aaaaand now for april. unfortunately, march was kinda shite. lots of yelling. a good deal of worrying. barely any work done. barely anything done *period*. but that was march. we're in april now. i've got several bills out, i've got a site just about ready to launch [to the point that i have nothing left to do with it, my clients just have to put content in the site], i've just about got my college situation worked out, and i'm an e-mail away from cutting ties with uml.
i've been keeping myself busy with zelda. since mid-february, i've been constantly playing some zelda game. first the bonus-disc version of ocarina of time, then i took another trip through link's awakening, then i sucked it up and played adventure of link [which really was as bad as i remembered], then i took my 8 billionth trip through link to the past, and since march 25th it's been all about wind waker. such a wonderful game. i've been trying to take my time in it, as i've really been having a hard time judging how long it is. its got to end soon, as i seem to be running out of stuff to do, and i just don't want it to. every time i turn around, i find some other wonderful little thing to be enthralled by. it seems like i've got nothing left but a dungeon or two, followed by a final dungeon, with several major side-quests to deal with along the way. but then, i only have half my hearts, if there were only two or three more proper dungeons left, then that'd mean there are ~40 more heart pieces for me to find, and thats just plain ludicrous.
i've been getting around 6-7 hrs of gameplay in daily, and they've all been very full hours. even when i'm just fucking around hunting for sunken treasure or something, its so much fun. much more fun than i expected. hm. it appears my mouse just died. or . . got close to dying. its blinking red, which isn't good for anybody.
i got a chance to listen to the widely-leaked new radiohead album last night. wonderful chunk of music right there. i won't go much into detail, i'll just link to the thread where i talk about it, over on the forums.
anyways, i've got some important sleeping to do. i'd like to get on a schedule where i'm conscious from 1000-0030. that leaves a nice ten hour span of time for sleep, and a giant chunk of time when theres nothing to do but play videogames. and it has me awake for when trigun airs, so i can get a chance to see the whole series. at the current time, i've been doing bizarre things, like tonight, where i woke up at around 0700 yesterday, fucked around for a few hours, watched er from 1000-1200, played wind waker from noon till 2000, and then vegetated for a few hours, and eventually passed out due to boredom. i woke up at around 2, and now i'm not tired. i'm planning on lulling myself into unconsciousness shortly, though. we'll see how good the new radiohead album is at doing that. now, to update the archive. [04.01.03@03:45]
april is pretty :cool: so far. i've wasted UNTOLD amounts of time with wind waker, i've made enough money to both buy dvd's i've been putting off and start my new-computer-fund, phoen^Wfirebird 0.6 is nearly finished, and e3-related information is starting to leak. e3 information like mother 3. yes. earthbound 2. after years of waiting, finally a sequel to the best rpg ever created. walking jeff approves.
i'm also working on a new project, a wallpaper site i'm using to teach myself mysql. no clue when it'll launch, as i'm the only one really working on it. i've also been enjoying a bit of free publicity for my company, by way of mr grace's site being listed in golf digest. all kinds of great stuff happening. mmm.
oh, hey, and you might've noticed, i went through and made/added favicons for my three main projects. favicons are happy little icon files which occasionally show up on ie in bookmarks. well, phoen^Wfirebird uses them multiple times. on bookmarks, in the address bar, and on tabs. for some reason, the one i have for the jedi outcast forums was randomly using other site's favicons, so i decided it was time to make ones for all the major sites. why the hell am i rambling on about this? well, it's just another thing which randomly showed up.
alright, i'm going to give up on this post for now, off i go to price hardware for my new machine. [04.15.03@02:35]
creative blocks are quite possibly the worst things ever. i'm stuck right before the breaking point, where i find the material that'll let me bring the idea into reality. i've been at this point for about a week now. strike that, just over a week. my notes have the first sketch at 0300 the 11th.
the sketch was perfect. it transitioned nicely into html. i was able to do the layout, the css positioning, the text orientation, etc, but there was one sticking point. a nice large header. something nice and anime-related, since it's for an anime wallpaper site. nothing immediately came to mind. no hunting through source imagery triggered anything that'd work nicely. so i made a very rough temp image, stuck it in the site to make sure the css worked, and went along my way.
i finished up the layout in a matter of hours. it really went easily. i made some preliminary layout prototypes for results, a few for news, and went along. i was going to go back and work on the header, but by that point, another sa goon stepped forward, and said he'd take a shot at it. i was fine with that, so i went on to work on more important things, like the mysql backend, the point to me working on this site.
it was monday by that point. iggy helped me through the designing of the database structure, and taught me how to do all kinds of nice things with mysql. this was one of the only times in the past year that one of my peers has helped me learn something. i think the last time prior was when andy would help me with my cs homework. but anyways, we worked for a few days, i think it was around three, and eventually we had a fully functional mysql base for the site.
i hadn't heard anything back from rush, the goon who said he'd help out. i gave it a few more days, since i felt like sleeping most of thursday and friday, which left me till now. i hunted down rush, and he said he wouldn't get a chance to make something. well, fuck. so it's up to me, again. right back where i started, except now everything else is already done.
so i've been here, spending the past four-ish hours trying to find some kind of source material i can use to make into this damn header image. i'm coming up with absolutely nothing. i've figured out that i don't have to keep it within my lame initial restrictions, so i just need to find something with two proper edges, then i just cut it out, slap it in the corner, pick some colours and ship. thats all, and then i'll be done. but it just isn't happening. it's the most frustrating thing in the world. being so close to finishing, so close to being able to make things happen and come to an end, and falling flat on your face. [04.19.03@02:34]
i don't know what the problem is. i can't tell if it's lack of inspiration, lack of interest, inability to find suitable source material, or what. i just don't know. i just can't seem to move forward. i'm down to having a massive TWO requirements for this image i'm trying to find. must be solid on TWO. EDGES. the bottom, and one side. thats all i'm looking for. i really don't care what it is anymore. i just want it so i can finish the site, and be done with it. i want to move on with my life. i want to be able to sleep. i want to be able to get back to whatever it was i was doing before i took this project.
i've noticed that since i've started work on this project, i've been deteriorating. i've been anxious about everything, i've not been sleeping properly, i've been dwelling on this shit every waking hour. i've had around five different things i should be working on, and i've not done any of it. i've got around three or four hours of work queued up for a client, and another few queued up for another client, and i've not done any of it because i've been so damn preoccupied. i'm just so damn close. so so close to being done. i've seen it, in my head. i get the image, i nicely crop it out of whatever it was, and then i indiscriminantly slap it on the background layer. and then i come up with a matching set of colors for the site background, text, links, etc. and then i e-mail marshall and say "TAKE THIS FUCKING PROJECT FROM ME, I NEVER WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN."
and then i'll feel so happy and content. and i'll probably sleep for 20 hours. it'll be the best day ever. but it doesn't look like it'll be coming for ahwile, because i suck at the internet and the web design. [04.20.03@06:45]
it appears that i have found the worst sleeping schedule ever. for the past few days, i've been running like this.
luckily, that all seems to be over. as of today, three major projects are more-or-less cleaned off my slate. all that's left for client #2's second phase is to e-mail them and say "hey, check this out, isn't it great, it's going online now!". all that's left for client #3 is to hunt down my cousin, and tell him to stop being a lump. and all that's left for wallpapers.adtrw.org is for marshall to tell me he's done for now.
pretty eventful, eh? well, the middle one will be slightly difficult, as i've tried contacting him every way imaginable, and failed miserably every time. but hey, being persistant is one of the things i'm good at. some of the time. the last will be some what annoying if marshall doesn't do his job, but i think he will, some time over the next 24 hrs at least, and my target is for the end of the week, so we're still ahead of schedule.
but for now i get to try to stay conscious till i make a phonecall at 9. then i can sleeep and sleep and sleeeeep untill i end up on a vaguely normal schedule again. i'd really like to end up on a schedule that puts me awake from 1000 till 0030. i'd be getting a shitload of sleep, i'd get to see everything on television i want to watch, and i probably wouldn't feel this dead all the time. [04.23.03@06:27]
the problem with not having any projects left, is that now i just don't know what to do with my free time. and posting this makes me sad, because firebird's text-box functionality is rather broken in this build. oh well. perhaps i'll go write some e-mail. [04.24.03@05:20]
hooray! finally launched wallpapers.adtrw.org, it's pretty neato. and soon there'll be more wallpapers on it. and today people are actually coming to start work on the house, even though it rained like hell last night. and firebird 0.6 is REALLY REALLY CLOSE now. and i'm still out of stuff to do, so i'm going to go watch anime for several hours now. [04.26.03@06:48]
