VISTA's

Well, last night I was up loading the pics I took at the PSO. About half way through it told me that I had uploaded 100% of allowed photo's for this month. So, you can't see all of them yet. But check them out any way. Here's a link. I tried to make it clickable with some code, but I guess it wasn't Allowed code. http://www.flickr.com/photos/73526260@N00/sets/72157594290147778/

Help me out, if you will. I've forgotten some people's names. (sorry!!) so if you are looking and see that I've put a '?' then let me know the name and I change it straight away. -Thanks, R.

Also check out this: http://blip.tv/file/75849 it's a video that I took while a few of us were at the Hub Pub. While you are there you can check out three of the shorts I made while in college. :D

Things are going well. emailed a bunch of area principals today about surveying the students to see what type of programing they'd like to use at the Community Media Center. Hopefully we'll be allowed to go into some classes and find out what the kids want. Then if we are lucky we'll be able to get a budget for such things. Money. vs. Monet. lol.

That's if for now.

Ta ta,

Rich

Comment from cheryl jerozal on September 18, 2006 - 9:20pm

i meant to post about something i discovered but i forgot...if you resize the pictures before uploading them it greatly reduces the amount of your monthly bandwidth they take (like more than it seems like it should). the largest size people can see them is with the larger side at 1024pixels so you might as well shrink your photos to that.

Comment from Rebecca White on September 19, 2006 - 4:57pm

Also, the flickr uploader software will resize photos automatically as you upload them (so they take up less of your upload bandwidth, like Cheryl said). It's available from flickr's tools section.

Comment from Richard T. Anderson on September 22, 2006 - 11:34am

Yes, thank you for the information, but did anyone look at the pictures? :S

Well, it seems most people have been at their postions for at least a week. I just started today. I'm working for Aspiration in downtown San Francisco, which is incredibly cool. I got a nice computer and a nice workspace. This morning Heather (my supervisor) went through all the tools I'll be using, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on them. Gunner (my other supervisor) took everyone at Aspiration out to lunch (that's easy when there's only 3 people). Right now they're at a meeting, and I've been playing around with my computer and the Social Source Commons (which Gunner will show me more about when he gets back).

Last week I spent moving. First driving down to South Carolina where I gave my parents my car, and then flying to Oakland on Tuesday. My furniture all arrived on Thursday, and my wife and I were completely unpacked and organized by Sunday (more or less). We actually invited a few people over for a movie Sunday night as inspiration to us to get everything done.

I just read an interesting article about a dichotomy in computer usage:

• Bicycle: The computer amplifies your own capacities or abilities
• Car: The computer comes with pre-packaged formulas or solutions whose inner workings you don't have to understand.

The article discusses this in the context of presentations--it is the Presentation Zen Blog, of course. For example, students can be taught PowerPoint in two ways:

• This is how you make a slide. This is how you make a transition. Put a picture in by clicking this button. Use this drop-down menu to start the show. As a car. Or...
• This is how you tell a story. These are good methods for displaying data. This is how to edit effectively. As a bicycle

And of course there is lot's of good advice on the blog on how to make a good presentation.

Comment from cheryl jerozal on September 27, 2006 - 6:02pm

i thought i understood it but then it broke and i'm not sure how to fix it. :/ but i will learn. and in the meantime, just as long as i don't change gears...

SETTING UP YOUR ACCOUNT

1. Begin at http://www.ctcvista.org (On the right, you should see ‘user login’)
2. Before you can actually login you need to click the link to ‘request new password’ just below the user login.
3. Fill in your name and/or email address, click ‘email new password’, and you will receive an email with your password.  The site will direct you to a login page, but instead check your email and use the second link (the longer one) provided in the email to log in. 
4. The link should take you to a page that says ‘reset password’.  Click the ‘log in’ link and find yourself at the ‘account settings’ page under the ‘edit’ tab of your account (your name should be at the top of the page and let you know that you’ve ‘used your one-time login link’)
5. Set up your account by entering your email address and creating a password for your account.  You may also upload a picture for your account if you’d like and/or create a signature.  When you’re done, hit login at the bottom of the page.  
6. Still under ‘Account Settings’ you will see two other sections ‘Organization’ and ‘Personal’
7. Under ‘Organization’ fill in as many fields as you can.  When you’re done, press ‘submit’.  ****you must hit ‘submit’ at the bottom of the page before moving to a different tab in order to save your info******
8. Under ‘Personal’ ********you must fill in your name, address, and a number where you can be reached.  The Project needs this information for their records and payroll.  If you would like to make this information private, you may do so at the bottom of the page.***************  Directly below zip code, and just above submit, you can check a ‘make private’ box so no one else outside of headquarters/administrators can see it. 

