Greetings all,
The warm spices and flavor of Mexican food provide comfort at my family dinner table, especially when the temperatures dip below zero. http://www.saveur.com/web-exclusive/the-flavors-of-old-mexico-55016.html. The slide show of food photographs moves slow enough so it is not a distraction while reading about Mexican culture.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
New Orleans slide show
I know the New York Times isn't the end all be all of the best on the internet, but a number of the slide shows they produced over the course of covering New Orleans after Katrina have stuck in my mind over the many months since.
A photographer relays his experience in the area during and after Katrina in New Orleans Revisited. (Click on the Return Trip tab. I can't seem to link to it directly.) His photographs and audio account give a more robust portrait of New Orleans "after the storm" than you typically get from a news outlet. He shows the destruction, but also captures a bit of the culture that makes the city unique. At the end of the show you see and hear the Treme Brass Band. They are playing the wedding I'm attending this weekend down there, and I expect to be parading behind them at some point in the next 72 hours. I hope you all are jealous!
If you have time, the Then and Now slide show on the tab in the top-left corner is also quite good.
A photographer relays his experience in the area during and after Katrina in New Orleans Revisited. (Click on the Return Trip tab. I can't seem to link to it directly.) His photographs and audio account give a more robust portrait of New Orleans "after the storm" than you typically get from a news outlet. He shows the destruction, but also captures a bit of the culture that makes the city unique. At the end of the show you see and hear the Treme Brass Band. They are playing the wedding I'm attending this weekend down there, and I expect to be parading behind them at some point in the next 72 hours. I hope you all are jealous!
If you have time, the Then and Now slide show on the tab in the top-left corner is also quite good.
Only 15 Days til Summer Solstice
That's right: Summer Solstice.
Hear me out. The days start lengthening again in December and it's not the cold, it's the dark, that turns Boston indoors, inward, and inimical to just about anything fun that involves stepping outside. Okay, so it is in part the cold but really much more the lack of sunlight on my pineal gland turning me into a troglodyte. The Solstice namers got it backwards: light re-flooding the world is a summery thing. Summer Solstice begins on December 21 when the balance of light in the day begins again to exceed darkness and that sorry day when dark begins to out shadow light, June 21, portends the winter and should be named accordingly. Maybe they weren't from this area?
The bright spot at this time of December is that seed catalogues begin arriving in my mailbox and I can start plotting what type of garlic I'll grow this year and how many different kinds of sunflowers. Invariably, I grow no garlic (though maybe this will be the year) and few sunflowers but I can plot. And dream - not only of more light, but of warmth from a breeze that is not my Glenwood gas stove.
Gayla Trail provides ample compost for this plotting. Great ideas, consistency, and above all a strong voice with solid writing make it clear why she has a big audience and lots of advertisers.
Aside from gardening my other interests run to nothing in particular. Lovely writing and beautiful images about everything and nothing.
I offer these as examples of writing worth reading.
Hear me out. The days start lengthening again in December and it's not the cold, it's the dark, that turns Boston indoors, inward, and inimical to just about anything fun that involves stepping outside. Okay, so it is in part the cold but really much more the lack of sunlight on my pineal gland turning me into a troglodyte. The Solstice namers got it backwards: light re-flooding the world is a summery thing. Summer Solstice begins on December 21 when the balance of light in the day begins again to exceed darkness and that sorry day when dark begins to out shadow light, June 21, portends the winter and should be named accordingly. Maybe they weren't from this area?
The bright spot at this time of December is that seed catalogues begin arriving in my mailbox and I can start plotting what type of garlic I'll grow this year and how many different kinds of sunflowers. Invariably, I grow no garlic (though maybe this will be the year) and few sunflowers but I can plot. And dream - not only of more light, but of warmth from a breeze that is not my Glenwood gas stove.
Gayla Trail provides ample compost for this plotting. Great ideas, consistency, and above all a strong voice with solid writing make it clear why she has a big audience and lots of advertisers.
Aside from gardening my other interests run to nothing in particular. Lovely writing and beautiful images about everything and nothing.
I offer these as examples of writing worth reading.
FLIP
Hi!
This is not my submission for the homework assignment, but I just came across this site that lets you create your own slideshows or online "flipbooks":
Flip
Look at this one, it is really cute:
Africa Project
The slideshow moves kind of quickly, but I really like the idea of making a personal slideshow with more than just pics. I feel like this isn't a good choice for the assignment though because the individual slideshows aren't actually owned and created by the siteowners.
I'll be back!
This is not my submission for the homework assignment, but I just came across this site that lets you create your own slideshows or online "flipbooks":
Flip
Look at this one, it is really cute:
Africa Project
The slideshow moves kind of quickly, but I really like the idea of making a personal slideshow with more than just pics. I feel like this isn't a good choice for the assignment though because the individual slideshows aren't actually owned and created by the siteowners.
I'll be back!
Multimedia Slideshow
Fullfilling my part of the HW assignment:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/12/04/theater/20071204_FARNS_SLIDESHOW_index.html
This is a slideshow from the NY Times. I liked the looks of it and how they tell a story. The text is easy to read, nicely written, and the photos are beautiful, especially on their travel section.
