STA Blog

zimmerman 09-10

By

 

phil zimmerman

howdee

i’m phil. this is my first year with the sta program. i have a bachelor of fine arts from penn state university with a focus in studio art. i am currently pursuing a masters degree in architecture at ut.
my creative interests include various mediums of hand work, photoshop, illustrator and indesign. i am also familiar with several two and three dimensional drafting and modeling programs.

what i have been up to

september 3, 2009

after updating my wiki with the addition of some new links and text, i spent most of the afternoon working in photoshop on the sta group photo project. i think things are coming together with that and i hope to move on to the TIGER project soon.

september 4, 2009

i began design work for the TIGER website redevelopment. so far i have a rough concept for a possible logo or heading. most of my work, a sample of which is shown below, was done in illustrator, with some stuff done in photoshop and indesign. Click below to see the full sized version of the logo that I came up with.

september 8, 2009

today i was back working on the TIGER website. basically i was fleshing out the web page layout with text, logo and image placement and icon design. things are starting to come together, another couple of working hours and i think ill call it done.

september 12, 2009

i spent the afternoon wrapping up some ongoing projects, mainly the sta group photo and the TIGER website mock-ups. mostly i was in photoshop but i worked a little in illustrator. i am pretty excited with how they turned out, check out the full version of the TIGER page by clicking below.

september 14, 2009

today i worked briefly on the TILTS banner. im not too sure how its going to turn out, i may start over. most work i did was in photoshop today. the woodburn logo below is linked to a full version that i worked on.

september 15, 2009

i have two versions of the TILTS banner done which can be viewed by clicking the image below. again most of the work was done in photoshop, they may need some reworking they are still pretty rough.

september 18, 2009

worked on the rise of china site, but didn’t get too far on actual design. i got some photos from the web and adjusted them in photoshop and illustrator.

september 21, 2009

i started to work specifically on components of the china rising page. the design for a propaganda bonzai tree was done in photoshop.

september 22-23, 2009

i have spent some time focused on fleshing out the mock up for the rise of china page. most of my work has been completed in photoshop with some done in illustator. with a little more time spent on the layout of the page buttons and content and i will wrap up work on this project.

september 27, 2009

today i spent a little time working on some general office upkeep. i finally completed my compliance training sessions, updated my time sheet on basecamp and spent a little time organizing my wiki. i hope to finish my rise of china mock up later this coming week.

october 1-2, 2009

i started working on the french artists page, mostly preparing artist portaits and abstract backgrounds.

october 3, 2009

today i finished two of the french artists pages. it was an interesting process creating abstract graphics in illustrator. click on the links below to view the finished pages.

october 10, 2009

i started the day sketching out some ideas for a logo for the texas language center. after scanning the sketches i dropped some color in them in photoshop to get an idea of how the project color palette would look with my logo ideas. i also spent some time putting one of the sketches into a more fleshed out illustrator logo. i plan to sketch out a few more ideas then go back into illustrator and photoshop.

october 20, 2009

i have spent the majority of the past week and a half working on the design of a logo for the texas language center. after sketching ideas on paper an developing mockups, i have most recently been creating graphics in illustrator. see the attached image as an example.

october 29, 2009

i have finally finished the print version logo design for the texas language center. after much work in illustrator, i have gotten the graphic to a level that looks pretty good. click on the link to see the final product.

november 10, 2009

getting back into the avis des artists project has been a little change of pace. the graphics for the site are relatively abstract so i have been having a little fun with them. so far, ive completed three, check them out below.

november 15, 2009

today i continued with the avis des artists project, completing one more page and starting another. so far, i have been happy with the work i have produced for the project and it has been a great opportunity to be really creative. see the new page by clicking below.