BLOGGING ON THE NEW SITE

1. After logging in, you should see your name and possible functions on the right side of the page.  Click on the ‘my blog’ link. 
2. Click on ‘post new blog entry’ below your name on the left.
3. You must give your blog a title and specify the priority area(s) that apply to the content of your blog entry.   There is also space for free tags. ********please tag your work (and separate tags with commas)***********  Wonder why tagging is important? Check out http://news.com.com/1606-2-5798694.html?tag=nl
4. Then type the content of your blog.  It’s like a MS Word interface, but you can switch to HTML if you’d like by using the toolbar above.  Also in the toolbar is a button for adding images (you can link to images on the web or upload new images to the site). 
5. If you’d like to add file attachments, you can do so by clicking the link just above the preview/submit buttons at the bottom of the page. 
6. FYI:  you cannot save drafts of your content in this system, but you can go back and edit your blog entries at any time.
7. When you’re finished, press the ‘submit’ button at the bottom of the page.   

Comment from danielle martin on September 18, 2006 - 3:04pm

Hey Erin,

These directions look great! I'm thinking we might want to set up a resource portal for site help...let's sit down on Wednesday and do that.

-Danielle

I put together an Address Book card with everybody's name, company, and e-mail address, (from the VISTA Roster that we all got). I thought that I could distribute this, and it would make it a lot easier for everybody to contact each other.

What I would like to do now is come up with a good way for everybody to:

a) update and distribute the vCard files (when changes are made to their info), and

b) distribute thumbnail headshots of everybody (to attach to their info cards), for that those of us who are terrible at remembering names.

Maybe this is something that nobody else is interested in, but I would very much like to have up-to-date contact cards, and little pictures, of all of the CTC VISTAs. So if any of y'alls have suggestions, or better ideas, let me know.

Comment from cheryl jerozal on September 15, 2006 - 10:10am

maybe you could include screennames too?

i am not sure if we can include files on blog entries, but if we could and we could make posts that were visible only to logged in people then you could just put it up here. big ifs though.

so maybe... well, we could set up a livejournal or similar account that everyone would have the username and password for and put the contact info there in a locked entry. again files can't be stored there, but maybe we could just have an old fashioned list instead? although pictures would be nice. we could store the pictures elsewhere and not name them meaningfully and just link to them from the entry.

it seems like most of our contact info won't be changing too much (at least over the year) so we could just have one person in charge of the contact info and anyone who wanted to change stuff could contact that person. but if we went with the livejournal-type-thing idea anyone could just log in and change their own info.

Comment from Corey Funderburk on September 16, 2006 - 7:50pm

I think your idea is awesome. Let me know what you need and I'll send it on. Maybe include birthdays? You can never be told by enough people to have a good birthday... Thanks for you work on this!

Corey

Comment from Ben Sheldon on September 18, 2006 - 3:06pm

All of the contact information (except birthdays, but I'm adding it) is already stored in the ctcvista.org profiles, and most of it is accessible. Rather than trying to regather the information, I can try to make it more accessible.

Are vCards a format that people like? Is that easier to use than importing a spreadsheet?

Comment from cheryl jerozal on September 18, 2006 - 4:24pm

i was under the impression that checking the "make private" option would make the contact info unavailable to anyone not at project headquarters. but that does not seem to be the case (for example tim chose make private but i can still see his profile: http://ctcvista.org/user/978 ). that means it is possible for us to share contact info with only the vistas through this site -- i didn't realize that before. but i think there should be 3 options for profile privacy levels - public (anyone can see), protected (anyone logged in can see), and private (only those who need to see can).

Comment from gariet cowin on September 20, 2006 - 3:42pm

Whatever's cool with me. I was just looking for a way to get everybody's name and e-mail together with a picture of them, so that I can remember who is who. I don't know about everybody else, but I find that I communicate better when I know what the person looks like who I am communicating with.

