I just spent 2-3 hours installing Adobe CS4 – all for nothing. I am not starting over now. At least not today.

On a happier note, Keeda got to meet HHRay’s puppy today. She was surprisingly patient and unenthusiastic with him. They say that some dogs are very bad with puppies because of their obnoxiousness and others are very good with them. Keeda surprisingly was on her best behaviour and allowed the puppy to climb all over her. She didn’t snap out of annoyance once and the most she did was mouth the air when the pup was getting too excited and annoying. In the end she simply sprawled out on the grass by my side as the puppy clambered all over her.

Random layout concept

I am really liking Mushroomhead right now, so I was inspired to make a few banners. I haven’t done this in quite a long time now so they’re a bit rusty :/. I don’t particulary like the second and third ones, but enjoy the look of the first and fourth.

Exciting news – for me, anyway. I got so tired and annoyed with my domain name not being the same as the title of my site. I mean, who would see ‘Vanilla Soup’ and think “ohh, that’s vanillasoup.com!”

So I registered www.vanillasoup.com and voila – this is now the URL to Vanilla Soup. I’m definitely not the first to register this domain – I definitely remember trying to register it quite a while ago and it being unavailable. I can still find some pages on Google linking to www.vanillasoup.com. 

So, in honor of a new domain and my newly inspired sense of blogging-ness, a brand new (semi-custom) layout will be created and other changes will take place. I’ll start to actively promote the blog again as opposed to letting it just be a personal diary-type site. Yay, overhaul!!!

I’ve been living and breathing PHP for two days now and though I have made a lot of progress from not knowing anything at all about it to completing my first ever user registration page linked to a mySQL database, it has been a frustrating journey. Between trying to look at the big picture of what my future web site is going to be and solving the nagging issue of preventing duplicate e-mails and pen names for users (with a lot of help from a particular Brisbane-based individual), I’m pooped. Right now I am eating vegetable lasagna and drinking water with vitamins. I managed to get some brief exercise in a few minutes ago, but when I’m done it’s back to learning something new.

On my list of PHP-dom:

1) Implement Captchas into registration forms
2) Create login form for registered users to log in using their e-mail and password.
3) Allow users to upload avatars and edit their profiles.

And everything that I need to learn how to do in between those three.

I’m sitting here with Ergo on the couch, working on my Art portfolio, which is due in tomorrow. I made a birthday party invite for HHAries’s brother’s 11th birthday last night and I must say, I’m quite proud of it. The dudes from Call of Duty 4 and Half Life took me quite a while to cut out, I was never happy enough with them and kept starting over >.>. ‘Jim’ wanted to mix in Bioshock, COD4, and HL into the invite somehow and you’ll see Bioshock’s Big Daddy in the background. Here it is (names, dates, and address changed):

I’m at TAFE, photoshopping a creased and ripped photograph of an old couple, making their faces more aesthetically pleasing, and placing them on top of a relevant background.At least that’s what I’m meant to be doing. I’m here instead, writing about it. I’d better get back at it :( 

I want to write this down as fast as possible so I don’t forget. We learned about RGB, CMYK, and Spot colors in our Illustrator class yesterday and I didn’t take any notes, so I’m writing them here because I just want to show off my great knowledge :D.

RGB: (red, green, blue ) Light. Used for computer screens, LCDs, digital cameras, etc.
CMYK: (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) Print. Used to print documents, posters, etc. Uses 4 plates. Colors not as bright and vivid as Spot color. Can not be used to produce luminescent and metallic colors.
Spot: Premixed color. The printer mixes colors together on one plate. Can be used to produce luminescent and metallic colors. The reference swatches for a full list of Spot color numbers can cost up to $250 and should be renewed every 2 years.

So if a client wants the most financially efficient print job – the cheapest he can get it, and has 3 or less colors in the design, it would be cheaper to use spot color because mixing 1 plate for each color would produce 3 plates as opposed to the 4 that would be needed if using CMYK.

If the client, again, wants the cheapest print job and has 5 or more colors in the design, the most efficient way to print would be using CMYK because it will need 4 plates regardless of the amount of colors there are.

If the design has 4 colors, it does not matter which method is used as it would amount to 4 plates either way.

If the design has 3 regular colors, 1 luminescent color, and 1 metallic color, it would be more efficient to use spot. This will amount to 5 plates. Luminescent or metallic color cannot be achieved with CMYK and using CMYK (4 plates ) for the 3 regular colors, then mixing 2 plates of spot colors for the luminescent and metallic colors, would amount to 6 plates.