GPC Anger

I am still a little mad about Google Page Creator (GPC) being shut down.
If any of you feel the same way, please visit this site.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/googlepagesalive/signatures-1.html

Google Page Creator

As you all know, I love to play around with, and develop my website. Well today I was reading a Google Group discussion on Google Page Creator. Google Page Creator is where I host my site. Anyway, this Discussion was said that Google is now transitioning all of there Google Page Creator stuff to there new program Google Sites. Now I understand that Google Page Creator was a Google Lab Program, and it was not necessarily going to be continued, and I would be fine with the transition except that Google Sits does not allow me to upload my HTML pages. Now surprisingly Google has not realized that 90 % of the users of Google Page Creator have put a JavaScript Redirect on there Google Page Creator Home page, that redirects to there real home page that is a HTML file.

Anyway, so in short, I am temporarily mad at Google, and I need a new place to host my site.
If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Tech Topia Challenge

Last Friday and Saturday I attended the Tech Topia Challenge at Neumont University.
The purpose behind the Challenge was to show prospective students kind of what it would be like to attend the school.
I personally found it very interesting. I have always considered attending Neumont; I just had not dived into the details very much.




Neumont University is a school located in South Jordan, Utah. It is focused 100% towards computers. The idea that Neumont goes by is that you learn better if you actually experience the environment that you will be working in. They do not teach things that are not needed, instead, they teach everything that you need to know then put you to work using it in a real world environment. They do this by partnering with some of the leading technology companies like IBM, Microsoft, and EBay to allow you to work on projects that those companies are working on. For instance, Microsoft has allowed Neumont to use the early release of Microsoft Visual Studios 2010 for testing, and Neumont can submit ideas and changes to Microsoft that will be used in the final release of Visual Studios 2010. This will not even be released for two more years.
The part the is really impressive is that most students complete the course in less then 2 years or less. At a standard University it would take 4 or more years.

Anyway, the Challenges included doing some programming using a program called Green Foot, doing some logics tests, creating a XNA game for the computer, or for the Xbox, and creating a simple flash webpage.

They also had a Wii there with Rock Band, which a lot of people played when ever they could.

After the Tech Topia Challenges, they had a few awards (scholarships). I received a $2,000 scholarship from them.

They made a video of what we did, it is embedded below.

Website Change

Well I have made a few significant changes to my website.
First, is the look, I have changed how the site looks from the old version seen below.



To this new version.




The new version is more dynamic. Each page has a different header image, instead of saying my name all of the time.

I have also added a little bit of JavaScript to my pages. First of all, I added a few more mouse over effects. They are cool, but they are not the best when it comes to download speed. They tend to slow things down a little when opening the site.

I also added a new page called Calendar. It has a cool little JavaScript Clock on it that tells the current time. It also has my shared calendar from Google Calendar embedded in it, so that you can see if I have anything planed and plan around it.

Along with the JavaScript I added a little browser message. In earlier posts I talked about how my page was not working in Internet explorer. Well using JavaScript, if you view my site in internet explorer, it will come up in the bottom left corner of the screen under the wood it will say "You are currently using Microsoft Internet Explorer. This site is best view in Mozilla Firefox. If you do not have Firefox, now would be a good time to get it." And will have a link to download firefox. Along with that if you are using Opera, it will say the same thing only replacing the words Microsoft Internet Explorer with the word Opera.
But if you open my site in Safari, or Firefox it will say "Thank you for not using Microsoft Internet Explorer to view this site."
This is done using a function called navigator.appName in JavaScript, it returns the current browser name. I then set up a simple If - Then Function to regulate the response to each browser.

If you are interested in learning how to use JavaScript to make a clock or to make a dynamic message on you page, let me know, I will gladly give you a few pointers.