Thursday, January 30, 2014

For Next Class – Tuesday, 2/4

We'll be making a series of connected web pages next class. We'l be working on the html pages in class itself, but I'd like you all to have content for the pages (the text, images, and one absolute link) ready to be integrated into your page.

That means having:

1. A paragraph or two relating in some way to your linked word (this could be text that you write, or text taken from other sources – thought if you do take it from other sources, I'll want you to attribute it).

2. An image or images related to your text.

3. An idea for an absolute link - that will will link out from either some text or one of your images – that will take people to an external website, related in some way to that linked text or image. So – for example, if the word you picked was "city," think of a couple paragraphs related to that word (maybe it's a history of the first human city, maybe it's a personal reflection about a city you visited, maybe it's your opinion of one of the worst songs ever recorded, "We Built This City on Rock n Roll"). Assemble or write the text in word or text edit. The gather some images that relate to that text. And lastly, decide where you'll link out to.

 For example, if your text related to the city of Paris, perhaps you'd link to a Paris tourism website. In Tuesday's class, you'll be putting all those pieces together in a web page titled city.html.

Here's a list of the words:

Claire: Watch
Keifer: City
Daniel: Telephone
Joe: Handkerchief
Sierra: Key
Forest: Transmitter
Katie: Train
Sean: American
Felix: Courage
Jake: Suburb
Ted: Pockets
Allison: Chain
Eric: Revolver

Youtube Clip o' the Day

Here's Keifer's video:


Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Ted Porter

My name is Ted Porter. I am from Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada. I grew up skiing a lot and eventually my parents sent me down to Maine to go to a winter sports academy. From there I Moved to Breckenridge Colorado for some more skiing and competing. Now I live here in Tahoe. I am an entrepreneurship major and I have really enjoyed SNC so far.
A web site I use a lot is http://www.reddit.com  Because it has pretty much everything on it and it is organized in a way that is easy to navigate. 

Homework 1 - Jake O'Leary

My name is Jake and I am a senior here at SNC.  I grew up in Durham, New Hampshire and enjoy skiing, videography, and travel.  I am an Entrepreneurship major and am taking Web Design because I feel it is important or be familiar with when starting a business.  I also enjoy digital art through photography and videography, but have never attempted any web design.  I have always been attracted to well designed website and feel it would be interesting to understand what really goes into them.

Website


Monday, January 27, 2014

Video of the day

Since I'm studying entrepreneurship, I realized that car commercials are the best way to study how industries target their market. This video is funny and it has a purpose.



Resources for Today (1/28)

This is some basic html text styling code – utilizing inline CSS – that I thought might be helpful as a "base file" for you to build your poem out of. Hopefully it gives an idea of some basic text-styling syntax (I'll break it down in class):

------------------------------------------------
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
body {color:red;}
h1 {color:yellow;}
p.ex {color:rgb(0,0,255);}
.bluebackgrounditalicboldetc
{
background-color:#6495ed;
font:italic bold 28px Georgia,serif;
}
.greenspaced
{
color:#00ff00;
letter-spacing:5px;
}
</style>
</head>

<body>
<h1>This is heading 1</h1>
<p>This is an ordinary paragraph. Notice that this text is red. The default text-color for a page is defined in the body selector.</p>
<p class="ex">This is a paragraph with class="ex". This text is blue.</p>
<p class="bluebackgrounditalicboldetc">This is a paragraph that has been styled with a class that has multiple elements controlled by it – background color, italics, bold, 28 points, in the Georgia font.</p>
<p>This is an ordinary paragraph, but I've modified this one word – <span class="greenspaced">HERE</span> – using the span tag, styled to a unique class.</p>
And </br>
lastly </br>
I'm </br>
including </br>
some </br>
line </br>
breaks </br>
with </br>
the </br>
break </br>
tag.
</body>
</html>
------------------------------------------------

MORE TAGS WE'LL BE LOOKING AT TODAY:

