Week Fourteen 
Final couple of days: User testing, bug fixing, tiding and exam revision
Final Countdown
All the work is due tomorrow, hard to believe it is all coming to an end. There's been a lot of hard work put in but hopefully it will all pay off. I'm using these last few days to continue my testing and bug fixing and just generally tiding up everything.
I have been testing my web site across all the browsers I can and it seems to look good in each. The only problem I have come across is in IE 6, I've been using a log of transparent png's which don't work in IE 6. This as proved to be a big problem and completely ruins the look of the site. So I've been creating the same images but with a background and adding conditional if statements to as many of the images as I can so that it will look as similar as possible in older browsers.
I've also been trying to fit in a bit of revision for the exam we have the day after the hand in, which is a total nightmare but at least it gets it all over and done with.
iTunes
It has taken a long time, a lot of e-mails and patience, but my podcast has finally been indexed by the iTunes search. Take a look by clicking on the image below:
Final Thoughts
This is my last entry to this blog as I am about to burn everything to CD and head up to hand it in. I've really enjoyed this project, and the whole degree, although I am kind of glad it is all over now. I've managed to learn a bit of Irish a long the way - Día dhuit, Jonny is ainm dom - hello, my name is Jonny. If I could go back and work more on something it would be to work more at my Flash skills so that I could animate the characters better to have them lip syncing. All in all I'm really happy with how it has turned out and I hope other people enjoy it to!
Week Thirteen
This week: Yet another podcast, adding all the content and user testing
Yet Another Podcast
I have continued with my weekly podcast creation this week and added another podcast to my pages on the iTunes Store. This week the topic was rooms in the house. As I have been publishing my podcast every Wednesday this will be the last one before the hand in. If I get time this week I will make another one for next Wednesday, although I don't think it can be count as part of my major project unfortunately as it is after the hand-in date.
Content
I have now finished creating my final two Flash tutorials which are Dathana (colours) and Mé Féin (body parts). I am very please with how all the tutorials have turned out, now it's just down to a lot of user testing to see if there are any bugs.
One further addition I have made to all the tutorials / games is a finger I created in Illustrator to replace the mouse cursor. I think this definietly improves the look of the tutorials and makes it more appealing to children.
Now that all the tutorials are out of the way it is time to add all the other content to the site. Stephen (that I mentioned last week) has e-mailed me back the translations (thanks Stephen!) so all the text has been added to the site. The site basically has Six main sections, below is a run down of what's included in each and roughly what it means:
- Home page - The home consists of a welcome message, links to the two characters pages, and a news sections which is the RSS feed. The latest news is the podcasts that have been added.
- Lessons - This contains a list of the seven topics covered, each links to a new page which has the Flash content in it. It also contains the printable branded word list PDFs that have been created, an example of the word lists can be seen here, and a link to the podcasts on the iTunes Music Store.
- About - This section basically gives information about Rí - Rá and about the Irish language.
- Characters - This section is a fun section about the two characters of Rí - Rá, Bertie Bear and Donal Dog. It includes a small bit of information about each character and the printable branded colouring in pages, an example of which can be seen here.
- Information for english speakers - This section is pretty much a translation of the About section. This is where to go if you can't speak any Irish
- 404 - Finally the web sites 404. This isn't actually a proper section but I thought I would link to it as it's a little bit different than your standard 404. I have created the Flash movie that explains to the user that there is an error and added normal 404 type text below. The text on the left is all the information in Irish and the text on the right is the same but in English.
User Testing
Now that all content has been added it is just down to user testing. I am going through each individual part of the site to see if there are any errors. I have come across a couple but thankfully nothing major yet.
One problem I will mention is the sound problem I've been having with my Flash movies. All my sound was edited with Audacity and saved as MP3, it all sounded good from there and any other player on my computer. However, when some of the sounds were imported into Flash they became distorted and sounded terrible. Playing them within the library in Flash showed that the sounds were still of but problems struck when the movie was rendered and published. After a lot of testing I found that the compression setting could be changed and for the sounds that were distorted it was best to set them to "speech", this increases the file size of the Flash movie so it would of been unwise to do it to all the sounds. Why it only happened to certain sounds I'm still not sure, but changing the compression setting seems to have fixed it.
Week Twelve
This week: Another podcast, portfolio crit, new voice recordings and adding content to the site.
Another Podcast
This week I have made another Podcast, this time on the topic of colours. Same idea as the last one but new words. I want to try and update this podcast weekly and see if it can get an interest in the website. I also wrote myself a review of the podcast on the iTunes Store, just to make it look good and as if people are actually listening to it.
My podcast still hasn't been indexed by the search, it's been well over a week now. I think I may be time to e-mail them to see if I can find out what's happening. I've read a few forum threads and apparently this happens a lot.
Portfolio Crit
Last weeks was in the form of a portfolio crit; just my luck, mine came up first. It was really good to get some feedback on it though, below are the suggestions that were made:
- Add example of work to the home page, possible in place of the microblog feed
- Lighten the border on the images in the photographer section
- Look out for big gaps in between words when justified text is used
I was really glad to get this feedback and I have made the changes that were suggested to me.
New Voices
A few weeks ago my sister-in-law told me she knew of an Irish voice actor, which I thought would be brilliant to get involved. After a few phone calls and e-mails I was off to Oakgrove Integrated College in Derry. There I met Nula and Stephen who have done a fantastic job with all my voice recordings, so a big thank you to them! Stephen has also agreed to help me with the translation of all the text, I've e-mailed him everything I need and will hopefully get it back soon.
