Another CSS Template - Winter. This one I also quite like. I think the contrast works really well. I couldn't find an appropriate color scheme for Summer, I'll have to see what Peter came up with.

Another CSS Template - this one is for Spring. It feels a bit 'cool' for spring, but it could work. I'm not so sure about it though.

A CSS template for Autumn - the layout I kept the same (from ZenGarden), I didn't play with it too much, I was more focused on the color schemes. I really like this one. It's one of my favourites, as is the season!

Another Westgate Park Picture - This one was taken in the grassland area. Looks like there's some tufted blue-bells and plume grass there... I'm getting good at identifying plants. :)

Another Westgate Park Picture - Quack quack quack, this was taken in the Heathland area.

A picture of Westgate Park - The Frog Habitat. We heard the frogs when we were there, but sadly, did not see any.

Xerochrysum Viscosum - Shiny Everlasting. These look a lot like the flowers my mom and I call Paper-Flowers. So named because they seem to rustle like paper and had the similiar texture to it. I don't know if they are - I think they might be, given that the book says that the long-lasting flowers dry well. But perhaps what I know is the paperflower, is a subspecies. The X. bracteata is locally extinct. :(

Patersonia Occidentalis - Long Purple-Flag. Just a visually stunning image.

Olearia Ramulosa - Twiggy Daisy-bush

Myoporum Parvifolium - Creeping Boobialla.

Disphyma Crassifolium - Rounded Noon-Flower. This reminded me of the flowers we have in our garden - I don't know the 'proper' name but it's called Pig-Face.

Dichelachne Crinita - Long-haired Plume-Grass. Pretty looking grass. It reminds me of those bunny tails (?) that you see growing everywhere... Except longer of course.

Bulbine Bulbosa - Yellow Bulbine-lily.

Brachyscome Parvula - Coast Daisy. Aptly named as it reminded me of a daisy, hence why I included it here.

Arthoropodium Strictum - Chocolate Lily, what an interesting name! :p Apparently it has lovely chocolate-scented flowers! Where can I find me a plant? :)

Allocasuarina verticillata - Drooping She-Oak. And this one is a male... (I don't know if I'm right in saying that, but it does say 'male' in the name file and I assume fem means female)

Allocasuarina verticillata - Drooping She-Oak. Apparently, this one's a female...

Allocasuarin Littoralis - Black She-Oak. I'm nto sure if that is correct, it seems to be from refering it back to the book I got from Tom and garnering what I can from the naming conventions.

Acasia Paradoxa, better known as Hedge Wattle
A very pretty picture.

There's suppose to be a Blue Wren Project of some sort happening at Westgate - I can't remember exactly what Naomie said, but she wanted a link of some sort on the website.

Hopefully this means there will be some blue wrens fluttering around the park.

Spiny-Cheeked Honey Eater in a Tree - a very nice shot.

The Iconic Black Swan - they're currently nesting at Westgate (according to Naomie) so maybe we'll see them with little fluffy chicks. :)

Clamorous Reed-Warbler

Pink-Eared Duck - Not very pink, and rather odd looking.

Little Egret

I think I've seen these floating around in the lake at Westgate.

Another cute looking bird - but at least here's a melding of native flora and fauna.

Green Finch - pretty cute bird. :)

Gold Finch

Crested Pigeon

Aerial view of the Royal Botanical Garden's "red center". Pretty cool looking swirl. :)

Week 006 - Meeting with Naomie

Hours: 3-5

I've been playing with CSS, trying to get some 'colors' organised for the seasons. Peter must have been in my head because he had pretty close to the same colors as I did. :)

Naomie was really happy with the design - she seemed to really like it, which was great. It was nice and clean and from a coding point of view - it won't be too hard to implement.

I gave her a client/software agreement to sign that said she was non-profit and using educational software, etc. And also gave her a hard-copy of the documentation. I had emailed her a soft copy, but brought one along just incase.

She really wants a database.
I explained that I was still studying it and Peter has just finished it - and then thought: I know one of their last assignments was to make one in html - if we could use that and change things around - or give it to me for a look at how it was done, then maybe I can modify it to make it work. I think I'll have to talk more with Lindsay.
I said to her that we'll work something out - and if that didn't work and she didn't mind waiting till I was done with study, I can work on it later.

We had a look at the park and she told us stories about the park - showed us the 'wood-pile' and we bumped through many potholes in her poor little car that she forgets is not a 4wd. :p

She showed me this really awesome Trigger Plant - if you poke it in the middle it'll stick it's 'tongue' out and attempt to pollenate you.
Also we went bird watching - saw some stilts, nesting black swans and ducks: so all my bird watching on the internet was not in vain.

She actually has never heard of Bird Australia - I was telling her that I was researching and doing google searches for flora native to Mornington (which we both agreed there was hardly anything out there - hence she really wants a database/list) and I had stumbled across that website and there were hundred and hundreds of people putting lists of birds they found in the park. She remarked that they had always waved to these people but they never waved back - too busy with their binoculars. So she said it would be good if they could link them up (somehow) to the website as well other "Friends of".