The "href" tag:

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_a_href.asp

The "img" tag:

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_img.asp

Aligning images with CSS:

http://www.devlounge.net/design/aligning-images-the-right-way-using-css

Here's a downloadable zipped file with css and an image to play with:

http://www.box.net/shared/j96gr8e650

Here's a paragraph from a story we'll be talking about today -- and creating some hyperlinks with as well:

I said out loud: I must flee. I sat up noiselessly, in a useless perfection of silence, as if Madden were already lying in wait for me. Something--perhaps the mere vain ostentation of proving my resources were nil--made me look through my pockets. I found what I knew I would find. The American watch, the nickel chain and the square coin, the key ring with the incriminating useless keys to Runeberg's apartment, the notebook, a letter which I resolved to destroy immediately (and which I did not destroy), a crown, two shillings and a few pence, the red and blue pencil, the handkerchief, the revolver with one bullet. Absurdly, I took it in my hand and weighed it in order to inspire courage within myself. Vaguely I thought that a pistol report can be heard at a great distance. In ten minutes my plan was perfected. The telephone book listed the name of the only person capable of transmitting the message; he lived in a suburb of Fenton, less than a half hour's train ride away.

Here's the wikipedia page for the story, which contains a link to the full text of it.

Lastly, for Tuesday's class, I'd like you to read the below article about hypertext (from the defunct website "five standing"), and answer the following questions (print out your responses and bring them to class):

a. List three ways in which reading on the internet is different than reading from a book.

b. How is the web-reading experience "non-linear"? And how does linear thinking differ from non-linear thinking?

c. In what way does non-linear reading invite us to be the "author" of texts that we read, even if we didn't in fact write those texts?



'Naturally my attention was caught by the sentence, "I leave to various future times, but not to all, my garden of forking paths." I had no sooner read this, than I understood. The Garden of Forking Paths was the chaotic novel itself. The phrase "to various future times, but not to all" suggested the image of bifurcating in time, not in space. Re-reading the whole work confirmed this theory. In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of the others. In the almost unfathomable Ts'ui Pen, he chooses - simultaneously - all of them. He thus creates various futures, various times which start others that will in turn branch out and bifurcate in other times. This is the cause of the contradiction in the novel.'
Jorge Luis Borges, 'The Garden of Forking Paths'


The Internet brings with it a new format of communication and thus affects and challenges our assumptions regarding textuality, reading, writing, and authorship. Hypertext implies and, paradoxically, demands new methods of writing and inevitably produces an extended text, one that is made up of individual, and sometimes, independent fragments that coalesce to create a whole greater than the sum of its constituent segments.

There are numerous essential differences between a hypertext and a written text. Primarily, instead of encountering it in a paper copy, the text is read on a computer screen. Contemporary screens, which have neither the portability (unless one owns a lap or palmtop computer) nor the tactility of printed books, make the act of reading somewhat more difficult - imagine sitting back on your bed or couch, a steaming cup of coffee on the table next to you and your favourite book in your lap. Now imagine doing this with a computer screen. Impossible. This is an immediate hindrance.

Reading a hypertext does, however, offer certain advantages - the reader can change the size and even style of font to facilitate the act of reading. Although such vacillate modifications cannot be permanently implemented in the text as seen by others, the reader is capable of making them whenever he or she wishes to. More importantly, the reader is in control of the text. He or she can move forwards and backwards through the text, changing and manipulating the text into fresh permutations, each alteration bringing new meaning to the text, increasing the interpretory vicissitude and creating a perceptual dissonance unique to the reader.

Hypertextual Consciousness is the science of writing displaced into a cyberspatial geography, a transcendental region where language is able to evolve, adapt and synchronise itself with the machine. Once this symbiotic interaction between language and narrative environment makes its way into cyberspace's eidolonic reality, then the Hypertextual Consciousness itself, as an 'event horizon' in the development of the gestalt-self, makes it possible for a discursive network to continually circulate without any need for something as overdetermined as the single reader (or indeed, the singleauthor.

