Because most philosophies that frown on reproduction don't survive.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Humanities Program site update

As I posted a while back, I've been working at moving the Humanities Program site over to a new, Blogger-based website. (I'll do a post in a few days on some of the techniques I picked up for designing a "real webpage" looking site with Blogger.) I've not re-pointed the Humanities Program domain, so that the new Humanities Program site is live.

Overall, I'd rate the custom domain process for Blogger as pretty pain-free. And I'm pretty pleased with the new site. Also trying out the site metering from StatCounter after long years of being a SiteMeter kind of guy. We'll see how that goes.

For those who haven't been over there in a while, there are some newer stories such as Alexander the Great and Philip of Macedon in the Elementary Humanities Program. There are also some cool new illustrations up, such as the one of Romulus and Remus with a somewhat quizzical looking mother wolf.

On the High School side of things, the reading lists for Year One: The Rise of Civilization through the Hellenistic Period and Year Two: From the Rise of Rome to Beowulf. One of my projects over the next week and a half while I'm at home is going to be to reconcile the various versions of years 3 and 4 which existed and my own thinking on the topic and get some reading lists for those two years up.

5 comments:

Dorian Speed said...

It looks great. I am going to have to remember the "Religion in the Humanities Program" part because you said it very nicely, especially the last paragraph. I am impressed that you are getting this done with a new baby in the house.

Darwin said...

Heh. Well, let's see how well I keep up. So far, I've just been doing some cutting and pasting from the old site.

Dorian Speed said...

Well, now that I am getting updates via the magic of Google Reader, I will be watching the site LIKE A HAWK. A hawk who can type with her little hawk talons.

I don't know what your long-range vision is for the pieces you have written yourself. Blurb has a "blog to book" publishing format. I would love to have a dead tree version, maybe with some art to accompany it? Public domain art, or something?

Darwin said...

Okay, I keep chuckling over you typing away with your little hawk talons, though somehow I'm wanting to see something more like a pterodactyl, with the claws actually on its wings, since that would be cuter to see type.

Actually, one of the things I seriously need on this project is some people I know are out there reading (and typing away feedback with their little talons) since otherwise I have this nasty tendency to blog instead.

The goal is definitely to produce dead tree versions as I get whole sections done. Though I've started to wonder if I need to break it into smaller pieces than the current four volumes. We'll see.

And there is art coming!!! Not as much as I'd like yet, but there's some great stuff on The Development of Writing, the story of Persephone, and on parts of the Trojan War (here's the Trojan Horse). The original artwork is pen and ink, so it would definitely come out well in a B/W printed book, which seems like the only vaguely economical way to get a book over a hundred pages self published. I was planning on using Lulu, but it's been a while so I'd honestly have to look into the whole thing again before picking a publishing venue.

Actually, this is one of the things I've been putting a lot of thought into lately (in part leading to this move to the new site platform), in that I've been realizing that I'll literally never finish this if I don't make it a serious writing priority, so I need to either give up or re-prioritize. Dunno if I need to try to get volunteers for an email list of active-feedback readers, or blog about it more, or get some co-writers (I tried this originally, but was having trouble getting anyone to commit) or what, but somehow I need to be getting through all this a lot faster than I have to date.

Which is a long way of saying: Yes! Feedback welcome! Yes! Pictures! Yes!

Dorian Speed said...

Hmmm. Well, it's all sort of in the realm of "not for a few years" for me, with regard to the high school stuff. That could have a double meaning, I realize: "Not for a few years have I read anything like these texts" and "Not for a few years will I concern myself with high school decisions for my own children."

Anyway, I also wondered if you'd used KompoZer for web design? I just tried it last night and it is a really nice WYSIWG editor that lets you do, you know, cool stuff.

I feel like most of my comments are probably things you already know. But my leaving them is my way of saying, "hey, great work!"