As some of you may know, in August I took a position at the University of California, Irvine, in their Informatics department, which is in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences. I’ve always been a big fan of that discipline as its multidisciplinary approach to technology provides great freedom and perspective when determine how it should be evaluated and studied. Of course, UCI is a great school as well, very distinguished, and everyone there has been quite wonderful, supportive, and accommodating.

Donald Bren Hall, housing, among others, the Informatics department

As was to be expected, however, I am also now incredibly busy. Last quarter (UCI works on quarters, not semesters), I taught Social Analysis of Computerization and Technical Writing, while next quarter I’m teaching the senior project capstone course which involves partnering with local companies, and a Human Computer Interaction course. The amount of preparation I’ve had to do for these courses can’t be overstated; it’s been nuts. I’m happy to be so busy, but at the same time I barely have time to do anything else.

Sadly, that included this website, my beloved IS301.com. I knew that it may wither and die like so many other sites whose owners abandoned them, that I simply wouldn’t have the time to maintain it and give it the proper amount of love and care with everything else I had to do, and for a good while that did turn out to be the case.

But then, I made a post. And another. Just a couple, not many, and the reason is that even though I was busy, I still thought about the site. I had put so much time and care and love and effort into it, I just couldn’t bring myself to let it die. It had its own Twitter feed, its own Pinterest board, extensive customizations and modifications I’d made over the years to make it exactly, or at least as close to exactly as I could get, how I wanted it. Those things may not be a big deal for other sites, but for a small, one-man operation like this, I’m pretty proud of what it’s become, especially considering its humble beginnings as a site on WordPress.com.

IS301.com’s humble beginnings

And that brings me to the crux of this post / video. One of the reasons I was hired at UCI was to teach a Human-Computer Interaction course in the new online Master’s program that will come on-line this spring. In order to do that, I will need to make some videos that provide lectures, demonstrations, tutorials, and so on. That requires video production software, so I invested in Camtasia for the Mac, which is more than adequate for my needs, and I also invested in a Blue Yeti microphone that will provide better sound for the recordings.

On a side note, the mic is a beast of a thing, you can see it there sitting on my desk, but it has a lot of functionality including various sound modes such as cardioid and omnidirectional, gain control, and it wasn’t too expensive all things considered (About $120 at Guitar Center).

Now THAT’S a mic!

I will primarily use these tools for the online course, of course, however since I have them, I thought I could use them as part of my repertoire to bring IS301 back to life. I’d like to make some videos including reviews, product unboxings, opinion pieces, that sort of thing, or whatever else strikes my fancy. I originally had a video accompanying this post, but after working on it for a couple of days it just didn’t add anything to the post; video needs compelling visuals, which the next one will have but this one didn’t. It was just a test anyway, an experiment to see how it went, and was essentially just a video version of the post itself. My intent is to move beyond that for future videos, but I didn’t want to go crazy for the first one.

(I did make the video tutorials explaining ripping dvds, Plex, and XBMC/Roku you see in the sidebar on the right-hand side of the page, but that was a jury-rigged setup, and I’d like a more professional setup for future endeavors).

In fact, I’m thinking that I’d like to invest a little more in the site; have a logo developed, an intro for these videos, perhaps some branding. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but you never want to think small. Lately I’ve been feeling like there is some real potential here, I’m not sure what has gotten me fired up about it but here we are, and I already have the idea for my next video. When it comes to videos, it’s easier to write them first and then record them, however for the next video that might be more complicated than it sounds. Or it might not, I’ll just have to try it and see. This video

Additionally, I intend to keep IS301 as the site’s name. I like it; it’s mysterious and enigmatic. People will ponder “what does IS301 mean?” when it’s simply the class for which the site was originally designed. That’s all!

IS301.com today. But you know that, since you’re here!

I’ve always been very pleased with the way this site developed and evolved, and the simple fact is I don’t want it to languish in the island of misfit websites, abandoned by their owners. That happens to sites much bigger than this; you should visit hauntedmansion.com or doombuggies.com (they’re the same site but two separate URLs). It’s a great site, beautifully designed, a ton of content, some of which was contributed by people who worked on the design and production of the attraction itself. But it hasn’t been updated in at least five years from what I can tell, and there’s no indication of what happened. So I have to be sure that I’m focused.

Hauntedmansion.com

I’ll still be incredibly busy, especially with the graduate class on top of my regular teaching load, and I am the sole contributor and maintainer, so I’m being idealistic, but at the same time I’m pragmatic. I have high hopes that this will be a fulfilling side project that continues to grow and expand, in terms of visitors, in terms of content, in terms of quality. I hope you’ll come along with me; in the words of my financial accounting professor, that will make it so much more fun!

I’ll talk to you soon.