In spite of all that brainwashing about not judging books by their covers, every one of us goes by first impressions at some level. And why not? First impressions are very important, especially on the web. There are two kinds of people on the net today. There are those with broadband connections, who will see the first page of your site quickly and dismiss you immediately if it is not satisfactory (this is assuming your first page is not a 1MB monster – even broadband has limits). And, there are those who still dial in with modems, 56K at best. These people will need to wait a little just to see your main page. After all that waiting, if the impression you create is not a positive one, why would they spend any more time looking through your site?

Main pages (index.html for us HTML geeks) come in many forms and colours. There is the Yahoo and Amazon school of “lets put every thing on the first page” design. This makes sense for large complex sites, which is why it is almost the standard format for web portals. I’m simply going to ‘skip’ the Flash extravaganzas, because I don’t even consider them an option. With personal sites, front pages come in two basic flavours: with splash page and without splash page.

Pages without a ‘splash screen’ either open with an introduction to the site’s content or with news/what’s new page. I’m not a big fan of the text intro page because it gets dated very quickly. This blog is going to be the news page for the new site, so starting with this page might not be the best idea. Firstly, it is not representative of the content of the rest of the site, and more important is the fact that most viewers might never get to the rest of the site.

The splash page adorned web site also comes in two varieties. First, there is the pretty picture splash page which requires you to click on the image to continue, or sometimes even scroll down and click on an insignificant link to continue – some do not even indicate what needs to be done to continue. Anyway the second and better type of splash page has visual elements to impress and also menu links into the sections of the site. This way you get to have the best of both worlds. On one hand the visitor is not immediately thrown into long text pages, and at the same time they are given an idea of the sites content and sections – something more than “click here to continue”.

The last option is what I have used in my old site, and I plan to use the same in the new one. This time the splash page will be made more intuitive by eliminating a general ‘portfolio’ link and replacing it with the links to the subcategories, as I have mentioned in an earlier post. Overall, this is the best way to go.

At long last I have started reading through the Blender 2.0 Manual. I got to the Mesh Modeling chapter and worked through it. Learnt a lot of new information I wasn’t aware of before – resizing an object disproportionately being one (click on the middle mouse button when resizing). Some of these editing features are actually a little more intuitive now in Blender 2.3, and they don’t require as much careful dragging of the mouse.

When I finally got to the part about proportional editing, I simply couldn’t move on. This is another part of Blender I had absolutely no knowledge of before today, and it is a joy to play with. The organic forms you can create with this technique are astounding. The image you see here started off as a plane mesh which I distorted in various ways in proportional editing mode. Since I liked it so much I skipped to the part about subdivision to add some more detail. Even better!

To add a finishing touch, I simply had to render this with radiosity. Blender 2.29 onwards has a new quick radiosity render, which doesn’t require the complex multiple steps to calculate a radiosity solution before the render. It took me a long time to get that working but I finally managed. This is still very new, and detailed tutorials and instructions are not to be found anywhere on the net at present. But, this should be addressed in the upcoming Blender 2.30 guide by the Blender Foundation. Until then, enjoy the image.

The next decision to make regarding my new site is the organization of its various part, its structure. While my old site was purely an online portfolio, I want this one to have some real content. I am interested in many things besides the work I end up doing and I would like the new site to reflect that variety.

Where to begin? First let’s get the obvious out of the way. This site should still act as a showcase of my work, so a portfolio section is mandatory. But after seeing the end result that is my old site, I am not for having a portfolio section with sub-sections for the types of work I want to show. Why? Usability – in my old site the viewer needed to click on ‘portfolio’ on the main page, then click on a sub-section like ‘new media’, and then click on a thumbnail representation to actually display the description and images of a project. That’s three levels of links to get to my work. Too much. Why am I making it excessively difficult for people to see my work? After all that is one of the reasons I want them on my site, so how can I make their browsing experience easier, and therefore more pleasant?

One way would be to have all links to my work on one master portfolio page. The problems with this is that this one page would continue to get bigger, and the file weight of all those thumbnails would add up quickly – not a very 56K-friendly thing to do. Also, someone interested in viewing only one aspect of my work would be overwhelmed with everything I have to show (blatant optimism ). This means a segregation of my work is necessary. The best option might be to have direct access to the different sections of my portfolio from my main page, thus cutting out one level of hierarchy. Now I need to know how many sections I want in my ‘showcase’. I need one for design (a segregation between print and new-media is becoming increasingly irrelevant, also what is ‘new media’?), one for photography, and now the complex part – sections for illustration, animation and 3D. The problem with the last 3 sections is this: items in the illustration and animation section could also equally belong to the 3D section. The obvious solution is to get rid of ’3D’ and only have illustration and animation sections for still and motion graphics respectively, irrespective of whether they were born in a 3D or 2D world. This might be a problem for people coming to see my 3D work (blatant optimism redux ), since the work will be spread across two sections. This matter needs some more thought.

