some day, maybe some day, ill listen when microsoft lectures me about “compliant browsers.

In the mean time, ill keep on using one that follows standards. And still works their livemeeting client just fine.

Jason Santa Maria, whom i recently introduced myself to, posted about a course that is using his website as an example of critiquing site design and usability. His focus is on the types of critiques he was given (and kudos to him for taking them in stride…some of those kids were harsh), but I came away with a more valuable lesson:

some schools actually CAN keep programs up to date and deliver them in an effective manner over the web.

what do i have to do to get a professor who is
a) this knowledgeable about current, relevant course material and
b) innovative enough to use wordpress to drive class participation?

has anyone else seen this kind of format used? Drexel uses blackboard and it is awful…and id KILL for a web development course that focused on standards and usability (instead of tables and frames!)

HEY DREXEL! Get off your ass and take MSU’s program as an example of solid, innovative course material that is relevant and presented in an online format. I’m sick of paying $1500 per class to “learn” from 5 year old slides on 7-10 year old material. I’m tired of being bothered with “busy work” and not being challenged or provoked to actually think on my own.

Ill give Drexel credit, their co-op program has helped me immensely. I’ve changed careers (from IT to web development) because of an opportunity it presented. But outside of that, the only thing I’ve learned is how much red tape comes with a high-ticket University.

The level of frustration that I’m experiencing with Drexel right now is obscene. I can’t get a return phone call unless I wave threats of an alumni’s annual donation going away, it takes weeks to get an intelligent human being on the phone at all. I waste hours upon hours a week staring at garbage slides and waiting until mid-week for a professor to respond as to why no assessments have been assigned for the week. Negligence, poor course material, laggy grading times…the whole thing is a mess, and I’m sick of it.

I’ve written the professor of this class at MSU, to try to get a feel for how he keeps his material fresh and interesting, and thought provoking. Maybe Ill get something to bring back to Drexel and suggest that they use to make their program not suck.

i’m not dropping out because i’ve already blown $50k on this piece of paper and i’ll be damned if i dont get it, and soon. But Drexel needs to quit wasting my time (and money) if they want to keep my business. I’ll take it to MSU, or anywhere else that doesnt suck, if it means a program that I can actually gain something from (or be proud to say I participated in).

YAAAAAARGH!

you might notice that i’ve rearranged a little bit…

my “navigation”, which is accessable my mousing over the red bar near the top of the page that says “navigation”, now contains the stuff that used to be down at the bottom, and the bottom has a scrolling tag/category box. This was due to the fact that my category list was getting unruly and long.

check it out!

something like 10% of my blog traffic is from people who search “Alex Hillman”.

who are you, and why are you searching for “Alex Hillman”?

somewhere in my cramped schedule i plan on taking some time to really evaluate some of the power behind the Yahoo UI Library. Ive seen Dustin Diaz do some cool stuff with it, but this morning Ryan pointed me to a sick Wordpress comment installation by Jack Slocum that was rapidly built using YUI. The system allows you to comment in blocks of content within a blog post, as well as the overall post. VERY cool. And, as Ryan pointed out, really freaking fast.

Demo/source included in the posting of the project itself.

worth checking out for sure.

i wrote about philly pride almost a month ago, and apparently I’m not the only one experiencing it. this recent wired article talks about the power and success behind barcamp and the collaborative format. They talk about BarCampNYC2, held just a couple of weekends ago. Making a cameo in the article were philly locals Jason Coleman and his fiancé Kim Wallmeier, young entrepreneurs from my hood and masterminds behind WineLog.net! As you might imagine, I have every intention of contacting them about their experiences at BarcampNYC2, and to talk about a full scale BarCampPhilly.

This quote stood out:
"Coleman and Wallmeier rarely get to mingle with so many tech entrepreneurs in their hometown of Philadelphia, so BarCamp was a chance to bounce ideas around with a like-minded audience."

THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE! Collaboration is the key! The Philadelphia indie community shall unite! WHO’S WITH ME!?!

"which makes me think there should be a glow in the dark version of easy cheese. it's not like the product has any integrity to begin with.
If you will eat room temperature cheese that comes out of can, you probably wont mind if it glows in the dark, too." - mitch hedberg (RIP)

ive been using deconcept’s swfobject for a while to remedy the IE Click to Activate box…along with simplifying the embedding of flash elements on the page. for one reason or another, the Click to Activate problem comes back if you leave the browser open for a little while, even though every flash element is embedded with javascript.

so while the IE bug is a strange, somewhat unpredicatble manifestation, one of my coworkers suggested this fix. I added it to the mix and everything is back to normal.

i tried to understand why, but really, it’s IE so all logic is out the window.

if anyone has any idea why this might happen, please, give a shout.

discuss

(thanks to my crazy coworkers and an elevator ride to the lunchroom)

as in, one more post for the night and then i’m done.

last night we picked up the piece that Ryan and I bought from the September opening at a friend’s gallery. A framed black and white print of a photo of Billy Idol taken by photographer Lithium Picnic/Philip Warner. I saw the piece the night before the opening and knew that it had to be on my wall.

I’m having a really hard time getting a good shot of it due to the glare off the frame, but the original shot below is from the lithium picnic website. Ours is black and white and doesnt have the cheezy billy idol logo in the top right ;-)