Category: Work

25 Years of UF

On February 26, 2001, I stepped into my office at 3219A Weimer Hall in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida as the College’s first full-time Web Administrator. 25 years later, I’m still the primary Web Developer in the College. The job has grown and taken me along for the ride, or vice-versa.

Looking back on some things:

  • My cell phone was a Nokia 5120.
  • I didn’t personally own a digital camera. That happened later that year.
  • My home computer was a Power Mac 8500.
  • My home Internet service was dial-up.
  • My personal website was a /~username account at my ISP.
  • Similarly, my personal email address was with my ISP.
  • 9/11 hadn’t happened yet.

Some milestones:

  • My first refresh of the College site launched for Fall 2001.
  • 2003 – Met Jeffrey Zeldman for the first time at a work conference at Indiana University.
  • 2004 – First live video webcast of a conference.
  • 2005 – First trip to SXSWi and first WordPress sites (this is one of them).
  • 2009 – Added WUFT.org to my work responsibilities.
  • 2011 – Shifted from being a “gang of one plus student assistants” to the newly-formed communications group.

Check back, I may add some more memoirs and milestones.

Blowing the dust off the blogs

I started by blowing the dust off the work blog last week. And yesterday it got a new template with an assist from my departing work assistant Charlotte Porter.

I’ve got plans to do more here, too. I changed the template last weekend to the new WordPress default after discovering a problem with the old one. I’m also planning to shake up the content a bit, first by getting rid of the old photo galleries. Some of those may move to my Flickr, others will just live forever in an archive on a hard drive at home.

I also have some cool new content plans that I hope to start executing in the near future (hint: think kayaking). And there may be a new template, too.

My new audio recorder

iPod plus TuneTalkStereoI picked up a new gizmo last week on my holiday Friday off of work, a Belkin TuneTalk Stereo accessory for my iPod. It records in either “CD quality” (44.1 KHz, 16-bit, stereo) or lower quality (22.05 KHz, mono) using its built-in stereo microphone or from an external microphone or sound source using its 1/8″ input jack. It only works with “5G” iPods. It cost $69 at The Apple Store.

We’ve been doing a lot more with audio at work this year and it’s been fun. It’s handy to carry an audio recorder around and this is certainly much smaller than a Microtrack is, if I have my iPod with me anyway. It can also record for a lot more time and certainly has longer battery life than the Microtrack.

I was asked today, “what are you going to record with it?” and couldn’t give a good answer. It would have been handy to have along on my trip to Britain this year so I could show family here what the family members we met over there sound like. I can take it to church and record more sermons for the Web site (even though Gary has passed away and I miss him tremendously). If my grandparents or my father were still around, I could use it to record oral history from them. If you’re a family historian or genealogist, I think an audio recorder is now a must-have tool (I’m a recovering one). I can record the wind chimes on my back porch or the sandhill cranes down by the lake.

When I showed it to Mindy today she said she wanted to hear some samples online (I suppose so she can hook me up on her work blog). These were made with the built-in mic. I haven’t tried any of the better mics we have around yet. They are also unprocessed except for conversion from .wav to .mp3 format.

The following was recorded in my office. I just grabbed an announcement off the table in the lab and read it into the recorder.

[audio:Rosenblum.mp3]

I wanted something better than that, though. So at home I read a passage from the book I read over the weekend. I like it better.

[audio:casinoroyale.mp3]

Update (14 Nov): I had a brief opportunity today to try it out with an Electro-Voice 635B handheld microphone. I read the guest speaker announcement again because that was handy. The levels came in a little lower than the built-in mic, possibly due the low-end cable that was available today. We have some other cables ordered and we’ll try that when they arrive in a few days.

[audio:Rosenblum635.mp3]

Photo presentation online at my work site

Last night at UF, renowned photojournalist David Burnett gave an excellent presentation at the Union auditorium in conjunction with his exhibition opening at the Union gallery. The humor and enthusiasm in his talk was infectious and I came away with a lot of enthusiasm for the art form. Let’s see what I do with it. You can watch a replay of the presentation online, which I produced.

It was interesting to note that at any given time he could take a picture with a Canon D-SLR, a 4×5 Graflex, a Holga, or a digital point-and-shoot, which he produced to take a photo of the audience so he could show his Mom how many people came out to see him. I might have to pick up a Holga to play with.

I’m writing about this here rather than at work because this is where I blog about photography.

Update: After I sent him a tip, photographer, author, and editor Derrick Story posted a link to here and the webcast on his excellent blog, The Digital Story. I highly recommend his blog and podcast to anyone serious about their photography.

I should do more here than announce photo sets

I really should. Maybe I’ll comment on the new TV season sometime. In the mean time, however, I have posted several photo sets over on Flickr.

  • First, at some point this Summer, I posted a somewhat complete album of pictures from my June vacation with Mom to England and Scotland. I later found some stragglers that may be added at a later date. Or maybe not.
  • In mid-August, I led a group from the cycling club on a ride, eat, and tube adventure at Ichetucknee Springs that we dubbed “The Strays Triathlon.” It was the only opportunity I really had this Summer to go tubing. Maybe I’ll get to go again in early Fall before the weather gets too cool for it. That is, if I can get a certain someone to go with me.
  • The week after tubing the Ichetucknee, I was off to Chicago for this year’s convention of the Society of Professional Journalists where I once again produced Webcasts of many of the sessions. I didn’t have much time for sightseeing, but came home with some neat pictures. I had the pleasure of meeting and getting my picture taken with Bob Dotson of NBC News. I will be posting some techie details about Webcasts on my work blog.

Public Speaking Engagements

On Friday, April 21, I head off to Tampa where I will be giving two presentations, “Web Publishing Tips” and “Video and Audio for the Web,” at the annual convention of the Florida Scholastic Press Association. I have a soft spot in my heart for the FSPA because I attended the convention twice (’80 and ’81) as a high school journalist. The presentations are not open to the public, but the slides will be online afterward.

On Thursday, April 27 at 7 p.m., I will give a presentation on “How to select and use a digital camera” at the Melrose library. All are welcome to come and bring cameras or problem photos and get free advice on usage or improvements. I have given this sort of presentation before and have always been well-received. The first time I did this, I sold a photo. This presentation is free and open to the public.

Me, the podcaster

I wrote today at work about a recent quick project wherein I added a podcast to the Rock104 web site.

My friend Matt, the designer of the Rock104 site, asked me if he could use the code for AnRWatch.com, another site he’s involved with. I was happy to share the code, but it had to be rewritten in PHP first, which I did as a learning exercise. That ended up being easier than I thought it would be. AnR Watch is a monthly webzine that promotes new, unsigned rock bands.

I mentioned these projects to my friend Susanna, who I know is interested in podcasting since she’s both a musician and a web designer. She asked if she could use the code for podcasting sermon recordings on her church site. I sent her the code.