leah_hci

hello everyone
my final website is finally up and on the server but not without a lot of help from my good friend david. we actually did it on a PC computer and in the running processes part, he had to change a bunch of things to make it go up like delete all my public html folder structure and just put my id on many code parts. i can't even put sound recordings of me playing because i don't have enough space on the server, and it was all really confusing and i don't think i'd ever be able to have my website up without my friend. in dreamweaver my pictures just weren't working AT ALL but he somehow made them work removing the "public_html" crap. so anyways the link is
students.depaul.edu/~lschwar2
and i hope that everyone else is doing ok and had friends that could help them out. i don't know how we were supposed to get them all up....public htmml seems to be a bit too much for the depaul server/computers to handle.
but since i don't have kathryn sadowska (my website switching partner)'s blog address, i am going to comment on hers here. she sent it to me in a zip file from her Udisk, and i just looked at it. it is very nice and has a gentle flowery theme. each page has a new flower on it, a white one, and then it has various colors of blue on the background. it looks very nicely laid out and definitely looks like she put a lot of work into it. it is labeled the index "restaurant" something, but i don't know how that relates to the website. she has a page for a portfolio of her work and a contact me page, and also a home, and pictures of her snowboarding. it is a great site about her, and has nothing to do with restaurants as far as i can tell. it looks professional and structured with a calm feel to it, probably a good way to describe herself. good work kathryn!

ok so i've been hard at work and my website will be great....once depaul's server lets me put a picture up. right now there is no picture and my links don't work but hopefully it will all get figured out. i am really excited at the prospect of having my own website out there for people to check out. i also included sound files because i am a clarinetist and that will help people get a better idea of how i sound and what i am up to repetoire wise. i can only hope that depaul lets me put it all up, rachel even tried helping me the other day with no avail. but anyways, the end is almost near. i like how now that i'm a senior i have hardly any finals so spring break turns into 1.5 or 2 weeks....nice and much needed break.

i am sitting here in a computer lab looking at folding chairs that are red and black. first of all they look really cheap and depaul could have maybe spent a little more money on them. secondly, they open weirdly (i know from experience.....weird design!). you kind of have to step on the back of the chair push the front out a lot and then pull the back towards you, if that makes any sense. the question is who thought of folding chairs, or even the chairs in the mcgaw/music building lounge and computer lab? they have no sides (that is a great invention) but they look sort of like a mushroom, and i have seen more than one of them broken.
some of my favorite chairs are by wenger. i am a musician....i sit and play sitting much of my day and the standard manufacturer of chairs for us is wenger.

http://www.wengercorp.com/web/wgrmenu.pgm?smurfid=01046511441420060228280484272213&loadpage=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wengercorp.com%2Fweb%2Fprodlist.pgm%3Ftask%3Dseeprods%26navid%3D0001054%26smurfid%3D00200709534520051005001103518038

http://www.wengercorp.com/web/wgrmenu.pgm?smurfid=01046511441420060228280484272213&loadpage=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wengercorp.com%2Fweb%2Fprodlist.pgm%3Ftask%3Dseeprods%26navid%3D0001054%26smurfid%3D00200709534520051005001103518038

there are a lot of chairs who claim to be good for your "posture" but they promote sitting back in them, instead of on the edge which is far better for you. what about our "desk chairs" in class. is that promoting ANYTHING?
what chairs are a good design to you or a bad design?

as i was walking home this cold cold night i saw so many cabs and i thought to myself maybe i should hail one (i was only a few blocks away...) when i saw the lights in the top part of the cab. why are cabs designed to have a light ON when you CAN'T hail it? i think it's just opposite of what should happen because when a light is off, i think it should be the sign that you can't hail it.
however if you think about it, there are so many lights on the road how can one see another one on the top of the cab in small letters "not for hire"? isn't that just asking for everyone to hail whatever cab they see? they aren't making it much easier for us. i think that it should be the other way around so that if you don't see a light of any kind that says "in service" or something, you can raise your hand. seeing a light would mean "filled" to me- what does everyone else think? is this similar to the glass being half full/empty? do you think it's right the way that it is?

can i reiterate that dominicks is seriously the worst designed store i have seen in about my whole life. i went there today to grab a "quick" dinner- which was really quite a feat. it was around 5:15 so it was of course busy, and by busy i mean there were a lot of people coming in to get dinner, and a lot of people were checking out. of course everyone wanted to go right by the registers and it was really crowded- such a bad design!! and then i went over to get some mac and cheese at the hot food place (it is really good!!! anyone had it?) and it took FOREVER! they really should train the people working there to make it quick fast and easy because first of all, you have to get a sheet of paper from them- how hard is that really? it shouldn't be hard, but apparently it is. and then you have to go pay for it and then truck through the lines of people to get get your actual food and truck back into the people to get out of the store. why can't they check people out there at the hot food sometimes? or when is that new register smack in the middle of the road near the salad bar EVER open? not sure, i've never seen it open.
anyways, i think dominicks did a good deed by opening up this grocery store for lincoln park however instead of having such a huge back room for wine and cards and crap, they could have arranged the registers in a better manner. or the door, either one. who agrees with me? does anyone LIKE the design of the store?

