www.fdu.edu

The Fairleigh Dickinson University website is the primary "product" of my position as University Webmaster. Since I took the position in 1997 the site has grown from a few tens of pages to a few thousands of pages. It receives over 50,000 page views during a typical day. The page at http://www.fdu.edu/mainpagehist/ shows some of the design variations that the page has gone through in past years.

Web Skills Certification

In 1996, Joyce Beck and I created one of the earliest certification courses in web development skills, and we have been teaching web skills and related courses since then, to undergraduates, graduate students, and hundreds of adult students.

eightytwenty.com

Not much of this website is available for public viewing. It is the instructors' notes for the continuing education course above, and Joyce (see above) is actually more its designer than I am. A design checklist is one of the useful pages not password protected.

academyppo.com

Bergen Academies is a county-wide public magnet high school serving Bergen County, New Jersey. I was for some time the volunteer webmaster for the very active Parent Partnership Organization. They still use my site design and my "puzzle-ring" logo.

looseassociation.com

This site was a new project in 2006. Using the CafePress structure, it offers t-shirts and other products with smart remarks.

Volkswagen vans

Although I have gone without for some time, I owned at least one air-cooled engine Volkswagen van more or less continuously for 25 years. Arguably the prize of this sequential collection was Toybox, a 1981 Vanagon into which I installed a Porsche 911 engine that nearly tripled the van's horsepower. Photographs and text illustrate the process and some dimensions for the benefit of other VW wackos.

Photography

I take well over 1000 digital photographs a year. Many of the photographs on the FDU websites (and sometimes one or more of the annual printed alumni calendar photos) are mine. After using a Sony Mavica CD-1000 for some years, I detoured to the Canon family (Powershot S1 and S2). But now I'm back, with the Sony H7 (DSC-H7). The H7 has what I admire in all the cameras just mentioned: long (10x optical or greater) zoom and steady-shot or anti-shake technology, which allows hand-held telephoto shots at the equivalent of a 300mm lens on a 35mm camera. The H7 adds a terrific new feature: high ISO settings up to 1600 or even 3200, allowing a much greater use of available light. See http://flickr.com/photos/farsightful/sets/72157600244333400/ for examples and http://pagetuner.com/h7/ for side-by-side comparison shots of the H7 and Sony DSC-H2.

SOCI3401

Sociology 3401, Computers and Society is one of a growing list of courses I have developed and taught for FDU. The two most recent courses I have developed and taught have been fully online courses for masters degree students: Perspectives on Leadership from Films and Planning for Change in Information Technology.

cups-n-saucers.com

Dara Holzman is a recent client; visit her site to see what she creates: it's art for women only.

Sun Recumbent Trike

A new toy for 2006 was the Sun EZ-Tadpole recumbent trike, a three-wheeled human-powered vehicle. Now I have sold that peculiar bicycle derivative and begun work on another one, still a recumbent but this time two-wheeled and front-wheel-drive.

inside.fdu.edu

The design concept here is that www.fdu.edu is for outsiders and inside.fdu.edu for those who are already members of the FDU community: students, faculty, staff, alumni. The main-page design of inside.fdu.edu was originally used on www.fdu.edu, and I frankly prefer it, but the University chose the more image-intensive look for www.fdu.edu .

Pagetoaster

University faculty and staff need to be able to post information on the World Wide Web, but it is difficult for them to spare the time to learn and to maintain the skills needed to construct web pages they can be proud of. I developed Pagetoaster in 1999 to allow individuals to make web pages in predefined formats simply by filling out a form. Hundreds of individuals at FDU have done so with success. Well over a thousand Pagetoaster pages have been created.

My own Pagetoaster page shows some of the features that can be included. A key feature of every Pagetoaster page is the link at the bottom: "How'd they do that?" You can always see what codes and choice of images a Pagetoaster author used for the page.

publicmind.fdu.edu

FDU PublicMind is a university-based public interest polling and research center.

colorandglass.com

This new site shows the work of a gifted New Jersey artist in stained glass.

njpsychoanalytic.com

This is an organization for which I serve as volunteer webmaster.

House Projects

I put lots of time and effort into designing and finishing the 20x30 foot garage we had built when we moved into our current home. There are good ideas here to be considered, and bad ideas here to be avoided, by others involved in the same process. More recently, I used products from Screen Den to make a three-season space from our screened porch. I was also happy with the results using CeilingLink ceiling panel supports instead of a conventional dropped ceiling.

Car Projects

In my search for a stick-shift minivan to replace the no longer available VW vans, I owned a Nissan Xterra for a period of years, but now have discovered the nicely-packaged and very affordable Mazda 5.

The Metaphor Factory

This is a short paper on "the library of 2012" composed for a competition held in 2002. My concept is that libraries will (have to!) specialize in virtual reality presentations of various kinds, since the volume of data available will not distinguish them from other resources the way it used to.

Tuba-related

I am a bad but persistent player of brass instruments: trumpet and euphonium in high school, and now after a 30-year break the tuba. I play in the FDU Pep Band.
Honey I Shrunk the Sousaphone
Brass Instruments in Five Sizes: Bb, Eb, Bb, Eb, Bb
Brass Instruments Mouthpiece Dimensions
Tubachristmas in New York City

My resume and Facebook link

Family Links