Oh - She also brought out the book that Tom had already given to us: she said that she wanted common names for them - like the Trigger Plant... so that people can identify with them as well as images.

Week 005 - Fauna search.

Hours: 1/2 - 1.

Its amazing what can crop up when doing a simple google search.

I stumbled onto a forum by Andrew Taylor of NSW School of Computer Engineering - they keep a eye on birding in Australia I assume.
http://menura.cse.unsw.edu.au:64800/2003/08/msg00218.html
(on fan-tailed cuckoos in Cranbourne Botanical Gardens)

Anyway - I thought I'd just do a search on their archive : westgate park...
http://menura.cse.unsw.edu.au:64800/cgi-bin/wilma_glimpse/birding-aus?query=westgate+park&errors=0&maxfiles=50&maxlines=10&.cgifields=lineonly&.cgifields=restricttofiles&.cgifields=filelist&.cgifields=partial&.cgifields=case
And out popped messages of birds found at Westgate Park.

I'll have to go through them and note down the names and do googles on them and hopefully it'll bring up some images.
If only there was something similiar one for flora. So far, not much - Cranbourne's site wasn't too helpful.
I'll keep poking but right now it's time for bed as it is almost 2am. :)

Week 005 - Heath Tea Tree

Heath Tea Tree - pretty but wouldn't convert very well into vector/graphics I think.

Week 005 - Sun Orchids

I really like this picture - it could be really graphically pretty, but I don't know if its native to the Peninsula and Western Port. So I don't know if w can use it. I will play with it though.

Week 005 - Images. Documentation.

Hours: 2-3 hours.

Finished the documentation - which I'm feeling relieved about, now that I know we have the basics all down, it's just a matter of refining where needed. Peter will create a logo for us... so I've been poking around and doing some research.

Tom suggested that we look at the Cranbourne Royal Botanical Gardens for images, as well as in the Science Library at Clayton - I'll have a look on Tuesday - for flora that is native to our area.

Apparently, according to the Cranbourne RBG they may have Koala's perched in their gumtrees. :D
http://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/rbg_cranbourne/garden_features/seasonal_highlights

Peter pointed me to a CSS contribution site: http://www.csszengarden.com/ (so I'll definitely be playing with that over the weekend.
Admittedly, I love playing with colors and I have created some seasonal webpage themes in the past - so I'd love to know how to do it with CSS instead of cut and pasting style tags directly into each webpage - which gets tedious. And will definitely be decidedly harder to maintain.

Images to follow!

Week 004 - Domain Thoughts.

Hours: 1/2 - 1.

I've been asking around about domains and the costs of them because I think that is the best way to go. I had a chat with Peter about it today, basically outlining my worries about if it is hosted with EcoCenter and if my fears are legitimate.

Some people came through (I figured I would start with word of mouth and people who are hosted - thus likely to have better service, before I went blind-searching for domain stuff)
One registered their dot com through GoDaddy.com and is $25 and gets his webspace for $13 a month - but he says there are free webspace available, which I kinda remembered that there was too.

Another highly recommends registerfly.com which is US9.99 and 7.99 to renew after a year. I'm a bit finicky about it being in US dollars
He also suggests hostrocket.com for webspace.

But as I was thinking about this - I had a thought. Naomie herself has a dot com! She would know, surely. And we mightn't even have to get additional webspace/hosting if the website is just tagged onto hers. If she has the available space that is - which at the moment looks to be likely, as her website at the moment is currently quite small in size, anyway! :)
But even if that is a problem - I'm sure she HAS to know about hostings and webspace etc.

I think it is pretty likely - if it is the place where I was looking at, which sounds right, because it is at the Botanics in St Kilda, and Tom had said the place was in St Kilda. So I think my website/google search is spot on. Which makes me believe very seriously that we will be held to the constraints of their website and basically all our job will be is to content manage.

I don't know if Tom or Naomie is aware of this - I'm guessing they didn't... else we wouldn't be "employed" to make the website for them, nor would Naomie have suggested the site have potential for changing through the seasons, etc.

So I talked to Peter about the two proposals I laid out in the doco - I also mentioned that we'd have to think about the design of the website, if we wanted it emulated similar to the NY Botanical Garden website (nybg.org) they would have to think about possibly getting a Flash license through Macromedia. Unless they can list themselves as educational? Or under government? I'm not entirely sure about whether they could get around it - I'm assuming that it's going to be expensive... unless they are non-profit? They never said. I printed out a client/software agreement nevertheless.

Peter was worried about that as well coz it means additional cost. We can get around it, if we want to put a pretty animation - we could just make it gifs, but it may make loading very high.

So definitely several things we'll have to talk about with Tom.
Also intellectual property - I want to make sure we can either have an email link or something on their website and some credit, that we designed/created the page...

Week 004 - Update.

Hours: 1-2.

Finished tiding up as much as I could on my section of the documentation. Tom's given us till Monday 22nd, which is nice. :)
We'll definitely try to get it done before hand - but it's good to know we have the extra time if we need it.

There's a few sections and a few queries I'll need to confirm with Peter and Tom - some software stuff and some other budgeting stuff.
But so far, so good.

Week 004 - Website Requirements and Docos

Hours: 3-4

Am going through the briefs and other information that Naomi has presented as well as starting to nut down the documentation - I'm a bit worried because Peter and I are bogged down with half the documentation each, and we have less than a week to do it.

I'm confident that we'll be okay, but it'd be nice to have a few more days to complete it. I gave Peter a poke yesterday to see what he thought and he sent an email off to Tom. I know that we're suppose to have it done in time for Naomi to have a read, my aim had been to get it completed the week before hand in - but we didn't get the information till last week and there's no way we'll be done by this week! :)

We've discussed our sections: I based it on last semester's documentation. Basically whatever sections Peter and I did last semester, we're doing again this semester as I figured the sections we know we can stick with and get done faster because we know what to expect. So I'm taking on Detailed Project Requirements, Budgets, Work Breakdowns, Plans for Testing the System, Documentation Plans. I have one more section to do, but am going to leave it up to Peter to dole out for me.

Anyway, as I was working through the content I had a thought about the website. Currently the thought is to host the site at the EcoCenter: but does that mean that we'll have to stick to their requirements/resolutions etc?
I had a look:
http://www.ecocentre.com/westgatepark.html
Currently it's almost like a newsleteter format and we're hoping for a centralized content section with lots of white space around as to not make the information so daunting. Will we have any site requirements that we have to stick with? And how much space can/do we have?!?!? And accessibility? And while it looks like they're not limited to one html page: it still looks as though we would have to follow the styling conventions of the eco-centre page.

Maybe, if a domain name is obtainable - it could serve as a redirection? i.e. here's some basic info - now go to our website for more details! Because if we are stuck with the ecocenter place - it seems a bit hard to design the layout to the suggested outlay as given by Naomi in the brief... well it maybe possible, but certainly won't be as "pretty" as we would like to make it!

I suppose we'll have to ask - but focus first is on documentation!
Tom said that Naomi and the rest of the Friends are enthusiastic about the project, which is good as Peter and I last semester were dumped with not only someone leaving our group (in Studio 2) but also with the council deciding 5 weeks into the semester that he didn't think we could use a DVD, when that's what we've been telling him from day 1!

A few questions have cropped up during documentation process
- licensing issues: I was going through budgets and I realised that if the design that we have decided upon (i.e. half flash half web) Friends would have to obtain a license... but if they were non-profit, would they be exempt? Or would they still have to obtain one as it is not for "personal" use? And if so, how would we/they go about getting one?

- documentation plans/training users
What documents do we need? I can understand having to train or introduce the person maintaining the site to the website, to ensure they know where everything is and how to change things - but what about documentation? what would they need? A step-by-step guide to changing page? Troubleshooting? (eep!) I suppose it would depend on the knowledge of the "basic Dreamweaver" person... Could it be as simple as letting them know file structures and naming conventions etc? Navigational charts?

Week 003 - Design and Information.

Hours: 1-2hrs

We finally got some information and content for the site. I haven't had a chance yet to go through it thoroughly, I'm going to print it out and have a good read and thus get moving on the documentation.

The brief we got from Naomi seemed pretty straightforward - apart from the database! :p We've pretty much decided on a design - I'll leave most of the nitty gritty to Peter though, even though I quite enjoy designing aesthetics for web (as well as other mediums) but we decided early on that Peter was our design guru in our group, and since I know more about html, the coding, etc would be left up to me to do.

I'll have to brush up on my html again - I'm pretty confident, I keep this blog (and several others) which can be modified to have your own design (but I haven't done here). I must learn how to link a css page to a html page - that's one thing I have yet to figure out completely, most of my styling goes into the head tag.

As it has to be updateable - I don't know what is more manageable, a css page, or just putting the style into the html. Of course, the more efficent way would be to do a css: one line of code vs ten... :) I suppose it couldn't be that hard to manage a css. I'll have to look into it.

I'm actually quite eager to get started on making the page!
Peter and I decided on quite soothing, pastely type colors, lot of white space and possibly making it one shape - i.e. using iframes and divs: as in all the information is accessed within the design - instead of loading pages seperately as with New York Botanical Gardens (www.nybg.org). Peter also liked the way the menu links came down over the page, but I'm not sure how that is coded - nor if it's going to be easy to manage, given that we only have one staff who has basic knowledge of dreamweaver.

Something else to look into, I guess.
Also I'll have to ask around about domain names - I've been meaning to for myself anyway, and I know a few people who have dot coms, so I'll find out how much it costs. Tom said that it's going to be hosted at the Ecocenter, but it'd be nice to have a dot com!

Maybe we could also incorporate a free php discussion board for the volunteers to keep up with each other - as well as announcements - I know that was one part in Naomi's brief... Peter thought of a chat - but I think that might involve a database, or at least a server of some sort... or some kind of programming anyway. There is tagboards (tag-board.com) which is basically could function like a chat - but you don't really know who's online or when... I think a php discussion board might suffice - if they want one that is.