Krugg chap 7

:( Clearly, this reading post is incomplete. For now!

McCloud

I read Understanding Comics already and, unfortunately, could only link this reading to my personal experiences. Which I suppose isn't unfortunate - it means I've gathered something from both the reading and the class I took - but I couldn't relate it to anything new. So I didn't.

Form and function are debates that have continued on in my mind since Dr. Doran first hammered the two parallels into me. When an artist draws, can it be read? When it a comic draws, is the picture the story or are the words around it? 

The same can be said for internet sites. What is the meaning of the website in relation to the content? What determines meaning? The pictures used? the words? both?

Our interpretation of closure is also something that reminded me a little of my comics course. When we finished the story, closure never really happened in the graphic novels we read. There were cliffhangers or resonating ideas or unstable topics that haven't really been fully explored. Closure, to me, isn't as important as fully understanding the meaning behind what we're supposed to be interpreting- which is something I'll think about in my website. Do all of the elements fit together? Will someone navigate away from my site with some understanding of what I intend to convey? 

Reading post 7

Weinberger is, finally, finished! I'll admit to being relieved- he spends an awful long time explaining his metaphors and not a whole lot of time explaining the actual meaning behind them. It does get me thinking, though...

I don't really like changing out the silverwear rack, either, for instance. I don't really remember how that tied into anything important in this chapter (I read it sporadically throughout break and it was just -that- memorable...), but I could relate.

The biggest thing that stood out to me, randomly enough, was the importance he noted about a specific hierarchy in things. The highest position is the best, the natural order of things in the world... et cetera. I'm still struggling to find a strong connection to anything in particular about this non-sequitor, but I haven't given up. 

Ah. Alright. There we go. A connection, finally, but it's a stretch- 

I use the order that Weinberger discusses (the hierarchy) when I tag my friends in Facebook. Their pictures become an order of importance system; some are tagged, some aren't. This also correlates with the silverware rack that Weinberger alludes sloppily to. Everything must be organized, painstakingly, but some items are skipped. That is, some of my friends are knives (easy to put away) and some are forks- if you tag them, they'll simply untag themselves so it's not worth worrying about. 

Spring makes me think of...

There's something about Spring weather. The fog lifts every morning to reveal new life, birds fly back from their winter havens, the snow melts away and everything just seems more real; revitalized. 

I've never minded the rain. Spring in Potsdam brings a month-long rainy season and, for most people, a soggy lawn and flooded driveways. No one likes flooded driveways. The rain has always been good to me, though. Good things happen when it rains. For instance, the last time it rained, I remember walking to the river with a good friend, chatting about the mysteries of life and the afterlife. It was a good conversation that dominated my thoughts for a few days, and all the while, a soft rain was splashing through the treetops. It was a comfortable background noise, like soft instrumental music, and it made everything so much more than it was. 

When the rain lifts, there's a perfect moment of stillness while the vegetation soaks up the last drops of the fresh water. Creatures from various rings of the food chain begin to emerge, breaking the stillness, but that moment before their intrusion is one of the few things in life that I look forward to. It's calm then. Serene. A soft wind could blow or the sun could be beaming- either way, whether windy or stuffy, that moment can't be ruined. 

Or can it? The rain acts as a natural cleanser, ridding the world of stagnation. It drives away negativity with every droplet, but the rain can also be deadly. What if the rain never stops? What if the winds assist the tumult of a fierce tempest that threatens to erase rather than cleanse? It would be so simple, so convenient, to unleash a storm whose ferocity can destroy our lives in a flood, or worse. Because of Spring. Because of my beautiful rain. 

Of course I'm referring to New Orleans. The tiny kernel of a storm that Katrina began as may have pleased other like-minded people that love storms. They may have been happily anticipating the first droplets on their foreheads, waiting for that moment of stillness when the peaceful rains lift. But they never did. The rain turned on them, screeching with the wind's laughter as house after house collapsed under their combined fury. Lives were lost. Lives were ruined. An entire city was devastated. 

I'm not intending to be pessimistic or depressing. It's a fact of life that the things that bring us the most joy can also, somehow, if the right elements are involved, become a typhoon of sorrows. 

The people of New Orleans didn't succumb to the overwhelming misery of their situation. They rebuilt their homes and are, piece by piece, stacking up the bricks of their lost city. Someday, with the help of the rain that killed them, the plantlife that New Orleans is famous for will grow back. People will come back to the city. Hope will be restored and everything, from the newly fortified walls that surround the city to the blossoming willow trees that flank the French Quarter, will stand tall with a new strength. 

I'm often reminding myself that the things that sometimes hurt me - people, my anxieties, my own body - are merely opportunities to test my mettle. I still love the people in my life that hurt me without meaning to; I still deal with my anxieties about the future and the past; I'm still fighting with my illnesses that threaten my health, because I know that after the rain lifts, there'll be that moment of stillness filled with peace, serenity and time to rebuild. To become stronger. 

Krugg 2

The audiences that are attracted to news sites are, obviously, varied by their interests. But how do newsy sites layout their design to accommodate them? 

Ironically enough, I was in a discussion with Dr. Mitchell about news sites. Her favorite is the Christian Monitor for its easy-going, free-flow webdesign (www.csmonitor.com). I think I agree- on the other hand, I'm fascinated by the bizarre way that the New York Times throws into their website a hodgepodge of seemingly mismatched stories. 

In the end, I agree with Dr. Mitchell- the diversity is there in the topics that are presented, but the audience knows, exactly, what to look for in the Christian Science Monitor. They have to go hunting in the New York Times. 

Which do you think is better? 

Krug

In considering a website as a billboard, I thought back to Weinberger's pleas for various kinds of order in both our physical world and the digital world. Is order really what websites are after, if we're to think of them as billboards? 

It's true that I generally skim a website. Even a blog I read (www.urbanmusewriter.com) has just so much content that I skim a little, go to a different page, skim something there, and then come back the way I'd read a billboard or a posting board somewhere on campus- my eyes are always flitting to different information. Why is that? I personally think it's because it's all there, spread out before us in an almost dizzying arrangement of information that, when all is said and done, just spirals into the infinite (like this sentence). 

Satisfice stuck out to me. We satisfy the reader with a sufficient amount of information when we apply information to the web (or we should, anyway). One website that I think does the job is www.googlemaps.com.  You find a bar at the top, toss in the location you need, and the rest is cake. It's skimmable (graphs are easy to read), it's fast and there's not a lot of time-consumption involved. 

Reading Post 2

... is coming soon, now that I've mastered blogger! 

Reading Post 1

... is coming soon, now that I've mastered Blogger! 

Here's where...

... I'll post my reading notes! Yay Weinberger!