HobsonGraphics - Randy Hobson Louisville, KY

Testing the look of the Flickr slideshow

2010-03-25T14:15:25Z

A year in review

2010-03-15T20:16:08Z

Headers:
Eachof these represent either an etirely new Web site, or rather directory of PC(USA), or a revamp of a neglected one.

Video:

There are plenty more of these on my YouTube channel.

Want some Flash based training? Yep, I haven’t given that up. (Warning. These are Adobe Flash pieces that open in a new window.)
Articulate training:
“Offering Our Gifts” for Presbyterians with Disability Concerns.
“What is General Assembly” for new participants in the Presbyterian 219th General Assembly (2010).

There have been Web sites that have come and gone for specific events such as the Moderator’s Conference in Louisville, Big Tent in Atlanta, Fall Polity in Minneapolis, etc.
Well, you should see the Moderator’s Conference sign.

I also found time to create a banner only for a local candidate, created various illustrations for orthodontic groups, teach ESL classes at my local Beechmont Presbyterian Church, teach classes at ITT Technical Institute, among other things. (unaffiliated with PC(USA))

There is more but this should give you an idea about what I’ve been up to. If I haven’t called… sorry.

Evening classes canceled at ITT Louisville 02/09/10

2010-02-09T19:23:48Z

The school Director, David Ritz, just sent out this email:

“Due to the threat of bad roads this evening due to snow melt and freeze, we will not hold night classes this evening. Employees scheduled to leave after 5:00 can leave at 5:00. Those who came in more than 2 hours late today will need to make up time later in the week or not be paid for the missed time. Lloyd and Trace have will stay later this evening in case students show up. Unless you hear differently, we will be on normal schedule tomorrow.
Have a safe drive home,
Dave”

Swedish HERO streaming video

2010-01-07T18:09:39Z

Here’s the site that let’s you make these:

http://en.tackfilm.se/ >

Merry Christmas Flash fun from JibJab!

2009-12-21T14:22:44Z

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Make your own.
JibJab

Presbyterian Church U.S.A. - 219th General Assembly

2009-11-18T18:37:07Z

General Assembly 219 - Web site Phase 1

I work full-time at the Presbyterian Church USA in Louisville and created the Web site for the General Assembly meeting to take place July 3-10, 2010. The Office of the General Assembly department in which I’m employed serves as a business arm, of sorts, for the national church. The General Assembly is a meeting, held every 2 years, that operates much like a congressional session. Rules are proposed and voted on by representatives from churches and collective groups representing clusters of churches around the country. Presbyterians operate under the guidance of a constitution that requires votes from representatives for every adjustment regardless of size. Tens of thousands of Presbyterians gather to discuss issues faced by the church. This year the meeting is in Minneapolis.

The 3 phases of releasing the site.

The site is going to be released in 3 phases. The screen shots below are from the first phase which is designed to present introductory information and training for participants called commissioners and advisory delegates. Phase 2 will require regular and timely updates of assembly business. The plan is to create 3 blogs that populate defined areas about the business, have a running news feed, a running Twitter feed (@presbyGA), ongoing photo galleries and anything else we can think of before then to keep members that aren’t in attendance abreast of what’s going on. A third party is responsible for supplying a window to be placed on the site with streaming live coverage of the event. Phase 3 is the aftermath where the results of everyone’s hard work will be made available for review until the next meeting in 2012.

The things I used to create the site

I am using HTML 4.01 Transitional for basic content and a CSS layout design. Any interactivity on the site was created with JavaScript or jQuery. Most all of the interactive bits were jQuery. Thanks to the hundreds of developers out there that have made getting started with jQuery a snap through documentation and tutorials online. Some of the highlights are the accordion menu, the video players, the Twitter feed and a page that recognizes the height of each column and automatically adjusts the columns to match when menus expand or a browser renders it differently. Thanks Greg Ferrell for helping me make that happen. There are presentations on the site for education that were created using the Articulate software. That is a plug-in that converts PowerPoint slideshows into Flash online courseware. Using this I can let the other office staff create their own educational materials without the use of an LMS or a team of developers to make it function like a proper course. I said proper course but in reality one can easily make very impressive courses with advanced functionality that are also attractive with this software and it’s relatively inexpensive. Some of the training videos were created using Screenr. Screenr is a great tool that connects with your Twitter account and uses a widow to record what happens on your desktop. We used it to train commissioners on using an online database that tracks the business of the assembly. You are allowed to record 5 minutes of on-screen action and record audio at the same time. The hard part is doing it in one take. I’m also using an AddThis toolbar at the top of many of the pages to make sharing and social networking as easy as it could possibly be. Oh yeah, I probably subconsciously left this out on purpose. I made a tiny slideshow of images from the previous assembly in Flash. It will be replaced with a more accessible jQuery image gallery at some point. We are discussing a mobile version of the site during the actual Assembly for phase 2 of the site to make following the business easier for everyone. God’s will manifested through the wonders of technology… sweet.

