History697

Williamsburg and Image Assignment

I just got back from Williamsburg. My family and I had a nice long weekend trip back to ye olde capital city. I was able to find lots of great books and some nice prints. I also was able to get some nice pictures. I am hoping that one set from the Governors Palace may end up in my final project. We shall see.

I really enjoyed this assignment. I know that the final product is going to look so lame compared to my talented classmates but this was fun and I am generally happy with what I have learned through experimentation. I have lots of reading to do because I didn't get any done while swimming in ye olde swimming pool.

Tech Problems

I ran into a snafu this weekend when I tried to add some elements to my Type project. I couldn't log in to the GMU mason cluster. (aka osf1 account...that is the old term for our personal web space at mason.) I didn't change my password or anything but now it refuses to let me in. I tried multiple ftp software tools including terminal/cyberduck/dreamweaver. No dice. I decided to go with ipage as a web host because I wanted to get back online and make progress. (I was able to call and talk to someone who was helpful on a Saturday afternoon...I will let you know if they are good over the long haul). Only problem was I needed to get oriented to the way they managed files etc. Meanwhile I felt like I was in the Steve MIller song time keeps on slipping...into the future. New site is at http://www.clioweb2.com/ .

Nevertheless...no animals were hurt in this process although I am sure that my profanity laced tirades makes my wife wonder why grad school has not improved or expanded my vocabulary beyond four letter words.

Typ-o'd

I am going to stop tweaking this thing for now. Enough all ready...It is driving me crazy. I fixed the "tiling" problem by creating a very small image of the blue background. I also created my own parchment from an old map so I feel like is more my own stuff now. I have a tacit understanding of good design and I just keep seeing problems with mine. I still need to fix my quotes so that they are the correct ones. I really like what lots of folks in the class are doing. I am enjoying looking at what everyone is putting up. I already commented on how much I like Lynn's. I also like Dan's. His postcard site is awesome!  Rebecca's is also very cool. I especially like the old wall texture. Tracy's typewriter style is really cool. It is hard to believe that I have been through 5 different versions of this thing but I know Prof. P will believe it when we all tell her how much work we have all done on this. Can't wait to see everyone.

Nice Background

I finally found the background that I have been looking for and interestingly enough it was created by our friends at CHNM for the Mary Washington site. Thank YOU!!! That was driving me crazy. My Image in the masthead needs to be smaller but I think I like the latest version of it because it looks like there is lots of snow. I might just have a hazy brain right now from being snowed in...The Type assignment is an incredible time sink-hole but I am slowly becoming more adept. Maybe...almost a novice. Back to work.

Snowblind

I haven't had much to say. I have been slowly working through problems with the type project through trial and error.

Instead I wanted to point to another cool digital source to suck more time out of your life. GIS. I am sure most of you know about this tool but I wanted to put a plug in for the Libraries because my colleague Joy Suh teaches people like me how to use this great tool. Here is her InfoGuide. It has tons of resources on it and I am learning to use this resource more myself. I was thinking that it could be interesting to map how many squirrel scalp bounties were paid out in Virginia between 1728-1742. (see David Hardin. Laws of Nature...Virginia Geographer Vol 22 n.2 Fall/Winter 1990))Not sure if it will make it into my site but one can never tell.

Also this is a great resource National Historical Geographic Information System to check out.

Well back to trying to get footnotes to work.

Holy smokes!!! I had some major issues this week. My laptop went into meltdown and I ended up going to the Apple store in Fair Oaks. They were helpful and got me going again but despite having back-ups I lost all my user data (because image was corrupted.) I did have most of my files backed up separately but non of the stuff from this class. Good thing I hadn't made much progress.
My site is up. http://mason.gmu.edu/~goberle
I see everything that is there as a placeholder. I put an image in as a background mostly because I like the colors and the light writing on the map. I also used an image in the sidebar as a placeholder. I had trouble but was able to make an inline list without bullets for my menu in a space below the header that I created. Will tweak more today. Want to find a way to add a caption and a footnote for the image.

Karelia-Sandvox

I have been playing around with the free download of Karelia's Sandvox Template tool. Our systems librarian used this when we needed to get a no brainer quick site up in less than a day. That was when EndNote was suing CHNM/GMU. The library had to find a way to communicate to users how to migrate their EndNote libraries into a generic format so that they could transfer it into the citation management tool of their choice. It is still up at http://citationmigration.gmu.edu/

Also see...http://www.karelia.com/sandvox/site_gallery/the_george_mason_university.html

It is really easy. I look forward to figuring out how to tweak these things.