How to find UPenn vendor information
Zachary Reese, Uncategorized
  1. Visit www.upenn.edu/u@penn
  2. Click on “Purchasing Services” in the right hand “Business Services” menu in the “Penn Resources” column.
  3. Click on the big “Supplier Search” button on left hand side

From there you can search by keyword, vendor name, etc.

One terminology note: “approved” just means they’re in the system. “Contract” is better and means Penn has some kind of special deal with them, and therefore we aren’t required get other bids for purchases over $5K.


How To Remove Moire Patterns from Video or Images
Zachary Reese, Uncategorized

In Adobe After Effects, add an adjustment layer above your asset. Change the blending mode to Color. Add a Median effect to the adjustment layer and adjust the radius to your tastes.

The same technique can be replicated in Adobe Premiere by duplicating the footage layer and substituting it for the adjustment layer in the preceeding instructions.


How To Connect to Wifi on Campus
APPC Support, Uncategorized

Your Penn Key gives you access to UPenn wifi all over campus.

Start by selecting the AirPennNet_Help network. It will connect without authentication, but only allow you to visit one web page.

Load a browser and that one page will load. It will offer you to download to your device (laptop, phone, etc.) a secure wifi app. Download and install the app.

Once this is installed (and, if on a computer, you tell your browser to stop blocking it), you will get a UPenn Penn Key login screen. You can enter your penn key and password there. Once done, it will automatically switch you to the AirPennNet network and your device will be permanently registered.


How To prepare featured images for the APPC website
Zachary Reese, Uncategorized
  1. Find an environmental photograph. Start with public domain, use stock sites as a last resort. Environmental is important for the tone we’re trying to communicate on the APPC site. No illustrations, studio shots, white backgrounds, etc. 
  2. Pop it into the PSD. 1440×548 @ RGB 8bpc.
  3. Match the black point output to ~25 and the white point output to ~235.
  4. Lower the midtones to ~1.20. I like to use a levels adjustment layer because it’s non-destructive.
  5. Make a two-color gradient overlay to direct the eye on the page. I normally do cold-to-warm at 36 degrees for sliders, 105 degrees for smaller images. Set it to lighten at 31%.
  6. Save for web to JPG at 70%.
  7. Upload to the WordPress media library and send to Michael.

From there there’s alt tags and stuff to be added but Michael probably knows more about those procedures than I do at this point.  In the future we’re going to be adding the source files for website images to a Git repo for archiving purposes, but in the meantime just keep the PSDs on a networked drive we can all access alongside the JPGs. 

Above all, use your eye. If something doesn’t look right with the normal histogram settings don’t be afraid to adjust the contrast or saturation to make it feel more in line with the other website images.


How To Post a CRN newsletter to the CRN site as a Featured Content page
Zachary Reese, Uncategorized

* Add newsletter images to Drupal.
* Copy and paste the content from Mailchimp to a new Featured Content item. Wrap text blocks in p tags for proper line breaks.
* Insert images using img tags. Be sure to include alt and title properties.
* Our Drupal site doesn’t currently support Bootstrap, so you need to apply any styles inline. Use this code for the CTA button.

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="mcnButtonContentContainer" style="border-collapse: separate !important;border-radius: 5px;background-color: #5CB85C;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="center" valign="middle" class="mcnButtonContent" style="font-family: Arial;font-size: 16px;padding: 16px;mso-table-lspace: 0pt;mso-table-rspace: 0pt;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">
<a class="mcnButton " title="BUTTON TITLE" href="BUTTON LINK" target="_blank" style="font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;line-height: 100%;text-align: center;text-decoration: none;color: #FFFFFF;word-wrap: break-word;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">BUTTON TEXT</a>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>