myPlymouth: Thanksgiving Theme
November 28, 2007 | 3 Comments
Thursday before Thanksgiving, users of the myPlymouth portal at Plymouth State were greeted by an altered header graphic similar to that of the Halloween theme I had done for the previous month.
This one, however, changed daily for 9 days. Here’s the sequence:
Friday:
Saturday:
Sunday:
Monday:
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday (The flames flickered ever so slightly):
Friday - Monday:
Now, once I finished that final graphic Dan approached me and made a funny request. He wanted a special little violent ending for himself. The thought of a custom final header for a few sketchy people sounded fun…so I obliged with this header that showed for a mere 5 people on campus:
In addition to the internal alteration of the header, I did another alteration on the login page for the Tuesday and Wednesday before as well as the Thursday of Thanksgiving. My pal, the turkey, showed up in place of the random image. Here he is:
Overall, the header was well received be the campus feuling my desire to come up with something nifty for the coming holidays! A special thanks to Ken, Zach, and Dan for giving good content suggestions and allowing me to bounce ideas off them!
Art: Kraval Novir in Ceremonial Armor
November 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment
The Master at Arms from the Dark Jedi Brotherhood contacted me and asked me to do another character drawing of his character, Kraval Novir. He looks a little pissed, is reclining in his command chair, and holds his lightsaber. All in all, I think it turned out alright.
Chuck Norris & Mike Huckabee: HuckChuckFacts
November 20, 2007 | 1 Comment
Chuck Norris is a god among men, legendary warrior, and all around deadly guy as I’ve stated before. It turns out that Mike Huckabee knows of this powerful force of roundhouse-kicking-bearded fury as well. Watch and be blown away:
Thanks to UNH Mike from who’s blog I found this awesome piece of work.
Plymouth State: JavaScript Workshop
November 11, 2007 | 1 Comment
Tonight I led a workshop on JavaScript for some PSU Employees. We discussed JS basics, node manipulation, DOM traversal, AJAX, JavaScript libraries, and myPlymouth implementations of those topics. Here are the slides:
A few resources that were mentioned:
Sam In A Pumpkin. Sam In A Turkey.
November 11, 2007 | 2 Comments
Right before Halloween, my wife put our daughter in a pumpkin for a cute photo-shoot:
Not wanting to be out-done, I put Sam in a turkey for a Thanksgiving photo shoot:
Overall, both pictures turned out nicely. She was surprisingly calm for both.
Note: due to the surprising number of people that actually think the second picture is real…I can assure that it is not. :) Here is the original.
Phrase Origin: Do Not Want
November 8, 2007 | 4 Comments
The phrase “Do not want” is one of endless amusement, now spoken often in my department when referring to anything bad or…well…unwanted. The phrase is brilliantly humorous and more so now that I know its accidental origin.
But where did this epic phrase come from? I found out yesterday that I had inadvertently blogged about the origin without even realizing it in titled Star Wars, Backstroke of the West. As I mentioned in my previous post, this was Star Wars Episode III recorded in theater, dubbed in Chinese, then subtitled in English off the Chinese dubbing…thus resulting in truly hilarious phrases, such as “Like, reach the man, Good good good let us counter-attacking.”; “The Presbyterian Church like enjoys you not.”; and of course: “Do not want”.
This gem that I’m focusing on in this post occurs when Anakin Skywalker - clad in his Darth Vader garb - learns of Padme’s death. In Episode III he yells: “Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!”, however, the skillfully done translation of the Chinese dubbing to English resulted in the beloved phrase: “Do not want.”
Beautiful. The world has seen this phrase’s real-world usefulness and has embraced it with open arms producing high-end content like the lolcats at I Can Has Cheez Burger:
Medicinal Maggot Therapy
November 7, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Contents:
Introduction
Recently, the mention of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) came up in my office as a way to make fun of Zach’s recent allergic reaction to some dry cleaning. Obviously, I was initially plotting which objects I would acquire upon his death, but when I realized that if he died, I would also gain his project list. My mind immediately went to treatments for the MRSA condition. Enter: Maggot Therapy.
Wikipedia states the following about Maggot Therapy:
What They Do
Mmmm…maggots writhing over open wounds and dissolving dead flesh. Sounds gross? Well…it is. But here’s the deal; they do 3 things that are helpful to wounds:
- Debride necrotic (dead) tissue from the wound. Dead tissue is a breeding ground for bacteria and can lead to gangrene.
