Ugly? Maybe. Common? Yes. Functional? DEFINITELY!

A few days ago I blogged about considering switching from Blogger to WordPress to publish my blog. It was prompted by some blog envy of my friend Sam Bradley, author of Communication and Cognition. Sam has really tutored himself on the craft of finding, creating, and keeping an audience in the online community. Sam switched to WordPress. Lots of the "serious bloggers" that I know use WordPress. I'm serious, right?

I was encouraged when I received more comments from that blog post teasing about a switch to WordPress than I have in a long time. Now, we're not talking tons of comments here...but lately any comment as proof that people are visiting this page is better than none. Most of the comments pushed me in the direction of using WordPress. "It tells the world you're serious about blogging," one person said. "Blogger is so boring and predictable in its design elements," another chimed in.

So, I tried WordPress. I installed WP 2.7 on my host and started reading the program's online documentation. Trouble was...that documentation seemed to apply to an earlier version of the program...as the Dashboard I was staring at was quite different than what they described. No problem...I'm a fairly intelligent person so I figured that I could poke around until I figured it out.

I haven't been more frustrated with something in MONTHS.

I'm all for the open-source concept! I love the fact that people all over the world are trying to make the program better--more widgets, better graphically, etc.--and sharing their knowledge with dopes like me without any sort of profit motive. My understanding was that I just needed to find a template that I like and install it. No problem. First trouble...there are SO MANY to choose from! I spent several hours obsessively poking through beautiful templates of all types. Finally found one that I liked. It was this one:

WordPress Theme Notepad Second

How clean. How professional looking. My little picture could be there to the right, with a blurb about my research next to it...replacing the "Lorem ipsum dolor" stuff.
And Tag Clouds! I love Tag Clouds. That's the one, I thought. Downloaded it, transferred it to my host. Selected it and viola:

Rob's sloppy page.

Could I find how to upload my picture. No way! Could I figure out how to replace the "Lorem ipsum, et al.?" Must be in the About Me thing on the dashboard, right? I mean, it says "About" right there, doesn't it?

Nope. That resulted in another line appearing somewhere. (Honestly, I edited the statement in "about me" prior to publishing this blog...)

I wrestled with that darn page for an entire afternoon. No luck. Feeling clueless, I decided that it just wasn't the time for me to work on migrating to WordPress.




Cool heads prevailed the next morning, with a fresh set of eyes after a good night's sleep.
"Come on, you should be able to figure this out!" I gave myself a pep talk over a cup (or two) of coffee. "Maybe you just chose too complex of a template."

That's it, start slowly. Ease yourself into this open source stuff. Remember, open source, where the information about how to do it is all out there...free...for the user!

So, I tried another template. Honestly, I think I've blocked out the actual name due to the trauma experienced after spending THREE HOURS just trying to figure out how to change the font color for the postings from orange (orange?!? I just don't get aesthetics I guess...how about a nice black color for my simple prose).

I did start learning stuff...thanks to the power of Google. [Google, who btw, provides me with the free...that free both monetarily AND stress-free...blog host I've been using for 3 years]. I Googled and learned how to change the font size on the menu of my page. I learned what a "hover" was...and how to change that font size. Even learned where to change the font color on my menu. But, the fact that it was in hex didn't help me one bit...do all these people using WordPress know the hex color wheel by heart? Oh my gosh, I am outta touch.

But, after copying and pasting figures like #FFF062G (or whatever!) from one place to another, I did change the text of my menu text from one hue to another. You'd think that would at least help me approach the problem of changing the font color in my posting itself. I mean, this is a simple template. It doesn't even have a place for me to put a picture of myself for cripes sake!

Nope. Couldn't find it. After another 45 minutes...lots of grumbling...and having my family members leave the house...I finally gave up.

Blogger.
My blog is blue. It's blue because I clicked a button saying "make it blue."
It's two columns. That's all I can get. Too bad.
But, when I'm ready to blog...it's here for me.
Functionality. I'll take it.

Visit to Ohio State Successful

It's been 10 days since I've updated. Sorry. Busy time.

Today, in fact, I was a part of a terrific panel as our Department's Colloquium Series.

Maybe more on that later.

But I wanted to share a little story.

Ten years ago or so I was an Assistant Professor at University of Alabama in the Telecommunication and Film Department. And, in order to continue my work I needed to get a physiology lab up and running. I had inherited all the equipment...it was in a storage room but I wasn't sure how to get it functional.

In our our lab use a program called VPM, written by a Professor Ed Cook at UAB to collect our physiology data. Because he was so geographically close to me in Tuscaloosa, I asked him to come down and consult with me. He was gracious enough to agree and soon the Media and Psychophysiology Lab was functional. I'll never forget his kindness.

And I remembered him fondly when Zheng Wang --an IU Telecomm. PhD. who is now at Ohio State--asked me if I would come and help her set up her lab in Columbus. She, too had inherited some equipment that were in somewhat a state of storage.

So, last weekend I went to visit her in Columbus and had a great time. Here I am with Brutus the OSU mascot...which is a nut as far as I can tell...but here he is dressed up as an astronaut.

And later in the weekend I was able to find my way into the OSU stadium which I understand is called "The Horseshoe." Apparently there was a big game that weekened between OSU and USC...but it was an way game as you can tell by the "crowd" around me.

And, most importantly, I'm glad to report that the Wang Lab is now all ready to collect data.

Go Zheng!

FOUR doctors in the house

Congratulations to Dr. Narine Yegiyan who today successfully defended her dissertation entitled

Experimental investigation of resource allocation and memory for central and
peripheral detail as a function of motivational activation

One of the key tenets of her disseratation was the dual-motivation systems concept which suggests that human beings have an "approach" (appetitive) system and an "avoid" (aversive) system, each of which act in different ways.

After her defense, Dr. Yegiyan presented members of her committee with T-shirts that had a well-known (at least to us) graphical representation of the activation fuctions of the appetitive and aversive systems.

Here's a picture of Drs. Yegiyan, Grabe, Potter & Lang (the latter 3 proudly wearing their new shirts).

Narine begins her new position as an Assistant Professor at UC Davis in the Fall.

It's a Small World--Eastern Washington State College

I live in a typical suburban, midwest neighborhood. The houses here are owned, primarily, by either young families or older, empty-nesters. The other day my family and I were out taking a walk and met one of our neighbor couples. After chit-chatting for awhile, it turns out that the woman had family members who live in Kennewick Washington. Kennewick is one of the Tri-Cities...a trio of cities in southeastern Washington...1716 miles away! And, here we were in the same neighbohood in Bloomington, Indiana.

Talking more, it turns out that her father was a kicker/punter for the Kennewick Lions and went onto Eastern Washington State College on a football scholarship. EWSC would eventually become Eastern Washington University, the place I began my academic career, met my wife, etc...

Later in the day, this same neighbor dropped by our house with a bit of memorabelia her father had given her from his football glory days:

ICA=Hooray, San Fran=Yuck

Over the Memorial Day Weekend I hit the road...traveling to San Francisco for the annual conference of the International Communication Association. ICA is, by far, my favorite communication-related academic conference. The research being done is of high quality and that stimulates me to go back to my lab and continue my work. I must say, however, that this year I seemed to be much more focused on re-connecting with friends and former students and meeting new people (including a faculty member from Virginia Tech who told me he is an occassional Audio Prof reader!).


Here are some pictures of a bunch of us out for dinner at a place called Calzone's.


And when I say a bunch, I mean 15!!

Now, San Francisco is not one of my favorite cities. It's ALWAYS COLD THERE and seems pretty dirty and smelly to me. But, here's a few required shots of of a cable car and me riding on it (thanks to Johnny Sparks for letting me borrow the transit pass!)

Now, I look like I gained about 25 pounds by eating at Calzone's prior to taking this ride...

Not so. I just had to have on about 14 layers of clothing...did I mention that it was cold there.

Anyway, back home again in Indiana, and off to teach my summer school class.