My homepage

I just finished my personal homepage! I'm actually pretty pleased with it. If you don't know me, it's a pretty good representation of me I think. Here's the link: http://mason.gmu.edu/~mdonalds/myhompage/index.html

Enjoy!

Fitness Advice

For anybody out there that is looking for a great way to keep track of the hours that you work out and everything you eat during the day, I highly suggest going to www.selfdietclub.com You have to have a subscription to SELF magazine but I highly suggest that also. It's a great way to keep track of what you've eaten all day and it even figures out the calories and how much fat, protein and carbs you need to consume. You can also track your workout hours to see your progress. You can compare days of your food log so you can tell which days were worse than others. It's just a great way of keeping track of your fitness goals and I highly recommend.

Managing Privacy and publicity

In this day and age, the Internet can be a very useful yet dangerous tool. I think most people are blind and ignorant about what can really happen on the web and how much information can be found about anyone if you search hard enough. That is why it is really important to filter what we put up on the web in the form of personal websites. I am building a personal homepage for this class and I have to really think about what kind of information I want to expose about myself. Future employers may stumble across this site and any others associated with my name so I would not want anything on there that might detere them from hiring me. Not that I have anything to hide, but personal information should be easily placed on the Internet in any case. Idenity theft has become a major issue in the world recently because it has become incredibly simple to get a hold of anyone's personal information. Why make it that much easier for them?
A simple way to make sure that you're not displaying too much information about yourself is to filter EVERYTHING you put on the web. This also includes pictures. A picture says a thousand words so even if you think only your friends and family will see your webpage, think again. Anyone can stumble upon your site. Think twice about putting incriminating photos on your site because it may come back to haunt you. It's important to display yourself on the Internet as you would want people to see you.

Website Audiences

As an advertising major, I can appreciate the importance of understanding your audience. If you know who you want your audience to be, it's much easier to design something that will cater to that specific group. I have built websites in the past that have had more professional audiences. However, for my own personal website, I think I would like it to be more personal. I am very involved with my family an friends and they are very important to me. I use the support that they give to me to focus on school and other endeavors. I would like to base my website around Mason, friends and family so that can see how they have affected my life. It's also nice to have a place where they can go and learn more about me if they don't everything. I will put up pictures of trips that I have taken with them, special occasions, etc. However, that being said, I do not want to to provide too much personal information because I'm aware that other people are going to stumble upon this website besides the people that I know.

Stress

I'm getting a little frustrated with this annotated bibliography project and the style sheet. Although I now think I have figured it out, I'm questioning how often people really still use HTML code in their day to day lives. I know that in the past I have used DreamWeaver and I'm aware that might be seen as cheating, but it still gets the job done. I can appreciate learning new things but I think I can speak for the whole class when I say that I think this project has caused a few more grey hairs to sprout in our hair.

Anxiety Attacks

I didn't get much sleep last night because I was up all night making sure my twin sister didn't pass out from a panic attack she was having. She's had a few in the past and even had to go to the hospital for one of them. I looked up some information online about them and what to do to solve this ongoing problem. However, I was wondering if anyone has experienced these before or know someone who has and how did you or that person deal with them? It might be too personal to discuss but I thought I would throw it out there. I'm very interested to find out how to solve this problem.

Bibliography Website

I know that for Tuesday in class we have to have started the process of coding HTML and putting our annotated bibliographies on the web. I have developed a few websites before for other classes but I have never used HTML coding to do this. I know that the example that was used in class was done in Notepad. Could anyone give me some more directions about how to go about getting in on the Internet. I have my account with Mason set up and I know for the most part how to FTP my files over. I guess what I'm asking is...how do I go about getting it on the web after I have all my code complete in Notepad? Anyone willing to help me out? I would be most appreciative :o)