This is what vacations are good for…
3 minute read
May 18, 2011, 11:34 PM
Vacations are great for Schumin Web. Usually, every time I take a vacation, I manage to finish a photo set. This time, it’s Plungefest 2011. Normally this wouldn’t be notable, except that I ran out of time to finish this “in-studio”. See, I normally do all my photo sets at home, on my real computer. However, I ran out of time on Tuesday night, and I had planned a trip to Stuarts Draft from Wednesday to Friday. So first of all, hello from my parents’ house in Stuarts Draft. Thankfully, I was able to complete enough of the set on Tuesday night that I could do the rest of the work on the road from the netbook. So I did all the captions on my parents’ couch, and then pulled the covers off the menu entry, and then voila! Done.
On that last part, that was kind of interesting. Before I left the house, I put the menu entries in and then commented them out. Kind of reminds me of when banks change names, which, as you know, happens on a fairly regular basis anymore. They change the signs ahead of time, and then put a cover over the new sign with the old logo on it. I believe Wachovia is in this process right now, with their eventual change to the Wells Fargo nameplate. Then when the time comes, they just yank the cover off and the name is changed. Same here. I just removed the comment tags, and boom – the menu item is revealed.
Of course, this kind of stuff will all change when I eventually convert the site to WordPress. Then I’ll be able to do all of the site from anywhere, rather than the current situation of being restricted to my home computer for some parts and being partially mobile for others. I’m looking forward to that, but it’s going to be a long time still before that happens.
Continue reading…Categories: Charlottesville, Driving, Schumin Web meta, Stuarts Draft
And Schumin Web is officially fifteen years old…
3 minute read
March 23, 2011, 10:44 PM
Fifteen years old, today. Really. If you want to put things into perspective, I have had this site for more than half my life. I started the site at age 14, and I am now 29. Wow.
And so this evening, we celebrated! After a remarkably stressful day at work (at least for me), a number of us from work went out to El Tamarindo in Adams Morgan to celebrate, where they have some really great margaritas. My coworkers certainly managed to surprise me, having secretly signed a birthday card for the site, with some very sweet comments in it. Take a look:
Categories: Schumin Web meta
Lack of personality is a problem, indeed…
3 minute read
February 27, 2011, 2:38 PM
You may remember the site design concept that I tossed around about a week ago. It used a three-column layout, and significantly changed the above-the-fold look of Schumin Web.
Since I doodled out a site layout with a Sharpie, I did go ahead and produce that hand-drawn concept using CSS, in order to see how it would look when built. Here’s version one:
Categories: Arundel Mills, Schumin Web meta
So how would you react to a Schumin Web that looked something like this?
2 minute read
February 18, 2011, 11:15 PM
In my quest to reinvent how Schumin Web looks and ultimately port it all over to the WordPress platform, I did some doodling this evening and came up with a design concept:
Categories: Schumin Web meta
So Schumin Web turns fifteen in a month and a half. How to celebrate…
2 minute read
February 4, 2011, 9:58 PM
Believe it or not, on March 23 of this year, Schumin Web turns fifteen. I think I’ve been tossing around ideas in my head about how to properly celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since the fourteenth anniversary last year. And unfortunately, I’m still at a bit of a loss about what to do for it. I’ve thought of a few things that have been through various levels of experimentation, but nothing really workable came out of it.
First of all, does anyone remember the tenth anniversary celebration? The Photo Feature was changed to this graphic:
Categories: Schumin Web meta
Happy Generic Capitalist Holiday to you…
3 minute read
December 25, 2010, 4:20 AM
Yes, a happy Generic Capitalist Holiday to you. I will be glad to see another one of these pass, that’s for sure. This year, I was just totally not into the whole Christmas thing, and almost outright opposing it, as evidenced by my many comments about it on the Twitter in the past month:
People need to boycott WASH-FM until after New Years when they stop playing that annoying #Christmas music!