links…..man

Nikki Wen 09-10

By

Nikki is a first-year STA and also a first-year PhD student in the Instructional Technology program. She finished her master’s degree in the same program in the summer of 2009. Before she came to the U.S., she was an elementary school teacher teaching English as a Foreign Language.
Nikki enjoys watching movies and jogging by the town lake. She married to Steven on year ago, who is also a PhD student at UT.
12.2.2009
  • Practice Illustrator tutorial
11.25.2009
  • Finished Tamil project Frame 13-18
11.18.2009
TAMIL studies
  • Finished Frame 12
  • Working on Frame 13-18
11.11.2009
  • Almost finish the bio site CSS coding
Link
11.04.2009
  • Taking CSS tutorial on Lynda.com and working on the bio site
  • Worked on Ancient Mesoamerica Image Correction
10.28.2009
  • Finished Passe Partout coding php files 04-10
  • Finished mock-ups for the personal web page
10.21.2009
  • Continuing the mock-up for the personal web page
  • Help with Passe Partout coding php files 04-10
10.15.2009
  • Made a PhotoShop mock-up for the personal web page
10.14.2009
  • Met with Prof. Donaldson about his personal web page
  • Built a mock-up for a personal web page in Dreamweaver
10.07.2009
  • Continue Photoshop CS4 tutorial on Lynda.com
  • Continue working on image correction
10.02.2009
  • Worked on Ancient Mesoamerica Image Correction (File000504557-000504561)
09.30.2009
  • Continued Photoshop CS4 tutorial on Lynda.com
09.23.2009
  • Taking Photoshop CS4 tutorial on Lynda.com
09.18.2009
  • Worked on China Rising mock-up
  • Evaluated Spanish Course Materials Project website and wrote up some feedback for revision
09.16.2009
  • Worked on TIGER redesign mock-up
09.11.2009
  • Practiced image correction
09.09.2009
  • Started the mock for COLA banner
  • Finished the mock up for the group picture. Will make some rollover images in Flash.
09.04.2009
  • Stared the mock up for group portrait
09.02.2009
  • Finished icon and changed banner for wiki
Resources
  2. COLOURlovers
  3. Lipsum Generator

 

Scorcelletti 09-10

By

My name is Spencer Scorcelletti and all I want to do with my life is make cool things.

8/16/10

  • Met with Kate and Suloni for further instructions on Per_Urlaub
  • Met with Ran for further instructions on World Lit content adding
  • Finished adding all content to Per_Urlaub
    • Styled all text according to Urlaub’s powerpoint
    • Added div’s to “basic” and “interpretative” questions sections to function with JS

8/12/10

  • Added more content to Per_Urlaub
    • Resolved some of the JS conflicts
  • The content is going to require some styling

http://dev.laits.utexas.edu/d6_spencer/page/introduction

8/10/10

  • Started adding content to Per_Urlaub
    • Ran into some conflicts when the complexity of the information the JS would be displaying was increased
  • Touched up and started styling some of the JS boxes

8/9/10

  • Began work on coding for Reading Comprehension page turner
  • Met with Ran about China Rising site and received new deadline for Friday 8/20/10

8/5/10

8/4/10

  • Began coding of China Rising

8/3/10

  • Worked some more on fixing kinds with Per_Urlaub site

8/2/10

  • Met with Kate to get tutorial on using JQuery for accordion content for Per_Urlaub site and styling CSS for navigation to have unique background color per page upon hover
  • Worked on implementing JQuery based accordion to Per_Urlaub site.
    • Ran into some trouble though. Upon clicking on link to expand content, link color turns white, and no content expands.
    • Using the exact same code outside of drupal, the JS works great. Must be something wrong that I’m doing with Drupal.
      • Also, having trouble accessing the server. I wasn’t able to access the CSS.
      • Will follow up on this tomorrow

7/29/10

  • STA Meeting
  • Met with Sarah to go over OCR world lit editing

7/22/10

Feathers in my cap:

Black eyes:

  • Have not had time to finish javascript for expanding content within Per_Urlaub site
    • Will meet with Kate on that soon
  • have not had time to start working on the implementation of the PDF>OCR>TEXT>HTML>JS but will be meeting with Ran on the soon
  • Have not finished STA wiki cell

7/19/10

  • Met with Dave to go over details for coding of ChinaRising site

7/14/10

7/9/10

  • Worked on transferring raw PDF documents to PDF templates, to correct color issues and shadow popping up in the binding
  • Upon further review this process appears doable, but more time-consuming than the original digitization of the book itself and with inconsistent results of quality (a template for one scan may not be good for a different scan, + different genres [i.e. novel, poetry, etc…] have different formats and may require different templates and individual touching up.)
  • Investigated potential ways of optimizing the process and quality of text:
*Promising results have been achieved using Adobe’s built in OCR technology. Although each individual word, as well as character recognition, are nearly flawless (I would say 99%), the formatting is buggy.

