March 2005 Archives

With yet a few hours in this month, I will report on the visitor stats, which I must confess greatly amuse me.

This was another record high month!  Unique visitors in 2005:

• January: 1,232
• February: 1,919
• March: 2,371
• Total for 2005:  5,522

Number of visits in 2005:

• January:  2,610
• February: 3,391
• March: 3,859
• Total for 2005:  9,778

This months bandwidth, despite all of my efforts to minimize bandwidth use, was the first month to exceed 1 gigabyte!

Most frequent search engine hit: лещен.  The country from which I get the most hits is Greece.  I had almost 1,000 Google hits and 1879 search engine hits total.  By far, the favorite day of the week to read my blog is Thursdays.  The favorite time of the day to read it is 8:00PM.

I'm heading off for London tomorrow evening.  But not worry... I learned my lesson.  I have a good friend house-sitting for me.  I just don't want a 108º repeat.

At any rate, the reason I'm posting tonight instead of waiting till I arrive in London:  I saw a great bumper sticker.

We have all seen, typically on large SUVs, the bumper sticker with a large white on black Times Roman “W” with tiny lettering under it saying “The President.”  Well, the bumper sticker I saw today was  a large white on black Times Roman “F” with tiny lettering under it that appeared to say “The President.” I couldn't get close enough to read it all, but their were more small words.

Almost all packed and ready to go.

My next  post to my blog will probably be made from London, England.  I will be in London and the Cotswolds for about a week!  Can't wait...gotta go pack.  Later!

I have been asked to be the keynote speaker at the upcoming Georgia Movie Academy, a state-wide version of the Film Festival we started at my school 4 years ago.  In fact, the GMA was started as a result of one of the directors at a state educational technology center attending our film festival and deciding to take the contest statewide.  At the end of the Georgia Movie Academy awards presentation, they will show the winners from our “Best Picture” category to inspire students to produce ever more impressive work.

I am really excited that educators across our state are starting to use powerful digital media tools to transform education for children!

I remember the “Cookoo for Coco Puffs” commercial campaign from my childhood.  Well, I have recently gone cookoo for IBC Diet Root Beer. I find it impossible to believe that anything that tastes so good can be 0 calories!  They have had plenty of time to get good at it.  The Independent Breweries Company (IBC) of St. Louis, started in 1919, began making root beer as a response to prohibition.

My sister is at home recovering satisfactorily from the medical procedures she had performed yesterday.  The problems are not yet resolved.  She may require surgery in the near future if medication does not address soon her health issues.

I've received several emails and personal comments about my “blog being down.”  Sorry.  I've just been swamped lately. 

This year's film festival entries were due last week for my school.  Every year I worry about the quality of what will be produced.  The students at my school get so much better each year, I can't imagine them getting any better.

Last year's student work was nothing short of sensational.  People did not believe 11 - 14 year old students created the movies--truly astounding, broadcast quality.  I was convinced they could not be better.

Well, jeeze!  This year's movies are even more phenomenal than last year's movies were.  I can't believe it! 

We held the judging today at Apple Computer's corporate headquarters here in Atlanta.  The judges were stunned, and the quality of our judging panel is unprecedented:  members of the GA Film Commission, the GA State Department of Education, Educational Technology Integration Specialists,  University Technologists, District Chief Information Officers, doctors (PhDs), and lawyers, but no Indian chiefs. 

I can't wait to show off our students'  work on Oscar's night.

When Does the War on Deficits Start?

Reuters this morning reports that according to America's top business economists, “the budget deficit has overtaken terrorism as the greatest short-term risk to the U.S. economy, and concern about the current gap is rising.”

Read the entire article at:  Sirotablog: When Does the War on Deficits Start?

For all educators, this site from Apple is a content-rich resource!  Check out Apple Learning Interchange!

For middle school Life Science teachers:  Digital Protist Lab

6th Grade Science students connect with higher education through the use of iSight in this ALI lesson.

iSightEd is an interesting concept.  I hope it takes off.  We just had a teacher at my school have an iChatAV conference with the Technology Editor and the Editor in Chief of USATODAY--a highly engaging activity for our students.  Perhaps this site will develop into a strong resource for forward-thinking teachers.

I am rather impressed with the site; already 591 educators are members!  The basic site navigation provides the user with:

• resources which can be sorted by category
• a project board which can be sorted by subject matter and grade level
• member directory which can be sorted by location (country, state, city), job description, subjects, and grade levels

Their goal is:

We strive to be a complete resource for using the Apple iSight camera in education. iSightEd.com provides educators and professionals a forum to find each other, share ideas and ask questions.

iSightEd is a tool for our community, developed by volunteers within our community. In order to keep this site valuable for all of us, please contribute your ideas to make it better and let us know how you might be able to assist us in getting there!

I'll add resources as I come across them.

As we mark the 2 year anniversary of our invasion of and war with Iraq, I would like to remind my visitors that the $157,500,000,00 we have spent could have:

• hired 2,728,300 additional public school teachers for 1 year--that's 3,260 in Atlanta alone!
• provided 7,631,931 students with 4 year scholarships at public universities--that's 9,121 in Atlanta alone!
• insured 94,270,484 children for 1 year!
• paid for 20,851,891 children to attend 1 year of Head Start

We need to seriously rethink our priorities!

Source: Cost of War

The former American car maker John DeLorean has died at the age of 80 after collapsing  in New Jersey on Saturday of complications after a recent stroke.

Source:  BBC NEWS

His car was used in the Back to the Future movies.

to ecto.  I've mentioned this software before.  ecto (which is not capitalized) is a graphic user interface (GUI) that links up to your blogging system.  With as few as 2 clicks of a mouse I'm posting.  I use it for almost every post I make.

Many of the teachers at my school have blogs.  I think the school district is going to buy each teacher a laptop.  I want blogging to be as easy for them as I can make it.  So we contacted Adriann at ecto to see what he would charge us for a site license.  He values education--just look at his resume for goodness sake!!  He gave our school an incredible deal.

Thanks!

I detest Windows Internet Explorer!  I know; I know; I know.  I rant about this regularly these days.  But getting a website to look the way you want it with CSS is easy in web standards compliant browsers, of which IE is not!

I have my blog closer to what it should look like in IE, but it's still not there.  And figuring out the twisted machinations that IE goes through when rendering a page should best be left to those who chisel the web out of stone and not code!  I even had to launch windows on my Mac--how disgusting!

Again, Windows users, ditch Bill.  Download Firefox now!  You will see the web through new eyes!

Seems people are starting to wake up...

From MSN:

March 19 - Although President George W. Bush has been traveling the country touting a new plan to overhaul the Social Security system, campaigning in 15 states over six weeks, the majority of Americans remain unswayed, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. Only one-third of all Americans (33 percent) approve of his proposal to create investment accounts under Social Security, the poll found, while 59 percent disapprove. More Americans (44 percent) trust Congressional Democrats with managing the 70-year-old program. The poll also found that, with the exception of his handling of terrorism and homeland security, his approval numbers are down across the board.

Forty-five percent of all Americans approve of the way he is doing his job, a five-point dip from early February; 48 percent disapprove, up six points. Bush's approval numbers have fallen the most among the demographic at whom his Social Security overhaul is targeted at: just 43 percent of 18-29 year olds approve of his performance (down from 56 percent a month ago).

Apparently, at some point AOL quietly unveiled new terms of service for its popular AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) chat service. Basically, AOL is claiming unlimited rights to all content and ideas transmitted via AIM. That’s right – if, say, you use AIM to discuss a new idea for a business, book, deal, etc., AOL is claiming the right to use, publish, or sell your ideas or plans without notifying or compensating you. At least, the way the AIM TOS is currently written leaves the door open for such abuses.

Source:  Contentious; Why You Should Stop Using AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) RIGHT NOW!

Wikipedia, a site run by volunteers, has more traffic than Paypal or USAToday.com. Mark Hurst interviews Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales over at Good Experience.

“I was recently on a panel with the head of USAToday.com. He said they have 300 million pageviews a month. I said that’s good; we have 400 million. Then he said he had 180 people on staff. I said I have one part-time person who helps me with the servers. There’s something new going on here. It’s not about broadcast, it’s about interaction.”

