I’ve decided to undertake redesigning this joint to make it more focused on what I usually do in my spare time – writing, artwork, graphic design, and music. This will be a major redesign and I’ve been coming up with several drafts. The two I like most are currently competing with one another for my favor, in a ring of death no less. They’re quite dramatic, draft layouts…

This first design is quite similar in structure to what I have now, and doesn’t make any radical design changes. It does, however, go for a more detailed and realistic look. This design in particular is based heavily off of The Typist, my latest novel currently in its editing phase. At the moment, I’m debating whether or not to nix the sidebar menu and put it all on the bottom. I may even go with more radical interface changes, such as making the blog display only one post at a time, and then titles of earlier posts next to it. We’ll see what happens as my designs evolve.

This draft is meant to follow a more simple, vector-inspired style, not unlike Vimeo’s intro page. Originally it started out as a reworking of the layout of the first design, but I soon learned I didn’t have the stock imagery to make a realistic looking wooden bookshelf go down the center (which I may get and do anyway). I noticed that the flat colors I was blocking out looked kind of earthen, so I made a sky and grass, added some perspective, and began to build up a miniature world. The end result of this would be a hyper-detailed scale model of an environment with colors that pop and attract the eye in a cartoonish manner. The light bulb makes the whole environment look like a wee science model ;)… However, it doesn’t very well represent the purpose of this blog!

So, I think I’ll be retooling the first design to have the organization of the second design, and then rework that into an even more slightly different organization. I’m trying to make something that’s best for a portfolio and such! It really is time to rework and retool the way this blog works so it’s not so dependent on me actually posting my daily whatever, because in the end I’d rather this be a portfolio and repository of my work instead of a silly journal. It can be that as well, but only on the backburner!

It’s been wild ten days, but now I’m home for the summer. I’ve been in Portugal, actually, with the Lehigh University Choir, and we’ve been touring around Lisbon and the greater Lisbon area performing in various churches and palaces. Needless to say, it was an incredible experience! Although I didn’t write a journal like I did last time I went touring Europe in 2006, I did document the trip with over 1700 photos. Expect to see those photos appear sometime in the near future – or at least the good ones!

To my choirmates, awesome trip. We showed Portugal what good choral music sounds like! I hope the next tour is just as good, if not better. Now I think I’ll put my feet up and relax for the summer – at least until I get a job, finish up the new Lehigh Choir website, and fix up ZU and add some nice new content to the place. (Seriously, there’s cool stuff coming to ZU!)

Tah tah!

That about wraps it up for freshman year of college. Over the next two weeks I’ll be taking my final exams, and then it’s off to Portugal with the University Choir. I can’t believe summer came so fast! Of course, the Venti project is now entirely finished… it’s not going to become a real business (unless somebody would like to invest – I would love to keep the business going), and classes have ceased until the Fall semester.

That said, I’ll have time now to focus on cooler things, like bringing more features and events to Zelda Universe, as well as redesigning this damned blog!

It’s been a while since my last post, and boy have I been busy – finals rushing toward me, projects about, specifically for IBE Freshman Workshop. If you didn’t read the post below this, Venti is the name of the team I’m on. Myself and three other students have formed a mock company and created a aesthetic prototype of our product. Today, we are releasing a full poster of information about Venti – the culmination of all of our research. Please look at the poster! It’s one of the nicer projects I’ve done to date – I’ll be making a matching keynote for our group to present to an audience of mock investors on April 23rd.

The style is taken directly from the Venti website, enhanced and updated. The Venti website will be receiving a similar update with information and graphics from the poster, as well as a link to the poster. Make sure to check the Venti website soon for the update, because it’s going to be massive! This poster has provided excellent material to build off from – especially for our group’s presentation.

By the way, thank you everyone for sending me emails about Hide and Seek. Its just a huge pleasure to learn that so many collegiate groups are interested in using my transcription, and I encourage you all to learn it and record it!

In addition, to those of you emailing me about the Maple Story Soundtrack, I will be updating the tracks this weekend with new tags to get rid of and sort the unknown tracks. However, once I do this the soundtrack will no longer be updated – I’m through with that thing. I really should be focusing on updating my portfolio and redesigning this site (especially after seeing my friend Kyle Wynen‘s new blog).

