site-related

Design Dilemmas

I’m contemplating embarking on a major website redesign. Not just a “the.details” redesign—a revamping of all the Diana Network of websites. I’m contemplating actually paying for my web hosting, and getting a decent amount of storage space. Perhaps an ASP-enabled server (so I can at least put pre-made scripts on it, even if I can’t make myself learn ASP alone). Hopefully at least PHP and SQL and Perl. Perhaps even abandoning LiveJournal altogether and trying out one of these other packages like Movable Type or WordPress or Textpattern.

Thing is, now that I give the idea some serious thought, I’m not sure how much control I would have over my design and coding if I use blogging software. My goal is to have a more dynamic page with more flexible design elements—”skinnable” is close to what I’m thinking, although I’m not sure if I could think of more than one or two site designs at once. But, anyway, having started as a hard-coder of HTML, it’s hard to give away all control of my coding, CSS or HTML or javascript or what-have-you. Even in Dreamweaver, I have to go in and fix code sometimes to get it the way I want.

And then there’s the Trendy Factor™. I don’t want my site to look exactly like everyone else’s site, spiffy and acclaimed though they may be. Unfortunately, however, my iFrames aren’t very searchable or trackable or navigable, though I once thought they were the proverbial shiznit. I want a clean, easy-to-update site with highly customizable design elements. I don’t necessarily want bleeding-edge web tech, nor do I want a rubber-stamp MT page with dashed lines around the blockquotes and a pretty patterned background behind my main content panel. I want a classic yet fun and moderately untraditional page that looks like I designed it.

When do I find my style? The one that I like as much as I like the styles of others? The closest I ever got was the Saginaires Alumni page, and even that’s beginning to look stale to me. It’s like it’s almost done, but not quite out of the draft stage. It’s missing something vital, some important detail elements.

Now, before I get a rash of “shut up—you design great websites!” comments (which, admittedly, I wouldn’t mind reading for an ego boost), I’ll concede that I do have some good ideas every now and then. I just can’t seem to make them combine into a solid final cohesive product with which I can be satisfied.

Maybe I’ll design a spiffy-looking new website with more dynamic and engaging content. We’ll see.

photography

Fun With Photoshop

After surfing around awhile, hoping to find a used lomo for cheap, I instead found an interesting photo manipulation technique. I first found a Photoshop action to “lomo-ize” photos—basically pumping up the saturation and vignetting (darkening) the edges. Honestly, I wasn’t impressed. But then I found a link to an article on Dooce’s page, and this made me sit down and play for a while:

Here’s a nifty photo I took of a bee on some flowers:

Here’s the same photo after tweaking it with Dooce’s not-so-secret recipe:

Works well on portraits, but I think it looks pretty spiffy here, too.

randomness 1 Comment

Back to the Grind

You know you’re a LiveJournal enthusiast (for lack of a better word) when life events prompt your husband to comment, “Well, at least this will make a good story for your LiveJournal later!”

What prompted this comment, you might ask? How about driving all over freaking Toledo looking for something so simple as photo album pages? All I wanted was a couple packs of damn album pages. Non-magnetic, clear pages that would fit three 4×6 prints on a side. Aaron and I struck out at Meijer, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Taylor Photo, Office Max and Target. I mean, jeebus! How asinine! None of these places carry the right damn photo pages?! *rolls eyes*

I finally ordered them from B&H online, along with some photo storage boxes I’d been wanting… but I’m sure I paid more with shipping and all.

The need for photo pages arose after the realization that I hadn’t put any photos in my photo album since Halloween. That’s nine whole months. Hello, slacker! So, I went through my overstuffed photo box (here again, note the need for those storage boxes I ordered) and located everything that had happened since October 2003. That would include Christmas, moving into the new house, getting Mei, visiting Fort Meigs, Fourth of July fireworks, and the Ann Arbor Art Fair. I have a stack of photos about half an inch thick that finally have names and dates written on them, but no homes. Bah. (And that doesn’t include the ones that don’t make it into the album—I’m more discerning about that sort of thing than I once was.)