Wales also claims that tampered pages are usually corrected in under five minutes.

“…the vast majority of changes on Wikipedia are made from a hard-core group of users. It’s not a Darwinian phenomenon of millions of people, but rather a community of people. That core group is in constant communication, via IRC, and on the Web itself - they’re always talking, in 40 languages, about the articles. That’s how the site gets corrected so fast. People notice the change and very quickly communicate it through the community.”

Source:  Signal vs. Noise

These ideas, community and interaction not broadcast, need to permeate our culture, our government, our face to face interactions, and above all, our educational settings at all levels!

Looking for something to get me for my birthday? Well, of course! Who isn't!

Here are some books I would like to add to my tech library shelf. These are the big names in CSS and Design right now. There are some others as well, but I have those books already!

"Designing with Web Standards" (Jeffrey Zeldman)

"Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook (Pioneering Series)" (Dan Cederholm)

"Designing CSS Web Pages" (Christopher Schmitt)

"The Art and Science of Web Design" (Jeffrey Veen)

"Taking Your Talent to the Web: Making the Transition from Graphic Design to Web Design" (Jeffrey Zeldman)

"Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition" (Eric A. Meyer)

"Cascading Style Sheets: The Designer's Edge" (Molly E. Holzschlag)

Check these tutorials, posted free by Rick Yaeger, founder of MacMerc, if you want some quick and clean ways to pull off common tasks and popular looks (like the iPod ad people) with Photoshop.

If you don't know this album, you must!  This recording of Against All Odds rocks!  The whole album is great stuff!! (some hot jazz licks of Collins' best work)

Against All Odds from the album “A Hot Night in Paris” by Phil Collins

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed. In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of “Big Oil” executives and US State Department “pragmatists.”

Goodness!  My blog looks horrendous in Internet Explorer for Windows.  I'll trouble shoot that tomorrow.  In the meantime, Windows users need to download Firefox for browsing.  You will be much happier!  :o)

OK, I'm really close to the layout I envision in my mind's eye.  There are still a few “issues” to resolve.  (If you don't see them, I'm not telling what they are!)  And there is one thing I want to add.  But I'm really getting close!

I haven't changed the HTML on the other pages to include the newly added CSS containters.  Therefore, those pages look a little strange.  All in good time.

Oh, I don't know what evil the non-standards-based IE is doing to my page render on the Windows side.  It has some issues on the Mac version of IE.  I tell you:  if you use Windows, switch to Firefox!

I read many blogs about all kinds of things.  One category of blogs I enjoy are those that focus on web art and design.  I think I've mentioned a couple of my favorties from time to time:  Jon Hick's hicksdesign, and Mike Davidson's mikeindustries.com. I have no idea how I first stumbled across these guys, but you don't have to read their work very long before you think they're smart, very creative, and have amazing sites.

Along the way I have visited the CSS Zen Garden.  I never really understood what it actually is until last weekend.  I came across a review of a book about the CSS Zen Garden, The Zen of CSS Design, written by Dave Shea of mezzoblue.com, another blog I was frequenting, and Molly E. Holzschlag.  Dave created The Zen Garden site in 2003.  I saw the book in a store and sat down with it for a few minutes.  I now own it.

What a brilliant concept: have a gallery of submissions or a “zen garden” that requires those designers who submit use the exact same HTML code but any CSS code the designer wants.  When I realized that every single web page in the zen garden was identical in HTML content and only differed in CSS content, I was flabbergasted.  All of the pages look drastically and dramatically different.  Fantastic!  And to allow visitors to the zen garden to look at all of the CSS code and image files to study the form and the function is nothing short of superb and extremely generous!

My final discovery has been that two of my favorite designs in the garden were created by Jon and Mike.  You have to check them out.  Both are gorgeous and dramatic and have some cool CSS coding ideas.  This is really great stuff!

Check out John Hick's Design and Mike Davidson's Design.  Now remember, you are looking at the very same HTML code on both pages.  Unbelievable!  I have to say that Mike's design blows me out of the water!  Still so much to learn about CSS.  Lovin' it.