Ok now for the new content. This blog is the first piece of content, which will continue to reside on the new site. Hopefully my knowledge of Blender will continue to grow with time, and since I hope for this to be a regularly updated site, there will also be plenty to say about on-going site news and “re-invention.” So, ‘updatingly yours’ still remains relevant – a sort of replacement for the ‘what’s new’ page found on many sites. The ideas for the remaining content are still in a nebulous phase. What I do know is that I want to write articles on communication and the visual arts which might take the form of a blog with each post acting as a link to longer articles. That’s all I have at the moment. There are also some thoughts about downloadable content. Maybe tutorials in PDF? It all depends on how people respond to these ideas. So a lot remains to be seen. But, at least basically I have decided to have sections of the portfolio accessible from the main page, content sections (possibly ‘articles’, ‘tutorials’, ‘downloads’), and maybe a link to a ‘contact’ page with the required information.

Hmm… now comes the all important decision about the main page. But that’s is for another post.

I finally managed to get an environmental map working in Blender to make a reflective object. I found the standard tutorial for envmaps to be a little confusing, but this (scroll down) proved to be very useful in providing a simple series of steps for the basic effect. I still need to explore multiple recursive reflections, which were introduced in the last few releases of Blender. And of course, a reflective sphere is one thing, but actually making convincing reflective real-world objects is a different story. Back to work.

In the early days of the web, making a website was straightforward. You simply wrote one long HTML page, and if you were a real artist you threw in a few graphics and actually organized your page into relevant sections. No decisions to make. Simple.

That was then, this is now. I now want to make a new website. Simple? Not quite. First I need to decide on which formats and technologies I want to use in the site. What will I use? HTML, DHTML, XHTML, XML, PHP, ASP, CSS, Javascript, PERL, JAVA, VBscript, Flash, Shockwave, PDF, RealMedia, WindowsMedia, Quicktime, DivX, VRML … the list goes on. Plus it’s not even a simple matter of what suits your needs, you also need to keep in mind if the technology you are using will be usable/readable by your audience.

What do I do? Firstly let me just ignore all the multimedia technologies at the moment as they only aim to augment an existing website, and not act as a replacement for a site. So that leaves us with the HTML variants, Flash, and the choice of programming language. The coding languages are also an additional element to the actual site, but VBscript is out because of its Windows-centric nature, JAVA is out because I am not totally convinced of its stability. Besides, many people (myself included) switch off the JAVA setting in their browsers to keep their sanity. Javascript can be used to the minimum since it is now almost standard extension of HTML. However, issues of compatibility and unpredictable results remain. That leaves PERL, which is a great choice for more complex coding solutions. The decision has already been made in its favour because Greymatter, the blogging software currently chugging away in the background is written in PERL. The results, as you can see, are quite satisfactory.

Now we come to that gigantic fork in the road. That never ending battle that is fought with religious fervour, and has seen many a casualty on both sides. What am I talking about?

**Flash or HTML**???

Fortunately (or unfortunately ?) I am religious about this topic as well. If you see my old site, you will notice that it is hand coded in HTML and all the links are text. Do I look like a Flash lover? No, sorry, for me it’s HTML all the way. Let me clarify though, that I do not hate Flash with a vengeance. I do know how to use the software, but I simply do not consider it a means of presenting a web site. I personally skip nearly every Flash intro I come cross, and I avoid complete Flash sites like the plague, unless I simply \\have\\ to see what is on the site. Plus, no matter how many figures Macromedia publishes about the stupendous download figures of its plugin, Flash is still not universal, and everyone out there does not have a trillion megahertz monster to run it on. In addition Flash content disrupts the standard interface of the web browser. Suddenly things don’t work like they are supposed to, the back button, the right-click menu. This is not a good thing.

I do have the Flash plugin on my system, but not Shockwave. Occasionally I come across a site that pops up a prompt in my browser to download the Shockwave plugin. While I am aware it is quick and painless, I have yet to come across any content which has convinced me to press the OK button. If it is any consolation, I do think Flash is an excellent technology for animation. That is what it started out as, but with all the hype surrounding its position as harbinger of the multimedia superhighway, its true importance as an efficient means of animation dispersal has been sidelined. Now there is a move to make SVG the new format of vector animation and interactive content. The one advantage it has is that it is an open standard, but its actual performance in the wild remains to be seen.

So, ultimately we come back to HTML. It has changed a lot over the years, for the better. The on-going effort to standardize it and to separate the function of content presentation from it has lead to the timely eminence of CSS. Cascading Style Sheets are simple text files that tell the browser how the content in the XHTML(the cleaner, leaner standards compliant HTML) should be displayed. Also, CSS has features that the old HTML couldn’t dream off: complex control of column layouts, transparencies, layers, and a built in ability to create roll-over effects with out the complex Javascript code it called for in the past. To top it off the ability to apply master style sheets to multiple XHTML pages breaks new ground in the malleability and maintainability of your site. Simply change the CSS and you have what looks like a brand new site. This feature is best demonstrated by the CSS Zen Garden.

