A New Look

Look for a new look, coming soon to a blog near you (this blog, that is).

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And the final list is . . . [From my "Web MaJoR" blog]

Here's the finalized list for this project:

• Lord of the Flies
• Orn
• Vile Village, The
• Ender's Game
  
  
• Animal Farm
• Lord of the Rings
• Lord Foul's Bane
  
  
• Bloody Mary
• One False Move
• On A Pale Horse
• K Is for Killer
• Stand on Zanzibar

Now that I have a list made up of books that I own I can get busy photographing them!

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A better possibility for S [From my "Web MaJoR" blog]

How could I, in my previous post, suggest Slaughterhouse-Five when it is obvious to anyone reading my Love All Books blog that the correct book should be Stand on Zanzibar.

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Photoshop Project [From my "Web MaJoR" blog]

For my final project in the Photoshop class I'm taking, I have to create an animated gif file.

After a bit of deliberation, I've decided that I might want to create a banner for my Love All Books blog.

My plan (at the moment) is:

• to come up with books (preferably books that I have read) with titles that begin with the letters L-O-V-E A-L-L B-O-O-K-S
• these initial letters would appear, one at a time, and as each appears
• the cover of a book that begins with that letter would then float onto, then off of, the banner

So far, I've come up with the following potential list of books to use (obviously some letters are going to be harder than others):

• Lord of the Flies
• Orn
• V for Vendetta (I've read the comic book mini-series as it was published; I might replace this one)
• Ender's Game
  
  
• Animal Farm
• Lord of the Rings
• L
  
  
• Big Sleep, The (I haven't read this one yet; I'd rather find another I have read!)
• O
• O
• K Is for Killer
• Slaughterhouse-Five

UPDATE:I've picked the following extra titles already (one more to go!):

• Lord Foul's Bane
• One False Move
• Vile Village, The (in place of V for Vendetta)
• Bloody Mary (in place of The Big Sleep)

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I thought I was going to be a Web Developer! [From my "Web MaJoR" blog]

Okay, it turns out what I'm doing for my friend Rob is more graphic artist and video post production than I thought I'd be doing, and less web development, but I'm still going to use this blog to discuss what's going on in my professional life. That will include what's going on with the above endeavors, plus my own journey to become a better web developer (self-study, classes, projects personal & professional, etc).

So, who is this Rob guy and what are you doing for him then, you ask? Well, for starters, Rob is a personal trainer. Rob also loves helping people, especially where it comes to personal fitness. As such, he has under development a number of projects (videos, ebooks, a membership site, et cetera) that I will be linking to when it goes live later this year. I've been doing some web work for him, but mostly lately I've been doing video production (using Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Encore DVD, and Adobe Photoshop), and have been working with him on the companion ebook for this product.

Since this product has to do with improving your posture (a problem that most people that sit in front of a computer for any length of time have — whether they're aware of it or not — that can cause a number of other problems for them), but is still under wraps, I'll refer to it for now as Project Quasimodo.

So, what are am I doing for myself then?

Well, I am still very interested in becoming a full-fledged web developer.

I did this kind of work for a brief time for my former employer but, as was typical at this company — in a very Dilbert kind of way — I was given training, put to work on a project, and then once that project was over (long before I could really master the skills) I was put to work on something completely unrelated to web development. Shortly after that project ended, I was laid off and have done very little with my own website since (being busy with "stay-at-home dad-hood" will do that to you!)

If I could master the skills I"d like to master, I'd be a wiz in the following areas:

• web graphics (I'm taking a Photoshop Class at Dakota County Technical College (DCTC) to work on that)


• Client side & server side web programming (which I will probably obtain while pursuing a Web Developer Certificate from Saint Paul College)


• PHP5/MySQL (also part of the above named certificate program)


• XHTML/CSS (actually part of client side programming, but I'd really like to know these areas well)


• AJAX (something I'll have to find a class for sometime, or teach myself)

Right now, I'm reading Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML because, as I said, I'm really rusty at web stuff, and I've never done all that much with either css or xhtml, and I'd like to (one look at my blogs and you'll see why!)

Oh, and I'm about one third of the way through this book in what is — for me — record time, and I'm remembering a good deal (it does help though that almost none of this part of the book is new to me, just rusty!) Still, if you're new to this stuff, these "Head First" books are the way to go.

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Sad to say...

The sad part about this blog is that I'm a very slow reader, so please bear with me. I tend to be reading at least one or two fictional books at any given time (I just finished reading The Miserable Mill, book 4 in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events).

 

This is in addition to reading my Photoshop textbook, and the one or more nonfiction books I'm typically working on at any given time (at the moment, that's Who Let the Blogs Out?: A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs by Biz Stone, and PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice by Matt Zandstra.

      

It is also sad that I'm hopelessly outnumbered by the authors out there. I can really relate to Henry Bemis, the character played by Burgess Meredith in the "Time Enough at Last" episode of The Twilight Zone (and yet, not even I want time to read that badly!)

I hope Riley, my soon-to-be six-year-old kindergartener, is a faster reader than I when he grows up or I will feel somewhat awful that I'm turning him on to books; I'd hate for him to have to deal with the frustration I endure! But I gotta admit, it is great watching him learn to read! He read—almost completely on his own—Hop on Pop (by Doctor Seuss) to me last night (imagine: he had trouble with "Constantinople" and "Timbuktu"!)

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Hunhhh? [From my "Web MaJoR" blog]

Just when you think you've seen every variation of "webmaster" on the planet, including such lovelies as "webmaestro" and "webguru", along comes moi with this puzzler of seemingly random capitalization: "Web MaJoR". What's up with that?

It does make one pause, doesn't it?

"What is wrong with the term 'webmaster'?", you may ask. To which I reply, "Nothing, in the proper context. The term truly does apply—by my very uneducated guesstimation—to probably a good 0.00003728 per cent of the web creators out there.

(Oooh, raise your hand if you correctly deduced that the number I cited above is meaningless, that I totally came up with it off the top of my head. I do stuff like that; most of the time you won't even be told about it—I'll give you credit for the smarts to figure it out on your own. That's part of my charm. If that bothers you, get over it.)

My problem—if you wish to view it that way—with the word stems from the fact that I cannot apply the term master to myself as it is being used (follow the link above to the definition at the Free Online Dictionary). In this context it is supposed to mean "an expert", which I, most certainly, am not, even though I do most of the web site management and modification for a certain company in the Twin Cities area.

"So why 'MaJoR', then?" you ask.

Well, the number one definition for major at the Free Online Dictionary is "Greater than others in importantance or rank"; while I'd say I'm certainly not greater than everyone when it comes to web development—there are, as I said, actual masters out there—I'm better than many and have performed the task professionally. More appropriate is definition number six ("Of or relating to the field of academic study in which a student specializes"): I am, and of necessity must continue to be, an ongoing student of internet technologies. (This is one of the reasons I'm currently working on the take-home portion of my Introduction to Photoshop mid-term!)

"Okaaaaayyy . . ." I hear you wonder, "so what's up with the funky capitalization?"

Well, my first name is Michael, my wife's is Julie (there are some projects—web and otherwise—for which her help is indispensable), and my kindergartener is Riley (anyone with a kindergartener will understand that he'd want to be involved and express his opinion on our projects).

And so—to make a long story short ("Too late!")—MaJoR stands for "Michael and Julie or Riley.

Filed in: Web.Master Webmaster Web.Programming Web.Development Photoshop

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