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Stuff that no one but the author cares about.

Cringe-Worthy

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I just put up a portfolio of my most recent — and distant past — projects. As I was nearing the end I started to debate whether to include certain designs I worked on. On the one hand they ARE my designs, but on the other hand they’re very… well not bad, just amateurish at this point in time. Some of the designs I actually cringed when I dug up some of my old screenshots. You know that saying that goes “people are their own worst critics” (or at least that’s the gist of it)? I’m a very harsh self-critic. I’m never happy unless things are just perfect, so seeing my old designs like that was, well not torture, but not fun either! It was all I could do to not open Photoshop and start redoing the layouts!!

It’s amazing how much of my time is spent online, but how little I utilize my website. I always say how I’m going to post more often, but we see how that goes. However I’m going to print out a big ol’ message that says “POST AT LEAST ONCE A DAY” and I’m gonna pin it to my bulletin board (which I’ll move to be right over my desk).

RAWR.

Why Do Desks Suck?

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I’ve been searching for a new desk the past day or two, and I’ve come to the conclusion that they all suck. The company that I bought my last twodesks from — none of thier designs today look even half as interesting as my last or current desk.

So I’ve decided to build my own. I want to keep it simple but also build it for me, or rather my height. I’m wondering how best to put together the underside, I would like some shelving or a cabinet or two, but I would also like this desk to be easy to move later on. At the least I intend to have a simple compartment to hold my tower below the desk, but raised off the ground…

I’m still debating, however, whether to have a raised portion on top of the desk. I currently do this because I want my monitor eye level, but if I plan this new desk to be raised high enough then I won’t need to add a shelf or something to the top. Well whatever I do I think I’ll just build the basic desk first, then decide later if I need to add anything to it.

Slow and Steady

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Hey that’s the reason I’ve not posted in a month’s time. Yeah, that’s it! The real reason is that I just got side tracked with WoW. But I’ve been getting bored with it, not even getting into ICC is making me want to stay. I’ll be working on a huge meta-achievement over the next week or two, and then I’ll probably let my subscription lapse. Or not. My guild is pretty cool.

On the flip side I’ve seen Iron Man 2 twice, once at a midnight showing and again a few days later. Still awesome the second time around. I really enjoyed it, much better than most of the other crud coming out of hollywood. The new JJ flick and The Last Airbender are both looking really cool. Inception is also slightly intriguing, but the trailer seemed to basically give it away.

Besides movies I’ve just finished reading the Destiny Star Trek book series, and I got to say I really enjoyed them. However I have to wonder how many times the extended book ‘verse can “devastate” the Federation until there’s no one left. I really like Bacco, and the other secondary characters that were given their own minor histories and stuff. I love that the Borg have finally been taken care of, though part of me liked the Shatner take on it. My favorite series is — was — New Frontier by Peter David, but the most recent book in that series was extremely out there. I mean WTF out there. I really liked the time-skip at first, but now I’m not so sure, especially now that he’s killed off a major character and he’s got others spread out in various areas. It was one thing with two captains and two ships, but now it’s two ships, an admiral, a new empire, and the traitor with the ghost ship. To be honest it almost feel’s like he phoned in the last book, I don’t even know if I’ll pickup the next one now.

On a related note, I’m actually looking for a new Sci-Fi series to pickup and read. But I’m really particular about my sci-fi, especially in book form. I might go back and read that Shatner series “Quest for Tomorrow”; though that just annoys me because the last book was never written. Maybe I’ll just go back and read his Star Trek books, they’re not that bad actually. Or maybe I’ll just go off and pickup the books that Legend of the Seeker is based off of.

A Clean Slate

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I’ve not used my website much over the past year. At times I wondered if I even needed a website anymore, even considered closing it down. However this seemed to be part of an overall “designer’s block” I was having in regards to designing anything. Whether it was a signature for a forum, or a full blown layout, I just couldn’t seem to get into it anymore. But like most “blocks” it eventually lifted.

Late last year I worked on an international website project with members all over Europe. I spent a lot of time working on that site and learned quite a bit about WordPress, and even more about CSS then I thought possible. It was then I started to consider my own website again. After the project was finished it was made clear to me I should get a portfolio up, to show my work. I knew this, and in some form or another I’ve had portfolios up. It was a few months before I made any substantial progress in a design for myself, however. Why so long? Well it was difficult to settle on what exactly I wanted to do. It didn’t help that I was depressed because of the weather. You would think that it couldn’t get grayer, right? Well you’d be wrong! A few weeks ago the weather here started to improve, the sun came out from it’s seemingly months-long vacation, the temperatures started to approach “mild” as opposed to “frigid”. Boy is it nice to see the sun… even if I’m sleeping during the day!

Suffice it to say I was finally inspired to redo my website, which I decided out of the blue to do one day. I even went so far as to delete the old content system, along with any files on the main domain (after making a backup of course). It’s taken me a few days to finish coding my new design, and I’ve to say I’m rather happy with it. It seemed like whenever I redesigned my site I also had it in my head I should do so “for others”. Who these “others” were I couldn’t tell you, but I’d never really done a design completely for me, ignoring “others”. This is what I came up with. I know it’s not very Web 2.0-ish, but I like it dammit.

So I start the new year, a few months late, with a ‘Clean Slate’. Which is what I’ve decided to name this particular version of Kupatrix.com’s design. Expect to see me post regularly every few days from now on, including quite a bit centered on Druids from World of Warcraft, Movies or TV Shows (Thanks Netflix!), some inane geeky thing, or a rant. I’ll also be adding a portfolio-like section to the site, though I feel hesistant to include any of my old work, since nowadays it seems rather “noobish”, to coin a phrase from gaming.