A List Apart has released the survey results from their first annual Web Design Survey.
There’s a ton of data in the report, but I think it will be very interesting to peruse. It gives a pretty decent look at the skill levels and such in the industry today.
Findings from the ALA Web Design Survey
Comments: 0 (view/add your own)I just finished taking the First Annual A List Apart Web Design Survey.
The survey took me less than five minutes to complete, and because I offered my name and email address at the end of the survey, I’ve been entered to win a free ticket to An Event Apart event, an Apple 30GB video iPod, an Event Apart jump drive, or an A List Apart T-shirt.
Personally, I’m very curious to see the results of this survey, especially with all of the recent discussion surrounding gender diversity at web conferences, and the industry in general.
So, if you’ve got 5 spare minutes and would like the chance to win some cool prizes, make sure to take the survey.
Comments: 3 (view/add your own)Seeing Garrett’s post made me realize that I haven’t posted a recent shot of my office since I started working from home either.
I’m fascinated with seeing other people’s workspace as a means to add to or improve my own. So, if you’ve got a recent shot of your own home office link to it in the comments.
See the photos after the jump.
Comments: 8 (view/add your own)Well, after an absense that was entirely too long to be called temporary, From Away is back in full swing. As you can tell from this post, I was a bit disillusioned with the whole web industry and decided that I needed to give myself a bit of a break from maintaining this website and extra-curricular web work in general. But, in light of the events of the last couple of months, I’m back and quite refreshed.
My biggest motivating factor for getting this website back up and running again has definitely been my new job.
Comments: 16 (view/add your own)I’m currently feeling very restless in my position of employment. I say currently, but I’ve had this feeling for quite a few months now. Mind you, I really like the people I work with (and I love developing websites and web apps - but every project in my current job is starting to feel the same), but I have this feeling that there are other, much more exciting projects out there that I’d love to be spending my working hours on.
Comments: 7 (view/add your own)After spending a couple of weeks using Mac OSX Tiger I can honestly say that Apple has definitely made a huge improvement on the operating system; both in speed and the quality of its applications and features.
Since I first installed Tiger on my 1GHz. 15” Powerbook (512MB RAM), I’ve been nothing but impressed by Tiger. I’ve been using my Powerbook both for casual purposes (checking personal email, organizing photos in iPhoto, surfing the web) as well as for professional purposes (web development/graphic design) and I can honestly say that my efficiency has risen in both aspects. The new features that Apple has made available in this release have been a godsend. Over the next few weeks, I plan to comment on some of the aspects of the operating system and how they’ve changed either for the better, or for the worse.
This little gem I can definitely see coming in very handy for me, as it already has in a couple of cases. One use that really stands out in my mind for Automator is its possible uses as a backup tool. I plan to at some point explore the possibility of setting up a workflow that will fetch MySQL backups from my webserver and save them to a network backup drive. Hopefully I’ll be able to set up a workflow to also grab a copy of my home directory as well.Another use I’ve already found for Automator is to serve as a local backup tool. I have a workflow set up that will mount a network volume for me copy and some folders over to the network drive. This has worked flawlessly, but I’ve hit a couple of walls in the process that I can’t seem to find solutions to. First of all, when the workflow is complete, I’d like for it to disconnect from the network drive. So far, I’ve not found anyway to do this with Automator’s built-in actions. Secondly, when I copy files to the network drive, I’d like only updated files to be copied (incremental backup). I’ve only been able to “Replace Existing Files”, which is fine for now, but it means about a 3 to 4 GB transfer of files over my network on a nightly basis.
As I begin to brush up on some AppleScript, I think the possibilities for this tool will be endless. Does anyone else have any workflows they’ve put together that they’d like to share? Also, if anyone knows of a way to disconnect from a network drive using Automator, or how to only replace updated files during a Finder copy, please drop me a line, or leave a comment.
Things have been pretty quiet on this site for the last ten days or so. I’ve been really busy at work, and by the time that I get home at night, I just don’t seem to have the focus to get much accomplished. I think I’m just going through one of those uninspired phases, and just need to take a step back for a little bit and do some relaxing. I”m sure before long, I’ll slide into my groove again and things will start happening. I’ve got a couple of ideas for articles for this site, one thanks to a comment that Shawn made on a project that I’m working on.
