‘Design’ Category

  1. the week’s update

    October 1, 2006 :: 10:09 pm

    I’ve been working on my other website a lot this week so I haven’t had much time to write.

    Last week kinda sucked, between feeling downright awful for several days (bad period) and some crazy shit going on at work involving deadlines and last minute changes and having to say no and things maybe not working right and the possibility of a trivia slideshow to be presented in front of 2500 rich people going down in flames (it didn’t, but it was nervewracking getting there) and talking to managers about lessening the craziness of the crazy shit and just generally being extra crabby.

    It was a bad week for a lot of people that I talked to.

    Also, I barely ran any at all last week; my leg is still not feeling any better. Now it’s doing this thing where if I put any weight on it, it feels like it’s going to buckle! Good times all around. I’m going to try to get back into it this week, maybe run some on the elliptical machine, which I like better than the treadmill and it feels better on my injury.

    I got a slew of new freelance work and billed for quite a bit from September. I feel that the projects are coming at a good pace now. Nothing like the craziness of the book project. That should be printed and might deliver this week (thus the reason I was working on my business website; my URL is printed in the credits).

    We did have a good time out on Saturday night with Kirk, Brittney, and Stan. We ate at a steakhouse and then went to the crazy bowling alley-slash-event and entertainment center. We didn’t do any actual bowling, but played some video games, then went to Steak and Shake for ice cream.

    Thursday night was a lot of fun. It was Doc’s birthday, and I took him to Kostas (Greek food) for dinner. We usually only go there once a year on our anniversary, but I decided to buck tradition. He didn’t know that Lori, Joel, and Valerie were going to be there too. We had some great food, wine, and baklava, and I was really pleased that I was able to treat everyone. It feels nice to do that for my friends on occasion. We stayed at the table until after they had closed, talking and laughing. Lori gave Doc some fun little toys and candies, and we played “Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans Roulette” where we closed our eyes, took a jellybean, and hoped to god it wasn’t the Vomit flavoured one. For the record, I got Earthworm, Doc got Sardine, Valerie got Grass, and Lori got Earwax. Doc voluntarily ate a Dirt flavoured one, and Lori was game and ate Soap and Booger. Joel ate Bacon and declared himself done.

    Doc found an old Hi-8 tape of my trip to New Mexico in 1996 with Kathryn and Ginger. We have two ancient Hi-8 cameras; one of them only plays audio and the other only plays video. I don’t even remember this tape; I’m dying to see what’s on it! I caught a glimpe of my old Honda Accord in one shot. I miss that car!! It had some problems towards the end, but I miss having a manual transmission and I miss having a red car. I might send the tape to a place that will convert it to DVD for a hefty fee.

    Category Design, Doc, Health, Holiday, Marathon, Memories, Work | Tags: | No Comments

  2. something shiny disorder

    September 1, 2006 :: 3:22 pm

    This weekend I am making A Big Switch. No, not the kind where a PC user sees the light and switches to a Mac. I got my first Mac in 1995 and never looked back, except fondly on my previous Apple experiences which included my dad’s Apple ][ and Apple ][e in the 1980s; PCN's Mac Classic – or was it a Plus? – in college on which I played many a game of Risk and typed many a paper; and the Mac LCII (with a COLOR SCREEN and blindingly fast 16Mhz processor!) that I got to use at my job in college.

    But I digress.

    For a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I'm beginning to really need a professional site promoting my growing freelance art and design business, I plan to break off this blog and my personal pages from the rest of this website and put them at a completely new URL: somethingshinydisorder.com!

    The two sites won't be tied together anymore, mainly because I don't necessarily want my professional clients to have a direct link to my personal rantings and ravings. Also, I think that I'm going to go anonymous with somethingshinydisorder.com. I'm not sure if I will go back and edit previous posts that refer to myself or my friends and family by name. That would be a lot of work. I might just take out last names, although I'm not sure if I've even used those anywhere.

    So if you have my "old" site bookmarked, my blog won't be there anymore. Please bookmark www.somethingshinydisorder.com!

