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2 minute read

October 29, 2006, 12:24 AM

Okay, I’m slightly amused. I’ve launched my new Online Store today, having set all the new mods, and it’s definitely a change. Gone are most of the old designs. Goodbye “Chef Schumin”. Goodbye to the three “Photo” designs. Goodbye to the old “You know you’ve been thinking about fire alarms too much when” design. Goodbye calendars. And most notably, goodbye thongs. The little thong underwear that I’ve offered in the store for four years is officially gone for good.

Only two things were carried over from the old store. The design formerly known as “Traditional” remains as the sole entry in “Logo Apparel” and “Logo ‘Stuff'”. The other is the line of photo mousepads, which are going to get spiffed up a bit when they’re expanded in the future. Then there are some entirely new lines. I’ve started offering my own brand of slogan t-shirts, and new high-quality framed prints of selected photo features.

Continue reading…

Categories: Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

August 11, 2006, 1:05 AM

My original plan was to offer the entire Web site in “Mobile Web” format suitable for viewing on a cell phone. I am officially scaling that back.

Why, you may ask?

Because the average mobile phone can’t seem to handle the pictures. And by “average mobile phone”, I mean my personal cell phone, which I will have until it’s time to upgrade again.

It seems that my site is strong on mobile phones in its text-based areas. In other words, the Journal, and some parts of the Archives. The photo sets seem to be too “heavy” for the phone to handle. I get “insufficient memory” messages and the photos stop loading. So pooh on that. Of course, that happens on three (that I know of) Journal entries as well. Those would be the three that are the basis for the narratives for the Million Worker March, J20, and A16, since they rely a lot on photos.

So at least I learned something from my experimentation on College Life this evening. I learned that photo sets do not work well in the mobile format. Now I just need to figure out what I want to port over to mobile next…

Categories: Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

July 26, 2006, 1:18 AM

Mom found out today that our new kitchen counters are going in this Thursday. These new countertops are STONE. Mom actually went to Roanoke to pick out a slab of granite a few weeks ago that would become our new counters.

I am impressed. So on Thursday, they go in. And we had nearly fourteen years with the old counters. The old ones were cheap counters with some sort of laminate on top of them. These new ones are nice. I’m told that if you put something really hot on them, that the worst that will happen is that the surface will get hot for a while.

So that ought to be nice. And so preparing food will be a touch tricky for the next few days while they put it in.

Otherwise, today I ran the first vertical photo feature since the main page was redesigned. And it’s from my very first protest back on April 12, 2003 of a black bloc demonstrator. Boy, oh boy, oh boy… that was an interesting protest. The word “greenhorn” comes to mind to describe how I handled that event. I had never heard of a black bloc back then, and I had certainly never seen masked demonstrators before in real life. But this was real life, and there they were. And I never thought that three years out from that first demonstration, that I would have participated in a black bloc six times.

But seriously, though, if you look at the April 12, 2003 protest and compare it with something more recent, like Night March, you’ll see a big difference. The first one is very much an account of a first protest, while the other one comes from a more seasoned participant.

Categories: House, Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

July 13, 2006, 12:32 AM

I’m getting the feeling that the recent reconfiguration of the main page to accommodate a horizontal photo feature is going to turn out to be a great thing. I’ve got a lot of horizontally-oriented photos that could be used as features, but that I’d been unable to show due to format limitations. Now I can do it. So far, though, I’ve not used something really new or daring with the horizontal feature. I’m still getting used to how it all looks on the newly-redesigned page. It will be a lot of fun, though.

And there’s still room for vertical features. I figured out how to use the space that was recently by the menu to fill what otherwise looks very empty. That will be visible as of the next vertical feature.

And I figured out how to make it where I can change the page design using a database switch. Part of the page’s design is supplied by the database, which has the HTML to render the filler material for the vertical features, or the HTML to leave it out.

Categories: Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

July 10, 2006, 7:06 AM

Unfortunately, my vacation is over, and has been over for a few days now. As I write this, I have three post-vacation workdays under my belt, and am going to start another one in less than two hours. However, the vacation did do what it was supposed to do – it left me refreshed, and not feeling like I want to strangle someone by the end of the day.

