Nino's Classroom
Money = Life? 10/17/2009
 
Is this true? Is life really governed by money? That is what Douglas Rushkoff propounds in his Life Inc. (the book and the 9 min. movie).

That's how it felt when I got my first credit card. Suddenly, I was somebody who carried around a tiny plastic card that identified me as a consumer. And in the consumerist world that we live in, that card is really your life.

Here's Rushkoff to explain how this scheme came to be, and ways to subvert this system:
What is ironic though is that while he talks about ways of getting around the system, running at the bottom of the screen are trading figures from Wall Street. So you might as well ask, is there really such an escape? Can you really get your life back?
 
 
How do artists legitimize their work in the scholarly realm of the academy? This is the question we have to answer as we formulate guidelines for creative works submitted for financial or institutional support.

Because whether we like it or not, artists are seen as intuitive rather than rational, subjective rather than objective, and so on. And so when we create something, our work is often considered as trivial or frivolous.

This is what Jan Svenungsson says in "The Writing Artist" (Art & Research, Vol. 2 No. 2 Spring 2009):
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Sinews of Syllables performance (Photo: JCAD)
"The scientist -- or scholar -- aims to establish knowledge which should be valid at least for a certain time, which can be shared and used as such, by others, whereas the artist strives to install in the viewer or reader an urge for further search, for further preoccupation with what there is. Of course, the artist wants to reach as many people as possible, but what will be shared between them is not really comparable, because they will interpret the task of further searching in as many different ways."

So it seems the twain shall never meet, at least in the academe. But that is what we'll try to merge -- with the aid of readings like the one above -- so that artists in the University will be given the same recognition as scholars.

Wish us luck.
 
 
Where to place a photo in your blog post? Definitely, a photo will help draw your reader to read down to the end of your post. So what image to use, and where to put?

Remember the F-shape pattern I mentioned in my last post? Well the stem of the F seems to be the best place to position your photo. Here are a few tricks I've picked up from some blogs:
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Where should I go?

1. Position the photo somewhere down the page
2. But make sure it is above the "fold" 
    (or before the user has to scroll down)
3. Choose an intriguing picture
4. Add an intriguing caption

Try it out. See if it works for you. :-)

If the reader continues to scroll down the page, and scan more of the items there -- then your image has done its job.
 
 
USERS DON'T READ BUT SCAN ITEMS ON WEBSITES. 


And they scan following an F-shape pattern: left to right across a page, then another but shorter left to right scan a few lines down, and then a vertical sweep down to the lower part of the page.

What does this mean for my website? It means a different kind of writing, and a different way of formatting text.

Which means I have to:
  • write "scannable" text
  • highlight keywords
  • use subheadings
  • use bulleted lists (like this)
  • have only one idea per paragraph
  • use the inverted triangle news format
  • cut by half the words used
It helps too if I follow the rest of Jakob Neilsen's advice (from his website, where I got these practical ideas):
  • use an objective tone
  • avoid "marketese" or promotional language
Hmmm. Useful advice indeed. Let's see how users ('cause they definitely aren't "readers") will scan this post.
 
 
I had my first, sort of, user's test today. Showed my initial design to Tess, and the first thing she asked was what the picture of a rubber ducky on the home page was about.

Which got me to thinking. If it were somebody else who gave that comment, perhaps I would go defensive if not ballistic. Yes, that's how close this project is to me. It's a personal website, after all. ;-)

But Tess teaches Visual Communication and Applied Media Aesthetics, so I seriously pondered what her reaction meant. (Which I should actually do every time a user -- including those who aren't adept with this technology -- becomes puzzled by something in this site.)

What could Tess's reaction mean? And that's when I realized that the homepage didn't really provide a function. It only served as some sort of a cover, like that in a book or a magazine, for the website. That was me still working in print media mode.

So I took it down and decided to have the website open with this blog. But without that homepage, I realized the layout theme didn't quite fit. And so now here is the new look.

Coorough and Shuman are right again. The second thing to consider in designing one's site is to consider how users will access it, and how they will use it.

I hope to have got it right this time. Let's see how the next user reacts to it.
 
Slowly ... 10/12/2009
 
My website is growing. Posted part of my master's thesis here, and I liked how it turned out -- with the hidden pages appearing as you hover the cursor over the menu bar. (I'm liking this more each day.)
 
My purpose 10/11/2009
 
After reading Coorough and Shuman's discussion on planning your website, and getting stuck right there at the first question they pose -- what's your site for? -- I finally have it. I think.

Because it is my personal site, it should focus on the person. So it will be about what I do, what I have done, what I hope to contribute to readers who will access my site.

So what I have been doing while experimenting with how to construct this site were steps in the right direction, after all. Expect to see more of what I do in the menu bar to your left. There'll be a link there to my classes (starting with what I'll be teaching starting November), my other writing pieces, my photographs, and hopefully, some artwork.

See you around here more often, then. :-D
 
 
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This book I got over a year ago can finally be put into good use. I wasn't able to make much use of it in building my blogs in other sites because I couldn't really get around the formats they offered for their free services. And because I'm not that great in tweaking html or css, I couldn't really do much. So I just had to construct my blogs according to the given templates.

But I think Calleen Coorough and Jim Shuman's Multimedia for the Web Revealed: Creating Digital Excitement (Boston: Thomson Course Technology, 2006) will come in handy as I try out the more versatile features weebly.com offers.


Coorough and Shuman says building a website "is 80% planning and 20% production" (32). They suggest going through several steps in planning, developing, and implementing the website. First is to determine the site's purpose.

So let me put on my thinking cap as I ponder this ...
 
 
Alvin introduced me to weebly.com, and I couldn't resist on seeing the click and drag format in creating a personalized website.

So here goes ...

Over the next few days, you'll see this site expanding by leaps and bounds. I've found a new toy. :-)