    Category Apple, Blog, Design, Technology | Tags: | No Comments

  3. do not bring shampoo, lotion, or snakes on the plane

    August 20, 2006 :: 3:02 pm

    I’ve been incredibly busy the past couple of weeks working on a freelance book project (designing cover, laying out insides), so between that and the mini-vacation that I took to Lubbock and Houston last week, I haven’t had a whole lot of free time.

    The book is DONE! I think. Just waiting on final client approval and then I’ll FTP it off to the printer this evening or tomorrow. I don’t know what I shall do with myself and all of my free time. The whole process has been kind of a nightmare of way-too-close deadlines. I think that we’ll all know better for next time, to allow ourselves about 300% more time at the end of the process, between final copyediting and the printer deadline.

    Doc had some crucial work stuff come up, so he unfortunately wasn’t able to go on vacation with me. I knew I’d miss him, but I didn’t realize quite how much I’d miss him. It was only 5 days, too. We’ve both been gone before, to conferences and other work-related things, so I wonder if maybe this time it was because we expected up until just a few days before that we’d be going on the vacation together.

    Anyway, the vacation. I went to Lubbock to watch Bob, my BABY BROTHER, get his PhD. That was pretty surreal. It sure made me feel old. Mom reminded me that when we were young kids, a friend of hers tested our I.Q.s for some schoolwork she was doing. Apparently Mike and I are unusually smart, but Bob is off the charts. He moved to Boston for his new job with a government contractor and he has to get security clearance… which I guess means he can’t tell me what he actually does. Heh. Not that I think I’d quite understand it anyway…. his degree was in math and his job has something to do with that.

    Lubbock burned hot (though not as hot as Dallas has been) and dry, except for the Sunday morning thunderstorm that I went jogging in. I know that Montana is known as “Big Sky Country” but I think West Texas deserves that descriptor too. The skies are just… big. Huge. This poem is called “Mesa” and I wrote it in 1994 or 1995.

    sometimes we long for
    the night after the day

    day
    of endless blue sky
    where the shimmering heat of the west texas sun
    bounces in ripples from the road
    and bakes color into golden skin
    a full tank and nothing to do

    yes the day is good but still
    we wait for the night
    after the day when black lines on the gray asphalt
    ooze shiny, sticky on a beautiful barren land
    a thin ribbon stretching miles through sage and sand
    reaching for the place the sun will rest

    and mesas in the distance
    sit flat, too flat

    blue sky days go on forever
    as we wait for the night
    we wait as sleepy engine drones on
    -but silent enough out here-
    away from civilization and towards civilization
    hot wind and the top off your car
    my hair gets lighter; your lips get redder

    even as the sun drops
    and evening sneaks into the air, the sky
    like the colors of me
    even as the sun sets and azure turns to chrome turns to dust
    turns to rust
    even as the stars emerge
    like ice crystals on black velvet
    and the engine stops

    we lay on the mesa
    we make love with the stars with each other
    lying on the mesa
    on someone’s table waiting, waiting to be eaten up
    on a world whose sky spins too fast overhead

    we lay on the mesa
    we see the divine at work
    making stars, blowing winds, growing trees
    sending the thunder to you and me

    on the mesa
    the night storm lightning piles up in the western sky

    we lie
    heat insidiously soaks up from the ground
    and wind lifts the hairs on our arms

    the mesa is not the end of the line you say
    your finger traces my lips
    is it enough to get us there?

    yes this is the night after the day yes
    there will be yes another day
    yes another day for us to lie
    and wait for night
    on the mesa

    So yeah. I talk about hating Texas and wanting to move to somewhere that has cool rain, tall trees, hills, and doesn’t regularly reach 90 or 100 degrees during the summers. But I think that part of me will always be drawn to the desert… landscapes like West Texas and New Mexico, with flats and mesas and big blue skies and violent storms.

    I arrived in Lubbock on Friday night, Bob got his degree Saturday morning, and my plane didn’t leave until Sunday afternoon. We ate at One Guy from Italy (Best. Calzone. Ever.), and tried to go to the County Line BBQ which had been recommended to me by a friend – but we found it closed and renamed to something nutty like “Peacock Cove.” It sat way out in the middle of nowhere by the airport, and there were a bunch of peacocks roaming around the property. Right across the road was a ropes course/survival camp or something strange like that. The whole setup was just kind of bizarre.

    I recognized a lot of the city from previous times I’d been in Lubbock. Actually the whole trip brought back some interesting memories, stuff I haven’t thought about in eight or ten years, so that was kind of weird.

    so my quest has led me here,
    here to a landspace of dry endless sands
    and it is my oasis
    i thirst for truth and for knowledge
    and here i can drink from your mind
    cool breeze in bright blue skies here
    and the fury of the storm

    Sunday I flew to Houston via Dallas to visit mom and dad for a couple of days. That was nice and relaxing. We did some shopping, some cooking, and lots of eating. I performed minor surgery on mom’s 4-year-old iMac (as she said, it was so fucked up that I had to “use the unfucking software to fix it.”) They’re moving to Sequim next summer, and so she had me take photos of some of the furniture that they aren’t going to take with them, in case we want any of it.

    The whole liquid-explosives-terrorist-plot-foiling thingy happened the day before I flew to Lubbock, so I had to check my bag instead of carry it on (no big deal), and put all my toiletries in my suitcase (if you put everything in plastic ziploc bags to prevent leaking, it’s not a big deal either). The only thing that I missed was my chapstick and a carryon bottle of water — air travel makes me thirsty and dry. The rules were relaxed between my first flight and my last flight, though, so I was allowed to have chapstick on the way back. But still no water, lotion, shampoo, or snakes allowed on the plane. Three of my four flights were only halfway full, and I cannot remember the last time I was on a Southwest flight that was not completely full. Almost nobody brought luggage for the overhead bins either — they remained mostly empty. I’m guessing that a lot of folks just canceled their air travel that week. I don’t know how else to explain the empty planes.

    Category Design, Family, Vacation, Work | Tags: | 1 Comment

  4. word cloud

    February 23, 2006 :: 9:18 am

    i gotta stop just recycling material that i read about on other peoples’ blogs.

    but this one is really cool. it’s a word cloud.

    as a designer type person, i cringe at the quality of the type (crunchy… yuck!)… but then again this is just a preview of what they’ll put on a shirt or mug or tote bag for you.

    Category Design | Tags: | 2 Comments

  5. inbetwans

    February 10, 2006 :: 2:07 pm

    ahem…

    searchin’ for fonts in all the wrong places,
    searchin’ for fonts in so many faces,
    lookin’ for serif,
    lookin’ for sans,
    or some
    thing
    inbetwans

    – courtesy of doc, on thursday night, watching me on a font hunt

    Category Design, Music | Tags: | No Comments

  6. done, i think?

    :: 8:01 am

    i think i got this redesign mostly accomplished. tonight i changed my header banner image to something i think works better. that is actually a quick & dirty photo of a close up portion of one of my paintings, which i did some “stuff” to in photoshop.

    i got my backgrounds and colors more to my liking as well.

    i’m not sure i’m happy with the font sizes and the way the “about me” section is displaying but i’m pretty sure i’m not going to worry about that right now.

    it is supposed to get cold tomorrow. by “cold” i mean temperatures in the 40s, possibly lower 50s. how sad is this, that in february i’m having to point this out as unusual. we’ve had such a bizarrely warm and dry winter. hey, it’s supposed to rain again tomorrow. i’ll take photos if it does.

    www.churchsigngenerator.com is a site that i wasted probably a good hour at work today looking through. you can make your own church sign!

    here are some of my favorites:

    Category Design, Links, Politics, Religion | Tags: | 1 Comment

  7. why do i always think a redesign will be fun?

    February 7, 2006 :: 10:34 pm

    yeah. i don’t know what gets into my head.

    i’ve spent three to four hours for the past two nights trying to fix my new layout so it will work in internet fucking explorer. that is its official name, by the way: “internet fucking explorer.” i don’t care if 90% of the world uses it as its primary browser; it is a piece of shit.

    so, anyway, this OUGHT to work better. at least, it works structurally in IE for the mac, most of the time. i have no idea what it looks like on IE for the pc, because, in a when-hell-freezes-over kind of way, i do not own one. i can check it at work tomorrow or if one of my three very kind and helpful pc-using friends whose names start with a “b” can check for me, that’ll be even better. :)

    i’m beyond caring how it looks on IE mac, but i would like it to work in IE pc simply because i have a lot of readers who use that particular platform and browser — and much as i would prefer that to be different, it ain’t gonna happen anytime soon. anyway, mac IE seems to be a good litmus test for pc IE — at least IE5.5.

    i forgot to upload this last week. it actually rained!! i was so excited that i took photos on the way to work, but forgot my camera’s usb cable so couldn’t actually upload any. don’t worry, i had the camera stationary on the steering wheel and just hit the button without actually aiming or composing. my eyes were on the road the whole time!

    this first one was taken at the intersection of northwest highway and buckner.