While I was at the school in Derry I took the chance to show Nula and Stephen what I've done so far. They thought it was a great idea and had seen no learning aids like it before. The classroom we were in had an interactive whiteboard in it so we put the website up on it. This gave me a chance to play around with what I have create so far in a real world environment. It was very easy to use with the pen that controlled the whiteboard (interactive whiteboards are cool!) and Nula and Stephen were very impressed with how it looked and worked. Even though Oakgrove Integrated College is a secondary school they said they would love to use it in their lessons. Most of their pupils are only beginning to learn Irish and the level of content I have created would be perfect for them. This was a real confidence boost for me, so I left them with a load of the Moo cards and asked them to let me know how they get on with using the site.
Creating Tutorials
I've been continuing to create all my Flash content this week. So far I've got the following done:
- Ag Gléasadh - Clothes
- Uimhreacha - Numbers
- Ainmhithe - Animals
- Bia - Food
- An Teach - Rooms in your house
That's nearly all of them done, just Dathana (colours) and Mé Féin (Body Parts) to do.
iPhone / iPod Touch Icons
I also this week I found how to create iPhone / iPod touch icons for my websites. It was very easy to do and is much like creating a favicon. An image of my iPhone can be seen below to see what it looks like, along with the icons:
Week Eleven
In this weeks entry: Podcasts, more tutorial design, ri-ra.ie layout, Rí - Rá Moo Cards and a few new ideas.
Podcasts
I mentioned podcasts back in week 3 and now the time has come to finally implement them. For my first podcast I have decided to do numbers and use the original voices I recorded last time I was in Dublin. Also a friend of mine has recorded a little backing track to go with it. Big thanks to John McBride for this. The MP3 can be downloaded here. Apparently it is called "The Loneliest of Hills" I'm not quite sure if this is an actual song or John has written it himself, either way I think it's great and is a nice addition to my podcast.
Unfortunately my free trial of Adobe SoundBooth has run out so I've downloaded Audacity, freeware is brilliant! The podcast itself was easy enough to create. I recorded all the english myself and then added in the Irish. Adding it to iTunes was a bit harder. Firstly I had to create the RSS feed which has its own iTunes specification. Then I had to submit it to iTunes for review before it would be added to the iTunes store.
I got confirmation through today that my podcast had been accepted. It can be found here. Apparently it will take a few days before it is indexed in the iTunes search, hopefully it will happen soon.
This is a great way of marketing Rí - Rá as people will be direct to the web site through the podcast. Apparently the language podcasts get subscribed to a lot, so hopefully it will increase the traffic to my website.
Tutorial Design
Last week I made a list of what all was going to be included in the tutorials and games. This week I have started work on designing all the content. I've have been spending a lot of time in Illustrator drawing all the objects, click below for a few examples:
I've now got most of the objects drawn so it's just a matter of putting them into Flash.
Rí - Rá Moo Cards
I finally got round to ordering some Moo cards for Rí - Rá. Check them out below:
I used the same background as is on the site for the background here, I think it makes it look fun and very memorable.
Rí - Rá Layout
I've looked a layout a couple of times before but that has mostly been background images, I have yet to create anything for the complete layout. After a lot of thinking about it I've come with the idea of keeping the current back ground and using blue round cornered boxes to display all the content. The navigation will consist of three buttons along the top. The Rí - Rá brand in the middle as the home page link and a rollover button in the same style as the brand on either side, one linking to Foghlaim (lessons) and the other linking to Eolas (about). This can be seen now on the home page.
To do this I had to modify the background image I created. It was one image stretched to fill the whole screen using a CSS hack (like on this blog) but that wasn't working out. It has now been changed to repeat horizontally and the image lines up on either side to make it look as seamless as possible. The new image can be seen below:
New Ideas
I've been thinking a bit about the content of the site and so far it is the flash lesson / tutorials and a bit of about text; not really very exciting, especially for young children. So I've come up with the following ideas:
- Characters pages including information about the two characters and printable branded PDFs for colouring in
- A news feed which updates when anything new has been added to the site
- Word list - Complete lists of all the words used in the tutorials on printable branded PDFs
- A talking 404 - Whenever the user hits an error the 404 will have a Flash movie where the two characters explain that they have come across an error.
Week Ten
This week: Portfolio Finished! Moo Cards and Rí - Rá tutorial design
portfolio
Last week I did most of the work on my portfolio site. Now I just have a few things to tidy up. I'm trying to test every aspect of the website to make sure it is all fully functional. I came across a few bugs such as spelling the e-mail address wrong on the contact section.
Everything seems to be fixed and up and running now. Thankfully my portfolio is now out of the way.
Moo Cards
I decided this week that I would order some Moo cards to advertise JonathanGribben.com. They came today, take a look below to see how they turned out:
Back To Rá - Rá
Now that my portfolio site is out of the way i can get back onto working on Rí - Rá.
Tutorial Design
Seeing as I got a start made on the tutorials and games it is now time to design all the content and make a list of all the words / phrases to be used. Back in week 7 after I came back from Dublin I made a list of the possible topics I would cover. For each topic I am going to one lesson and one game. I have chosen seven of the topics as I think it is the best amount I can in the time left. Below os a list of the topics and what I have come up with to put in them:
- Numbers lesson - Numbers one to ten. Ten screens: each screen has the number and some object relating to that number, such as two triangles. Each time the number is clicked Donal Dog will say it, each time the object is clicked Bertie Bear will say the object and how many there are.
