Around when I was 13, I began learning C++ and decided to make a little site to showcase my little programs. The programs weren’t much, but I enjoyed making them. So I “created” TS Software. Sadly, the Internet Archive doesn’t have a complete save of the site with images and everything, but it does have this. The site was a nicely formatted site with a navigation bar, header space, content area, and even a sidebar. Everything had rounded corners and a nice flash animation for the header. I didn’t make it though. I made none of that. I found the site design online somewhere.

Why did I not make the TS Software site? Well, I wanted it to look good, because it was my first little “company”, and I knew I did not have the skills to make it look good. All the “good” websites had rounded corners, nice logos, and other images. I didn’t have that skill. And I still don’t (even though I own Photoshop now).

There was a large barrier to entry to making a “good” website a few years ago. Needless to say, images made your website better. I saw that you couldn’t just make a website with just HTML and some CSS. Images were king.

Now, we have HTML5 and CSS3.  Rounded corners? No problem. Gradients? Done. It becomes very easy to make a good looking site easily. Making tannersmith.me a few years ago would have been impossible for me. I would’ve had to have several images to create the effect. After learning CSS from Ryan Ashcraft and CSS3 after that, making the design was very simple. No images were used in the design itself.

I don’t have to use Photshop or Gimp to make a good looking site. Yeah, it might help with certain details, but it’s not required anymore to produce an original, good looking template.

What does this mean for the web? It means that people can get a good looking site out on the web faster and easier. It means I don’t have to sit down and learn how to use yet another product after I’ve gone through the hardships of learning HTML and CSS.

The web should be somewhere anyone can easily create a site to publish to the world. With HTML5 and CSS3, it’s easier to make a good looking website which means more people can make websites resulting in a web with more content.

What is a PRS you may ask? I didn’t know too much about them as I have never had to use one in my previous semesters at Georgia Tech. A PRS is a device that allows a presenter (such as a professor) to get feedback from an audience on what they think on a topic or to quiz on their understanding of material. Most PRS’s use a small hardware device for students to send their response, something that costs around $50.

A friend and a fellow teaching assistant of mine, Ryan Ashcraft, thought that it was really neat that you could get live feedback on a class’s understanding of material – something we really thought would be useful for seeing if our recitation understands the material we are discussing. However, we couldn’t force the students in our recitation to go out and spend $50 on a device. We still wanted some way to get feedback from our students during recitation and asking for people to speak up isn’t really cutting it – rarely anyone does it or it is a select few who always speak up.

So what are two computer science majors to do? Build their own system of course. We weren’t going to make an iOS/mobile app or a Java app, though. This system requires a more platform-independent solution – and we are going with a website. I have never worked on a web-based product before, but I’m excited for what it will offer for me as a developer. It’s about the easiest to build, run, and about every device that connects to the internet has a browser that should be able to use our site. And we’re calling it Class Response.

Now you can go out today and do a bit more Googling to find some already-existing personal response systems that use a web app or mobile app. However, almost all of them cost money. We’ve already made a decision that ours will be free. We’re also planning on eventually opening the source on GitHub (because git > subversion).

We realize that our system may not be the best in the world with all the whiz-bang features. We just want something that simple that is targeted specifically for the classroom. We’re hoping it will be a really good, free alternative to Georgia Tech’s expensive PRS.

We’ve still got a ways to go before it will be released. I’ll be posting more updates as our development advances. I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Some time ago I had a cross-country trip from Lawrenceville, GA to San Diego, CA. When my Uncle and I went on the trip, Dad bought us a Spot Satellite GPS Messenger for safety and tracking reasons. Using the Spot, we could report our position to the appropriate authorities using the GEOS International Emergency Response Center or have the Spot upload our position to Spot’s servers every 10 minutes. While we did not have to use the “help” button, we did use the tracking functionality. The tracking functionality let us keep a record of our position along the flight and also have our semi-realtime position uploaded online for friends and relatives to track.

When the trip was over, I archived the position data from the Spot so that if the data was deleted, because our Spot subscription expired or something, I would have it. Sadly, on the way back from the trip the Spot died for mysterious reasons – Dad, Uncle and I think its because of the heat, though Spot disagrees. Due to this, we don’t have complete data for the flight back; I just have data from Ramona, CA to Deming, NM. I excluded this data as it pretty much replicates the flight out to California.

Recently, I rediscovered the data and decided to make a Google Map of the data out. Bit of reading on the Google Map API and I had all the data in a map with info windows stating where we stopped to sleep or refuel. Very cool.

