regarding the grammar reading

I'm really glad we touched on the issue of grammar the other night in class.  This is a subject I've had changing views on throughout my life, views based upon my atmosphere and experiences.  For example, in high school, I worked almost painstakingly to cultivate an educated voice in my writing and speech.  On second thought, perhaps over-educated is a more appropriate term.  I would actually sometimes take pride in being able to speak in a way that some people couldn't fully understand me... pretentious, I know.  As I aged and matured a bit, I learned that my approach to speaking and writing was not a very diplomatic one, and that in fact I tended to alienate certain people.  Then when I was introduced to the AP style book and the field of news writing, I learned that to communicate very effectively, conciseness and plainness of language is key.  This, however, makes me wonder: just how "condensed" will the English language become, and will the Associated Press or other grammatical standards eventually change to accommodate emoticons or casual abbreviations?  If this would happen, what consequences might we face?  I guess what I'm getting at here is: does the construction/appearance of language ultimately really matter, as long as the meaning is conveyed?

a bit behind...

greetings, fellow classmates.  Sorry I've not been updating my blog these past couple weeks.  I suppose I was waiting for us to make some additional website progress before I made my next post, as the personal website has now become the focal point of this class.  I'd like to say that Matt's presentation on Roxer.com was very informative, and I definitely think I'll be using that service to map out my homepage.  The various photoshop and dreamweaver tutorials have been helpful as well.  I'm definitely not real technically literate, so all the assistance has been nice.  I believe I'll also be giving a demonstration on dreamweaver this coming class, exploring the possibility of alternating links, aka those pictures that change to a different picture when you drag your cursor over them.  I'm going to do some youtube research in the coming days, as well as some personal exploration of dreamweaver and photoshop.  Hopefully I can provide some helpful insights come Monday with my software demonstration and facilitation with Jade.  Until then, this is Eric signing off.

pumped for webpage

so I must say the prospect of designing my own website excites me greatly.  I have not so much as opened dreamweaver or any other page creation software prior to this class, and have already enjoyed the minute amount of tinkering we've done in class.  I believe this page will be a most effectual means of promoting my original music and writing, and will hopefully help me gain recognition from employers.  i was wondering; what do some of you plan to do with your pages?  Have any of you created a page before?  Greatly anticipating discussion and development of our personal sites as this class progresses.

typefaces - oh joy!

I am actually really enjoying this week's reading about fonts.  Granted, I'm presently less than halfway through and may tire of it eventually.  Anyway, I fount the info regarding typeface history and its former national implications rather interesting.  I would agree with what the document has said thus far; that choosing a typeface can seem largely arbitrary, and the effects of a certain typeface can definitely be subconscious.  For example, someone reading a wordy, compressed document that's typed in sans serif may think "man, these words all seem to mash together."  Fortunately, now that we have greater insight into the font world, we can prevent such gaffes in documents we create.  Looking forward to discussing this, see you all tonight.