- Secretions from the maggots kill numerous bacteria and many not killed by the secretions are ingested by the larva. This is the key component for use on people with MRSA simply because the maggots can kill the antibiotic-resistant bacteria that antibiotics cannot!
- Enhanced wound healing properties. Maggot secretions have been shown by some instances to “amplify the epidermal growth factor.”
This source states that “Historically, maggots have been known for centuries to help heal wounds. Many military surgeons noted that soldiers whose wounds became infested with maggots did better — and had a much lower mortality rate — than did soldiers with similar wounds not infested.”
Limitations
Despite the awesome properties of disinfected fly larva, there are some limitations on maggot therapy as Wikipedia states:
- Maggots have a short shelf life which prevents long term storage before use.
- Patients and doctors may find maggots distasteful, although studies have shown that this does not cause patients to refuse the offer of maggot therapy. Maggots can be enclosed in opaque polymer bags to hide them from sight.
- Dressings must be designed to prevent any maggots from escaping, while allowing air to get to the larvae. Dressings are also designed to minimize the uncomfortable tickling sensation that the maggots often cause.
- The maggots are sometimes painful to patients with ischemic wounds, possibly because they anchor to the tissue.
Now, if you have a nasty, gaping, non-healing wound, I’d highly urge you to not go to the nearest trash heap and start applying any larvae that can be found lurking amongst the waste. The US Food and Drug Administration currently regulates maggots as a prescription only device, and as I stated before, the maggots used are “clean” maggots provided by Medicinal Maggot Companies like Monarch Labs or Zoo Biotic.
Other Sources
Overall, the disgusting baby flies are suddenly a little cooler. If you want to read up a bit more on the topic, check out this this NY Times article, or this document or this one.
Videos
Text is nice…but videos are awesome:
National Geographic Video
Of course, you could always watch this National Geographic video (note: don’t watch this over lunch):
Testimonials
Additionally, here’s a testimonial of a guy that risked amputation of his leg from a serious knee infection that refused to heal…maggot therapy helped him nicely. His description of the whole process is really detailed informative. This testimonial video is an account of a woman whose feet were saved a from amputation. Pretty awesome stuff.
Facebook Is Better Than Porn
November 4, 2007 | 3 Comments
Time has an interesting article that states that Generation Y craves electronic social networking more than electronic porn. Stating:
Facebook and those involved with OpenSocial must love the thought of such numbers. Now I’m beginning to see why Facebook is worth billions of dollars. (as opposed to billions of monkeys) Who’d have thought buddy lists and comment walls would beat down nudity and sex. The pornography industry must be shaking in their shoes.
myPlymouth: Halloween Theme
November 2, 2007 | 4 Comments
As I alluded to on my last post, on Halloween, Zach, Dan, and I unveiled a new feature in Plymouth State University’s portal. Plymouth State will begin customizing the myPlymouth logo and/or the entire header withing the portal.
Using some snazzy CSS easter-egg functionality combined with some PHP, we can dynamically alter the look of the portal and target customizations to the entire campus, groups of people, or individuals. On Halloween, we customized and targeted the entirety of our user population with the following header theme. We changed this:
To this:
The Halloween theme was a surprise to the campus and received a number of good reviews and comments! The theme didn’t reduce the portal’s functionality, it simply gave it a nice candy coating to add a little flair. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the layout (which is actually made up of 7 images). Due to the excitement around the Halloween theme, the campus can be sure that more are coming!
As I mentioned before, targeting the entire campus is doable along with targeting groups of people and individuals. Needless to say the targeting capabilities of this can be exploited by…well…by me. And I’ve had some fun exploiting it, too! Here’s a couple of fun ones that I targeted at specific users:
This header was targeted at my manager, Ken:
This one is targeted at Dee:
Here’s one that I targeted at Dan and Zach:
Fun times. So far, Dan, Zach, and I have some pretty sexy ideas for what can be done…ranging from minor tweaks to the logo (similar to the goofy ones I did above), to fully customized headers (like the Halloween one), all the way to full blown themes that customize a larger portion of myPlymouth. I look forward to getting creative with what I can draw and implement.
Art: Turkey Sketch
November 1, 2007 | 6 Comments
I’ve begun the design of custom headers for holiday themed portal action in Plymouth State University’s portal. Here’s a quick turkey sketch I did with my Wacom tablet in preparation for a Thanksgiving themed header. I’m still a little undecided on what I plan to do with the header as a whole. I have a few weeks to figure that out, I suppose :)
