Tuesday marked the launch of a new site in the mtwstudios.com network – tcnjmenc.org ! This site was built to replace the previous site, which had been up for a number of years and was in terrible need of a redesign. mtwstudios was chosen to redesign the site after submitting a design in response to an open call for proposals earlier this summer.

The site started from an original sketch on paper, to pretty much the final design by early August. August was spent formatting content and filling out the styling as well as how the pages would be arranged. The new site was finally launched on September 12, 2006, to correspond with the first general meeting of the 2006-2007 school year.

The site uses the most recent codebase of the PHP templating engine that I use on pretty much all of my pages. One noteable difference is that the main class in this system has 3-4 main templates for different page layouts. This comes in handy if I need a liquid-width version of a page or something. The site also uses Gallery 2 (gallery.menalto.com) and php-calendar (php-calendar.sourceforge.net), both custom skinned to the tcnjmenc templates.

The site includes (mostly) all of the previous content on it (minutes, constitution, photos, bylaws, links, et cetera) as well as improving upon a number of concepts. The photos page is now run by Gallery which should make it easier to post and manage all of the photos in a neat manner. Also, the calendar section looks much nicer than the previous one, and should help with keeping all our members in-the-know concerning upcoming events.

Probably the most noteable feature of the new site is one that hasn’t been unveiled yet. The directory which was printed last year will be done completely on the web this year, which should make things easier as well as the information more accessable and useable. The online Musicians Directory will include and entry for all of our current MENC musicians, which they will be able to edit at any time during the school year. For those looking for a musician, the directory will also be searchable by instrument, etc. More details will come later as the project nears completion.

I’m currently developing the online directory framework, as well as finishing up a couple finishing touches to the site. If anyone has any comments or suggestions, feel free to email me or leave a comment.

So I recieved this message while on vacation:

From: Office.of.Records.and.Registration/recreg@tcnj.edu     Mailed-By: mailhost.tcnj.edu
To: tom3@tcnj.edu
Date: Jul 7, 2006 9:32 AM
Subject: FSP 12104 Notification of Class Cancellation

Juuuuust great – my first choice FSP was cancelled.  Of course my 2nd-5th choices are probably all filled up now because at registration you only register for one class.  TESS tells me they automatically signed me up for FSP -104-03 CLASSICAL WORLD IN GLOBAL CNTEXT (details).  On quick review, it doesn’t look too bad, and I could probably do fine, so I’m not too worried.  If I find a class I like better open, then I might try to transfer into that one instead…

I wonder what happened to Gasko concerning this – haven’t gotten a chance to talk to him since I got the message.

Developing…

Well today was a rather interesting experience.

I woke up at 5:45 (before my alarm) which is not usual for me, because I usually sleep through alarms. Left around 6:30, and despite the torrential downpour and low visibility, I got there early, without a problem. Upon sign-in at the Brower Students Center, we received a program and a little bag with some papers about the day, as well as a TCNJ pen and some mints. 7:30 was breakfast hour, so I sat around and read for about half of it, and then went and took my ID picture on the second floor, came back to the lobby and hung out until Welcoming at 8:30.

We were welcomed with a pretty standard welcoming speech from the President of Student Government. We were then split in half by program color around 8:45, and herded into the Music Building performance room for a panel about FYE, liberal learning reqs, residential life, etc. For something I thought I’d sleep though, it was actually semi-informative. After 15 minutes, the panel left, and we were shown a poorly-produced parody skit, documenting the remainder of our day at orientation, put together by the ambassadors. Then the second panel came in and talked about Financial stuff – payments, scholarships, loans. It wasn’t as clear as the first panel, but it was also semi-informative.

After the panels in the Music Building, we were split up by major for Departmental Welcoming at 10AM. The Math majors were shuffled into the basement of the new Library, where Dr. P introduced herself and talked/explained about the course-track that we’d be taking. She made the course requirements and such very clear, which I was very pleased with.

After the Departmental Welcoming, the parents and students were split up – parents to some seminars about learning how to avoid mental breakdown, etc – and students to a lab in the Science complex to start registering for classes. This was a long, tedious process, as TESS is not the most genial web system you’ll ever come across. You get timed out every 10 pages or so, no matter what you do, you cant use the Forward or Back buttons, among other things. It didn’t help that pages were taking 20 times as long as they should to load (due to 100 kids simultaneously accessing the same pages) and my computer deciding it just had to reboot at a certain time in the middle of my scheduling. Other than that, it wasn’t too bad once I figured out what I was doing.

Since I haven’t received my Calc AB AP test scores yet I signed up for Calc B (instead of Calc A) as per Dr. P’s instruction. Discrete Mathematics was selected as my second math as part of the core reqs. Also, a quarter no-credit course req. is “Orientation To Math & Statistics” which Dr. P explains is a panel format, with her introducing us to the department and life as a Math major, answering our questions, etc. Then I have my FSP choice, which I was rather happy about because I got my first choice – “The Free/Libre and Open Source Software Movements”.

And then the last course is my language. There was a bit of confusion about this one, because there were a number of us math majors who had taken 3-4 years of a language in high school, but for one reason or another had not taken/missed the placement testing in May. I don’t know how well I would have done anyway – I didn’t really learn much in the 3 years I had Kottmann…. The question was if we could take the placement test before this semester or somehow test out of years of the language we had taken. The other option was to start a new language or start at 101 in the one we had taken. After weighing my options, I decided to go with Japanese 101, because if I could later test out of years of French, then I’d complete my language req. (3 semesters, or equiv.) by taking the last year I’d have to. If I cant take the test (or I didn’t get out of anything), I can just continue with Japanese to the 300 level, fulfilling the req. Either way I’d be happy with.

My schedule’s pretty good – on T/F I don’t have to wake up ’till twelve, and W/F I only have 2hr. of classes. Monday and Tuesday are my busiest days, with 4.5 hours of classes on both days.

After we successfully completed registering for courses and printing it out and giving it to Mrs. P, we were free to leave, after stopping by BSC to pick up our IDs. The drive home was uneventful – rather slow actually – I kept getting stuck behind trucks on Rt. 31…

My Fall 2006 Courseload

• MAT -099-02 ORIENTATION TO MATH & STATISTICS
• MAT -200-01 DISCRETE MATHEMATICS
• IDS -102-04 INFORMATION LITERACY PROFICIENCY
• FSP -121-04 THE FLOSS MOVEMENTS
• MAT -128-01 CALCULUS B
• JPN -101-01 JAPANESE FOR BEGINNERS I