The blog of things

Chronological log of this site's activities

Robin Broekman

Entry 1: Gogbot - 23/09/19

This year I went to gogbot 2019. The moment i visited was thursday night, as i thought the most interesting effects would be shown that evening. However, it turned out to be far less spectacular as i had imagined. Most displays felt a bit incomplete and in general it was hard to really understand what was going on. Furthermore, it did not feel like a whole, rather small projects under the same theme, which I think is a pity. With a bit of better organization and some wow-factor this event would be far more memorable. Luckely i have seen that one of the project of this study is to partiscipate in gogbot, which means we can try to amaze people ourselves.

Entry 2: Design plan - 23/09/19

I am bulding this site in raw HTML and css using the w3schools library and bootstrap add-on. I am doing this because id much rather learn how to code than to use a programming environment. Though I imagine it is a bit harder and slower to build, I do believe that the added value in experience is worth it. As far as design goes I have settled on a simple modern design. If i can find the time I want to build my portefolio in a same matter as this site. I have build a standard formatting for all my paragraphs which I will try to improve as time goes on. The first iteration of the portefolio will be done in a simular matter as the blog.

I am planning on putting the about me section and a part about my skillset on the home page as it is general information. Furthermore, I am planning to put all the blog posts on one page at the blog post page and put the portfolio on one page underneath eachother in the portfolio page for the time being. The contact page will consist of just my email address untill i have made a linkedIn account and I actually want to be contacted.

Entry 3: First entry out on portefolio - 23/09/19

I have added the first piece of work I thought was worth mentioning on my portefolio. This is a bit about the Audio amplifier project i have done last year. Click the link above to go to it directly or use the nav-bar to go to the portefolio part of the site.

Entry 4: Progress made on the video project - 23/09/19

As a part of the We Create Identity course for this module an interactive movie is to be made. This movie should be around 5 minutes long, which doesnt seem as much, but is quite the ordeal for an interactive movie. I am part of project group Yankee this module. After some brainstorming we have decided on making a narrator-protagonist story. This idea is inspired by a game called the Stanley Parable. In this game the narrator tells a story whilst the protaganist (the player) gets to ignore the narrotor and influence the narrator. However, in our sketch the player is influenced by the decisions the narrotor makes (player) and whatever the narrator says will indeed happen. The protagonist does have a free will and will try to work with the future the narrator has set for him in creative ways. At this point we are all to deliver a script for the opening scene so we can pick the best ideas from all of them in the next meeting.

Entry 5: Yet another post on the portefolio - 01/10/19

I have added a second piece on the portefolio. This time it will be telling the story of my own radio broadcasting station. This has been done in module 3 of Electrical Engineering as a group project. Use the link above to directly go to the portefolio.

Entry 6: Adding my personal touch to the website - 01/10/19

Whilst I was thinking about a design for the website I decided to look for examples. Using a blog post about full screen background picture I found a very decent example. I spent most time updating the site on getting this to work the way i wanted to (which was quite time-consuming). Furthermore, I have fixed the spaghetti code I had left earlier and made everything a bit neater. I have used a no-copyright picture to function as my background. The main source for my information on how to do this came from a blog post on css-tricks. Most of the small things were just trail and error using various troubleshoot posts. I am planning to add a footer to the first image with some contact details and I am planning to create a footer in general. Additionally, I want to make the portefolio a cardbased selection screen. However, this will be another project taking a lot of time and therefore I am planning to do this later this week.
In detail: you get a picture with a wider aspect ratio than you need. Then you turn it into a cover and set its height to 100vh (device height). To get the text to work, you make sure its in a container which is absolute and center it, using a top padding of 30vh it will be relatively in the middle. For the navigation bar on top, the old navigation bar just needed slight modifications and i redesigned them to fit the theme.

Entry 7: Writing a peer review on Guido Struijve - 15/10/19

As one of the exercises for Web technology, I was to peer-review a fellow student. The review site linked me to someone called Guido Struijve. However, this person did hardly any assignments on the website (as he quit the study). Therefore, i will be writing another review in my next blog post.

Entry 8: Writing a peer review on Olaf Tempelman - 15/10/19

This site has also been done without any influences of wordpress (which I liked a lot). There are actually some things I am going to take into consideration in my own design, especially how the blog page was made. Olaf places the dates below the title in a lighter colour, which saves some space which im lacking in these posts. The blog itself was put into boxes which worked quite well in his design. Additionally the pictures where put at the far right making them less distracting to the text on the left. As I have peer-reviewed entire papers last year I do not really feel any significant improvement through this assignment. However, it was fun to see someone elses design and get inspired by it. Olaf seemed to use an external stylesheet consisting of 19 different rules, this makes me think that the style for the webpage was highly personalized. In addition to that there is a pretty significant style block at the start of the code as well. The blog page itself consists of a navigation bar which is customized and different blogposts which is also in the external stylesheet.

Entry 9: Final Project and Expo - 7/11/19

At the end of module 1 of Creative Technology an expo was organized to show off all the small projects and the video project. This expo was organized in the smartXP on the campus of the University of Twente. The expo was an open event and quite a few students invited their parents to come and see their work, however, this caused the expo to be rather crowded. At the expo my project group (Yankee) presented our video project on a laptop at one of the tables. The video project of our group was named A day in the life of Thomas, which is a story that introduces a narrator in the life of an ordinairy (slightly chizophrenic) person. Because of its nature, our video did not make much sense without sound. Therefore, the video could only be viewed by two people at any given moment, since we only had 1 set of earpieces. Therefore, we couldnt let many people view our project. Nonetheless, the expo was quite fun to attend and it was interesting to see what other people had done with the assignments throughout the module.