If you want to play with the map, click here.

When I inputted my iPhone backup files to program, I was surprised by the results. The application did work as expected, but apparently the location logging and my backup files extended back to when I did my cross-country. That said, there are positions logged all the way across the United States showing where my Uncle and I landed and stayed for the night. Click on the image to see more!

Even though my first experience with film cameras did not turn out so well, I did not really want to stop. Why? Because it was interesting. Why is the film turning out that way? Is it the amount of light coming into the camera hitting the film, the old lens or camera, or the old film? I like figuring things out, learning more in the process, and in the end, ending up with an interesting result.

So, last week while I was on my “summer break” I went to my childhood beach house with my Dad and sister. I say “summer break” because I am taking summer classes at Georgia Tech and that’s all I get (well that and two weeks in the Fall before Fall classes). I took my film camera with me, armed with new film and experimented a bit. Dad, being resourceful with his knowledge of having had a film camera, thought it might be the light sensor for the camera. So we took his old film camera, my sister’s digital camera (just for funzies), and my camera out and compared light meter readings (yes, this is what I do with my free time). Turns out the old camera’s light meter has gone a bit off – the reading was not matching up with those determined by both my Dad and sister’s cameras. Uh oh!

With this knowledge, I try to see if I can determine a relationship between my camera’s light meter and the working light meter (hurrah! math!). However, switching between cameras with three main independent variables is quite tiring thus that idea was quickly thrown away for another day.

Thus, having no other options, I started playing with the film speed setting knob on my camera. Normally the film speed setting is set to the speed of your film or your film sensitivity to light so that you can expose your pictures correctly, however, it seemed like something interesting to play with to “fix” the light meter. After a bit of playing with the knob, I got the light meters to essentially match up. I say “essentially” cause its not perfect and probably is by far a terrible method to correct this. Neither Dad or I knew what else the film speed setting could be influencing, but it didn’t seem to make much sense if it modified anything other than the light meter.

After taking a bunch of pictures and developing them, I found out that the experiment with a different film speed setting was a success. What was my first clue? The employee at Wolf Camera was able to cut my negatives – last time he was unable to because the results were so dark. As for the second clue, there really was none. The photos were brighter and looked like reasonable photos from a reasonable camera.

To see the photos, click here.

Just for fun, you can see the difference in the photos taken before the film speed setting was messed with and after. For example, here, here, and here are photos taken with the correct film speed setting for the film I was using, which resulted in a imprecise light meter. You can see that the photos look a bit off in the contrast and just overall kinda “blah”. If you look at any of the other photos, such as this one, you can see that the result is much better.

Some time ago one of my Dad’s friends brought his old camera from his time in the Marines to our house to take a look at it. I looked at it and didn’t know a thing about it, but knew I wanted to learn more about it. I like old things and this camera qualified as old.

Months pass and I come home during spring break. I “rediscover” the camera as I re-explorer my home again. I tell Dad I want to learn how to use it. Before you know it, we discover that it is a Pentax SP II and that it needed a new battery for the light sensor. However, that problem was solved with a modern battery from RadioShack works fine. Load up some old film found in the suitcase for the camera and I’m off to take pictures!

Two old rolls of film later and I’ve taken my first pictures with a film camera! Ta’da! Exciting isn’t it?

Well, thats the “exciting” part. I said the film was old and by old we’re guessing its around 10-20 years old. Now unlike today’s modern digital cameras, the analog film degrades over time which leads to imperfect pictures. So, I held onto that excitement of seeing whether or not my pictures were in face usable or whether the film had degraded so much that the pictures were pitch black through finals week at Georgia Tech until today. Today I processed the two rolls of film.

You can see the results here on my Flickr page. I must remind you, those are the few good pictures. When I say few, I mean few. In the Flickr set are 18 pictures out of the two rolls – thats 36 pictures per roll for a total of 72 pictures taken. Yes, 75% of the pictures taken were worthless. Am I sorry? No. I had fun, learned something about how photography began, and learned that old film is old and that the camera I have is special. But more on how it is special later.

For now, enjoy the pictures. More to come. Hopefully the special part of the camera won’t influence the results too much.

And yes, I hope to get back into blogging more. Its so much fun.

I found statusdot a few days ago and the idea seemed interesting so I signed up for the free beta and set up my site. Now if you point your browser to status.tanner-smith.com, you get a page hosted by statusdot that shows my site’s (ergo server) uptime.

