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Author Archives: Sam PL
Free Geek
For the past few months I’ve been doing some web work for Free Geek, a non-profit in downtown Portland that refurbishes, donates, and recycles computers and electronics. They’re in the middle of web tweaking–preparing for a redesign (as you can see, their current site needs some improvement)–and wanted help addressing usability issues, doing some basic [...]
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Libelo Online Learning Platform
For the Capstone project of my Bachelor of Philosophy degree, I created a proposal for an open learning materials site, complete with preliminary sketches, wireframes, visual design, and even some usability testing.
Download the pdf or read the online version below…
Posted in Academic, Web Leave a comment
Joystick and Guitar Hero MIDI Scripting
For an Independent Study this past summer semester, I set out to tackle some novel approaches to controlling music. I ended up writing patches for the graphical programming language MAX/MSP that allowed me to receive signals from game controllers and convert them to MIDI signals, which were then received in my favorite music software: [...]
Posted in Academic, DIY, Interface, Programming 1 Comment
Potato Cannon Redux
Some friends and I built a combustion PVC potato cannon (or spud gun) and named her Charlotte.
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The LION 90.7fm Online
I created the site of the The LION 90.7fm, the Penn State student radio station, taking the site off of a Wordpress backend that was too simple for the needs of such a large organization and moving to a customized Drupal CMS installation. The new site provides one place for intra-station communication, playlist posting, and public [...]
Posted in Graphics, Web Leave a comment
Priming and Third Person Effects of 4chan.org
Taught by S. Shyam Sundar, my 400-level Media Effects course this spring was a survey of media effects theory that transitioned into analysis of online implications. The course culminated in a collaborative social sciences research project; our group attempted to measure the effects of race-related imagery on 4chan with a standardized implicit association test.
An excerpt [...]
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~$100 DIY Astronaut Costume
In my own revolt against crappy and overpriced astronaut costumes, I made a homemade Apollo astronaut suit for Halloween.
Posted in DIY 7 Comments
Audacity theme
Audacity is a great, simple, open-source audio editing software utility. The interface needs a little work, though–everything is functional, it just looks a little stale.
Audacity’s 1.3.3 beta release included preliminary support for skinning, which allowed users to modify the interface graphics. I created a partial theme with a significant icon update and submitted it to [...]
Posted in Graphics, Interface 2 Comments
wConnect Facebook Application
During the summer of 2008 I worked with in the Computer Supported Collaboration and Learning Lab at PSU’s School of IST. My work focused on developing a facebook application for wConnect, a social alliance of women in information technology headed by Mary Beth Rosson, using PHP and the Facebook API.
The project required careful handling of [...]
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