Well, I have to say that I’m glad May is almost over. My poor little brain has been working on overdrive, although I have really enjoyed the projects I’ve been working on.

The main project has been a wonderful Flash interactive feature. A little mini educational game for kids. It’s really stretched my coding skills, and the timescale has been tight which as added extra pressure, but overall it’s been fun. I’ve also got to animate fun little bits of it, which I always love doing. And, it’s given me a bit more motivation to think about creating another game for myself on my own time.

But anway, June is almost here. This is my favourite month, mostly because my birthday is in it. Celebrations (and much shopping) shall ensue!

Aside from the fact that the catchy, yet slightly annoying, song from the Noisettes (Don’t Upset The Rhythm) is on the radio at the moment, I’ve also been rather on the busy side. I’m getting through my freelance projects at a steady pace, while not stressing myself out about it.

I’m looking forward to getting a few more of them finished and getting back to a few of my own personal projects. I have a few illustration ideas in mind, some crafty things I’d like to do…and I’ve itching to re-design my website for quite a few months now.

I don’t think I’m working too hard. I’m working just as much as I have to.

I think I’m trying to do too many things at the one time. Lots of ideas for new things I want to do, and a whole backlogue of things unfinished…but not abandoned. I think I need to get through the freelance work first, then just attack each of my unfinished projects one by one. I am not allowed to start anything new…well, maybe once I’ve finished at least one or two things…

Well, while I find this Seven Things, blogging link exchange thing, that Felicitas Betzl has tagged me in, eerily like a chain mail, I’m going to break with my usual tradition of not getting involved. What the hell, it’s almost 2010, and I’m almost 30.

Seven things about me

1. One the most important things that has shaped me as a person is having an identical twin. My sister Jennifer has always been someone I can rely on and trust, and I could never properly express how great and supportive she is.

2. I have a phobia of tic tacs. Yes, those harmless (ick) sweet type things. I only have a vague memory of my elder sister tormenting me with them when I was younger, but I can’t look at them now without feeling on the queasy side. TV adverts must be switched off, and just the sound of the box rattle makes me twitch. Yes, even typing this is making me uncomfortable. I have challenged my phobia. A few years ago I tried to eat one. I removed it almost immediately and it doesn’t seem to have helped.

3. I hate when people spell ‘weird’ incorrectly. I even had to correct it from the Rules section below. All these stupid english rhymes have done is confuse people. ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ is NONSENSE: weird, their, abseil, beige, caffeine…..

4. I don’t really think I can deny being a geek. I’ve been programming computers (badly) since I shared a ZX Spectrum 48k with my sisters from aged 7/8. I make a point of knowing what actors and directors are associated with what films, and by now I have a pretty decent movie knowledge. I read sci-fi books and watch sci-fi tv shows. I play computer games on PC or console till early in the morning (even if only at weekends). I wear glasses. I read books on the bus. And well, I slouch forwards when I walk….does that cover it?

5. I will NEVER EVER let anyone see the first web site I made (notice how I didn’t use the word ‘designed’). It first reared it’s ugly head in the year that I discovered the internet…I think that was about 1996. You know, I actually wonder if I actually still have the files.

6. I’m addicted to sugar. The 2 sugars in my tea could easily get turned to 3 unless I keep an eye on it. If I’m in the supermarket and they have those 3 packs for a £1 fizzy sweetie selections I have to buy them. And I also just finished eating a Sherbert Fountain. DAMN, there are no more sweeties in my flat.

7. I have a BEng (Hons) degree in Product Design Engineering. The only parts of it that have come in handy is the Accounting and Marketing classes. But, you know, I met a great bunch of people, so I can’t really feel bad about it.

Tagging along

• Jane – Lumen Spiriti
• Vonnie – Blotted Copy Book
• Eileen – The Food of Love
• Beth – Sit Pixel
• Lindsey – Paper, Pictures, Automata & other fanciful things
• Steelso – All about nothing
• David – Web Garden

Rules

And here’s the rules of the game:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

And just to finish – due to my dislike of chain nonsense, would all the people I’ve tagged please NOT feel obliged to do this unless they really want to!

Well, while I’m almost fully converted from Elaine Simpson to Elaine McVicar, and now I’m getting converted from Danu Design to Elaine McVicar. You may not have noticed that my domain name has been changed over, with only a few hiccups, from yesterday, but here I am elainemcvicar.com. You know, I really like how that looks.

Well, I’m glad this week is over. It’s been a pretty awful one. Redundancies announced at the start of the week, which has made work a very depressing and slightly more stressful place.

So, I’ve occupied myself with pottery class and climbing, which are two very good things to get yourself out of your own head. Also realised that when I started this blog my intention was to write about my thoughts on my general day to day work in design, but I seem to have gotten distracted into trying to write articles and tutorials. So, from now on I’m going to try to go back to my own thoughts. This is about me.

Well, today I’m going to try to create an RSS feed for my homepage updates. The blog one is already handily incorporated by WordPress, but I’d like to create one that involves all my updates.

Now the XML tags are pretty easy. This website, Make RSS Feeds, gives you the basics. However, what I need is one that is automatically updated when I update my website. I believe PHP is the answer. I’ve found this site: Web reference – Creating a Custom RSS Feed with PHP and MySQL. Let’s have a go!

Okay, that took me some time using the tutorial above, and the PHP code from my homepage updates…

First try in the validator brought out a few errors. I believe they are to do with the header information so I’m going to search from more help with creating an RSS feed using PHP.

So an hour later, I’ve managed to get it to work – excellent! Seems like the tutorial I followed had a few things in it that was causing me problems, although I’m not sure why.

Now, after some tweaking, here you go, my homepage RSS feed. Please let me know if you have any problems with it, and I will try to sort them.

Well, it’s the start of the new year, and I don’t know about you, but I could really do with a lie down somewhere. I’m not quite on a work schedule yet.

But apart from that, I’m really looking forward to this year. I have quite a few projects that I’m enjoying, and I’m looking forward to getting far more creative stuff done this year. You know what? I think I’m going to go make a list!

I think I’m all documented out.

Last week and the week before I was mainly working on a Functional Specification (how each page/section works, as well as how it all fits together) for a website, which has come in at almost 7 thousand words, as well as a Component Specification (explains how each component should be set out, as well as text/background colours etc.) which is only sitting at 756, altohugh, I’m still working on that as I do the design.

Documentation is important so we can keep a log of how everything should work, but I’m starting to wonder if we are approaching it in the right way. It’s difficult for people to grasp how something works from dry text, and I’ve spent quite a bit of time explaining things as well, but then maybe that’s just because I need to work on the way I write. Initially I’d used a lot of bullet points to try and make it clearer, but I think this is actually more confusing because it’s more difficult to understand the context. I added simple wireframes, which definitely helps, but this should also perhaps been taken to further detail. Yes! More diagrams! That will be fun…um…

Anyway, keeping documentation up to date can also be troublesome, it’s easy to get distracted with other things. However, as the project goes on it’s best to keep an accurate document on the website, that way we always have something to fall back on, and to check, especially if the client wants to make further changes.

Well, I’m reaching the end of the documentation stage for me (hopefully), so it’s back to the pretty pictures. Excellent.

Well, it’s coming to the end of the year so I thought I’d do a quick run down of some of the sites I’ve really liked this year. It’s mainly about the overall look and feel rather than any kind of functionality, but they all have something that I find inspiring in some way.

Carsonified Events

Big fonts, sketchy graphics and muted colours.

Ma.tt

Feels like it’s a worn away painting on a wall. And, what a great domain name.

The Statement

The white on black makes the old newspaper style feel like something a bit more special.

The things we make

Perhaps the mix of colours, wooden floorboard background and zig-zaggy lines. Just feels nice.

Satsu

Pencil sketches. Love it. Love it. Love it.

Meomi

It’s just so gosh darn cute.

Carbonica

Nice and sketchy.

Kyan

Clean, simple and lovely

Studio MIK MIK

So pretty. I really like the pale blue and brown.

Ah well, I’m sure there are tonnes more than that, but I’m getting tired now.