site-related 1 Comment

Homework Assignment

OK, I’m completely serious about this, so don’t post something silly without posting something serious, too.

I’ve been going through this list of well-designed websites, deciding what I admire and what I feel to be cliché. (I must have some amount of good taste, since I already frequent over half a dozen of the sites.) Anyway, one of the things I’d like to incorporate into my redesign (whenever it happens) is an About Me blurb. Not necessarily the full-page kind, as I’ve tried that multiple times and it just don’t work. More of something concise and amusing, like:

Diana Schnuth is a web designer and photographer in Toledo OH, making her actual living in the world of finance.

So, my homework assignment to you is to write one or two brief sentences about me that would explain who I am, and what I’m about, to any complete strangers who might confusedly stumble upon my site.

May the power of The Pink Pig be with you! Now go!

randomness

Belated GIP

I am genuinely disappointed that no one has yet commented on The Pink Pig! I mean, really! His skin is a crunchy treat!

Incidentally, The Pink Pig was scanned from a bag of Meijer store brand pork rinds—since discontinued, I am sorry to say. Anyway, Aaron was trying to cajol me into eating some pork rinds one day and came up with the phrase, “My skin is a crunchy treat!” It’s been a catch phrase for pork rinds ever since.

Rest in peace, Pink Pig! In your absence, the newly-redesigned Meijer packaging will still silently say to us, “My skin is a crunchy treat!”

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.