CommLab homework, week 1

Waterfall under the bridge

This week’s homework:

  • Create two simple web pages using styles, and FTP them into your ITP account.
  • Visit the Waterfalls (www.nycwaterfalls.org), or check out David Byrne’s “Playing the Building.” Post response on your site.
  • Read Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy, Chapters 1–4 (The Orality of Language, The modern Discovery of Primary Oral Cultures, Some Psychodynamics of Orality, Writing Restructures Consciousness), and post response to Ong on your site. Be prepared to discuss in class.
  • Email [Spencer] the URL by Saturday.

Well, my Internet connection was really dodgy this weekend, so the last item was out of the question, but the rest is here:

Ong
Waterfalls
Learning HTML

Mutant WordPress

Mutant Hemingway theme

I can see already that I’m going to have to do my own WordPress install. I wanted to just make do with the school’s installation, but, the built-in theme system is too broken.

The first theme I tried, veryplaintxt, had some typographical things that annoyed me, so I copied it to My Themes and tried to get to it through the built-in theme editor . . . ? No dice. Error message. Since I’d copied it over, I could have just made hard edits via FTP, but I’m trying to work with the system.

So I switched to this theme, Hemingway, which doesn’t annoy me as much out of the box. But it refuses to display my blogroll, no matter where I try to put it—

Hemingway configuration

—which is bad, because I need those links to the class pages (which is another issue; why is everything so scattered around?). I could just make a static links list, since the pages list is showing up, but—It. Should. Work.

Also? This WordPress Mu installation is some weird-ass out-of-date version: “wordpress-mu-1.2.3-2.2.1.” I’d much rather have the new version. And having neither the well-thought-out plug-in set that’s used at WordPress.com not the ability to install my own choice of plug-ins sucks.

I don’t think I’ll have time to install WP this weekend, though, so I’ll just have to whine.

India’s ITP blog