I really would like that webmaster position that "The Record" posted recently in the newspaper. I also wish I knew who in the world I need to talk to about that position. I've heard about this position for almost 6 months now, but they haven't found that perfect person yet. It is apparent that I have been unable to be "noticed" from whomever is doing the hiring, so I think I'll write a little something hoping whomever runs across my resume and/or cover letter will be like, "Hey ... maybe this guy has some good ideas...". Oh and I know PHP in case that didn't some across on my resume.
Just some ideas....
Navigation.
Come up with a way such that readers do not have to scroll miles down the page to get to a section of the website.Maybe an expandable tree menu/ rollover/pull-down menus. It takes way too much scrolling to get to the other section of the web site that could be better viewed with pull-down menus. I am on the fence on this issue. I think its was good accessibility wise, but not so good efficient-wise. I would come up with something that can take car of both needs. Its not horrible to have 2 set of navigation on the page. (Too much stuff "under the fold".)
A nice CSS navigation would probably solve allot of this and accessibility issues.
Ads
The ad system needs work. I would suggest thumbnails when you click on "Dillard's Latest Ads". It takes 3 click to see and ad where it really only should be one.
NO competing ads in certain sections. If I was Dillard's, I'd be a little upset that I had to share screen space with some other ads, especially if it is called "Dillard's Latest Ads."
Make the ad "look" like it belongs there.
Too many banner ads scattered all over the place. Take a note from the LA times, MSNBC, NY Times, etc. Either have rotating ads or in-line story ads ( not a personal fan of in-line ads).. eating of the right 3rd of the page is a waste of valuable "above the fold" / screen space.
Research suggest that people like across the page ad then ones down the screen. Plus having them at the top or bottom is best. No one like being interrupted while reading a story, but before and after is quite effective.
Layout
Why this web site does NOT fit in a 800x 600 space is odd. Either make it fit or go and make it a liquid page . I know this doesn't work for reading, but for other content items on the website it would be good. Horizontal scrolling is the worst.
Minimize white space without overloading the reader.
Move the login box to the TOP of the page. Who puts a login in the middle of the page?
Should really be moving toward a CSS defined page . As more page move to CSS layout and away from table layout it solves allot of formatting and accessibility issues.
Make the layout consistent as much as possible .. Style guides in the web are just as important at print. I would make a standard for how pages should be laid out given the content.
The back-end
URL rewrite.... it is bad web style to have a .dll in the URL, I am sure its hacker proof, but it has no meaning and in general URL should be simple. Since 100 or so newspapers, publishers, etc. use the Publicus software from Saxotech, I know its hard for me to argue, but a simple script should be able to fix that and leave the CMS system as is. I am not the only one who agrees with this statement (http://weblogs.asp.net/jasonsalas/archive/2005/05/01/405209.aspx)
Getting your separate PHP/MySQL/apache and CMS systems to work together, seamlessly. I've had to do it with some NASA websites, so I understand the investment in legacy/CMS software, but at the same time want the flexibility in a separate custom built PHP/DHTML environment.
Same with other outsourced sections of the website. I noticed that the obituaries and employment stuff are some features that are outsourced. I would find a way to make it seem seamless also that those services are from a record.net URL. With the onslaught of phishing and URL hijacking, it give a sense of trust when the URL stays consistent.
As you can see I spent allot of time looking at and trying to understand how the web site is constructed and how I could benefit from being part of this organization. I believe that I could reign in the designers, ad managers and coders to get this web site organized, consistent and looking that way too.
My ten reasons why is sucks looking for a job (In no particular order)
Usually means you are unemployed.
You were too dumb not to have something lined up before you lost your job.
Less than half the HR people actually reads your resume, cover letter, etc that you spent hours on.
Most employers already have someone in mind for the job and are required to post it knowing they won't be hiring you.
Wondering if possible employers ever got you resume, cover letter, application.
NEVER getting a call back, email, smoke signal, even as a courtesy saying something about the job you just applied for. I thought we were suppose to be professionals.
Being told you are unqualified 90% of the time.
Being told you are over qualified 10% of the time.
No one is hiring when you are looking, but always when you're not.
Turned 32 and all is well and the world keeps spinning.
Actually I had a very nice and relaxing birthday. I decided that I did NOT want an xbox 360 for my birthday and that I should focus on finding a job before have such luxurious toys to play with, but I did get a game for the PSP, Me and My Katamari. I also that to update my PSP since I could not play Me and My Katamari without doing so. I however learned that Sony has some smart folk, just not a good leader. It seems like the fix that Sony always has on being a proprietor marketeer. This mentality is going to cause them to shoot themselves in the foot once again. They could save themselves in my opinion with a couple of simple things. Make recordable UMD's and stop the fight over home-brew apps on the PSP, they would sell more of those thing than ipods. You are already spending some time and effort on adding cool features like the ability to listen to RSS feed from the web and surf the web from anywhere in the house on this little portable computer for just 200 bucks, but why stopping the home-brew apps? SONY, Let the market drive the product and what it should do.. Let people put there DVD they already bough on these things, Let people listen to their content on these things, sell them the games, but don't hinder the ~100 of other uses for the PSP...
