Week 16 -- Final WordPress Document & Links

For my final project, I've used the Twenty Ten WordPress theme using 15 images of buildings from Riverside, IL and listing them under four separate categories: Schools, Restaurants, Houses of Worship, and Public Buildings. I decided to use a grey/blue background which compliments the more vibrant blue of my water tower header. Tags have also been created for each post. While certainly not an artistic masterpiece, I feel that this assignment has been a terrific learning experience as far as creating a basic WordPress document.

http://www.agiftoffriendship.net/

http://www.agiftoffriendship.net/riverside/

Week 15 -- I'm Finally Up- to- Date on the Posts!

Yep, here it is -- my last post of the semester. Since I felt kind of bad about those missing blog posts, I've chosen to end this assignment with a gratuitous photo of my sister-in-law's cute little Yorkie, "Zoey, the Wonderdog." As you can see from the pic, Zoey is completely tuckered out from taking all those shuttle rides back and forth to SXU.

So even though Zoey has nothing whatsoever to do with my final project, I'm comfortable knowing that I'm probably leaving you with an "Awwww, look at the puppy" moment. (At least until you pull out your grade book and give me that "F" I so richly deserve.) Oh wait, I'm auditing this one! Thank the good lord.

In any event, I'd like to thank you, Nathan, for sharing your time and knowledge with me. I'm much obliged for all the help you've given me this semester.

Week 14 -- More Sucking Up

Not since the Algonquin Round Table have so many great minds assembled in one place at one time. If only Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker could been at the Senior Show. Unfortunately, they had tickets for the Bulls game that night.

I felt kind of bad that George S. Kaufman wasn't in the photo, but he'd already left to go on a beer run. I felt even worse because I had to leave before George returned with the keg. (I can't prove it for certain, but I think Monte's zoom lens might have contained a secret compartment for his Schnapps.)

Week 13 -- SXU Senior Show, II

Since I've inadvertently come up three weeks short of a completed blog assignment, I'm resorting to the tawdry tactics of stuffing arbitrary material into my last three blog posts.

That said, this seems like a great opportunity to give credit to the folks who guided me when I was a student here at SXU back in the '90s. That's 1990s, not 1890s. I'd like to thank Jayne Hileman for working my ass off in her classes. It's because of Jayne that I have developed an artist's eye. Monte Gerlach was gracious enough to offer me a job as his dark room assistant/photostylist. It was one of the best working experiences that I've ever had. He's a terrific employer and a stand-up guy. As for Brent, he taught me that you really can't do much erasing when you work with watercolors. Suffice to say, I didn't take his Watercolors II class. I thank them all for their many talents that they've shared with me.

Week 12 -- SXU Senior Show

Since I'm a couple posts short, I'll be sucking up to the teacher this week by adding a pic of him and his honey from SXU's Senior Show.

By the way, the show was pretty terrific! Special mentions go to Mike Uher and Justin Bozzelli for their multimedia video, projection animations.

Week 11 -- Hacking a WordPress Theme

This week, I hacked the Constructor WordPress theme. I started by using photos of buildings located in Riverside, IL. I then changed out the background to Black Urban and switched out the typeface as well. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties resulting in "fatal errors" on my home computer, I was unable to manipulate the blog any further. Serves me right for trying to manipulate a website during a Mercury Retrograde period. That said, here's the blog so far.

Week 10 -- WordPress Blog

This week I created a 10-page blog using WordPress. I took pictures of buildings in the Village of Riverside which is where I currently live. I took pictures based on three criteria: Houses of Worship, Schools, and Public Buildings. Each blog page contained the title of the building, one or two images, text, and of course, tags.

Week 9 -- WordPress Themes

For this week's class, I needed to come up with a WordPress template for my next project tentatively titled, "Churches." I went to freewpthemes.net and chose a building template named "Collaboration" to use as my model for the next assignment.

Week 8 -- SXU Art Dept. website

This past week, I took some photos of the VAC 2nd Floor Posting Board for inclusion in SXU-vac.com.

I also wrote a couple of paragraphs of text explaining why I thought the Posting Board is a valuable asset to the Art Dept. students.

Week 7 -- Continuation of Hot Spots/Resuable Items Project

Today I continued working on last week's resuable items website. My mission was to lasso a feather image and insert it between my paragraphs. After lassoing the feather, I deselected the background and saved the feather as a png. image (it could have been a gif. file as well). I clicked back to my web page and inserted the feather between two paragraphs. Wanting to center the feather image, I had to create a table. Following the success of that page, I inserted the same feather image into the other two web pages.

Week 6 -- Hotspots and Reusable & Non-Resuable Images

I took a designed page out of photoshop. After deciding where to make the header cut, I cropped the header to separate it from the text & images. After that, I saved the file as a jpeg and moved it into an "images" folder.

