Archives: February 2004
Sun Feb 29, 2004
The Eerily Lovely Children of the Photoshop Generation
The work of German artist Loretta Lux shows how making subtle changes to digital images can produce stunning results. From the
New York Times. (Reading the NYT on-line requires registration for a free subscription.)
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Internet Ad Attack: In Politics, the Web Is a Parallel World With Its Own Rules
In an interesting article at the New York Times the recent ad run on President Bush's campaign web site is analysed in terms of how the Web is changing the rules for campaigning. (You'll need to sign up for a free subscription to see the article.)
As the Times points out accurately, the Web is becoming a free-fire zone for political attack ads and so-called reporting that would be much less acceptable on a broader stage. The ad such as the one run by Bush, and the one that recently ran at Bush in 30 Seconds, which was sponsored by MoveOn.org, are both examples of how the Web allows a faster and often grittier/nastier/dirtier approach to campaigning than we've seen in the past.
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Sat Feb 28, 2004
Through the Looking Glass
An article in today's Palm Beach Post about "The Passion of the Christ" got me to thinking about how our own perceptions and prejudices color how we feel and think about truth, fairness, and What's Right.
The paper asked two groups of people, one Jewish and one Christian, to watch the controversial movie and comment on what they thought of it. Not surprisingly, the Christian viewers found the file to be a powerful testament of the suffering that Jesus went through prior to his death and a must-see for anyone of that faith. Jewish viewers found the film to be frightening and voiced concerns that the film portrays the high priests as demons who "hounded Jesus to his death and stood there and smiled while he was bleeding." Jews fear that the film will awaken (or stregthen) feelings of anti-Semitism.
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Fri Feb 27, 2004
Radio Vox Populi: Now That's Just Weird
This site claims that web logs are the modern voice of the people, and to help things along they're collecting blog entries, running the text through a voice synthesizer, and broadcasting the results. What's it like? Just plain weird if you ask me. Of course, if you're into that disembodied machine-generated speech thing maybe it will appeal to you.
Radio Vox Populi
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nuclear moose musings
Just working out some kinks in all this blogging stuff, and thought i'd pick on my friend Craig.
Craig's Nuclear Moose blog is as good a place as any to stop in, sip a cup of Tim Horton's coffee, and enjoy the fine surroundings.
Actually, here in South Florida it would be Senor Horton's Cafe and we'd get some nuclear powered Cafe Con Leche to see us through the day.
Anyway, I knew Craig wouldn't mind, so I've trying out the bookmarlet thingie by posting this.
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Posting Student Web Design Projects
The students in one of my 8th grade classes are finally wrapping up their first full-scale web design project and I'm posting them at the school web site as as quickly as I can. You can check things out at the Student Portfolio Page.
This always takes a little time as I have to define my little USB zip drive as the remote server so I can use Dreamweaver to transfer the files from the each student's computer to my laptop, and then on to the school server. I learned a few years ago that this method works best as I can then use the automatic upload of dependent files feature in Dreamweaver to be sure I only get the files that are needed. Try as I might I still have a hard time drumming the need for good site organization into my student's heads.
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Thu Feb 26, 2004
Speaking at the South Florida MUG
If you're in the South Florida area drop on by the SFMUG and say howdy! Here's the annoucement:
Presentation this month: From Site Concept to Site Reality: Strategies for Using Fireworks for Page Composition by Kim Cavanaugh.
Kim Cavanaugh is the author of two books on Dreamweaver and Fireworks, co-author of the recently released Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic from New Riders Press, and is a Team Macromedia volunteer for Fireworks. In addition Kim writes extensively for CommunityMX.com on topics covering all the tools in the MX Studio and is a frequent contributor to Macromedia's Developer Center.
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Wed Feb 25, 2004
Watery Image Created in Fireworks
It's always fun to stumble across new sites and new effects. This one is from "sangles" and demonstrates the way that he (she? sorry if I get that wrong) created an entry for the Macromedia Central wallpaper contest using nothing but Fireworks. The source file is included, so you can have a look for yourself.
Gotta love the "Code vs. Design" slant on this blog as well.
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Mon Feb 23, 2004
Do Republicans Hate Education? (Part 1)
I've got this long thoughtful piece rattling around in my head that goes into some detail about the underlying mistrust that the far-right has towards education. I've been planning to carefully make my case, drawing on examples from conservative writings and ideology, crafting a well-constructed treatise that details how Republicans secretly, and not so secretly, want to dismantle public education. Turns out that the evidence is closer to the surface than I thought. Today Rod Paige, U.S. Secretary of Education, called the largest teacher's union in America a terrorist organization.
I still need to write that article. It seems that this is just more of the same from the good folks who bought us ketchup as a vegetable in school lunches.
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Making Yahoo! Profitable
Last week, in a move that was expected for some time, Yahoo! dropped Google as their provider of search services. The move has brought a lot of attention to Yahoo, including this in-depth article from the L.A. Daily News.
There's quite a bit of interesting reading for those who follow the Web, and particularly those who are working to make a profit from publishing and providing web content. Some of the more salient nuggets include:
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Sun Feb 22, 2004
Gotta Love Those Spammers
I don't usually spend much time looking at anything in the messages that show up marked as junk, but this one caught my attention. This was the text found in the message:
"If living with bodice ripper trade baseball cards with anomaly over, then scythe related to coward wakes up.Sometimes tripod for meditates, but inside pork chop always figure out grand piano related to traffic light!Indeed, guardian angel related to seek bottle of beer over."
Now I know that's machine generated in an attempt to defeat my spam filter, but it almost makes sense, in a twisted sort of way. Kind of like those questions on the SAT's.
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Fri Feb 20, 2004
Still a Work In Progress
I know, my adoring fans are waiting for the big annoucement that the blog is live, but I've still got some things to work out. This would all be a lot easier if I just ditched the CSS-P layout that I'm striving for and went with that old comfortable shoe known as nested tables, but I gotta learn this stuff sometime. Soon.
This great article from Stephanie Sullivan on the process of taking a site comp created in Fireworks to a full-blown CSS-P layout should be a big help.
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