- Numbers game - Bingo game. Already created, minor tweaks needed
- Colours lesson - Similar to numbers, colour and an object relating to the colour
- Colours Game - Coloured circles will fall from the top of the screen in random order, the user will be asked a colour and will have to click on the correct falling colour
- Animals lesson - One screen containing eight animals. Each time an animal is clicked Bertie Bear or Donal Dog will say what it is, the animal will do something like move his head and the animal will make a noise such as a cow's moo
- Animal game - Similar to bingo but with the animals
- Food lesson - Seven items of food on the screen, each time an item is click one of the characters will say it
- Food game - Food tree. The food has fallen off a tree and needs to be put back on. Each time an the user is asked for an item of food they will have to drag it onto the tree
- Body parts lesson - Cartoon body on screen, rolling over each body part will make the word appear and clicking on it will make one of the characters say it
- Body parts game - The user must click on the correct body part as they are asked for it
- Rooms in your house lesson - Similar to body parts lesson. Rolling over a room will make the word appear and clicking on it will make one of the characters say the word
- Rooms in your house game - The user must click on the correct room as they are asked for it
- Clothes lesson - The user can dress Bob. All the clothes are on the screen and the user can drag them onto Bob. Rolling over each item will make the word appear and clicking on it will make one of the characters say it
- Clothes game - Washing line. The clothes are moving across the washing line, the user must click on the correct item of clothing as they are asked for it.
Working through each tutorial and figuring out what to put in it has made me realise how much illustration work is required for this project. I didn't really think much of it at first but there is a lot to do. Each item needs to be drawn in such a way that is appealing to young children.
I've made a few changes to the prototypes, as Nicklas suggested in week 8. I've made the Flash movie a lot bigger, they are now 800 x 600. I also did a bit of research into the fonts on the comic life software Nicklas mentioned. Apparently it does ship with a lot of Macs but unfortunately not mine. So I found their website Plasq.com and bought and download their comic life software. The software is really cool and has a lot of nice features. After a lot of searching, within the software and on other font websites, I have settled on the SundayComics BB font for use in all my tutorials.
Week Nine
In this weeks entry: Jonathan Gribben Portfolio website.
JonathanGribben.com
This week I have spent all my time on my portfolio website, JonathanGribben.com. Chris mentioned to us in the lab last week that our portfolios need to be up as soon as possible because employers are starting to look at them. I would quite like a job so it's now time to do mine.
I bought JonathanGribben.com last semester and had thought a bit about what I was going to put on my portfolio back in week 6 but haven't really done much else with it. I had come up with a few ideas but the only one that has really stuck in my head was a three column fluid width layout, so I'm going to stick with that.
I've been looking at a lot of other portfolio websites and a lot of them seem to follow the same theme; recent work, current work, CV and that's it. I want to do something a bit different so I have come up with the idea of having five flash buttons on the home page, each linking to a different section that will showcase a particular skill of mine. These sections are animator, developer, illustrator, photographer and writer.
Jonathan Gribben Brand
Firstly I wanted to re-look at my brand. I still really like the design I came up with but it just needs a few touch ups.
I've stretched "Gribben" out to match the width of "Jonathan" above it and spaced everything out a bit better.
Layout
As I've already said I want to use a three column fluid width layout. I've never done a fluid width layout before so it will be interesting to see how it goes.
It has taken a lot of work, including a complete CSS re-work, but I've finally got the layout complete. The middle column is fluid width and the two outside columns are fixed width. Now that I've got each page ready, it's time to add all the content. I've added a few features like Flickr feed, Twitter feed and an Asaph microblog.
Asaph
I came across a microblog recently called Asaph. Basically it uses a mySQL database to store all my entries. Each time I find something I want to post I use the JavaScript bookmarklet which adds it to the database. PHP pulls all the content from the database and displays it nicely on my web page and also produces a nice RSS feed. It works really well and looks good now that I have incorporated my brand into it. I have used some JavaScript to display my most recent entries on my home page.
My portfolio is now pretty much complete, it's just going to take a few touch ups next week. Take a look at JonathanGribben.com.
Week Eight
This week: A roundup of my work over Easter, some prototypes I created, characters work, brand work, background image work and some more feedback from Nicklas.
Easter
Normally Easter is a time to relax and have a nice break for two weeks, unfortunately this year is different. Thankfully I made a lot of good progress over Easter, so it has all been worth it.
Firstly I got to go to a Flash course for two days in Queen Street Studio. this course proved to be worth far more than the £60 I paid for it! A big thanks to Ciáran Máher, who ran the course, for all his help.
The course was based on ActionScript and it has taught me a lot of very valuable skills, many that would of take months of online tutorials to learn. I'm very glad I took this course, it has helped me get started with my Flash work and dramatically improved my ActionScript skills.
Brand
I did a bit of work on the Rí - Rá brand over Easter and have got what may be the final version. I decided to take the dog character out of it as I felt it just wasn't working. I've kept the orange circles and extended the a bit to look a bit messier / fun. I plan to continue this idea throughout the rest of the site.
Characters
As I said back in week 3 I am going o stick with just the dog and bear character. I had created the dog character in Flash but came across big problems if I want to use it anywhere else. Simple copy and paste made the image all pixilated and useless really. This was very frustrating as I didn't want to have to create the character again in Illustrator. Apparently though you are able to export objects from Flash as a .gif etc. It took me quite some time to figure this out and thankfully it has solved my problem.