Anyways, back to my birthday. Since it seems apparent that I like strawberry cake, I was bless with 3 of them on my birthday. One from the gf, the other two of them came from my brothers at the Andronicus Chapter of APX and from Pam and the crew at LA SIGGRAPH. Thanks you SO much everyone. A special thanks for the dinner and the fun times and some cool socks, flip-flops, and pants! I always enjoy my time and hopefully soon live a little closer to each other.
Yippie! I know whomever reads this is like, " WTH is he so happy about?". Well let me tell you. Most web sites, yes MOST web sites are pretty static in their ability to scale to the browser window. If you look at most wiki's, image galleries, blog, and the like, what you will see is a page formatted to fit an 800px (pixel) width (actually something like 770px since you have to also account for scroll bars.) screen with it set to center as you make the browser windows bigger than that.
Anyways, since my early days of web development, I have ALWAYS been looking for ways to fill the screen and adjust automatically to the size of the screen. (Never was a fan of doing more work on making page fit 640, 800, 1024, 1280, 1520, 1920 pixels.. too.) So as I start rebuilding my new website, I finally was able to develop a way it to work, along with some other cool web technologies like javascript, some crazy CSS manipulations and soon some AJAX. Anyways , its seems to work for now.
Many argue that you can't always have liquid pages since the text is very hard to read, and this is true, but for image galleries it works beautifully! So I am still working out for textual content, what I should do. As for now I will leave it the left justified fixed space that it is in now..
Wow.. How does a university with a Class B subnet get shut down by one of the largest DSL providers? Well I dunno, but access to usc.edu or the ip block 128.125.x.x looks like it has been blocked by SBC as of today. I hope they get this sorted out soon. I wonder if USC's other subnet is blocked?
wow... So my friend Brian and I went to lunch today and I finally got to sit inside a new Audi A3. Not a bad car in terms of exterior and interior fit and finish. Coming from an Audi TT owner, I know I am a little biased, but the TT is in my opinion one of the best interiors in the 21st century, but the most amazing part that warranted the "wow is the Audi MMI system ( to the lay person the fancy navigation/phone/MP3 player system.) I was totally impress by the fit and finish of the system. With blue-tooth it cleanly switches over to hands-free mode as you get into the car, the perspective on the screen was amazing. The only thing missing was a touch screen., but the controls were totally enough to navigate the system.
Now I get around to building my own integrated car infotainment system, I will use this as a model.
Actually my reason for removing the EXIF data is that it was it was totally messing with the image re-sizer in my picture gallery. I was going a little nuts for a few hours trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Anyways, after pouring over the Internet, I found out what it was.. I guess Microsoft's fancy GetThumbnailImage() method will use the thumbnail if present, but have not idea how to tell it NOT to use it so I just decided for goodness sakes and for security to remove all the data so I don't also have to worries about transmitting GPS data along with my silly pictures!
As my work continues on updating my old website, I have been playing with image upload and image galleries. The #1 thing that I was interested in was a automatic image resizing utility for IIS/ASP (yeah I know PHP graphic libraries are a no brainer, but I am ASP guy). Another feature is builting the gallery from the images directly and not having to depend on a database table for it.. I am a BIG fan of just dropping files into a folder and a server "smart" emough to figure out what the heck is going on ....
Anyways after some long investigation I stumbled upon some nice built-in utilities using ASP.NET and some work from The Code Project and from betaparticle. Best $20 bucks I've spent on a something in a long time, Thanks Matt.
I think I will have a semi decent image gallery for free. Not that I am not a flickr fan, just as a webmaster I should be able to do all this on my own.
Now if I can add some fancy AJAX (web 2.0) so I can move images around that would be cool... (Yes I am working on that...)
I've been working on this online voting system for the Los Angeles Chapter of SIGGRAPH (http://la.siggraph.org/vote ) for about a month or so and finally feeling like its going to actually work.
So I sit here again in my gloomy office and break my back trying to look out the window. Its cloudy, rainy and overall just sucky. But imagine, just a few hundred miles away, there is a sunny sky, temperatures possibly in the 70s and a little red car zipping by. Am I jealous? Any California girl would be. Am I sad? Maybe sad that I cant go. Am I going to get even? You betcha! And it will involve 32 kicks in the butt on a very special day, afterall, its someone's birthday month so enjoy the sunshine while it lasts, sip on a soda or lemonade. Take a book, take a nap, take your sunglasses and maybe some candy.. Enjoy the day!
I cant remember what John was referring to when he made that comment; but I'm sure it was regarding this fancy dancy Blog page he designed. Oh the wonder of being so capable of creating whatever your mind desires (web sites, voting pages, and the rest of the web techie stuff that I have no clue about ..
Anyway, I sit here and am reminded of the constant amazement this man gives me. But dont tell him that, because I know that he will say (in his mind) "well, thats not the only thing I can amaze you with!" Ah, the understanding of "john-thoughts" . I'm glad I understand him... most of the time.
hello world. This is a test of my blogging software. I will be moving my existing blog on blogger.com to this site, so if you REALLY want to read some old articles, check it out http://sterni.blogspot.com
