Monday, October 29, 2018

The Greatest Showman Cast - Never Enough (Lyric Video)

I have waited to post anything about this movie because I would not want to spoil the wonder you feel the first time you see it. But this scene is worth seeing twice. This is actually performed by singer Loren Allred - acted by Rebecca Ferguson who plays Jenny Lind in the movie. This is one of the best movies I have seen forever. The entire cast is amazing. The music the acting and the costumes. I can't say enough about it. Hugh Jackman and Michelle Williams (actually in my opinion every single person in this movie and every scene) are wonderful and I purchased the soundtrack too. There is also a new itunes release coming out called The Greatest Showman: Reimagined. There are covers of all of the songs from the movie including one already available from Pink A Million Dreams. Kelly Clarkson, Pentatonix and more.

A lil' musical break...Alvvays - Plimsoll Punks (Live on KEXP)

www.stereogum.com Alvvays – “Plimsoll Punks” article

Friday, October 26, 2018

What is Instructional Design? By Joel Gardner Youtube Channel

https://www.popsugar.com/celebrity/What-Drake-My-Feelings-Challenge-45047332

This is from a while ago but this is my fav Drake In my feelings

Everyone Can Stop Now, Because Will Smith Just Crushed the #InMyFeelings Challenge

Drake "In My Feelings" Challenge

Thursday, October 25, 2018

3D project Sheri Boston Design

Great Article about rejection & moving onto success.

Rejection is sometimes the biggest gift you can receive...Check out this list / article

27. Stephen King

King’s most renowned and first book, Carrie, was rejected thirty times. King decided to toss the book, which his wife then went through the trash to rescue and convinced him to re-submit it.

I know I have been posting a lot about Stephen King. Ok, so it is October. Halloween, Fall, Scary Movies all of these things make you think about October. I also watched the full season of Castlerock on Vudu. If you like reading Stephen King you will like this series. It is dark, scary and speaks of humanity and the forces of evil. It is so funny to me that yet Stephen King is the "King" of dark, ominous books, movies and stories his real persona is of giving, generosity and reaching out and helping others learn, connect and prosper. As my previous post communicated Stephen King recently sold one of his stories to students for $1 buck. It is our responsibility if we are doing well and prospering that we share our wealth with others. Don't just sit back in your proverbial easy chair and accept success without being mindful of how you can help others.

I also have a story to share about Stephen King. I was exiting a plane from St. Louis to Cape Elizabeth, Maine to visit family. I met a women who was a school teacher and someone who lived in the town where Stephen King lives and we starting speaking about King. The reason being was that I had been reading the book The Girl who loved Tom Gordon on the plane and it was in my hand. Well she went on to say he was the most generous and willing to support education and gave to the schools constantly in her town of Bangor, Maine. See these articles talking about the authors generosity.

https://bangordailynews.com/2018/04/04/news/portland/stephen-kings-foundation-to-give-50k-to-portland-school-group/

https://www.stkfoundation.org

pro·ver·bi·al

/prəˈvərbēəl/

adjective

(of a word or phrase) referred to in a proverb or idiom.

"I'm going to stick out like the proverbial sore thumb"
well known, especially so as to be stereotypical.

"the Welsh people, whose hospitality is proverbial"

synonyms: well known, famous, famed, renowned, traditional, time-honored, legendary;

notorious, infamous

"well, the proverbial bad son has returned at last"

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Stephen King Talks About His ELEVATION Audiobook

Stephen King is Awesome

Boston Globe story about Stephen King selling his story for $1 to students

https://www.stephenking.com

A lil' musical break...Taylor Swift - Delicate

This is so awesome...The Making of a Song: “Delicate” – watch more on Taylor Swift NOW

A lil' musical break...Ed Sheeran - Photograph (Glastonbury 2017) Video

Songwriter Ryan Tedder on writing songs quickly

Sunday, October 21, 2018

Setbacks and achieving your goals

Article from the Muse website about goals

Friday, October 19, 2018

A lil' musical break...Beyoncé - Halo (Live From Wynn Las Vegas)

Still one of my favorite songs by Beyonce. This song was written by Ryan Tedder

from One Republic. He has written songs for Adele, Elle Goulding, Paul McCartney -

to name a few.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

A lil' musical break...The Ting Tings - Do It Again

The Ting Tings are one of my favorite groups of all time this is an older

video/song but they have a new album on iTunes on October 26, 2018.

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

From the pencil of James Patterson

Max Einstein "Albert Approves"

Monday, October 8, 2018

Evaluating Web Editors - Boston

Evaluating Web Editors

Module 5: Evaluating Web Editors - Boston

Wix
I have used Wix in the past and was not happy with their autosave feature. From using it in my past class I was liking it better so that is why I wanted to try this platform for my project. But I have to say I built my Module 5 project with a template and the free stock images on their site and I was pretty happy. I did have an autosave issue happen but I was able to find a semi-built out version so I was still happy with what I was able to create. I found one work around made it easier to edit: preview you site and position your screen where you want to make edits, then hit edit and you are right where you want to make changes. I also liked the Templates I think all of these web editors have upped their game to compete with Square. I have always purchased my domains from GoDaddy and then build my sites but the template are too good to not use (GoDaddy after much resistance because they were always the purist web developers go to - finally has created templates and similar ones to Square or Wordpress). You still have to develop the entire site and make design decisions but the functionality is really great. Also the responsiveness is pretty amazing. To make it more my own I would create perhaps an original logo, maybe some backgrounds or my own content (I did do this for my site) On the IDT site I used Jo Ann’s writing about the different sections of study in IDT. Some of the writing I created to be enticing but would tailor to the actual client or department.

