Book Changes
I made a mistake in the book order sent to the bookstore, and forgot to remove Steve Krug Don’t Make Me Think! and replace it with Christina Wodtke’s Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web.
I’ve notified the bookstore, and while they may not get the new book right away, you won’t need it until the fourth week of class (after the winter break).
Pretest Files
Since I can’t get myCourses to let me upload files, here’s a Zip archive of the image files (1.5MB) for use in the pretest.
unavailable
My sister’s husband was killed in a car accident yesterday; as a result, I will not be available on campus or via email until Monday.
Files from CSS Exercise
Sorry for the delay. Here are the files (as a .zip archive) from the CSS exercise.
Discussion Items
A few people have asked where they can ask questions about the project so that others can see the answers. One option is to post the questions directly to the assignment. But I’ll start putting discussion items (like this one) up for each assignment as well.
In terms of finding and sharing resources related to class topics, I’d suggest posting those as comments to the class topic entry for that date.
Project Group Assignments
Group 1: Circle
Nicholas Hawkins
Josephine Leow
Kimberly Mitchell
Olga Olin
Qing Quan
Jennifer Rohrig
Group 2: Triangle
Michael Ashman
Sarah Begonis
Jay Bibby
Christine Chriscaden
Maria Morris
Amy Moyer
Group 3: Oval
Brendyn Alexander
Philip Charles
Michael Delaney
Frederic Lindenhovius
Shawn Snyder
Brian Tepfenhart
Group 4: Rectangle
Shad Ali
Jordan Fripp
Erhardt Graeff
Sean Hannan
Ryan Munding
ITS Form for Increasing Disk Quota
If you need to increase the amount of disk space allotted to you on Grace (the default is 20MB), you can fill out this form (it’s a PDF file; print it out and fill it out in paper form), and bring it to me for a signature. I’ll pass it on to the IT office for approval.
Links of Interest
Many of the links that I discuss in class can be found on my del.icio.us page. It’s a freeform bookmark maintenance system that allows you to share links with others, and subscribe to other people’s lists of links.
Group Accounts on Polaris
I have created accounts for each group on our polaris server. The user ID is your group name, and the default password will be given out in class (I strongly encourage you to change the password as soon as possible).
The default web directory on polaris is public_html, rather than www. You’ll need to create the public_html directory in your home directory, and set the permissions (for it and anything you put in it) to allow reading (there’s no “ofw” script on polaris!).
Polaris now supports secure shell (ssh) connections, so I strongly encourage you to use ssh instead of telnet when connecting to the server (you should do this on grace, as well).
(If you want a MySQL database on your polaris account, let me know, and I’ll have one added.)
Blog Survey
Fernanda Viegas, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab, is doing a survey of people who have weblogs. She’d be grateful if you’d take the time to fill this out:
Thanks!
lectures versus readings
A few people have expressed surprise to me that I’m not reiterating material from your readings in lectures.
That’s not accidental, it’s intentional.
It doesn’t make sense for me to repeat the material from the readings to you in class—you need to read those yourself, and I assume that when you walk into class that you’ve read the assigned materials.
Think of me in lecture as the “color commentator,” not the “play-by-play” person. The focus of the lecture is to provide some context for why you need to know the things in the readings, not to replace or regurgitate that content.
I spend a good bit of time thinking about what readings to assign. I review lots of materials before I choose the specific readings for each class session. I wouldn’t assign something that I didn’t think had relevance and importance in the context of the course materials and objectives. Please read them.
That being said, I apologize for not yet having the readings for next week posted. Those should be online later today. (I’m guessing most of you are still working on your individual assignments, and haven’t been too concerned about next week’s readings.)
And, as a special reward bonus for those of you who actually read to the end of this message, I won’t be grading the projects until Saturday morning, so you have until I get up (usually around 7 or 8am) on Saturday to get the midterm site completed and uploaded.
Peer Eval Forms
I’ve attached MS Word and PDF versions of the peer evaluation form to the group project assignment.