I'm heading off to London, England for Spring Break.  Will start planning the trip this weekend.

I'm not really sure why one would want their To Do list to follow them anywhere in the world, nagging away at them, but it's an interesting concept.  Check out Ta-da Lists.

I just noticed on my blog that I only have 32 days to my birthday.  Rapidly approaching 50!

I best get busy and update my wish lists!  I have no idea what is on them.  Or, if you prefer, you can always send lots of money through PayPal.  :o)

I had the wonderful opportunity to hear Dr. Lorraine Monroe, a powerful educator and child advocate from the Bronx.  As I shared with the staff in our faculty meeting yesterday, she gave us the gift of refocusing on some essential questions and ideas.  I am copying the post I have on my work blog here on my personal blog because what she said was so powerful.  Even if you are not an educator, her words will have meaningfulness for you.

She asked some essential questions that deserve some deep reflection:

• What do I emanate?
• What really matters to me in this work?
• What difference can I make in my school right now, this day?
• Is what I'm doing, planning, and accepting from myself and others moving my dream for my students forward?
• What is standing in the way of my creating the dream of excellence for these children?
• What will I no longer accept?
• Am I the advocate for the children's success?
• What could be the result of my service for the least privileged among us?
• Am I capable, as an instructional leader, of transcending all of the obstacles that are in the way of my dream for my students?
• Am I willing to “notch it up” for the poor kids, for the least among us?
• Do I fully realize that I may be the last chance to prevent teenage pregnancy, a life crippled by addiction, or to keep children from adult poverty?
• Am I, today, in my instruction, in my attitude, and in my behavior, setting an example of the possibilities for excellence and the power of hope?

In our hearts we all know she is right: we get what we give to the children.  Every day we have to model what we respect in and expect from them.  Each one of us at Mabry must set an example of the possibilities for excellence in everything we do.  We have to be that positive change agent.  We each have to be the way without being in the way.  We must open the door that is the power of hope for every child we serve.

This life of service that we have chosen to do requires self-emptying.  We can not come to work looking through the screen of our own prejudices.  We cannot help the children who are the least among us when we focus on their disability, in all of the many forms disability may take.  We must focus on their ability and develop that powerful seed of potential. 

We can not feel sorry for the disadvantaged.  They have what they have, and they have you!  A child can survive almost anything in his or her life if there is at least one person at our school that is here waiting for him or her to arrive, but if there is no one, that child has next to no chance to survive.  You each know at least one child here that needs you.  “Let me hear you say it:  'I am the one!'  'I am the one!' Now, believe it!”

You have chosen this work because you understand how powerful your role and influence as a teacher is.  You do what is right because it's right to do it!  But the truth is you really have no idea the influence you have every day in these little lives of hope and potential. 

Take just a moment to think of the work that you have committed yourself to do.  It is full of power and glory.  It is electrifying in its power and shattering in its wonder.  When children change because of what you do, you have created a miracle of God.

Because of your work at our school, the future's so bright, we gotta wear shades!

I've mentioned Yuri before.  He takes incredible pictures.  If you haven't visited his site in a while, here's his photo link.

(Click to enlarge)

“Apple and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs came in at No. 194 on this year's installment of Forbes' list of the richest people on the planet. Jobs' net worth is now US$3 billion, up from $2.1 billion last year. Microsoft founder Bill Gates once again topped the list with $46.5 billion. The collective net worth of the 691 billionaires on the list is $2.2 trillion, up $300 billion from the combined worth of the 587 listed last year.”

Source:  Apple's Jobs moves up world's wealthiest list | MacMinute News

Have you gotten bored with the same old music groups you listen to all of the time?  Well, the folks at MusicPlasma have an interesting solution to your dilemma.  You enter a group you like, and their software provides you with similar artists.  Pretty clever stuff...

(Click to enlarge)

I just discovered InkNoise.  These folks offer several online wizards that provide you with free html or CSS.  For example, Layout-o-matic generates the code for a 1, 2, or 3 column CSS container that will include a sidebar(s) and text area.

The Amazing Rolloverer is a tool for generating Javascript-free, accessible, flicker-free menubars.  And, finally, List-o-matic, an external link from InkNoise, was the original inspiration for this tool that generates CSS for formatting lists in a variety of forms.

