Photoshop & CMS

My youngest daughter is a photoshop wizard.  This weekend I was having her show me some of the things she does with the program.  Previously, I had been using photoshop elements 7 on my computer.  My daughter, however, has the full blown photoshop program.  After playing around with her version of photoshop, I figured out that you could save images as html pages.  After having this epiphany, I tried to use the dreamhost ftp to see if I could upload my saved photoshop pages.  I have no idea what I accomplished because I can’t navigate dreamhost well enough to confirm if I have live site now or not.  This is the part where you get happy when you learn something then come quickly back to Earth after you realize that you still don’t know enough to put what you learned to use.  Anyway, despite my dreamhost complications, my photoshop discovery has led me to question the value of employing a CMS for my project.  If I can design pages through photoshop, and since my site will be no more than 10 pages maximum, then perhaps I don’t need no stinking wordpress.  I dunno, maybe this is cheating?  But for a handful of pages, perhaps I’m better off keeping my goals simple and my architecture static?

Modification: Strategy and Scope

I’d like to add some details to my strategy and scope. In conceptualizing my site map, I am considering the following: First, a home page that identifies the purpose of the site. Second, a page that provides a brief overall time-line or chronology of my grandparents’ entire lives. This page will also establish the navigation layout to be duplicated on subsequent pages. Also, this page will link to an image archive and a page of personal “recollections.” Third, a page that introduces three detailed textual “recollections” of the times, places, and events reflected in the image database. These recollections will be centered on three specific periods: early childhood, the Hays County Herald, and the Torpedo Factory. The intent of the recollections is to allow my grandparents to convey their experiences in their own words. Fourth, an archive page that provides paragraph length descriptions of, and links to, the three collections of digital images.

Site map

Poor Jeremy!

It looks like we have plenty people interested in meeting for some extra help. Jeremy had mentioned that if we get six or more people interested then perhaps we’d break into two groups. I imagine we’ll discuss all the logistics tonight. I’m looking forward to meeting ASAP.

Anyone Want Extra Help With The Basics?

After class last Monday, Alan Capps and I were discussing our questions and concerns relative to html and css. During this discussion, it was obvious that our inexperience with code was generating some mutual concerns. Consequently, Alan and I kicked around the idea of approaching Jeremy with a suggestion to create a standing meeting with a group of the more challenged (technology) students in Clio II. I have broached this idea with Jeremy and he is perfectly willing to help the needy. Therefore, in order gain a better understanding of who may want to cash in on this offer to receive additional help, please respond to this blog post.

And just to be clear: The intent to establish this meeting group is posited firmly upon the need to readdress the basics (of writing code) SLOWLY. In the Marine Corps, we called this type of thing “remedial training.” Thus, no one should arrive at this meeting expecting to discuss web design metaphysics. This meeting is for the basics only.

All Comments Welcome: Strategy & Scope

I made the management decision to ditch the concept that I presented to Dan for Clio I. Ultimately, I realized the time necessary to research and collect the materials needed to support my Clio I concept would make execution in Clio II all the more difficult. As a result, I’m starting over from scratch.
I intend to construct a website that depicts the experiences of my maternal grandparents. Currently, my grandparents live in Fairfax, VA. My grandfather is 97 and my grandmother is 94. My grandparents were both born and raised in Kansas City, MO. During the Depression, they were married and struggled to make ends meet as journalists. From 1938 to 1941, my grandparents owned and published a small weekly newspaper called the Hays County Herald in San Marcos, TX. My grandparents wrote every line in that paper and I’ve located a few surviving copies. After locating these copies at the Texas Newspaper Project in Austin, I employed a researcher to make digital images of each page of the newspapers. On the website, I’d like to present these images of the Herald in a small digital archive.
What I envision is giving my grandfather the opportunity to read the editorials contained in each paper and subsequently have him make a general comment about his recollections of Hays County and the local newspaper business. I would then use his comments in an introductory page to the image database. Perhaps these papers will contain some local events that he may want to comment on at length. But whatever the case, I intend to use his summary, synopsis, or characterization of the paper as an intro to the digital images. Fortunately for me, he still loves to write.
Additionally, for approximately 20 years, my grandmother was an artist at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, VA. During that time, she did silk screen prints with a group called the printmakers. Every member of my family has her artwork hanging in their homes. I thought I could create a digital archive of her prints. I’d also like to give my grandmother the opportunity to describe her artistic inspirations and comment on her artwork in general. I’d use these comments on a web page that introduced the collection of images.
Another collection of images I’d like to construct consists of photographs of their early childhood. They have a substantial collection of photographs of themselves and their parents and siblings from 1912 to approximately 1925. Because I can just scan these photos, this collection should be fairly easy to assemble. In an introductory page, the people in these photographs can be identified and the circumstances described.
The audience for my website is primarily my family. Nevertheless, the Depression era journalistic content might generate some broader historical interest. Additionally, people that like silk screens or have a general interest in art maybe drawn to the site as well. And finally, the photographs of midwestern life during the WWI years have historical value for those interested in domesticity during the progressive era.
In sum, I see the website centered around three primary collections of digital images: First, the photos of my grandparents early childhood; second, the newspaper images; and lastly, the images of my grandmother’s silkscreen prints. Consequently, the first design issue to be addressed with this site is to identify and discuss the options for constructing accessible image databases. The newspaper collection will consist of tif images but since I’ve yet to collect the digital images of the photographs and silk screens, I’m not certain if I’ll have jpegs or tif images. I’m working on that problem now. I’m totally in the dark on most of this stuff so I welcome all suggestions.

Cartoons and History

I am in agreement with Professor Staley’s modest assertions that historians need to acknowledge the limitations of written prose while also exploring the multidimensionality of computer-based visualizations of the past. In my view, the scholarly debate that stems from new approaches and methodologies can only serve to advance the thought and production of history. In this light, various aspects of Staley’s book elicited a number of questions in my mind. The questions I had were primarily related to Staley’s analysis of historians’ use of prose. On page 19, Staley suggests that historians assume words to be the highest level of thought due to an uncritical acceptance of Greek tradition. Accordingly, I wondered: What is Staley’s perception of why history is written? Why did Herodotus and Thucydides write history? What purpose did history serve for Herodotus and Thucydides and how is that different from what historians do today? Interestingly, on page 178, Scott McCloud asks a very similar question about the creation of art: “Does this artist want to say something about life through his art or does he want to say something about art itself?” So, if we understand historians to be practitioners of an art, and if we also understand, as Staley notes, “there is no Platonic medium that exactly and perfectly represents thought,” then in terms of searching for truth and expressing meaning, the value offered by mathematic precision seems at least as limiting as the syntactical confines of cause and effect relationships. In their pursuit of meaning, Staley makes plain that both writers and mathematicians use abstractions. But again McCloud notes: “When we abstract an image through cartooning, we’re not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its essential meaning, an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t.” On page 30, McCloud calls this “amplification through simplification.” I am not certain how much of the past is truly recoverable. So perhaps amplification through simplification has as much methodological applicability for cartoonists as historians. I find that prospect more than a little unsettling!