Full Face Course

2009-11-18T14:40:27Z

I recently created a small informational site for Dr. L. Douglas Knight in Louisville. He is an orthodontist that spends a lot of time working with dental professionals on a specific discipline in the field. This new project is a course for practicing dentists and orthodontists that takes place in 4 locations over 5 weeks. Below are some screen shots, etc. I worked with Dr. Knight for a year out of school and I owe him plenty for giving me a chance to work in the field and get my hands nice and dirty as a staff member. I created all of his presentations, printed materials, Web site and office educational materials. By the end of a year we had created, pretty much, everything he needed from a full-time employee. I moved on to work at Fort Knox for Northrop Grumman and we have remained friends for the past 5-6 years. He needed a small informational site and I was glad to help out. Check it out here.

Description of the course:

comprehensive/interdisciplinary approach to the treatment of the entire dental and facial system.

The objective of this compressive course is to assist the Orthodontic Specialist in achieving consistent, efficient, highest quality orthodontics for your patients. The course consists of 5 modules broken down in an easy digestible format that enables the Orthodontist the skills to compete in today’s ever demanding clinical environment.

Understanding the principles of occlusal function is a step in the right direction; however, learning how to properly and effectively apply these principles in everyday orthodontics is quite another matter. This course will build on the basics and grow your understanding of treating to a standard that will last for the patient’s life.

These goals were originally developed by Dr. Ron Roth who took many years of work and study to develop the methods and procedures needed to achieve these goals.

The present leaders were all students under Dr. Roth and continue to build on his teachings and approach to Orthodontics.

Images of the site:

Ustream

2009-10-27T19:48:48Z

Students, here’s a neat little Web tool that you may find a use for one day. I’ve been working on figuring our how to utilize UStream to do Web casts for Presbyterian (U.S.A.). You will need a Twitter account and a Web cam The rest is pretty self explanatory. This might be a tool you could use for fun as well. USTREAM

The cool thing about it is that the basic service is free. You can stream video live, have a chat window and a running stream of Twitter hashtags. In January Ustream announced the release of an iPhone app for viewing the live streams… also, free. Isn’t the Web an awesome place. Be warned, it hasn’t gotten great reviews yet for the iPhone but I’m sure it will be updated and, in time, improve. Did I mention that it’s free. If you want to embed a player in your website of your dogs while you’re away at work, then do it. Just copy the code and drop it in. See what it looks like with no customization of any kind below.

To peak your interest, here’s a 24 hour feed of a puppy dog. Cute overload, friends.

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

Kentucky’s Frank Peak is Having it All

2009-10-23T18:55:34Z

In Elizabethtown (south of Louisville) Frank Peak is cranking out some amazing stylized illustrations. The work is enough to make your head spin and even the hardest Nickelodeon fan drool. I worked with Frank at Northrop Grumman, better known for building military ships and satellites, and we made online training as Army contractors. Just to give you an idea about Frank’s work ethic let me describe what one might see when ascending into his space. Our office was a typical cube style office and when you round the corner 4 guys sat back-to-back working on 2 large monitors creating, usually, 3-d imagery and/or rigging Army characters. The two ends of Frank’s cubicle had a chain that was 10 or more post-its long of sketches and just as many napkins with cartoons littering the adjacent walls. Lunch… cartoons on the napkins and receipts. Meetings… cartoons scattered among random notes. He cranks out these characters by the hundreds. Each one recalls a specific passer-by that he stored away in memory to mock and ridicule in a caricature fashion that is determined whenever he has 2 seconds to put pen, pencil, blood, urine or anything that leaves a mark to paper.

