night enveloping
embracing its mysteries
coolness in the air
Mysteries of the Night
Category: Design Work
Descending Sunlight
sunlight descending
embracing Western mountains
air becomes kinder
Walking through the woods as the sun drops low. I love the light at this angle.
Dandelions Windchimes
with the wind waiting
gentle sun upon wind chimes
breeze awakes slowly
High Clouds In Motion
high cloud’s in motion
graceful against the blue sky
the best of feelings
An evening walk
walking through my town
spring’s glories slip past my eyes
flowers start to fade
Sandra and Woo: A Little Fun With PhotoShop
I’ve long enjoyed the webcomic “Sandra and Woo”. Today the artist posted the following strip:
I found this amusing. However, me being me, I was disappointed that he didn’t create a 3rd solution (Solution C), so I went ahead and did this for him (I love PhotoShop).
I was pretty proud of how quickly I was able to whip this together, getting the font to match and copying/pasting the images over. Anyway, I hope you find it as amusing as I did. And you should definitely go and check out their site.
Design Oops of the Day
Stumbled upon this layout oops today. Designer friends: don’t forget about the gutters on your magazine layouts! Tiny details can have large impacts!
What is SEO?
This quarter I studied SEO techniques, mainly working off of Moz’s “Beginner’s Guide To SEO”. Let’s take a look at some of my main takeaways. Today, let’s start with the basics: What Is SEO?
- SEO is otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization. Essentially, this is a technique to strategize your website’s content to place better in the search results of Google and Bing. This requires deeply understanding your target demographics, what they are interested in, what sorts of things they search for, how they search, and the way they structure their searches. Also, you need to understand how search engines work. They crawl the internet, creating indexes of the content they find. Ultimately, SEO is about creating better organic search results, as opposed to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns. SEO has 20 times more traffic opportunities than PPC (via both mobile and desktop). SEO also pays off over a longer time.
Edit: corrected the link to Moz’s “Beginner’s Guide To SEO”.Â
Looking At Laptops
My main laptop right now is an OLLLDDD MacBook Pro. It’s nearly 10 years old, and it’s starting to really show its age. And we do have need of a laptop. So, it’s time to think of a replacement.
I’ve been very pleased with what I’ve seen of Apple’s new M1 chip. Also, my wife is most comfortable with Mac OS. And I pride myself on being OS agnostic. Additionally, one of the things I’m considering once I’m done at Edmonds college is UW’s Interactive Design program. They require a laptop and, though they don’t mandate a MacBook, they do highly recommend one. So, with all of that, I’m leaning towards an M1 Macbook Air. I still need to explore more, though. Due diligence and all that. Fortunately, I do get a student discount.
So, I’ve done a bit of research already. Check out these videos below. The first is a review of the MacBook while the second talks about the M1 chip compared to Windows PCs. Both point towards the M1 and Macbook.
Some Thoughts 2 Weeks Into Winter Quarter
It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Winter quarter started January 4th. This round, I’m taking 3 classes: one I’ve already talked about, “Web IV Joomla! and SEO”. I’m also taking Systems Analysis, and, lastly, but not leastly: JavaScript.
Web IV has been the most puzzling. Besides Joomla and SEO, the course also covers Amazon Web Services. All of these are cool, but, what a hell of a collection. I feel a bit of whiplash as I move through the week.
Systems Analysis is something I’ve been looking forward to. Understanding how to look at business systems in a strategic way excites me. I think this will be critical to my future career work.
Then there’s JavaScript. This is the grail! Yeah, this summer I coded in Visual Basic, which was fine and all, but JavaScript is what actual web developers use daily. So I’m delighted. But, code is a double-edged sword.
For several days last week/early this week, two of my projects were stuck. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the code to work. I went through all kinds of imposter syndrome stuff. Finally, grabbed one of my other classmates. It took both of us over an hour, but we figured it out: I was missing ONE curly brace (this thing: “}”). But as I’ve started interacting with the developer community on Twitter, I know this is not uncommon. Every keystroke is important, and variable names are case sensitive. Meaning “GetByID” is not the same as “GetById”. At one point in my career, I highly prided my typing skills. Back in the days of typewriters, that is. Spell check, autocorrect, and even simply being able to delete and re-write have spoiled me. Now my keyboarding kinda sucks. And just when it became critical.
And since I’m never happy unless I’m silly busy, I’m also filling in for a friend who’s on paternity leave. I’m “working” as a media coordinator for Trinity Lutheran Church in Lynnwood, WA (unpaid, but that works fine for me right now). This mainly entails creating graphics, as well as editing videos. Nothing too dramatic. I’m doing some of the photo editing in Photoshop to keep my skills up, but a lot of the stuff I’m creating I’m doing in Canva. It’s a pretty slick tool that really speeds up some workflow. Videos are also pretty straightforward. Our church services are online, and we’re using a fair amount of pre-recorded music and such to keep the number of people in the space to a minimum. Mostly I’m trimming down the videos, adding fades and such, and also plugging some b-roll in so that the videos have more visual appeal.
Here are a few things I’ve crafted recently.
Featured image:
Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile from Pexels