Summer

I can't believe tomorrow is August 1st! I have been waiting for summer weather and I don't know what to think. My sister told me that she saw geese coming back to Creamer's Field. Here she told me how warm Fairbanks is in the summer and I was so excited! I missed the hot days of summer. At least we had a few.

A plus is that I discovered a new book. This one is called "The Spellman Files" and is by Lisa Lutz. It is a pretty good book. I make myself leave my books upstairs, otherwise I never put them down. Lisa is compared to Carl Hiassen (another fav of mine) and I've even heard someone say Janet Evanovich (she is the best).

Now...off to Fireworks! How many others had to try out buttons--I did. I couldn't just couldn't skip that chapter....

Cuil

Cuil is a new search engine that was developed by former Google employees. It is easy to use and is providing okay search results. I'm taking away my recommendation to try it out and am now saying the search results aren't excellent. I'm bad, I know.

My Reason:
I do like the wide variety of search results and many of them seem relevant to my search. However, it does seem to have a few issues.

Some of the pages are dated (which isn't always a bad thing), I got a page of repeated words (since this engine does content based search and not just meta tags) and I pulled up a nasty site that must have had embedded text or meta tags that made it seem relevant. So, I wouldn't let your kids use this search engine (or demonstrate this engine in front of a group of people!) until the kinks are worked out. Argh! Gross!

Important note: you may think that the site is safe to go to based on the picture that is displayed by the link--it is not!!! Yuck! Double gross!! I can't believe I saw that stuff and good thing my kids weren't watching.

mootools

Something I want to look into. http://mootools.net/

Redskins Football

Michael and Darrin played their first football game today. Here are the shots that we managed to get. Did you know football games last TWO hours each?

Scott's New Bike

Scott won a bike yesterday at the Goldpanner's game! He is still very excited. It was Kid's Day and my brother gave us tickets to go to the ballgame. At first I said, "No!" but then I thought it would be nice for the kids to experience a game. And why did I say no so quickly? I used to watch the Cincinnati Reds play and those games lasted a long time and that sun was hot!

Goldpanner games are much cheaper too--$2 for adults and $1 a kid =) We are definitely going to keep going to the ballpark!

Blog: Bitmap vs Vector Tools

1) Have you worked with other graphics tools? If so, what were they? Were you working with bitmap or vector tools (or both?).

I have only played around with PSE 4.0 and that was only to modify my pictures for scrapbooking.

2) Point us to three images on the web that have caught your attention or that you feel are noteworthy. Since they are being displayed on the web, you are seeing a bitmap version, but what kind of tools do you think were used to create each image (bitmap or vector or both?) and why?

I did a google on vector images, since I wanted to see what could be done. Here is one that does look very cool and is by "Cris Vector". http://www.vectorvault.com/2008/07/20/incredible-vector-art-portfolio-cristiano-siqueira/

If I was guessing if it was vector or not...the amounts of different textures that he is using and colors.

Here is a cool picture from flickr. I know it is a bitmap, otherwise known as raster image, since it is most likely a digital picture. http://www.flickr.com/photos/97968921@N00/2677899048/

Just because I think these would make cool rubber stamps. I wonder...are rubber stamps made from vector images? Hmmm....http://www.vecteezy.com/vf/453-Ornaments-Vector-pack

She Rides!

Jill finally started riding her bike. She knew how to balance, but just didn't have the courage to take off. Yay Jill!

Blog: Fireworks Thoughts

Make a post to your blog answering the following questions: what do you think of Fireworks so far? What are the most interesting uses you can think of for it? How do you plan to put it to use for your "real" site(s)?

Fireworks is frustrating! I worked on my other class this week, since I thought this assignment in Fireworks looked similar to what I have been doing in Adobe Photoshop. Moosetake! I had issues getting Fireworks to work properly and couldn't save my selection. I still can't do it and receive an error when I try. I spent a lot of time messing around with that.

Fireworks seems like a very useful tool for altering free Dreamweaver templates, resizing images and altering digital pictures. I plan on using Fireworks to alter and resize my images for my "real" site. It seems like there is a lot more to Fireworks than what we have done so far, so I'm sure I'll have a better answer for this question soon.

Blog: Table-Based Design

Take a look back at each of the sites you chose as examples of good design. Is their design based on tables? Styles? Both? How about your blog itself?

Why do you think so many sites still use tables for layout even today?

I can't wait to learn more about CSS for page layout! I guess so many sites still use tables for layout because the work is done and they don't want to redo everything that already works. Maybe they already have determined how they are going to layout pages and it would be hard to make/convince everyone switch to a new format. Perhaps there will be more motivation to get rid of tables as more people invest in iphones and such. And that time seems to be coming rather quickly.

I changed my blog layout after a previous lesson and it looks like it doesn't use tables! Very cool. I noticed that the Web Design Library site that I liked uses tables and CSS. QVC uses only CSS and no tables (at least their index page doesn't). I don't know why I liked the Web Design Library. Today it looks too blue.

color management

Someone recommended this tool for color management. I'm going to look into it later, but am using this blog to remember the link. Huey

TV Converter Box Coupon

My kiddos have been asking all the time about the TV converter box. They are very concerned that PBS will go away in February 2009. In Juneau, we weren't able to pick up any stations, so I guess they are having a flashback. Today is a wonderful day for them. The TV Converter Box Coupon as arrived.

Update: Still cost me $14.99 with $40 off coupon BUT the converter box rocks!!

Flickr

I checked out Flickr and discovered a ton of stuff. Being a member of Yahoo groups, I decided there had to be a "web design" group. Here is one link that someone recommended off of the graphics design group Blue Vertigo.

More on CSS

After completing the table chapter, I had a better understanding of how to find out where the code related to CSS. I realized that I could look through the XHTML and find "clean" looking code and that would most likely have a CSS applied. If it was "messy" looking, then either the CSS was embedded or not used at all!

4th of July

What a day! I was planning on having a lazy day and it was much more than that. We went to the North Pole parade and that was interesting. I thought watching tons of farm equipment go down the road was bad, but it turns out motorcycles can also have the same effect. Ty got a free box of sparklers, so the kids all tried them out. We did get to see Mary and gang yesterday and boy do they go all out for fireworks!

Dragonfly Days

We went fishing yesterday and enjoyed the sun and warm weather. Of course, we caught no fish. We did manage to catch this dragonfly. Creamer's Field had dragonfly day and we had to chance to go on a dragonfly hunt with John Hudson and Bob Armstrong. They have a book out called Dragonflies of Alaska that is fantastic for learning about dragonflies.

Advanced CSS

Your blog task is to find two sites that implement a design using XHTML and CSS for design and layout. Post links to the sites along with your commentary on how the CSS is being used, what you like (and don't like) about them, and any questions you might have about their construction. These don't have to be sites about web design nor do they even have to be exceptional sites. A good place to start might be taking a look at the source of some of the sites you've become used to visiting. Are any of them using Style Sheets? My site, http://www.chrislott.org/ is CSS based. It uses no tables at all, but instead uses CSS to create the columns and to style the text and links. You can tell because there are no TABLE tag, no FONT tags, and there are links in the HEAD of the document to the CSS stylesheet.

1. http://www.webdesign.org/

I see a stylesheet for the column and a general stylesheet. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more CSS stylesheets that I am not catching. I think they did a good job of organizing a lot of information. I like how they kept the main text short and utilized the space on both sides of the text.

2. http://www.qvc.com/
QVC has a lot of embedded CSS defined and it is a total bear to read this. Perhaps because it constantly has to be updated. I can't stand the glaring white buttons and background. Geesh.

I just realized why I was having such a hard time with this blog post--we haven't really learned about using CSS for creating layouts. We have been working with using CSS to redefine existing tags, create classes and ID selectors. That is not the same as the creating the layout of a page. In this light, I still like the two sites that I found--they do have good layouts that were created with CSS stylesheets and XHTML. I cannot tell how to critique their use, but I am able to notice that they are being used.

Going shampoo free

No, it's not for free shampoo!

Shampoo free

It has to do with not using regular shampoo for washing your hair. Instead use baking soda and Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV). I wonder if it works, but I'm almost too afraid to try. I'll have to go back and read it again later and see if I'm willing to attempt it. Perhaps I'll try it first on one of the kiddos...perhaps one named Mikey....