He’s a great guy on top of all this. The real beauty of it is that Frank attended Murray State for fine arts at nearly the same time that I did (we never met there) and moved on to California to attend the California Institute of the Arts or CalArts School of Film and Video. The school is fairly legendary and this is where Frank honed his skill as an illustrator. Flash forward a few years and he comes home to Kentucky to live in an area ripe for hunting and fishing. In my mind he walked away from a dream. In his mind he traveled back to reality. Given that this transition didn’t stop him from doing work for Family Guy, Star Trek, Quicksilver and numerous other noteworthy institutions I think Frank is making it work out okay and eating his deer meat too!

Anyway, Frank had a giveaway on Twitter a couple of months ago and sent me a package as well. Every winner received a package but none were similar.

Here’s the envelope front and back alone.

One of 2 drawings included.

The awesome button pack. I also received an unbent copy of the print for my poster rack.

“I was asked by Royal Buttons last minute if I wanted to do an illustration for a button pack promo that’s headed to the Comicon this year as a promotion. I gladly accepted and this was the result. Turn around on this was about 36 hours from concept, to finish. They liked the monsters I’d done previously and were looking for something interesting as an advert to get people to flip the pack and look at the back. This is a topper so it will be folded and stapled with the bag.” -fp

If you want a set stop in at Ultra-Pop on Bardstown Rd. and get one. Paul might just let you pet his dog and put on a Rock Band show for you! A little birdie told me to also look for an art show by Frank some time around December at the shop!

Greg Rewis on styling in Dreamweaver with jQuery

2009-09-16T16:59:32Z

Discover jQuery

My current students in the Web development class, VC240, will want to bookmark this to come back to after the quarter is over. Let me start by telling you how I came across the problem that requires this solution. I needed to add a drop shadow effect to the outside container of a Web page. Easy enough, I’ll just create a repeating background with CSS and… Oh, I didn’t set up may divs to float the shadow on the outside. CSS3 will allow a border image but only in Firefox and Webkit or something like that and that wasn’t going to be good enough. So, a freind, Greg Ferrell, who just happens to be an avid jQuery fan turned me on to the possibility. This video pops up and I’m very sad to learn that it was published in Jan of this year and I apparently wasn’t paying attention. sometimes we get so consumed with current work that we forget to set a little time aside to learn new things that will inevitably lighten the load in the long run. Okay, enough mantra. This video talks about the plugins for Dreamweaver which don’t include the drop shadow effect but jQuery has a solution for that too found here before I ramble any further.

The available plugins at the time of this article are:

So.. “I haven’t figured out HTML, JavaScript, PHP or CSS yet, can you give me a break?”

No. You need to see everything out there to make good decisions if you end up designing for the Web for a living. Like I said in class Monday, “Are you guys real nerds, or just pretending because your parents liked Weezer?” I should say that most of you delightfully surprised me. Learn to enjoy this kind of work for your own good. It’s fun to figure out some of this stuff and make products that are good AND functional.

What is jQuery exactly?

Well, there’s no point in recreating the wheel and I’m still soaking it all up but it’s basically a JavaScript libraby that interacts with HTML to create numerous effects. You can do visual effects, manipulate CSS and page elemnents etc. Here’s the Wikipedia article that gives more detail than I could pretend to have floating around in my head. [ “jQuery is a lightweight JavaScript library that emphasizes interaction between JavaScript and HTML. It was released in January 2006 at BarCamp NYC by John Resig.”-Wikipedia ]

Wordle is FUN

2009-07-28T20:27:10Z

Here is the hobsongraphics.com wordle image.

I couldn’t resist. Web toys are awesome.
Also try jacksonpollock.org.

