Stories, skinning rats, insomnia, awesome designs, and osmosis
Internet | July 20, 2010
My inspiration well is drier than the Sahara. I could write about the gash in my foot that’s making me hobble around like I’m 186 years old because I stepped on a sharp rock while swimming in a natural pool under a waterfall, or about the supremely meditative hour or so I spent driving around the entire beltway surrounding my city because I needed to blow off steam, or about seeing skinned rats and splashes of rat blood at the lab, or about unsuccessful shopping trips and the evils of suburban malls, but you know what? I don’t feel capable of spinning stories into better tales than they are right now.
Aww, that makes it sound as if the stories aren’t good enough the way they are. I hope that doesn’t hurt their feelings. Don’t worry, stories, I love you, and please please please don’t ever coat yourself in forty layers of makeup or get bad plastic surgery. Stories at the bottom of the bad story basket are just as good and deserve just as much love as the ones at the top or the overachiever ones that never made it in there.
That last paragraph was a shining example of what insomnia does to poor, undeserving people.
ANYWAY. We all know that “featuring the latest awesome designs/blog posts/funny pictures I’ve come across!!!” posts on personal blogs are the product of boredom or lack of inspiration 103.2% of the time, so I’m not even going to do any pretending here. I’m just going to do a “designs I like” type of thing because I’m not as awesome as some people and my uninspired-ness doesn’t disguise itself as a series of awesome tutorials.
So, yeah, layouts I like as of late (like the unintentional alliteration? I know I do):
I used to read Cy’s blog. I don’t know why I stopped. Stumbling upon Cyniquentially again via someone’s link list after I don’t know how many months really gave me a fresh perspective on the layout. The title font, the Louboutin heel illustration, the cute feed bubble, the style of the link lists, the style and placement of the search bar — why didn’t I come up with any of that?
Even if you don’t love pink like I do, you’ve gotta love this simple, typography-based layout. It’s proof positive that layouts don’t need flashy illustrations and intricate doodads to be awesome. My favorite parts: the hover effects and the blog posts (not part of the layout, but too awesome not to mention). I’m kinda obsessed. With this site and with the word “awesome.”
Owls have only recently (within the last year…that’s recent, right?) started to enthrall me. I know, I was missing out on life before. This particular owl illustration is TOTES ADORBS, as is the way its eyes move when you hover over it. Hovering over the site title is fun, too. AND the person who designed this site just happens to have the best name ever (but it’d be even better without the first “a”).
I believe the owner of this site used to own Angel Kizz the doll site, and I admired her layouts back then, but this one is way better, no question. LOVE the sketched watercolor style and how it matches the site name. The site title, paintbrush, bird, heart, iMac, search box, and social media icons are particularly cute. Actually, no, you know what, everything is cute. Yay pastel colors!
I like the airplane, dolphin tail area, treasure chest, colors, headers, sidebar boxes, textured background, and look of the secondary navigation on the side. Ignore this sentence: Blah, I’m tired now, and I can’t think of anything else to say about this site, so let’s just hope this useless sentence fills up enough space for the format to look okay…hey, didn’t I tell you to ignore this sentence?
This is kind of a bonus. My tumblr sports a lovely bare and simple layout that places the focus on the content, which consists of funny or inspiring tidbits that I didn’t create but wish I had. Am I seizing the opportunity to shamelessly promote at an inopportune moment? You decide. I didn’t make the layout, though, and I legitimately love its simplicity, so I’m not totally tooting my own horn!
Maybe if I stare at these designs long enough, I’ll absorb some of the talent through osmosis? No? Does it not work that way? Way to burst my bubble. Okay, good night.
I am smarter than Apple
Internet | June 26, 2010
Remember back when the iOS 3.0 software came out and how iPod Touch users needed to shell out $9.99 for something that barely looked any different? Well, now iOS 4.0 is out for free.
Months of not being able to download any useful applications because they all required the 3.0 update have finally paid off. Now I finally understand why my friends are so obsessed with Tap Tap. Better late than never. This basically means that I’m smarter than the entire Apple company. Or that cheapness is an admirable lifestyle. It’s a hard decision, but I prefer the former.
ETA: Also, speaking of cheap, I’m currently sitting on the stairs in the basement. Because that’s the only place in the entire house with a temperature below a thousand eight hundred forty-six degrees. Because my Asian (believe me, this is relevant — not to perpetuate stereotypes, except that’s exactly what I’m doing) family is too cheap to turn on the air conditioning. That’s how we roll.
The Color of Royalty
Internet | June 25, 2010
That’s the name I’ve cheesily but affectionately given this new layout.
Story behind it (not that there’s much of a story to tell): Inspired by the look of my Moleskine planner, I sketched a rough outline for a layout months ago. It included lots of rounded corners and no purple at all. A few weeks ago, I created a rough mock-up and asked the lovely folks of Snark Forums for critique. Yesterday and today, I finally decided to tackle coding — which wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be!
I know I still need to iron out a few things: There’s a 1px gap under the navigation in Safari and Google Chrome (why??). Internet Explorer 8 doesn’t display the opacity settings I have for the footer. IE6 jumbles everything, and I mean everything, up. (If you still use Internet Explorer 6, pleeease do yourself a favor and switch.) “Type and press enter to look for stuff” runs over on Windows. The archives page and comments are quite ugly. But if I stare at this layout any more, I might get sick of it before it’s even been up a day.
Questions? Comments? Any problems you see besides the ones I pointed out? Any suggestions on how to fix the problems I pointed out? Just feel like saying “I love you” or “this sucks”? Hit up the comment form, yo.