Neat, no? I think its a nice little service that is easy to set up and could be quite useful to sites with a bit of traffic which may cause the site to go down frequently.

The first thing I tried for this quest was simple – remove the entire scrollbar. Luckily I found an extension called No Chrome that did just that. Despite the bad name which leads to some very questionable thoughts when trying to find the extension in the extensions manager, the extension works quite well and does what you’d expect – it removes the scrollbar. Very clean, simple, and overall nice to use.

Spite all this nice, clean scrollbar-free browsing, there were a few problems. For one, I lost a bit of that sensory perception of where I was on the page and how much further I had to go. Obviously, without a scrollbar it becomes very hard to tell where I am and how much was left to scroll. I did not expect it to affect me too much, but after a while I found myself scrolling a lot more than I probably needed to just due to not knowing those things. Secondly, scrolling textareas were practically invisible. I could not tell if they were simply a styled piece of content on the web page or a textarea without purposely going over and trying to scroll. Inefficient? Yes.

The second extension I tried was called Simple Scrollbars which was the first extension I tried that had an iOS-like look to it. When I tried the scrollbar out, it was a bit large for what I wanted, though the colors and style had me thinking of trying to find an iOS scrollbar replica. My main problem with this scrollbar is that you can still see that little “trench” that the scrollbar resides in and that just was not kosher with me. You can’t mix simple/minimalistic and then have this trench thing. Just no.

The last extension I tried was called elementary scrollbars. In the picture featured, it looked exactly like an iOS scrollbar – perfect, yeah? Well, almost. The scrollbar was good – it was thin, nice, and out of the way.

You can see a mashup.comparison image of both scrollbars below (elementary scrollbars on the left).

But the elementary scrollbar extension and the Simple Scrollbar extension both had one flaw – they looked out-of-place on non-white backgrounds. Take a look at the image to see for yourself (elementary scrollbars on the left).

So, wrapping this up – which am I going with? I am not sure as all the scrollbars (or lack there of) have their pros and cons. Perhaps I shall find an answer with some more explorations or just stick with the OS X/Chrome default.

About.me is supposed to be all about consolidating social profiles and what not, which is does well, but I mainly like how it looks. Nice big picture of someone, a bit of bio, and then links to their various social networks or sites. Simple. Nice.

Yep – so that is it for now. Finals for college are almost done and over with, but still got one more to go so I’ll get back to studying. Not sure why I am telling you that. Anywho.

Now, I can think what you are thinking. Why is my post titled “The Beginning” if all I’m talking about the end being near. Now that does not make much sense does it?

In a way, saying it is the beginning does make sense. At the end of my ENGL 1101 class today, my professor made a little speech about how she would miss us, find it interesting to see how would progress in the future, and how her previous students contact her now and then about essay proofreading along with other questions from the class. I can’t quite quote what she said due to my memory, but I think her tweet from earlier today sums it up.

Last day of class is always bittersweet. Always wonder what amazing things these students will do in the future. Now to #grading…

Now I know that most if not all of my teachers from high school and the various others level of education I attended said something similar, but for some reason having my ENGL 1101 professor saying such a thing is different. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because there has been a serious difference in the amount of work required for this English class than the ones in high school. Perhaps because we spent 1.5 hours every Tuesday and Thursday at 8:00 AM for the past few months. Whatever the reason is, I think she is right. Students at Tech will do amazing things.

But how is this the beginning? Well, in order to do amazing things, one must subject themselves to training. The classes. The lectures. The “easy stuff”. Only when these various requirements are met can one take major steps to becoming amazing. Everyone is amazing.

So, by the end of things coming, it really is the beginning. I kind of have to say that for myself it seems more the beginning now of a lot things than it seemed when I first arrived at college. Now things are just so much more… [insert word here]. I can’t think of what it is. Tech is amazing. I knew that before I came to college, but now I feel how it is amazing. That kind of is hard to explain. I have visited the Emory library for an exhibit on the world’s first great digital writer. I have met several amazing people. I have made 60 new friends according to my Facebook “College” list and many more who are not on Facebook. I have done a lot.

What does this bring me to? I am not sure. This is my last official required ENGL 1101 weekly post, though I never really had trouble with writing a post for the class. I will continue to blog here after next week, the official end of my first semester at Georgia Tech, is over.

I cannot think of any quotes that I know of off the top of my head to close this post. Well, that is not entirely true. I can think of one…

“Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.” – John Keating, Dead Poets Society