I’ve just finished my learning proposal; it’s hosted on my blog but I coded the whole page in XHTML as per the assignment guidelines. I just couldn’t resist using the same styling as my blog layout. Weakness: A bit of a perfectionist!
I suppose you’re wondering why I’m up at 2:00am and it seems like I’ve just finished this. Well, I finished most of it ages ago but I only bothered to upload it now. I suppose some of you in my class have at least twelve hours to go. Not for me, I have work in the morning. Time to get up early and eat the cereal I bought earlier tonight. You know eating dry cereal is pretty amazing? It makes for a good dinner if you have nothing else to eat, but don’t tell anyone else that.
I should be sleeping now, but truth be told, I got distracted by a few internet-related things. In light of the WordPress plugin I’m looking to create, I just thought of another example. Tumblr. I don’t know how many of you are using Tumblr for your blogs, or have ever used it, but I like Tumblr’s user interface, for the most part. I guess the reason I brought Tumblr up is because its image uploader is really simple and I’m looking to create something similar. I like that you can add tags and it remembers what tags you’ve used before. I suppose tags aren’t really necessary for images in WordPress, but it would be a nice feature to add.
For those who are regular readers to my blog, you might already know some of my favourite plugins but I’d like to suggest a couple to those in my class. Preview Theme by Dougall Campbell is a great one if you’re designing and developing your own themes. You don’t need to change the theme on your blog but you can preview your layout in different installed themes with a preview URL. In case any of you are wanting to make your own WordPress theme, that’s a handy one.
Tweetable by Matt Harzewski is something I like for the fact that it tweets my posts as soon as I post them. You can also tweet from WordPress, but most people have their own favourite clients anyway. Many other plugins and services tweet posts, but this is the only one I know that does it immediately.
Acronyms by Joel Pan and WPTouch by BraveNewCode Inc are another two plugins you might find useful. The majority of my other loved plugins are more advanced.
I thought I’d share a few of the design newsletters I sign up to. The first is MightyDeals. I haven’t bought anything from them but they have lots of free downloads from time to time, so it’s worth signing up. If you’re serious about design and UI or you wouldn’t mind paying for some high quality graphics, I recommend seeing what they’ve got. I also sign up to Web Designer Depot. Every week or so you’ll receive an email with some links to some very good articles about web and graphic design. Their blog is also full of tutorials and helpful tips.
One of my personal favourites is Vandelay Design. There are lots of free downloads on their website and their newsletter arrives with some goodies as well. You’ll find that they have some inspirational sites in their newsletters that you can browse and be inspired by. Speaking of inspiration, some of you might find such beauty in CSS that you’ll be amazed by websites like CSS Heaven, Best CSS Gallery, CSS Leak and CSS Bake – all which showcase gorgeous web designs.
Lastly, before I get my precious sleep and dream of Weet-Bix, I want to share my all time favourite newsletter – the MyFonts Newsletter. It is one of the only newsletters/emails I look forward to getting each week, particularly over my YouTube subscription updates (which scream “Watch me! Watch me!” but I just don’t have the time). You will find so many great fonts and descriptions about them. If you’re a lover of typography like I am, this is just for you. Additionally, if you’re in love with custom fonts – a suggestion I gave to another classmate was to visit Font Squirrel or Google Webfonts to use custom fonts on your webpages.
Anyway, time to dream of electric sheep. Classmates, let me know if you found this post helpful.
Last week I was drying my hair with the hairdryer our family has owned for many years. Supposedly due to the heat, the unit decided to explode. It only exploded on the inside, so there was a bit of fire, a lot of sparks, and some remnants of the unit made their way down the sink. I wasn’t injured but my mum decided to look for a new hairdryer. Since it’s been a decade or so since we got this hairdryer, it was surprising to find that these days we’re apparently going to have to fork out some $100 for a good hairdryer. I don’t dry my hair a lot – most of the time I let it dry naturally, but because I hated the poofiness that resulted from this old hairdryer, I sometimes used the hair curler instead. Now I like killing two birds with one stone. Curly hair and dry hair… fantastic.
My mum isn’t a fan of buying online, even though it’s cheap, shipping is free, and it’s generally quite safe. I keep telling her that the shock stories she hears about using credit cards online and getting money stolen is often reported on television as a result of people’s lack of common sense, or just the media trying to make you crap your pants. The media is ridiculous in the way it tantalises minor issues in society in order to gain more viewers and hence higher ratings. What’s this I hear about sashimi making people lose their legs? … come on. I got salmonella in a country where hygiene is terrible and health conditions are below average (not joking – and it was horrible). That’s not hard to believe, but in a relatively rich country where raw fish is stored at very cold temperatures giving them a certain appearance and flavour – I highly doubt that you would get some life-threatening disease like gangrene from eating sushi that isn’t cold enough. Ugh, moving on.
