Magzalez’s eyes on media

I love me a good Ciara reference.

I edited a video shot by Alligator feature writer Chantelle Marcelle. She did a very good job of getting all of the types of shots she needed. The only real problem was the audio on the interviews was not very good. It’s OK though because I only used one of the interviews. She made sure there was a story in the footage she gave me, which is a good thing.

The video is pretty fun. Not much to say about it. I love me a good fiddler.

Just sent out from the University of Florida Web Administration office:

WebAdmin is looking for a student Web assistant. This position is part time during school, and can be full time during the summer if you are so inclined.

You: Enjoy developing and managing HTML/CSS standards compliant Web pages, Web servers, etc. Aren’t afraid to use the command line to get things done. Would like to work closely with designers and developers on cool Web site projects. Are looking for a challenging job where you’ll have the opportunity to solve problems and learn new skills while maintaining production Web sites in a real-world team environment.

Us: The Office of Web Administration provides Web site support and development for the university’s Web presence and critical path Web sites including: ufl.edu, president.ufl.edu, news.ufl.edu, trustees.ufl.edu, and many more! We are looking for a student Web assistant to manage and maintain professional quality Web pages and Web sites.

If you think this is a great match, please email your resume and a brief description of your development skills to webmaster [at] ufl [dot] edu with subject “Student Web Assistant Position.”

This position is only open to UF students!

Thanks,
Joe Spooner
Web Developer
Web Administration

Check it out, I mean, I don’t mind it. Check out the Web Admin blog while I’ve got you here.

The Alligator has a weekly entertainment section called the Avenue. It is a silly section, but I’m sure a lot of people read it. There is an over-the-top sex column along side book, cd and movie reviews. Honestly, I don’t think the paper puts enough work into the section, but that is only because the section does not put enough work into the paper.

Either way, I edited — and I used the term lightly today — a video shot by avenue-write Bailey Park. It is just a silly supplement to her story about a new store in Gainesville that I won’t bother plugging by putting its Web site here.

She shot the whole interview/tour in one take. It’s shaky; It’s crazy, but the information is actually pretty interesting, and it is a good example of how, if done right, even a simple video tour shot by a reporter can be a great supplement to a story that needs visuals.

Really though, the most important thing to come out of the video is the new Alligator logo that is going to appear at the end of all the videos. Exciting!

Last night I collaborated with The Alligator managing editor for online media, Ken Schwencke, a sweet and to-the-point infographic about proposed bus route changes around Gainesville.

I wrote the action script and made the design. Ken found the maps on the Gainesville Regional Transit System’s Web site. We copied some Google maps, and Ken overlayed the bus routes with the hoity toity Photoshop Pen tool — the most difficult part of the night.

I was glad I didn’t have a whole heap of trouble catching up on my Flash. It is really pretty intuitive once you’ve done it before. That was the first Flash I’d done since I made a small package for class a couple of months ago. Before then it had been more than a year.

Although this story and idea were sprung up on me, I commend Ken for thinking out of the box for different ways to present information on The Alligator’s Web site. The site’s multimedia section is growing as Ken has somehow motivated reporters to shoot video. Alligator photographer Charles Roop — great photographer — shot a video about a roller derby for today’s online edition as well. I’d be lying if I said I’d seen it already, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check it out!

I recently finished a freelance job I did for a UF fine arts professor. He asked me to turn his print, tenure package into a Web site. So I did.

I’m not exactly gushing with pride over this site, but I’m glad I did it. There are a whole mess of things that fly in the face of standards, validation and good sense, but hey, I was working with a certain customer who needed a certain finished product displayed in a very specific manner..

Some peculiarities of the job:

• Ridiculous, but I mean re-DIC-ulous amounts of content.
• Mr. Offerle was the first person I’d ever met who actually had javaScript disabled on his computer
• I only had 10 days to put this site together
• Much of the work came from ripping videos off of DVDs, cutting them into snippets and making them Web ready.

Things I am embarrassed about on this site:

• Does not validate: This is the first site I’ve made in a long time that doesn’t validate. The problem was that because he had javaScript disabled and his audience was a bunch of viejos whose computer settings couldn’t have been much different, I couldn’t use .swf object to embed video players or audio players.
• Doesn’t use a CMS: This site was a prime candidate for using a CMS, and with all the work I am doing with TextPattern I could have done it easily. The problem is that I only had 10 days to set up the entire site, edit all of the videos and audio, burn DVDs of the videos, make photo galleries and input the massive amount of text. Time just didn’t allow.
• SoundSlides demo: When crunch time came around, I needed to make some photo galleries. Unfortunately I didn’t have a registered copy of SoundSlides plus at my disposal. I had to do with the very cheap, very ugly and very stupid alternative of using the demo and dealing with the “This was made with SoundSlides Demo Version” sign. It goes away pretty quickly, but it’s up just long enough to make me want to vomit.
• I must have spent close to 70 hours in 10 days on top of my regular 40-hour work week.

Things I’m happy about:

• I got paid
• The customer really liked his final product
• I made some contacts, got some referrals and learned a bit about the world of freelance in terms of the Web.