I created a new bear character in Illustrator and I'm quite happy with the way it has turned out. I've been trying to come up with names for the characters and the best I've got so far is "Donal Dog" and "Bertie Bear". I'll see if I can come up with anything better as I go along. The two characters can be seen below:
Background
Back in week 4 I created a few background images for the website. Before Easter Nicklas suggest making it simpler, so I've done that and come up with a few more designs which can be seen by clicking on the image below:
I think the first one is probably the best as it is most simple. Hopefully I will get to see Nicklas in the next lab session and see what he thinks.
Flash Prototype
Over Easter, after the Flash course, I was able to create a few prototypes for Rí - Rá. Firstly I work on a bingo game to go with the numbers lesson. The ActionScript I learnt has really improved how this game is created. Before I was just able to use gotoAndStop and .onRelease commands but now I have be able to create a far more advanced game. Here's how it works:
- An array of numbers is created
- The numbers are shuffled each time the game is started to randomize the questions
- Each number is assigned to the frame in a movie clip, which is used to display the question
- The possible answers are displayed in a grid, each answer is assigned to a number in the array
- When a question is asked and an answer is picked, the two are compared and correct or incorrect is displayed
- Once a question has been answered the buttons cannot be clicked to answer again until the next question is asked
- And finally a score is kept and displayed at the end of the game
A very basic prototype of the game can be found here. Keep in mind that no design has been used here, it is simply to test the code. A full code listing for this game can be found in this PDF. I am very happy with how this has turned out. This code will probably be the basis of each of the games I create.
Adding Design
I liked how the last prototype turned out but it needs some design to make it look good. So after a bit of work I have come up with this full bingo game. The improvements I have made are as follows:
- Sounds have been added - Each question is accompanied by the appropriate sound, taken from the voices I recorded last time I was in Dublin
- A title consistent with the branding of the website has been added
- The numbers (answers) have been put into a grid to look like a bingo card
- A bingo pen replaces the normal mouse cursor
- A movie clip of a spinning ball with bingo balls inside has been added
- Other design tweaks to make it look generally nice.
Overall I think it's not a bad start, I'll wait and see what Nicklas thinks in the labs.
Flash Prototype Two
I have also created a lesson prototype. I have stuck with the numbers topic for the time being. A screen shot can be seen below:
Basically when the user clicks on the number or the object the word will be said and the object will spin round, the characters mouth will also move to simulate speaking. The button on the bottom right corner will be clicked to move to the next word.
Again I think this is not a bad start but I will wait to see what Nicklas says in the labs before I move on.
Viva Presentation
So it's now the first week back after Easter and my viva presentation is on Friday. I've done a bit of public speaking before so I'm kind of looking forward to it, my main worry right now is getting my slides ready. I've been watching all the other presentations and I've tried to learn from them. I want to keep each of my slides as simple as possible so as not to distract from what i'm saying.
I've finished my slides and sent them off to Nicklas. Here is basically what I want to get across:
- I'm going to start with a few short sentences of Irish, kind of like an ice breaker. It took two hours on the phone with my Irish speaking friend but I think I've got it down now
- What Rí - Rá is
- Who it's for
- Why I'm doing this
- What's involved
- How i'm getting on, including a formal introduction to my two characters
- And finally, how I plan on doing this without knowing any Irish at all.
The slides that I am using can be seen here
More Feedback from Nicklas
I got to talk to Nicklas and show him my work in the labs on Friday. Here's a brief summary of what we discussed:
- Flash prototypes are a good start, need to be made bigger though
- Choose a different font, chalkboard is rubbish! A program that usually ships with Macs called "Comic Life" has some really good fonts in it.
- New backgrounds are better, stick with the simplest one
- Apparently my presentation went ok, although I could of done with some extra materials.
Why did I not order those Moo cards sooner?
Week Seven
In this weeks entry: an update on my correspondence with the Taney Primary School, a trip to Dublin, some feedback from Nicklas and that darn COM module.
Taney Primary School: Update
Mid way through last week you'll remember I sent an e-mail to the principal of the Taney Primary school in Dundrum to see if they could give me any help with my project. Unfortunately, it now being Monday, they still haven't got back to me yet. I phoned my friend that put me in contact with them to see what she knew. Apparently they have been expecting to hear from, so I was thinking they didn't get my e-mail. After a few phone calls I found this was not the case.
The first phone call I was told the principal was unavailable for the rest of the day; I explained the situation and said I would call again in the morning.
The second phone call I was told the principal was in a meeting but might be available later in the afternoon. I was also told he had gotten my e-mail but was very busy and unable to reply yet. I said I would call again in the afternoon.
The third and final phone call to date, I was told the principal had just stepped out and again was unavailable and extremely busy. This time I asked if it would be possible to be put in touch with the infant Irish teacher of the school, as was my intention from the beginning, but was told I would have to get authorization from the principal for that. I was then told that the principal would definitely get back to me but probably not until after easter.
This was partially disappointing as I wanted to get some input from an Irish school and then get cracking on the main content of the site over easter; but no matter, if I hear from them after easter I'll hopefully be able to get some input from them then on the work I hope to have done.
Dublin Trip
Things didn't go so well with the Taney Primary School but I still think I really need to get some input from some form of an Irish teacher before easter. I need to see that what I am doing is right, that it is in-line with the Irish curriculum and it is the best way to teach young children.
