To Infinity!

Jesus, it’s already been 3 days since I posted! My attempt to post once daily the first month is in ruins before I’ve barely even started. I had completely forgotten how difficult it is keeping a blog. I’ve been trying to post as little as possible about my personal life, as I’m frightened of boring you to death. But the other possibility – not posting at all – makes boredom even more likely. So I guess the former is the lesser evil. ;)

Little piece of information about me: I am absolutely awful at saying no. I’m a people pleaser. I want everyone to like me, and I definitely don’t want anyone to find me rude. This has bitten me in the ass more times than I can count. A recent example follows.

The other night, I had been to the city, so I was sitting on Burger King while waiting for the train to come. Now, note that I was alone, and that the area around the central station is not one with a good reputation – you could walk 20 meters from the main entrance and on the way score both heroin and a hooker. Anyway, once I’d finished the meal, I fished my iPhone out of the pocket and started watching random YouTube videos to keep myself entertained. Then, out of nowhere, a complete stranger sits down across from me and begins conversing. He’s maybe a year or two older than me, African, and speaks somewhat broken Norwegian. I play along despite being completely uninterested.

When my train’s a couple of minutes away, he insists on following me down to the platform. When I’m about to board, he asks for my number. I hesitate, but because I’m terrified of being impolite or rude, I give it to him.

On Sunday, he sends me two texts and calls me thrice. I never dared to pick it up, instead ignoring it until it stopped ringing. On Monday, he calls me thrice more. By now, I’m dreading every time I hear my familiar Super Mario theme ringtone, but he seems to have given up and finally taken the hint.

I feel awful about it. :( And slightly flattered. But mostly awful.

My best friend is now making me say “NO” to a request at least once daily, to ensure something similar doesn’t happen again.

4 comments Tags: blogging, personal

Here’s the reason why I want to do design professionally when I grow up: the satisfaction I get from seeing things I’ve made in use is enormous. For example, I’ve done everything design-related for my school’s revue, which premiered on Wednesday. Watching everyone in the audience sitting there paging through my event programme was a great feeling.

I’ve been working on developing the new version of Galleristic lately. I took the old version down from my scripts collection not too long ago because of insecurities, (I first wrote it when I was 13, after all…) but the new one should be up in less than a month. I’m writing it from scratch, adding new features, updating it to today’s standards and most importantly fixing all security vulnerabilities that existed in version 1.0. When Galleristic 2.0 comes out, it should be a great script for maintaining a basic photo gallery or portfolio, which is easy to customize based on your own needs and design.

Here’s a little preview of the redesigned default template. Compared to the old one, it’s quite a big improvement. ;)

If you have thoughts or inputs, either on the design or features you wish to have in Galleristic, feel free to share. I’ll probably need beta testers in not too long as well, so if you keep checking this blog, I’ll post a link to a beta .zip sooner or later! :D

(PS: I have a habit of taking my post titles from random song lyrics – get used to it. ;) And if you want to, you can guess where they are from.)

6 comments Tags: galleristic, my scripts, personal, portfolio

I’ve had several people ask me how I made the sliding effect on my portfolio. It’s done using a Javascript library called jQuery, a framework that generally has made life web development a whole lot easier. It’s a lot easier to learn than Javascript is, and also lets you get away with much fewer lines of code than you otherwise would.

Thorough documentation for jQuery can be found at the website, jquery.com. However, I’m going to be covering some of the basics here. :) You should have an elementary understanding of HTML and CSS, though, and possibly also of general programming language structure. If not, you’re probably going to be really confused. Read the rest of this entry »

15 comments Tags: code, javascript, jquery, tutorial

Lately, I’ve become increasingly interested in designing for no particular purpose – you know, art for art’s sake. The last year and a half, I don’t think I’ve ever actually made anything that wasn’t a) a school project, b) a work project, c) something else that had some kind of use, whether being a portfolio for myself or posters promoting our student’s revue.

I’m thinking I should probably do something about that – if I want any hope of coming into my universities of choice, my portfolio should probably contain some creative pieces, right? The only issue here though, is getting the inspiration and ideas! However, that’s what I have this fancy little list for – 5 quick tips for finding design inspiration. ;)

• Listen to your favorite music, and try to visualize the song.
• Take a scene or quote from a movie, and describe it with graphics.
• Ask a good friend for good ideas.
• Think of a clear message you’d like to broadcast – how can you illustrate it?
• And last, but not least – find inspiration in other people’s work.

Since this was all going on during Math, #3 really was the easiest option. Asking a friend returned the prompt “the Americanized global society” – which quickly resulted in ideas for several concepts. End result? It’s over here, at DeviantArt. I’m really pleased with it, to be honest.

10 comments Tags: design, personal, portfolio

There are a couple of techniques in Photoshop that I use regularly, to achieve certain effects. For now, I’m walking you through smooth grain texture, sharper brush tool and simple grunge effect. All tips require basic Photoshop knowledge. Read the rest of this entry »

1 comment Tags: photoshop, tutorial