Absent Teaching Week1, New York Dolls, Big Tent and a Homeless Guy Named Terrence

2009-06-19T15:22:07Z

My absence in no way suggests that I am anything less than completely stoked about working with you guys on Introduction to Flash. It is my favorite program and I think you will learn to enjoy it. I can hear your baited anticipation over the interwebz. I wanted to tell you what I was up to. If you poke around on this site you’ll learn that I work at the Presbyterian Church headquarters downtown on Witherspoon St. My new job sent me to Atlanta for an event called Big Tent. 1,600+ Presbyterians came from all over to gather and do workshops/worship together at the Hyatt Regency. I am the web manager, but that week I was the videographer/interviewer/run arounder. I’m pretty new to video production especially all of the cameras and lighting so I’ll spare you the details of the trials but this is what happens when you guys graduate and go professional. You have to pick up skills, that you haven’t even considered in 5-10 years, overnight. I literally stayed up until after midnight for 3-5 days playing with the equipment and probably still made a million rookie mistakes. This article is meant to simply give those of you without the experience an idea of what business trips can entail. Anyway… here’s the breakdown:

Tues-Left early on my motorcycle to avoid the rain. It almost worked, but as soon as I crossed the GA border I was pummeled by hail going 80mph. Ugh.

Wed-Went outside the hotel and walked a few blocks with a homeless guy named Terrence. He was a college basketball player from South Carolina, I think, until he started smoking crack and has lived on the street for 2 years now. I learned all about what it takes to live on the streets there. Well, more than I knew anyway. The shelter is a couple of blocks behind Peachtree St. They give you clothing tickets that you can turn in for clean threads. He was in jail the night before but that was cool because he was hungry. Atlanta is not a town to wander aimlessly in.

Thurs-Started doing interviews of commissioners to the General Assembly and with members of special committees. It was a lot of fun. I met some great people and the amazing diversity of culture and attitudes in the Presbyterian flock impressed me deeply. I worked from the moment I woke up until 11:00 or so. That night I interviewed Bruce Reyes-Chow and Byron Wade. They are moderator and vice-moderator to the General Assembly resp. Think Congress for the General Assembly and the top cardinal and his sidekick for the moderator/vice-moderator positions. They are both young guys and old friends. These guys are a riot. We could hardly get the interviews started because they were cutting up so much but it was a blast. I laughed until I cried. They closed by singing Rappers Delight. The interesting thing about these two is that they are avid social media fans. Check my article on Twittering. Bruce twitters 10+ times a day about what he’s up to. It isn’t necessarily a popular activity for a person in his position for some but he believes strongly in the value of it.

Friday-I worked a full day and ended up having dinner with a group of communicators including the attendees from the creative services team here in Louisville. By 9:30 I was looking for some freedom and found out that the New York Dolls were playing down the street. My time! You can’t go out of town without stretching yourself a little in the interest of experiencing the town a bit. The New York Dolls were amazing. They rocked out in ‘71 and are best known for wearing dresses and high heels while daring the crowd to say something and rocking a sound that can only be called the early conceptions of punk rock. Look them up if you don’t know. It’s worth the read.

Sat-More work and a big celebration at the Centennial Park in Atlanta. That’s the place where someone set off a bomb during the Olympics in ‘94. We had rented out the amphitheater and had a big celebration of the birthday of the church. The locals were packing the place. Kids were running around in the fountain and people were laid out on blankets enjoying the day. Three homeless guys came up to hassle the magician scheduled for the event before we were ever set up. He was a good sport and they seemed to enjoy it.

Sun-I rode my bike home in one sitting. The rain was bad in TN and when UI pulled over I picked up a cool guy from Monteagle TN headed through Louisville. It’s good to have a companion in the rain on a bike. It’s just safer. I diverted toward Dixie Hwy when we were close to show him Fort Knox. He was less than impressed with the size. I agreed. We stopped for a beer at the Steel Horse Saloon on Dixie and I bolted after a Grim Reaper outlaw started striking up conversation with me. That was going to go nowhere good.

Glad to be back home and look forward to our first meeting tonight.

My Portfolio

2009-05-22T14:49:41Z

I finally posted some images and descriptions of work in the Bio section of this site. I suppose my students were beginning to think I was full of it and hadn’t really done any work. Well, now they can all rest at ease. “Mr. Hobson”(it still sounds funny to me) just exposed his many mistakes over the past 6+ years here and when I say, “I don’t really recommend that route” you had better believe it comes from something hastily produced by me in the past. There is really only a sampling of images there but much more than that would have been redundant.

