I seem to go through phases of rapid development, followed by periods of stasis. I just realized, after having worked 35 hours in the past 3 days, that I’m in a “rapid development” phase. Or I’m just working so much that I can’t help but pick up things faster.
Anyway, new projects!
I’ve had the craziest last-little-while: personally, professionally, otherwise. I took my first vacation in years and disappeared into the Mayan jungle for a week, and I’ve just recently returned from just shy of a full month spent on-the-road, living out of suitcases and backpacks and the trunk of my car. It’s been utterly fabulous–exhausting and refreshing simultaneously, and just what I needed to return to my life & business with a clean brain & slate.
I have many stories and photographs, which are forthcoming. For now, two new projects: the holiday cards I mean to do every year, and a redesign and rearchitecturing of Fernwood Publishing.
…but apparently I’m not. I’ve actually had “update website” on my to-do list for the last three or four weeks. In the past week it’s actually been upgraded to “update website PLEASE” and “for the love of EVERYTHING, UPDATE WEBSITE ALREADY”. I’m starting to suspect it might be easier to switch over from my custom-built Ruby on Rails powered site to a customized Wordpress site, which could easily handle everything my RoR is doing with a much easier-to-use backend (not that manually editing database fields isn’t easy).
I’ve been using Wordpress for everything lately, and have totally fallen in love with it. I seem to always be a little behind the curve on web trends (as a side note, I’m now on Twitter, though I still don’t really understand the point entirely) due to my general distaste for trends (if everyone likes it, it can’t possibly be any good, right?). But I really wish I’d discovered the power and flexibility of Wordpress earlier on—it’s brilliant and I’m beginning to use it for more and more of my client projects.
Well, it’s been a long, long, long time in the making, but I’ve finally updated my portfolio a teeny little bit (not too much to be overwhelming, of course!) There’s this portrait of my gorgeous little sister:
and a “new” website (that was completed months ago). I really don’t like updating my own website!
But I’m determined that it’s about time to do it, especially given that I’m about to move again, and that means that my address as listed on the website will be even more wrong than it is currently. (Sure, in theory it only takes two minutes to change it, but that’s not how I work…if I’m going to spend two minutes, I’m going to be there three hours trying to fix all the little things.) At any rate, all the little things have really added up, and it’s time for some major-ish rearranging. (continue »)
So contrary to what the local paper reported, I am not, in actuality, a firm made up of three people, one of whom is named “Dinah LeChaton”. Dinah has actually been missing since November, and Marigold returned to Ottawa, where she may continue doing some client relations work. I decided it was high time to bring on new staff. So I picked up Kalliope, an eager new talent whose skills include getting herself tangled in plastic bags, finding a lap to curl up on even when said lap is covered in laptop, and eliminating the evil monsters who live underneath bedsheets.
I am, naturally, enamoured. (continue »)
It’s only taken me about half a year, but I’ve finally crossed an item off my perennially growing “to-do” list: add flash to portfolio. I’ve always been fond of this monologue from Fear & Loathing, and not solely because it seems like a shopping list for debauchery. While I was at it, I added a t&s time capsule chronicling some of the various different designs this site has undergone (that’s another strikeout on my to-do list). And then for good measure (I was on a roll at this point), I added screenshots of the Brambles Antiques website—both the public site and the admin panel. These days, I’m working with COPAN Offshore to develop a logo for their new business, and am painting my bedroom walls a bright gold.
Brambles Antiques is finally finished, complete with a fully functional backend admin panel. (Screenshots to follow!) I spent a good long time re-re-re-designing T&S, to what is at least a temporary satisfaction, and I’ve learned that I’m infinitely my pickiest, most annoying, and most demanding client. And I’m refusing to work for myself ever again.
I’ve finally settled into Lunenburg and am in the process of repainting my whole apartment, which is growing in scope exponentially every time I find more paint chips in a hardware store. I’ve just finished the Idealbikes website, and I’m currently breaking the ice with two new clients, both based in Lunenburg. New website should be coming soon, complete with a better design and more stuff to look at!
I converted my layouts to XHTML/CSS only (finally saying adieu to tables) and am butting major heads with MSIE, the scourge of the web world. Everything works in Opera, Safari, Mozilla, and Netscape (Mac and Win, when applicable), but IE5 Mac has this tendency to create major random glitches in my page layout. You know, like rendering links non-clickable, or evaluating 20px as 250pt. All skins are at this point functional even in the sad scenario that you’re using IE Mac. But really, if you’re using a Mac, what are you doing using a Microsoft clunker of a browser?
Oh yes, and I’m still working on some of the work term projects, which are turning out to involve the archiving of ten years’ worth of badly formatted FrontPage code. I’m hoping to get through this lot by the end of the week and potentially taking a trip home before my childhood home is sold. (continue »)
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