October 31st 2007
One of my biggest pet peeves with professional designers is their invalid coding. If you’re offering your designs, especially when you want to get paid for them, they should be valid. It goes to show that you’re either ignorant or you don’t care. These days, with the multitude of browsers, it’s hard to make sure a layout looks good in all of them, but the easiest way to tell is to make sure it’s valid. You take out the errors and in almost all browsers, it’s not messed up. Except for IE of course, but they’re never going to get on the bandwagon of not sucking.
I’ve been thinking about putting up a portfolio site. I bought the domain months ago when XFluro had a sale to get a domain for $3.50 and I haven’t done anything with it except use it as a test site when developing new layouts. My next chore is to make that domain actually worth something, especially now that my mom’s new website links to my portfolio. SA Design shouldn’t have an index page saying “Coming soon” until it expires.
I also want to break into the Wordpress theme business, but I’m too lazy. I have this incredible lack of inspiration that is getting in the way of everything creative I’m trying to do. I also have a lot of extra stuff to do with this site and TCK. My todo list just keeps getting longer and nothing’s getting done. That said, I really should be studying for my test today…
October 27th 2007
I have a serious lack of inspiration all around. A few weeks ago, I needed to redo my stepdad’s taxidermy website, but I just couldn’t come up with a layout. And then it took me days to finally come up with an idea for the redesign of this website and now I’m onto my mom’s site. She’s a college professor and I’ve been doing her website for…maybe seven years. I remember the first layout I used on it was from Layout Land (or something like that). Seriously, I was like ten. I can’t believe I’ve been doing this stuff since then. It’s incredible.
Her university has this great new logo since they changed their name a few years ago and they’re very anal about its usage. You can’t edit/reproduce it in any way and you can’t resize it. WTF. I had this cute idea to use my mom’s name in place of the university’s name with the star in between, but apparently, I can’t do that. So there went my idea. Besides that, I didn’t know what else to do. So I went and played Nintendo 64 (seriously, I played Mario Kart) and then when I came back I had some ideas. So that’s what I’m working on now, although of course I’m procrastinating.
On a different note, I’m not sure the newest version of Wordpress is necessary for personal blogs like mine. I don’t use tags at all. I really don’t understand the need for tags when there’s already categories. I like categories better anyway, because I’d have way too many different tags. For That College Kid, I use tags, but only for my SEO. I still don’t entirely get all that I’m supposed to do about that. I’m getting visitors and making a little bit of money so that’s all I really care about.
October 19th 2007
I’m in the process of uploading and tweaking a new layout. There are parts missing and pages with errors. I’ll let you know when it’s all finished.
Edit: all done.
October 15th 2007
It never ceases to amaze me that adults can still be childish morons when they’re online. In the “Wordpress community”, there are some designers that are apparently big shots, although how one of them has come to this conclusion is beyond me. These designers created a friendship and ended it rather quickly and why did such a relationship end? Because one of them is a baby.
One person posted a review of the other’s designs and the guy took it extremely personal. Now if he wasn’t trying to sell these designs, I could see where his feelings would be hurt, but since he’s selling these premium Wordpress themes at $80 a pop (to multiple people no less), criticism is exactly what he deserves. I personally like some of the designer’s work, but some of it isn’t good quality, not even close to what I’d pay $80 for. I wouldn’t pay $5 for some of those designs.
What gets me the most is that a friendship was ended over criticism. And the one who ended everything is an adult. A frickin adult. It just amazes me. This guy burnt a bridge he’ll probably need later on because he takes his work too personally. When you’re a professional, taking your work personally is just stupid. Your clients will criticize. They are going to want things to be a certain way and if you don’t like it, they’ll find someone else who does.
October 5th 2007
Don and I are both big baseball fans and although our team is the Atlanta Braves, we still love the Astros. We are from Texas after all. So last Sunday we went to see the last regular game of the season, Braves v. Astros at Minute Maid Park in Houston. We bought good tickets on ebay and drove up to Houston. This game wasn’t just the last game of the season, it was Craig Biggio’s last game ever.
He was picked up by the Astros twenty years ago as a rookie and has played his entire career with them. He holds a few records, some with the Astros franchise and some with the league. He’s been an all-around amazing player and I’m sorry to see him go. He was great to the Astros and he will be missed.
The game itself started off great, Biggio scored his last double and the Astros were up 3-0 in the first inning. The rest of the game was uneventful, but the ceremony was wonderful. Craig spoke before and after the game and the owner of the Astros spoke as well. They presented him with a plaque and a case with his jersey. It’s amazing when a crowd full of men start crying because one man is retiring.
