07.19.01

Flying My Time Machine

Posted in General, People, Tech, Web at 12 pm

I feel like I’m hurtling through this week without a single point to stop and catch my breath. I’m helping out with WebVisions, going to developers’ group meetings, and playing with a new toy.

Ah yes the new toy. It’s a Wireless Cam. Imagine your ordinary Lo-rez web cam, except with a wireless transmitter. It’s powered by a 9 volt battery, so you can put it anywhere you want and get a web cam set up.

The cam is available online for $80 (it’s a ‘C Video Camera’ from TrendMasters. (I would link to their site, but it sucks.)) However, the Software Etc. over at Clackamas Town Center has them for $30. Like I said, they’re low rez, but for a toy to play with, it’s very cool.

Good thing Bob loaned me an old ATI video card that has an RCA Video In that can bring in the signal. Thanks Bob!

Yes I will try to set up a WebCam, but the modem connection is only good for intermittent access, not a dedicated video feed.

Updated Nov 2007 to fix links in first paragraph.

03.26.98

avant-garde

Posted in Apple, Career, Media, Tech, Web at 6 pm

I’m slowly transfering my work machine to be based on MacOS 8. I’ve had it the 2 gig sitting in my machine for quite a while but have been slow to transfer over my preferences and set it as my startup disk. I finally moved my TCP setup over and I’m starting to get Malph re-setup piece by piece.. I know I could just copy over the Preference files, but it’s nice cleaning things out by hand. Though time-consuming to be sure. But damn, it’s _so_ responsive. Of course I haven’t installed all my fonts yet, either… :)

Forest Puzzles is looking good. In fact, here’s the URL for it: <http://www.omsi.edu/~rosso/forpuz/> That’s not the final place for it, so don’t bookmark it. However Busytown has reached it’s final destination at: <http://www.omsi.edu/busytown/> which is aliased to a longer more logical pathname as the site structure goes. It’s still got to get through Paramount’s okay (they own the rights to the characters), but it’s looking good.

I’m switching over to Netscape 4.0 as well. I’ve been sticking with 3.0 for a while, because I use the mail client to read my personal e-mail (and Eudora for my business mail). I really feel that Communicator is way overblown. I wish you could install just the parts that you want. For me, it’d be the browser and the mail client. OpenNS 5.0 perhaps?? Maybe I’ll try to find a different e-mail client, though Eudora is such a landmark, it’s hard to think of another one to use. Wait, didn’t Bare Bones come out with one? Time to do some research.

Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space has been a constant soundtrack for my life lately. It’s really a beautiful CD. VW recently used the title track in a commercial. This fits in with the concept that TV commercials are more (avant-garde) musically than commercial radio. Isn’t that sad?

This week shaped up to be pretty active and productive. These are two words that haven’t been part of my vocabulary for a few weeks lately. Winter doldrums? Hopefully I’m looking at an upturn here. I’ve certainly got enough projects that could use some work. And a partner who could use some attention.

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03.19.98

Postcard Postoffice

Posted in Career, Tech, Web at 10 am

Took a warm bath last night. It was nice. Did a little reading. (The Art of Human Computer Interface Design is a 600 page large format tome of a book. I really gotta get it finished soon.)

I’ve just about finished of the Busytown site. It’s a part of the Busytown exhibit which OMSI built about the Richard Scarry characters. It’s a very playful site, though there’s not much depth. It’s somewhat of a side project. It does however have a cute little postcard postoffice facility that I’m thinking of re-purposing for the OMSI site. I’m thinking it needs cool shots of the OMSI logo, the building and famous scientists. If you know any good repositories of famous scientists portraits, drop me a line. I’d appreciate it.

I think I’ve just about got the the archiver for this journal thought through. Piece by piece, it’s coming together in my head…

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03.12.98

She's a Peach

Posted in Career, Life, Meta, People, Web at 7 pm

Toady I’m doing part of a teacher workshop put on by OMSI. These are teachers with little or no experience with web development, and I’ll be giving them the basics. I’ll be trying to show them a way of critiquing sites so they can understand the difference between good and bad design. I’ve only got half and hour, so we’ll see how it goes.