As for everything else…the site ripping continues. Chris Davis is the latest victim. The people that are responsible for these rips always seem to use the same excuse: “I just wanted to learn about CSS.” It’s great that there are so many people that want to learn CSS and how to make their websites accessible. But, wanting to learn is one thing, and trying to pass off someone else’s work as your own is another.
There are so many great resources available to help people out with CSS and XHTML. A great place to start is by picking up a couple of books on the subject. Dan Cederholm’s book Web Standards Solutions is an excellent place to start. I just received this book as a gift, and I can definitely say, it’s a worthwhile read for any web designer/developer, no matter what your skill level is. The majority of CSS books published by O’Reilly are also worth picking up. I keep the CSS Cookbook in my reference library for those times that I run into a really tough problem that I need a little help with.
If you don’t have the cash flow, or you’re not a big fan of reading books, there are a ton of free resources on the internet. Have a look at A List Apart which contains a huge amount of articles surrounding all things web related. There are also a ton of blogs that feature articles on the subject. Andy Clarke’s And All That Malarkey is one such blog that springs to mind. Andy lays out some excellent, real world examples of his, and his company’s design processes. Jared Christensen has recently added a great article on coding styles/standards that is also a great read for those that are just starting out. It gives a great view of how to properly lay out your code and the methods that different designers use. For those in the Wordpress world, Chris Davis has some excellent plugins on his site for Wordpress. Not only that, his blog is a great example of making use of some of the great features that Wordpress has to offer.
With all of these resources available, I don’t think the excuses for stealing other people’s work hold much water. I mean, it just requires putting forth a little bit of effort to do some research, and you’ll be well on your way to making use of CSS and XHTML.
This post may seem a little all over the place, but that’s just way my mind has been working the last little bit. I’ve got so many ideas, and things that I want to get accomplished, but I just don’t seem to have the time to focus on them and get them done. I’m blaming the scrambled mind on recently turning another year older, yeah, that’s definitely what it is. Regular, worthwhile posts will soon return, I just need to slide back into that proverbial groove and get things flowing again. It’s just going to require a little bit of patience on my part.
Comments: 2 (comments closed)To coin a term from the Greg Storey dictionary.
Last November, my girlfriend and I got tenant’s insurance and car insurance from a local broker here in the city. When the deal for our car fell through, we cancelled the car insurance and kept the tenant’s insurance.
A couple of months later we received a cancellation notice for our tenant’s insurance. So needless to say, I was a little upset by this point. A call to the broker didn’t yield too many results, he said that he would look into it and get back to us…yeah…right. So this was the first of December.
At the beginning of last week, we still hadn’t heard back from him so we started looking around for a better insurance broker. This past Monday, we noticed a sum of money missing from our bank account that we tracked down to being an automatic insurance payment. Apparently, they had reinstated our insurance, without bothering to tell us, and took this money out of our account because they already had our bank information. So my blood pressure is sky high at this point. I call and leave umpteen messages for this dill hole at his office, and he doesn’t call me back.
Today in the mail, I receive a letter from the insurance company stating that our policy has been reinstated, and a quote of our monthly payments accompanies it. But, they neglected to subtract the amount of money that they already took out of our damn bank account!
So, I just got off the phone with another agent at our brokerage, and she has absolutely no idea what is going on. She says, “Can I get your regular agent to call you back tomorrow when he is in the office?” So yeah, I work, I’m not home in the morning…and I feel really bad about this because this lady honestly didn’t know what was happening with our file, but someone needed to hear my displeasure…So I kind of said what I thought of the company, their customer service, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Within 5 minutes, my agent called me back….from his home, vowing to have this solved by the time I call him after work tomorrow. I’ll believe it when I see it…
Apparently, I’m not the only one having problems with customer service, check out Jared’s story.
So I finally decided to give one of these *4free.com sites a go; in particular AppleStuff4Free.com. The gentleman that is running this site seems to be quite a nice fellow. He has answered a ton of my questions that I had, as I tend to be quite skeptical about these offers. It seems to be a great offer, and I only hope that I can find 11 people to help me get my Mac mini. If you’d like to help me out just go here, sign up for an account, and complete an offer. I’m counting on all of you guys!
For those that don’t live in the US, you can choose the PayPal offers instead. AppleStuff4Free.
