The Online Home of Bob Burchfield
This is my Home Page. It's my test page. It's my experimentation page. I use this page simply to learn more about HTML5 and CSS3 and how to convert my pages over from earlier versions, to test widgets, Spry functionality, jQuery, JavaScript, and so forth. I figure at this point in my dubious relationship with Web programming, dating back nearly 20 years to the early 1990s, I might as well keep trying to learn new techniques. To me it's more interesting and challenging than merely dropping a CMS of some kind into this space. For example, the menu buttons in the left sidebar are created completely with CSS, nothing else. It's a styled unordered list. No Javascript, no rollovers, etc.
So you might see photos or images that don't fit the space properly, a 1979 photo of me at age 29 (above!), widgets that don't work, or text that doesn't align properly in a column. You might see boilerplate text or any manner of other incomplete programming. You never know WHAT you will see when you visit this page. It's not intended to be a finished page; it's intended to enable me to learn more about how to create finished pages. Frankly there are some aspects I understand, others I just don't get. But I'm studying and learning more daily, because after 20 years of this stuff, I'm still intrigued by it, even though I'm no expert by a long shot. So come back and visit later to see what else I'm up to.
The unique, one-of-a-kind Indianapolis Artsgarden, in the heart of downtown Indy, hosts exhibits, live music, and a variety of special events throughout the year.
Located on Indy's NW side, Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre is the last remaining theatre of its kind in the nation.
The Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Indiana, is home to the Carmel Palladium, Booth Tarkington Civic Theatre, etc.
More than 1,000 restaurants in Marion County offer every conceivable choice of dinner fare.
With 40 state parks and more than 300 city parks, there's always something to do around Indy.
I've been piddling around with the Spry Content Slideshow Widget (see slide show above) that is built-in to Adobe's Dreamweaver CS5 (and above) HTML editing software. It built the slide show above automatically, then I changed the photos and the text in the existing code. A very nice-looking widget that I could never have figured out by myself! (Don't bother to click the links in the slideshow; they don't work. I'm still learning...) ABOVE: With my younger sister and older brother in October 2011 in Evansville, Indiana. In late 2002 I was teaching the Web Design class in the School for Adult Learning at the University of Indianapolis. A student in the class made an off-hand remark that planted a seed in my head: "We need a Web site that shows what there is to do around Indy." That's how AroundIndy.com was born. Today nearly a decade later, AroundIndy.com is recognized as one of the most visited and most popular events Web sites in America, with a full range of technologies for delivering content to 50-75,000 readers monthly, including widgets, syndication feeds, three blogs, e-news, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more. It has more site traffic than 99.7% of all Web sites in the nation that are ranked by Quantcast, an independent third-party site traffic analysis service. In 2009 I was honored to be one of 95 ROSE Award Honorees by the Indianapolis Convention and Visitor's Association and the city of Indianapolis. "ROSE" stands for Recognition of Service Excellence, and is an award presented to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the hospitality industry in Indianapolis. I was nominated by Pauline Moffat, Executive Director of the Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival, for five years of volunteer work with her organization as the IndyFringe Web Manager. Although I was not ultimately chosen as one of the 12 winners that year, I'd like to personally thank Pauline and the ICVA for this recognition! My mother died on June 22, 2011 at age 92. This may sound strange to say, but as the executor of her will, I've learned more about her than I ever knew in her lifetime. And I thought I knew a lot. She gave me one of the best skills I possess when she taught me to type at age 8. By the time I was 12 I could type about 80 wpm -- on one of those old Royal manual typewriters, no less! Nevertheless, she helped me type my papers for high school. She helped me deliver my papers every morning at 4 a.m. when I was an Indianapolis Star carrier in Kokomo and again in Whiteland as a young teen. She even sent me $50 a month when I was in college so that I would have some spending money -- when $50 was a LOT of money. When I had chosen the woman I wanted to marry, she even went with me to help choose an engagement ring. She was a quiet woman, kept mostly to herself, didn't stick her nose into anyone else's business, didn't go out to eat or go to the movies, didn't have any vices, and didn't hesitate to let you know if she thought you weren't living up to her standards. She was stubborn and bull-headed as could be (now you know where I got those traits!). But she was fiercely loyal to and protective of her family, did whatever she could to take care of us, and was always there if we needed her. If you can't tell, I miss her badly.
AroundIndy.com
ROSE Award Honoree
Remembering my Mom
