

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

I Love Typography Menu on top, rollover changes color. Plain, use of whitespace, black text with some red text here and there

I Love Typography: 15 Examples of Excellent Web Typography Would have been better if they explained what was so great about these examples.

Typographica A graphic with “Typographica” runs along the top of the page, gray with white letters. The rest of the page is divided into two columns. Print is black with links in light red. The bottom has examples of type.

Planet Typographyhad orange blocks with curved edges. The colors were orange and shades of purple. I liked the history of different fonts, even though it’s not important in the scheme of things. I want a font that works well. One problem I had was the dead links. Compared to other typography sites we had to look at for this week, I think this one was my favorite.

I enjoyed looking at the different textures and backgrounds, especially ones that were available for free. In the interest of time, I limited myself to ones that could work with my site’s theme.

Urban Dirty I generally stay away from websites with white font on black background, but here, it works - the font size is large enough to read, and the black background goes with the whole urban theme.

Best Textures Flickr Group On Flickr, the background is white, text is black except for the logo in hot pink and blue, and blue hyperlinks. This draws focus to the important part of the site - the photos.

Torley Textures All I can say is colorful. Very colorful.

Deviant Art Textures The colors for this website are white, grey, and blue-grey (mono anochromatic?)

Texture King has a white background, with boxes bordered in orange.

Grunge Textures uses the curled yellowed page of a book as background. You can choose backgrounds of concrete, wood, stone, tombstone, brick, asphalt, etc. I ended up using a stone background from here for my website. I tweaked it a little to make it fit.

Grunge Style The examples are listed (images and everything) along the left side of the page. I like the comments under each image and how you can link to the sites. Other links on the Smashing Magazine site are in narrow columns to the right. It makes it easy to focus on the main information on the left.

Chapter 2 in Beautiful Web Design was all about Color. It’s interesting now to see the different color combinations, tertiary colors, etc. And to learn which color combinations work well when.

Web Style Guide looks plain, with its black text on white background and blue hyperlinks, but it makes it easier to see. The site has a large column on the left, and narrow column on the right. One problem I see is under the menu on the right, there are advertisements that have nothing to do with the site (one of the limitations of using a server?) The menu stands out, because it uses a blue tint for background.

Universal Usability has a bar on top in either a purple tint or blue shade with a yellow logo. This bar appears on every other page within the site (a frame?). A desaturated version of this color is used as the border for a desaturated yellow background. The mix of these particular yellows and purples make the site look inviting, even if I don’t understand the content.

JJG.net has cool icons. The shade of blue used for links is a bit bright, and might put some people off - at first. That color on the black bar on top of each page looks good, though - bright blue on black gives it a hip techy feel. And it stands out on the white background.

Smashing Magazine: 50 Blog Designs uses variations of orange and grey in its color scheme. Other colors belong to sample blog pages/templates posted on the site. The number of links on the right seem overwhelming when I first glance at them, but on further scrutiny, I realize there are links that will be beneficial to me. Above each blog photo are no more than 3 sentences telling what’s good about the blog and a link to the actual blog page.

I’ve come to realize that the textbooks are easier for me to understand than many of the websites I have to peruse for this class. Could it be that the textbooks assume you don’t know anything and the websites are very technologically-oriented?

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers provides information about domain names and is in many different languages. Links to pages appear across the top and left side of the page, so it is easy to jump around.

Internet Traffic Report is an up-to-date site that measures the speed of Internet connections worldwide. It measures speed in milliseconds.

Internet World Stats has you scroll down long pages to get graphs, pie charts, and links. The pages are divided into three columns: the right and left are striped blue, and the center column contains the information.

CAIDA Internet Infrastructure Each page has different color bars for headings, but all have the CAIDA logo. Emphasis is on content, so there isn’t any graphics except the logo and heading type.

Pew (non-profit research center) The homepage has three columns; the middle column has a light background color. The menu appears on every page; surfers don’t need to use the back button to get to the homepage, they just click on the page they want to see next. The layout is well-organized, and the site is updated daily. This site is good for political and current news research and trends.

Nielson Net Ratings (private research center) The site uses shades of blue in its menu backgrounds. Main menu is horizontal on the top and the submenu runs vertically along the left side. Website creators can measure demographics of users.

After a long hiatus from playing the violin for The Ties That Bind, we regrouped for a phenomenal mini performance at a coffee house event last night. This is a picture of after the performance. We were all relaxing at Danielle’s apartment.

Life is sometimes like opened soda cans on your desktop. A very strange feeling of disappointments and disillusions. I haven’t been back to my dorm for many weeks and came back only to find a part of my life i can’t seem to fit back into. Hopefully, I will adjust soon.

We’re only a little over a month away from the public opening of the new building! New pictures can be found on the Flickr site. Things are looking great and moving at a much faster pace now.

There are many nuances to successful blogging, one of the most important being frequent posting. I am not good at this. I chose to use USF’s blogging tool for my blog for this class. The link to my blog for Instructional Graphics is afrustratedlibrariansblog.blogger.com. I prefer the blogger account to my USF one. This is mainly for the ease of customization that it offers. There were more options for personalizing one’s site without tweaking code. I have often striven to discipline myself to keep a journal. Alas, it is not to be. If I were a chronicler of life, this would be an amazing way to keep track and share my views. If they were interesting, that is. I can see potential uses for this in the classroom (with responses allowed), and I have been exploring ways that this could be used by my students. It could be a way for students to keep a writing journal (with ideas and inspiration), or it could be a way to hold outside discussion about assigned readings. It could also be used as a reflection tool for group assignments, or a means of communication between group members.
Michele

At this meeting, I finally found a real start for my webpages! Yea! I started both of them while at class, even choosing buttons and placing titles. I did some more work at home to tweak some of my work, but I was still struggling. It looked disorganized, but I could not figure out how to use tables. Yes, I let one of the simplest things in an editor get the better of me. I attended the extra help session on July 1st. It was here that everything came together. Mrs. Austin showed me how to use them, different ways to lay them out, and suddenly it all made since. I have finally finished my websites! They are rudimentary, and not at all professional looking, but they function!
Michele

I chose Publisher because of its usability. Of all of the Microsoft programs that can be used for publishing, this one has the most options and templates, and it is the easiest to customize (at the click of an icon). As with all Microsoft products, the icons are the ones that the user is familiar with. It looks like Word, and in some cases Power Point. I have used Publisher in the past, but rarely. I created a flyer advertising next year’s Battle of the Books. We have never had one of these before (they are not prevalent in High Schools), and I was to be a major part in seeing to the details. With my change in position, I am not sure how my extra projects will be affected.
Michele

I noticed that since I only had the blog link included in the menu of the main page it looked odd as I jumped from page to page, so I added the blog link to the menu on every page. Maybe it’s a small thing that no one else will notice but it sure stuck out to me.