Lack of “real” posts lately

August 10th, 2008 | Rants, Technology | No Comments »

Indeed.

The main reason is because I haven’t had much to say. Summer for me hasn’t been very interesting, however I did had to go down to Truro a couple of times regarding various things, as well as a couple of LAN parties, the most recent one being today.

Even though I haven’t been posting much lately, I do have my twitter feed being added to my blog.  I like this because I do twitter more often than I blog, which seems to be the case with alot of people lately.  But anyway…

I am having a little difficulty again with making my portfolio website.  I did do a great design, but however I think that I can do better.  I’ll try probably at least do another design, and decide if I want to put that to rest and redo it.  The reason?  I want to get better at designing. Right now I look at all of these portfolio sites and of course they are made by 25-35 year-olds.  I’m 19.  To me, having a nice looking (and correctly coded) website at 19 would be well… quite interesting ;)  Most people who are out there now only started around 20-23, while I started at 14-15 and even then I was learning about XHTML, and CSS, and stuff like that.  That, to me, is quite an accomplishment.

There are people in my Web Development class from Fall 2007 (last year) were pretty much learning how to do that for the first time (or so I think.)  Now, I do say that when I was first hand-coding HTML, I would not write tables.  At all.  I felt that they were difficult as heck. :p  But now, I can do it pretty well, because I eventually just started to accept tables.  However I do not use them for layout. ;)  I have NEVER coded HTML tables for layout.  Well, with an exception for a local website that I had to rewrite the whole page for, and I wanted to keep a similar look to the rest of the website.

Another reason why I want to start over again with the design.  I want to try different methods of showing the navigation, logo, and content.  So far I’ve only done top-down “HNCF” (Header, Navigation, Content, Footer) layouts. (Should I coin this term? <g>) I want to try things like positioning the logo and navigation to the left, and content to the right, or something along those lines. Perhaps this would be the time to look into different concepts and ideas, such as my previous “Coffeehouse” layout, which utilized a blackboard for navigation, and had a coffee[house]-inspired logo.  Also, this might be a great time to learn how to make my own backgrounds and effects (I’ve already figured out the half-tone effect.)

I do not know whether saying that this portfolio website is going to be two-going-on-three years in the making would be an understatement, but however to be honest, I’ve restarted this project pretty much every time I put a layout in storage.  That would be… at least 35 times.  Although I have been slowly getting better every time, and actually, the latest two layouts (“Azure Heaven” and “Coffeehouse“) have been a step up in what I had before.  I think that if I keep at this one, it’ll be another – possibly big – step up from the previous one, which I could have added a light coffeecup stain and some texturizing to the header + footer.

If anyone has any Web Design resources that they wish to share with me, there are several methods that you can reach me:

Either way would be really helpful to me, as a growing Web Developer and Web Designer. It’s always interesting to see what other people find on the internet. :)

State of the Site(s)

June 15th, 2008 | Daily Life, Linkage, My test pages, News, Rants, Site Info, Stuff that I work on in my spare time, Wordpress, Writings | No Comments »

It seems that H-M has been down for a good week or so.

I’ll try to keep on blogging, at the least twice each month as it has been since over two years ago :)  For those who have continued to visit, I thank you.

That time off that I’ve had with Hidden Melody has gotten me thinking about the future, and I believe that in the upcoming months, I will be seeing a transition from Hidden Melody, which with all of the combined periods of being hosted by different places, have been at least four to six years, and even before that, it’s been probably five to six years since I’ve started having my own website, and about five since I’ve started coding HTML and CSS, which I do say, have been pretty much hand-coding my little projects since that time, which would mean that I was 14-13 years old.  Of course I’m just guessing, although I do recall that I’ve never did any WWW-related stuff on windows 98 SE, and only after getting XP I started. :3

Well, I think that I should stop rambling on now, and just have to do a little self-promotion of sorts:

My remote development server that’s hosted by a friend is at http://azuretan.mine.nu/; Quite possibly if you visit it right now you might see my upcoming personal site.

Which now brings me to another rant, after the jump.

(more…)

And thus came the end of the school year… (April)

May 16th, 2008 | Daily Life, My test pages, News, Rants, Stuff that I work on in my spare time | No Comments »

Note: this was originally meant to be posted sometime in April, but I seemed to have forgotten about it, so here it is anyway, and also WLW works with Wordpress 2.5 now!~

The year overall, has been pretty good.  I’ve had some trips, falls, and a pitfall or two, but I think I pretty much survived the school year without (much) scathing.  The thing is, I still have a week d^_^b; and I have three major projects due, as well as another project that a group that I’m in did for our client.

But anyway, I will continue posting at the least twice every month (as required by my host’s original rules.)

Speaking of which:

These are two folders in my root.  /test/ comprises of old website tests and whatnot that I’ve done in the past year or two, and /dumpbox/ is newer, consisting of different things that I just dump in there such as bits of VB code, pictures, website designs, etc.  The /dumpbox/mitemite/ (mitemite being Japanese for "Look, look!") is where I sometimes post random photos for sharing.  Feel free to look around in there.

Back to the topic at hand.

I am really hoping that I do pass (which I always seem to, mostly, except for that one time in grade 11 [two years ago this year]) so I’ll manage a way through, no matter what. d(^_^)z

And one last thing before I sign off for the night… I am hoping to finally get that new website finished this summer, which is going to be one of my many little projects and goals planned (another being a Pringles "[can]tenna." I do not think I’ll be getting an actual domain YET, so of course, it’ll be hosted here on my current web space, and I’ll of course integrate Hidden Melody in, so in other words it’s going to be Hidden Melody 3.0 with more content for you to browse through.  Of course, mind you, that it’ll probably never get done anyways, and in that case Hidden Melody will stay as is.

So good night, and have a wonderful evening!

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