Assessment Task 1

My Blogger Page

Blogger, possibly one of my favorite blogging sites of all time! I have been using blogger for quite some time so being able to use it as part of one of my classes was a real treat for me. I do enjoy posting although I have not been doing as much of it as I would have liked to have been doing. The total count for my blog posts at this current point in time is sixteen posts. Like I said, not as many as I would have liked to have done.

-sigh-

Some of the more interesting posts that I have made include:

• Blog Skins Part 2
• MissBimo.com Rant
• The Cousin Visit

I have gone for a completely unrelated template. However, this is not the template that I wished to use. If you click on this link you will be able to go to an example of the blog skin that I worked on and wanted to use.

For navigations sake I have chosen a simple and straight forward layout. Also, due to the fact that we use Mozilla Firefox in class as opposed to IE it is easier to have my current template so that there are no screw ups in the layout. I enjoy having something that is completely different from what the rest of the ‘group’ has.

In order to improve the aesthetic qualities of my blog I did several things. Like I stated before, I have used a template that was not specified by Blogger. On this I then edited the sub title fonts. I felt that the previous fonts were far to overpowering and drew the attention away from the blog itself. I also edited the color of the fonts from white to grey on the side navigation bar. My blog also has background music. Yay background music!!!

Tags that I have used:

• Mpi104
• Delicious
• Flickr
• Personal
• Hitman
• Miss Bimbo

I have made comments on the blogs of other students in the class. Some of the more interesting blog comments would be:

• My comment on Vicki’s Blog
• my comment on Catherine’s Blog
• My comment on Katie's Blog

The other aspects that I explored in blogger would be the promotion of my blog site and the use of an internal search engine to find a specifically desired blog post. You can see these additions at the top of the page. I love it. Makes my page just a little bit easier to navigate.

My Del.icio.us Account

At this point and time I currently have forty seven websites in my Del.icio.us archive. These sites include many of the class member blog sites, among some of my person favorites. I have chosen to use Del.icio.us as a way to both tag interesting and useful sites.

Alot of the websites that I visit are random sites that I like to look at when I’m feeling extremely bored or sites that I need to keep bookmarked for future reference. It’s great to be able to cart stuff like that around with you anywhere you go. I love it. My three favorite sites that I have linked on my delicious account are:

• Ill Will Press
• I Can Has Cheezburger
• Anime Corner

My Flickr Account

I have grown to love flickr over the past few weeks. I wasn't really much for Photosharing websites until I was introduced to Flickr in class. It is an easy image hosting website and it opens up alot of doorways for those who use it. I got a little out of hand with Flickr and managed to post 146 images up on the site. Dear oh dear I think that I may need to get rid of a few so that I can add more otherwise I may have to open up a new account.

Below you will see my three favorite images out of the many that I have on my flickr account. Also if you have a look on the MPI104 2008 Group you will be able to see that I have posted many of my images up in the group sharing folder.

• Awesome Tree Trunk
• Hillston Fire
• Cactus Plant
  

Also here are some links to my favorite images on Flickr:

• Puppy Dog
• Hely
• Fly Splatter

The Cousin Visit

Welllll.

The cousin visit was very interesting (Not). How do you entertain people in a place where there is absolutely nothing to do except work or watch the cars go past on the highway? We ended taking my cousins sight seeing so that they would be entertained. As you can see in the images below we had to look at the landscape and a playground in order to keep them amused. Although I did enjoy spending time with them I was very happy to see the tail end of them. I'm not all that great with entertaining people sadly. ):

*All photographs were taken by me. The one with me in it was set up on a tripod with a timer.

Sadly, today's anime screening did not have a big turn out.

However the titles that we screened today were pure awesome!!! We started watching Full Metal Alchemist and we made our way through six episodes of The Ouran High School Host Club. Ouran High School Host Club has to be one of my favorite Animes at this point in time. I can't help but adore the male cast. The personalities in the group are so various that it makes the series delightfully packed with many different experiences of the club.

Anyways, before I start rambling any further, I would like say that if you like FMA and Ouran High School Host Club you should attend the screening next Saturday (that'd be the 26th April.)

Defiantely check it out!

A Href =Templates

First of all I would like to point out that my entire blog has been customized. I am not using one of the templates that was provided by Blogger.

When working with HTML the editing possibilities are endless. You can change anything from the width of a table to the font style and color. You can also change border width and the entire layout of a page. For example, most of the blogs that you will come across are pretty much a standard layout. However, for the sort of people who would prefer something more extravagant they go for a navigational blog (you can see examples in my previous blog post).

In my opinion, these are far more fun to work with. However, in editing the HTML to create a navigational blog it means that you must revert to classical mode. Which in turn means that you lose the Page Elements option and trust me, if you don’t know HTML well it is best to stick to using the Page Elements option. At least Page Elements isn’t temperamental.

-Sigh-

Anyways, as an example I changed the titles for all of the page elements that I added using the HTML editor. Below you can see a screen shot. The areas in red indicate what I changed. Yay!

Also, to give you an idea of how the changes I made affected my blog there is a screen shot below that you can have a look at.

I love Templates. So much fun to screw around with. Yay!


No Drugs Or Children Were Harmed During The Creation Of Theses Posts

Oh What A Feeling, CSS.