I then went into Dreamweaver to create three separate html pages entitled, The Elder, The Warrior, and the Healer. (Images have to be jpeg, Dreamweaver has to be html.) Background colors were changed to mimic the light brown background of the header.

I created hot spot buttons as well. Using the rectangular hotspot tool, I identified images, made a box around the text, gave it a link, then gave it a target.

After hot spots were added, I went back into each page and added new text (arial font) plus resized the photos to fit the space.

Week 5 -- Creating a Cohesive Photoshop Document

This past week, I created three pages of Photoshop documents that all had the same Native American- inspired colored header (light brown and turquoise). Once the color selections had been made, I overlaid the color bands with the heading "midwest soarring powwow" in the Monaco font with a slight bit of shadowing. In the lower color band, I included a subheading containing the categories "the elder," "the warrior," and "the healer." A different powwow photo was selected for each page (200 width, 72 resolution) to reflect the subheading category. I also added a bit of text, again in Monaco, to address the individual photos.

cmm

Week 4 -- Dreamweaving and Hair Pulling

Week 4 had us creating an html index page. Per Nathan's instructions, we worked with a basic Dreamweaver template consisting of 2 columns and 3 rows. I inserted my images on the left-hand side and the text to the right. Because I'm unfamiliar with Dreamweaver, this was a basic learning exercise for me.

Week 3 -- Capture the Screen

www.agiftoffriendship.net

Created my new website today. Learned how to capture a screen and move it to my blog. The process is as follows: opened up my blog, then opened up www.agiftoffriendship.net/iweb1. Clicked on the image I wanted to transfer, then pressed shift, command, & 3 at the same time. That command published the image to my desktop. Pressed the image icon on my blog, then captured the image I wanted to transfer.

Week 2 -- Due To Technical Difficulties ....

Week 2 and the fun continues. After experiencing problems with my computer crashing, the scanner not working, lab attendants who aren't familiar with iweb, and suffering through movie sing-a-long at the Computer Lab, I have a half-finished product to submit to class. Seven hours of my life that I will never get back. Not my finest hour.

As for what I actually managed to finish ... I wanted to put together some photos I took at the Midwest Soarring powwow a couple of years ago. Call me old school, but I still like the richness of film. Because this project is only half-completed, I'll focus on page 2, my bio page. Not because it's especially good, but because it's the one page I managed to finish before the rest of the project went to hell.

The Q & A session is pretty straight forward. As for the photos, the first thing I noticed at the powwow was the explosion of color, so I wanted to photograph as many of the costumes as possible. I then cropped the images to hone in on the individual dancers and the delicacy of their beadwork and feathered costumes. These were dancers who were obviously very proud of their heritage and were very gracious in sharing their traditions with non-native people. The powwow was a coming together of tribes, where Indians met with old friends and communed with each other through dancing.

cmm

Week 1 -- Holy Crap! What Have I Gotten Myself Into This Time?

Greetings, all!

This is my first ever blog, so please, bear with me. I'm trying not to be overwhelmed by the fact that everyone in this web design class already knows each other, and they already know what the @*#! they're doing. Meanwhile, here I am -- still a blog virgin. I predict that it won't take too very long for the other students in class to get tired of me pestering the crap out of them for information. Justin already looks like he wants to switch seats with Jerry just to get away from me ... but I digress.

Nathan asked us to say a little something about ourselves. That seems simple enough since I conduct interviews for a living. As it turns out, I currently recruit for two South side car auctions. When you move a couple of thousand cars through 14 auction lanes every week, it takes a lot of manpower to make that happen. Of the folks I've hired, the majority have been retirees, followed by students and housewives.

It's kind of ironic, but when I was an art student at SXU a million years ago, I dreamed of creating that one masterwork that I could be proud of forever. I actually succeeded, but I did it with people, not with paint or clay. The folks I work with are some of the nicest folks you'd ever hope to meet, and they've come to us from all walks of life. It doesn't really feel like a workplace, so much as it feels like a community of friends.

I also work part-time at Triton College (Yikes, the competition!). On Sunday afternoons, I produce and host a four-hour radio program called The Old Neighborhood featuring THE BEST music from the '40s, '50s, and '60s. I'm really stoked about bringing the musical stylings of Kay Starr, Rosemary Clooney, and Frankie Laine to a new generation of fans. I also play a lot of show tunes. Love that Ethel Merman! Voice like an air raid siren, but damn, she knew how to belt out a tune.

As for the websites I visit regularly, they're actually pretty tame: Yahoo, Google, suntimes.com, Youtube, and the Internet Movie Database (my personal heroin). I've probably said too much, so for now, I bid you adieu.

cmm