Otherwise, I’m just tickled about the new Transit Center design that I’m implementing. I’ve already got the section on the rail pages, and I’m getting ready to make the changeover for the buses. It’s got a tan-colored background, and the Transit Center logo is now orange. And you know how I describe the color scheme? I refer to it as the “Breda” color scheme. For those of you who are unfamiliar, I based the color scheme here on Metro’s 4000-series cars, which were manufactured in 1991 by a company called Breda. I was tempted to add “Made in Italy by Breda Costruzioni Ferroviarie S.p.A.” to the page somewhere, complete with horse logo, but I don’t want anyone to think that the page was actually made in Italy by Breda.

And then as far as reconfigurations go, I’m also launching a new main page design. This reconfigures the photo feature so that I can carry horizontal images on the site, and also sweeps the sidebar menu off the main page to make room for it. Losing that side menu isn’t too much of a loss because the main-page menu just carries information that’s linked to the bottom of every page. So we’ll still get along fine if we lose it. I’m just tickled, though, to be able to run horizontal photos in the main-page space.

Categories: Schumin Web meta, Travel

2 minute read

June 30, 2006, 10:48 AM

I would like to know what I was thinking back in 2003 when I was laying out these “Photo Essay Blitz” sets. Usually, I try to make the final photo numbers go in order down the page, even if the pictures aren’t arranged in chronological order. This, however, is ridiculous. And it makes my current work retrofitting captions onto these older sets all the more complicated since I have to hop all around the database to find the entries for these photos.

This is why the 2003 set A Protest Against the War received an update last night. I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. The numbers were all out of order, plus the navigation didn’t flow logically. I fixed the numbers by renumbering all the photos. Now they start at 1 and go to 122 in exactly the order that they appear on the page. I fixed the navigation by going from the old descriptors (Freedom Plaza 1 and 2, McPherson Square, Farragut West) to straight parts (Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4). The navigation also bugged me because the descriptors were inaccurate, which I noticed in becoming more familiar with DC. The “McPherson Square” section was a block or so away from the square, and then the “Farragut West” section was at 18th and K Streets NW, a few blocks from Farragut Square, though only one block from the Metro station.

I can tell you why I did it that way originally, though. I set it like that because I picked out the photos, numbered them, and put them on the page, and then laid them out on the page like a big storyboard. Thus the numbers ended up all out of order. Compare to now, where I sort them in CompuPic, and don’t pin them up on the Web site until it’s nearly done.

One thing I have to say is that it certainly makes maintenance and updates easy if the numbers go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. It gets to be a real bother if it goes 1, 7, 23, 15, 12, 34, etc.

Categories: Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

June 28, 2006, 7:13 AM

If you’ve looked at my site updates, I just released a new photo set in Life and Times called Night March. I wasn’t planning on finishing it this morning, but I got to working on it, and I realized that I was very close to completing it, so I just decided to go ahead and finish the set, and get that out there. So now you can view that protest against the World Bank and IMF that I went to on April 22, where a black bloc snaked through the streets of DC. It was fun.

My only issue with the set is that the dark and the rain, combined with the constant motion of the camera, led to pictures that I don’t consider my best work. Of course, Life and Times is there to showcase events, where capturing the action, rather than creating beautiful photos, is the point. Still, I’ve done better. A16 and the Million Worker March are two Life and Times sets that I consider to be really nice photography-wise. On this one, with the camera having water issues during the event and the need to heavily retouch some of these photos to show the action, it leaves me wishing that the photos had come out better. Still, though, I do like the set, and the photos certainly demonstrate the hostile environment in which they were taken.

For the next set to go up, it’s either going to be one about downtown Waynesboro or Breezewood for Photography, or the “No Armageddon” rally in DC for Life and Times.

Categories: Photography, Schumin Web meta

2 minute read

June 17, 2006, 12:33 AM

June 28, as you may recall, is my first day of vacation. And I can’t wait. What do I have planned? Not much. I’m planning on going to Washington twice during that time – once on both ends of the vacation.

