Writings on web design and higher education from Missoula, MT

• World’s Best Resignation Letter?
  Never piss off your network admin.
  (tags: computer geek humor work)
• A Guide to CSS Support in Email
  (tags: design css Email html webdesign)
• Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth
  I am a big fan of #6, using a lightbulb. A fun read, and now to take over the world…
  (tags: science humor)
• LiveScience.com: The Most Popular Myths in Science
  Well, this ruins all the fun.
  (tags: cool humor Science myths)

• Learn about type - Pleasures of design
  Linotype.com has a great guide about the basics of type. A must read (think skim) for anyone that wants to make their documents look a bit nicer.
  (tags: design type fonts)

• Lake Peigneur: The Swirling Vortex of Doom
  A story of turning an eleven-foot-deep freshwater body was replaced with a 1,300-foot-deep saltwater lake.
  (tags: humor, news)
• Middle Earth musical divides critics
  When does this come to America?
  (tags: LOTR)

• CNN.com - Court’s prescription for ailing horse: Viagra
  Why, Lord, why?
  (tags: humor, news)
• Interesting Posters
  (tags: funny humor)
• 100 Things You Need to Know About Women
  Amusing. I would like to know how much of this is true.
  (tags: humor Women)

I am now eight weeks into my student teaching experience. I really have learned a lot, though it is very difficult to put it into words. I have found that every aspect of this experience seems to have a duality to it. Some students really like me, and others don’t. Many students are learning a lot from me, and I am unable to reach others. Every teacher has their difficulties, but I think that student teaching comes with a bit of an unfair disadvantage.

Why a disadvantage? Well, there is so much that as a student teacher, I really don’t have going for me. Such as the fact that I am temporary, and the kids know it. I haven’t had the time to build up a solid foundation with them, and because of that many students don’t feel they have to respect me. These students have forced me to give out a lot of detentions, an act that I honestly thought I could avoid. It shows I am pretty green I guess. I can only hope that those students learn something from our little lunch time discussions.

After next week, I move over to the High School for a couple months. I can hardly wait. Perhaps the lessons I have already taken up will allow it to be a more successful time. Again, I will be teaching out of my subject area, but environmental science is much closer to biology than electronics is (though I am teaching chemistry at the middle school this week and next.)

I am going to miss the students. I like every one of them, and hope I can remember them for the years to come. They are all great kids, even the ones that have some issues to work on before they can succeed in life.

• Fingers breakdance
  Speachless

• How to Become an Early Riser
  It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
  - Aristotle
  (tags: biology Science Sleep Productivity)

• Google In 20 Years
  I can hardly wait.
  (tags: google funny humor)
• Aircraft carrier entirely made of Lego
  I would have built this if I had the peices ;-)
  (tags: Lego funny humor)

• How To Create A Powerpoint Template In A Few Steps
  For those of you who are serious about PowerPoint and want to do high quality presentations, this is a great page.
  (tags: microsoft powerpoint office)

Northland College now has a book exchange

After running the idea over in my head for several years, I finally decided to implement t textbook exchange for Northland College students, so I am happy to announce that the community can now utilize the Northlander Exchange.

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• Science of Cycling
  An interesting article on cycling that could be very good for middle and high school educators.
  (tags: Science cycling)
• SimpleBits
  Dan has done it again. I loved his last design, and now he improved the color and made it a bit closer to the Web 2.0 movement (not a total redesign, but enough to really spruce it up). Good content, great design.
  (tags: webdesign design css)

I decided to implement the Fold Page Menus plugin for Wordpress on my site to allow me to give users a deeper navigational display than I previously had. It worked great, but with one problem, and I’d like to share my solution with the community.

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I switched over my feeds to feedburner today. I did this for several reasons, but most importantly of which is feedburners ability to track subscribed users and optimize compatibility between readers software. You won’t have to update the feed URL because I installed a great Wordpress plugin by Steve at Ordered List. If you are running Wordpress and are thinking of using feedburner too, I highly suggest taking a look at this option.

I noticed a while ago that there are two forms of punctuation that I like to use in my writing, the semicolon and th em dash (—). Semicolon is an easy one, because it is easily recognized in the standard character set, the em dash is another story altogether! Here I will show you how to add an em dash to your WP Quicktags in less than a minute (file transfer included!)

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Student teachign is an interesting experience, and there is very little that you can do to prepare for it. That being said, I have decided to come up with a list of things that, in retrospect, I would have liked to have picked up (more) while I was in the safety of a college class.

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