Projects

XS Magazine was a class project which took a while to actually make it to the web, but I'm glad it finally made it. Getting sick for about two weeks near the end of the semester was a real pain and ended up changing my article. I do like what I ended up with in it, and I think I might eventually turn it into a book.
Read my article here. Go to the XS Magazine site and check out the rest of the writing by clicking on the XS logo.

Overall I'd say that I do like Salon.com. The writing is interesting, and has a definite left lean in its political view, but that's okay. It's nice to hear the other side. I never listen to Bill O'Reilly anyway.

I will take issue with the design of the site. It's so 1999. Some might think that's a good thing. I don't. Spend some money on web design. Make it a little more flashy. Not so much of a wall of text. It's the web, not a scholarly journal. Give them credit for updating regularly. This is something that a lot of sites don't do.

Navigation is not too badly organized, but is a little text heavy again. At least it's not as bad as the ICQ site used to be or as bad as Canada.com is.

I can't complain about the articles. They're interesting and they cover a variety of subject areas that I think are interesting to many readers.

They deal with important topics like: U.S. journalists that take government payoffs. Give them credit for taking on the right wing in the U.S. The articles I have read seem to be objective. If you're interested in a more objective point of view than something like Fox News, check out Salon.com.

When I first saw the Boundless site, I thought, "hey, this might be a cool outdoor site." I was wrong. I was very wrong. If you're interested in making babies, then this is the site for you. Oh, did I forget to mention that it's about that season of "purposeful singleness" and "once married, intentional family formation (having babies)?"

Designwise, this site is pretty slick. Someone pilfered a few collection plates to hire some good web designers. It's simple, clean and uncluttered. They've got a cool logo and a cool falling leaves flash animation on the opening page. They make good use of colour and have some nice photos.

The writing is not bad. The articles are interesting, even if they are doing the hard sell on saving my soul. You need to check out the advice of Professor Theophilus. I'm not sure where they got this guy from but is he advising George Bush?

I think that if you're into this brand of Christianity, this site will interest you. If you're wanting a good laugh or to just shake your head, you might find it here too. I'll give the creators of the site credit for a thought provoking examination of life's issues.

I like this site. There are a lot of interesting things to read, which will always keep me coming back. In the Antipop Culture section I found this article called E-jected. It's about a guy trying to meet people on the Internet. It's good.

I love the humour on this site. It's right up my alley. This article from the Socially Inept section about the 2004 year in review was particularly good. My favourite was the quote about Michael Jackson. How about the article about Ken Jennings? He's the guy that won so much dough on Jeopardy.

The design of the site is good. They've got a cool logo, I like the colours and it's easy to get around. It's an uncluttered design. Get used to yellow boxes. Keeps it organized though. Somebody gave the site a lot of thought before they designed it, and thank God they did. I've had enough of sites that are all over the map.

I'd have to say that the main audience for this site would have to be men. The writing isn't going to win a Pulitzer, but it's very good. Besides, do I really want to be reading serious stuff all the time? Not at all. The more humour I can get, the better. So, if you're needing a laugh or want to read some CD reviews, this is the place to go.

Aphelion is an interesting sci-fi/fantasy webzine. There is a lot of content there for people who are into this genre.

I'm not really fond of the design of the site. It's a throwback to the early days of the Internet. Think of it as looking deep into space. You know how scientists say that you're looking millions of years back in time? This is the Internet version of that.

But design, some say, isn't so important and that content is king. Content certainly wins out here. There are back issues of this zine that go back to February 1997. If you need to read a lot, then this is the place to do it.

You could look at the design as a retro statement of some sort. On the other hand, I read somewhere in the site that it is a total non-profit enterprise with no ads and no income of any sort. So, it's a labour of love and what you see is what you get.

The organization of the site really leaves something to be desired as well, but that's something that could be taken care of with a redesign. It's probably a bit of a daunting task with all that material!

On a personal note, my condolences go out to the creator of this site. His wife died less than a month before Christmas. She was only 44 too.

Are you interested in the death metal scene in Belgium? I know, you're asking yourself, "who isn't?" I had been wondering what my favourite bands Self-Inflicted and Putrid Inbred were up to lately. Now I know.

It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but the design of this site is good. They take the apocalyptic/dreary dungeon theme and run with it. The effect is great. It reminds me of a map in an Unreal Tournament game. Why don't web designers everywhere give their design this much thought?

There is a lot of good information on all your favourite death metal bands. It's all up to date too, so it's useful. Keep them coming back.

Other useful items on this site are the reviews. Wondering whether that Bloodfart CD really is worth getting? I don't know about you, but the title of their CD "The Unnameable" is so appropriate. Maybe it's referring to their name.

This site definitely caters to a particular audience and it does it well. Look past the objectionable (to some people) material and look at the design here. It's pretty slick.

I had a nightmare once about two evil babysitters.
They looked a lot like these guys.

This was the first site that I designed in my Online Journalism class. It was interesting but didn't turn out quite as I had hoped. Not bad for a first effort I figured.

After some debate on what the ideal site size should be in terms of screen resolution I adjusted it to 800 x 600. I learned a lot about Dreamweaver and tables. I think that the one on this site is actually done to 1024 x 768 and is one of the earlier versions. I tried to get the style sheet to work to stop the background image from tiling, but just couldn't get it to work. It's something that I'd still like to figure out though.

This was another experiment in web design. I figured I could do the "normal" website look, so I would try something different. I chose to go with a magazine format. The key to this one is the hot spot. It allows you to link off any portion of an image that you want. So, you can link off of the headlines in the magazine. The design aspect of this page took me a lot longer than anticipated. Overall, I was happy with how it turned out.

I'll be the first one to admit that I have a ways to go in terms of web design. I really enjoy it and I like being able to see the results of my work almost immediately. I will definitely be doing more of it in the future.

In class we covered Flash a little bit. I didn't incorporate any of that in my sites mainly because of a lack of time. If I wasn't taking five classes I would have had even more time to devote to these projects. I have some ideas for what I could have done with Flash for the sites.