June 28 will be a trip similar to the “accidental” DC trip, where I approached DC from the south (I-95), rather than my usual westerly approach (I-66). This time, though, I’m going to run it on local roads. Instead of I-95, I’m going to take US 1. I believe this will take me close to the Huntington station, which is one that I’ve never originated from before. That ought to be exciting. That would bring the number of Metro stations to which I can confidently drive up to four.

Currently, I can confidently drive to Vienna, West Falls Church-VT/UVA and Franconia-Springfield. And when I say “confidently”, I mean that I could give someone good directions to drive to the station from outside the DC metro area. Now mind you, I can get to a good many stations by walking – more than I want to list. I can follow the route of the Blue and Orange Lines on foot from Foggy Bottom all the way to L’Enfant Plaza, Green all the way from Shaw to L’Enfant Plaza (and Yellow by extension), and Red from Cleveland Park to Judiciary Square, among other little station-to-station walks. But driving is a whole different ballgame, especially with the suburban stations. Trust me here.

Continue reading…

Categories: DC trips, Schumin Web meta, Travel

2 minute read

May 31, 2006, 11:17 PM

What a wonderful dinner we had at O’Charley’s! Dad met us up there, since it made more sense for him to meet us up there than go back home. So Mom, Sis, and I went up to Harrisonburg in the Sable via Route 11 (the scenic route through several small towns) and then cut through JMU to get to Harrisonburg Crossing.

Everything went well. The only point where things went slightly awry was when all the staff came out to wish some other customer a happy birthday. Sis mentioned how good of an idea it would be to mention it to our server that this was my birthday dinner. Then our server came out, and Sis mentioned it to her. My exact response was, “Don’t even think about it.” It worked out, though. Our server said she’d bring out a cake without the fanfare. And it was a nice cake.

Still, like I need the sugar and calories in a cake.

Continue reading…

Categories: Birthdays, Family, Myself, Schumin Web meta

< 1 minute read

May 25, 2006, 5:27 PM

What can I say? I’m tickled. I just completed a version of my Journal that’s optimized for display and navigation on a Web-enabled cell phone. I call it “The Schumin Web Mobile Edition”.

And why only the Journal? Because the whole thing is database-driven, and thus it’s easy to convert. No having to do any reconfiguring on the regular site at all. I just created a second interface for it from scratch and ta-da. It looks like crap on the regular Web, but it looks fine on the phone.

Compare what we see on the Web using a real computer…

Continue reading…

Categories: Schumin Web meta

2 minute read

May 17, 2006, 4:07 AM

I got a new cell phone last week while I was up in Harrisonburg, and it’s definitely an improvement over the old one. Along with a 1.3 megapixel camera (wheee!), this one has a better mobile Web feature. It actually displays graphics, and all in all makes things very easy to get around in, provided that the site is optimized for such a use.

And The Schumin Web is a pain in the butt to get around in on the mobile browser. It’s because my design is optimized for display on a computer monitor with a conventional browser. I use a big table to lay everything out, for proper viewing on a computer. With that, the phone then tries to make do with what it’s given.

As a result, the first thing you get is my logo and the “Celebrating ten years online” message beneath it. Then you get the list of sections. Then it displays the header image, and from there it rattles off the menu. Then it displays a large black box, which is how it renders that black vertical line that I use as a divider. Then, after navigating through all of that, you finally get to the actual content. By then your thumb is tired from all the scrolling, and you’ve probably decided it’s not worth the trouble to browse my site on your phone.

Continue reading…

Categories: Cell phone, Schumin Web meta

4 minute read

March 22, 2006, 11:38 PM

Scary to think about it, but it’s true – it’s been ten years since I first created The Schumin Web. And now I’ve got the site all decorated up for the tenth anniversary. The photo feature is a collage of old site designs, and the URL beneath the logo at the top of all the pages has been replaced with the phrase “Celebraring ten years online”.

I still remember the day that I first created this site way back in 1996. Of course, we didn’t call it “The Schumin Web” back then. Back then, I called it “Ben Schumin’s Home on the Internet”. That then changed to “Ben Schumin’s Internet Command Center” (I was big into Power Rangers in 1996). That then changed to “The Great American Road of Ben Schumin” and then to “The User-Friendly World of Ben Schumin”. That last one’s being such a hideous name, by the way, gave rise to the current “Schumin Web” name in late 1998, which ended up sticking.

