It has been a while since I posted last. Somehow time flies when you are having fun.
I just returned from a short holiday (yea again) down the beautiful south coast of Australia. It is early summer here now and we went by car, beautiful coastal route from Sydney to Merimbula and I was exposed to lots of eye candy. Of course I took my camera with me and some pretty pictures were taken. Lots of inspiration for new designs and textures, so lots of goodies to look forward to.
verysimpledesigns.comIn the mean time I worked hard on the design for our new website, and tho it still needs some tweaking, we have decided to launch it, keep it low profile until we have uploaded more items.
The main focus of Very Simple Designs is to provide digital resources that can be used for print and web design. While we fill the site to the brim with our professionally created vector stock, patterns and textures as well as brushes for Photoshop and Paintshop Pro, we offer everything free for personal use. If you are curious have a look at verysimpledesigns.com.
I have always wondered how people can build up a successful business through internet. And I do not mean those that can do something extaordinarily, but just the John and Jane Does of this world. I see heaps of scam sites and I bet you know them too: “Buy this remedy and loose whatever you want to loose in weight in just 3 days” or “buy medicines cheap and end up with fake products”. I can believe that there are people desperate enough, or naive enough, to buy products from those crooks. But I could never run such a business (scam). That clashes with all my feelings of being honest, rigeous and feeling good about what I do in life.
I also think that most of the skills I have are not extraordinary. I dabble a bit in vector programs, 2D and 2D graphic programs, I love photography and I design and develop information systems. I have run some courses in scripting and building for 3D worlds and I have written some tutorials to show how some great effects can be achieved just by knowing what program and tools to use. I never considered making money with that. Mostly because it is fun to help others, and because I think it is just a trick and not a skill to know how to do things. Creating new and orginal designs is something that reveals the artist within, and not many have that talent.
Thing is that a lot of people without great talent, skills and just by applying tricks, are also making good money by using the internet. And I know that as long as I just keep thinking about it and wondering about it, I will never be in that group. So how to commercialise?? It starts by building a name, making yourself known on the internet. Link to several sites and start participating. Now that is not something new to me, but I am as paranoid as uhm.. dunno what would make a good analogy there.. but paranoid. I always have kept my identities in forums and websites I visit seperated. I am NOT a promoter of social networking.. I do NOT need fake friends …which is a funny thing to say as I moved from one site of this planet to the other for someone I met through the internet… I however would like to establish some business through the internet. So I have to be a bit more forthcoming and let all of this make sense.
I will work on this in the next few weeks, most likely in conjuction with the new domain I have set up. I have opened up my own store in Zazzle, where the funny designs I recently made will be available. So nothing more to add than Visit Syllie’s store!
Cool.. now only to figure out to expose this to more people. Anyone having ideas to draw more persons to this blog? I still got to learn a lot!
Today is one of those days that I want to work on all things at the same time. Impossible of course, so I have to pick something.
WordPress Theme
The work on the WordPress theme is progressing nicely. I was thinking to create an ’empty framework’, every template must adhere to basic rules and any theme has a pre-defined minimum set of files. So basically I am rethinking my workflow for creating templates. And as a developer I of course figured that someone else probably did this work already. There are many frameworks for WordPress readily available (just do a search in Google), but most of them are more than empty and not so lightweight anymore. I stumbled upon the WordPress Starter Theme project and have decided to give that a go.
Graphics
I did install the new version of Blender and everything I did before is still working 🙂 now to experiment with the new stuff. Today I will experiment a little bit with conforming clothing for Poser. I start modeling the clothing in Blender, and I have a design for a 50’s dress planned to ease into it. I have done similar work before, but not with Blender nor with a version of Poser that allows dynamic clothing. So hopefully it won’t take too much time to make something decent. I eventually hope to be able to create complex models that would fit in a steampunk environment. I love the victorian style in combination with extravagant designs of common things. Also the typical materials that are used in these designs – woods, brass, leather, lace – appeals to me. Just planning ahead, but I already have an idea for a bustle dress.
I have done some further doodling with RealDraw today. I have created a few hand-draw elements and will use those for a 2 column WordPress template. Sneak preview:
About 2 weeks ago version 2.49 of Blender was released. And practice makes perfect, as there were some imperfections in the release, an update was promised in 1-2 weeks. I have been checking Blender.org daily, but so far no update in sight. Now I am sorta stuck in a dilemma… as everything really itches to do some further 3D work… so do I continue in 2.48 or will I update to 2.49 and do the same thing again probably tomorrow… *sigh*…
WordPress 2.8
Same goes for WordPress… I update normally within a week of a new release, first I wait to see if there are emergency reports of people finding their site no longer works and there is obviously something wrong with the release. If that does not happen, I make a copy of the site, install the new version and check if I see quirks on my setup. And then I install the real thing. That normally works out fine, but I am still waiting for that one day that I just cannot make things work again.
That is why I do not like updates. My site runs fine. I don’t use much fancy features, not sure if I need them. I do not seem to miss them now. Why would I want them? Mmhm.. maybe I am onto something there…
Updates
Of course I am acting a bit silly. As a developer I am fully aware of software features that were originally planned but did not make a freeze date for a release, and security related items need to be fixed as soon as identified. And I love to have new shiny features for free. But what about software that is not available for free? Or updates that are not offered for free? What motives are there to update or upgrade?
I am still a happy user of older versions of software, I do not run Vista (and as a matter of fact, I guess I will skip that OS totally), one of my PC’s was assembled in 2001 and I only increased storage space on it. How much more features can you add to a wordprocessing application that the average user will not ever need? And why would one change the locations of all menus so no currently experienced user feels comfortable with it? Somehow I feel I have to keep up with all the changes as I make a living as ‘ICT professional’, and somewhere in the back of my mind is an image of the ‘IT dinosaur’ at a former company, professional in the time when computers took up a ballroom, and you had to send your ‘input’ through a ‘terminal’ to a ‘calculation centre’ overseas. That expert became obsolete when the PC reached the desktop. I feel I have to keep up as it would be horrible to be obsolete so soon.
Fashionable
It seems that changing software / hardware / personal electronics as often as you change underwear has become fashionable. And maybe that is just it. We live in a consumer age. We are pushed to buy and consume and keep our economy going. I decided long time ago that I do not understand ‘fashion’ (but hey.. I am a geek.. a girl geek.. but still a geek). So I wear last years colors, and those of the year before that, and before that.. and gosh.. 10 years back even. I do not care if it is ‘hip’, ‘trendy’ or whatever fashionable word is used nowadays. I am not a consumer, I do not spend heaps of money on trendy things. When I finally got a mobile phone (my boss said I needed one) it was already 2001. It did exactly what I expected it to do, I could receive and make calls, had voicemail and texting. It died on me about 8 months ago. It was replaced by a handed down phone which belonged to my brother earlier. It still does all the things I require from a phone and has an mp3 player and 2 megapixels camera as added bonus. I have no idea why my brother replaced it, it seems to be working fine and I bet it will last me a few years.
Consumers
I must say I really do not understand where we are heading to. We buy and replace stuff faster than ever. We throw out perfectly good stuff, and pour hard earned money into shiny gadgets, sometimes only because the gadget the neighbour has is shinier than ours. I hate spending time and money on buying stuff I do not really need. Just as much as I hate wasting time on installing stuff I do not really need. But how to determine what is needed and what if I miss out on something really neat? Bleh.. reading release notes I guess… Oh and have a look at storyofstuff.com