I know this is pretty shameless, but hey, what can you do?
Comments: 6 (comments closed)So here’s my best excuse for the lack of original content around here the last few weeks: work is extremely busy, and between that, trying to fit in a bit of freelance work, and spending some time with Krista, I use what little time is left to catch a little bit of sleep. As I get my schedule adjusted, I’m sure that things will round out for me and I’ll be able to fit in a little more leisure time to work on a few little side projects that I have laying around.
One of my resolutions for the new year was to try to fill up this space with some more writing about design (both web and graphic). I’m sure I’ll pump out a few articles based around that subject as my job goes on and I run into some snags with projects and pick up a few little useful tidbits of useful info here and there. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that the majority of my writing is going to based around the daily happenings in my life. Shawn seems to be in the same position as me regarding not only his content, but the design of his site as well. The advice that I gave Shawn was this:
“I also think that your website should reflect your personality and not what others want to see. That’s the basic essence of weblogging, is having a place to express yourself freely.”
and I guess I should heed my own advice. So, expect to see more content from me in the near future, as I won’t have to struggle to try to think of ‘profound’ and ‘original’ ideas to write about as my content will be happening every day. Till then…
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All I can say is wow. We’ve all seen the rumors, but I honestly never thought we’d see it. This is definitely one of Apple’s most impressive releases to date, as far as I’m concerned. I can definitely see myself buying one of these in the next couple of months. I’m usually not much for jumping at Rev. A hardware, but I think after a couple of months most of the issues should be out in the open. The Mac mini will definitely make a nice addition to my desktop.
All in all I was extremely excited about everything that Apple presented this morning. Even the software tweaked my interest. I’m waiting anxiously for Tiger to be released as I think that Spotlight will definitely make my workflow much more efficient. I wanted to write a little more extended post on my views of everything that was released today, but my time is a little bit limited, perhaps on the weekend.
Comments: 10 (comments closed)I finally had a little bit of time this afternoon to write down a few of my predictions for the upcoming year with regards to web design and development.
Andy Budd has kick started BlogAid, a drive to get blog owners to donate the revenue from their blogs throughout the month of January to the tsunami relief effort.
Even though I do not have advertising on this site, I definitely support this effort, and as soon as I get my first paycheck at the new job, a portion of it will definitely be donated to this effort. I’m also going to look into Google adsense for this site so I can try to do my part. I urge you all to make any donation you can to the relief effort, whether it be through BlogAid or another charity. We all need to do our part to help out those that have been stricken by this terrible disaster.
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After spending this morning watching various news channel’s coverage of the devastation of the tsunami in Asia, I have a new found consideration of how lucky I am for everything that I have. My thoughts go out to those that have lost family members, their homes, as well as those that cannot contact family members in the area. If any of you have a little extra money left over from the holidays, please consider making a donation to a charity that will help those in need.
That being said, I thought I’d give a little bit of a wrap up of our Christmas holiday, since it is pretty much over. Krista is back to work today, and I’ll be heading to the new job a week from today. Christmas this year was quite different. It was the first year, for both Krista and I, that we didn’t spend the holiday with our families. It has been tough at times being a country away from everyone, but lots of telephone calls, well wishes, and good new friends here in St. Albert have made for a great Christmas.
Our Christmas eve was spent here at home, we did a little celebrating of my new found employment, and turned in pretty early. We spent the majority of Christmas morning on the telephone with both of our families and opening a ton of gifts that were sent to us from the east coast. We honestly didn’t expect many, if any, gifts form our families because they have all helped us out so much with our move to Alberta in the past few months. Later on in the afternoon we went over to our friend’s (Bill and Annie) home and spent the evening with Annie and their children. Bill is a firefighter/paramedic, so he ended up have to work the night shift. They also gave us some lovely gifts, among them was some delicious Jack Daniel’s flavored coffee. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a huge Jack Daniel’s fan.