Other clever stuff on their site...

But, I must go to bed.

Several weeks ago one of my colleagues at work, JM, hit the blog of the husband of another colleague with whom we both work, DK.  He had written on his blog, which is incredibly fun reading by the way, that the 1,000,000th person to hit his blog would win a brand new top of the line Mercedes Benz!  JM was viewer 999,999!  The blog counter apparently would only count her the first time she hit the blog because she kept hitting refresh so she could win, but the counter continually registered 999,999!  In order to claim the prize, you had to take a picture of the screen saying 1,000,000 and email it in.

Immediately I hit his blog, and yes!, I was the 1,000,000th person to view it.  I jumped up, grabbed my digital camera.  Snap!!  I had just won the new Mercedes Benz!!  JM, who was sitting next to me, was, naturally, outraged that she had found out about this but that I had won.  Indignantly I told her, “Hey, I won fair and square.  I was visitor 1,000,000 and have the picture to prove it!”

DK, the wife, with whom JM and I work, of the owner of the blog came in the next day excited that I had won but dismayed that our mutual colleague, JM, was all upset.  She was unsure as to whether or not her husband would give us both a top of the line Mercedes Benz.

Well, naturally, I'm taking some artistic license here.  I was visitor 5,000 I think--oops, no, that was 10,000!.  And the prize was not specified by DK's husband.  As it turns out, her husband emailed us both a gift certificate to the iTunes store.  Oops!  I didn't know this and am horrified to tell them that I deleted it thinking it was some junk mail about how to get a certificate to the iTunes store.

You may notice that I have passed the 5,000 hit mark on my own blog. Not to be outdone, I am excited to tell you that the 5,000th viewer to my blog received an all expenses paid trip around the world [wink]!  Mercedes Benz are just so yesterday!  :o)

I'm just going crazy with this cascading style sheet design.  Each time I play with it to tweak this and adjust that, I learn.  Now if I can just remember all of this!  I'm trying to add a good bit of white space to the page as I think it looks clean and is easier and perhaps more inviting to read.

I highly recommend Style Master 4 for OS X.  The tutorials alone are incredible.  I have learned so much from them.  My brain now hurts.

At any rate, I am eager to hear from my Internet Explorer friends.  Has my labor been in vain today, or can you now see my blog correctly?

Yesterday I stated that the WAN my computer picked up was not provided by the hotel.

It was.  My apologies!

I'm presently in Perry, GA, for the governor's conference on improving high schools in this state. I arrived in my hotel tonight, opened my laptop, and saw a wireless LAN signal. I don't know who to thank for the bandwidth, (it's not the hotel) but, wow, thanks!

I heard from a friend and colleague today that my blog looks strange in Internet Explorer.  Well, it probably would as IE is not a web standards compliant browser.  I would suggest all of my Windows friends use Firefox as their browser.  Firefox is free, fast, free of spyware, and just a vastly superior browser to IE.  Additionally, Mr. Gates feels he can ignore development of his browser because he has large market share.  WRONG!! 

Firefox is completely standards compliant and therefore my blog looks the way it is designed to look.  As time goes on and I learn more about CSS, I will attempt to make my page work more consistently in non-standards compliant browsers.

I spent a good bit of time this weekend revising the format as well as the design of my blog.  I don't much like it all, but I have done some amazing things in this process:

• I previewed this software called Style Master 4, a CSS visual editor.
• Between playing with the software and reading some of the online help material/tutorials, I have learned a massive amount (still haven't scratched the surface) about CSS.  Wow, it's so cool!
• I created 4 new MT template files and learned a lot about MT tags in the process!
• I added ID selectors and Class selectors and their parameters to a CSS style sheet and linked them up to some fresh HTML code on several of the new MT template index files I created.
• OMG!  It actually worked!!  I amaze myself (and probably no one else)!  :o)

Now, I have no doubt that I am certainly not in the big boys' league by any stretch of the imagination.  However, I learned a whole lot this weekend, and I always get a big kick out of that!