I got in touch with a few more friends and found that one was currently on placement in St. Catherine's Primary School in Dublin 8 and would be able to get me an appointment with the principal of the school on Thursday. Perfect, I'm going to head down on Wednesday.
Test Voice Recordings
Before I went to Dublin I managed to borrow a friend's microphone, to use with my Belkin TuneTalk, and do some test voice recordings while I was there. I got my Irish speaking friend to record all the words on the list I created last week and I'm going to use them as test voices while developing the tutorials.
The quality of the microphone with the Belkin TuneTalk is excellent, definitely an improvement over the internal microphones. Although I did come across one problem, the voice can only be heard on the left channel. I'm not sure if this is a problem with the microphone or with the Belkin TuneTalk but either way it is a pain. Listening to the recordings, without any editing, they are hard to hear. After a bit of editing in Adobe Soundbooth, namely saving the audio from the separate channels and just using the left channel, they sound a lot better and are definitely usable.
Help from a Friend
I met my friend (the Irish teacher on placement in St. Catherines Primary School) on Wednesday night to see what help she could give me. She had a lot of great ideas on how I could teach children Irish using flash, all of which I'm going to be using next week when I begin to create some prototypes of the tutorials.
St. Catherines Primary School
I met with the principal of St. Catherines Primary School on Thursday and she was a lot of help to me. The main thing we discussed was the Irish curriculum, which I now found out for junior infants (4 / 5 year olds) includes 10 themes:
- Food
- Clothes
- Myself
- At home
- Colours
- Days / moths
- Animals
- Numbers
- Weather
- T. V.
Basically at that age children are taught just a few words in each topic. Those words can then be put into small sentences such as "a red square". I hope to be able to complete as many of these topics as possible with a lesson and a game for each.
I was told that for my project to be in-line with the Irish curriculum I would really need to have the whole website in Irish as all the Irish lessons within the schools are completely in Irish. I hadn't really thought of this before; I was hoping that my limited Irish could take me through creating the lessons and games, but the whole site in Irish could be more difficult. What about people who don't know any Irish, how are they going to understand the website? Maybe I could create two versions for the site, an English ad and Irish one.
Irish Books
I was advised to get a few more books to help me with my Irish, in particular some picture dictionary books. These would be able to help me with the basic words and hopefully give me some good ideas for my lessons.
I was told the best place to get these books was in an Irish book store in Dublin called Conradh Na Gaeilg (I think). I asked the nice lady to help me when I went in but as it is an Irish store she only spoke Irish. Most confusing, but after a big of pointing and gesturing I got what I was looking for.
Feedback from Nicklas
I got to meet with Nicklas in the labs this week, here's a brief summary of what we discussed:
- Background image - There is too much detail in my current background image. Make it more simple.
- Completely Irish site - Having the website completely in Irish is a good idea. Possible have a small section on "information for english speakers" instead of two versions of the site.
- Flash prototypes - I need to start making some prototypes of the lessons over easter.
- Hand in date - Everything is due on the 13th of May, that scares me!
Darn COM Module
Finally a quick mention about my lack of work this week. With spending a few days in Dublin and the rest of my time spent on a painful XML assignment from the COM module, I haven't had a whole lot of time to make much progress. I'm going to have to play catch up next week; but seeing as we're off for easter, I should have plenty time.
Week Six
This week: Ri-Ra.ie finally registered, Rí - Rá promotion, tutorial design, my portfolio website and The Big Word Project.
Ri-Ra.ie Registered, Finally!
After nearly a week I'd still heard nothing from Digiweb, so I decided to re-submit my documentation to them (see image below) and give them a call to see if I could hurry them up. By the sounds of the conversation they just hadn't bothered getting round to it yet, but soon after I received the all important confirmation e-mail:
Nameserver Change
Now that ri-ra.ie has been registered I need some web space to go with it. I already have an account with Dreamhost, so paying for hosting with Digiweb would be a bit pointless. Now, standard procedure for this would be to login into my account with Digiweb and change the nameservers myself so that ri-ra.ie will point to the Dreamhost servers and people will be able to see my work instead of the not-so-nice Digiweb placeholder; but things are so easy with Digiweb unfortunately.
I actually did look into this when I was registering the domain name and Digiweb say it is possible to do so here; but when I logged into my account to do this, I saw the following:
Apparently they are still developing their online domain management. Thankfully thought they are still able to change the nameservers; i just have to e-mail a request to them, which can be seen below:
So now ri-ra.ie is online and working. I just have to create and add the content, not as easy as it sounds.
Rí - Rá Promotion
Now that ri-ra.ie has been registered it's time to start a bit of promotion on the site. First things first, google. I need to get my site as high up in the google search results as possible. To do this I added metadata to the head of my index page. I haven't looked at this kind of thing much before so I found a good article on W3Schools that helped me figure out what to do. Pretty much I needed to add keywords and a description to help search engines index my site. I put a bit of thought into it and came up with the following:
<meta name="keywords" content="Ri-Ra, Rira, Irish, Gaelic, learning Irish, irish for kids, jonathan gribben">
<meta name="description" content="Rí - Rá, Irish for kids - free Irish Tutorials">
The next task was to add my site to google:
Hopefully this will take effect and my site will be easily found on google, I'll check back in a couple of days and make any changes if necessary.
Last week I had mentioned creating a Bebo, MySpace and Facebook account to promote Rí - Rá. I've been thinking about this a bit and don't think that it will help very much. Rí - Rá is targeted at 4 / 5 year old children, these social networking website's have an audience of mainly teenagers and therefore this kind of marketing would be hitting the wrong audience.
