Toby's Log page 104

Stearn’s Research: Food for historians

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We identified history buffs as one of the probable main visitors to the Stearn’s site.  We want to list local attractions on the site, so I am researching eateries that history buffs might be interested in.

Here is a list of Parma eateries.  I’m not sure if there are any historical places in that list, but I’m sure most of them would be places that a history buff would be happy to eat at.

Possible Restaurants

Unfortunately, it is very hard to find historic restaurants in Parma with a search engine, so that is the best I can do.

    Stearns Farm Meeting 1

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    We had our first meeting with our client contact for our Stearns Farm project.  She (Debbie) was very nice and the meeting went quite well.  We got a much better concept of what we will be doing with the site.  We also found that the site will be made completely new on whatever hosting we care to put it on:  It is not tied to being served from the Parma site as the old “site” was.  So the project looks like it will be interesting and fun, and we’ll be able to do a lot with it.  I think it will be a huge improvement for the farm’s web presence as well, and we should hopefully be able to increase both visits and donations to the farm.

    We determined for sure that it is a 501(c)3 non-profit.  I’ve worked on a number of non-profit websites (including Red-Cross of Greater Cleveland, Humane Society of Greater Akron, and OROC) well an intern at RPM International.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to use some of my experience from there to help this project.

    Full WordPress Blog

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    We set up the full version of WordPress (from wordpress.org) for learning how to work with it. Mine can be found here.  I’ve already had experience working with the full version of wordpress (I’ve used it for years on my own site), but I haven’t gotten too far working with the themes.  I’ve taken this opportunity to make a theme nearly from scratch.  I’ve used the Sandbox theme, deleting all CSS but leaving the html/php templates.  I’ve considered modifying those as well, as I don’t like everything about them and I may need to to get the site to work as desired.

    Anyway, I’ve created a semi-fluid centered layout there using absolute positioning within a div.  I’ve been wanting to do something like this to allow the navigation and other non-main content to be placed at the bottom of the page structurally but still where I want it for appearance.

    It works fairly nicely, though it still has some problems.  For instance, padding on any of the absolutely positioned boxes expands them and messes up the layout.  Any padding must be done on sub-elements.  Borders on any of the main blocks don’t work either, and can cause layout problems.  And since the side columns are absolutely positioned and take up no height, I need a min-height to ensure all of their content doesn’t float out of their box.  I hope to continue working on the theme to correct these problems, and may use something similar for my own website.

    I recently (re)read about elastic layouts.  I find the idea to be good for usability:  The whole site scales when the text size changes.  So I’ve considered changing the theme to work completely based on em’s for sizing, except I’d have to use a workaround for the full image header.  Strangely though it seems most newer browsers can scale any site almost as if they were already elastic:  With the aforementioned theme, IE 7, Firefox 3.5, and Safari 4 scale the whole page, including the header image and pixel width sidebars, down or up just fine and even maintain line lengths through part of the scaling.  Currently the page is 100% width unless the browser goes wider than its max-width, so I’d try to keep that if going to em’s.

    The theme hasn’t been tested in IE 6 yet, since I don’t think I have a copy:  I may have to use a virtual version or another computer.  I imagine it will fail miserably there.  I haven’t yet delved into the conditional stylesheets, but I may add one just for IE 6 if the site doesn’t work well with it.

    I can’t figure out how to apply this theme to this wordpress.com blog.  It seems like it may cost money to do.  I’ll have to investigate further.  I may end up moving this blog for the class over there, maybe converting this into a personal blog.

    Questions to ask the client

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    In this class, we will be working on updating the site for a historical farm in the area.  We are coming up with questions to ask them about the site we will build for them. We must use these questions to find out their needs effectively. To do se we need to be good communicators.

    Questions should uncover:

    • Target Audience
    • Style
      • Examples: Get examples of 3 sites they like or would be what they are going for
      • Branding: logo, colors, etc that the organization uses to identify itself
    • Content
      • Priorities for content, functionality
      • Objectives
      • who will provide writing, images
    • Technology and hosting
      • Cost
      • Database
      • Scripting
      • other features
    • Target audience
    • Dollars
    • Timeline
    • Peers & Competition

    Historic Sites

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    I am taking a look at some historic sites and deciding what I like and dislike about them.  The sites are:

    Hale Farm

    Hale Farm and Village was the first historic place I thought of.  I’ve been there before and it is fairly nearby where I live.

    The site is a sub-site of the Western Reserve Historical Society.  This makes it more easy to find other historical places in the area, but gives Hale Farm less emphasis.  Some of the content bleeds together.  I think it could have a lot more information about what is at the farm.  The site is kept very up to date.  It has a fair amount of event and news related content.  There is an online donation function, though it doesn’t seem as extensive as many other non-profits:  I’m not sure if this is because they are less dependent on donations or get enough from other methods or what.  There is perhaps what is going to become on online store, but it is not functional currently:  It has a shopping cart, but no way to add anything to it.

    Peninsula Historic Museum

    A single page on the Peninsula Library site discusses the museum.  The museum is relatively small and new, so I suppose this is to be expected.  A basic description, location, hours, and basic exhibit descriptions are all the content.  I like that there are descriptions of the exhibits, though there could certainly be a more in-depth description of the museum itself, including perhaps a history.  A link on the page goes to another site where you can view some of the museums images, but the link only goes to the root URL of that site, and it tells you to search for the images:  it would be nice if they could have a link to their stuff straight off.  It’d also be nice if they actually seemed to have images there.

    There is no dynamic content on this page, though the main site has a lot more happening, such as events, donations, and a good bit of information about the other stuff the library does (including all that book stuff).  The menu is somewhat annoying to use.  It has a top level set of items that don’t go anywhere, but open up a set of other links to click.  The links aren’t actual links, probably flash buttons, so they give no tells of the underlying URL or whether they are to an external site.

    Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad

    This site is not a sub-site of others, giving the item of interest a lot of emphasis.  There are advanced data driven features such as event listings, news, a calendar, and even a membership section.  Some of the stuff that is nested in sub-sections of the site can be hard to find perhaps, especially with no search available.

    Hello there

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    I am Toby Mackenzie, a student at Tri-C in northeast Ohio.  I am taking class called Web Design II there, for which this blog will be used.

    Teacher spot reports for knowledge check

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    School administration would on occasion randomly choose some teachers to write a report. The report would be either a short (1-2 page) paper that must be written on the spot with little or no resources, or a longer (perhaps 10 pages) research paper which they will have a specified period to complete and can use any resources they want.

    The topic of the paper would be randomly assigned, asking how they apply or could use certain educational principles in the classroom. Some possible topics might include how the teacher uses or could use Piaget’s or Vygotsky’s theories, positive reinforcement, levels-of-processing theory; how do they handle the different learning styles of students; what implications a recent educational news story might have for them; how do they apply technology in the classroom; or a more general question like how new educational theories have shaped their teaching styles.

    The check would help ensure that teachers are paying attention to and using both well established and new educational theories to hopefully provide the best education they can to their children. Educational theories often are adopted slowly or aren’t translated well into teaching styles. There is a whole lot that can be done to improve the education system just by fully implementing the recommendations of the vast available knowledge pool of educational learning theory.

    Dwight moved out

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    After a year and a half of living with me, my roommate Dwight finally moved out. His girlfriend got a “real” job in Texas, so he moved down there with her. His stay here was supposed to be temporary, but he liked the low living expenses so much he decided to stay.

    This has been quite a change for me. The change in my cost of living is quite significant: My basic expenses will increase by an estimated 34%, not a small number. This is at a time when I’m about to lose my job. I have money saved, and could easily get a job at a restaurant in no time I’m sure, but it still could be rough, especially on some of my planned extra type expenditures.

    Living alone is quite different from living with someone. There was someone there most of the time to do stuff with before, but now I have to put effort into finding someone to do stuff with, especially since I no longer have any real friends (he was the only one that I actually did stuff with excluding family). He had a good collection of movies and frequently rented some, so we often watched them. We also played card and other games. It was nice to have an additional person to help with some stuff: It meant I didn’t have to always be there to look for and deal with everything. It can be very lonely sitting at home alone.

    Of course, it can be nice as well. I can have lots of alone time without worrying about someone popping in. Dwight could be quite the talker and sometimes would talk for hours, sometimes about things I wasn’t especially interested in. The dishes were a shared duty and they ended up being quite a mess as well as a lot of work. My house is much cleaner now and I plan to keep it that way.

    On the cleaner note, I have moved some of the stuff from my front room into his old bedroom. The front room had been piled with stuff and virtually unusable, but now it is rather clean. It will be an entertainment room (video, board, and card games, chairs to chat, etc). His old room is rather clean still as well, and may become an office. I hope to get rid of a lot of stuff and make the house cleaner still.

    We’ll see how this works out.

    Oil change trouble

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    After running through a few tanks to see the pre-change MPG of my Saturn, I changed the oil to a synthetic high MPG formulation. I had used the same oil in my Corolla and had noticed a definite increase, and wanted to verify that this increase was indeed happening. I haven’t verified the increase yet.

    Unfortunately, the oil change itself was the worst I’ve ever done. It probably took me at least three hours. I had to clean some oil spilled from my leaky oil catcher pan. The biggest time consumer, though, was the filter: It was on there ridiculously tight and the Saturn has almost no space around it. I ended up stabbing it in numerous places with a screwdriver, hurting my hand, and getting soaked in oil. A filter wrench finally did it.

    Continue reading post "Oil change trouble"

    Appropriate living place service

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    To help ensure people can easily move to the country best suited to them, there would be a program which all countries could choose to join. Joined countries would have buildings that citizens interested in moving away or even just seeing if there is something better could visit.

    A counselor would be provided. The citizen would discuss their political, social, religious, and other wants and views, and the counselor would talk to them about the countries seeming most appropriate. The counselor would then give them guidance in how to research and choose a country as well as how the country moving procedures work.

    The citizen would be given access to a computer database with political and social characteristics, news, geography, and all sorts of information about all of the participating countries, with advanced searches available.

    After researching the countries, the citizen would talk to the counselor to make a final decision. If the citizen decides to go through with the move, the counselor would tell the citizen everything they need to do to proceed with the move.

    The counselor would meet with a counselor from the other country to start the process toward citizenship for the citizen. This process should be an agreement between the two countries plus the citizen that would help ensure both success and safety for both the citizen and the new country. The process should be relatively quick and easy, with important records provided from the originating country so the destination country can more easily do background checks.

    Some countries might only do exchanges, have number limits, or have certain stipulations on the citizens they will take, though the movement of citizens must be generally relatively free and easy.

    A similar but simpler version of this service could be provided for intra-country moves, helping citizens find the best city or place within a country for them to live.