AuxMix - Showcasing Talent

As the title said this blog is about my audio setup :D

I have a x-fi extremeMusic sound card along with Logitech X 5500 5.1 Stereo Speakers.

info on my layout click here

encase the penny did not drop the cable management system was..... a joke. although it does actually look like that behind my desk. I call it 'Wire City'.

As many of you know who have digital TV, the film called Hitch was on this weekend (Easter weekend).

I have seen it many times before as I have it on DVD but just thought I would let you know that it has some really nice audio in there.

The audio that the director has chosen for each of the scenes I think works really well....

In case you have not seen the film Hitch, its all about Will Smith who plays Alex Hitchens. He's a date doctor who goes around setting up average joes with typical girls.

If you haven't seen it I would say you really need to! The film makes perfect sense as to how typical girls act. The director made a packet getting this message across and I think every women should see it. At least then, maybe women would come to release that us men are not the same!

Common Digi-Design please fix the active directory code errors!

As Chris has just posted up what he’s looking for I thought I’d share what I’ve been up to, for the web development module we've been given the task of coming up with an idea for auxmix.com and I’ve kind of gone along the lines martin said in the lecture/lab a couple of weeks back if any of you can remember!

I’ve gone with the sort of mix of professional look and fun and rather playful at the same time! The layout in my view has been kept simple so you can easily find your way around the website without having to spend 5mins working it out...

The menu can be found via the "pull me" chain which then drops down the menu for moving around the site a similar system is in place for registering on the site and also resetting password if you forget it.

Registering for the site is easy its using a php/mysql script which stores name and email address and password with md5 (encryption) so everything should be nice and secure.

On the main page I’m planning on implementing a hacked version of the RSS feed from the blog to show the last to posts (may change the limit I don’t know just yet).

The site is coded using XHTML 1.0 Trans and CSS and if you kick the style out you can still use the website without any problems which is great for usability.

I’ve checked the site in Firefox, Internet Explorer and on Safari on the Apple Mac’s and there doesn’t seem to be so many differences in the design, so looks like for once my coding for CSS is getting much better and all the pennies I’ve spent on books has finally paid off!

Anyways if you want to check out the site you can at

http://auxmix.magicbug.co.uk

So here I am pondering on what we need for Auxmix.com in terms of the quot;front-end".

When I say front-end I specifically mean the main page, the home page, the start page which sits in the root folder and named index.html.

Essentially with a project of this kind we need to understand whom our target audience actually is, we need to understand the demographic, where these people are coming from and what they are seeking, we need to understand what type of person the site is designed for and what type of content that target audience would be stimulated by.

Moving on then, I feel we can draw up two main target audiences here.

1. Potential students interested in our courses.

2. Employers and other persons with a vested interest in what is taking place within the audio related areas of Technology at BCUC.

Those two items above are the main themes I personally feel this site should cater for. This leads us on to thinking about the actual content we should display in order to meet the above needs.

I think our greatest asset is YOU, the current student, it is exactly what you are engaged with, producing, understanding, creating, examining (enough buzz words) that is to be explicitly shown off on Auxmix.com. The site is a SHOWCASE for your talents and abilities (which will grow in magnitude), which enables (we hope) the above target audience to, for want of a better phrase, "a piece of the action".

So what content do we need?

Here is my list, feel free to add anything:

• Blog (heard a good film recently? - tell everyone why. Found some good audio samples for an animation? Strange noises on the bus?


• Podcast (great idea this, essentially a student time-shifted radio show)


• Moving images (created a cool animation?)


• Music (mixed a tune?)


• Course outlines and module details


• Sponsors (who's helping us out, shops companies etc)


• How to apply


• Ability to create an account profile (this is so we can notify people in
  the future by sending a newsletter)

I think the list could go on, though that's enough for starters.

Now I think the way forward for the initial design is to come up with a template that enables the content to be imported into varying content areas. So for example clicking on a link in say the top navigation menu would change the content below, though the nav menu stays the same. Having the design this way allows for expansion and importation and integration of the content required.

Moving on further I know Martin is looking to have some of you design for this, or possibly anyway, but bear in mind you need to finalise what will you are being assessed on as I am acting here as an industrial person who is indicating some site design needs.

Please feel free to open up the discussion, anyone need a blogger invite please e-mail me.

Chris