Again, everything is a work in progress.  I just threw a lot of HTML code out into cyberspace to just get something up and running.  The Movies page is old and horrid work and just temporary.  Others are woefully inadequate.  I was trying to learn, link, and lay a foundation for further learning and enhancement.

By the way, I love Style Master 4!  Its a really nice cross platform CSS editor with some excellent tutorials and wizards that make so much sense out of this tangled www we weave!  Any other suggestions or ideas for CSS visual editing?

The new navigation system is a work in progress.  As of this minute, most of the links refer to a non existent page.  In fact, the Photos link is the only one that presently works.  Stay tuned.  I'll be hooking up more soon.

And I am beginning to learn more about CSS--Cascading Style Sheets.  So, rather than be terribly late in changing the appearance of the blog for the season, Viola! 

Hope you like!

New Poll Finds Bush Priorities Are Out of Step With Americans
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER

Americans say President Bush does not share the priorities of most of the country on either domestic or foreign issues, are increasingly resistant to his proposal to revamp Social Security and say they are uneasy with Mr. Bush's ability to make the right decisions about the retirement program, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.  ...

Read entire source:  The New York Times > Washington > New Poll Finds Bush Priorities Are Out of Step With Americans

You know, I must confess... I personally HATE the dock.  I really do!  I have wished I could turn it off completely!  It always gets in my way--and I have 2 monitors:  the big Cinema Display and the one that's the next size down.  Every time I do a project in FCP the dock drives me insane.  I even have it tucked off to the right side of my smaller monitor!  But enough ranting.

The menu bar is a whole different matter.  I love my menu bar!  Here's a little picture which will show full size in a separate window if you click on it.

(Click to enlarge)

1. The first 6 icons are You Control menus!  You create them any way you like!  (I love You Control more than oxygen!!)
2. You Fonts from the folks who made You Control!
3. The Weather (um, that would be yes...from You Control!)
4. Synergy for iTunes control.  (I like it better than the iTunes controller from You Control--today anyway.)
5. Pod2Go is awesome!
6. Detour for individual application audio control.
7. Airport
8. iSync
9. Main Volume Control
10. Character Palette
11. Bluetooth
12. iChat
13. You Control Calendar

I started thinking about this because I read the post below.  Seeing what people use was interesting.  No one had Detour or Pod2Go.  I'll post more about these tomorrow.

Last year, the question was being asked around mac blogs, “Whats in your dock?”. Now I feel its time to ask the same about menubars. With so many apps using menu items, I find my menubar is becoming just as crowded as my dock.

Source:  What's in your menubar? : journal : // hicksdesign

No link between MMR and autism

Scientists say they have strong evidence that the MMR vaccination is not linked to a rise in autism. Researchers looked at the incidence of autism in a Japanese city before and after the withdrawal of the measles, mumps and rubella jab in 1993.  New Scientist reports autism rates kept rising after MMR was withdrawn.

Michael Rutter of the Institute of Psychiatry, who worked on the study, said it “rubbished” the link between MMR and a general rise in autism. These findings are resoundingly negative in relation to the link between MMR and autism.

Concern over a link between the two were raised after a study by Dr Andrew Wakefield published in the Lancet in 1998 which claimed MMR might trigger autism. However, no research has ever proved a link, and the overwhelming majority of experts believe the vaccine is safe.

Source:  BBC NEWS | Health | 'No link between MMR and autism'

High court: Juvenile death penalty unconstitutional:

“In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court ruled today that executing 16 and 17-year olds is unconstitutional. Executions for those 15 and younger had been previously outlawed. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, said…

      ”Our society views juveniles … as categorically less culpable than the average criminal,“ Kennedy wrote.

With all due respect to Justice Kennedy this is a load of crap. In which society are 16 and 17-year-olds viewed as less culpable? So what you’re telling me is that if Dylan Klebold had lived (Eric Harris was 18 at the time) after Columbine that he would not deserve the death penalty because somehow in your mind he’s ”less culpable“?

This sends out one of the worst messages possible. ”Hey kids go out and kill all you want. You’re less culpable than the average criminal“

Personal responsibility dies another death.”

Source:  TheTrenchcoat Chronicles; Responsibility is Unconstitutional