Wishing that “criminally bad lighting displays” was a citable offense: http://twitpic.com/3egpdi #xmas #christmas
My idea of Christmas spirit this year: http://twitpic.com/3f3suv #scrooge #christmas #holidays
After all, “#Christmas” is really just a celebration of #capitalism and materialism, and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves.
@Slate Considering #Christmas has no meaning whatsoever, why not? Just one more thing for retailers to sucker you into buying. (Note: This tweet was in response to a question from Slate about whether Jews should own Christmas trees)
How much would I have to pay the man playing #Christmas music on his trumpet to get him to stop?
Why don’t we just refer to #Christmas as “Shameless #Capitalism Day” and get it over with already?
Is it rude to refer to people who post “Happy birthday Jesus” status messages as delusional? #christmas #birthday #jesus
Happy Generic Capitalist Holiday to all.
Categories: Christmas, Schumin Web meta
So if you ever wanted to know how much I talk about things…
5 minute read
December 9, 2010, 10:32 PM
So did you ever wonder how much I talk about what in this space? Well, I did, and so I sat down with a pen and paper and categorized my Journal entries. Seriously. I did every Journal entry starting with this entry at the beginning of 2009 about an Augusta County issue, all the way through this entry, which I remember most for composing it on the Metro.
And what did I find out? Well, it’s kind of surprising and not surprising. Not surprising is that the thing I discussed most in the past almost-two-years is Metro – 38 times. Surprising, however, is that discussion of Anonymous is so close to it – 33 times. In 2009, I actually discussed Anonymous more times than Metro by one (24 Anon vs. 23 Metro), and then it reversed to more what I would have expected in 2010 (15 Metro and 9 Anon). Then after that, I discuss work – 24 times since the beginning of 2009. I wasn’t really surprised about that.
But you know what was really surprising? Since January 1, 2009, I wrote about snow 19 times, making it the topic I discuss fifth most often overall. I guess that’s what happens when nature dumps a few feet of snow on the Washington DC area and we’re all trapped in our houses for days at a time. I racked up most of those hits during the blizzards last winter, and in February 2010, that’s just about all I talked about.
Categories: Schumin Web meta
This is what a Vietnam Memorial photo set should look like…
3 minute read
November 23, 2010, 8:21 PM
I think I may have outdone myself with the new Vietnam Veterans Memorial set in Photography. I was quite pleased with the way the photos came out right after I shot them, and I was especially pleased with the way the whole set came out as a finished product on the Web site.
This certainly does a better job in showing the Vietnam Memorial than my previous attempt, in Part 5 of The Schumin Web Salutes America from 2001. The lighting is different, the Canon has far superior resolution than the original Mavica, and I’ve grown as a photographer and how things get displayed. Let’s admit it – the older photo set was a bit all over the place. I was operating under the assumption that it would be a very long time between visits to Washington, and so I went after a lot of stuff at once – probably too much. By the time I got to the Vietnam Memorial, I had already walked four-and-some miles, and so I was tired. The National Mall, by the way, is a lot longer than it looks, and I walked the entire length of it from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and about halfway back that day. So the effort was a bit lackluster due to my packing too much into a day.
By the way, I generally consider the older photo set from 2001 to be poor work by today’s standards despite all the effort that I put into it at the time, and a few retoolings of the photo set over the years. The older photo set does, however, show The Three Soldiers, which the newer photo set does not. I deliberately avoided the statues due to concerns over freedom of panorama as it applies to statues.
Categories: Schumin Web meta
Greetings from CAF 5109…
3 minute read
November 17, 2010, 7:29 PM
First of all, hello from CAF 5109. I am riding the Red Line home from the Tenleytown area, having just had a wonderful time enjoying a cup of coffee with a friend. Always good to see friends, and nothing beats a hot cup of coffee on a cool fall evening.