Louisville’s Greg Ferrell on Titanium App

2009-05-12T14:44:12Z

Greg Ferrell is a friend of mine and has an excellent grasp of current trends and techniques with JavaScript. He is recently featured on the Yahoo! Developer Network Blog for his article on Titanium by Jeff Haynie of Appcelerator vs. Adobe AIR for development. This is a good read on his revelations at Jsconf2009 (April 24-25, 2009). For those of you that aren’t familiar with Greg check out his article and read his blog at studiokoi.com.

“...Titanium, it is an open-source, cross-platform, desktop application SDK that is built on Webkit and applications are written in HTML/CSS/JavaScript and supports lots of HTML5 goodies. (It also supports writing in Python and Ruby, with plans to add more languages in the future.). If that sounds a lot like Adobe AIR, that’s because it is. However, there are some fundamental differences that make Titanium a viable choice and very desirable over other solutions.”

For my students: Why is this important to you?

What is Appcelerator Titanium any way?

Well Bob Walsh of CNET puts it well:

“Titanium apps are more than web apps running in snapped-off web pages such as with Google Chrome; they’re full blown first class desktop apps with desktop app goodies like direct file system access, local database storage, desktop notifications-prerogatives that traditional desktop developers take for granted but Web devs usually have to do without.”

Okay, so what is Adobe AIR?
From the Wikipedia article:

“Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is a cross-platform runtime environment for building rich Internet applications using Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, HTML, or Ajax, that can be deployed as a desktop application.”

There are a ton of resources online so there is no need to re-invent the wheel here but it will be worth your time to browse the links in this article so that when these things come up in conversation you will now what it is that someone is talking about and possibly apply some of these resources to your own work as you develop into full-grown technology creatures.

In a nut-shell:

A Rich Internet Application, which these tools will allow you to create, is a desktop application that integrates with the web. Greg uses them automate workflow process such as gathering XML information and outputting it into different formats and integrating that workflow with the web. This kind of development will make your life much easier.

Greg Ferrell is the author of the studiokoi blog and is a developer for Northrop Grumman producing distance learning courseware for the military at his office by Fort Knox.

Night of the Twitting Dead

2009-04-30T16:03:14Z

I created a Twitter icon for fun and want to offer it up for free here and discuss what it is I see so great about Twitter anyway. I’ve only recently started to explore Twitter and now don’t know what I would do without it. Getting immediate updates to tech and design blogs that I follow is only one of the reasons I am a new user and devotee. I thought that maybe I should share what tech news I follow through Twitter and why for the benefit of my students so that they can see what a nightmare they have placed themselves into by becoming graphic artists or web-developers or whichever relevant field they choose.

So here goes:

Jeffrey Zeldman - this one is obvious. He is a true legend. If you don’t know read this.
Aaron Boeving - presented a nice custom CMS at my first RefreshKY meeting.
AIGA Design - “AIGA | the professional association for design”
OpenSrcTech - track news and announcements about things going on in open source technology.
Smashing Magazine - great resource for inspiration and design tips.
Lee Munroe - web designer in Belfast.
Kawsar Ali - DesignTech, be cautious because this guy posts ALOT but it is definitely good stuff.
Sonali V. - DesignMusings, good design discussions and tips.
Tripwire Magazine - web developer info, best practices, site lists and more
Aral Balkan - developer in Brighton.
ExpressionEngine - the CMS used for this site.
Angela Kuwaye - teaching me everything I know about the Moodle LMS and excellent gal.
Greg Ferrell - author of StudioKoi codeblog and excellent guy.
Louisville Web Group - Local web development group
LGDA - Louisville Graphic Design Association.
Refresh Louisville - my favorite of the local groups.
ILoveTypography - ILoveTypography is a great place for the often overlooked art of typography.
Sean Hodge - author of aiburn.com.
Nate Koechley - works on the YUI Library at Yahoo!.
...and more, sorry if I left anyone out.

I don’t know what I did before I was able to follow the blogsphere 24/7 in real time and get immediate updates to things like Siggraph, JSconf, wallpapers, best of the web lists, fonts, standards, Photoshop brushes and a million other things I may or may not use.

Maybe next week I’ll post some of my favorite art and design folks to follow but for now I have to rest up for Derby. I hope everyone has a great, safe and not too embarrassing Derby partying season this year. See you in class. Unless you get arrested.