Category: Design

heard you say

Friday, 22 February, 2008 at 11:39 pm

I feel like writing here. I’m not really saying anything, but this is stuff I have on my mind. (A brain dump, I suppose.)

The Fanlistings.org has a listing for “Tommy February6 / Tommy Heavenly6 (Kawase, Tomoko)” but when I go to that site the website says it’s a fanlisting for Tommy February6 only. (Okay it doesn’t use the word ‘only,’ but seriously there’s no mention of Tommy Heavenly6 on the site.) I don’t know who to be more annoyed with, the site owner for not including Tommy Heavenly6, or TFL.org for including her! (…That phrasing is awkward, seeing as it’s the same person….)

To be honest, I don’t really care as much as it seems. I don’t pay much heed to the list itself. (As evidenced by all the buttons on my joined page that don’t have a fanlisting. XD) I just feel really really … weird … when I think of joining the fanlisting that TFL.org says is for Tommy Heavenly6 and using a button with Tommy Heavenly6 on it to link to a site that mentions only Tommy February6. Maybe I should just stick up a button and not link to any site. XD That works for me. Now I just need to get unlazy and do it…

(Note to self: don’t ever write a post about Tommy Heavenly6 and Tommy February6 both. I’m tired of typing Tommy Heavenly6 and Tommy February6. Which makes me wonder why I keep typing Tommy Heavenly6 and Tommy February6. It’s not for SEO, honest.)

Oh, a point I forgot to include and am feeling entirely too lazy to try and work in now: The ridiculousness of TFL.org expecting, because it’s the same physical person, that everyone will be a fan of both her personas/recording personalities. I mean, from the fanlisting itself, “Tommy February6 is all about 80’s style cutesy pop music; so sugary sweet that you’ll grow cavities!” And Tommy Heavenly6 has a rockier edge. I like the rock and am willing to pay the price for imported CDs, but the ’80s pop … not so much.

On to the next topic! Hopefully it will be as short as it was in my mind, unlike the previous portion of this entry. Okay, so I’d been thinking of writing this post about paper or plastic bags and which to get at the store, which to line trash cans with, but I may have built it up too much in my mind to essay proportions, and you should know how much I can’t stand writing. Basically, I heard recently that paper bags are getting banned in certain cities and that only 1% of plastic shopping bags get recycled and about 17% of paper bags are recycled. (These numbers are off the top of my head from my somewhat faulty memory, so don’t go citing me as a source or anything.) (Also someone in GPC said plastic films can’t be recycled, period. Ziploc bags, shopping bags, all those little baggies they use to package children’s toys and then warn that plastic bags and kids Do Not Mix Well, they all can’t be recycled. boo.)

So that just made me feel worse about using plastic bags to bag my trash. But I still can’t bring myself to use paper bags for trash. Why? Paper always gets recycled with me, no matter what. It’s been instilled in me since grade school. (I was reminiscing earlier that my city used to not recycle colored paper. And now they’ve moved up to recycled shredded paper! *sniff* They grow up so fast…)

I looked up biodegradeable trash bags, but I can’t find any. At least not any in stores around here. I am really not interested in going online to search for trash bags. Seriously? Have something shipped to me that I’m just going to toss out? Besides, another person in GPC said biodegradable plastics don’t degrade in landfills, because of lack of sun or too much pressure from other waste or something, I don’t know. Basically, biodegradable potato starch=not for landfills.

Yeah. That was a little longer than I’d hoped. Am cutting it short here, no more thoughts on that, except to say that I am still stuck in this moral conundrum.

Third and final topic, this blog needs a new layout. x.x I was planning one I think it was last September, but uhh stupid research paper (that I don’t think I talked about on here … I like to keep my blog clean and PG-rated) got in the way. But it’s sort of ugly anyway. I like the idea, but I don’t know how to carry it off in a pleasant way. Hey! Much the same way I designed my tea box project for Advanced Digital Typography! I love my idea (mommy and baby gorilla, awwww), but … I don’t like designing packaging. Do I make it look similar to other products out there so it’s recognizable as that type of product, or do I go waay out to left field and make something eye-catching that people might pass by because they don’t know what it is?

*cough* Uh, anyway. Yeah. After that idea in September (I did draw what I had in my head out on Illustrator, but I didn’t move beyond that ’cause I don’t know how to lay it out), I have no other ideas really. blegh. I’ve had ideas for images to use, but then the layout would just be a variation of the current one. And I thought, if it’s just basically this layout, then what’s the point of doing all that work? I’ve had plenty of schoolwork to occupy time outside class, thanks. Also, the green fits in with my posting a lot lately about environmental stuff. (Hah, that’s the only thing I can make myself care about enough outside of classes to write something.)

But then, I’m getting really really really tired of the huuuuge margins/padding around all my text. (Margins: typography; padding: code.) And my Twitter box is stuck all the way down there, hidden and inconspicuous. (I want more conspicuous! More!)

I just don’t know what to do. Even my Livejournal has been sitting all blah and boring and grey for probably over a year. (Yes, grey. I have nothing against grey, but seriously, that’s how drab the layout is. Nothing but shades of grey.)

I think I’m tired of the basic layout. Header, text below like a magazine or book or anything, and links somewhere. I was considering a horizontal layout but I either can’t be arsed or am tired of that as well. (My touchpad doesn’t scroll horizontally like my brothers’ do … oooold laptop.) Right now I like Noelle’s layout she made for me a long while ago. (Layout 14 under Flimsy Silence at [Shadows they fall (link to stf)] if anyone wants to see. Man, I need to restructure my layout archive. I can’t even reference layouts. Maybe that was part of the reason I stuck to frames so long for that site. No one link to anything on that site! Not even me! XO ) But I dunno what to do with it. I wonder if div auto overflows are out…

This is a very long post, when I meant to write only a handful of paragraphs…

flimsysilence favicon and ofTen

Saturday, 23 April, 2005 at 3:30 pm

Yay! fs.net has a favicon! I don’t know why I decided to do it. I don’t know where the idea came from. But there ya go. I just used the ƒ character (whatever that is … I don’t know what it is >_> has an ALT code 0131) and drew an s around it. woo.

…

*dork* :)

I kinda wish I could make it transparenty-ish though. I could make the background that normal grey color, but then what about the people who change their color settings, huh, what about them??? … Okay I’m just being weird and happysatisfied. New favicon. Or is it really new, considering there wasn’t an old one? … *moves off the subject*

I have this nagging feeling that I just lifted the idea off some other trademarked logo, though … I’ve done things like that before. If anyone can tell me where I got it from I’ll take it down. ^^;;

- - - - -

Today I have been enlightened one tiny little step. When I was in the sixth grade my social studies teacher had this one student read off words on a side board, and the student read “often” pronouncing the T. For a split second, I thought, ‘Oh no, I’ve been pronouncing it wrong all my life?! How stupid am I?’ But then the teacher corrected the student, saying that the word “often” was mispronounced a lot, and that the T is actually silent. So I spent a few more years thinking that …

Lately, though, I’ve been hearing ofTen so much, and it was driving me nuts. Today I heard some guy on the radio pronounce the T, and in a fit of … frustration? I went to m-w.com to see if I could figure out why so many people pronounced “often” that way. m-w.com says both ways are correct though. So then I went to the lovely, handy-dandy Bartleby.com, and found out pronouncing the T has “come back.”

I don’t know, I just thought that was interesting. ehehe.

[edit: WP doesn’t save triple carriage returns line breaks?]
[edit2@4:41: Maybe I’m thinking of ƒx. ^^;; Yeah … in Microsoft Excel or something?]

layoutness

Friday, 1 April, 2005 at 9:18 pm

Wow. Almost exactly two weeks (just one more day), and I’m tired of the layout now. haha. But I don’t have any new layouts in mind. At all. So … this’ll stay around a while longer until I get some ideas or until I get tired enough of the layout and just toss up whatever junk I can make. *snerk*

dah, design funk

Friday, 20 February, 2004 at 7:32 pm

I’m trying to make this layout for jeidaijournal. And I don’t know what to do with the pictures. :( I don’t want to do a techno-ish, pixelly layout. I don’t want to do that simplified layout I’ve been doing lately (eg jeidaijournal, AALCC fanlisting, my links page …). I don’t really want to do grunge. Firstly because I’m not that good at it. ^^;; Secondly because I’m tiring of it.

I just want to do these fantabulously amazing layouts. Like Sephiroticum.net (which isn’t up anymore). I just want to fill the whole page, I want everything to be going on, but instead of looking like a mess, it looks effin’ fantastic. I want the final product to look completely different from the original image(s) I used. Kinda like … (you’d have to visit my layout archives site to understand this ^^;;) IAT v33, or SMC v5, or L.S v3. But more.

I know, I usually say, “Open something up and just mess around.” Which is what the owner of Sephiroticum.net said. :b But whenever I do that I just use filters and stuff and usually it ends up looking like a jumbled, disgusting mess, and it’s not even really my mess, it’s someone else’s formula to change the image around that way.

I think I like this [www.hiddencache.com/blackdreams/] ^_^ *stares in wonder*

Okay I have to stop saying that. ^.^;;;;

You know my V-Day layout? (Which was supposed to link to vday.org, but I got lazy and forgot.) This person [butterfly-edge.org] did something similar. But her layout looks a lot better than mine. :P More organized and preeettier.

So anyway … I forgot what else I wanted to say … I made a new Amy Lee icon for lj. What else is new? Well, I’m actually really very satisfied with this one. But I don’t think it counts because it’s black and white with touches of pink and it’s pretty easy to be satisfied with those colors. I think I should be happier about another one, which is pretty much all brown, and I don’t really use brown. But I like the other one more. *shrugs*

I also found out that they aren’t making any more “My Immortal Pt.2 (enhanced)” singles, and that’s why Amazon isn’t shipping our order until “Feb 17–Mar 9.” And the order was placed January 19. O_o

I tried looking on ebay for it, and there’s one, but there are seven bids on it already, and I feel guilty outbidding someone, and it’s already up to $15.something already anyway, so I don’t want to try for it. Then I was looking at this [old ebay auction] and this [another ebay auction], but then I remembered that I don’t have any money. ^^;; And I reeeeally want that poster. :( Oh well.

working on layout; moodtheme; Alice in Chains

Saturday, 3 January, 2004 at 9:56 pm

I’ma working on a new layout for IAT. Yay! ^^ The last layout I made was in mid-September … o.o And I think this one is very fall-y as well. O_o Not very good. But OH WELL! I was never one to follow the seasons and stuff anyway. :b

So. I’m taking a break from it because I’m pausing to give my brain a rest before I have to figure out the HTML for making a full-size div in a frame, without a background-image, but stationary images that serve as the background, and an image that hovers over the text, but not the scrollbar. *takes a deep breath* It sounds simpler when I type it out. ^^;; Ah well.

I’m also working on an Amy Lee moodtheme set. ^^’ I have about 8 of the moods set. ^.^;; About 50 random pictures that I have to assign to moods, and a few I’ll probably end up tossing out because there isn’t a mood for it, LJ doesn’t have that mood, or because there are too many pictures of her like that. XP

*ahem* I forgot that I didn’t post this. O.o *10:44 now*

So the HTML is all written up. ^.^ Yay! Now I just have to change all the other pages. Oh yeah, I also have to write the css up.

Umm … at the moment I have most all the Alice in Chains songs from their Greatest Hits album checked to record to my compi. ^^. Yeah. I like their songs a bit more than I thought I would. Or maybe … I dunno. Maybe it’s because it’s their greatest hits. :b Yeah.

Well I’m gonna go finish up putting the IAT layout together. XD So fun. I realized, recently, I think I like writing the HTML more than I like working on the layout in a graphics editor. *shrug*