Holy junk, I actually forgot all about having this blog for my Advanced Technical Communications class that I took during the Fall of 2006. If people land upon this site and are curious about what it is that I am doing these days check out my other Wordpress blog General Lordisimo’s Apocalypse seeing as that is where I tend to do most of my blog writing. But then again who knows, I’ve kind of become really into this whole Blogging thing and so am thinking that maybe I could put this ol’ thing to some use. We’ll see how it goes.
Holy Advanced Tech Comm blog!
January 22nd, 2008 by nhlordDreamweaver
December 4th, 2006 by nhlordOkay, so it is Monday and I am working on putting the animation tutorial into HTML but I am stuck a bit. I think I have been successful transfering the text but I am really lost on images. Also I couldn’t remember if we wanted to put stuff in tables so that there would be space for images, text, and those info boxes. Question, how do you add cells to a table in dreamweaver once you already made the table. I have all the screen shots, or at least all the screenshots that I think I need I’m just having trouble getting them onto the html I’m making. Maybe somebody will see this and give me some advice before tomorrow morning.
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Hotkeys, Hotkeys, Hotkeys
November 26th, 2006 by nhlordHey All, I just completed a list of what I would say are the most useful hotkeys in A.P.E. (in fact I probably only left a few out and they were really obscure ones that you would probably only use if somebody offered you money to use them). I posted the document on the Wiki on the Style Guide page I’ve also saved it in our Advtech Turing so you can check it out in either of those locations.Â
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Animation Tutorial Suite
November 16th, 2006 by nhlordSo last night Doran, Christine, and I sat in the smallest library study room for several hours and pounded out an animation tutorial suite. By the time we were done I think we were all pretty relieved but also pretty proud of what we had created. I think it is a really cool and fun suite. I can’t wait to talk about it in class.
On another note, last class I offered to take over Procedural work. I haven’t had time yet to look at how we want to plan on dividing stuff up but I expect to get out to everybody this weekend what needs to be done. It would be really great if people would let me know what procedures they have already written up so I can get an idea of what we have left.
Okay, cool beans, that’s all for now.
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Update
November 12th, 2006 by nhlordI just added a little to the Style Guide so if people get a chance go look at it. I’ve been working on writing up the Dorro suite this weekend (Doran started it the other day and I’ve gone with it from where he left off).
Another thing. I am really confused with DreamWeaver. I’ve taken a look at it and really am lost. First off I don’t remember what we are suppose to be doing with it and second of all I am not even confident that I would know how to do what ever it is we are suppose to be doing. Can somebody give me some help or explain how to use this program. I’ve pretty much figured out how to add a table but how do we do that linking to files? Yeah, really confused and wouldn’t mind some clarification. Thanks.
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November 6th, 2006 by nhlord
Hey here is a rough sample of what I was talking about for screenshot animation. I will repeat that it does take time to make it work so that everything is lined up (which this one isn’t) but I think that if we are patient this could be a very cool way to show our users how to access certian menus. We could even logically animate slider bars in dialogue boxes.
 
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November 5th, 2006 by nhlord
Okay so I have to admit that I am incredibly excited right now. Doran, James, and I just spent over an hour and a half in the library playing around with A.P.E. and talking about some approaches we want to make in the next week or so. Then we got to talking about the claymation suite and how we needed to contact Dr. Stiller soon so as to find out how to do animation. But then it dawned on us that maybe our good friend A.P.E. Help had a solution.  A few clicks and some scanning of dry procedure and we were well on our way to several works of genius.  Yes indeed the three of us now have an idea at how to animate using A.P.E.
So besides the fact that animation is super awesome cool what else does this mean. Here are some things that I would suggest we could use this tool for.
1). THIS NEEDS TO BE A TUTORIAL SUITE!!! I know we have a lot of work to do but this is without a doubt one of the coolest and most fun tools of A.P.E. I would suggest that maybe we do a tutorial suite covering animation in general and then point out how using these tools could be applied to claymation. Animation has more to do with layers than any other suite I think we have yet encountered. If somebody can make it through the animation suite they will have a very strong understanding of layers. Let’s please talk about this in class.
2). Our web page can be made very cool with animation. We shouldn’t overdo it but a little here and there may make our product fun and appealing.
3). Here is a biggy I think. The other day we were discussing how to best illustrate a screenshot so that the user can see exactly where to go. Well animation may be a solution. Not that every screen-shot should be animated but if we animated some of the drop down menus using the arrow cursor image and highlighting important areas then we are actually demonstrating to our users where to go and what to click. Sure this would be somewhat time consuming but I think that if we all put in the effort it could be a). very useful to the user and b). very rewarding to us when we present and receive many ”ooohhhss!” and “aaahhhhsss!” of wonder and amazement. So hey let’s seriously think about this too.
So animation is awesome and I will probably be up all night playing around with it. I will admit that it is a little time consuming and requires a certain degree of patience but in the end it is just so cool and fun that I think it is completely worth the effort.Â
GO TEAM! WE ROCK!Â
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Sample Banner for our Online Help
November 5th, 2006 by nhlord
Last class Ryan had asked me to create a sample banner that he can put up on the website for Thursday when Dr. Stiller comes to visit. Well this is what I’ve made. Right now this is very basic and simple. I do not plan on this being the permenant top of the page for our online help. As a group we should probably work on making a real one soon.
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November 1st, 2006 by nhlord
Friends . . . Last class was awesome!  I just wish we had had more time to finish some stuff up in the Rainbow Monkey Button suite. I really think that this in class work on the tutorials is really cool. A lot of ideas get thrown out and a lot of interesting solutions are found. Let’s keep up the good work, the creativity, and the fun. Let’s also keep our minds focused on other areas of our document. We need to decide what we want to do with various dialogue boxes that appear at various times. Will we have time to address them? I think that it is good that we have been saving screenshots of them when they come up but what are we going to do with them now. Also let’s not forget procedures. We have a pretty good list of procedures going and I don’t think they should be too hard to draft up. Perhaps by next Thursday we should aim to have drafts of as many procedures as possible (all would be nice).   Oh yeah, can we all start saving stuff to our turing account? We’ve been graciously given this large chunk of memory to work with so let’s utilize it. It seems that since finishing the doc plan we’ve slowed down our use of the wiki some so maybe we are at the stage in our project where the Turing account is what we want to use. We should all have it mapped to our profiles \\turing\advtech. Okay that is all for now, might be back on later with more ideas.
Oh yeah one more thing. If any of oyu all have anything that you want to see added or updated on the Style Guide please let me know and I’ll get on it.Â
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Style Guide
October 26th, 2006 by nhlordI have added three more headers to the Style Guide on the wiki. These were all things that I took note of in class on Tuesday. If anybody thinks things need to be added or reworded please let me know. See everybody in class (except for those of you who are out of state).
