To begin preparing for an upcoming homepage update, we have started adding syndication feeds to the main PCC website.

To quote myself:

Never miss another college news item or important event at PCC. RSS feeds allow you to get the newest website content delivered straight to your computer. By subscribing, you will be notified whenever new information becomes available.

We are starting by syndicating the News/Events that are currently displayed to the homepage. However if there is interest, I would like to push out other items such as:

• Weekly web features (showcasing student and staff)
• Announcements
• Various college calendars
• Faculty/Staff news

Merry Channuka - Sam got me an iPhone!

This is the first of hopfully many entries from the new device. So far I am finding the on screen keyboard just a little hard to use, but not much. It is about the same size as the qwerty on my zuarus, but the lack of tactile feedback is slowing me down a bit. With time I am sure that I will adapt. Also, in safari, the wysiwyg interface on this blog was giving me a bit of trouble. However, in code mode - it works great.

And despite what I have heard, the wireless edge network is more then adequate for browsing, maps and youTube.

Flying cars be damned. THIS is the technology of the 21st century!

Right now I am updating the style sheets that affect all 50,000 pages of PCC’s main website. With absolute certainty, I can say that all I want for x-mas is a standards complaint version of Internet Explorer…

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Looking at the beautiful graphics on a bag of whole-wheat flour, I suddenly became inspired to make some more bread. This time, rather then the simple dollar recipe, I loosely followed some directions posted on the back the brown “King Arthur Flour” bag:

The ingredients on the bag:

• 3 1/2 cups King Arthur Flour (kicks your flour’s ass!)
• 1 packet instant dry yeast dissolved in h2o
• 1 1/3 cups warm water
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup honey, or molasses (I used a combination)
• 1/4 dried milk
• 1 1/4 tsb salt

I decided to double the recipe. In addition, I also added:

• Some sun-dried tomatoes
• A heck of a lot (’bout a cup) of fresh rosemary

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After presenting in 2007, I was asked to be on the conference committee for the 2008 HighEdWeb. This next conference will be in Springfield Missouri, and I have been selected as multimedia representative (though I am not entirely sure what that means yet). We have already had several meetings (via the telephone) and many items are set, or underway.

The theme for the conference will be “Infinite Solutions” and this year we have decided to set up a  competition for designing the logo and website template. Along with the deepest admiration from your peers, you are also set to receive $200 cash if your submission is used. So all of you out there in higher education land should take a look and show us what you’ve got!

But, you better get started. We need to get everything rolling, so submissions  are required by January 21.

Details on the conference and competition can be found at: www.highedweb.org/2008

Yesterday, while reading the usual blog feeds, I clicked on a link www.dayofbirth.co.uk which shows you some simple data about the day you were born. Along with the usual fluff ( Cancer born on a Friday in summer) there was a harsh revelation….

Today, I turned 10,000 days old!

What have I done with my life? This makes me feel really old.  Oh well, to celebrate this momentous occasion I will be accepting gifts in the form of a cash donation.

Cheers,
Gabriel “Methuselah” McGovern

A few months ago, I bought a mac pro. Part of the excitement of the new computer, was that I could turn my old mac into a media center. This was made especially enticing by the prospect of using Apple Front Row as the interface to all of my media. If you have not seen Front Row, you should really check it out. The interface is slick and very user friendly.

But of course there were problems… (more…)

Last weekend, I went with several friends (Sam, Poarch and the disgruntaled Mr. Fish) up to Larch Mountain. Less then 45 minutes outside of Portland, this lush area is just inside of the Mt. Hood national forest. It also happens to be some of the highest elevation around. In winter, the snow falls here first, which makes it a prime place to go snowshoeing.

However, the weather was still good and we weren’t looking for snow - we were looking for mushrooms! (more…)

I cook a lot and enjoy making many items from scratch. This includes things like pastas, gravy, pickles, pies, hot sauce and many other items. However, the last (and only) time that I made bread was about 10 years ago for a school project. Bread is just one of those items which is so inexpensive that it seems more trouble then its worth to make from scratch. Last week however, I came across a blog article that changed my mind…
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Derek Tonn, mapformation, LLC

I skipped this one before, but several people have been raving about it. The session is supposed to go beyond “save for web”.

• Clip art kills! The extra bandwidth wastes electricity for unnecessary graphics.
• 8-bit png is better for logos the gif… It compresses better and smaller. Interesting.

JPG

• remove exif
• remove excess colors
• Apply unique zonal compression!

He also talks about gif and pdf techniques.

Tools

• All the great tools are listed on handouts

For an example, he takes the logo on the HighEdWebDev site from over 100K to under 9K. All without decreasing the quality!

I need to remember to run all of our images through this process.

www.graphicsoptimization.com