filed under: dad, the anniversary
I miss you more every day, Dad. It’s hard to believe you’d be 55.
I’m heading into New York City for the day with mom to celebrate your life. Max is having a blast at Cornell.
filed under: NaNoWriMo, short stories, Writing
It was a weird decision on my part this year not to participate in NaNoWriMo. For the last five years, I’ve written a new novel every year, and I finally felt like I didn’t have the time this year. I did, however, find a wee bit of time to write a small short story. It’s not edited, so don’t expect anything spectacular here – but it keeps my little hobby going.
If you’re intrigued, give it a read by hitting the jump. It’s a bit stream of consciousness, and its pretty quick. I hope you find it interesting!
Interesting thing I noticed today that I hadn’t before about the supposed silly decision of Apple’s to make the rotation lock switch into a mute toggle. I use my iPad day in and day out for all sorts of things, and was pretty upset about the switch from rotation lock to mute in 4.2. But in actual use, I’ve learned something revealing:
Prior to 4.2, there was no way to mute the iPad without unlocking it (hardware volume controls only work once the device is unlocked). Unfortunately, unlocking it makes noise.
The hardware mute switch makes sense on the iPad because there is a purpose to using it with the device in sleep mode and when awake. There is no purpose in the hardware rotation lock when your iPad is asleep – what effect would it have on a blank screen?
filed under: iOS, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, maple story, Music, soundtracks
If you haven’t heard, Nexon Mobile yesterday released a single-player iOS port of Maple Story – today a rather nice tipster has informed me that about half of the audio files inside of this port actually come directly from my Maple Story Soundtrack, noticeable by examining the track tags from the MP3 files contained in the app’s bundle. I’m both flattered and surprised that the developers chose to use the MP3 files available here for their project.
Kudos to Nexon for releasing an iOS Maple Story – I hope it does well for them! I haven’t played Maple Story in years myself, but I’m sure lots of people are out there now enjoying the iOS game with my rips in it. ;)
filed under: diamond dream, Photography
Although I usually think of myself as a decent photographer, Something inevitably happens that makes me think I don’t know as much as I think I do. That, recently, has been a side gig I picked up at local jeweler Diamond Dream.
I think I can safely say that jewelry photography has changed the way I think about photography. Everything must be precise, and there are no artsy beauty shots. You show the jewelry. That’s it. That’s a far cry from the food photography I did for Soup Shoppe last summer – food seemed to be what I was made for. Every shot was an opportunity to capture to beauty in food. With jewelry, I’ve come to appreciate that someone already worked hard to make the most beautiful ornaments they could imagine; I’m just there to take a picture of it.
Edward Shapiro, the owner of Diamond Dream, has been giving me tips on how to properly photograph jewelry. When I started, he essentially handed me a light box, an LED light, some props and a tray of jewelry, then told me to get to work. Unfamiliar with the props, I asked him to explain it to me – why the heck did I need wax? What were all these plastic pieces for?
filed under: updates
Whew, now I can focus on things that matter. Like getting that search bar in a better place.
Thanks to everyone who put up with my defeating the purpose of having a web design portfolio by letting it get full of bugs. If you see something icky on the site (unintentionally icky, anyway), let me know in the comments! I’m in full spring cleaning mode.
filed under: artwork, college, lehigh, Portfolio, product design, School, updates
Whoa! Bet you never thought you’d be seeing this. After a few months of deadness, I’ve come back and updated my portfolio to include a bunch of my artwork from my AP days. I also come bearing the news that I’ll be switching majors at Lehigh come fall semester – I’m moving out of Integrated Business and Engineering, and into what I consider more true to my passions – Product Design (aka Industrial Design). There I’ll finally get the hands-on experience I want to have to build and create products in the future.
To celebrate my monumental decision to change majors (I nearly transferred schools!), I’m going to give this place a good sprucing up. There’s some code that doesn’t work, and the placement of the search bar has driven me mad for a while. And just look at the footer! A travesty. Well, I’ll fix that – and then some.
My updated portfolio contains selections (the good ones, anyway) from my AP portfolio. You can check it out under the “Artwork” section of the Portfolio tab on this site or click here!
Happy birthday, Dad. I miss you. I hope you’re enjoying your 54th… wherever you are.
filed under: anecdotes, articles, design, reading, web design
A good friend of mine shared this article with me today. It was so shockingly accurate, I felt that it was my duty to share it with all of you. It’s just a little bit of insight into the world of web designers dealing with some very special clients. ;)
filed under: cyberpunk, cydia, NaNoWriMo, the collapse, Writing
As you can probably tell from the rather poorly made banner above (sorry, I had an all-nighter last night), the tentative title of my next novel is The Collapse. I’ve decided to handle NaNoWriMo 2009 much differently than I’ve handled NaNo in the past. This is the first time I will be returning to a world I’ve already created in order to write a story. If you’ve read my NaNo 2008 novel, The Typist, then the cover above should easily explain itself and lend to what this novel is going to be about. But why am I doing this?
comments