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/12/04/theater/20071204_FARNS_SLIDESHOW_index.html
This is a slideshow from the NY Times. I liked the looks of it and how they tell a story. The text is easy to read, nicely written, and the photos are beautiful, especially on their travel section.
The Good, The Bad
Per our assignment, I sleuthed out some websites whose copy provided some food for thought, quite literally. During this season, I like to peruse the catalogues of specialty food item purveyors. Although the hard catalogues that I receive in the snail mail usually entice me first, I typically log on to their websites and make an electronic purchase through their sites. Thus, I proceeded to approach their websites and examine them for good web writing, usability.
The Good
Zingerman's. I'm biased here since I adore ol' Zing and would order from them even if their website copy was written in pig latin. However, I think Zingerman's does a fairly good job of describing their goods (they have to describe them especially well because their site does not contain photos - just illustrations). The individual product descriptions are thorough - maybe a little too lyrical for the impatient web reader - but they do include extensive ingredient lists which can be helpful for those with diet concerns. Some of the product descriptions even tell stories, i.e. of how the products are made: citrus pressed oils from marina colonna. I also like that their categories are clearly labeled, with a one-line description of each, such as when I land on these thresholds for full-flavored gifts and cheeses.
The Not-so-Good
Harry and David's catalogues are well-known for their visual spectacle and the fruit display pictures that look like oil pastel still-lifes. But have you ever read the ad copy on their websites? 1-800-CORNY!
Let me just offer you the description of their chocolate truffles with my own comments in italics:
Rich chocolates like ours cause pleasure (Oh really? Glad they don't cause antipathy or discomfort!) and involve the emotions in much the same way as falling in love: They simply make you feel good. (Gag me.) Deeply fragrant (Glad they're not malodorous! Nothing worse than a truffle that stinks!), wholly satisfying, these are the kind of truffles that connoisseurs spend a small fortune hoping to discover in the world's finest shops and confectionaries. We could save them a lot of time and effort. Our gourmet assortment includes Cherry, Almond, Coffee, Raspberry, Double Chocolate and Dark Chocolate. An affordable luxury, in an elegant gift box. (This description does mention that there are 1 lb. of truffles. Wouldn't it be helpful if they could tell you other gift ideas I might like in case this description made me feel like yacking?)
The Good
Zingerman's. I'm biased here since I adore ol' Zing and would order from them even if their website copy was written in pig latin. However, I think Zingerman's does a fairly good job of describing their goods (they have to describe them especially well because their site does not contain photos - just illustrations). The individual product descriptions are thorough - maybe a little too lyrical for the impatient web reader - but they do include extensive ingredient lists which can be helpful for those with diet concerns. Some of the product descriptions even tell stories, i.e. of how the products are made: citrus pressed oils from marina colonna. I also like that their categories are clearly labeled, with a one-line description of each, such as when I land on these thresholds for full-flavored gifts and cheeses.
The Not-so-Good
Harry and David's catalogues are well-known for their visual spectacle and the fruit display pictures that look like oil pastel still-lifes. But have you ever read the ad copy on their websites? 1-800-CORNY!
Let me just offer you the description of their chocolate truffles with my own comments in italics:
Rich chocolates like ours cause pleasure (Oh really? Glad they don't cause antipathy or discomfort!) and involve the emotions in much the same way as falling in love: They simply make you feel good. (Gag me.) Deeply fragrant (Glad they're not malodorous! Nothing worse than a truffle that stinks!), wholly satisfying, these are the kind of truffles that connoisseurs spend a small fortune hoping to discover in the world's finest shops and confectionaries. We could save them a lot of time and effort. Our gourmet assortment includes Cherry, Almond, Coffee, Raspberry, Double Chocolate and Dark Chocolate. An affordable luxury, in an elegant gift box. (This description does mention that there are 1 lb. of truffles. Wouldn't it be helpful if they could tell you other gift ideas I might like in case this description made me feel like yacking?)
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Outreach Center
I’ve been working on a freelance project for the last 3 or 4 weeks, and the site finally went live over the weekend. I was trying to think of a way to post this in a way that’s relevant to this blog, but was coming up short, especially on the writing front. I mostly did the HTML and CSS coding, with only a little input on the design and no influence whatsoever on the content. There are definitely things that still need work, but the launch date we were held to was 12/1, and we felt it was "good enough" to hold its own as is. You can find the old design, which looked like it was from 1998 (but believe it or not, is actually just from 2006), on archive.org.
Katherine fortuitously gave me an in during lecture today—all of the very large, colorful background photos are from iStockphoto.com!
So here it is, the redesigned site for the Outreach Center.
(I’m not going to say what they do. You tell me: how well does the tagline work?)
Katherine fortuitously gave me an in during lecture today—all of the very large, colorful background photos are from iStockphoto.com!
So here it is, the redesigned site for the Outreach Center.
(I’m not going to say what they do. You tell me: how well does the tagline work?)
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