After contacting the eBay seller to retract my bids, I received no reply until two days later, upon which the seller threatened to open a case against me. After that they said that they had already sold the item to someone else… but still demanded payment. Now I got myself into this mess and I used James’s account and felt like a complete fool, but he was nonetheless willing to help. He contacted eBay and they dealt with the situation, though we were not given any information about what they did to the seller. The seller still opened a case saying I was a non paying bidder. It’s funny that the warning is that I “may not receive the item” if I don’t pay… yeah well, even if I do, I won’t get it because the idiot seller sold it to someone else. Ooooh, that hurts so bad.
The reply James received from eBay was promising though, and assured us that appropriate action would be taken and the issue would be resolved. The representative reassured us that it would be okay and even apologised for the late reply. Meanwhile, since I was outbid on a number of iPads, I chose one (just one, hahaha) and went for it. This time I made sure I read through the listing and was okay with it. Right, so I’m not desperate for an iPad but one would be useful for my eBooks, more of my music, and for web testing.
I’m getting bored of this layout; I feel like the colours and fonts are dull and it’s time for something new. Working on a number of websites at work has made me keener to dabble in HTML5 and CSS3. I should be thinking simpler; that’s just what I had in mind when I designed my free themes and they turned out wonderful. I feel like I put too much effort into things sometimes, that if I stop poking around and look at the bigger picture, it would make things a lot easier.
Today James took me to a Japanese restaurant for lunch to celebrate Valentine’s day. There were some heart-shaped decorations hanging from the ceiling but I was most amazed by the avocado, tuna and roe sushi that were shaped like flowers. I’ll be posting some photos to my photoblog. Valentine’s Day is a special day for some, and a day of whining about being single for others. Please, stop. It’s a holiday that was originally meant to celebrate romantic love but for crying out loud, it doesn’t mean that if you don’t have a partner you have to feel like you’re drowning in rose petals. It’s rather pathetic; I think that people should be able to treat it like just another day if they’re in that predicament. Some people don’t celebrate Christmas but they don’t complain about not being Christian. I don’t complain that I get nothing on Mother’s Day… because I’m not a mother, duh.
I’ve got to be up early tomorrow to go to work again, so it’s time to sleep as early as possible. Catch you in Dreamland! I’ll be playing my guitar under the tree with pink leaves.
There are times when nightmares have really, truly happened, and often, the worst nightmare is being caught out. For example, being caught urinating in a public place. Or being walked in on while doing something embarrassing. Having skirts fly up in the breeze. Having pants fall down. Walking into a glass door. Lists could be endless here. It’s not just embarrassing moments, either. I think there are two other kinds of nightmares that can occur, that are often vocally expressed like so: 1) “I’d rather be dead than be caught listening to Justin Bieber”, or 2) “I seriously hope my parents don’t find out about this”.
I’m pretty guilty of the latter. I’m not a goody-two shoes, but I’m not very rebellious either. Like typical rebellious daughters, I don’t do drugs or drink until I get trashed, I don’t drive a car when I don’t even have a licence, I don’t go out late and ignore my parents’ phone calls. Like most daughters, when I’m in a bad mood I yell at my parents, I also hate doing housework sometimes, and my room is a mess.
I began web design about ten years ago but didn’t have a personal website until 2003. I had just been learning to work my head around HTML and CSS. When I decided to make a personal website and include a detailed profile of myself, the only digital photograph I had of myself was a photo of me in a ballet costume performing the Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker Suite. Back then, digital cameras were expensive and I had obtained a digital copy of this photograph thanks to my ballet teacher. I didn’t think twice and I put it straight on my website, along with a substantial amount of information about myself.
I was level-headed, I was well-informed, I was careful, but I was also naive, and perhaps gave out too much information. The internet is full of predators, though over the past few years – dare I say – it has become a more interactive platform and people are interacting via Twitter and even advertising themselves to employers via websites like LinkedIn. I wouldn’t go as far to say that it’s safer, but it’s become more of an outlet for people to connect than it was before.
In 2003, I was 12. Ooh, come on. No parent likes their twelve-year-old chatting to other people online. Though I was regularly chatting with Rhiannon (whom some of you might remember from PetShopGirlsReviews.com before she disappeared, or if you remember her before then, she owned petshopgirl.tk) and other people who owned blogs and websites, my mum wasn’t pleased when I told her I was chatting to some random chick on Messenger from Perth, and she doozed up and ranted about how this girl could be some freaky old man who lived just around the corner. I was just thinking, come on, fat chance.
Ages ago, my uncle used to send a crapload of chain mail to my mum. My mum used to refer to this particular one, in which there was some ridiculous story about this girl who started talking to a boy online. One day there was a man following her as she walked home from basketball practice, and as soon as she reached home, she rushed inside and shut the door. Her parents obviously asked her what was wrong, and it turns out the man following her was a douchebag hired by her parents to teach her a lesson about chatting to people online. I hate that story, FTR.
As I sit here, still ill, with a cold, but drinking vegetable soup garnished with generous amounts of chili, I feel my nose draining itself. Yesterday, James bought me a bowl of spicy egg noodles with wontons. It was great, and it actually got rid of the soreness in my throat. I’m not feeling any pain there anymore, just an odd emptiness. My voice still sounds like P!nk, or as one of my workmates said, “like a man”.
I guess my cold is just stuffing things up but I hope to be better soon. Smelling some Vaporub seems to do the trick, too. I think the wind also gets to me easily. Yesterday I let myself into work (I have my own keys now) and I opened the windows because I was rather out of breath from walking from the station and up the flights of stairs, but soon enough the wind was making me feel cold so I shut them. The good thing about working in a converted loft is that it rarely gets muggy in there.
I caught up with Johnny and Fern the other day – I hadn’t seen them in months! I didn’t have a jacket with me and as I was waiting for them outside our meeting place, I was hoping it wasn’t going to make my cold worse.
I was wearing my shirt that said, “The art of conversation is, like, kinda dead and stuff”. A boy about my age was nearby with another two girls, and he asked, “Hey, excuse me, what does your shirt say?”
I walked towards them and let them read it out aloud. “Hey, that’s cool! Thanks,” he nodded.
Thankfully, that’s probably the only geeky shirt I own that has words on it; the others have prints of LEGO, rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock or a TARDIS, which doesn’t really encourage people to ask what my shirt reads, or say. A popular online store from which I bought some of these shirts is ThinkGeek.com. I used to shop there quite often before I found their shipping costs to Australia were too high for my taste, not to mention they seemed to be out of any good merchandise.
More often than not, I find geeky shirts that quote certain memes or have Pedobear on them, or Double Rainbow, or reference some game like Skyrim or Minecraft or Pacman, or have some programming or HTML or blogger joke on it. I find the majority of these shirts, particularly the ones with jokes on them, to be very unfunny and very lame. Yes, I think a shirt with <body> on it is a pretty cool shirt, but I wouldn’t buy one and wear it.
It’s not hip and it’s not funny or cool or totally rad or fully sick [bro]. Let’s just say, if I saw an English teacher wearing a shirt like the one I mentioned earlier, I’d think he was being rather pretentious or trying to be cool. It makes sense for me to wear it because I’m part of the younger generation and even though I prefer writing formally and with verbose words at times, I do kinda, like, talk like that.
There’s a shirt that reads “Just shut up and reboot already”. If I saw an IT support guy, or just someone working in a computer shop or anyone interested in computers wearing that, I’d honestly think he was a snob.
It’s as if whoever chooses to wear these shirts will think that whoever is interested in the same thing as them or has the same kind of knowledge as them will understand their shirt and likewise, think it’s cool. Perhaps it does seem cool to that person, but you’re just showing off, really. I don’t see my boss wearing a shirt with <body> on it. I would understand it, but if someone else sees someone with a shirt like that and has no idea what HTML is or is unfamiliar with the internet, they wouldn’t think twice about it.
James agreed with me and stated that it was the reason why he wouldn’t buy something like a ROS shirt. (I’m sure that 98% of you would have no clue what that means.)
“It’s sad. It’s like you’re saying ‘I want you to ask me what my shirt is about so I can boast of my knowledge. NOT to converse, but for me to tell you about my specialised expertise on a topic. FOR I WAS HEAVILY NEGLECTED AS AN EARLY TEENAGER’.” And after a pause – he laughed.
If it makes someone feel good wearing a shirt that shows off some of your knowledge, well, fine, be my guest, I’d say to them. Hats off to you, mate. But don’t expect me to ask you what it means if I haven’t a clue, then mope and have a booboo at home because no one asked. Finally, if you do see someone with a shirt with something you like on them, are you seriously going to approach them and say it’s zarking awesome? I still think that giving strangers compliments makes my shoulder feel like spiders have crawled over it. I also think that receiving compliments from strangers gives me the same feeling (but on my other shoulder).
Maybe it brings this sense of community or something. “O HEY YOU LIKE VLOGBROTHERS TOO WELL SO DO I OMG…”
“Then why the fuck don’t you have a DFTBA shirt?”
“I would also take an arrow to the knee omg you play Skyrim? Man I love your boobs.”
“Ugh, go away.”
So even if girls do play Skyrim, or any other game for that matter, it doesn’t mean you get to make out with them. I know couples end up together because they have the same geeky obsession with something – they might have met online through playing a game, or found out in school that they had common interests, but I bet you my left foot that it wasn’t from wearing some godforsaken t-shirt with some geek joke on it.
(If you’re still wondering, ROS = Robot Operating System.)
I get too attached to it. Correction: got. What with this SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) issue getting heated up, yakking on to my brother about it…
I see many people are involved. Many people blocked out their websites for the 18th day of January. People tweeted about it everywhere. People posted about it on their blogs. People posted about it on forums. People expressed their opinion virtually everywhere – on the internet. I guess I didn’t really want to put much thought into the issue, thinking that a lot of these internet-related laws or acts usually don’t garner much of a problem in the end. Of course, it crushes the right that people have to free speech, but when I look at it in light of other things, I feel like it’s not going to take a massive toll on my life.
I could be wrong, though.
My brother seemed to only have become interested in the issue today. I hardly talk to him since he’s occupied with studying and activities like taekwondo, and I have work myself, but when we do get to chat, it’s usually about the internet or music or something that is indirectly related to the internet. Today he brought up SOPA, as if it was completely new to him. He does use the internet a lot – just as much as I do – but he doesn’t do much other than play games and watch videos occasionally. That said, I’m not surprised he wasn’t as educated on SOPA as I was.
My parents find me to be very terrible when it comes to “general knowledge” and world news and “current affairs”. Truth be told, I hate current affairs and I find news incredibly dull.
It’s always “three thousand people were killed when a ship ran aground on the east coast of Whatchamacallit. About fifty of them are believed to be Australians”. The latter sentence always ticks me off, because for some reason, when a large number of people have died, the fact is always put forward that so-and-so Australians have died. I begin to wonder if it is like that in other countries. Perhaps not. My brother, on the other hand, gratuitously laughs and repeats lines from newsreaders that follow as such: “Good evening a man has died…” where there is no pause for breath between the greeting and the announcement of a tragic incident.
But when it comes to internet-related things, oh, I like to believe I’m on the ball. Which is why I wasn’t at all surprised when my mum said, “What are you guys talking about?” Neither she or my dad had any idea what SOPA was about, though my dad had a faint grasp of the situation. My dad uses the internet to download music, and my mum sends and receives emails. That’s about it. If the internet were to go down for whatever reason, they wouldn’t feel that affected.
I guess in the past few weeks, being busy with work, I haven’t felt so attached to the internet as I have before. I know, I work with the internet with web design and I have to be connected to the internet, but I still don’t feel that need to check my email every two minutes. My consolidation has done me really well; I have cut down on a lot of online projects and I’ve relaxed in terms of blogging and reading blogs. It’s something I enjoy, but after nine hours at work, sometimes I really do just want to read a book, or watch Futurama, or crash on the couch and just see whatever movie is on television. I have hated many things about the internet – the drama, the idiots, the YouTube commentators, the YouTube “community” (as my boss says, “what community? More like a flash mob”), the Tumblr bitches, Tumblr in general, the whiny bloggers, the paedophiles, the sex advertisements, the thieves, the…
Oh, I could go on. But you know, it’s times like these when I really appreciate a good walk out of the office and Vietnamese food with the gang (I’m just referring to workmates here), a walk to the bus stop with Jebediah ringing in my ears, or just curled up in bed on a Saturday morning finishing a really good book.
Whatever happens with SOPA, well, rest assured that it can go right back up the backsides of anyone who makes the internet an unpleasant place.
Maybe we all do. But a lot of us take photos that aren’t ours to use as avatars, rephrase things, quote Wikipedia, have downloaded an album without paying, have shared music with everyone else – maybe we do get a taste of our own medicine, but who’s going to stop us? It’s the freakin’ internet.
Weakness: A bit of a perfectionist!
I’ll be posting some photos to my 