May 17th, 2008 — Tags: Berlin, Germany, History, photography
Michelle Harris arrived on Thursday afternoon. I was glad of the company, even if she did wake me up.
We went out for dinner that night at Cafe Prenzlauer for quintessential Berlin food and walked around a bit afterward.
The next morning, (Friday) Michelle and I got up early and walked down to Alexanderplaetze to take photos.
3 churches, the TV tower, some fountains and a museum later, our feet began to complain.
We made our way back to the hotel expecting to have time for showers and naps before Professor Freeman and the other students arrived.
Imagine our horror when we walk into our room and not only have the others arrived but we are expected downstairs in 15 minutes!
We were treated to a meeting with Ian Johnson, Wall Street Journal Berlin Bureau chief, Pulitzer winner and UF graduate. Too bad most of us were half asleep! He talked about how he got his job in a foreign bureau and what possibilities there might be for us to crack the competition.
Then we went to the Bernaur Wall Park. I still can’t fully grasp what happened in this city, but the pictures and stories gave me the same quiet, sick feeling that I get from any account of human atrocities (the Holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia…).
We took a tram to “Prater Biergarten” for a dinner of sausages and beer. On the walk home my ankles finally went numb. Huzzah for scalding hot showers!
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Big Fountain
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Poseidon
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TV Tower at Alexanderplatz
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St. Marienkirsch at Alexanderplatz
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St. Marienkirsch at Alexanderplatz
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Marx and Engel
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Bernaur Wall Park
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Bernaur Wall Park - No Man's Land
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Prater Biergarten
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Prater Biergarten
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Hotel Transit Loft
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St. Marienkirsch at Alexanderplatz
May 14th, 2008 — Tags: Berlin, photography
So, after having dropped off the face of the cyberearth for a few weeks, I’m resurfacing in Berlin. I’m taking a Photojournalism class with Professor Freeman and some other students from UF.
And by the way, yes, I did manage to graduate! It hasn’t quite sunk in yet, but I’m sure some day it will. My move to Miami was anything but graceful, but everyone involved survived.
So I’m in Berlin for 2 weeks, then back to Miami for my internship. I’ll start uploading photos tomorrow and blogging about my experiences here.
So far, I’ve managed to get from the airport to my hotel, find food and walk 3 miles. And realize that my German is even more atrocious than I thought. I can read pretty well, but forget the rest.
This city has more graffiti than any other place I’ve ever been. Some of it is even extremely artistic, as opposed to just scribbles on the wall. Unfortunately, I wasted most of the daylight hours recovering from bouncing from plane to plane for 15 hours, but tomorrow I’ll be out and about bright and early. (Could I get anymore cliches in there?)
May 7th, 2008 —
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This mashup is more a template than a real application. you can use it as a starting point in order to build your own Google Maps mashup (I use it myself by the way).
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This is a cool geo tool that lets you paste in an RSS feed URL to instantly map the locations of the posts/news articles.
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This mashup takes your IP address (if available) and matches it with local news for that geo.
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A tool to let you easily draw and encode polylines and polygons.
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Compare the two maps services.
April 27th, 2008 —
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April 23rd, 2008 — Tags: alligator, blogs, journalism, web
Mark Luckie at 10,000 Words isn’t “just a blogger,” he’s a print journalist gone online. Luckie has been looking at college journalism this week, and The Independent Florida Alligator got some awesome mentions:
Online Student Journalism: Best of the Best
1. The Independent Florida Alligator, University of Florida
The Alligator is hands down the best online student newspaper and rivals the pros in its news coverage and use of multimedia elements. Just listing the stellar components that make up the site warrant its own individual post. The Alligator’s standout features are the Gainesville
Explorer , a look at the surrounding city using video and audio slideshows, the use of Google Maps mashups to illustrate problems like apartment overcrowding and rising gas prices, and its 11 blogsthat cover pretty much every spectrum of news. Admittedly The Alligator works on a larger scale than most student newspapers, but it is nevertheless an exceptional example of the possibility of online student journalism.
What a payoff for all the hard work we’ve done!
Online Student Journalism: Outstanding Use of Multimedia or Social Networking
7. Twitter, The Independent Florida Alligator, University of Florida
It seems everyone is Twitteringthese days, but The Alligator is one of very few student newspapers doing so. The site uses twitterfeed to broadcast news stories and links, almost 2,500 of which have been sent since The Alligator began using the service.
Personally, I think we should have gotten more mention of our amazing multimedia, but at least my Twitter obsession has been justified.
Online Student Journalism: Best Site Design
4. The Independent Florida Alligator, University of Florida
The Alligator is an incredible example of the potential greatness of an online student newspaper. Its black and white design makes the fine journalism happening on the site look even better. Sections and stories are easily scannable and the site’s headlines are large enough to catch the eye. The Alligator also makes great use of its footer — a contrasting black to
the rest of the page — something that is rare in online student paper design.
That’s so totally what we were going for!
