Greetings from #rdcHQ! Work continues on the 351-Archive, (a.k.a. Port Orford Historical Photos) and we are pleased to report that we are making great progress!

The software that powers Port Orford Historical Photos will be a substantial upgrade to the previous effort, espg v2.0, which was indeed a useful tool for many years but needed to be completely overhauled in order to take advantage of newer technologies. The new site will launch during Point.B Studio’s annual art show over Labor Day Weekend (details to be announced), and it goes into private alpha in August.

Building the UI – The 351-Archive software under development.

The new software will have many of the same features and will have a host of new features as well, most notably improved handling of categories and access to high resolution imagery of historical material. Select photographs from The Memory Palace Project will become part of the archive. The site will be updated on a regular basis with new material and historical photos, and anyone can contribute to and benefit from this resource when it launches next month.

Sandstone Bluffs of Floras Lake/Blacklock – One of the many photos that will be made available.

Greetings from #rdcHQ! During the last meetup, we took a look at the structure behind the code that makes up the new Cobwebs Website.

The diagram below examines the 18 lines of code that makes up the redesigned home page to present a clear understanding of all of the elements in an HTML page and how they work together.

Click for a PDF version of “Understanding The Cobwebs Code – HTML 101″

We’re just getting started, and we’ll be taking a similar in-depth look at the structure of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and basic HTML tags.

The newest member of #rdcHQ, ada-pug is learning the ropes starting with HTML 101.

Stay tuned!

Greetings from #rdcHQ! We’re busy on a myriad of projects, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have time to score a little bonus Extra Credit. We’d like to congratulate Kelsey Brokaw of the Cobwebs Crew for successfully installing NOOBS and Raspian on a Raspberry Pi Model B Revision 2.

The Raspberry Pi Model B

Success! Downloading software to the Raspberry Pi Model B

Not only did he get the device up and running, he also created a Cobwebs Workstation on the RasPi, installing Inkscape and Gimp on the Model B. Unfortunately, we were unable to successfully install Blender at this time and are currently searching for a potential 3D and 2D animation tool that runs on the RasPi and is compatible with our current workflow. However, we are pretty excited that one can create a design environment on this low cost computer!

Installing Inkscape on the Raspberry Pi Model B

The next step is to produce work for Cobwebs using the device to see if this could indeed be a viable work environment … this is going to be fun! … Stay tuned!

At Saturday’s Cobwebs Meetup, the Crew began work on the website redesign. The first step was to incorporate all of the design elements into the layout, including navigational text. The results are quite amazing! Artist Evelyn Jennings based her design on a very simple 1024 x 768 pixel grid.

It certainly looks very impressive as the final design!

The new web site home page by Evelyn Jennings (would also make a great new mousepad for 2014!)

The crew began some very basic coding to transform the current website into its new design. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be covering the basics of what it takes to turn a visual design such as the one Evelyn created into an web page that is accessible via the Internet. That is quite a bit of ground to cover between now and our site launch (including the release of the movie) … however The Cobwebs Crew can do it!

Click the image above to view the website redesign in progress!

NOTE: We have a special Extra Credit post from the Cobwebs Crew, and we’ll have an update from the animation team next meetup — Stay Tuned!