Why do I have so many blogs? Well, I realized I had a lot of opinions, well more like extremely accurate knowledge, on many topics. So the things I had enough opinions about to support a blog, I moved over to a new blog. This allows people who don’t care about dachshunds to read about design. And people who don’t care about design can read about technology. And people who only care about me can choose between all of them, or just this blog. NatalieTootie will become a more personal blog.

Both of these blogs are just babies, and one doesn’t even have any clothes on at the time of this writing.

So first off, we have sd sync. This is the blog all about technology. I love it. I love to talk about it. I love to watch it. That’s right, I like to watch.

sd sync

Next, we have Designoplasty. This is a blog about design, the business of web design, and the more technical side of design such as programming. I just wrote a post about version control software.

Designoplasty

Where sd sync is macro, Designoplasty is micro. Where sd sync is about other people’s business, Designoplasty is about my business. If sd sync is Donald Trump, Designoplasty is Martha Stewart.

For instance, tonight I had a really good idea on customizing themes on a per post basis based on custom fields in Wordpress. But the blog I wanted to do that with didn’t have any sort of a theme yet. And the customization happens in the theme files. So I did a whole new theme, with new art and a new color scheme, and with this new thing that was really what I had intended to do. Along with that I made some changes to the base code that gets applied to all themes so I merged that in everywhere. It feels good to get stuff done in chunks like that.

But because now I’m tired, but I’m running a bit on adrenaline, I feel antsy. Being done with stuff always sneaks up on me. “Oh, I guess I can close that window, oh and I’m done with that, and that, and… hey, I have no more windows open.” That’s when I check the dachshund cam and watch the babies for a while.

Doxie News

Duuuude! I have been working so hard to get this done. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been slaving. And I was all into doing the site in Drupal instead of Wordpress because of some of the interesting features Drupal has. I had the site up, and themed, after days of work. I mean days like up ’til midnight, it’s been crazy. Drupal theming is a trip and configuring the website is, well, an adventure. Anyway, then I realized Drupal was just not going to work out. Drupal is too green and the risks were too great. So just when I should have been finished I started all over again.

I quickly took the site down so that Google wouldn’t index the pages. Then I plopped (that’s the technical term) a Wordpress site up there and copied the content over manually. Then I spent I don’t know how many days developing a theme. So anyway, I just tore apart Wordpress’s default theme, got it down to a minimum, reconfigured and replaced almost all the HTML, and basically started from scratch. Yesterday sometime I was down to this, web people will know what I mean.

*
{
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
}

And it was full speed from there. I’m a little hyper because I’ve been working like mad. Anyway, the site is up. I hope you enjoy it.

1280×800 original also available for those that want to have fashionable desktops.

Today I was working with brushes, and again totally amazed at how easy it is to do stuff. Each of these strokes was made after just a simple change to the brush panel altering how Photoshop will draw the same brush. Click to see the full sized version.

click on images to view larger

Adobe Photoshop CS4 was released tonight. I should be in bed but I couldn’t wait to download and use it. I was originally intending on doing all my work using programs created by small developers such as Acorn or Pixelmator. However, it got to the point where I really did need the features offered only by photoshop. I think it’s a good sign that my work requires professional tools. I think it’s a bad sign that I’m going to make everything rainbow colored and glowing. Is that my aesthetic?

Kody is bringing so much learning to my life that I would have not experienced without kids. I relate so much better to people with kids now, and have had a number of very touching conversations with my Mom and sisters about that. We’ve connected on a whole new level. It’s nice to have some greater shared experiences.

Kody has helped me be more patient, above all else. I am so thankful for that and it’s affecting all the other parts of my life. I’m a cleaner person because of Kody. It’s important that the floors are clean, and that there’s nothing potentially dangerous within his reach. I’m better at managing my time. I now cook a meal for me when I cook for him. I schedule new toys and treats around times I need him to be self sufficient. And if I need to work at the desk, Kody is better off if he’s tired or occupied with a toy, so that affects my time management decisions.

At the same time I’m learning to eat like a bodybuilder in a way that’s maintainable and running my business. I’ll tell you, for someone who’s not going to work every day (although I certainly work every day) I am busier than I ever have been in my life. Running a business is at least twice as hard as working at a job. For every hour you work, there’s an hour of administration or sales and marketing. On top of that there are two hours of what could basically be described as technical and design research, reading, and practice. But it’s a blast.

Larger version here.

Larger version here.

Before:

After:

The thing that most stuck out to me was that the e in Design seemed to be lost between he D and the s. So I tightened up that spacing. I also noticed that the ending s, t, and o of Mattifesto were spaced too far apart as well. And the last thing as that the a, t, and t of Mattifesto also needed slight adjustment. Although that’s still hard to see at this smaller size.

But I think if you look at the two, you’ll see that the bottom one just feels more solid. Because some space was removed by making some of the letters closer together, the letters also became larger when fitting the entire logo into a same sized space. If you look closely you can see that the letters after are just a tiny bit bigger than the letters before. That makes it stand out more.

Today was a rough day. And I find the best thing to do with rough days is just to ignore them.

Yesterday I received my licensed copy of Corel Painter X and my Wacom graphics tablet in the mail. The graphics tablet is kind of amazing. It runs off USB power, and the pen has no battery at all. I didn’t realize that it tracks where the pen is without it even touching the tablet. So you use it just like a real, brush, pen, pencil, etc. If the pen is within a couple of inches of the tablet, it registers. But not only does it track pen location, it tracks how the pen is tilted and the rotation of the pen. All of these factors are used by Painter to draw the strokes.

To draw a stroke, you touch the pen to the tablet. This is the equivalent of pressing and holding the left mouse button. The tablet is pressure sensitive so whatever tool your using acts like it would in real life. In fact, most of the time you just have to use very light wispy strokes barely touching the tablet if you don’t want it to look like you smashed the brush into the canvas. It’s something to get used to. Also, the pen isn’t relative like the mouse. The tablet represents the whole screen and wherever the pen is on the tablet is where it is on the screen.

You would think this would be easy, but it takes a bit of getting used to. I thought writing would be simple, but it’s quite difficult. I imagine this will get better as I get used to the feel.

The background for this post was made by taking a really big conte crayon and lightly rubbing it on the canvas. Then I took a wet sponge and smeared the conte crayon around. Almost everything in painter is a real life type object. It as all the different types of artist tools: sponges, art knives, oils, acrylics, watercolors, pencils, pens (ink and felt tip), crayons, and erasers. Oh, that’s something else, if you flip the pen around on the tablet, the top works just like an eraser. Neato!

I finally bit the bullet and ordered some software along with a graphics tablet to create natural looking textures. I’m pretty creative with layout and the graphics software I have, but I needed to be able to create more natural looking orignal artwork and have it look really striking. I’m really excited, but since there’s hardware involved I’m going to have to wait a few days to get the whole thing going.

I am surprised at the diversity of software needed to do what I do. I use like ten different applications regularly. And I’m so glad they’re different. They are all good at what they do and should be separate. I like that my text editor is the primary product of one company and everyone at the company is focused on making it the best text editor ever. People aren’t likely to get transferred to another product or for the company to just ignore the product entirely.

While I fully understand economies of scale, I believe the concept should not be confused with the goal of capitalism. Capitalism is about getting people what they want. Sometimes that’s best done in a big way, and sometimes in a small way.

After seeing an incredibly interesting animation that I knew was created by a relative amateur, I started investigating 3D landscape generation software. I was pretty sure it was made with a program name Vue because I had seen some other stuff created with that program. I didn’t find anything else that looked like it would do it, so I bought Vue 6 Easel. This is the entry level version of the software.

Vue was also used to created dramatic environments for at least one of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. The interface is a little quirky, but in a very short time I was able to create this.