Meanwhile, this is my first time actually writing a Journal entry on my netbook while on the Metro. The train is not crowded by any means, so I’m sitting sideways in a row and typing with the computer on one leg. And it seems to work. I’m listening to Randi Rhodes on podcast, and just tapping away on the keyboard. For those wondering, I don’t have Internet on here right now, but instead, I will post this when I get home. I’m too late for the 51, so I figure, I’m either going to take the Y9 bus or walk. Follow me on the Twitter and find out, I suppose. Meanwhile, this train did not service Farragut North, strangely enough. When we went through (without stopping), there was caution tape on the platform and a bunch of people in safety vests at the outbound end, but a lot of regular people on the inbound end. Go fig. I know that the L Street entrance was closed, but who knows if that’s related.
Then this weekend is raid weekend. It’s always fun to troll Scientology, and this ought to be good, though I’m concerned that our numbers will be down due to its being so close to Thanksgiving. This is, after all, the weekend before Thanksgiving, and I’m sure that many people will be taking off early for the holiday. However, Scientology is not above scamming people out of large sums of their money on the weekend before Thanksgiving, and thus we will be outside to troll. It’s this Saturday from 1-5 PM. Hope to see you there. Should be fun. Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong on the numbers, and we’ll have a good number of (masked) faces out there trolling Scientology.
Categories: Computer, Project Chanology, Schumin Web meta, Thanksgiving, WMATA
So I did one of the things I bought this netbook for…
2 minute read
November 5, 2010, 11:33 PM
Well, I did my first Video-Journal-on-the-go entries today. I did two videos, both on the Metro. I first did one in the morning:
Categories: Schumin Web meta, Video Journal, WMATA
And for the first time, meet my netbook…
2 minute read
October 25, 2010, 9:54 PM
Another video Journal entry for you:
Categories: Computer, Schumin Web meta, Video Journal
Is it time for a major overhaul?
2 minute read
October 17, 2010, 11:30 AM
I’ve heard this a few times recently. I was told by a coworker that my site is “kinda Web 1.0”, and at the One Nation rally, one of the Rochester folks said that my site looked “kinda 90s”. Ouch.
So that begs the question: Is it time to give Schumin Web a major overhaul? And by “major overhaul”, I don’t mean just a mere redesign that I could do with a style sheet. I mean big time.
If it gives you any idea about where things stand, this is when the various elements that make up Schumin Web came into being:
- Logo: July 1999
- Navigational structure with sections: September 2000
- Archives section: September 2000
- Journal section: October 2004 (part of Life and Times prior to that)
- Life and Times section: July 2003
- Major Areas: September 2000
- Odds and Ends: September 2000 (current form since July 2003)
- Online Store: September 2000 (current form since January 2010)
- Photography: July 2001
- Splash Page: August 2002 (current form)
- Photo Feature: March 2005
- Current layout: October 2004 (rebuilt to same design twice, in 2007 and 2010)
- Current “squares” background: June 2008
Categories: Schumin Web meta
This time, I am saying something substantive while on camera…
< 1 minute read
August 21, 2010, 11:54 PM
So I gave the “Schumin Web Video Journal” (a name I came up with after I filmed this) a spin once again:
Categories: Companies, Products, Project Chanology, Schumin Web meta, Video Journal
Now we have a baseline to improve upon…
2 minute read
August 17, 2010, 6:05 AM
So I bought a new Web cam last night – a Microsoft LifeCam HD-5001. Seems to work well enough, as I sat and video blogged for a bit. Check it out:
Categories: Computer, Schumin Web meta, Video Journal
Welcome to the new site!
5 minute read
June 25, 2010, 7:46 PM
Welcome to the newly-redesigned Schumin Web! Since February, I’ve been busy at work on the site, reworking the code and generally cleaning the site up, and now it’s finished and launched.
The main thrust of this redesign was to finally get away from using tables for layout, and do the layout entirely in CSS. I also pledged to do everything “right” this time, and not do anything kludgy. If I didn’t know how to make something work the way I wanted, then by golly, I researched it to find out how to make it work as intended.
However, the site still generally looks like the old site, since I admit – I really like the layout, and I saw no reason to make major revisions to that at this time. Why fix what’s not broken, after all? But that doesn’t mean I didn’t take the time to do a lot of smaller changes.
Let me give you a quick rundown on some of the stuff that’s new…
Categories: Schumin Web meta