Hypertext, as a concept, suggests an alternative to the more inflexible, authoritarian linearity of a conventional text. In the middle of reading a hypertext (and it is arguable that the reader is continuously in the middle of reading a hypertext), the reader is supplied with a number of options to select from so as to break away from the text-block being presently read, thus the reader become complicit in the manner in which the text unfolds and enabling him or her to immediately enter a new writing or textual space.

These options are reminiscent of the remote-control devices we use to 'channel-surf' with our televisions. A hypertextual viewing style would be one where the reader actively 'clicks' their way into new graphological, textual or audio-visual spaces. Hypertext, as a more narratologically-generated,
manually manipulated reading format, can be construed as a kind of literary MTV.

Roland Barthes describes an ideal textuality that precisely matches that which has come to be called hypertext. That is to say, a text composed of blocks of words (or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an open-ended, perpetually unfinished textuality described by the terms link, node, network, web, and path: 'In this ideal text,' says Barthes, 'the networks are many and interact, without any one of them being able to surpass the rest; this text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilises extend as far as the eye can reach, they are indeterminable...; the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language'.

Like Barthes, Michel Foucault conceives of text in terms of network and links. In The Archaeology of Knowledge, he points out that the 'frontiers of a book are never clear-cut,' because it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network... a network of references'.


Like almost all structuralists and poststructuralists, Barthes and Foucault describe text, the world of letters, and the power and status relations they involve in terms shared by the field of computer hypertext. Hypertext, a term coined by Theodor H. Nelson in the 1960s, refers also to a form of electronic text, a radically new information technology, and a mode of publication. 'By 'hypertext,'' Nelson explains, 'I mean non-sequential writing - text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen. As popularly conceived, this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways'. Hypertext denotes text composed of blocks of text - what Barthes terms a lexia - and the electronic links that join them.

Hypermedia extends the notion of the text in hypertext by including visual information, sound, animation, and other forms of data. As hypertext links one passage of verbal discourse to images, maps, diagrams, and sound as easily as to another verbal passage, it is relatively easy for the computer based medium to effectively combine these into an aggregate product - hypertext intimates an information medium that links verbal and nonverbal information. Electronic links connect lexias 'external' to a work as well as within it, thereby creating a text that is experienced as a nonlinear, or, more properly, as multilinear or multisequential. Although conventional reading habits apply within each lexia, once one leaves the shadowy bounds of any text unit, new rules and new experience apply.


If you wish to continue investigating 'hypertext' and 'narrative theory', you may find it beneficial to examine the weblinks provided in the 'links' section of this website, as it is far easier to unearth information online than from physical texts. However, if you prefer to examine text books, I suggest you track down some of the following.




  • Amiran, Eyal and John Unsworth; Essays in Postmodern Culture, (Oxford University Press, 1993)
  • Bal, Mieke; Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, (University of Toronto Press, 1997)
  • Barthes, Roland; S/Z, trans. Richard Miller, (1970)
  • Coste, Didier; Narrative As Communication, (University of Minnesota Press, 1989)
  • Currie, Mark; Postmodern Narrative Theory, (Macmillan Press Ltd, 1998)
  • Danow, David K.; Models of Narrative: Theory and Practice, (St. Martin's Press, 1997)
  • Genette, Gerard; Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, (Cornell University Press, 1979)
  • Gibson, Andrew; Towards a Postmodern Theory of Narrative, (Edinburgh University Press, 1996)
  • Landow, George; Hypertext: the Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, (1992)
  • Landow, George; Hyper/Text/Theory, (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994)
  • Lehman, Daniel W.; Matters of Fact: Reading Nonfiction over the Edge, (Ohio State University, 1997)
  • Martin, Wallace; Recent Theories of Narrative, (Cornell University Press, 1986)
  • Mitchell, W.J.T.; On Narrative, (University of Chicago Press, 1981)
  • Phelan, James; Narrative As Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology, (Ohio State University, 1996)
  • Rabinowitz, Peter J.; Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation, (Ohio State University, 1997)
  • Richardson, Brian; Unlikely Stories: Causality and the Nature of Modern Narrative, (Univeristy of Delaware Press, 1997)
  • Richter, David H.; Narrative/Theory, (Longman Publishers, 1995)
  • Roemer, Michael; Telling Stories: Postmodernism and the Invalidation of Traditional Narrative, (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1995)
  • Schank, Roger C. and Gary Saul Morson; Tell Me a Story: Narrative and Intelligence, (Northwestern University Press, 1995)
  • Tabbi, Joseph and Michael Wutz; Reading Matters: Narrative in the New Media Ecology, (Cornell University Press, 1997)