The next step is to develop a reliable process:

  • Of rendering the text properly via the correct OCR settings
  • AND putting the text in a visually appealing as well as faithfu-to-the-text way.

This will most likely require a compromise between individually having a human format each page, and having an automated process, one in which the OCR automatically generates the text of the body, and a human manually puts the body text in the correct format.

7/7/10

Scanned and merged:

  • Oct 21 Goethe 2159-2182
  • Oct 26 Gothe 2183-2217
  • Oct 28 Goethe 2217-2263
  • Nov 2 Pushkin 2284-2305
  • Nov 9 Baudelaire 2420-2432
  • Nov 11 Proust 2674-2713
  • Nov 16 Woolf 2735-2746
  • Nov 18 Borges 2871-2881
  • Nov 23 Achebe 2931-3030
  • Nov 30 Achebe 2931-2980

Bulk of scanning is now complete. Now the process of correcting needs to begin.

Consulted quality of digitizations with Suloni and recorded her recommendations to Basecamp

  • Identified reading assignments that need to be redone

Made an appointment with Ming to begin training and overview for Humanities Institute site scraping

7/6/10

Scanned and merged:

  • Sept 23 1001nights 923-948
  • Sept 28 Dante 1010-1039
  • Sept 30 Dante 1060-1064, 1078-1082, 1130-1142
  • Oct 7 Montaigne 1502-1523
  • Oct 12 Shakespeare 1629-1671
  • Oct 14 Shakespeare 1671-1726
  • Oct 19 Basho 2108-2134

Met with Suloni briefly to get a brief overview on the Humanities Institue scraping project

7/1/10

Scanned and merged:

  • Sept 7 Meda pages 433-451
  • Sept 9 Meda. 451-465
  • Sept 14 Chuang Chou 555-565
  • Sept 16 Kalidasa 746-774
  • Sept 21 Kalidasa 774-811

6/30/10

  • Met with Sarah to go over scanning procedures
  • Came up with a workflow to improve scanning and merging
  • Scanned August 31 Gilgamesh 10-31 and September 2 Gilgamesh 31-42
  • Merged the above documents into single PDFs
  • Posted workflow ideas onto Basecamp

6/29/10

  • Fixed Nice-menu module CSS issues: The nice menu block going past the left sidebar block, the very faint grey background that was showing up on the “Training” link, as well as various lines sticking out randomly and entering the content.
  • Added a new favicon to the Per_Urlaub theme.

6/24/10

6/21/10

  • Added “nice-menu” module to site, with help from Kate. Edited .info file and added additional variable to PHP and CSS.

6/19/10

  • Worked on making some finishing touches to the CSS for Per Urlaub.

6/18/10

  • Continued editing CSS for Per Urlaub theming, as well as changing some of the PHP to fix some menu problems.

6/17/10

  • Began basic CSS theming for Per Urlaub site: backgrounds, margins, etc…, from 328 theme.

6/16/10

  • Assisted faculty for technology seminar: How to use Blackboard (continued): using Blackboard with Webspace.

6/15/10

  • Assisted faculty for technology seminar: On the fly video production.

6/14/10

  • Got permissions to the theming folder for the Drupal site. Started writing an outline for the Per Urlaub structure.

6/11/10

  • Worked on getting acquainted with Drupal by following Kate’s cheatsheet.

6/9/10

  • Assisted faculty for technology seminar: Webspace, UT Wiki/Blog tools, and other campus provided tools.

6/8/10

  • Went to photo lab to get green-screen photos for wiki.

6/4/10

  • Met with Chris to get training on scanning and color correction.

6/3/10

  • Met with Kate for Drupal crash course.

6/1/10

  • Orientation: Punching in/out, picked up key, introduced to wiki.