Tutorial Design
This week I have begun thinking about the design of my tutorials; i.e. how are they going to look, what's going to be in them, etc. Firstly what's going to be in the tutorials? Last semester I had considered the following topic areas to cover:
- Numbers
- Days
- Months
- Colours
- Animals
- Objects
For now I'm going to stick with those and I've created a list of possible words to use, which can be seen here.
Taney School, Dundrum
As has been mentioned before I want to get some input on this project from an Irish teacher. I spoke to a couple of my friends from Dublin and have been put in touch with the Taney primary school in Dundrum. I've been given their e-mail address and the name of the principle, Mr Stuart, and sent him the following e-mail:
Hopefully I'll get a reply pretty soon and will be able to make a trip down there next week sometime.
Tutorial Size Test
I've also been considering how the tutorials are going to look within the site, i.e. the size of the flash box. I decided to knock up a few test pages, which can be seen via the links below:
- Test page 1 - 500px x 500px
- Test page 2 - 600px x 600px
- Test page 3 - 600px x 500px
- Test page 4 - 600px x 450px
- Test page 5 - 600px x 400px
In each of these tests I've used a rough version of the background and logo and put no other content in; so it's by no means a finished layout, it is just letting me see how the different sizes of flash boxes will look.
I didn't like the look of the square ones (600px x 600px and 500px x 500px), so their out. I think 600px x 500px is slightly to big and 600px x 400px is slightly to small. So that just leaves the 600px x 450px, which seems to look quite well. I tested all these layouts on both my MacBook 13" screen and a 17" monitor, the bigger monitor does make a substantial difference but I still think the 600px x 450px is best.
Portfolio Website
I've been starting to consider my portfolio site this week. As I've already said, I've registered jonathangribben.com and plan to put my portfolio site there. I've just repeated what I did with ri-ra.ie and put up a temporary placeholder image, added the appropriate metadata to the head and added the site to google. I've already had some success with google:
Maybe it's because there isn't that many Jonathan Gribbens with website out there, but I'm happy enough that my website is the top hit. Searching for multimedia designer doesn't bring the same results unfortunately. I'm going to check this again later to see if the metadata has made any difference.
I've been thinking a bit about the layout of the site and right now the picture I have in my head is a three column layout with recent work, current work and about me contained in the columns and a Flickr feed across the bottom. To do that I first had to create a Flickr account and upload some pictures, which can be seen here.
The Big Word Project
Finally this week I want to look at The Big Word Project. A fantastic idea from two masters students. Chris sent us all an e-mail about it and since then I have bought a few words, including:
- Geek - A link to my portfolio site, a bit of fun really
- Johnny - It's my name!
- Kids - A link to ri-ra.ie
- Property - A link to my dad's property development website that I am currently developing
Week Five
This week I'm going to look at domain registration, promotion and sound recording.
Domain Name Registration
When I met with Nicklas last week he said I should stick with the name Rí - Rá for my major project. Unfortunately ri-ra.com has already been registered so I'm going to go with ri-ra.ie. Nicklas said that I should register it as soon as possible, so this week I've had to spend quite a bit of time trying to sort this out. Turns out it is a lot harder to register a .ie domain than a normal .com domain.
I started at the Ireland Domain Registry (IEDR), which maintains the database of .ie registered domain names. All .ie domain registration applications have to go through the IEDR but the IEDR does not sell actual .ie domains for some strange reason. They do give a list of resellers, so I took a look at a few of them and chose IEInternet. After a quick phone call I found that IEInternet only dealt with businesses but they suggested I try Digiweb.
The online registration, that can be seen above, was fairly simple but there was a lot of references to documentation required. I first had to figure out what category of domain name I was registering. A quick look at the IEDR Registration Policy found that I was registering a Discretionary Name, i.e. where the domain name application does not fall within any of the other pre-defined categories. A quick call to the IEDR confirmed this and that a brief letter stating the reason I why I wanted to register ri-ra.ie would suffice for the documentation.
Soon after filling out the application form online I received a confirmation e-mail and an e-mail requesting documentation from Digiweb, both can be seen above. The documentation I sent can be seen here. Now I just have to wait for them to get back to me.
Sound Recording
In the labs last week I asked Nicklas what he thought the best way to record the voices for the tutorials would be and he suggested a Belkin TuneTalk. It is a little adapter that is plugged into the bottom of an iPod and can record sound either through the internal microphones or through a microphone connected to the line in. Apparently the quality is fantastic so it sounds perfect for what I need!
I remember sometime ago seeing an article on Wired about a guy who recorded the first commercial album on an iPod. Jimmy Camp was sick of how the music industry isn't about the music anymore and somehow this led him to record his entire album using just his iPod with a Belkin TuneTalk and three microphones attached to it. He explains it all in this "movie". I especially like the part where he ties a tambourine to his foot with a bandana.
I listened to a few of his songs and they actually sound pretty good. He explains in his video a few of the imperfections he came across but says they add to the feel of the album. If this guy can record an album with a Belkin TuneTalk and have it on iTunes then I can definitely use it to record the voices for my major project.
After a bit of searching I found the Belkin TuneTalk available on Amazon and ordered one.