XHTML with CSS it is then! As in many aspects of the design of my new site, this blog is also acting as my experiment in CSS. I am still not as familiar with CSS as I am with basic HTML, but the latest version of Greymatter which I am running does use CSS for layout. Through tweaking the default templates I am starting to get a feeling of the sheer sense of freedom and power CSS can give the designer of web content. I am enjoying every moment of it and will continue to see what it can be pushed to do. I am also looking into what software can help with CSS coding an design, but my report on that is for an other time.

I’m finally getting into doing some tutorials in Blender. I was browsing around and this mesh based terrain modelling technique caught my attention. It could be done with only blender and didn’t need to involve fractal height maps, so I gave it a whirl. Manipulating complex organic organic meshes is surprisingly un-daunting in the Blender interface. I was able to achieve the basic model quite painlessly.

I seem to have some innate problem with completing tutorials “by the book”, so as usual at this point I went off on a tangent. Playing around with the World settings took up quite a bit of time but that resulted in a weird and wonderful sky. It was satisfactory, but not quite. It needed something. So, I set out to model a figure to put into the landscape – yes I know that is a ridiculous thing to do for a newbie, but stranger things have happened.

A few hours later, after many mistakes and a lot of searching on how to group objects, I finally came up with this very stick-figure robot with no neck. Not bad for a first try. I put my mechanical friend into the landscape, posed him thanks to a basic parenting setup, and rendered away. The floating head thing wasn’t very convincing so I put in a box for the neck and played around with a halo material till I was satisfied. A good few hours of inefficient Blendering, but a good start I think.

Since I want my new site to be regularly updated with fresh content, I thought getting to grips with blogging technology would be great idea. While I have no interest in writing long touching posts about the sad but true story of my feline pet�s reproductive ineptitude :confused:, the web log as an organizational structure has many advantages. Beyond being easy to update, it is also an efficient and familiar format. People on the web are familiar with the conventions of interacting with a blog, which makes them more receptive to the content. For me the most important aspect of the web log format is the ability to allow readers to comment on content. In some ways blogs seem to not only allow, but encourage commentary and discussion, which can only add to the strength of the content.

Maintaining ‘updatingly yours’ is part of my learning process to become comfortable with the formatting and design of blogs, as I foresee having a handful of sections in the site which would benefit from this structure. When I first decided to start this section, there were a few decision to be made, because the blog is a very varied animal. To begin with I decided that I didn�t want to go for one of those ready-made blogging services, purely because I wasn�t comfortable with the idea of my content depending on an external service.

The next decision to make was which of the many personally hosted blogging tools to use. There are many out there, but the first one to catch my attention was MovableType. Sites made with it seemed well organized, and some of them were gorgeous. When I explored further on their site, however, a few things put me off. Firstly this software is not really free. The terms and conditions for “personal non-professional use” can be very iffy when you are a freelance designer, one of those rare breeds of homo sapiens who never seem to be NOT working. The second issue was a technical one. MovableType depends on a back end database engine. This is near impossible to test out on a free webspace because it is considered a high end feature by web hosts; it puts an excess strain on their servers.

So, Movable type was out. Next I came across Blosxom. It was tiny! I loved it. It could work with just a CGI-BIN, which some free hosts do provide. It was totally free and open source, and its database engine consisted purely of directories and simple text files – definitely something I could live with. In addition it could be augmented with a plethora of plugins to do almost anything I could think up. So, I downloaded the 17Kb file loaded up the web page with the installation instructions and waited for the magic to happen. Unfortunately it didn�t. For one thing, Blossom’s documentation needs some major work. Second, and more important was a technical issue. Blosxom works by creating the blog page live every time someone requests it. While that sounds good in theory and has many advantages, it is an unnecessary strain to put on a server, especially a free one.

I was almost giving up on the whole blog idea when I came across Greymatter quite by chance. The reason I hadn�t found it before is that it was actually the first of these type of tools, plus the development had been almost non-existent over the last couple of years. But, it was open source so I tried it, and here you have the result. The thing I liked about Greymatter was that it worked pretty well to begin with, once all the necessary settings had been entered. Also it is a bit of a Goldilocks story because, while MovableType is very user friendly (by all accounts), and Blosxom is a code hackers dream, Greymatter forms a very comfortable middle ground. You can change everything from the ground up when the need arises, but it is quite happy to work away to a default satisfactory level if you don’t want to bother. Best of all, Greymatter creates static HTML pages whenever new content is added and there is no need for repeated running of CGI scripts.

Greymatter still has a long way to go before it reaches the level of development activity behind Blosxom, but that is partly because it is considered an old fogey in the very trend-conscious world of blogs. However, what it lacks in vitality, it makes up for in its robustness. From the first moment you run Greymatter it feels mature and stable. So maybe it should come as no surprise that a search on Google for the ubiquitous “powered by …” line produces the following number of results.

“powered by blosxom” 40,000
“powered by movabletype” 71,900
“powered by greymatter” 199,000

Greymatter�s age and its system of generating permanent static pages might have something to do with the large number of search engine hits, but it is good to know that a good piece of code has not faded into oblivion. While Blosxom remains a good choice, and something I might consider in the future if I simply must have any of its extra features, at the moment Greymatter is the perfect system for my needs.
:satisfied: