Project 52 Plans

Posted on January 14, 2010 by John F Croston III

I’m still working on my plan of how to complete Project 52, but I first want to thank Anton Peck for coming up with the idea to get himself and others to blog at least once a week for a year. Anton at first thought that maybe 25 or at most 50 of his friends would participate and ended up with over 700 last time I checked the list.

When Anton first came up with the idea on his blog I was all for participating, because I didn’t do a whole lot of blogging last. Instead I attended a few web conferences, ran a few (Accessibility Camp DC and BarCamp DC) with help from others, along with starting a monthly accessibility meet-up here in Washington, DC.

Donate to Charity

In the comments of Anton’s blog post about Project 52 I even talked about why not try and do some good out of all this by donating $10 to charity for ever week I miss blogging, creating code examples, making a “How To” videos of either accessibility related items or whatever. So each quarter I will donate $10 per week of missed blogging to a local charity like Martha’s Table or to Kiva.

Blog Post Ideas

Some of the things I plan on blogging abut this year are listed below:

  • Accessibility related issues and best practices
  • SXSWi – spring-break for geeks in Austin, Texas
  • Access U – accessibility conference in Austin, Texas, put on by Knowility
  • Accessibility Camp DC
  • BarCamp DC
  • Accessibility DC monthly meet-up
  • Food and wine
  • An Event Apart DC – great web standards conference put on by Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer
  • creating my web application (more to following in a future post)
  • lessons learned from things I have done or from others (friends and experts)
  • book reviews – mostly technology
  • spending more time with friends
  • more writing

So those are some of my ideas for blog posts and plans for the next 50 weeks. Might have to write a few accessibility best practices or code examples posts in advance for times like when I’m at SXSWI for a week and won’t have much time to blog. I already have six or eight subjects with titles and a short outline started from ideas from last year, now to just do the writing and coding required.

Are you planning on doing more blogging this year or just more reading and other work?

Please tell me what you are doing or suggestions for me to do in the comments.

Wish me luck.

Posted in Accessibility, AccessibiltyCamp, AccessibiltyCampDC, AEA, Austin, TX, BarCamp DC, DC Adpative Technology, JAWS, Knowbility, Martha's Table, Martin Luther King Jr. Library, National Gallery of Art, p52, Project 52, Refresh DC, Screen Reader, SXSW, Washington, DC, Web Applications, Wine, Writing | 2 Comments

2009 Has Come to an End

Posted on January 1, 2010 by John F Croston III

2009 was a very interesting year of change and learning new things. Looking forward to 2010 to even be more fun and productive.

Some of the 2009  highlights for me were:

January

Started new job as “Web Content Accessibility Manager” (big fancy title) for the United States Army, which means that I’m responsible for making sure the Army’s main website www.ARMY.MIL and the 45+ micro websites we are responsible for are accessible to as many people and devices as possible.

March

Attended SXSWi (spring break for geeks) for the third year in a row now. Had  great time as usual speaking with old friends and new ones I made this year. Still continue to learn each year that I attend. A lot of the new things I learn is from having conversations in the hallways, at dinner, in the bars late in the evening, or just relaxing in the Hampton Inn’s lounge on the second floor.

Upon returning from SXSWi needed to start planning for the next BarCamp DC, along with another event I heard about on twitter a few weeks before SXSWi. A small group in San Antonio, TX, did an accessibility camp. I spent a great deal of time and some conversations while in Austin, TX, about doing one here in Washington, DC.

Upon my return I spent more time I’m looking into when we might have the next BarCampDC, along with contemplating, doing an Accessibility Camp here in Washington, DC, in more detail. These events took over a lot of my spare time trying to find venues for both events that were both free and cost to metro.

April

Took a trip out to Denver to visit my brother and his family, along with attend BarCamp boulder which got canceled do to 18+ inches of snow the day before. That is a lot of snow for even the Denver area for mid April. Ended up still having a nice time visiting with my brother’s family.

May

Attended “Access U” put on by Knowbility in Austin, TX, in mid May. Again it was a great place to meet new friends and learn more about accessibility. Spent an extra two days down there after the conference was over so I could see Austin, when it was not filled up with over 10,000 web geeks from around the world.

July

In late July got a direct message from @v (William Lawrence) another local accessibility person and a good friend about going to an accessibility event at Ben’s Next Door. Decided to go and hoped to meet some new local accessibility people. Got to meet and talk with a lot of new people throughout the evening. Later in the evening I got to talk to my good friend Patrick Timony who is a great resource of information about Adaptive Technology equipment and software. He works at the Martin Luther King library here in DC.

During that conversation a big old light bulb went off in my head. Why not I ask Patrick about having Accessibility Camp DC at the MLK library.

August

After a bunch of talking with him later in the month to explain more what BarCamp style events are, we started looking into what it would take for us to have the event at the library. Normally the library only lets you have one room for a few hours, we were looking to use at least two spaces besides Patrick’s for an entire Saturday. Luckily Patrick and his boss were behind the event so we were able to secure the space.

While working on final preparations for Accessibility Camp DC, also started looking into having BarCamp DC at the MLK library. Planning and attempting to get rooms for this was even more involved, since we were looking at getting six spaces for a Saturday. In the end we managed again to get what we needed with the help of Patrick and his boss.

October

On October 10, 2009, which was the Saturday of Columbus Day weekend we had the first Accessibility Camp DC event. We had 110 people sign-up and over 80 people attend, which was just great. Most other BarCamp events we have run 40% – 50% of the people sign-up but never show up.

People came from all over the country (Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and a few other states I can’t remember) and even Jennison (@jennison) from Toronto, Canada. Even Shawn Lawton Henry, who leads worldwide education and outreach activities promoting Web accessibility for people with disabilities at the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) attend.

She even did a talk that was attended by about half the attendees and widely talked about as one of the best talks of the day. Was sorry, I missed it because I was running around doing work to make sure the rest of the day ran smoothly. I gave my “Is Your Website Accessible?” talk, along with a peared down version of Jared W Smith of WebAIM’s WAI ARIA talk.

We had 13 planned talks and one or two impromptu screen reader demonstrations during the day. There were like 30+ people at the first one that a few people mentioned opened their eyes to what people with visual issues go through to do things on the internet. Jennison did the first one and Leslie Bobbitt (@DreamWeaver78) did a wonderful one the second time as well.

End of October attended Peter Corbett’s (iStrategyLabs) Tech Art’s – Spooky Union, Halloween event. Had a great time and met a lot of new people, along with seeing a bunch of old friends.

November

On November 14, 2009, we (Justin Thorp (@thorpus), Shaun Farrell, Patrick Timony, Peter Corbett, and a few others) had our third BarCamp DC. It was a rousing success with over 125 people attending. We did not have to many problems.

If memory serves me correctly I think we had 36 talks on great many different subjects. We instituted a Twitter swear jar, that meant if you mentioned twitter in your talks it cost you a dollar, which was then donated to charity. I think we ended up collecting over $125.

We also attempted to have people not use PowerPoint and the like slides so there were discussions at the event than people just talk at or present information to others. This made the event more active than years before.

Only three days after we got done with BarCamp DC, Patrick and I put on the first monthly Accessibility DC event at the MLK library on November 17, 2009. We will be meeting every third Tuesday of the month for those wanting to attend.

December

nclud started the holiday season off right with their annual end of year holiday party. There were a ton of people as usual. I don’t think I got a chance to talk to half of the people I wanted to. Still had a great time none the less. Got into a little trouble, since I had another wine event at a friends and brought extra wine after they had to go get more from local store down the street.

Spent Christmas weekend with different friends and just relaxing.

New Years Eve was a quiet affair with some friends at a Japanese Steakhouse, with a few of them coming back to my place for wine, cheese, cure Italian meats, shrimp, and some Creamant de Bourgogne to usher in the New Year. All while watching the Food Network most of the evening. Creamant is a champagne style wine from another region of France that is not from Champagne.

2010

This years looks to be an even more exciting one than last year, with more monthly accessibility meetings, SXSWi, working on my different web applications (more on my change of plans later), hoping to attend Access U again, and attending An Event Apart DC when Jeffrey Zledman, Eric Meyer, and their great speakers here Washington, DC, on Sept. 16–17, 2010.

More details of me plans for this coming year to follow over the next few weeks. I am participating in Project 52, that my good friend Anton Peck started, which is to do a blog post or some equivalent each week for a year. When I signed up I figure he would get a hundred or so people to sign-up. Last time I checked he had 488 people signed up.

So how did your 2009 go and what are you’re plans for 2010?

Posted in Accessibility, AccessibiltyCamp, AccessibiltyCampDC, AEA, An Event Apart, Austin, TX, BarCamp, BarCamp DC, DC Adpative Technology, Denver, Knowbility, Martin Luther King Jr. Library, nclud, Washington, DC | 4 Comments

Tallying the Votes

Posted on August 5, 2009 by John F Croston III

I am currently in the process of tallying all the votes.

I received them in many ways starting with the blog comments, to twitter direct messages, to e-mails, and to people telling me in person. From what I can tell the three leading web applications that you all want me to build are the technology Skills or Skill Swap repository, the mini adhoc conference information service, and finally the online wine inventory for personal use and to sell to wine stores. Most everyone I talked to personally said I need to do the wine inventory, since I’m knowledgeable and passionate about that one. Hoping to have everything them all tallied by the beginning of next week.

I am also at the same time as doing this, trying to put together one of the first AccessibilityCamp’s, which will take place here in Washington, DC, in the month of October. Going to be looking at a few places in the next week or so to see about using them. I will keep you informed about that too.

My Choices

In case you were wondering my top choices to web applications to build would have been the following in the order listed.

  1. Bookmarking – it’s such a pain with multiple computers at home and work to keep track of bookmarks/favorites.
  2. Wine Inventory – that one is a no brainer.
  3. Mini Adhoc Conference Scheduler – for things like AccessibilityCamp or BarCamp and the like.
  4. and finally Tech Job Skill Repository.

Conclusion

Thanks, again for your voting and encouragement in this endeavor I’m partaking in.

Posted in Accessibility, AccessibiltyCamp, AccessibiltyCampDC, BarCamp, Design, Development, Washington, DC, Web Applications, Web Standards | 1 Comment

Need Help Deciding which Web Application to Build

Posted on July 14, 2009 by John F Croston III

Now that the house issues have been mostly settled I can get started on building one of the many small web applications that I have been tossing around. Some of these ideas I have been thinking about for what seems like years and others just a few months.  I have a good 7 or 8 different web applications that I want to build and I’m looking for some help in determining which one(s) I should build first.

Reasons Why

I need to get other peoples opinions on which will be useful them and more importantly the general public and might in the long run I would be able to charge enough to cover my hosting costs with ads or annual fees. I know that probably all of these have been done many times over, but there are a few reasons why I want to build them and they are:

  • Learn PHP and MySQL
  • Use the newest accessibility implementations of WAI-ARIA and possibly HTML 5
  • Use microformats were applicable
  • Test newest features in screen readers – JAWS, NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA), etc. and web based browsers (Firefox 3.5, IE8, etc.)
  • Use Web Standards
  • Test abilities for user interface design (UI or UX)
  • Create 508 compliant and usable examples for others to learn from for accessibility presentations.

But most importantly to create web applications that I would like to use personally.

Important Part

Now comes the important part, which from the following list of web applications should I build? I added a short description of what they do along with different ways I could help pay the hosting cost. I even created one page prototypes just so you could see what types of information is stored in each one. The style (CSS) and layout (UI/UX) will be changing. I just took some old CSS and put these together.

  1. Online URL/bookmark storage which allow user to have X URLs/bookmarks stored online for free, charge per X items stored, set up annual fee, or show ads of some type. I started this one a while ago and stopped for some odd reason. I’m tired of having bookmarks on two home computers (MAC and PC), along with on work one. Yes, I have heard of delicious.com and ma.gnolia.com.
  2. Store individuals personal contact information and either have X individuals for free, charge per X customers, annual fee, or show ads of some type. Always looking for an address or phone number when at someone else’s house or office and would like to have it be web based.
  3. Online wine inventory – personal use hosted by me with ads for up to X entries or small annual fee for limited number, bigger ones for people with 1000s of bottles of wine. Yes, I know corkd.com is around. I started mine about the same time they (Dan Cederholm and Dan Benjamin) did, just did not have enough get up and go to get past midway with it. Once Cork’d came out I stopped for the most part. So this one is a good way completed using ASP and Microsoft Access, which only needs to be converted to PHP and MySQL.
  4. Online wine inventory – for wine stores to allow their customers to store their wine collection information and then place their (wine store) ads on website (charge monthly fee to store per customer or flat rate by amount of storage and bandwidth used).
  5. Mini adhoc conference information service (no prototype just yet), which would help groups like BarCamp create main information page about event and later at event add an online schedule of talks (allow addition of rooms, topics, speakers, etc.). Place AdSense and/or links of event sponsors on pages. I created similar conference room scheduling web application for old job so have the general idea for it already in my head of what it would need. Not sure if this one exists, but I assume it does somewhere and have not really looked if it does.
  6. RSS/XML Feed reader, which either would have X feeds free, charge per X feeds over free amount, annual fee, or show ads of some type. Created one to pull in a feeds and either display all records contained in RSS/XML, first X amount, or only display records that contained certain words or phrases. There are way to many of them around.
  7. Store multiple weather location information, which would allow you to save multiple zip codes or city/state/country combinations to keep track of home, vacation location, other friends, or families weather. Same idea for covering hosting costs as previous ideas.
  8. Technology Skills or Skill Swap repository, which would allow members to put in there different skills and then have the rights to search for others for help with questions or for projects.  Would have ability to make personal information private so as not to get spammed. Could charge fee for those just looking to find people for work or projects, charge for recruiting type ads, or just place AdSense on pages.

Conclusion

So please do me a great favor and list the top three applications in order you think I should build them so I can get an idea of what others are thinking.

Thanks, greatly in advance for your time and effort for helping me learn new things and decide which web application to build first. I will post findings in a few weeks along with the order in which I will build them in, since a few could be bundled together to make an over arching suite of applications.

Posted in 508 Compliant, Accessibility, BarCamp, Best Practices, Design, Development, JAWS, Layout, NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA), NVDA, PHP, Screen Reader, UI, User Interface, Web Applications, Web Standards, Window-Eyes | 13 Comments

Cleaning Up My Life

Posted on June 15, 2009 by John F Croston III

Don’t worry, nothing like that, I am just cleaning up the apartment (first floor of two family home I rent) and my part of the basement. Kind of was forced into doing this, since the people upstairs noticed bugs. I had seen some over the course of the last year or two when the old tenant and his new wife lived here and thought nothing of it.

The new tenant contacted the landlord about them, which they then had an exterminator come check on it. After looking around I guess they found that we had some cockroaches, while I was at Access U conference. I had lived here almost seven years and noticed the bugs recently and never paid attention to what I was squishing. So the landlord informed me that the exterminator would not spray/treat the house until we got rid of all our (neighbors and myself) cardboard boxes and old papers, since what they eat is the glue and cardboard.

Landlord’s Freaking (just a little bit)

The landlord was a bit freaked out because there were bugs in their rental property along with the fact that the couple upstairs is due to have a baby in like four weeks or so. They want it done yesterday so they can spray or whatever they are gong to do before the baby is in the house.

So for the last two weeks after work and on weekends when I have not had other obligations I have been first going through all the crap, as my mother would call it in my apartment. This has been helpful in the form of having me go through boxes of stuff that I have not looked at in years and tossing, saving, or as much as possible donating things to charity. I have recycled as much paper and others items that I can. I really don’t want fill up a landfill with more junk. No, I’m not a tree hugger, not that there is anything wrong with that, I just want to recycle/reuse as much as I can.

Donations to the Poor

I have donated a ton of clothes (work, casual, jeans, dress shirts, etc.), shoes, ties, and a lot more to Martha’s Table, so they can help out others less fortunate than myself. Even made two trips so far and I might have one more before I’m all done. I ended up getting rid about half of the clothes I owned, since I have not worn most of them in years for whatever reason.

Was at a fairly good point with the upstairs, so spent a few hours Saturday afternoon/evening going through boxes in the basement that contain stuff in them that have not moved or been looked, since I got here almost 7 years ago. I found at least one box so far that contained 5+ year old magazines in it. I had a lot of old magazines upstairs too. Pointer to others once you have read them unless it’s important to you because you, family, or a friend are in it, recycle them or just recycle them once your done reading.

I used to shoot a bunch of model photography back in the day as they say and had boxes and boxes of photos. I ended up transferring them from their cardboard boxes into new plastic containers with lids. Glad Target had 18 gallon plastic bins with lids on sale last week for $6, so I could buy 20 of them. Did not get all the miscellaneous boxes sorted yet since I have to go through to see if there are any important papers in them, like tax form, old bills with bank, or SSN information in them.

Spent Time with Friends

Spent about five hours Sunday(6/14) in the basement with a good friend of mine and her sister helping me consolidate, move, re-box wines. If your wondering why it took so long, it was because I have close to 600 bottles of wine just in my basement. I’m a wine collector, which made one of the landlords request to get rid of all boxes extremely difficult. How am I going to store 600 bottles of wine with no cardboard boxes, without spending thousands of dollars on wine racks, which won’t work downstairs, since floor slopes into center of room? Luckily I have been gathering and saving wooden wine boxes over the last few years, when I could get them.

I finally took my two 47 bottle wine frigs out of their boxes and started them up. Just in case you were wondering the number of bottles they say will fit is incorrect if you are trying to put Burgundy or long odd shaped bottles in them. Now they are loaded with a total of about 60+ bottles, which removes over five boxes from the basement.

Still need to go downstairs the next few nights to finish sorting and dumping the 20 or so boxes I have not looked at in the basement. The slowest part has been going through the old bills and removing the check receipt and bill to be shredded and placing them in one container and everything else  in a recyclable one. Anyone have suggestions to getting rid of old software. I recycled the boxes, but am trying to figure out what to do with all the CD’s and a lot of 2.5 inch diskettes.

A few friends and co-workers have asked if this has helped me feel lighter, less clutter free, and I have told them I will tell them once all of it is done. Right now it is feeling like a second job that needs to be worked on every night after work. I can’t imagine what is like for someone that is a hoarder to have to do a task like this.

Conclusion

If you have  suggestions for doing any of this better or stories similar to mine I would like to here about them.

Hopefully if nothing else you all start, recycling, donating extra stuff, and keep up with stuff on a regular basis so your not forced into having to “clean up your life” all at one time.

Posted in Apartment, Basement, Boxes, Cardboard, Fun, Helping Others, Landlord, Martha's Table, Recycle, Wine | 4 Comments