April 23rd, 2008 — Tags: alligator, social media, twitter, web
Well, my obsession with Twitter has been pretty well satisfied by now.
I’ve gotten the feed printed onto my desktop with Geektool, set up keyword tracking, followed a bunch of super cool journalism people, then meticulously tracked down every Twitter user in Gainesville and followed them as well. (Now that I’m leaving, should I un-follow them?) My tweets automagically go through to my Facebook status and I even set up my calendar and to do list on Twitter.
I use a combination of Twhirl, Google Talk and mobile updates to keep track of everything. And no, I’m not paying attention ALL the time.
I made a Twitter account for The Independent Florida Alligator and then made a page on the Web site where the “tweets” of those that follow the newspaper’s account will show up. The Alligator’s Twitter feed also includes weather conditions and updates from the University Police Department’s crime log (scraped with Dapper).
My initial obsession has been tempered by productivity problems and information overload. But I won’t stop using it. I’ll just have to be a little more judicious.
April 23rd, 2008 — Tags: Google, map, programming, web
For the last month or so I’ve been taking a really in-depth look at the Google Maps API. Partly out of my own curiosity, and partly as an individual project for the online capstone course at UF.
I’ve learned some really cool things along the way. How to work with information flowing between a viewer and the server, for instance. I’ve also learned more about javascript and PHP.
One bad thing though: Google Maps tend to fail when you need to plot more than 200 locations. Ken Schwencke and I found this out when we tried to plot over 800 Gainesville restaurants with their inspection reports from an XML file. We’re still looking for a solution. (We’ve basically parsed a CSV file with python and gotten it to feed into an XML file which is being fed into the map…now I’m hungry.)
We wanted to integrate restaurant reviews using the Yelp API, but the requests are restricted to only 20 businesses, so we’re working on our own review backend.
For my class project, I’m building a map with multiple layers, like crime, alcohol licenses, and restaurant inspections, that can be toggled to show only the information a viewer wants to see. Or all of it at once. It’ll be on a small scale, just as a proof of concept. But still pretty cool.
April 17th, 2008 —
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April 12th, 2008 — Tags: programming, python, web
After 2 frustrating months, I finally got Django up and running on my laptop. I could have had an easier time installing it on my Windoze machine, but I’m not home very much, so I wouldn’t have time to play with it.
Ken Schwencke, whose help was instrumental in finally get Django to work, and I have been working through the tutorials on the Django project Web site. It’s time to buy some python programming books.
Ken is a few steps ahead of me, having already written a python script to parse a Twitter friends feed so it can be printed out in plan text. (We discovered GeekTool recently, and have been experimenting with getting all kinds of data printed to the desktop.)
I’m really excited about learning how to use Django and python to build new web projects.
April 12th, 2008 — Tags: blogs
Zac Echola reminded me yesterday what this blog is about and why I started it.
- 1. A networking blog should be a living document of your professional self. You should stay focused on topics that matter to people who may hire you. You should start reading blogs from people in your field.
- 2. When someone makes you think, you should think out loud on your site. Have a conversation with others. Email people questions. Chat with them on twitter. Get to know people. Working a blog isn’t much different than working a room at a conference. Stay focused.
- 3. Show off your work. When you do something good, show it off. Don’t be bashful.
- 4. SEO the crap out of yourself.
- 5. Seize every opportunity you can.
- 6. Always remember that there’s a real human being on the other side of the machine.
I’ve been really bad at updating lately, and I’m going to work hard to fix that, starting with a bunch of updates on what I’ve been doing lately. I think short posts are preferred, so I’ll split things up. Keep an eye out for stuff on Twitter, Google Maps, Django and more.
April 12th, 2008 — Tags: links
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Graphic, schematic maps can very useful in a wide range of charting scenarios and thanks to a recent upgrade, now you can use the Google Chart API to create them.
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This unique introductory SQL tutorial not only provides easy-to-understand SQL instructions, but it allows you to practice what you learn using the on-line SQL interpreter. You will receive immediate results after submitting your SQL commands.
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It might come in handy some day if you ever want to learn data structs and algorithms.
The woman who writes them is a genius, and has a knack for explaining things
April 11th, 2008 — Tags: links
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The Google Maps API is a great tool if you’d had experience using it, but there are a number of third-party applications that streamline the map-building process and facilitate and quicker move to the web when time is a factor.
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Can this be used to make a Django install package?
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A lot of data sources are already freely available on the net, as it turns out, if you just know where to look. Here’s a summary
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Shiny and glossy design elements are now officially outdated. Just like retro is becoming trendy again, grungy look appears to rapidly gain on popularity.
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A new class, titled “Content Management, Data and APIs,” came about as I heard what former students were telling me regarding their day to day workflows
I'm a senior at the University of Florida where I study journalism and linguistics. I am the New Media Managing Editor at The Independent Florida Alligator. My studies at UF are geared toward a career in online journalism. I love to write, play with words, and take advantage of technology to discover new ways to tell stories.