Geeky wife of a web developer

Sunday tips: RSS test drive.

Julia Demchenko — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 21:20:51 +0000

After a short vacation and two weeks of re-adjusting myself on both professional and personal levels I am back on track. To stretch up a bit I will start with a post about RSS-feeds.

RSS-feeds are essential part of nowadays’ life. It is not a discovery that the mankind is now on a level of informational society and information is the most valuable asset. Especially when your activity is based on new technologies, web development, internet marketing, etc you need to keep track of all news in your field, to read your colleagues’ opinions on the subject or catch new trends. For me RSS-feeds now are the same as weekly newspaper for our fathers. It’s both habit (morning paper with coffee before breakfast) and the only way to get fresh news (as I believe now news appears on the web first). And of course, the main advantage of the RSS-feeds is a possibility to keep all your sources of information in one place, sort them by priority and “interestingness” and quickly access them.

I caught up on RSS-mania a year ago. I tried to add almost every blog or community to my RSS-reader which was at least somehow interesting for me. Of course I ended up with more than hundred feeds in the reader and hardly could make my reading through one third of the feeds.

I realized I have to do something to save my time and to keep my attention on what is really important for me.

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Knitta — the gang that makes cities warmer

Julia Demchenko — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 23:10:04 +0000

I was browsing Flickr today and bumped into this interesting photo blog with pictures of some knitted pieces were placed on different public constructions like guide-post, hand-rails and etc. And eventually I found myself on the website of the group who call themselves Knitta.

From their about page:

Knitta began in August 2005, when the soon-to-be-Knittas were discussing their frustration over unfinished knitting projects: half-knitted sweaters and balls of yarn gathering dust. That afternoon, they knit their first door handle. Then it dawned on them… a tag crew of knitters, bombing the inner city with vibrant, stitched works of art, wrapped around everything from beer bottles on easy nights to public monuments and utility poles on more ambitious outings. With a mix of clandestine moves and gangsta rap — Knitta was born! Today, Knitta is a group of ladies of all ages, nationalities, and… gender.

I think this is a very creative and makes cities more beautiful and warm looking. I would definitely join them if I could knit. Maybe I should start learning to do that because I see very good way of promoting one’s blog for example in this activity. Just put a label with the link. And it’s less disturbing as stickers or graffiti.

Make your blogposts clean and readable

Julia Demchenko — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 15:01:30 +0000

We all studied grammar at school and punctuation was an important part of it. But majority neglects the rules of correct punctuation online. And I am not talking about instant messaging, forums or chats. My attention catches blog posts and respectable websites once in a while. Well, I am not that nerd who will notice missed dot or comma. But putting minus instead of dash or inch symbol instead of quotation marks is not serious at all. To tell the truth, it is just so much more appealing with correct characters.

Here I wrote a short but handy list of HTML entities I use.

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Julia Demchenko — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:45:08 +0000

Stuff I read:

A List Apart
Webworker Daily
Smashing Magazine
456 Berea Street
BittBox

Cool Projects:

Software Defender
Second Project

Julia Demchenko — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:41:32 +0000

This page is an overview of my work samples. Most of the projects were done during last year of studying at Hyper Island but there are also some freelance works. As I’m in a learning process I try to take different roles in projects and explore all the techniques and possibilities. Although I am a great activist in field of usability, accessibility, correct semantics and valid code I also like to “play” with ActionSript and expressions in After Effects.

Musicbay website

Client:

Musicbay, Sweden.

Participation:

Story, animation, storyboard and sound editing.

Description:

During one module at Hyper Island groups worked with real-life clients. My group worked with Swedish design bureau called Musicbay and the assignment was to redesign their current website. This animation was an intro for the website. Guys from Musicbay liked it and want to use it. I don’t know if they will use the intro but to make it was a lot of fun.

Crew12.se — portfolio site for students of Crew 12

Client:

Crew 12, Sweden.

Participation:

Technical part — random help with Flash.

Description:

One of the assignments for Crew 12 at Hyper Island was to make a web site about the crew with some information about each student. Everyone was more or less involved with the project.

Experience Technology’06: “Leopold”

Client:

Hyper Island, Sweden. For ET’06 exhibition.

Participation:

Technical part — ActionScript programming.

Description:

The task for group of 5 students to find a new use for existing technology (GPS receiver). The result was a flash-based art performance. On the radio-controlled car we put the GPS receiver connected to a laptop. A simple application was writing coordinates from the GPS into an XML file. A Flash application on a remote laptop was working with this XML and according to coordinates — changed the car position within the grid that we defined beforehand. Every cell of the grid contained different background image, so when the car entered specific cell in this imaginary grid the flash application displayed cell’s background on a big screen in a chill-out room.

“Subvideo”

Client:

Participatory Academy, Sweden.

Participation:

All content and animation (made in Adobe After Effects).

Description:

During week-end 22-24 September, 2006 the 4th European Workshop On Cross Media and Collaboration took place in Växjö, Sweden. Eight students from Hyper Island, Crew 12 were invited to participate in concept development workshop. The task was to visualize five ideas for new media projects. Time to complete the project — from 17:00 Saturday evening till 10:00 Sunday morning. To read more about workshop and see motion reel of all concepts visit official site — Crew 12 at cross media workshop.

Personal Motion

Client:

Hyper Island, Sweden.

Participation:

All content and animation (made in Adobe After Effects).

Description:

Individual task to make a 20 seconds motion splash for upcoming online portfolio. Time to complete the task was 24 hours.

«Crew 2 Guru»

Client:

Hyper Island, Sweden.

Participation:

Technical part — ActionScript programming.

Description:

Task for group of 5 students to make a presentation of survay results on companies – potential employers for Hyper Island’s students in predefined region (The Netherlands). The result was a flash based presentation–game.

Geeky wife of a web developer

Sunday tips: RSS test drive.

Knitta — the gang that makes cities warmer

Make your blogposts clean and readable

Crew 12 students:

Stuff I read:

Cool Projects:

Musicbay website

Client:

Participation:

Description:

Crew12.se — portfolio site for students of Crew 12

Client:

Participation:

Description:

Experience Technology’06: “Leopold”

Client:

Participation:

Description:

“Subvideo”

Client:

Participation:

Description:

Personal Motion

Client:

Participation:

Description:

«Crew 2 Guru»

Client:

Participation:

Description: