Content and menu bar: Completed

I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders to be able to say that I have FINALLY completed all of my content for my website . The rest of this week will be spent transforming my content into the website. I feel like this process has been very long and I can't wait for everything to be pulled together. I had planned to do more work during the break, however due to my thanksgiving plans, I was unable to make it on campus to get anything done. I'm seeing that I'm not as behind as I was initially worried. Hopefully, I can remain calm and buckle down, and all of this coding and web designing will be a thing of the past. I will be so happy when this semester ends and I can finally relax..

Food Forecast and Team Awesome

As I continue to do my research for the game, Joel has been working on the opening page as well as the main characters. Chelsea has finished drawing the unhealthy foods, and I'm pretty sure Lauren is doing what she can in her maternity leave. We're all pulling our weight, and I am looking forward to the payoff of having all of these things completed. I still need to work on some globaloria projects, but as long as I keep busy and focused, I know I will get it done.

Pulling Everything together during a stressful time

As far as my website goes, I have the first 10 pages completed, along with most of the content that I want to use and what it's basically coming down to now is coding and having everything come to fruition. DreamWeaver is a lot more complicated than I initially thought and as the deadline is approaching, I'm starting to feel the pinch. I'm trying to plan out everything to the point where my goal is to have all of my pages completed by the time we get back from Thanksgiving break. I wish the lab could be open, so I could really make use of my free time, but I guess those are the breaks. At this point, I just want my site to be completed and this semester to be OVER.

I'm anti-UNO Moo

Since I am taking a game design class, I felt that it would be appropriate to talk about other games that are on the market. I was watching tv the other day and I saw an ad for UNO Moo, which I found to be slightly appalling. I understand the concept of UNO Moo is to dumb down the game so that it can be fun and easy for young kids, however UNO original isn't that challenging to begin with. The main source of my irritation stems from the idea that certain toy companies feel the need to change games that have nothing wrong with them to begin with. "If it aint broke, don't fix it" I believe the old cliche' goes, and I absolutely agree. Bellow is an ad for UNO moo, what do YOU think?

Ginza in Charles Town

Last night, my boyfriend and I decided to go out to a restaurant outside of the confines of Shepherdstown, and headed toward Charles Town. We stumbled across Ginza Japanese Steakhouse, and decided to check it out. The sushi selection wasn't bad in terms of the variety of specialty rolls. A unique aspect of going to Ginza was that the specialty rolls also used various types of seaweed. In my years of eating sushi in many different cities, I have never encountered that. Although that was unique, the taste of the sushi was so-so. The fish wasn't particularly bad, but the taste was nothing spectacular. My boyfriend said it best when he described it as, "standard". I would recommend going there if you want to have the Japanese steak house experience and don't want to drive to Hagerstown or Martinsburg, but I wouldn't necessarily suggest driving out there for the sushi alone. If I were to give Ginza a grade it would be a B-. I wouldn't mind going back there, but I'm in no rush.

Creating a game = fun Researching for it, not so much

I took on the role of being in charge of the research and development of our game, "food forecast" and all I can say is that it is BO-RING. It's interesting to know the health benefits of eating different vegetables, but when you are researching 12 vegetables at a time over a course of 3 hours, it tends to be monotonous. We all know that vegetables are loaded with vitamins and minerals that are essential for immunity and weight loss, and going over each individual veggie and the included nutrients becomes quite daunting.
I've also found some slight difficulty in designating a crop to a specific season, when certain ones are grown in two different seasons. When I took on the job, I thought it would be more cut and dry but I'm learning that isn't the case. Thus far, I've completed my research on 12 spring vegetables, and I am now working on the summer ones. I'm not sure when all of the research needs to be completed, however I'm trying to get it done in a timely manner, so my team will have more to work with. I wish it were more exciting and fun, but in any job or position, it won't always be.

Team Awesome and Our Awesome Roles

Recently, my team (awesome) met and discussed our jobs and roles as group members which are as follows:
Joel-"scripting and animating the characters"-each season has a different character which he will be in charge of animating as well as doing a lot of the work using coding and scripting.
Lauren- illustrating the good foods-The object of our game is to match the appropriate crop with the right season. Lauren will be collecting and drawing these using photoshop, and mailing them to us, as she is about to go on her maternity leave (Good Luck!).
Chelsea- illustrating the bad foods- During our game, the "bad foods" will be chasing the characters as a way to sabotage the player's ability to select the appropriate crops, which deducts points from the overall score. Chelsea will be illustrating these foods which will be used in the game.
Me- research and development of crops- As part of our game, we are providing information regarding the health benefits of each of the crops to be used. I will be researching 12 crops per season, providing the information to be used in the game as well as assign the crops to the seasons. . In addition to that, I will be doing any other outside research that would be required into making "Food Forecast" a reality beyond the existing paper prototype. With the jobs in order, the development of "Food Forecast" can begin.. Hooray!!

Navigation Bar: Completed

Last week we learned about the coding and linking up the navigation bar. I think it's interesting to look at websites now and understand how these pages are put together. When you're building your own website, one understands more clearly what goes into web building, and I no longer look at websites at face value. In a way, I think it's pretty cool to look at a navigation bar and think, "I know the coding for that." Although it's somewhat frustrating to learn, it's interesting to see that you know it, and get it. As the semester is rounding itself out, I know that I am getting that much closer to getting the final product, which is actually a little exciting as a novice webpage designer.