     

    this one was taken at the end of my street, looking across plano road towards the sonic (open for breakfast! shining that bright red neon glow through the windows of the houses! “you’ll never forget we have tater tots and strawberry cheesecake shakes, any time of the day or night!!!!”)

    Category Blog, Design, Geek, Storm, Technology | Tags: | 2 Comments

  8. tweaked design

    February 6, 2006 :: 10:03 am

    i spent much of the weekend practicing my CSS, and have thusly refined my blog template. i’m not sure that this works in internet explorer for the pc… i suppose i can find a pc at work and check it out. i know that it blows up in ie for the mac. i’m trying to decide if i care, or if i can find a workaround either in CSS (preferably) or through a javascript browser sniffer and redirect.

    if you’re on a pc and are having trouble with my site, please let me know. sending a screenshot would be most helpful!

    Category Blog, Design | Tags: | No Comments

  9. just a few minor fixes…

    October 4, 2005 :: 9:36 am

    Category Design, Work | Tags: | 2 Comments

  10. a new look

    April 20, 2005 :: 8:00 pm

    changed the way my site looks again… i don’t know why i do this. apparently i get easily bored. what do you think? the fancy top bit is a detail from one of my paintings, called “land of counterpane.”

    Category Blog, Design | Tags: | 3 Comments

  11. plastic fantastic

    February 1, 2005 :: 9:24 pm

    My hip has been hurting for a couple of weeks now. You know that feeling when you use a muscle you haven’t used in a while, and afterwards it’s painful and sore? This is kind of the way my hip feels, except it’s really deep in there, right on the side of the bone; it feels like it’s maybe bruised on the bone or something. I don’t know if bones get bruised; it doesn’t feel like a pulled muscle, or a pinched nerve (believe me, I’m all too familiar with that). Anyway, it’s been hurting steadily for a few weeks, especially when I walk down stairs, or lie on that side. I wonder if I should get that looked at.

    My desktop background right now is of a sunset scene on a beach in Australia, with cloud-to-cloud lightning in the distance. There’s a little strip of beach along the bottom of my screen, and my two printer icons look like they’ve been thrown off the back of a truck, sitting on the sand, waiting for the tide to come in and pour salt water into their little electronic guts.

    So I get this catalog from a store called Design Within Reach. It’s home furnishings and furniture… all very modern… much of it retro/futuristic… all of it designed by famous designers… most of it made of plastic and u-g-l-y… and I’m not exactly sure whose “Reach” they’re referring to but you can buy what looks like a middle school plastic orange chair with metal legs for $200. Oh, excuse me, it’s a Herman Miller Eames chair, how hoity toity. Basically this stuff is supposed to be high end and high design, but it looks like crap you’d find at Eurway, and five times the price. It’s ridiculous. I mean, I’m all for good design, but I’m also all for comfort, good materials, and practicality. Call me lowbrow if you will, but I can’t see the value in a $400 set of plastic orange shelves , a $750 plastic outdoor sofa, or a $7000 white plastic chaise lounge. I am not completely biased, though; I do like the Akari freeform floor lamp (but $750? for fuck’s sake!) and a few other items.

    I guess I’m just not a big fan of plastic fantastic, the savior of the 1950s, the modern space age material.

    Category Architecture, Art, Design, Health | Tags: | No Comments

  12. ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

    January 4, 2005 :: 8:35 am

    So do you like the new look? I needed a change.

    Actually it was a spur of the minute decision.

    I’m still wanting to customize it more, which I’ll do this week or weekend. Ain’t CSS great?!

    Category Blog, Design, Technology | Tags: | 1 Comment

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