Still, that first day was something. I was playing around with NaviPress, which was a WYSIWYG Web page designer – a good thing, since I’m more of a visual designer than a coder. I was playing around on there at our old computer down in the living room, trying to figure out how to make the program work, and I actually got something to work. I ended up uploading it to AOL’s “My Place” where you had a little Web space. Then the next step was showing it off. I was so proud of my little URL, which was http://members.aol.com/BenSchumin/. Nowadays, I would be embarrassed to have such a URL, but this was the mid-90s, and the Web was still young.

Continue reading…

Categories: Schumin Web meta

5 minute read

February 2, 2006, 11:38 PM

This last trip to Washington was definitely an interesting trip. I managed to put myself behind schedule at almost every turn I took, but it was SO worth it.

I arrived at Vienna on time – right after 10 AM. Rode Breda 4053 to Rosslyn. At Rosslyn, I got a message on my phone from Matthew Tilley. That turned into a phone call, where we discussed all sorts of stuff while I also watched birds do laps in the air above North Moore Street.

Then after that, I got on the Metro and rode Blue to Capitol South. I took a walk from the Capitol South station entrance up to Union Station, going by the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court in the process.

The Supreme Court building has netting around the pediment, due to a chunk of marble falling off the building and onto the steps on November 28. In addition, on the sidewalk in front of the Supreme Court, a pro-life group stood facing the building, symbolically gagged with red duct tape with “LIFE” written in black on the tape. Take a look:

Continue reading…

Categories: Activism, DC trips, Religion, Schumin Web meta

2 minute read

January 27, 2006, 12:51 AM

My Wednesday-Thursday weekend was fun. I got to accomplish a few things that I’d wanted to do. First of all, I attempted to visit the new Martin’s store in Waynesboro, that opened up next to Wal-Mart. I attempted to get in, but the store was so crowded that I ended up having to scratch that idea, since I wasn’t about to park at Wal-Mart and walk over to Martin’s. There were literally no parking spaces available in the Martin’s lot. I consider that too far of a distance to walk, plus I consider it rude to park in one business’s parking lot to patronize their competitor. I did, however, get the chance to fill up the car, since Martin’s has a gas station on its premises. I got to fill up for $2.19 a gallon, too, which is pretty good for Waynesboro at this time (the nearby Exxon and Citgo stations were selling at $2.29 a gallon).

After that, I took a trip to Roanoke, which worked out well despite that the friend I was supposed to meet up with in Roanoke never got back with me (so we didn’t end up meeting up). I ended up visiting my usual Roanoke spots, plus I also drove over to Salem, where I basically took a little driving tour of the town. So that was fun.

Continue reading…

Categories: Martin's, Retail, Roanoke, Schumin Web meta, Wikipedia

< 1 minute read

January 16, 2006, 7:22 PM

I have burned EVERYTHING in my image collection to CD that was taken between August 18, 2004 and December 31, 2005. To give you an idea of what a project this was, I burned 29 CDs to accomplish this. But it’s all on CD now, which frees up a lot of space for other projects. What does this leave on the actual hard drive? It leaves my January 4, 2006 trip to Washington, and my trip to the Outlet Village on January 12.

And this was a project I was determined to finish as quickly as possible. I set my away message to “Burning about a year and a half’s worth of images to CD…” and vowed not to take it off until I was done. So there you go.

Otherwise, after not only that one IM that I told you about previously regarding something on Wikipedia, others have contacted me through Schumin Web to discuss Wikipedia. This has led me to put this on my user talk page:

I don’t think it’s that much to ask that what happens on Wikipedia is discussed through the discussion channels that Wikipedia provides, as it adds to the record for Wikipedia, and allows others to help in the collaborative effort, since everyone’s supposed to be there for the same reason – to create an encyclopedia.

Some people, though…

Categories: Computer, Schumin Web meta, Wikipedia