 Luke Treiber Webmaster August 2016 - May 2017 |
Writing Into The Sunset Mr. Wright approached me near the end of my junior year asking if I would join Rocket Athletics. I had only taken Photoshop and Dreamweaver and hadn’t even been in Mr. Wright’s room since the year before. Even though I had some computer skills I didn’t exactly feel qualified. I decided to join and found out my job as article writer had big shoes to fill after Ethan Aberg’s two-year stint at the job. The summer ended quickly and before long I was writing season previews for the four fall sports. With a missions trip to India scheduled during the first two weeks of school, I actually had to write these previews before the school year even started. With conflicting schedules, I was unable to work on the website in the same hour as everyone else, and found myself along with Mr. Wright in fourth hour. It was a lot of fun, especially considering the numerous times I changed or photoshopped something on Mr. Wright’s desktop. I made Mr. Wright’s room a second home by adding another hour for Rocket Athletics after a TA hour with Barger fell through. Writing the articles became easier over time with the ample time, especially when I had more stats to go off of than just the box score. I had the most fun writing the summary articles, including a painstakingly worthwhile 555 word summary of the girls’ 19-3 basketball season. The articles began to feel mundane as the year went on but occasional puns made them much better. Besides writing articles I also updated the results and photogallery banners, which are the links that navigate between the different years in each sport. I also worked back in time, updating nearly 500 old athletics pages. I feel God is calling me into ministry, so I will be attending Faith Baptist Bible College in Ankeny, Iowa, next fall to major in Pastoral Studies. I plan to check the website while I am there and hope to see the continued change and improvements next year’s team will bring. Overall I had a lot of fun this year. I’m thankful for the entire webpage team that made my job easier and enjoyable. I’m especially thankful to Mr. Wright: because of his never-ending effort and continued attention to this website my job hasn’t been near as stressful as his. It’s hard to believe that this year is already over, but I should probably take my writer’s block someplace else. |
| 2 Years Well Spent During my second semester sophomore year in high school I discovered a class that seemed to have a lot of the components that I was interested in. We called the class advanced webpage design, but in all reality it was much more than that. It was a class that taught individuals to do their part and showed just how websites were really ran. First coming in I didn’t understand everything and Mr. Wright helped lighten the way as well as former web masters such as Josh Treat, Jarrod Fisher and Ethan Aberg. I can remember all the times we came in; all of the hours that were put into this website and I remember feeling a sense of pride. I was proud of the work that I had done. So when the time came again to see if I was going to do it again during my senior year, it was a no brainer. I said yes. I enjoyed this class so much and this time it was a whole new crew, minus Mr. Wright and myself. So as I came closer to the end of my senior year I remember thinking how am I gonna write this. I can barely type something that’s even two sentences long sometimes. Yet here I am writing what feels like the gospel of rocket athletics. I have very much enjoyed this class and I regret nothing. Yet like all the great things this too must come to an end. So it is with happiness and sadness that I say goodbye to rocket athletics. I wish it and all those who work on it to continue to improve it and keep it the best. |
 Dominic Scott Webmaster August 2015 - May 2017 |
 Henry Mann Webmaster August 2016 - May 2017 |
Mann, It's Been A Long Year When Mr. Wright first tried to recruit me at the end of my junior year, I was a bit reluctant to help. After some persuasion I agreed to help, but he couldn't have my 4th hour, that was reserved for Chemistry II. When I came in during the summer before the start of school to learn how to do my job from the great Jarrod Fisher, we discovered that the "fix" they put on every page to make them mobile friendly was going to be quickly discontinued in July. Panic quickly ensued while we figured out what to do, and how the new software was supposed to work. A lot of the website is made with a program called Adobe Flash, which does not run on mobile devices. So Google then made a program called Swiffy, which converts that flash into html that can run on mobile devices. However, Adobe was about to release a new program called Animate which replaces the old Flash software, this made Google discontinue the Swiffy program, which last year's webmasters painstakingly put on every page. The biggest downside to Animate was that all the Flash files had to be remade using a different programming language, Javascript. This however was not a problem for me as I know Javascript, and is how I quickly became in charge of remaking all the Flash files into Animate canvases. These include most of the front page, the header, various photogallery and box scores, and different award pages. As a webmaster I have learned how to streamline my work and how to get others to run their photogalleries faster. I am attending the University of Texas at Austin next school year for computer engineering. I hope that I can take as much as I can from this class and continue to strive to make the best products I can. Thank you for the long year! |