Out of our minds 2 (Day 115/365)

Posted on by Dale

I read chapter two in Sir Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds, wherein he examines what he calls the septic focus in education and society on purely academic skills. He explains where our respect for this narrow set of human activity has come from and the impact (both positive and negative) it has had on the world.

He looks at IQ as a factor in academicism and at the (same) skills that particular number purports to measure. He also looks at the assumptions underlying England’s “eleven-plus” exam, which separates the sheep from the goats at the end of sixth form. All are found wanting.

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More CSS reading (Day 114/365)

Posted on by Dale

I read more in my CSS books, and I’m beginning to get a handle on how this whole thing works.

However, I am also formulating a theory that just like all other technological tools, most of what it’s used for is irrelevant. I like, I prefer, well-designed sites, brochures, letters, etc., but while all the examples in the book and on the website itself are lovely, there is some level at which I just don’t see the point.

I guess my main quandary is I have no clue as to what I would redesign my website to look like. I mean, it’s got quiet, sophisticated colors, and the layout is plain vanilla, but honestly, what more would I need? All the real action is over here in the blog.

CSS reading (Day 113/365)

Posted on by Dale

I spent a lot of today reading through two new books I bought on CSS: The CSS Anthology: 101 essential tips, tricks & hacks, and The Zen of CSS Design: visual enlightenment for the web.

The latter is devoted to explicating the contents of the website csszengarden.com, a pioneer in getting web designers to consider CSS as a design force. I had encountered it before, but never really needed to look at it in depth.

The concept is pretty interesting: the site has a single HTML file, and scores of approaches to that single page using CSS to lay it out. WARNING! TECHNICAL EXPLANATION AHEAD: HTML was originally developed to mark up research papers (and the web was originally developed to share research papers.) It was never meant to be a layout tool. Before long, the designers wanted layout capability, so frames and tables were developed, i.e., ways of chopping up your screen into little squares that your browser would reassemble to match what the designer wanted you to see.

However, we are all supposed to despise frames and tables now. (Actually, we’ve been despising frames for some years now. It’s hard to keep up.) Nowadays, CSS is what all the cool kids use to spank HTML into submission.

I’ve cheated in redesigning my main website by using templates provided by DreamWeaver. However, I’ve modified the template to meet my needs, and now I’m thinking about making it a little more elegant if I can figure out exactly what that might look like. From what I can tell on csszengarden, it’s all about using images as backgrounds. It’s all very complicated and, I’m afraid, time consuming. Still, I’ve had some cool ideas about the eventual William Blake website that I think will dazzle.

First, though, I think I’m going to redesign and rescue the production photos from Figaro. At the moment, they’re still in the old NCTC design, using tables. Quel recherché.

Small stuff (Day 108/365)

Posted on by Dale

Because of social commitments in the evening, I was limited to two small things today.

One was the realization that the software I use to convert the .aiff file (Finale’s output) to .mp3 could probably add the reverb back in. It did, and now the Milky Way .mp3 file sounds a little more lush.

The other is sort of a continuation of something I started to do last spring when Lacuna was active. The New York Times constantly has theatre and dance reviews, of course, and often they have very exciting photos to go with them. Today I re-started my plan of clipping photos which have particularly interesting picturization or staging.

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More Milky Way (Day 107/365)

Posted on by Dale

I girded my loins and returned to Milky Way. I worked all night on smoothing out the lumps in mm. 61-75. It’s better, but I still have some polishing to do. The subito p at m.64 still sounds gulpy, but that might not be an issue with an actual orchestra.

There are other places where there are gaps in the sound, but I don’t know whether I want to add the missing instruments for those measures. Tutti can be boring.

I’ll keep listening and make some decisions.

And now you can listen too: turning off the reverb makes the thing bearable for my little laptop. It won’t sound as lush, of course, but all the notes are there. Here’s the mp3.

Back to the stars (Day 106/365)

Posted on by Dale

I went back to work on Milky Way tonight. ::sigh::

I worked on the child’s exultant cry that he’ll “never part day from night!” and the recapitulation moment. ::sigh:: I used the SoftSynth instruments so that the computer wouldn’t bog down with hiccups and glitches, and it was sounding good in a sketched-out kind of way.

Then I switched over to the Garritan Personal Orchestra sounds. ::sigh:: Now it sounds like crap, all unbalanced and blaring.

One positive thing: I found that by turning off the “ambience” setting, i.e., reverb, there are a lot fewer hiccups.

It still sounds like crap. ::sigh::