Amy and I had a great night last night. Details unavailable. :) “She’s a Peach…”

I got caught up on my e-mail back to about late Monday. I’ve still got stuff back to early last week… :(

I finally got a counter on this page. It will be interesting to see how many I’m getting. As well, I implemented that new error page for OMSI. It’s working really well from what I can see. The only problem is that if it works well, then no one will know it’s there… :p

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03.11.98

The Art of Human Computer Interface Design

Posted in Apple, Meta, Tech, Web at 1 pm

Home and finally done for the day. The meeting for the Webmaster’s group was a lot of fun. But I think I may have been a bit too enthusiastic. I started going off about virtually every aspect of developing the OMSI web site from the Server Side Includes to the CGIs that I’ve worked up. I asked a couple of times if the other people there minded me just digging into the aspects of these web pages. They encouraged me to keep going, but they may have just been being nice.

Amy says she pointed a link to my journal in her journal at < <http://www.spiritone.com/~giovanni/> >. Tit-for-tat… :)

Oh, books I’ve been reading: The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design which is basically a manifesto by Apple circa 1990. Also Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, which is an O’Reiley book, plus all the usual web journals:

<http://www.webreference.com/>

<http://www.webreview.com/>

<http://www.macosrumors.com/>

<http://www.webmonkey.com/>

and I’d like to read <http://www.builder.com/> from c|net, but I can’t stand how slow their web pages render. Waaaaay too many tables. (Can you see I’m getting a lot of use out of this auto URL linking?)

I wonder if/when my family will find this journal.

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03.10.98

Fourteen Days

Posted in Life, Web at 6 pm

Gave Blood today. I really think this is important for people who can to do it. Blood that is donated only lasts for 14 days. This really surprised me. I didn’t know it was that short.

Now I’m off to a health insurance meeting. 5:00 to 7:00 and then a local web masters group at 7:00 downtown. On the run today…

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Great Information Sites

Posted in Design, People, Web at 1 pm

Long day. Attended Amy’s PCOS Support meeting tonight. It had some good information, but I got trapped in the kitchen by a guy going off about his glory days. He seemed nice, but his stories were frightening. It’s a difficult situation to try and get out of.

Saw a great site today: <http://www.cool404.com/> has cool ‘Page Not Found’ pages. Some of them aren’t that great but there were a few pages with some innovative things on them. I worked on OMSI’s error page because of it: <http://www.omsi.edu/qqqqq> will bring it up.

Some other Web design pages I want to check out at some point are: <http://goldray.com/webdesign/design_resources.htm> and <http://goldray.com/webdesign/course-content.htm> but I’ll wait until I get back into work for the T1 access.

I’m so tired. I’ve got to finish reading a few digests, then I’m off to bed.

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03.09.98

Water Works

Posted in Career, Media, Web at 3 pm

Monday morning and I’m back into the fray. Had a department meeting with Marilyn and Stacey that lasted quite a while.

I took the WaterWorks web site on OMSI’s pages and cleaned it up a bit, added a couple of needed pages and links and cleaned up the file structure. It’s an interesting resources though the graphics area really lacking: <http://www.omsi.edu/sln/ww/>

Feeling really busy and yet little to show for it. I guess I’m still trying to get a few pieces into place so that the work I’ve been going can be put out in the open. It’s the waiting that’s the hardest part – Tom Petty

I took one of Amy’s O-+> CD’s to work. The Hits 2.

Good stuff.

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03.08.98

Server Side Includes Library

Posted in Web at 12 pm

This page has good list of the environment variables that are available to CGIs: <http://www.ppc.edu/~fred/course308/cgi.html> and I’ll be adding it to my XSSI Library later today.
<http://www.ordersomewherechaos.com/rosso/xssi/>

XSSI’s can be very powerful if you have access to them. But I hadn’t fund any good documentation about them, so I started my own library. I haven’t added anything lately, because I haven’t been working with Server Side Includes. I should list the site at Yahoo and on the ADV-HTML list.

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Sunday Through Thursday

Posted in Career, Media, Web at 11 am

Dealing with HTML really makes regex a lot of fun. It seems as though the pattern I set up has just gone all over the place. I’ve had to comment it out in order to get perl to run the script at all. Well it looks like it runs now. But I still want the regex to work.

Amy and I didn’t get to watch Shine because the tape was messed up. Whenever the tape was playing normally, the screen went to its ‘this-image-is-so-messed-up I’m-just-going-to-show-a-blue-screen’ screen, but you could see the video when you had the tape moving at fast-forward or in reverse. I guess I’ll take them back to Hollywood Video today.

I work on a Sunday through Thursday schedule by my own choosing. So I’m headed into work this morning.

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