My belkin TuneTalk came within a couple of days and as I'm sure you can see from the image above, it is incredibly simple to use. I haven't been able to get a proper microphone yet but I have done a few test recordings using just the internal microphones and the quality is fairly impressive! I can't wait to try it out with a proper microphone. Some samples can be listened to below:
Rí - Rá Promotion
I had planned this week to setup Bebo, Facebook accounts etc; but as it's Friday and I still haven't heard back from Digiweb on the registration on ri-ra.ie, I can't really do much with that. It's just going to have to wait to next week now.
Week Four
This week: layout, ActionScript, viva presentations and some feedback from Nicklas
Layout
The time has come to start work on the layout of my major project. Last semester I created a few wire frames, which can be seen below:
The wire frame on the left is for normal content pages, such as the home page, and the wire frame on the right is for the tutorials / games pages. As the target audience of this site is 4 / 5 year old children I think it is very important to keep the layout as simple and consistent as possible, with little clutter and only a few navigation buttons. I've been thinking about this a lot recently and I have a picture in my head of how I would like it to look. Some sort of large static background image made up of bright and vibrant colours, weather or not I can turn my thoughts into some sort of digital output is a different story.
I know this looks rubbish but it is a quick image I made as a guide for the sort of thing I'm aiming for.
I did a bit of searching and found the following image:
Hopefully I'll be able to make a cartoon style version of this image, possibly with a bit of a sunbeam effect as well. I want to keep it very simple and not let it take away from the main content of the page.
I've been doing a bit of work in Photoshop on the background image and I've created two. My Photoshop skills aren't the greatest so it's taken a lot of trial and error. I found two tutorials to help me out, the first from PSTUT.com on clouds and the second from PSDTUTS.com on sunlight. The two images can be seen below. Click on either for a larger version.
As you can see the two images are very similar, the only difference is the light source. One has the light coming from the top left corner and the other has light coming up behind the hill, sort of like a sunrise. I have yet to decide which of these to go for, if any. I think I'm going to ask the advice and opinion of a few people and see what feedback I get.
My current intention is to have the background image fill the screen and stay static. I have setup to test pages for the layout here: Test page 1, Test page 2.
ActionScript
This week I have been continuing my look at ActionScript. I'm still working my way through the videos in the Adobe Video Workshop, which are proving to be very useful. This week I have also been looking at the book I bought last semester, How To Cheat In Adobe Flash CS3 by Chris Georgenes. The book has a whole chapter on interactivity using both ActionScript 2.0 and ActionScript 3.0.
Viva Presentations
This week saw the first of the Viva Presentations. I was very impressed by the standard of all the presentations and it was obvious that a lot of work went into them. The one big thing that I learned from seeing all the presentations was that preparation is key.
As I am not giving my presentation until the last group in week 10, I have plenty time to prepare. I'm already starting to think about what content I'm going to put in my presentation and how to format my slides but a lot of it depends on how far on I am with my major project. The last scheduled lab time with Nicklas I have before my presentation is March 14th i.e. week 7; so I want to have a rough guide on what I'm going to do that I can show him and get some advice.
Feedback
I got a chance to meet with Nicklas in Friday's lab session. I got some good feedback from him on the work I've been doing and the work I need to do ASAP. Main points are:
- Stick with name "Rí - Rá" and tagline "Irish for Kids"
- Register ri-ra.ie as soon as possible (could be tricky as it is a .ie domain)
- Brand is nearly there, few touch ups needed
- Use the dog and bear character in the tutorials
- Start work on tutorial content ASAP, get input from Irish teacher
- Sound recording could be done with a Belkin TuneTalk attachment for iPod
- Inclusion of kids voices in tutorials
Plenty to work on!
Week Three
This week I'm going to look at my character design, the possibility of podcasts, more ActionScript tutorials and the viva presentations.
Characters
Last semester I created 4 characters:
I think you'll agree they are not all that great but I did say there were only a starting point to give a rough idea of where I was headed. My plan is to choose two of these characters and fully develop them and use them in my tutorials. As these are only rough versions and it won't matter what I do to them, this week I want to try my hand at a walk cycle with the dog character. This will be an interesting test of my Flash skills.
After a bit of work I have got the front legs moving in a kind of walk cycle. It is no where near perfect (especially the when they are returning to their original state) but this short test has given me a better insight into how I need to create the characters and how their walk cycles will work. The walk cycle example can be seen by clicking here.
PodCasts
Podcasting was recently suggested to me and I think it's not a bad idea. Not only would it be a good way of promoting my site but it would get my content out to a wider audience. With the audio I record short podcasts on certain themes could be created and put on the iTunes Music Store.
I went to the iTunes Music Store to look through the education category and do a quick search for "learning irish". Currently there is only one Irish podcast called One Minute Irish, so there definitely is a gap in the market there.
After a bit of research I found that it is surprisingly easy to put podcasts on iTunes. Apparently it is just a matter of putting the audio file on my server and creating a special iTunes RSS feed. I found full details on Apple's Making a Podcast page.
ActionScript Progress
Last week I started learning ActionScript. I found a lot of great resources on the Adobe web site, in particular this ActionScript 3.0 Manual. There was a lot of reading involved and not much practical content but I did learn a few good things about ActionScript 3.0. I decided I would be better to go looking for some practical tutorials. I started in the Adobe Design Center and there found the Adobe Video Workshop. There I found a lot of really useful videos on creating Flash content and was able to learn a lot more than when I was reading the manual.
Viva Presentations
This weeks lecture was about the viva presentations. We got the full details of what is expected of us in our presentations. I've have a few ideas for mine already but thankfully I'm in the last group so I have plenty of time to prepare.
