Mark this off the list of simple things I wanted to get done for this site.
I made the above banner, though I don’t have plans for using it as a header. Rather, it’ll serve its purpose as a focus when I need one, in places like on my blogging experience page. Something that no site in the world needs but will get action if it exists.
ChristopherWink.com was always meant to be my professional Web site, where I blogged about the interests and experiences that involve being a young journalist today. I decided I needed a place to display my more personal experiences, particularly pursuing My Life To Do List. I am announcing the soft launch of that site today.
When I was 13, I sat down in my bedroom of my parents’ home in rural northwest New Jersey and I composed a list of 26 things I had to do before I died.
From time to time, I have updated it, so that the list, now in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, is a more than 300-item syllabus for my life. It still governs the choices I make and experiences I want to have. It’s where my money goes and dreams lead.
Continue reading My Life To-do List: A Web site to chronicle my obsession
Currently I am abroad, video podcasting at WeDontSpeakTheLanguage.com: A video podcast and blog about traveling the world for the young and broke. Follow me there, but also continue to enjoy regular posts here at ChristopherWink.com about the plight of a young, aspiring journalist, which will appear below this reminder.
Continue reading We Don't Speak the Language: European Exploration
Philly.com – the online home of the Inquirer and the Daily News – launched a new redesign last week.
Our man Daniel McQuade of Philadelphia Weekly’s Will Do blog has some thoughts.
Well, well! Philly.com went a redesigned and… well, they got rid of the changing front page via Javascript, so the redesign is an immediate success in one area. Reader Christopher emails: “The site has totally gone retro 80’s pastel with geometric shapes and magic marker headlines. Feels like Miami Vice.” That kind of feels right, though — remember, this is a company that pays both Michael Smerconish and Christine Flowers, who must turn in their columns in magic marker.
My friend Chris Reber says it “looks good, but isn’t that the same design as Stereogum?”
No surprise the comments on the redesign’s announcement are full of hating.
Your kidding me right… did you have the website redesigned and outsourced in India? It looks like a 12 year old without any perception and or understanding of color theory or interface usability built this site. And what is up with your header and that bouncing “philly.com” logo? And for the love of god whahy did you use a beige textured wallpaper in your background it look very 1996ish. One word comes to mind “FAIL”!
Of course, that is fairly excessive. Agreed, it doesn’t scream professionalism or the Internet home of the third oldest daily newspaper in the country, but then, the two newspapers’ individual pages are more traditional. The Daily News didn’t change at all – from what I can see – and the Inquirer didn’t change much, though, to be honest, what changes they made seem to be a step backwards. No dominant image and no displaying other new media. Three columns and I am drawn more to their left-most advertising than their content.
I have been busy.
Because I didn’t have the grades to get into the honors school initially, in order to graduate with honors on May 22 – my day of commencement from Temple University – I have to complete an undergraduate thesis project.
I have been steadily working on my paper, due the first week of May, but, in addition to a public presentation and defense of my initial findings at a research forum held two weeks ago, I have nearly put all the final touches on the framework of a blog that chronicles my year-long research on Philadelphia’s Republican Party, the focus of my thesis.
Finally, a home for all of you dying to learn everything there was to know about partisan politics in Philadelphia.
The paper will eventually go up there too, all of my research and notes, as a means for giving the project a permanent, more visible home. For now, I am happy to have a place to organize all of my work, interviews and research.
Give it a look. I’ll keep you posted on its progress.
It is difficult for me to believe, sometimes, that it has been nearly 18 months since I first started working with the students at the Village of Arts and Humanities, a multimedia recreation center at 11th and Alder Streets in North Philadelphia’s Fairhill. It was last December when I first started working with high schoolers there on filming and video editing, coming into what was already a fairly established program.
Today, in working with the kids, I really got to thinking how we haven’t done enough to publicize their work, to let others see the short videos they’ve made.
So, in just a few short hours, ditching the outdated Web site of the nonprofit, together with a couple of the kids, we made a WordPress blog, outfitted with several of their videos uploaded on the class’s new Youtube account.
More to follow, but I’m awfully proud of the work and was surprised just how excited a few of them were to have their Myspace accounts linked. New media has teaching capabilities to be sure, but there are elements that seem to be needed.. like Myspace.
Thanks in large part to our online editor Sean Blanda, The Temple News, the college newspaper for which I work that services the Temple University community, has finally launched its independently designed Web site, based off WordPress.
I am happy to say I was active in the switch over and working with Sean on its design elements.
Check it out or read Seany’s blog on the real details of how the switch, from College Publisher which hosts most college papers in the country, went down.