Last updated: Monday, 10th May 1999
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Thursday, January 23, 2014

Resources for Today's class: 1/23/14

HTML - basic definitions.

A basic HTML intro, from a great web design resource site, W3schools:

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp

HTML elements:

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_elements.asp

A guide on how to write html using TextEdit (taken from about.com):



If you use a Macintosh, you don't need to buy or download an editor to write HTML. You have a perfectly functional editor built into your operating system -- TextEdit.

For many people this is all the HTML editor they will ever need.

There are only a few steps to creating a Web page with TextEdit:

Open TextEdit
Open a Finder window
Switch to the Applications folder
Scroll down to TextEdit and double-click on it


Change the format to plain text
TextEdit defaults to a rich text format, so you need to switch it to plain text to write HTML
Open the Format tab
Choose "Make Plain Text"
You can also hit Shift-Apple-T to switch to plain text


Start writing your HTML
Remember that you need to be more careful than in an actual HTML editor. You won't have elements like tag completion and validation.

Save your HTML to a file
This is the tricky part. TextEdit normally saves files as .txt. But since you're writing HTML, you need to save the file as .html.
Go to the File menu
Choose Save As... (or Shift-Apple-S)
Change the file extension from .txt to .html
A popup will ask you if you want to append the extension ".txt" to the end. Choose "Don't Append"

Opening an html file in TextEdit(from www.askdavetaylor.com):


Go to TextEdit --> Preferences... and choose "Open and Save". You'll see:


The key is the first option under "When opening a file": you want to check Ignore rich text commands in HTML files. Check that option, then quit TextEdit.
It turns out you can also do this by manually selecting File --> Open..., choosing the file, and also selecting the option in the Open dialog window of "Ignore rich text commands", but since i'm always double-clicking on files or otherwise launching TextEdit, it's a much easier solution to simply fix the preferences and never worry about it again.

Here is a battery of links that may be useful to you in the formatted poem, our first html-based assignment:

I want you to take a poem or song lyrics, and use text formatting to "design" the text in ways that emphasize properties of the poem/song (for instance, if there is a line that's very angry, perhaps the font is larger and red for that section). I want you to use at least six different text properties (color, font face, size, alignment, etc.) in the course of the poem/song.

Links to CSS text and font info:



http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_text.asp


http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_font.asp

The "span" tag (for modifying elements outside of "p" and "header" tags):

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_span.asp

Web colors:

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colors.asp



Link to CSS examples:

http://www.w3schools.com/CSS/css_examples.asp

An online resource for getting the text of a poem:

http://www.bibliomania.com/

Emily Dickinson, defaced via CSS:



http://sncweb.110mb.com/class/EMILY_PLAIN.html

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Allison McCulloch




Hi everyone, my name is Allison McCulloch (muh-kuh-luck) and I'm a senior at SNC. I am a global business major hoping to pursue a career in marketing or personal relations. I'm currently working at Redemption Sports, the new-ish ski and snowboard shop here in Incline. We are currently working on building a website for the store so it will be interesting to see what I can take from this class and apply to my work life. 

Like most people who live up here, I like to spend my time snowboarding and adventuring around the lake. I'm starting to develop a real itch to travel and if you catch me spacing out I am probably day dreaming of snowboarding in New Zealand, learning to surf in Bali, or eating tapas and sipping wine in Spain. I love to cook, read the news (I'm an old lady I know) and have spent an extensive amount of mornings trying every bloody mary I can possibly find around the lake. Because of my love for food, travel, and everything awesome and random that can be found on the internet,  the website I have chosen to share with you all is Stumbleupon . This site has led me to some of the best recipes, quotes, inspiring photos, poems, work out regimens, and random sh*t ever so I hope you guys enjoy! 

Hello,

              My name is Katelyn Jensen, but i usually go by Katie.  I am an interdisciplinary major studying digital arts and business management.  i love to paint and draw, but i have recently found a passion in video editing and hope to keep progressing in this field, so i can someday have a professional career in creating film.  for now, i  wear a ridiculous uniform as a cocktail waitress at Caliente in KB.  I have worked in the food service industry ever since i became old enough to legally receive a paycheck (7 years...?).  when i received my first tips ever at the end of my shift, i was hooked (even though it was about 15 dollars for the whole day).  I do okay at my job now, but i am sure many of you know how deeply frustrating it can be dealing with the public at times.  Therefore, i like to visit this website www.TipOrGoHome.com.   This site is a blog that anyone can view or add to.  it is all about funny/extremely frustrating or sometimes happy experiences that servers face on a day to day basis during their shifts. this page is entertaining. it is also extremely easy to relate to some of the almost humorous but horrible experiences most servers go through, hence the reason i am getting a college degree.  I'm over working nights with guacamole all over my shirt and ready to make money doing what i love!


HW #1 Bio, Picture, & Website

Forest Jade
Hello, I am Forest Jade, I am a Junior and this is my third year at SNC as a Digital Arts and Entrepreneurship student. I enjoy an interdisciplinary lifestyle, striving to live everyday like vacation. I was born in Oregon, raised in Vermont, and have x-crossed the country many times. I love America, I love Earth. I enjoy participating in the fractal of life, whether that be calculating my own scared geometry with Adobe programs, making melodic patterns with my Maschine or dialing in a rotation out on the mountain snowboarding.

Website:  >Click<

  

Felix Mobarg

Im from sweden and I grew up in the capital, stockholm. I'm majoring in SBRM. My main interest is snowboarding and I've been doing for 10 years. I try to snowboard as much as I possibly can. Other interests are soccer with I've played since I was 5 or something like that. Soccer is the national sport of sweden and about 70% of the population have or are playing this sport and it's the biggest sport in the world, so that were my first passion and still are one of my favorite things to do. Other then snowboarding and soccer I also enjoy shooting photos.

http://theberrics.com/

Sierra Granados

I grew up in Asheville, NC and South FL, and have been spending my summers with my family in Hood River, OR since high school. My main hobbie is art (draw/ paint), but i also like to snowboard and skate. I taught myself how to use some adobe suite programs, but have only figured out the basics.

I like visiting vice.com and watching their movies/ articles about international issues through a funny outlook.

My link to my online art portfolio is: fauxfate.com

Heres some skatedecks i painted with acyrillic. Looking forward to the semester!



Joe Fioramonti

       I grew up near Hartford, Connecticut and have been an SNC student for the past two semesters as a Digital Art major.  I have always enjoyed and excelled in art classes but have only been doing computer based work the past couple of years.  Computers have always been a part of my life and to use them in creative ways is very enticing.  My experience in digital platforms is limited to Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, and some video and audio editing.  I also have some experience in other mediums including Painting, Ceramics, Printmaking, and 3D practices.  My interests include Snowboarding, Basketball, Video Games, Hip-Hop, and Reggae.  I am also a serious golfer with professional ambitions.  While a career as a professional golfer is only lucrative for the top few, having a foundation in Digital Media and Web Design will be an advantage in a society that is so entwined in technology.








