the pure interest

I would like to take a break from my regularly scheduled fitness update to talk about design and websites. Huh, remember when I used to do that? Talk about my profession instead of my personal life? Oh well.

Kristin informed me about the iheart revolution months ago and I downloaded half the songs, but I had, for some unknown reason, never actually visited and explored the site. I did it today and I was struck by how unique it was, and I really liked it. All of the main content is on the first page, and instead of switching pages when you click main navs (aside from the obvious myspace and facebook links), it smoothly slides you down to the next section using anchoring and bookmarks, where the same nav is present again so you don’t get lost. I thought this was so cool and although an old technique, used in a new and efficient way. Not to mention how the main “i heart” graphic is created, layered gifs over a really cool background, this being the first stop on the navigation journey - all the links are sort of hidden inside. The site loads quickly, smoothly and is all there - so no waiting for new pages to load.

I like how they’ve broken the typical “link-must-click-to-new-page” preset and done something easy and simply unique.

Thoughts?

Take some time to check out the site and read how the album was created. It is beautiful stuff! I praise God for people who can use these talents in music and media for Him.

One of my best friends, Christy, finally got her playmate - a baby 9 week old cockapoo puppy named Violet. She was a little lethargic and tired this weekend, but when Kristin and I went to visit her we still got some adorable pictures. I wish I could do animal photography for a living sometimes! Christy was just glowing in the pictures - if she is this happy with a puppy, I can’t wait to take beautiful photos of her with her newborn baby (when the time comes)

I downloaded a photoshop action and had some fun with these… you can see how they’d be great for wedding photos or dreamy nature shots. I thought they were so cute for Violet! You obviously have to be careful with these things, but hey, it was fun!

This is a ROSE BUSH. It always freaks me out how plants start out SO tiny.

Seriously - Christy? Hello? Model?

This looked even cuter through the lens!

I love this picture!! My Nikon would NOT auto-focus. I still don’t know why. So excuse my slightly perturbed expression.

Happy Friday everyone!

sidenote: It is 12:40am. I stayed up late getting some of the many things done that need to be done this weekend - I’m really glad I did, because although I am tired, I am much less stressed now! Thanks to some crazy second wind I get around 11:45 if I can stick it out, I decided to blog. Anyway, I was typing something into my google search bar in safari and I saw this message:

UM….. WHAT?????

Thanks to Emily, I wanted to try this today. You make a collage of Flickr photos that correspond to the answers below. Normally I post my own photos but I was really interested to see how I could visually represent myself with other people’s photos! I wasn’t totally happy with it because a lot of the ones I chose would not allow uRL linking, so I had to pick sometimes my 4th and 5th choices for images, and some images had black borders which sort of ruined the symmetry so I ended up going in and manipulating myself a bit. But, still successful I think!

The Questions
1. What is your first name? Rachel
2. What is your favorite food? Yogurt and Berries
3. What high school did you go to? Harbor Creek
4. What is your favorite color? Red
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Matt Damon
6. Favorite drink? Water
7. Dream vacation? Hawaii
8. Favorite dessert? Chocolate Cake
9. What you want to be when you grow up? A Mother
10. What do you love most in life? (Worship)ping the Lord
11. One word to describe you. Emotional
12. Your flickr name. Pure Motif

The Concept
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker).

This is an old picture I took of cherry trees a few years ago (surprise, right?). It’s peaceful to me.

In June, I actually have some “profit” from freelancing, and I was deciding between a Wacom tablet or the new Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac. After reading some not-very-good reviews on Office 08, I decided on the tablet. I ordered from Amazon one that had decent reviews, was medium sized, and not ridiculously costly - so I am excited to work with it. It’s supposed to be here today! I hope I can do some new types of illustration and it gives me some more freedom I’ve been looking for.

I went roller blading by myself last night, and it was ok. The only things I hate about blading/walking at the penninsula are the clouds of gnats. I had to have breathed some in because I would notice I was plowing into them way too late! I did 6 miles in 45 minutes, which meant I was going relatively fast. When I sat down in the car I wasn’t sure if I could get my blades off I was so exhausted . . . but somehow managed to. Then, I went home, had some veggies for dinner, and did “3T - Totally Tubular Turbo” . . . yeah, sounds cheesy but it’s a great workout using resistance tubing for weight/strength training. About 30 minutes after being done, I noticed I was having trouble lifting my limbs and walking up the stairs. I guess it can truly be said that I beat myself with working out yesterday! But I needed it so I am glad!!

This was mainly to make up for the fact I went to Olive Garden yesterday with my sis and my hubs and had the new Chicken Milanese. I did give about half to Bri and Amy, so that was good. But it was unbelievable. Worth every calorie, bite, and bloated feeling afterwards.

Also LOST last night? Wow. Some questions got answered, which was crazy, but somehow I have a really hard time putting it all together still. I depend on the short reviews for stupid people so I can sort of get a handle on what I saw!

Tonight we have small group which is always a pleasure, and I think some new folks will be joining, so I am excited about that! Brian and I also need to find an air conditioner this weekend, which needs to be a priority, and I am searching flyers for the best deals.

Oh and update: I have no accent, because Erie is awesome:

Have a happy Friday everyone!

With the country receiving their economic stimulus, it’s interesting for me to learn what people plan to do with theirs. Are they putting it right back into the economy? Paying off federal debt (loans, bills, etc.)? Giving to charity?  Well, this is where half of mine is going. A small 6′ x 3′ shed for our tiny backyard. This is an item that I’ve needed for two years but my hubby has been resistant to spending our household money on, because the outside of the house is sort of my domain - he just doesn’t really concern himself with it. We made a decision that we could each do with our check what we wanted. Some of mine will go on my student loan, and the rest spent on this shed and potentially a small used (cheap) lawnmower.

Interesting and Flashy? Not really.

Necessary? Very.

Brian is using his plus some to add a bunch of cool pedals to his new birthday present, a VOX AC30 Amp, purchased by my family and a friend for him in a SCREAMING good deal. Don’t worry, we’d never ever be able to spend the full retail price on this. When I say screaming deal, I mean 1/4 price. This amp is a beautiful, prized thing for guitarists of his style/genre, and I am so thrilled for him to have his first amp ever! Here are some pictures from when we surprised him with it!

So, where is your economic stimulus check going?

Tune in next week, I plan on doing a color week - one new spring picture of a different color everyday.

We’re all excited for another Meta Cafe! The last one was a a great time of just hanging out, gaming competitions, coffee, goodies and conversation.

Thank you so much for all your compliments yesterday everyone. They really mean a lot - when I post these things it’s not necessarily to get a bunch of praise, but feedback either way, and of course the positive stuff is always appreciated!

So I’ve decided to start a .mac trial (60 days - I like that they give you a full two months) mainly for the “Back to My Mac” feature, where you can connect and control two (or more) of your mac computers remotely. I’ve had this need for the last few months especially when sometimes I’ll end up needing to work on agency work from home, and I don’t have all the files, so I end up emailing them to myself, etc. It’s just not efficient. In theory, .mac allows me to have not only storage space online (which I can’t say I’ve been too thrilled with - a friend of mine and I use it to transfer sermon mp3s and it often crashes my computer if I try to copy too much at once), but remote management of both macs depending on where are at. You can do screen sharing, but I’d probably avoid this since on Mondays and Tuesday there is another designer sitting at this computer and I don’t think she’s appreciate her mouse and folders being taken over by me Anyway, for $100 a year, if this works, I think it will be super helpful and very worth it!

Anyone else have experience with .mac that they could weigh in on?

Thanks - and have a wonderful Wednesday! GE Shareowners meeting is today, (big deal in our town) so I hope to go down to the convention center later and get a look at all my agency and some other vendor’s in towns hard work in helping GE put it together!!

Please prepare for a very linky post.

Thanks to KT for this font game reference. I was proud of myself for scoring 30 out of 34!! It’s interesting to see what you recognize. Some were easy, some trickier and had to be done through process of elimination.

Last night was spent watching some tv, American idol (I thought Mariah Carey was a great mentor), while online with my bloggy friend Tina who was helping me make the dynamic lightbox script work. I couldn’t figure out what i was doing wrong, and after about 5 tries of completely redoing the script, I finally just used Tina’s version, and it started working There are a few kinks in it, but I’m almost there, and Tina stuck with me for 2.5 hours online!! I seriously don’t know what I would do without my web designing and techy friends to ask for advice sometimes… thanks for being there for me. I’ve learned so much from you and you help me get out of sticky situations a lot, I owe you.

Yesterday was a little hard… my husband was discouraged about his job, and then I had sort of a depressing day for my business; I was scared because I was on hold on so many projects, I literally had nothing to work on. I have invoices out, and about 5 projects in the works… but I don’t know that any of them will be able to be paid in the next month, which means forgoing the small additional salary I give myself monthly out of my business account (I just paid estimated taxes so there isn’t much cushion). But then around 6:00 pm, I got a cold call from a referred client who wants me to help them do a small website in the next 2 weeks. This is such a blessing, and to top it off, it’s a Christian client who wants to promote his evangelism missions! It won’t be much, but it helped boost my confidence that God is providing work for me and to just keep calm, keep working on administrative things and promotion when I am slow, and trust that things will pick up. And the small cash flow will help. I also have two small wedding photography projects coming up that I know of this year, and that is also really fun stuff!!

It’s so funny because at my agency job, things are so crazy, I feel like I could work for weeks and not finish everything. And yet, here I am, blogging.

To work with me!!