Mai-Thi Le 09-10

By

WATAAAAHHHH!!

intimidating, aren’t i? NAH! don’t be scared, just be on my good side and all will be well! instead of that, i will look more like this:

better, eh? 🙂 underneath all of that black ninja cloth is a fun-loving, tiny 4’11” person! stuff you need to know about me is that…

i am vietnamese…yes, there are other asian people out there..and i’m one of the other ones!

my favorite color is this bright aqua teal-ish color.

i love eating and sleeping although i can’t figure out what to do first when i’m both sleepy and hungry. it’s a sad dilemma.

i play this legit asian instrument called the “dan tranh”…that long wooden thing with a bunch of strings on it.

lastly, i’ve always wanted to find a latin lover and change my last name to valencia. but if all else fails, i will make my boyfriend go tanning and turn french instead (ask for explanation if interested)!

mai-thi’s wiki!

11/18/09

  • finished all charts!

____

11/4/09

  • made some pie charts for texas politics
  • made more mock-ups

____

10/28/09

  • front page news mock-ups
  • starting on COLA front page mock-ups

____

10/21/09

  • meso slides
  • starting on COLA front page mock-ups

____

10/14/09

  • english – DONE! just waiting on final word from ming about the english folks!

____

10/7/09

  • english – discovered lots of hidden pages that need to be moved over! yikes!

____

9/30/09

  • english – moved over all navigation pages and the pages below them

up next – creating pages for the links on those pages!

____

9/23/09

  • meso-american corrections
  • jewish – mock up done
  • china rising – mock up done

9/16/09

  • navy guy – finished dressing the guy in a new jacket!
  • eagle/ pigeon-mahjig – redid the bird so it looked more eagle-like..i think

____

9/9/09

  • navy guy – trekking along on the jacket

for a laugh, check out some awkward family photos!

Camri Hinkie 09-10

By

Camri Hinkie

I'm Camri Hinkie and I am a third-year Journalism student. This is my second year as an STA, and I primarily deal with Illustrator and Photoshop. I love cats. Check me out below at Hogwarts! (And all the cool stuff I make this year, of course.)

 

lol catz

May 5

  • Finished adding metadata to the branding graphics on DASE.
  • Working on more now!!

April 21

Almost done with COLA branding graphics for the departments

Here are a few examples:

March 24

  • Working on ASL php filling in the video links.
  • STA presentation stuff.
  • Found more OPA images.

March 3

  • Finding stock photos for Kate.
  • Making 500 width COLA graphics.
  • llilas crops for the new 960 size.

February 25

  • Finished LLILAS and History resize.
  • Finished Rhetoric and Writing illustration.

February 17

  • Finished the Texas Map for Prof. Menchaca.
  • Working on ASL site.
  • A little more on Rhetoric and Writing illustration.

February 10

*Started helping Ran with the ASL online CSS. Made thumbnails for input on the page.

*Working on Rhetoric and Writing Illustration.

*Working on COLA news graphics.

January 27

*Working on Rhetoric and Writing illustration.

*Met with Stuart about Moore site changes.

*Made a few more news graphics.

January 19

Continued working on Rhetoric and Writing illustration.

December 9

  • Working on Rhetoric and Writing illustration.

December 2

  • Even more COLA news graphics!
  • Doing image search for OPA

November 18

  • Started adding info/text to Prof. Ortega-Llebaria’s site.
  • Met with Christine and Nikki about Tamil and finished scanning in the PDF version of the book.
  • More COLA news graphics!!!

November 11

  • Working on COLA News Graphics.

November 4

  • Fixed Prof. Ortega-Llebaria’s web page.
  • Worked on news column graphics.

October 28

  • Met with Prof. Ortega-Llebaria about website and started building the page.
  • made some mockups for ASL

October 21

  • Working on FINALLY finishing Unit 19 backgrounds.
  • Starting mockups for Unit 20.
  • Finished Sociology feature banner.
  • Meeting with Prof. Ortega about her bio site on the 27th.

October 9

  • Re-worked the ASL Unit 19 backgrounds to be less distracting.

September 30

  • mock-up for EEJH.
  • Fixed the colors for China Rising.
  • Made thumbnails for ASL and worked on Unit 19 artwork.