Boxing day was even busier than Christmas day. Krista decided that she wanted to get up super early and go shopping, so at 5:50 AM we arose from our slumber so that we could be at The Brick when they opened their doors at 7 AM. We ended up only getting a set of lamps from there, but being up that early allowed us to be at Ikea when they opened at 9 AM on the other side of the city. Because of our families’ generosity, we were able to purchase a ton of furniture to make our apartment feel a little more like home, finally. We picked up a coffee table, 2 end tables, and a dining room set. We then went to Kingsway Garden so that I could pick up some new clothes for work. Needless to say, the mall was absolutely crazy. I needed a new pair of sneakers, so we headed to West 49, and found out that they had a huge shoe sale on. After waiting for 20 minutes to get into the store, I was able to get a $130 pair of Vans XL2’s for $58 which was pretty sweet. The rest of my day was spent putting together our mass of Ikea furniture.
Then to wrap up the holiday, I cooked a turkey dinner last evening. It turned out really well, and my stuffing ended up being a bit hit. So the next week, a lot of meals will be consisting of left over turkey. Time to get creative with my recipes. I wonder if turkey tastes good in an omelet?
So that was our holiday. I took a few pictures, one of which you can see above this post, but being that my digital camera is about 3 years old, the pictures are not very good quality. I may post some more later if I get a chance to run them through Photoshop to touch them up a bit. I’d be interested to hear what everyone else did for their holidays?
Comments: 4 (comments closed)My search for employment is now finally over. Yesterday morning I accepted a web design position with a company in Edmonton. I’ll be designing web layouts for their clients as well as helping to develop web application interfaces, and doing a bit of work with Macromedia RoboHelp to develop tutorial and help file solutions.
I feel extremely fortunate to have been able to find a job at this time of year because I realize that a lot of people are still out of work. I could not have asked for a better Christmas gift this year. My first day on the job will be January 4th. Wish me luck!
Comments: 13 (comments closed)I’ve sat down today and did a bit of analyzing of where I want to see my career headed in the next year. I didn’t see any point in waiting until the new year to get things started, so I’m going to dive in headfirst right away.
First off, I’ve decided to tackle the design of my portfolio website. I haven’t been satisfied with the design of the site even with the redesign that I completed back in November. I don’t feel that the site really exemplifies the skills that I have, not only as a web designer, but as a graphic designer as well. Things are just a little to plain for my liking. Also, I want to incorporate some of the PHP skills that I’ve furnished myself with in the past month.
Secondly, when I have the redesign complete, I plan to pursue my freelance work even more than I have been in the past few months. I really believe that I have the skills to gain a steady, loyal clientele that will keep me busy and allow me to make a living. Although, I’d really like to be a part of a design team, I just can’t seem to find the opportunities within Edmonton, or at least not any opportunities that will allow me to get my foot in the door of the industry to make a name for myself. Part of the problem is the fact that I’m living in St. Albert, which is on the North-West side of Edmonton, and I don’t have a car, which means that my transportation is somewhat hobbled by the bus system that runs between St. Albert and Edmonton.
As a corollary to #2, I want to start networking within the community more. I want to make more, regular appearances to development firms in the area to try to develop some more professional relationships which will hopefully lead to more contract work. Also, I want to start getting to know some of the other designers whose sites I frequent (well, as much as you can get to know people over the internet).
I’m also still looking to collaborate with another designer, or even another web developer on a project. I’m pretty much open to any suggestions. Basically, I’m looking for something new and different to work on that doesn’t deal with my normal, small business clientele.
I’m more than likely going to add to this list as 2004 draws further to a close, but at least this is a start. I want 2005 to be a lot better year for me because the last half of 2004 was somewhat bleak.
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I’ve seen the year end lists popping up around many of the blogs I visit on a regular basis, so I thought that I’d throw my hat in the ring as well.
![With The Lights Out [3CD Box Set + DVD]](http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00065XJ4S.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_.jpg)
So that’s 2004 as I saw it. I’ll probably add to the “Other” list as the year draws to a close as I’m sure that there have been a few things that I’ve missed.
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Today I experienced a definite trip down memory lane. I spent a good portion of the morning listening to Nirvana’s newly released box set “With The Lights Out” which caused a rush of memories of the early to mid 90’s and the Seattle Grunge scene. Then, this afternoon while watching television and flipping through the channels, I happened across VH1’s “Grunge” special.
I began thinking of how much of an impact the Grunge scene had on my teenage years. I can remember buying Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album when I was 10 or 11 years old. Soon after that parents started hearing about how this new music was starting to cause teenagers to think about suicide, drugs, and all that corruption that the conservative media related with the Seattle music scene, which was, by and large, very true. Many of the more popular Grunge bands were heavily involved in the drug scene (especially heroin) which was fuel for many of their lyrics (eg. Alice in Chains song “Junkhead”).
By the time that Nirvana released “In Utero”, Grunge music was starting to become trendy. Around this time many of the other bands from Seattle’s Grunge scene starting appearing on the charts along with Nirvana. Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, and Mudhoney among others started to be names recognized by anyone that turned on MTV or Much Music. I think this is the point when Grunge began to die, not when Kurt Cobain passed away.
It seems that now, everyone involved in the music industry seems to want to forget that the Grunge scene ever existed. I believe I even heard a journalist on the VH1 show this afternoon comment that Grunge was merely an aberration in the music world. I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement. From my perspective, Grunge was/is a very important part of music history, especially to people around my age (mid to late 20’s). When I think of my top ten favorite bands of all time, at least five of those are from the Grunge era, and I still listen to their music on a regular basis.
I know that this entry seems somewhat out of the blue and thrown together. I just had a lot of thoughts come rushing back that I needed to get down before I lost them.
Comments: 26 (comments closed)It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. My search for full-time employment has yielded a couple of interviews in the past week that both seemed to go very well. So I thought. I’m still hoping to hear back from one, but I’m not sure what has happened with the other prospect. I was told that things would be set up for a trial basis for both of us, but haven’t heard anything back and the response to my phone calls has been limited at best. So still, I soldier on looking for more opportunities.
I have a new design for this site underway, but just can’t seem to work up the motivation to get it coded and online. The design is quite different style-wise from the current design. There is a lot more color involved, well, at least graphics wise. The format of the site will still remain the same (2 column layout, etc.), although I hope to be doing a bit more writing about design related topics rather than my woes of job hunting.
I’m also planning to write a small article/tutorial about how I implemented iTunes Watcher in my sidebar of this site. I’ve had a number of emails regarding this as well as a few comments posted here on the site. I wouldn’t expect this to appear any time soon, as there are many other matters to attend to first.
Hopefully, I’ll be soon back to regular posting on this site. Things are somewhat crazy and stressful in my personal life lately, but I’m sure that things will work themselves out and everything will be back to normal. Cheers!
Comments: 2 (comments closed)Just wanted to mention a couple of site redesigns that have popped up over the last 24 hours.
Michael Heilemann just launched “Freya”, version 4 of Binary Bonsai. Another amazing design that uses unique colors and unique ideas to achieve an amazing user experience. Also, Shawn has redesigned hexfactor.com. Another excellent design with some new colors as well. Be sure to drop by both sites and have a look.
Comments: 2 (comments closed)I’ve spent some time this evening hunting for online project management software. Basically I’m looking for a solution (preferably using PHP and MySQL) that will allow clients to log into my site, view task/project progress, view comps of projects, post feedback, and leave messages for me. Somewhat of a tall order, I know. I’m looking for a way to limit the countless emails sending revised comps back and forth to clients, basically to make my workflow more efficient.
Nathan Borror was working on a solution called Jupiter which is exactly what I’m looking for, but it appears that progress has halted on the project for now. I’ve also looked into dotProject and phpProjekt but they’re not quite what I’m looking for. I need something a little more minimal that my clients won’t get lost in because some of them are not comfortable with unfamiliar software. Basecamp is another solution I’ve looked into, and it definitely has all of the features that I’m looking for, but at this point I’m not willing to pay $19/month for project management software.
So, if anyone has any suggestions, I’m all ears. Of course, I’m looking for a solution that doesn’t cost any money…
Comments: 4 (comments closed)With the US election over, now I guess we’re back to normal. Dubya has received another 4 year mandate, which doesn’t really surprise me that much, although I would have rather seen Kerry in there. But that’s a whole other rant.
Things haven’t changed that much here in St. Albert. I still spend my days doing a bit of freelance design work, but that has pretty much slowed. The rest of my time is focussed on finding full time work. I’m to the point right now where I’m going to start just applying to any job that comes my way rather than focussing on design jobs, as I need some steady employment that will provide us with a little extra cash; which is a pretty scarce thing around here these days.
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Halloween is going to be a bit different this year for me. Usually I’d be adorning a ridiculous costume of some sort and heading off to a party somewhere, for a night of hellraising and other tom-foolery. This year I think things will be pretty tame for us, we don’t know that many people around St. Albert just yet, so we probably won’t be invited to any parties, and with funds being a little short, we can’t really afford to hit any of the pubs that are hosting Halloween parties.
I think it will be a night of lots of scary movies (Jason has some excellent suggestions at his site) and some tooth-rotting candy. Happy Halloween everyone!
Update: As you can see, everything is back to normal here. Halloween was pretty uneventful, as expected.
Comments: 0 (comments closed)In my abundant amount of free time these past few days, I’ve been trying to come up with a new design for my portfolio. The trend seems to be that the more free time I have, the more fussy and critical of my work I become. I’ve sketched out numerous designs on my sketchpad that just didn’t achieve the desired effect once I got them completed in photoshop.
With that being said, I need some inspiration. I’m a regular visitor to sites such as CSS Beauty, CSS Vault, and Style Gala. Usually, I can find some inspiration from the gallery entries at these sites, but I’m drawing a complete blank. If anyone has any suggestions of any sites that might provide a little inspiration, please send them along…
Comments: 2 (comments closed)So while taking a break from my hunt for employment, I’ve discovered complete boredom. I can’t seem to focus on any artistic projects this morning, so I’ve resorted to taking some really lame, personality tests that I saw posted on Ned’s website. And thus I’ve come to these conclusions:
So we’ve been in St. Albert since the 29th of August (at least I believe it was the 29th), and I’m still lacking in the area of full time employment. This is not due to a lack of trying though. I think I’ve been in contact with pretty near every Web and Graphic design firm in the Edmonton and St. Albert areas. I’d like to continue on with the freelance gig, but right at this point that even seems to be slowing down. I’ve been told by a few local printers that this time of year tends to be a little slow, but things pick up before, and after Christmas.
I’m almost at my wits end searching for full time employment. I’m not going to give up, because I know that this is what I want to do for a career, but god damn it’s discouraging. I feel that I produce attractive, quality work, and I’m just waiting for someone to recognize that. I’ve spent countless hours searching job databases, making phone calls, networking with everyone that I possibly can, but to no avail. I realize that it is a difficult industry to break into, and I guess that’s what I’m waiting for, is someone to give me that break. I continue to try to improve myself as a designer through projects such as the design for “From Away”, the portal for what has become the Jeff Smith Designs Network, as well I’m also working on redesigning my my portfolio to give it a fresh new look in the hopes that will attract some more business.
At the present, I’m considering taking out an ad in a few of the local papers, to try and advertise myself, hoping that someone will catch the bug, and give me a chance at a job, or even another interview. I really dislike the idea of prostituting myself such as this, but I’m starting to run out of ideas. If anyone has any contacts they can pass along to me, any job leads, what have you, please drop me an email or get a hold of me on MSN at the same address (AIM: jeffsmithdesigns).
Comments: 1 (comments closed)Well, we’re finally starting to get settled in here in St. Albert, mind you in a very bare apartment. We couldn’t bring any furniture or the like with us when we moved seeing as we had to travel by airplane, so we’re basically starting from scratch again. So far we’ve managed to get a TV (no cable mind you, but at least we can get some use out of the XBox), microwave, toaster, some dishes, and a few other odds and ends. I have a desk and a chair coming on Tuesday which I’m extremely excited about, along with our high speed internet, which means that I’ll be able to get back to work and hopefully start picking up a few freelance jobs until I find a more steady source of income. That being said, if anyone out there has some extra design work or even a full time job they’d like to through my way, I’d be forever grateful. :)
All in all, St. Albert is a really nice city. It would be a lot nicer if the stores weren’t so far away from us, but that we knew that was part of the deal when we decided to take this apartment. The grocery stores are about a 1/2 hour walk away from us which makes getting groceries quite an excursion, especially when you have about $120 worth to carry back and you don’t have a car. Needless to say, Krista and I are quite tired after one of those journeys. The department stores are a little further away yet, about a 40 minute walk. These walks are definitely giving me the incentive I needed to get back in shape, that’s for sure.
Hopefully the next time that I post, I’ll be able to knock out something that might interest any of you that are designers. I’m currently working on organizing some notes for an article that I’ve been meaning to write for some time. The subject is integrating MovableType (a blogging system for those that don’t know) into an already existing web template. I’m going to write a condensed version for the Web 9 Design Forums and a much more detailed version will hopefully appear in Ross Harvey’s upcoming book “Web Authoring using Photoshop CS and Web Standards” (still a work in progress).
* Edit: Just wanted to let you all know as well, that we now have a new phone number and our address finalized, so anyone that is interested, my email address is still the same, just shoot me a note and I’ll send you our updated info.
Comments: 0 (comments closed)I had hoped when I started this weblog, to post a number of entries regarding web and graphic design standards and accessibility, since this is a topic that I come up against in my daily work and also interests me greatly. As you can see though, that hasn’t been happening in any of the posts. I’ve been extremely preoccupied the last bit with the prospect of moving to Alberta from New Brunswick, finishing up my final project for my schooling, as well as hunting for employment in Alberta so I can pay the bills. Hopefully when I get settled in Alberta and get some extra time on my hands I’ll be able to start touching on a few subjects that I have some ideas jotted down for. Until then I’ll catch you up with everything that has been happening the last little while.
The first part of the journey started out on the 14th of August when Krista and I travelled out to St. Albert, Alberta to meet with her new employer. We were both nervous but excited about the trip. We spent four days staying with Susan at her home, which she so graciously opened up to us, an extremely generous and trusting gesture. We both had an amazing time in the town and it was great to get to know Susan as she and Krista will be working very closely with one another.
After all the details had been worked out regarding Krista’s job at the day spa, we started on our hunt for an apartment, and happened across an amazing 2 bedroom place that had a fireplace, huge bedrooms, and an excellent layout. We will find out tomorrow if our application has been accepted. I’m not too nervous about it because we have great references from former roomates as well as former landlords.
Following our stint in St. Albert, we continued on to Vancouver (not actually Vancouver…White Rock, a suburb of South Surrey), British Columbia, to visit with Krista’s sister and her boyfriend (and their new Great Dane puppy Bella). I had such a great time out there, the scenery was beautiful and the weather was great all but one day we were there. We spent a bit of time walking on the beach at the bottom of the hill in White Rock as well as travelling to Grouse Mountain and we spent a day in downtown Vancouver doing a bit of touring around. I took a ton of pictures of the whole trip, but as I’m on dialup for the next few days, I probably won’t get them uploaded until I get high-speed access again at the new apartment.
We flew back in to Halifax on the 23rd and the following day (Tuesday) we went back up to Fredericton, so I could finish moving out of my house and getting all the loose ends tied up before we head back out to the prairies once again. I didn’t have a whole lot to do, but I wanted to take some time to head down to Reid St. and hang out with the lads down there for the evening. It was a pretty uneventful night, but we all had a good time sitting around, shooting the breeze, and watching a movie and a bit of TV. Good times had by all.
So, as concise as it could be, was my last couple of weeks. I’m really looking forward to getting settled in the new place, because I am definitely in need of a break after all that travelling. I’m working on a new piece of art that was inspired by some scenery from the airplane ride from Toronto to Edmonton, but it is progressing pretty slowly because I just can’t seem to find time to get it completely finished, but definitely stay tuned for that…
Comments: 0 (comments closed)Well, it’s now official. Krista and I are moving out to St. Albert, Alberta this coming Sunday. Krista got the job at the spa that she applied to, so we found an apartment while we were out there for this visit. It’s a really nice 2 bedroom place, so when people come out to visit us, there’ll be a room for you to stay in :) (but in the meantime the 2nd bedroom is going to become my office).
That being said, I’m moving out of the house in Fredericton today, and I have to turn off my internet, so I’ll be out of touch for a little while. Hopefully not too long though, I’d like to have telephone and internet pretty much ready to go when we get out there. If you need to get a hold of me in the meantime, just send me an email because I’ll be checking it periodically when I get chances to at airports and coffee shops.
Sorry I didn’t get to see everyone that I planned to before I left, I’ll be back on the Island the last weekend in September for my sister’s wedding, so definitely get in touch with me for then…
Comments: 0 (comments closed)My name is Jeff Smith and I'm a web developer and graphic designer living in St. Albert, Alberta, Canada. That being said, I'm not originally from the prairies, I'm a maritimer, born and bred, namely an Islander (Prince Edward Island).