Becauses when there is a picture next to somebody's contact info, I feel like I am communicating with a real person, and not just some mysterious faceless cyber-entity.

The moral of my story: Pictures of ourselves in the contacts section would be awesome. Especially if they are only accessible to those who are logged in.

Comment from lauren bratslavsky on September 20, 2006 - 5:12pm

Just an idea to throw out there --

I know there is a spreadsheet feature on gmail that looks almost like excel and can be shared. That could take care of sharing our info in one online sheet and also can be set to editable by any of us. Also, gmail has a chat feature where you can upload a picture and use that as an icon. The chatting feature can also maybe lead to an online meeting place? And one more thing about gmail (sorry, I really like gmail), there is a calendar feature that we can add events and birthdays and anything else.

This option though would require anyone without a gmail account, to add yet another email account to the ever-growing email addresses we all have. I've got 100 invites if anyone is interested in a gmail account, regardless.

Hey everyone-

Hope the first week is going well. Mine's swell. I even have a workspace and in the future, a file cabinet. exciting.

Anyways...

I'm at Media Bridges and my job this year is to start and build the MB Youth Channel. The first stage is to look for programming made by youth. And since we don't really have that yet, I'm hoping that other orginzations (digital storytelling included) may have some videos they are willing to share for public access. Credit, of course, will be given to the producers and the distrubters.

So any one out there who has videos, made by youth (25 and under), and is happy to play it on Cincinnati Local Cable Access, would be much appreciated. Once we get our program going, maybe we can exhange???

email me if interested.

thanks

Comment from gariet cowin on September 14, 2006 - 5:16pm

Hey Lauren.

I worked with a youth documentary camp over the summmer, which produced 7 short documentaries. The program I am with now also produces youth documentaries, but I haven't watched them yet. If you are interested in showing this kind of stuff, let me know, and I'll ask around to see if it's okay for you to use.

gariet

Comment from Richard T. Anderson on September 14, 2006 - 7:42pm

I will talk to Jeanne. I bet we can send you some of the MoLLIE projects. Many of those were made by Middle and High Schoolers. Mostly PSA's and the like. Nothing as awsome as the stuff from Media that Matters, but they would probably meet your requirements.

Later,

Rich

Comment from Will Quinones on September 15, 2006 - 6:24pm

Reel Works has over 60 short documentaries produced by High School kids.  I'm almost positive i could get you a dvd of a few award winning films. just send me your companies address and who i address it to and i'll send you the dvd by the end of next week. you can email me at  will@reelworks.org. good luck. talk to you soon.

Comment from danielle martin on September 22, 2006 - 4:08pm

Hey Lauren,

You're looking for content for your station to show on the air, made by youth? You should get hooked into this new digital distribution network that Andrew from the MNN Youth Channel is trying to create where public access stations could exchange content. He might have some handy immediately to share with you on DVD too. Send him an email and let him know I sent ya.

Also, check out Digital Bicycle, a digital distribution project for community media centers in development.

Also, if any of you who commented could put up an examples on Blip.tv and tag it "ctcvista", it could show up on the CTC VISTA site as well.

-Danielle.

Hi,

I hope everyone had a safe trip back and is enjoying their work thus far.  I just wanted to drop a quick-line to let all of you know about this awesome web-site and list-serve, called Young Non-profit Professionals Network.  The link below will take you to a local area network for Chicago, Boston and NYC among others.  If there is not a list-serve in your area, they give you the tools to start one.

http://www.ynpn.org/national/chapters.asp

All the best,

LM

Hey!

    I'm trying to comment on people's blogs and my comments do not show up? What's the deal? Grrrr.

    Also.  Would it be possible for us to communicate directly with other CTCVISTA's here. i.e. and email feature. I know they don't want this to get too much like myspace, but it would be convienant to be able to communicate one on one with each other on this site. Providign comments work for you leave one here if you agree. :D

                                                                                                        Peace,

                                                                                                        Richard

Comment from Carl Seifert on September 13, 2006 - 1:22pm

I agree completely richard. I think that would really add to the functionality. Good thinking.

Carl Seifert
Computer C.O.R.E.
Alexandria, VA

Comment from Richard T. Anderson on September 13, 2006 - 3:00pm

I'm an idiot. Comments have to be approved before they are posted. But shouldn't they be approved by the person whose blog you are commenting on rather than the administrator? Seems like the administrator would be too busy to read each and every blog comment.

Peace,

Rich

i really hope we all keep up with our blogs, because i want to be able to keep up with all of you! ok, now for some "vista life" type stuff i've been thinking about / looking into:

*** food stamps ***

according to stuff online, i don't think i am eligible for food stamps since i have too much savings (too much being more than the limit of $2,000). savings in an ira must be included toward this limit, even though according to wikipedia "a debtor in bankruptcy can exempt his or her IRA from the bankruptcy estate" and this seems like it should be a similar situation.

also, higher rent payments (after a certain amount that it is assumed you can pay) leads to being eligible for a higher amount of food stamps. this makes sense in a way -- after all, sometimes (depending on where one's job is) one can't help but get an expensive apartment. but on the other hand, sometimes one can choose between more expensive apartments that are bigger/more convenient/newer and less expensive apartments that aren't. it seems that one shouldn't get more food stamps just because one's rent is higher -- it should depend on other factors such as the average apartment rent in the area.

anyway, though it would have been nice to be able to get better/more food, i am glad i am not eligible for food stamps because i think if i were it would be hard for me to not get them. and i am not sure i think getting food stamps is the moral thing for me to do since i can live decently without them. actually, this is a question i struggle with a lot: how much unnecessary stuff must one have/buy before it is wrong? what do you guys think?

*** health benefits ***

does anyone else think it is strange that we won't get our health benefit cards for a while (what was it, 4-6 weeks)? i think we should at least get our member numbers and stuff like that right away.

i was looking through the guide to the health plan, and some of the stuff was kinda weird. there are a number of treatments that are not covered by the plan even if they were not preexisting, such as narcolepsy and add and aids medicines. i don't expect these omissions to be a problem for me personally, but i wonder how they decide things like that.

one of the "exclusions to covered services" is "Any services related to the treatment of allergies including allergy tests and surveys, injection, medication and treatment (except for emergency treatment including medication and hospitalization for asthma)". so recently i've been having this itching in my ears that i think is caused by allergies but for all i know it could actually be caused by some weird ear disease. if i go to the doctor and then they decide it is caused by allergies, will the health plan not cover the doctor visit even though i didn't know it was allergies at first?

*** cheap stuff ***

for getting things cheaply or even for free, check out the websites craigslist and freecycle.

you guys are great and i hope you have great first days.

Comment from Richard T. Anderson on September 13, 2006 - 8:04am

Wow, "how much unnecessary stuff must one have/buy before it is wrong?," that's a deep philosophical question. I'm not sure how to answer that. Who decides what is unnecessary? Are things that are unnecessary for one necessary for another? Or is there a hard and fast rule?

Technically all one 'needs' is shelter, food, and water. But I believe everyone's lives should be richer than merely having those needs met. Though I don't believe anyone deserves to live in mansions, have five cars, and gold plated socks. But I have a lot of unnecessary souvenirs that I'd be quite upset if someone decided that I wasn't allowed to keep them.

It's an interesting debate.

I'd also like to say that I agree that there are a lot of strange things about our "health benefits" plan. Preventative care is so much smarter and saves much more money in the long run. Like so many businesses these days, the people that decided on this are not looking beyond the short term. Short sightedness has a strangle hold on our society just as much as material possessions do.

But I got the impression that we shouldn't complain too much. At least not til the end of our service. ;D

Peace

 

Comment from Corey Funderburk on September 16, 2006 - 7:56pm

Hey Cheryl,

I was thinking about your question about the moralism of food stamps and in case you wanted them, these are my thoughts: I think you should do it, because....

1-  you are on a budget and could be making a lot more money for the work that you are doing, so there is no reason you should feel bad about it.

2- By you receiving food stamps, others who need them are not hindered from getting them, so you are not taking anyone's means of eating away. You are merely costing the gov't a little more money which brings me to #3...

3- The gov't is taxing us on our stipend (and our education award at the end, pshaw!) so just consider it taxing them back :)

Corey