It only took me several years, but I’ve included a favicon at last onto this blog. I can’t believe I never did. I think it’s a pretty nice favicon as well!

It matches the site and will probably even look great on an iPhone or iPod Touch. So, with that off my chest, I’d like to announce my latest work – I’ve been doing quite a bit of work for IBE Workshop, a product development class I’m taking the semester. The product my team of four has been tasked with developing is a humidifier for vehicles such as cars and trucks. I’ve created a brand image and company identity for this product – I call it Vënti. And we’ve got a website, too.

Vënti will, with any luck, be the most versatile humidifier for any vehicle out there – but we’re still making big changes to the device, and we’ll have a working prototype made by the end of the course. I’m actually incredibly excited to see this amazing yet simple device come to life after the entire design and development process. We’re moving forward into business at the moment, so I’m pretty much settled on a design for the product. I’ll have much more to show about Vënti in the coming weeks, so watch out for that!

On the side, I’d like to mention that I’m 20% through editing The Typist! I’ve never gotten this far into editing a novel before. I’m going to finish this one, I swear it! The writing is actually half-decent – better than any novel I’ve written thus far – so I think it has real potential.

Yes, you heard right. I must be a terrible person for doing this, but Professor Xun’s particular strange Chinese accent makes it impossible to follow o take notes from his lectures. I’ve actually begun teaching myself Calculus outside of the class in order to make up for the man’s lousy teaching skills, and it hasn’t been to difficult. The guy never did anything but regugitate what the textbook said anyway, so reading the textbook actually provides me with clearer information.

But Jason, you haven’t made a post in nearly two months! I know, something must be wrong with me! I probably died or something. Or I didn’t, and everything’s fine, since it is and I’m alive. And not much, incidentally, has happened in two months – to explain my absense, I’ll simply say I’ve been focusing a lot more on schooling and much less on web development and side-projects. I do, however, have a few updates for my design portfolio; I designed a new logo in my absense, and obviously I would like to put my covers for The Typist in there, as well as the logo design for Cydia. Expect that in a couple days.

As for the Maple Story Soundtrack, which I get a million emails about – it should be obvious by now that I can no longer update it. Not only do the tools no longer exist, but I’ve switched operating systems and the most I would be able to do is name the unknown tracks. I will do this, but I won’t go further; as soon as I identify aqnd sort the unknown tracks, the Maple Story Soundtrack is going out of commission. I will always host it, and you all are free to send me tracks I’m missing and I will add them to the soundtrack, but I will no longer actively maintain it. I’m sorry, but school takes priority over a silly game!

In addition, I’ve discovered some very cool note-taking tools in Curio + Evernote. In the past, I’ve tried Evernote and failed to realize its usefulness until I used it in combination with Curio to manage my IBE Freshman Workshop project. Curio integrates seamlessly with Evernote, so Evernote becomes your online project library, which is great when you need to capture and photo of, say, a powerpoint presentation or a whiteboard and keep it in your notebook for later. I’d say my class notes have also become supercharged with Curio + my Wacom tablet. I’ve never been more pleased with my class notes; pencil and paper can suck it.

I’ll be back sometime soon with more stuff to talk about. Until then… goodbye? ;)

Now that The Typist is finished, I’ve made a front and back cover for the book. You can also feel free to download the entire PDF – or give this poor college student some cash by buying a physical copy from LuLu. Click the thumbnails to see bigger versions (they’re pretty darn big).

Front                                                                     Back

It’s over. Holy crap. I don’t think I’ve ever been more satisfied with any novel I’ve ever written, or more frightened by the sheer size and scope of the universe I’ve created. I’m going to create a cover, back cover, and spine for this story and get myself a couple of LuLu copies, then call it a day. It’s been one hell of a NaNoWriMo 2008.

Final Word Count: 122,861

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And tomorrow, the novel ends. It’s gonna be a big day! Most likely more than 5,000 words will be written ;)… and it’ll become very climaxy. Also, happy birthday to me! I’m a whole year older than I was yesterday – 19 years old! Soon I’ll need a cane.

Word Count: 115,372

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There really was nothing he could do, in Wheat’s defense.

Word Count: 112,105

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