First of all, please excuse the title. I have the stupid Toyota slogan stuck in my head. DAMN YOU TOYOTA.

CSS is the acronym for Cascading Style Sheets.

The term is used in web development to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language*. It is used by webpage readers to be able to define color, font and the layout of a page. It is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content from document presentation. In normal people words that means that the pretty stuff stays as pretty stuff and all the crap that goes on the webpage still is, you guessed it, the crap on the page.

///Okay, enough of the definitions. Today we were asked to have a look at the differences that were made when you were to switch your webpage reader from it’s basic style to no style at all. ///

The first thing that I noticed was that the layout of my blog became appalling!!! It was actually quite upsetting to me after I made it all cutesy and all.

–Pout.-

Also, instead of having the multiple pages like my blog is set up to do (It’s a navigational blog), it had the one page with all of the details outlined on it. It removed the specified blog font and the coloring, not to mention separated the background from the blog. Now my poor lion is all lonely…

)=

I can see why CSS is such an advantage for both web page designers and viewers. It enables the viewer to be able to see the layout in the way that it was intended to be viewed, not in a simplistic style.

Although, I can see why the no style setting could be an advantage too just because of the simple fact that it decreases the amount of time spent downloading a page’s content and settings. But, I much prefer things to look all pretty and be set out the way I coded them to be set out. Much love for the CSS.

*A markup language is a set of annotations to text that describe how it is to be structured, laid out, or formatted.

No Drugs Or Children Were Harmed During The Creation Of Theses Posts

Blog Skins Pt 2

But, out of all of these pretty blog skins I couldn't help but pick the amazingly wonderful Lion skin. Ish so cute! I loves it, as you can see, seeing as how it is my blog skin right at this very moment. Hooray! I hope that I can stick with it for a little while.

For larger views of all of these blog skins go to:
My Flickr

No Drugs Or Children Were Harmed During The Creation Of Theses Posts

Blog Skins Pt 1

For the last three weeks of the holidays I have been playing around a lot with the HTML coding that we can use for Blogger. I’m not too much of a fan of the XHTML that we have been working with during our workshops, so I decided to opt for the classical HTML views to create the layouts for my blog.

I’m a freak, in the sense that I can’t just stick with one type of layout. There are so many different layouts that we can use so I like to be able to experience them all. Below you will see screen shots of some of the blog layouts that I went through during the holidays. I’m such a blogskin whore. ):

No Drugs Or Children Were Harmed During The Creation Of Theses Posts

What an Experience

Being home with the folks. What an experience and a half. I had kinda forgot what hard labor was like until I came back home to see my parents, and, dare I say it? I actually kind of missed the hard labor. I guess anything different after a term of working on computers. It's definatly a welcome change. Since I got back I have been helping my parents 'renovate' our front and back yard due to an infestation of CatHead plants. Damn those stupid prickly bastards!!! All this renovation has to be done so our dogs have somewhere nice and pointy-free to roam around while our visitors are here. For the most part, our dogs are inside dogs so the pads of their feet aren't used to hard and pointy. So, we need to dig up this horrendously ugly patch of catheads. Otherwise, our poor babies are going to end up all hurted in their feets and we can't have that now, can we? Blah, well it's a new day and we still have so much to do so I should probably get out there and start on that damn patch of weeds again. Toodlie-Oooo. :3

Going Home For The Hols

Ugh, living out of home sure makes you not wanna go and see your folks.

I love my family, of course. But, living out of home for as long as I have makes me reluctant to go home. My mother fusses, like I'm sure everyone else's mothers fuss. She always wants to know if I'm eating properly. I also end up coming back to Wagga Wagga with three times the amount of stuff that I went with.

Buuuut, I suppose this time will be different because my cousin is coming to visit. She's pretty awesome even if we have almost nothing in common. ANNNNNND, she's bringing her friend Keita along who is just plain awesome too. So, we should have fun while I'm at home.

But, my dad is still sick so I'm gunna be at home helping take care of him too. Urgggg. I have way too much work. I don't have time for holidays!

-Pout.-

About Damn Time!

Dear Players,

Due to unforseen worldwide interest in Miss Bimbo we have had difficulty in maintaining our game in the manner players have become accustomed. We are sorry for this inconvenience and can assure you that our game will be up and running as soon as possible.

As a result of this rather surprising media attention we have decided to remove the option of purchasing diet pills from the game. We apologise to any players whom this may inconvenience but we feel in light of this weeks proceedings it is the correct action to take.

We would also like to sincerely apologise to our players for the media comparison of Miss Bimbo and Paris Hilton. We feel that this does a dis-service to the players whom send their bimbos to university, tea parties or chess tournaments.

At this time we would also like to remind players that the Miss Bimbo team assume no responsibility or liability for any fashion faux pas, hair style disasters or boob jobs incurred in real life as as a result of playing the Miss Bimbo game.

The Miss Bimbo Team.

I was so pleased when I found this on the MissBimbo.com website earlier today. I'm not sure of when this occured but it makes me quite happy to know that they are actually going to remove some of the insulting aspects of the game. However, it's a tainted win because I know the creators are only doing this so that they can avoid legal issues...Oh well. It's better than nothing right???