Posts Tagged "Events"

Twenty-Thirteen Update

I am in now within my 29th year of existence on this planet and things are pretty good. I started a new job a little over a month ago and I am completely loving it. It holds the same pains that many places do within my industry, however at the end of the day I feel like I am where I am supposed to be.

Perhaps I am becoming a little reflective as my 20s come to an end, however reading through my posts since my last birthday makes me realize, with pride, how much life has evolved. As well as moving I have switched jobs not once, but twice. My 28th birthday seems like a long time ago.

Before I changed jobs I was in the middle of a series of posts that were very dependent on my workplace environment at the time. The sudden stop halfway through is bothering me however I am working on reformatting them slightly and may pick back up in a few months.

This years Towel Day graphics are now live. Instead of producing one graphics in all of the various sizes, instead I uploaded the high resolution versions of the images and produced two new images with help from local photographers.

I have begun to see them out and about in the world and I am truly loving it. It actually gives me a new idea for the twitter competition for next year.

Getting Assembled

Things are finally coming together with my latest re-design. I have about half of my old content transitioned from Blogger to WordPress. There are tools available to batch import content, however there are some changes that I still want to make in order for my website to use responsive web design techniques.

I also created a new portal for everything related to Towel Day. This was causing 404 errors for some people, however I think I have fixed the problem. There still is allot of stuff that I need to do before this year’s festivities.

Now or Never

For better or for worse I updated my website last month. It started out as a sort of experiment in CSS3. I was just playing around to see what I could do, simplify things, make them more complex, add social features, etc.

I actually didn’t necessarily start out intending to update my whole website; the design itself actually started out the exact same as the old one did. There were a few things that I wanted to fix ever since I finished my last design and I was going to tack on a few minor quick fixes, however as I began adding new effects and rethinking the way I presented different elements it slowly evolved into what you see.

The problem I ran into was that because I was using a hacked up version of an existing blogger template, I couldn’t accomplish anything in any simple way, so it was easier for me to start over from scratch.

Well, I was playing around with this stuff in a separate sandbox and got it to a place where it was unfinished and untested, but actually looking and working pretty good. It did (and still does to an extent) require some more work, but it was a working website.

So, what happened?

While working on it – in an insomnia filled stupor – I decided to push it live on a bit of a whim.  I spent the next week or so frantically trying to fix it and/or add things. My reason for making such a foolhardy decision was that it was the day before Towel Day.  I have hosted graphics for Towel Day every year and I get about four times as much traffic on that single day than I do the rest of the year combined.

Essentially, I figured it was better to rip the band-aid off than tear it away slowly.

I’m back!

I return from obscurity, with change! The only real visual difference between what I had before and what I have now is that I got rid of the brown background and changed it to a bold dark red. The blog posts now take up the whole width of the content area allowing me to use larger images.

Most of the changes I have been making are functional in nature; Blogger, Picasa, and YouTube have new features that I want to take advantage of. However with these changes, there are now a few things broken now, but I am working on it. Most of them I should know about, however if you want to do me a favor then if you notice anything that isn’t working then comment on it.

I also have a whole bunch of additions to my Motion Graphics Portfolio, so check it out.

Don’t Panic

Towel Day is a big day for me every year; other than being a non-apologetic Douglas Adams fan, last year I decided to share my nerdiness and created a wallpaper which ended up getting me allot of attention. This year I decided that I needed to out-do myself, so I created what I feel is a much cooler one. I really just wanted to thank those that used and shared these wallpapers last year and wish everyone an amazing Towel Day. I sometimes wonder if my sister knew the monster she would unleash when she introduced me to the series.