Feb 26, 2010

It’s really about what you know

Recently, I came across a post talking about how every designer that is serious about their profession would have Photoshop. Photoshop is retailing for $699, assuming a full license and not a student one.

I had a problem or two with this.

Photoshop, while great and all for all designers, does not make the designer. Having bought it and invested in such a tool is not equivalent to buying your “seriousness” about your job. If you compare someone who has taken the years to study design, to practice design, keep up to date on concepts, theories and techniques, are you going to call him just the “average Joe” when you compare him to someone who “has dabbled” but has no professional experience or education but has Photoshop on his computer?

Money invested does not equiv to how serious a person is. I can vouch for this fact because I’ve spent a lot of money (probably the same amount that Photoshop cost or more) on 2 guitars and I am FAR from being a serious guitar player. I will make ears bleed if I play guitar. However, if we apply the same concept, I can be considered a very serious guitar player.

Alas people, focus on learning and experiencing new concepts and less so on material things. If you walk up to an employer bragging about your skills and education, it’s much better than a receipt from your local computer store showing you have the latest Photoshop. Powerful tool, yes. Career changer? No.

Feb 26, 2010

Women to Serve on Submarines

I find it appalling that people are so against women serving on submarines. In the last century, we’ve taken a lot of steps as far as women’s rights and all that. I hear some say that if women wanted to be treated equally, then they should stand up and do the stuff that men do. Well, give women the opportunity now. Everyone is so focused on the possibilities of the rules breaking. Well, the rules have been broken before and it wasn’t the end of the world.

Women to Serve on Submarines

Feb 26, 2010

PCS, Moving, Home Buying Guide

Here is something I coded up, however, it was more repurposing the general news layout of the site to fit what was needed for this micro-site. I had to rebuild the entire center column while the left and right side columns were mostly reusable.

Check out the live version here.

Feb 26, 2010

Magic HTML Machine

At my current job, I am a web producer so there’s a lot of formatting articles and then shoving them into a CMS. For the first few weeks of working here, I used to do it manually… one at a time. Then I started using Dreamweaver to do it with the ctrl+shift+p shortcut. One day sitting at home, I created a “tool” to do it for me with some simple regular expressions:

$edit = str_replace("\r\n\r\n","</p><p>",$text);

This was all fine and dandy for me but when you work with a company where some people like to copy and paste from MS Word, curly quotes can be an issue. I had opened my tool to a few coworkers initially and after curly quotes were an often enough problem, I implemented a search and replace for that while p tagging the content:

function convert_smart_quotes($string)
{
$search = array(chr(145),
chr(146),
chr(147),
chr(148),
chr(151));
 
$replace = array("'",
"'",
'"',
'"',
'-');
return str_replace($search, $replace, $string);
}
 
$text = convert_smart_quotes(htmlentities($_POST['text']));

Here is the finish product, not fancy or decorated at all since it’s just a tool for convenience.

Feb 25, 2010

Is advancing your paycheck really that bad?

I’ve googled “paycheck advances” or “payday loans” which, if you haven’t had any experience with them, is a short term loan. I’ve only done it once when I was in a financial crunch. Basically, they give you a limit you can advance (for me, $250). You tell them where you work and all the basic info and after they confirm and that all is well, they direct deposit the money into your account as soon as the next day.

I recieved the money in a timely manner and got through my financial crunch. I had set up my payday (aka payback day) 2 weeks ahead even though I’m paid weekly. I wanted the extra time for the “just in case” situations. However, I was prepared to have that money taken out of my account the very next week and set aside that amount.

I think with financial planning, getting a short term loan isn’t bad if you know you’ll have the income in the near future to pay it back. In this case, it was automatically deducted from my account so it was either have the money in there or be hit with overdraft fees.

Things may go awry if a) you don’t have a stable income or b) you don’t set the amount you borrowed aside as soon as you have it. It’s important to understand that it’s not free money, it’s money you were suppose to get later but needed at the time.

So no, I don’t think they’re bad. I think they’re helpful, especially for a contractor (like me) that doesn’t always get paid on time. :]

Feb 22, 2010

Outdoor Guide

Here’s another project I did for Military.com’s Outdoor Guide. I was responsible for slicing and dicing the PSD that I got and formatting the HTML and CSS.

Check out the live version here.

Feb 04, 2010

Now reading Wicked by Gregory Maguire

I bought Wicked at Borders. I wasn’t going to but word of mouth in the bookstore got to me and I did. I read the prologue before coming back to the office. It was enticing if you were into the whole Wizard of Oz thing when you were a kid. Which I was. In fact, I had played a munchkin in a Wizard of Oz play back in the 3rd or 4th grade.

Wicked is a different take on the toons of Wizard of Oz. Supposedly discusses how does someone become so evil (like the wicked witch of the west) and if they’re really born that way. Or so said the guy in the bookstore while he was talking to a lady who was staring at the book. And yes, I was eavesdropping. The play captures the concept of the book but reading the actual book supposedly really gets into the author’s main ideas.

Feb 03, 2010

Under the Radar

Here’s a finished product which I mentioned working on earlier.

It was originally this theme here: Magnet. I was given a jpeg of what the end product should resemble and a psd of Magnet, the original theme. This project was different than other projects I’ve worked on because a) I wasn’t given a PSD to slice and dice into a layout. All the layout modifications (color changes, image editing, etc), I was left to do on my own. This gave me ample time to become really familiar of new techniques in Photoshop CS2. This also gave me the chance to work with WordPress in a professional environment, as opposed to personal uses.

Check out the live version here.