So if you ever wanted to know how much I talk about things…
December 9, 2010, 10:32 PM
So did you ever wonder how much I talk about what in this space? Well, I did, and so I sat down with a pen and paper and categorized my Journal entries. Seriously. I did every Journal entry starting with this entry at the beginning of 2009 about an Augusta County issue, all the way through this entry, which I remember most for composing it on the Metro.
And what did I find out? Well, it’s kind of surprising and not surprising. Not surprising is that the thing I discussed most in the past almost-two-years is Metro – 38 times. Surprising, however, is that discussion of Anonymous is so close to it – 33 times. In 2009, I actually discussed Anonymous more times than Metro by one (24 Anon vs. 23 Metro), and then it reversed to more what I would have expected in 2010 (15 Metro and 9 Anon). Then after that, I discuss work – 24 times since the beginning of 2009. I wasn’t really surprised about that.
But you know what was really surprising? Since January 1, 2009, I wrote about snow 19 times, making it the topic I discuss fifth most often overall. I guess that’s what happens when nature dumps a few feet of snow on the Washington DC area and we’re all trapped in our houses for days at a time. I racked up most of those hits during the blizzards last winter, and in February 2010, that’s just about all I talked about.
Continue reading…Categories: Schumin Web meta
This is what a Vietnam Memorial photo set should look like…
November 23, 2010, 8:21 PM
I think I may have outdone myself with the new Vietnam Veterans Memorial set in Photography. I was quite pleased with the way the photos came out right after I shot them, and I was especially pleased with the way the whole set came out as a finished product on the Web site.
This certainly does a better job in showing the Vietnam Memorial than my previous attempt, in Part 5 of The Schumin Web Salutes America from 2001. The lighting is different, the Canon has far superior resolution than the original Mavica, and I’ve grown as a photographer and how things get displayed. Let’s admit it – the older photo set was a bit all over the place. I was operating under the assumption that it would be a very long time between visits to Washington, and so I went after a lot of stuff at once – probably too much. By the time I got to the Vietnam Memorial, I had already walked four-and-some miles, and so I was tired. The National Mall, by the way, is a lot longer than it looks, and I walked the entire length of it from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and about halfway back that day. So the effort was a bit lackluster due to my packing too much into a day.
By the way, I generally consider the older photo set from 2001 to be poor work by today’s standards despite all the effort that I put into it at the time, and a few retoolings of the photo set over the years. The older photo set does, however, show The Three Soldiers, which the newer photo set does not. I deliberately avoided the statues due to concerns over freedom of panorama as it applies to statues.
Categories: Schumin Web meta
Greetings from CAF 5109…
November 17, 2010, 7:29 PM
First of all, hello from CAF 5109. I am riding the Red Line home from the Tenleytown area, having just had a wonderful time enjoying a cup of coffee with a friend. Always good to see friends, and nothing beats a hot cup of coffee on a cool fall evening.
Meanwhile, this is my first time actually writing a Journal entry on my netbook while on the Metro. The train is not crowded by any means, so I’m sitting sideways in a row and typing with the computer on one leg. And it seems to work. I’m listening to Randi Rhodes on podcast, and just tapping away on the keyboard. For those wondering, I don’t have Internet on here right now, but instead, I will post this when I get home. I’m too late for the 51, so I figure, I’m either going to take the Y9 bus or walk. Follow me on the Twitter and find out, I suppose. Meanwhile, this train did not service Farragut North, strangely enough. When we went through (without stopping), there was caution tape on the platform and a bunch of people in safety vests at the outbound end, but a lot of regular people on the inbound end. Go fig. I know that the L Street entrance was closed, but who knows if that’s related.
Then this weekend is raid weekend. It’s always fun to troll Scientology, and this ought to be good, though I’m concerned that our numbers will be down due to its being so close to Thanksgiving. This is, after all, the weekend before Thanksgiving, and I’m sure that many people will be taking off early for the holiday. However, Scientology is not above scamming people out of large sums of their money on the weekend before Thanksgiving, and thus we will be outside to troll. It’s this Saturday from 1-5 PM. Hope to see you there. Should be fun. Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong on the numbers, and we’ll have a good number of (masked) faces out there trolling Scientology.
Categories: Computer, Project Chanology, Schumin Web meta, Thanksgiving, WMATA
So I did one of the things I bought this netbook for…
November 5, 2010, 11:33 PM
Well, I did my first Video-Journal-on-the-go entries today. I did two videos, both on the Metro. I first did one in the morning:
Categories: Schumin Web meta, Video Journal, WMATA
And for the first time, meet my netbook…
October 25, 2010, 9:54 PM
Another video Journal entry for you:
Categories: Computer, Schumin Web meta, Video Journal
Is it time for a major overhaul?