Web editor practice website build for a design business
Module 5 - Boston Website 1 Personal

Web editor practice website build for IDT program
Module 5 - Boston Website 2 IDT Program

Google Sites
I started using Google Sites when my teacher in my last class Stephanie Moore knew I used Google Drive. She said have you used Google Sites. I noticed it in the apps but never used this program. Well I started using it to create a type of digital diary of all of my IDT projects for my class besides my Blogger Blog. I like some parts of Google Sites. I do like having everything in the Cloud and easily accessible but this is pretty common now. I don’t know if I like the templates that much. But it gives a neat storage for your html and is easily to add pages and upload quickly. Doesn’t (maybe I need to research more templates) seem to give as clean of a look at Wix or Square. I love the easy links, up-loadable html, it handles images great as all Google products do - because of their seamless cloud system. I do not like the block look of the design. It is pretty responsive as it scrolls nicely and creates a nice clean look. It reminds me of when I first used Wordpress templates. I think I prefer Blogger for my Blog/digital diary for IDT but I will keep because I want to continue to learn more about it as Google changes and updates.

https://sites.google.com/view/sheri-bostonid/home

Joomla
I put this in for extra…I could not figure this one out but I am intrigued. Although Joomla used to be a much used word for all of my developer/html designers I know it seems to be much more template based now? I might be incorrect. I set it all up downloaded, typed in my outline information and thought ok I don’t get it. Then I looked at the link in my email again and noticed it was a complete template laid out and saved I just need to plug and play and start building/developing. As time did not permit this I will revisit. I didn’t think it looked as slick at Wix or Square (when I say these I actually mean any clean and modern template - like Theme Islands say). I am kind of lumping these together as I think it is a bit of a competition between these companies to be the go to for companies. Stay tuned…I will try to look further into Joomla. Oh and I like the name - ha ha.

http://bostmag.joomla.com

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Joomla-so-complicated-to-learn

Wordpress
OK, so I must have about 4-5 wordpress.com/ wordpress.org websites. I have worked with Wordpress for awhile. The issues I used to have with wordpress is the clunky toggle apps etc. But it has cleaned itself up a bit. Probably also thanks to Wix and Square getting very popular. It was looking like Square was going to dominate the web developer and small business start-ups (because of their Square easy payment strip/platform - app) I remember when this first started it was so cool in my opinion. Wow I can just pay at an art fair for an object without taking money out or using a traditional cc machine. Well Square seemed like it would take over Wordpress for all bloggers, startups etc. But Square has some setbacks. I think they still need hosting? This might have changed. Well wordpress was always so cool because you could just have a website or blog up and going in one day without paying for anything. Wordpress is still very efficient. I just have always been not that fond of all of their “add this pay app” etc. I still think it is a viable option and pretty reliable. I didn’t to use it for the project but I did find a handful of my older word-press blogs. That was pretty fun. I am a little domain happy…I have numerous domains I keep through Godaddy.

https://bostmag.wordpress.com

Blogger
I like Blogger for the traditional Blog look and format. I don’t want this to look like my website. I want to enter items related to IDT. I like how Youtube immediately links up to my Blogger app for quick posting. I like the scroll column siting other Instructional Designers. It is like a journaling and diary for my time in graduate school. I like to make my posts related to mostly Instructional Design and Graphic Design. I put musical videos in because I am very into music and use to relax between studying and working. I don’t think Blogger is very user friendly. I think it can be quirky but it is very reliable for blogging. I think if you are not set on having to make everything perfect Blogger is a good way to start learning website development/design. It is also fun to see how far you have come learning wise.

https://sheribostonid.blogspot.com

Shopify
I name Shopify because I have had to transfer sites for customers from other sites to Shopify because they wanted to sell their wares. They did not only want to have a professional site and have a toggle type area to add items in the future but also a highly functional site that included a lot of pages and drop-downs. Also there is a good accounting system built into Shopify. It does really handle sales very well. If you are a web developer they are very helpful. You can also chat with them and they are such good communicators it is really a value. If you set up a developer account you can build the customers sites and then transfer over to them once you are done building. If you do this you can get a % of pay back for the sites you build from Shopify. I did this in the way that I set up as a developer but I did not partake in the % as I did not want to keep any ownership of this website because they wanted to be taught how to do small edits. I have been called on a couple times to make large changes and design type edits but they are pretty self sufficient at this point. Nice templates a little more back end developing knowledge is needed. The editing is a more complicated than Wix. Not as user friendly if you are new to web design but with time you could definitely get used to it’s interface. Also with the chat help and their very friendly customer service you can have your own online shop. A lot of my friends who had Etsy shops have transferred over to Shopify. I don’t know if it was because they wanted to not pay out a month % or they just wanted to be independent? I have an Etsy shop but have been to busy to build out. I have done all of the setup design and naming. I might start this soon. (Etsy) This is a great way to sell anything if you are good at knitting, antiques or even handmade cards. You can set up your own store pretty quickly. You do not have your own website but you are listed amongst other sellers and you have your own “cyber” shop.

Additional research articles to share on web building software. Insights from web developers and other software types. Not live links copy and paste if you are interested.
These are cited to the authors of each of these online sources.

Additional research on web building software:

https://www.thebest10websitebuilders.com/index.php/charts/1/best-website-builders?utm_source=google&utm_medium=build%2520website%255Ep%255E265338872599%255E1t1&utm_campaign=ma_thebest10websitebuilders.com_us-ca_b-p%255Ebld_build_a_website_2ka

https://www.capterra.com/website-builder-software/

12 Website Interface Design Tools in 2017
Summer 04/14/2017

https://www.mockplus.com/blog/post/website-interface-design-tool

https://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/business/14-best-tools-for-evaluating-user-experience