  

Daniel Chavez, Picture and Bio

Hello,

My name is Daniel Chavez, I'm a senior and working on an entrepreneurship major and a minor in accounting. I want to gain some experience after school and learn all the things neccesary to make my own business.  I like snowboarding and I love playing soccer, I play all year round and sometimes I play in three different teams. I'm taking this class because I want to learn how to make a website and I know I'm going to need it when I make my own business.
www.soccer.com


Claire Bagg


Hello
My name is Claire Bagg. I originally started school in Santa Barbara, received 3 Associate Degrees in Art with photography emphasis, Art with graphic design emphasis and Arts & Humanities. I came to Tahoe a year ago to be in the snow and fell in love with the idea of SNC and the work that comes out of the art department. I have attended SNC for a semester now (this being my second) & have another exciting year ahead of me.


My sister is actually a Graphic Design major at USF and she loves sharing different interesting links and websites with me and one of my favorite was the link below for a company that actually specializes in digital communication through offering website making services for their customers, along with an array of other marketing services. 

Another humorous site, with no real purpose other than to make people laugh is the link below. 

& here is the youtube clip asked to be posted by me as clip of the week...I chose this because I feel it best shows the difference between commercials/advertisements then and now.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Lukas Brassie Bio and Picture

I am from Canandaigua NY, and I am currently a freshman at SNC. I came here mainly to snowboard and I am also on the lacrosse team. I am an entrepreneurship major hoping to eventually own my own business in the near future. Snowboarding and lacrosse have been my main two hobbies for most of my life, while I also enjoy wake boarding, hiking, backpacking, swimming and much more. A link to one of the websites I visit most often is posted below.

http://www.netflix.com


Keifer Bly About Myself and Picture

I am in my second term at Sierra Nevada College, and am working towards a degree in digital arts. I have some general practice in 3D animation and with Photoshop, and love to work with computers. My other hobbies include snow skiing, video games, hiking, swimming, and more. I have programmed a few apps for the iphone (or iOS). I also have some experience in web design, having worked with the Mac program iWeb, and having designed my own website. Here is the link, I visit it relatively often:

techtutorials.ucoz.com



Chris' Test Post

This is my introductory post. I'll load a picture, too. My website is chrislanier.com.




Sunday, January 19, 2014

Welcome – Spring 2014 Class

Welcome to the blog for the web design class.

You have a two-part assignment to complete before next class, this coming Thursday.

PART ONE

Make a post on this blog. You should: a) write a short paragraph about yourself, b) include a picture of yourself, and c) provide a link to a website that you like or visit often.

PART TWO

Be prepared, next class, to talk about why you like the website for a presentation of five to ten minutes. Write and print out an outline, which you will hand in on Tuesday's class (this is not a full paper, but an outline you can refer to in your presentation). Talk about:

1. The design of the site

You should be able to describe the use of:
a) color
b) fonts
c) images
d) the general layout

How do each of these elements serve (or undermine) the purpose and content of the website? What is the emotional or design quality of each of these elements? For instance, a site designed for children might use colors that are bright, vivid, and friendly -- with a font that appears playful or toy-like.

2. The navigation of the site

How it the site organized? How do you get from place to place? Is the content on the site easily accessible? Are there different navigation schemes on different parts of the site, or is it consistent across the site?

3. The functionality of the site -- what the site "does."

Also, if you have a website of you own, post a link to that as well.

And don't forget -- if you'd like to order a reference book, you can order "Visual Quickstart Guide to Dreamweaver CS6," online.

Finally -- if you'd like to download a copy of the syllabus, it's here:
https://app.box.com/s/4ntrll1kn4070slbx3ki

And finally, finally - the youtube "clip of the day" times two: