Week 11?!?!!!!??

I have very mixed feelings right now.! I'm very excited for this week to be over and all of my classes over and done with. At the same time i can't believe it went by so friggin fast. Did I really learn that much? I almost feel like the bulk of my learning came from working on the St. Stephens site. Well definitely the CSS Zen Garden exercise helped me quite a bit as well.

I wish this week wasn't here b/c I have so much work due it makes me hurt. I can't wait for the class to present their projects.

I still stand by remembering negotiating with Sharon about some of my blogs being long enough to count for 2! It happened, I promise!!!!!

I need to get back to ActionScript. The one thing that sucks about coding is that it's hard to be productive in short bursts, which is what happens when you try to work on something in class.

Not enough hours in the day. You can say you'll return to something later to make it better but the odds of that happening are so slim. Try to do the best you can the first time around!

Week 10????????

Oh holy friggin smokes!!!!! So the projects are due today! Both teams have worked really hard and have made great progress. Unfortunately team 2 is experiencing a horrible case of irony with their server 'Franking' them. Irony is a bitch, and I've got it in spades! Why does everything go wrong or pile up on you at once? What is a person supposed to do when it seems like everything is going to hell. Literally. Family, boys, school, work, all while trying to figure out what to do about the fact it's time to renew your apartment lease and they've decided to jack the rent up $600 a month b/c they're doing some renovations? All during finals, all with an ultimatum in which you were given a week to complete something that frankly you just don't have the time to deal with right now.

The IE6/CSS gods have it out for me. And when even your teachers are stumped...where might there be a good corner to go cry in?

I am extremely proud of both teams in this class though. It's tough to hand out last minute updates and get everything done. Hooray for my iPhone and it's ability to allow me to do work on the go!

Week 9????????

How in the hell is it already Week 9? I don't understand. I'm so tired. I've been so busy.

So what have I been up to? My mom came for a visit 2 weeks ago. We were in San Diego Thursday-Sunday over Labor Day Weekend for my cousin's wedding. Actually the technical title of the wedding as named by the evites was the Big Gay Vegan Wedding. It was pretty fun to see my family from Ohio. I see them maybe once every 2 years. My mom left last Thursday. I felt bad b/c every single day we weren't in San Diego I had school. Except for Labor Day weekend. We were going to go to Napa but decided it would be too hot and too far. We did go shopping, drink margaritas at Chevy's, and saw the movie Vicky Christina Barcelona. It was pretty good.

It just not hit me that I have 3 final projects due in 2 weeks. I worked this weekend for the first time in almost 3 weeks. It was the Mountain View Art and Wine festival so the restaurant was PACKED. I worked from 9am - 6pm yesterday without a break. I was in bed by 9pm. My body feels so broken. It was quite the task hobbling to the train station this morning.

I got an iPhone last Wednesday. I absolutely love it except I'm still struggling on figuring some stuff out. Like how to add an application. It keeps telling me to go to this one apple site to update some information. So I go to the site but I don't know what information to update so it'll let me load the application. Oye. Week 9.....REALLY??????????

Week 6!

Well I finished my CSS Zen Garden assignment. It wasn't quite a bad as I thought it would be. The hardest part was coming up with a design and creating the graphics. I definitely feel like my CSS sheet is probably a big mess. I was getting so frustrated when something wouldn't work and not being completely sure of maybe the correct layering to access different elements I just started putting in anything and everything til it worked. I'm sure there's so much stuff that could be taken out b/c it isn't doing anything but I'm just so relieved to have it done that I'm choosing to look at that code as decoration or a garnish if you will.

I'm really kinda angry that I'm going to miss this week of class. I never miss class but this trip has been planned for months. It just sucks that it seems like all of my teachers chose Week 6 to be the 'CLASSES NOT TO MISS.' Perfect. Especially since I'm the Project Manager and will be gone. I guess the one thing that makes me feel better is that I know the people in both teams are motivated and want to do well so slacking shouldn't be too much of an issue. At least for one week. Being Project Manager is kind of daunting. It's always scary to be in charge because you have so many people depending on you and you don't have much room for error. I just wish I had a better idea of how to set up the contract.

I think I might still be missing an assignment for this class. I think the redesigning of our sites. That unfortunately will have to wait for the time being. I'm convinced there's an evil teacher conspiracy to try to destroy me in the next couple of weeks with all the projects and work due. Well it's working.

Week5!

I can't believe this quarter is already pretty much half over. That stresses me more than anything. Especially since I'll be missing an entire week of class next week. Luckily the only thing due is the CSS Zen Garden design which I just need to post to my site and not actually be present in class to turn in. I had planned on coming to at least the first part of the class but the schedule with airlines and getting a ticket that will get me where i need to be on-time is not cooperating in the slightest. Argh. Oh well.

I'll be honest that I haven't done much so far on this assignment. As busy as I've been b/n class assignments, working, and going kayaking this weekend (so much fun but man do I hurt!) i haven't been doing the best with time management. I'm definitely reaching the crunch time to get my butt into gear. But typically it's when I reach crunch time that I start to churn out the best ideas. I've always validated my procrastination by saying that it helps me come up with the best ideas. I've started getting a few flashes of ideas and color schemes that I'm liking. Sometimes I wish someone would give me just ONE element to work off of. Even if someone were to say 'ok make your main color theme purple!'

It's never been the technical side that scares me, just the actual design. Which is completely ironic considering when I was finishing up my computer science major I never wanted to fuss with the technical side I wanted to do design and make things pretty! But in all honesty anything I would've done would've been great since I was the only artistically inclined one. Here everyone is so artistically inclined I think I'm just incredibly threatened because this used to be the area that I shined in. I guess it's the whole big fish little pond becomes little fish in big artsy fartsy pond! So I think that's why I'm starting to crave the technical side again because I feel like I have a slight edge since I understand code set up and algorithmic design, object oriented programming, and everything else.

The grass is always greener right?

I think I just need to stop being so lazy.

WEEK 4!!!!

So I'm thinking i forgot to post a blog last week. My head is so not into this quarter the way it should be. I think this is the first quarter where I'm really beginning to feel real stress in relation to the ginormous amount of work I have due in the next could of weeks as well for the rest of the quarter. Compounded with the fact that I haven't been able to work as much at the pub due to my school schedule. You'd think that would make it a bit easier but it doesn't. Instead I'm stressed about the fact that I've gone from working 5 days a week to only 1. Money and school have become my number one enemy.

I'm also beginning to reach that point of total creative brain exhaustion. Every couple of weeks every class is asking us to come up with yet another original idea that needs to be fabulous. And when you're taking 5 classes, that adds up. I was complaining about this to my mom who's been a professional graphic designer most of her life and she said this was part of becoming a professional. You reach a point where you can no longer allow for divine inspiration to come at your leisure but be able to generate something on the spot whenever needed. I'm exhausted none the less.

CSS Swapping

So I was having some issues re-doing my index page to standard naming. This biggest issue was the face I did my index page using tables since I created it during my first quarter. I never had a need to change to it to divs. Til now. The stupid navigation images would not cooperate! They had this space between each image and it would not go away even though everything was 0'd out. The fix ended up being adding a float: left to the nav_main id. Seems a bit like rigging it in maybe not the best way but it worked.

I switched CSS sheets with Adam and Nick. It's obvious that we design our CSS pages around how we want our content laid out. So using the other CSS pages made my page very long since nothing was lining up next to each other. I think the swapping CSS sheets is nice in theory but not so much in application.

Week 2!

So I found this homework fairly frustrating. Which apparently was part of the point of the assignment. My problem I find is that I know how to arrange the content sans style. My problem comes with the styling. Knowing all the proper code, floats, widths, heights, to achieve the desired look.

I've never been that great in tackling something completely unknown. My brain can't bust out of what it currently knows. I am definitely no inventor. BUT as soon a I see an example of the new concept I'm then able to go and apply it and morph it from there.

I am so brand new still in this whole field. I will admit I didn't even know what a CSS sheet was until the first day of Fundamentals of Web Based Programming 6 months ago!

Yay Intermediate Web Design!!!

Let's see, we're supposed to use this space to discuss our progress in this class or just vent about what is bugging us in the multimedia realm.

Right now I'm mostly bugged by how overwhelming the entire subject is. There's so much possibility in every aspect and with everything changing so fast it's hard to know where to start and what you should focus your time on. I have a deep fear of wasting time doing something one way just because I'm unaware of the better way.

I have no idea how to overcome that.