Week Two
This week I'm going to look at the design of this blog, my major project brand, ActionScript and what's expected of us this semester.
Blog Design
I've started this week with a nice new re-design of my blog from last semester. I've decided this time to keep it a lot simpler and stick to the grid more. Last semester I have images of all shapes and sizes throughout my blog; so this semester I've figured out that the text area is 540px wide, meaning a large image will be 534px wide (leaving room for a 3px border) and smaller images will be 249px (enough space for two images, 3px border round each and a 30px gap between them). I've also added a simple RSS feed and navigation to each week along the top and bottom.
Chances are I'll change my mind on the design half way through the semester and change everything but for now I like it.
Major Project Brand
Above is the first attempt at my major project brand from last semester. I am still considering the name and tagline but for now I am fairly sure on "Rí - Rá" and "Irish for Kids". The logo I created is a good start but I don't think it's quite there yet. There is definitely room for improvement there. I'm going to start by looking at the font of the text. Below I have made a list of possible fonts to use:
I don't want to go for a standard font like Verdana. i think I need to use something a bit different that will stand out but not something that is to out there and not easily read.
I was struggling to find a good font on my computer that looked childish enough so I went the free font way. Normally I would consider that a bad idea, but for a logo like this I might get lucky and find one that work well for the logo. I found a few interesting fonts, which can be seen near the bottom of the possible font list, I'm going to try these in the logo and see how they look.
I decided to first of all try out the casual font. Unfortunately, as this is a free font, it doesn't have any fadas. So I'm going to have to add my own. After a short bit of playing about here is what I've come up with:
With only a small amount of work the logo has changed a lot. I've changed the name font to casual, added an orange drop shadow and a plastic wrap effect. The tagline font has been changed to Giddyup Std and a 3d effect added. The orange circles have had an inner glow added. It definitely is more childish but still not quite there. From looking at this one I'm concerned that it may be to hard to read, especially with a lot of different effects added. I think it may be better to keep it simple. I'm going to create a few more designs and put them all in a logo options document like we used for last semesters branding exercises.
ActionScript
The time has now come to start learning ActionScript. I've played with ActionScript a bit before but it was only very basic stuff. As a new version of ActionScript has been released with Flash CS3 I'm going to start learning it from the ground up. I've been programming with a wide variety of programming languages for the last 6 or 7 years, so I'm hoping this won't be too hard. I started by visiting the Adobe Developer Connection to see what I could find. Not surprisingly there is a huge section on ActionScript, the ActionScript Technology Center. There I found the Programming ActionScript 3.0 Manual, which begins with a great explanation of ActionScript:
"ActionScript is the programming language for the Adobe Flash Player run-time environment. It enables interactivity, data handling, and much more in Flash content and applications."
This Manual goes into a lot of detail and looks very complicated. So I'm going to put a bit of time into this week and report back how I'm getting on next week.
Friday's Lecture
This week's lecture was an introduction to the DES512J2 and DES513J2 modules. My suspicions were confirmed, there definitely is a lot of work ahead of me. The two modules run alongside each other and, according to Nik if DES512J2 was Tin Tin then DES513J2 would be Tin Tin's dog Snowy. In other words DES512J2 is a bigger module and we need to pay more attention to it. There are four deliverables for the modules:
- The major project
- The design log
- A portfolio web site
- Major project presentation
The first two are self explanatory. The last two are pretty cool and I'm looking forward to starting work on them. Last semester I registered JonathanGribben.com and got some web space with DreamHost but have yet to find the time to put some content up there. I'm really glad that I now have the chance to put some decent work on it. The major project presentation is when each of us have to make a five minute presentation on the progress of our major project to the class. I'm in the last group so I have plenty time to prepare for it. I'm looking forward to doing it though.
So that's everything we have to do. Along with the other COM module I don't think I'm going to get to see much of the outside world for the next few months, but it'll be worth it in the end.
Week One
Well here we are, back for another semester, only this time it's the last semester of IMD ever. It's been fun although I'm sensing this semester might be painful. Here we go...
Last Semester
Firstly a quick review of last semester. Basically the idea of Rí - Rá was conceived and planned out.
"During my placement in Dublin I formed a great interest in the Irish language. I noticed a lack of learning aids within the language. This tutorial based web site will be built using Adobe Flash and will delivered online. This web site will make learning Irish fun and easy for kids."
At the end of semester I produced a Major Project Proposal, detailing what what project is and how I'm going to go about it. I probably didn't put as much time into this document as I should of and I think it all boils down to my bad time management of last semester. With everything left to the last minute as usual I didn't get a chance to put the effort required into my major project proposal. With all that being said, done and in the past; this semester is going to be different.
As part of the major project proposal I have to create a Gantt chart showing when I was going to do all the different parts of my project. I have since slightly revised it and I plan to stick to it from here on in. A graphical version of how I'm going to be spending the next four months of my life (i.e. my Gantt chart) can be seen below:
On Friday I got a chance to meet with Nicklas to get some feedback on my work from last semester. My major project proposal did left me down a bit but I've got a good start and hopefully, with a lot of work, I should have a good project. Nicklas said my technical skills are good and I have no problems there but my design skills are lacking a bit and need a bit of work. These being design modules I suppose that's probably a pretty bad thing. All I can do is just keep working on my design skills and hopefully they will improve. Unfortunately there wasn't much time and I didn't get a chance to discuss the brand or characters I had created, so over the next week or two I'm going to work on these and the design on this blog.