October 17, 2010, 11:30 AM
I’ve heard this a few times recently. I was told by a coworker that my site is “kinda Web 1.0”, and at the One Nation rally, one of the Rochester folks said that my site looked “kinda 90s”. Ouch.
So that begs the question: Is it time to give Schumin Web a major overhaul? And by “major overhaul”, I don’t mean just a mere redesign that I could do with a style sheet. I mean big time.
If it gives you any idea about where things stand, this is when the various elements that make up Schumin Web came into being:
- Logo: July 1999
- Navigational structure with sections: September 2000
- Archives section: September 2000
- Journal section: October 2004 (part of Life and Times prior to that)
- Life and Times section: July 2003
- Major Areas: September 2000
- Odds and Ends: September 2000 (current form since July 2003)
- Online Store: September 2000 (current form since January 2010)
- Photography: July 2001
- Splash Page: August 2002 (current form)
- Photo Feature: March 2005
- Current layout: October 2004 (rebuilt to same design twice, in 2007 and 2010)
- Current “squares” background: June 2008
Categories: Schumin Web meta
This time, I am saying something substantive while on camera…
August 21, 2010, 11:54 PM
So I gave the “Schumin Web Video Journal” (a name I came up with after I filmed this) a spin once again:
Categories: Companies, Products, Project Chanology, Schumin Web meta, Video Journal
Now we have a baseline to improve upon…
August 17, 2010, 6:05 AM
So I bought a new Web cam last night – a Microsoft LifeCam HD-5001. Seems to work well enough, as I sat and video blogged for a bit. Check it out:
Categories: Computer, Schumin Web meta, Video Journal
Welcome to the new site!
June 25, 2010, 7:46 PM
Welcome to the newly-redesigned Schumin Web! Since February, I’ve been busy at work on the site, reworking the code and generally cleaning the site up, and now it’s finished and launched.
The main thrust of this redesign was to finally get away from using tables for layout, and do the layout entirely in CSS. I also pledged to do everything “right” this time, and not do anything kludgy. If I didn’t know how to make something work the way I wanted, then by golly, I researched it to find out how to make it work as intended.
However, the site still generally looks like the old site, since I admit – I really like the layout, and I saw no reason to make major revisions to that at this time. Why fix what’s not broken, after all? But that doesn’t mean I didn’t take the time to do a lot of smaller changes.
Let me give you a quick rundown on some of the stuff that’s new…
Categories: Schumin Web meta
It was always a little kludgy, but it worked…
May 25, 2010, 9:26 PM
Yeah, I’m almost to the point in my redesign where it’s time to design the Journal section. Right now, before even one line of code has been written for it, it makes me nervous. See, I am worried about how many Journal entries will break. After all, I code Journal entries on the fly, and do whatever comes naturally to me. And full CSS layouts are not something I’m accustomed to. So it makes me a little nervous.
But I’m almost there. I’ve done the redesign in this order: the basic page templates, Major Areas, Archives, Odds and Ends, Photography, and most of Life and Times (still working on that last one). That leaves the Journal and then the unnamed “center section” still to do. It’s okay, though. It’s coming along quite well, and with the photo sets mostly done, that’s one less thing I have to worry about.
However, it’s going to be really weird to have done the Journal correctly for a change. Right now, it’s a bit kludgy in places. I cut a lot of corners on the current design, which dates from 2007, to make it look right regardless of whether it was also done correctly. If you look at my code for the Journal, there are a bunch of little invisible graphics that are there just to get the spacing correct. After all, I kind of did the 2007 redesign under a bit of duress. The site had gone down, and I was determined to convert it from ASP to PHP and get it back up as quickly as possible, and the hell with doing it the right way. According to my update log, the Journal was the first item to be restored. Thus not only was I racing to get it back up and running, but I was also perhaps doing most of the learning on a new HTML editor and a new platform on that section. So a few kludges were inevitable, I suppose.
Categories: Schumin Web meta
So should I buy another Web cam?
May 6, 2010, 11:25 PM
I’ve been tossing around the idea for a while of buying another Web cam. One may recall that from 2000 to 2003, I had a feature on this site where I had a Web cam that transmitted a still picture to the site every two minutes. So Web cams and Schumin Web are definitely not unfamiliar concepts.
However, before you start thinking I’m going to resurrect the old Web cam feature, forget it. I am so over that. That feature is dead, and is staying dead.
Actually, I’m thinking about the possibility of doing some Journal entries in video format. I think it would be fun, and I could convey some things that I can’t do in written form, like tone of voice, and hand movements and such.
Of course, that requires actually having a Web cam of some sort. The Web cams that I had in the days of the old Web cam feature are long gone. I either threw them away, gave them away, or they’re buried somewhere in my parents’ house. However, you slice it, I don’t have them. Besides, those old cameras were a pain to deal with anyway, and modern cameras are far superior to and cheaper than the old ones, which by now would be eight and ten years old. Right now, the only access I have to a Web cam is the iSight camera on my office Mac, and there are a whole host of reasons why I will never “video blog” for Schumin Web from the office.
Categories: Computer, Schumin Web meta
So how would you integrate Twitter into Schumin Web?
March 17, 2010, 9:39 PM
As you may have seen on a recent site update, I have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. I envision using Twitter as kind of a mini-Journal. In other words, stuff that’s not enough for a full Journal entry, but certainly worth a mention. And with the site redesign going on, now is a good time to do this kind of work, rather than shoehorn it in later.
So far, I’ve come up with a footer link for the page. It takes the existing Facebook page link that’s been at the bottom of every page since October and makes it more prominent and pairs it with the new Twitter link. Thus under the row of links with updates, contact, privacy, etc., there will be a new line that says, “Follow The Schumin Web on Facebook and Twitter”, with “Facebook” and “Twitter” in their own logos. Facebook will still be used the same as it always has, consisting mainly of Journal entries and the like. Then Twitter will be like a mini-Journal. Of course, I first have to get into the habit of actually using the Twitter.
So now the question becomes, how do you integrate Twitter into Schumin Web? Considering I envision Twitter as something of a mini-Journal, I was thinking of putting a box of some sort for the Twitter feed there, possibly in the vicinity of the menu.
Categories: Schumin Web meta, Social media
So the redesign for CSS is coming along well…
March 1, 2010, 1:42 AM
The redesign of this site to implement CSS layouts is coming along well. So far, all the major templates are built, the site navigates, and the Archives and Major Areas sections are complete.
I’m building the new version of the site in a “sandbox“, and I’m going to launch it all at once. This isn’t going to be a launch-in-sections like I did in 2004 and 2007. I’m doing the whole thing at once. I’m also deliberately designing it to make sure that no links change. The site still uses PHP, so it’s not like pages are going to have to get re-spidered anyway for an extension change.
As far as how things are going to look, expect to see a number of tweaks. All the screen-captures in Major Areas are updated, and Major Areas has a new header image. In Archives, the Vintage Schumin Web page has been completely rewritten, and I’ve attempted to clean up navigation on the Site Updates page. Then also look for various minor changes throughout, as I bold this or italicize that.
Right now, I’m most worried about two areas. I’m worried about the Main Page, and the Journal. For the Main Page, the Photo Feature concerns me. Currently, the database supplies the left edge of the main content panel, because it varies depending on whether the Photo Feature is horizontal or vertical. I feel that implementing that variable in CSS will be something of a challenge, but I think I’m up to it. Then in the Journal, I’m not too worried about actually designing it all. I’m more worried that a few entries might break a CSS-designed layout and have to get fixed. I’m not too keen about having to comb through 1,200-some Journal entries to find a few bad apples, though I have a feeling I know which ones might break the new page if something is going to break it. Hopefully that concern is unfounded, and everything will go smoothly. We’ll soon find out, I suppose.
Categories: Schumin Web meta
This will mark the second time I’ve redesigned Schumin Web to have it end up looking almost exactly the same as it did before…
February 21, 2010, 12:30 AM
Categories: Schumin Web meta
This is a photo set that was long in coming…
January 31, 2010, 2:38 PM
I just released the UNITE HERE Picket Photography set. This was a long time in coming. When I attended this event on June 20, I originally planned to just do a Journal entry about the event. I was going to write about it on the night of Monday, June 22. But then the Metro accident happened that evening, and I ended up writing about that instead. Thus the UNITE HERE event got bumped. It was the Photo Feature that week, but nothing else was said about it.
Now, it’s part of Photography, and is one of two planned 2009 sets (the other being the teabagger march). I suppose it worked out well for the event. Rather than getting some discussion in the Journal and moving on, it got a full-page spread, with 35 pictures rather than a select few. And I got a chance to experiment again with Photography set layout. This time, I went for staggered rows. I’m still deciding how the format will look, and this one looks good, but the photos seem a little too close together.
And the weird thing about this group of photos is that every time I’ve published a photo from this event on the site, Metro has had an accident involving their rolling stock. I posted a photo as the Photo Feature on June 21, and the next day, Metro had a major collision on the Red Line. Then I ran a different photo during the week of Thanksgiving, and while that one was up, the yard collision at Falls Church happened. Very weird coincidence, if you ask me. I’m almost afraid with posting 35 photos from this event that an elevated structure will collapse or something. Let’s hope not.
So with another Photography set published, I want to know once again what you think. I’m trying something out, and so let me know!
Categories: Schumin Web meta, WMATA