ok, so i am trying to finish up my webpage for class because despite my best efforts to make my picture show up, it is not. my webpage is up, but with no picture. so i came to the computer lab filled SAC early today to get it all figured out and of COURSE the digital cinema lab is closed (which i should have known by looking at the schedule last week)and the guys outside the office are really unhelpful and i come into the "2nd floor computer lab" where there is a sea of windows gateway computers (one of which i am on right now) and NO MACS. of course i am a windows user and this is fine with me usually, but not right now. how am i ever supposed to fix this? why doesn't this school have a "mac lab" if there are so many people that use them? where does all the money go for the school? to the new softball stadium? i know they have all these high tech computer labs and such and they got rid of the ancient big screens and there are new signs letting everyone around us in lincoln park and people that drive by that we are depaul university and all, but i'm pretty pissed right now. all i need from depaul is a mac with dreamweaver on it.

i did some searching online today and found some websites that i frequent who had good design, according to our book. what do you all think?
this is what i think:

http://www.clarinet.org/home.asp
a great model for structure dealing with a website's different parts. no side scrolling and good presentation. the pictures could be a little better and it's kind of plain but still, pretty good organization.

http://www.musicalchairs.info/
cute logo, and good organization for getting exactly what you want to get to quickly. a little small but diverse and you can read it in 5 languages!!!

http://www.ikea.com/
simple, big picture, and you get to pick your location before you start shopping online so that you don't have to find something you like and realize it's only offered for pick up in poland.

http://www.gap.com/browse/home.do
it's centered in the screen of my computer but it does have a nice layout. a bit busy but a heading at the top and the right side so you can pick women's not mens. central focus of the model, and white but has the GAP logo (of course) all the time. although now they have sale AND clearance, what is that!!! aren't they the same?

so i flew to Los Angeles, California last weekend for an audition for a masters program and i flew american airlines for the first time in a really long time. i have to say their planes are really nicely organized and they have this system where they board in "groups" to make you feel more special than your row number. it's kinda lame but it works well and they board the back of the main cabin to the front of it, which is a great system so that people can still get settled and not have to be smushed in their row for a long time while everyone passes them. of course, when i got on, this was a disadvantage for me because the overhead compartment above my seat was BROKEN! so i had to find a compartment way in the back of the plane for my luggage to fit in.
but they also made one less seat in the exit rows on this 747 and extra leg room- which is very smart, considering our society is battling obesity. if the plane had some malfunction and people had to get out, who could fit past three seats in a regular row? but all in all, american airlines has a great design features and good strategic planning to better suit it's customers. if only they didnt' charge you for FOOD on a flight that is 4 hours long. you have to seriously pay 4 dollars for goldfish and other lame snacks. they gave us drinks twice but no food!!! not even peanuts- what is that!

why is facebook so addicting? sometimes it hardly loads anything and i wonder why i try to log in. maybe because i have like 40 friends on a given day whose profiles are "updated" in some way. or that everyone has interesting pictures now that they added that. the one thing i really really hate right now is having to scroll ALL THE WAY back up to the top of any page i'm on just to log out. couldnt' they make it easier for us and have a log out button on the bottom of the screen? or what about a side or top section that always stayed the same and then it would be right there where ever anyone was on the page- that would be nice. it really helped that they changed the URL address to www.facebook.com instead of www.thefacebook.com, i think it got faster when they did that too. anyway, i think that facebook is sometimes too involving and the whole relationship option is getting out of hand. seriously everyone is "in an open relationship" or "married" to their best friend or jokester. and how about the new option to tell how you know someone? "we hooked up once 3 years ago and now it's complicated" probably doesn't sum up a lot of people's friends but you could put that for everyone if you wanted (as long as your friends accepted that). i think i have a love hate relationship with facebook. do you?

i did a lot of surfing the internet over the weekend and can i just say that i love netscape/hp's home page. they always have the most interesting tidbits of information and stories that are news worthy. although, i have to admit it's not really set up in the best way: there are a ton of links all over the page and you have to choose a section to look at or focus on, or you just have a free-for-all scan over the entire page. it seems like they could organize or sectionalize the topics in a better way because there is just so much to look at. sometimes when i turn on my computer to check my mail i end up spending like 10 minutes just looking at the different articles they have listed there before i even type in gmail. the one thing i will give them credit for is that they always have like 4 different top stories and the most important news blurbs are right next to that. but as you can see, even though it's not designed significantly well, i still browse it all the time. anyone else use this as a news resource?