QuestionableDaze

Well I finally had some time to work on the site and the first major revision to the design page is complete. New projects and concept sites are posted and hopefully I’ll continue to have plenty of work to keep coming up with stuff to update the site with. The services tab has also been extended to encompass the new abilities I’ve gained in the past few months with all my projects but I’m happy to report business is good. Thanks all for your continued support. View the updates now HERE.

I don’t really understand the movement against WYSIWYG coding programs. Best I can make of it is businesses don’t want people that claim to know code languages applying for jobs against people that do know the codes by heart.

But on the same tick I love using programs like Dreamweaver and GoLive and I do know the codes. WYSIWYG programs are fantastic for small and medium size websites because they provide excellent workflows and can do a number of mundane tasks automatically. Most importantly they automatically update all pages with links to files like javascript,images, and css so renaming and moving directory structures doesn’t require coders to update every single page. Dreamweaver and GoLive also can automatically upload files when saved, uploading any related files such as images and css only if those support files have also been updated. And don’t get me started on macros. For saving time a WYSIWYG is fantastic and can’t be beaten by any simple editor. Long live WYSIWYG!

Today I finally got to work on a project for my friend’s wedding developing the paper goods and I really like the way it’s coming along. I still need to finish the border for the main invitation and fiddle with some things but it got from nowhere to somewhere real quick. This weekend I’ll try to finish it. For now here’s a sneak peak on the project and the finished product will be posted in a few days. Enjoy.

Minniti Broekhuizen Wedding Invite Sneak Peak (Work in Progress)

Yesterday I had a lovely day of low productivity getting only two of the things I wanted to get done done. I finally got around to editing and uploading photos which can be viewed on either TotalPanic’s Photo Page or on my Flickr. The latest set focuses on landscapes and aerials, although I’ve made significant updates to all of the existing sets as well. Feel free to browse either way you want. I’ll leave a couple of my favourite shots here for the lazy ones. Enjoy.

Over Arizona

Horseshoe Bend

New York Morning

I’ve always been a major supporter of Windows in an industry that is heavily prejudiced against the world’s largest OS but I’ve finally had the ability to add an iBook G4 to the list of tools I use for graphic design and there is an image that comes along with the system. Personally I don’t get more done with a Mac or find that it is easier to use for this line of work, if anything I get a little less done with the annoying need to use expose and spaces which add a few seconds switching between programs and objects due to unneccesary animations and the lack of a taskbar. When working on single images or just one program the architecture of OS X is a little faster but it still won’t beat a 4 monitor custom built PC setup. Overall though I feel like I’ve gained a persona, as though people that look at me while working automatically assume that I’m a designer and give me more credibility and in a way that is a big plus in the freelancing industry even though its completely an image and nothing more. Sometimes substance takes a back seat in an industry run on aesthetics and if it gives me a little more business or at least a few more questioning people wanting to find out what I do I’ll take it with open arms.

I’ve been thinking about putting all the individual words I use to describe or define women I am interested in together at one place and what better place than my useless life and design blog which has been woefully neglected in the past two months. It may not be the right kind of attention but hell it’s something. I’m not going to make any kind of order or devise some interesting phrases out of it (at least not at this point) but who knows what could happen. Maybe I’ll go so far as to make a photo journal with each word in the future and print it for a coffee table book. But probably not.

Bitch Beauty Tomboy Impractical Silly Flake Artist Heartbreaker Blonde Criminal Tattoo Alcoholic Rough Beast Tall Musician White Sharp Loud Smoker Dancer Brunette Humorous Challenging Spontaneous Skinny Aggressive Bossy Fickle Impulsive Opinionated Playful Witty Confident Bad Careless Manic Scatter-Brained Curious Passionate Sexy Writer Drunk Nerd Ambitious Polyglot Red-Headed Mean Fashionable Trendy Smooth Physical Belligerent Funny Unpredictable Angry Stubborn Eager Cruel Dreamer Self-Centered Reckless Difficult Extremist Smart Clumsy Odd Independent Experienced Amazing Sensual Commanding Unruly Domineering Unusual Hipster Freaky Maneater Fresh Insane Sketchy New York Traveled Hungry Crazy Cultured Dangerous Fast Dorky Extreme Sexual Rude Forgetful Happy Delicious Arrogant Haughty Selfish Seductive Luscious Intellectual Fiend Nympho

And that’s all I have to say about that. For now.

What exactly happened this past tax day? People on the right yelled for change, people on the left yelled for patience, and everyone got fucked. Just a few months ago during the presidential campaigns just the reversal of slogans and attacks were thrown around with the left clamoring for change and the right preaching stay the course. Irony passed over the day in its usual silent style except for the few cynics that noted the hypocrisy on both sides but no one seems to like them or their opinions and the chuckles of amusement faded before they even happened. As one of those cynics I watched in bemusement as my conservative parents rabble roused at their home in New York to the tune of Fox News and read with gusto the blog rants and comments on CNN and MSNBC youtube clips. It seems everyone got it wrong on Tax Day and it’s a shame.

Where did the tea parties come from? Most of the Fox set gave credit to Rick Santelli of CNBC for starting the Tax Day tea party movement and to them it really did start with Rick Santelli. His claim was that on July 4th he was going to dump thousands of stocks that were going to be worth nothing into Lake Eerie in Chicago due to unreasonable tax burdens and government regulations from Obama’s administration including the new budget, the ARRA, and other recent regulations that have passed in the past few months. In reality a lot of the tea party organizers were not following Santelli’s lead and the movement had started about a year before then. Fox News didn’t notice since they were supporters of McCain or Guiliani or Huckabee that the annivcersary of the Boston Tea Party in 2008 was the single biggest fundraising day of Libertarian/Republican candidate Ron Paul and that his campaign resurrected the idea of “no taxation without representation”. To the right, which inevitably took over the tea party idea as their own, Tax Day Tea Parties were another chance to gripe about Obama’s election, the chaos in their own party, and how much they don’t like paying taxes.

What was the real message of the Tax Day Tea Parties? To true Libertarians, many of which organised the tea parties across the nation, the point of the demonstrations was simply “no taxation without representation.” I believe the offshoot of Ron Paul’s Revolution Campaign, the Campaign for Liberty, stated most simply that Americans are no longer in control of the government that we pay to rule over us. The people’s power has been subjugated by lobbyists and special interest groups that are primarily responsible for electing public officials and passing legistlation. These interest groups and lobbyists are not guilty of belonging to one side or the other, they are only guilty of creating laws that interfere with the way people live their lives, either directly such as anti-Abortion activists that bring religion into law by banning abortions or indirectly like creating subsidies to big businesses like the current paper industry scandal. But beyond the special interests and lobbyists, the greedy politicians that have been elected continued to expand the power of the government including in recent history Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George W Bush, and now Barrack Obama. These presidents have taken the power from the people with limitless beauracracy which is controlled by appointed officials and with each new government seat has the ability to swing wildly to the left or right as subsequent presidents step into power and replace the bureau heads with their own choices.

Why didn’t the message get across? The Tax Day Tea Parties were destroyed by the media on both sides. In Fox’s charge to get more people to the rallies they destroyed the original message and lionized the events as solely conservative when originally they were third party. In response the liberal and even centrist media sources responded with vicious attacks going so far as to label the parties as Fox-sponsored, right wing militant, and anti-Obama. Both sides are equally guilty of killing the message and it wouldn’t be right to say one side was more to blame or the other but such things happen and will happen more frequently as the political parties become further radicallized. Although Fox’s coverage did an excellent job covering the spectrum of the ideas that the tea parties ended up supporting, their very presence created a cloud of mistrust from everyone on the left   further resulting in putting off a lot of the original tea partiers from the Ron Paul Campaign, yes those same people that created the events in the first place. The coverage meanwhile on MSNBC and CNN in particular were disturbingly partisan as some anchors showed their true colours as opinion overran their objective reporting. Fox at least tried not to label the as conservative to no avail but CNN and MSNBC went so far as to claim the events were Fox-sponsored which was unfounded and outrageous to anyone who knew anything about the work put in to organizing the events. It was generally a case of Fox stampeding around like a bull in a china shop and CNN and MSNBC putting their heads where their asses are. Thank you objective journalism.

So what can we hope for? Not much. It seems that the liberals which are in charge of the whole of Congress and the White House have plenty on their plates with a failing national economy, deteriorating global markets, increased hostilities in Pakistan, Iran, and Somalia, and a list of reasons why the ARRA and increasing the national debt won’t help for long. The conservatives on the other hand were so beaten back that they’re hopelessly in the minority and can’t do anything except squabble and kvetch about Obama’s administration. They could use this time to reorganise and modernise their party politics but if it took twenty years for the Tory party in England to come up with anything who knows how long it will take for the Republicans here. It isn’t completely unreasonable to see the conservatives swing wildly right wing in which case we’d be in for a real tough time in the future, but it’s equally easy to foresee a change toward a more centrist or Libertarian stance in the conservatives if they can learn their lessons from the Bush administration. But that’s a huge IF and one that I am not abundantly optimistic about either.

For now I’ll continue to push for a true third party in the United States and a return to politics of the people. Shorter term limits for all elected positions, banning campaign contributions from third parties, creating accountability in the government, a peaceful foreign policy, and a true free market system instead of this false-free market pro-big business system that we’ve had for the past forty years.

Here’s a good one I read today: “She was a harlot par excellence and the loveliest woman I’ve ever had the pleasure to pleasure.”

Sometimes I adore the English language.

I just wanted to let you readers know about a fantastic design idea that I would love to have in my house one day. It’s both organic and modern, clean and earthy - practically perfect in my eyes. Lithography meets the green movement culminating in tree ring reliefs as wall art. Simple relief prints of pre-cut stumps turn out to be one of the most beautiful and most moving pieces of art I’ve ever seen and it’s all accomplished in black and white with an ancient technique that’s been perfected and transported to work on tree stumps by artist Bryan Nash Gill. Anyway that’s all I wanted to say. Enjoy.

The site has all kinds of great art pieces and some practical pieces as well so don’t forget to explore.

So the good news is Version 4 of the site was released and I really like the design. It’s minimalist, boxy, and incorporates my second favourite (and favourite design related) colour, Magenta. I’ve come to the realisation that I love boxy designs, in cars, layouts, websites, and interfaces. Despite the recent shift in the past few years for rounded boxes and organic shapes I’ve gone the other way and choose to imitate the machine instead of make the machine imitate the biological. It’s all very 1980s virtual reality cyber landscape.

Version 4 I especially love for its use of technology. Pretty much all the major APIs are called through javascript and jQuery giving the site plenty of dynamic content and a photo gallery that automatically populates from my Flickr account. The design page has simplified the separate web, print, and video portfolios into a single page and despite looking quite simple required mammoth amounts of coding for the page itself, all the tooltip descriptions, and the screenshot/image previews. Each page has different widgets hidden in the pull down tabs so don’t forget to check them out. I could foresee changing the site in the far future but for now every time I go to tinker with it I am happy with the overall style and just change a few words around or the positions of the pull down menus.

What I wish I had more time for is the blogs. I haven’t blogged in weeks and it’s been very disappointing for me but I have good reason. I first stopped for the site redesign and was about to begin anew after the release but on the day of the release my father had a heart attack and I’ve been with him in New York not getting any work done for the past two weeks. It’s unfortunate but he has been recovering and hopefully will eventually make a full recovery over the next few months. The good news for the site was the release was completed in time and I’ve already recieved a few messages from interested potential clients.

Yay! It seems life works in the most mysterious ways and it never fails to keep me on my toes. Please feel free to leave comments on the site, I crave input and wish I could hear what everyon visitor though of the site.