September 23

Beginnings of mockups for East European Jewish History.

Also working on ASL Unit 18 thumbnails and making changes to Unit 19 artwork.

September 18

China Rising mockups:

September 16

  • Finished with Cicero
  • Worked on STA portrait
  • finished ASL Unit 19 art
  • Resizing ASL Unit 18 art

September 2

  • Worked on Cicero bibliography
  • Need info about what to do next on ASL

August 24

STA Orientation!!!!

Chris Gillette 09-10

By

Chris Gillette

Christopher Gillette has been working for the LAITS Department for nearly 4 years as a digital archivist, which entails scanning and color correcting photos in Photoshop.

Christopher recently changed his major to Sociology with a minor in American Sign Language.

Chris is an avid reader who gives hearty hugs and looks forward to heavy downpours.

He enjoys live music, board games, climbing trees, and spending time with friends and family.

Christophers ideal future involves lots of traveling

“Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God” –Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

What I’m Doing:

August 19, 2010

  • Worqspace

July 22, 2010

  • Worqspace

July 15, 2010

  • Worqspace
  • resumed petroleum scanning (Cement)

July 8, 2010

  • Worqspace

Cinco de Mayo

  • started scanning Prehistory of Texas
  • started Worqspace project

April 28, 2010

  • finished batch of COLA IDs
  • Meso American corrections
  • uploaded Petroleum files to hard-drive
  • worked on presentation page

April 21, 2010

  • started COLA IDs

April 14, 2010

  • finished scanning (casing) for Petroleum
  • started/finished scanning (catheads) for Petroleum
  • started/finished scanning (cathodic protection) for Petroleum
  • started/finished scanning (cellar) for Petroleum

April 7, 2010

  • more (casing) scanning for Petroleum
  • corrected image for pro bene meritis

March 31, 2010

  • more (casing) scanning for Petroleum

March 24, 2010

  • more (casing) scanning for Petroleum
  • Moeller scans

March 17, 2010

  • cleaned and rescanned for Hoelscher

SPRING BREAK

March 10, 2010

  • Scanned La Figure D’Hector for Marc Bizer
  • Corrected La Figure D’Hector for Bizer
  • Finished scanning (Capsules) for Petroleum
  • Started/Finished scanning (Cargo Basket) for Petroleum
  • Started scanning (Casing) for Petroleum

February 24, 2010

  • Finished scanning (Canada) for Petroleum
  • started scanning (Capsules) for petroleum

February 17, 2010

  • Meso American corrections
  • Petroleum scanning (Canada)

February 10, 2010

  • Scanner problems
  • Finished scanning pipeline_construction binder for Petroleum
  • Started scanning Ca-Cel binder for Petroleum

CABLE SPOOL

CANADA

February 3, 2010

  • Scanning pipeline_contruction for Petroleum

January 27, 2010

  • Scanning primer_of_pipeline_construction binder for Petroleum

November 18, 2009

  • Petroleum Scanning

November 11, 2009

  • Petroleum Scanning
  • reviewed Ashley’s meso recorrections (twice) and gave feedback

November 4, 2009

  • Petroleum Scanning

October 28, 2009

  • Petroleum Scanning

October 21, 2009

  • Petroleum Scanning
  • MesoAmerican Correction Feedback for Ashley
  • Flatbed Scanning with Ashley
  • Searched Archives for Witt Scans
  • Sorted Through Backup Disks for Witt Scans

October 14, 2009

  • Meso American Corrections
  • Petroleum Scanning

September 30, 2009

  • Meso American Corrections
  • Petroleum Scanning

September 16, 2009

  • Color Correction Tutorial with Ashley
  • Petroleum Scanning
  • Follow-up Correction Meeting with Ashley
  • Color Correction Tutorial with Sarah
  • STA Group Wiki Banner & Rollover Banner

September 9, 2009

  • Scanning Tutorial with new STA’s
  • Bio for Wiki (see above)

September 2, 2009

  • STA Orientation
  • new Wiki Banner (see above)
  • new Wiki Tile (see above)
  • Wiki Portrait Thumbnail
  • Scanning Tutorial with Ashley