What's on the midterm?

° Midterm organization

Ø Read required articles:

§ Graphics overview – typography

§ Impact chapter 7 on charts and graphs, informal reports

§ Evaluation/investigation/status reports

§ “Aesthetics and Technique in Data Graphical Design” by Tufte

§ “Understanding Readers” by Redish

§ Impact chapter 10 resume and letter of application

§ Read class notes on Persuasion and Impact

§ Study class 6 lecture notes on “user stories/audience matrix”

Ø Midterm is separated into 2 or 3 parts

Ø One: short answer (answer 3 of 5 questions; or 5 of 7)

§ Sentences (I didn’t can’t what Jamie said about this)

§ Identify 5 things from a letter of application

Ø Two: Revision, problem solving

§ Similar to Prince William Sound assignment (in class)

Ø 60/40 split, or 50/50

Ø 1.5 hour exam, with 2 hours given

Ø Bring your own paper to the exam.

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

As legend has it, Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in 6 words. His response was "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

The technical analysis assignment looks more like a riddle to me.

How much do we include in 500 words? I'm not complaining that we don't have enough to write, but what kind of detail do we need? Are the few readings on writing/graphical analysis enough to help up write something cleaver and thought-provoking?

Meh.

Could you describe yourself in 6 words? I find it almost as difficult as this assignment -- Ha! -- so much to include, but to what level of detail? I'll give this a try.

Bespoke threads. Active life. Loves all.

Alas, another week will begin

Ladies,

I'm still awake and need to run off to sleep ... as soon as I get the last half of my lunch made.

I've had one of the busy months in my life, and no signs of slowing down. I have put some thought into the assignment (one due on Feb 21). Instead of having a nervous breakdown (joke), I'll probably email him the goods the day after or something. I'll see. I just want to get this term done!

I want to get back on the ball next weekend for this project. This whole reading week thing didn't help my situation :( but I think I see the light!

I want everyone to focus on this; in one month we should be close to finished our project. Wouldn't that be mahvelous?

I haven't kept up on my reading, but I'll try to do better.

I want to hear how everyone is. How are you? I've been trapped in my own world, deciding it would be better to try to power through this crazy busy time.

Hugs and love for everyone!

Hi everyone!!!

Hello ladies,
Thank you for the invite. Hope everyone's weekend was not as short as mine!
See you gals on Thursday.

Photography? Ok. Why can't we see it? I'm curious!

Here is the course web site.

http://private.james-roberts-photography.com/courses/4310/

Guess what?! If you go to this site, you can see his photography. Not bad! I'm no longer curious.

http://james-roberts-photography.com/

Brainstorming -- class project

I've decided that working on an "open source" project and creating documentation for a piece of software is the way to go. Not only can we contribute our documentation to a team when we are done with the course, but we can put on our resumes that wrote documentation and it's out there for the world to see; it's a publication!

A great place to look for open source software is:

http://sourceforge.net/

Updates I'm writing this on Wednesday evening (Jan 9) 2 days later (I've been researching)

I have three ideas for this project. To ensure that everyone has access to the software, my requirement when searching was that the software was open and free. Open is hard concept to define here so I defer to wikipedia or opensource.org. I also don't want to pay for it, but legally. I also wanted to brainstorm about software that everyone would be familiar with and that they've seen before. The categories of software I state in this modest list should be familiar with everyone in our class -- so the basic concepts of how to use this won't be too difficult to grasp.

1. Instant messaging software
   
2. Blogging software
3. Photo management software

Let me give some examples of software we can work on for the project, going through each idea above.

1. Instant messaging software

The IM clients Pidgin and Miranda have FAQ and some documentation already, but we could improve on it or we could reorganize some of the information. We can also contribute to these projects -- they are continuously being developed.

2. Blogging software

I don't have any other ideas other than Wordpress. It's an open project, not owned by a company and anyone can use it.

3. Picture management software

We could document Picasa, but it's owned by Google. I don't know if we would be able to publish our documentation when we finish this course.

Innovative minds don't think alike ...

... that's why were are all good friends because we collaborate well. Here's an article that caught my eye that is relevant to communication studies. The New York Times has really good articles that appeal to thirsty minds, read this one here.

Wishing all my friends a healthy and joyous New Year in 2008! I can't wait to see everyone in a few days. Let's kick ass!