And in other news, today is the final day of my vacation. Aaron still has all this week off of work, but I go back tomorrow morning. I guess I don’t really dread going back to work, but I’m certainly not excited about it. As Aaron says, I finally got to feeling like a normal human being again. It kind of gives me a teeny tiny taste of what it might be like to be retired.

Pretty pathetic, I know, dreaming of retirement before we’ve even had kids, but still… I guess if you don’t want to work for The Man, though, your only options are a.) start a successful business, b.) own a farm, or c.) win the lottery / receive an inheritance. Those options don’t include d.) become homeless (like my uncle), or e.) go on welfare (like my Mom when I was really little), since I don’t currently consider those viable alternatives.

And as follow-up: I’m currently trying to purchase a lomo on eBay, though my patience is being sorely tried. I want my new toy now, dammit! I don’t want to have to wait and snipe an auction tomorrow night! Gah!

*deep breath* I’m OK now… I just want my lomo. I’m excited.

photography

Lomography

One of the blogs I check on a regular basis is [daily dose of imagery]. I’ve been noticing that, in his technical photo info, he sometimes mentions a “lomo,” and he’s even won an award for one of his “lomographs”.

So, finally, I’m like, “OK. What is this lomo thing?” I go to the lomography page that Sam linked from his page, and it’s weird. I follow some links, check out eBay, check out PhotographyReview.com, check out the Popular Photography forums, and find mixed reviews. What I did find for sure is that the lomo:

  • is a Russian-made compact 35mm camera
  • has a fast wide-angle lens with manual focus and adjustable speed/aperture settings
  • has a lens coating which makes colors more saturated
  • receives mixed technical reviews from photo-snobs and art-snobs
  • seems to have a two or three-roll learning curve before producing “good” images
  • is currently more expensive than it should be, due to its cult status

Therefore, after obsessing over the lomo for an entire day, I have decided to purchase one—but only if I can get a new or gently used lomo for around $60. New, they cost $199.99 with the instruction manual and case. I’m not down with that… but if I can get a relatively cheap point-and-shoot with adjustable settings that can fit in my purse or pocket, I’m all about it.

Beth, was that four-pane motion-capture camera of yours a lomo? That’s not the model I’m going for, but I saw that the actionsampler looked kind of like the camera you had back in 2001 or so.

health & fitness

Food Glorious Food

This morning, I decided to be all spiffy and make Spicy Chicken Papaya Curry for lunch. Aside from some minor papaya issues (hey, the recipe didn’t say to peel the damn papaya!), it was quite tasty. I’d include a link to the recipe, but the people at the Cooking Club of America don’t have it listed on their site yet. Bah. Anyway, if you like fruity and spicy Thai-esque foods, lemme know and I’ll type out the recipe and post it. It was really delicious… after we sliced off the papaya skins. 🙂

Then, this afternoon, we stopped in at the Low-Carb Solutions store on Reynolds, hoping to pick up some Cinnamon & Butter Flavored Pork Rinds. Unfortunately, they were out of the pork rinds, but we found a new snacky food: Parmesan, Garlic & Olive Oil “Soy~Teins.” Yummy, yummy stuff… as was the Asher’s Sugar-Free Dark Liquid Raspberry chocolate bar we shared. And Heather, the owner, was nice enough to take down our name and number so she can call us when the pork rinds come in.

I also picked up a bottle of Da Vinci Gourmet Irish Cream Sugar Free Syrup. I’d heard those Da Vinci syrups were supposed to be absolutely scrumptious—and I’d heard right. When we got home, I looked up a recipe for Italian soda (since we have a whole two-liter of club soda leftover from making our low-carb pizza crust). OMG. So, so good. I’m going to be buying more of these Da Vinci syrups. *yum*