A behind-the-scenes look at the work that goes into the Rich Media Projects sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Teaching at Xavier University of Louisiana.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Theological Perspectives of the Reformation: Added a form to enable comparison of any given person's timeline to any other person's timeline, or any movement's timeline to any other movement's timeline. Met with Mark Gstohl. We discussed the changes and came up with a list of improvements, which include the addition of database tables for links, critiques and events.
posted by Editor B
Monday, November 24, 2003
Theological Perspectives of the Reformation: Completed integration of scripts: years and comparative timelines.
posted by Editor B
Haiku of Kobayashi Issa: Oops. Looks like I made a mistake editing the crontab. Instead of sending one e-mail at the given hour of the day, it sent one e-mail every minute of that hour. I've fixed it now, I think.
posted by Editor B
Friday, November 21, 2003
Theological Perspectives of the Reformation: Continuing integration of scripts. Completed index mode for movements, integrated timelines (including exhaustive option) and integrated albums (not sure if exhaustive option is appropriate here). Just need to do years and comparative timelines and the integration will be complete.
posted by Editor B
Haiku of Kobayashi Issa: Created table in database to store e-mails. Modified script to send haiku messages to e-mail addresses from database. It will also send a report e-mail to me upon completion of job stating how many addresses were successfully messaged. After further testing I set it to mail but once a day so that we arent't drowning in haiku over the weekend.
posted by Editor B
Thursday, November 20, 2003
Theological Perspectives of the Reformation: Began integration of scripts. Established a base class and merged five separate stylesheets into one. Reworked scripts for movements and works to use base class.
posted by Editor B
Interactive Taxonomic Zoology: Conducted part two of usability test which began Tuesday. A cursory glance at the data seems to indicate the program is a screaming success, but with some room for improvement.
posted by Editor B
Haiku of Kobayashi Issa: Yamlak Tsega helped me with my cron issues and we seem to have resolved them. I modified the script to pull a random haiku from the database and e-mail it to me and David (at off-campus accounts) once an hour, just to see if it works reliably.
posted by Editor B
Readings: Met with Biljana Obradovic. We reviewed her progress in the first stages of her implementation plan over the past summer and semester. We agreed that her first priority will be to locate a copyright permissions page to circulate to all authors, agents, or publishing houses involved. She will also work to organize the various assets which she has collected before turning them over to me for Web production work before the beginning of the Spring semester.
posted by Editor B
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Thinker: Completed change blindness and viewer-centered demos. Created an "under construction" page for undeveloped sections of the site. Met with Elliott Hammer. We discussed revions that will be necessary to both of the aforementioned demos. Elliott will soon be sending me text for the next section and for the change blindness demo.
posted by Editor B
Haiku of Kobayashi Issa: Investigation of the nonfunctioning crontab job continues. I've brought Yamlak Tsega in on the case.
posted by Editor B
Theological Perspectives of the Reformation: Linked photo album to people and movement pages. Met with Mark Gstohl. We agreed that a virtual file system (that is, a site which is dynamically generated in its entirety and which does not have real files for each web page served) would better meet the needs of the project at this time. I will work to implement such a system, and a list of other tasks, while Mark will continue research, writing, and stuffing the database until it bursts.
posted by Editor B
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Theological Perspectives of the Reformation: Implemented crude photo album feature.
posted by Editor B
Kids to Afrika: Completed Benin tapestry album.
posted by Editor B
Interactive Taxonomic Zoology: Conducted part one of usability test with 22 students. Part two will take place Thursday.
posted by Editor B
Monday, November 17, 2003
Haiku of Kobayashi Issa: Met with David Lanoue and planned new feature that will send subscribers a random haiku once a day via e-mail. Experimented with crontab on our Web server, but it doesn't seem to be working.
posted by Editor B
Kids to Afrika: Formatted images of Benin tapestries for on-line album.
posted by Editor B
Theological Perspectives of the Reformation: Added a number of features and improvements.
posted by Editor B
Interactive Taxonomic Zoology: Burning the last of the CDs for the test tomorrow...
posted by Editor B
Sunday, November 16, 2003
Theological Perspectives of the Reformation: Installed latest version of phpMyAdmin, which will allow for easier management of lookup tables (a concern which came up in our meeting on Friday). Linked works pages with associated people. Linked year pages to associated people and movements. Created movement pages that index associated works and people and link to relevant timelines and links pages. Created a bunch of people pages for the new entries Mark has added to the people table.
posted by Editor B
Friday, November 14, 2003
Theological Perspectives of the Reformation: Met with Mark Gstohl. We discussed the workings of the database, and we made plans to improve navigation throughout the site, create photo albums and movement pages. We also discussed the possibility of creating a critiques table and of relating the images table to both the works and timelines tables. We decided not to pursue the locations table for now. For next week, I will implement the above-mentioned ideas, and Mark will concentrate on adding data to the database.
posted by Editor B
Thinker: A little more progress on the change blindness demo...
posted by Editor B
Interactive Taxonomic Zoology: Burning more CDs for the usability test...
posted by Editor B
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Interactive Taxonomic Zoology: Burning CDs for next week's usability test.
posted by Editor B
Theological Perspectives of the Reformation: Met with Mark Gstohl. We discussed a number of ideas for the site, including a universal timeline comparison page and a database table to store information about images. I emphasized the importance of breadth over depth at this point in the development process. We agreed to meet again in two days. I spent the rest of the day working on the project: I created tables in the database for images and works, as well as lookup tables to relate the people table to both of these, and I wrote scripts to display this content. I even got around to the universal timeline camparsion page!
posted by Editor B
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
BibleDudes: Fiddling with stylesheets so that the site will be accessible in older browsers.
posted by Editor B
Interactive Taxonomic Zoology: Finished resolving a number of bugs that had crept into the program; burnt a new CD.
posted by Editor B
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Interactive Taxonomic Zoology: Burning cross-platform CD-ROM. Resolving miscellaneous issues and, in the process, creating new ones!
posted by Editor B
Thinker: Fiddling with stylesheets so that the site will be accessible in older browsers.
posted by Editor B
Friday, November 07, 2003
Thinker: Created preliminary demo for change blindness. Met with Elliott Hammer and reviewed animations for attention, divided attention, brain map and change blindness. Elliott submitted the text for the section on memory.
posted by Editor B
Interactive Taxonomic Zoology: Created navigation and improved formatting for introductory section.
posted by Editor B
Thursday, November 06, 2003
Interactive Taxonomic Zoology: Roughed out the basic content of the introductory section of the program, using the text that Mark Schlueter sent me months ago. Met with Mark and we reviewed the plan for testing the CD with his students, including the revised version of the survey which he formulated.
posted by Editor B
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Kids to Afrika: Photographed banners from Benin.
posted by Editor B
Thinker: Working on brain map illustration.
posted by Editor B
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Thinker: Completed animation for attention; getting started on the divided attention task.
posted by Editor B
Monday, November 03, 2003
Theological Perspectives of the Reformation: Implemented a new feature to display information from the people table in the database.
posted by Editor B
BibleDudes: Created a thumbs-up symbol (for use in a chart) and a timeline depicting the canonization of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.
posted by Editor B
Haiku of Kobayashi Issa: Created an ear icon to signify that audio content is available; configured the search results to display this icon as a link when appropriate. Created a simple index of all haiku with audio, which is at http://cat.xula.edu/issa/audioindex
posted by Editor B
Saturday, November 01, 2003
BibleDudes: Implemented almost all of the changes that we identified yesterday!
