Chyrp 2.0 Beta

I've upgraded to the latest and greatest. But there's been some hefty changes to the entire infrastructure and since I haven't been keeping tabs on the upcoming 2.0, I've lost track of its theming engine. It now uses Twig and I must recode my entire theme. I'll probably change it at the same time.

I will also try and get the Related Posts Module updated for 2.0.

Twitter Geolocaters

Making Twitter a global experience, visually speaking...

...of totally wasting one's time.

To sway me into blogging more I thought I'd include some reviews. My thoughts on things. You know, to actually get into those topics I'd like to get around blogging about.

So to kick it off, I'll be giving a quick capsule review of two real-time geolocation visualization feeds: TwitterVision and TwittEarth. What is a geolocation feed? Its simply a visualizer that displays the geographic location of something on a screen-sized map of Earth.

My workstation featured on Unplggd survey

Thought I'd drop word that (as I have on Twitter and Pownce, cause I'm a social whore) one of my photos of my current workstation setup was featured in a survey about whether having multiple screens improve productivity. Head out and vote if you want. I just thought this exposure's kinda cool.

I'm thinking of turning this into an article about multiple monitors and virtual desktops and my thoughts and how its affected my productivity -- both good and bad.

Blood Donation

For a few days my sister had been bugging me to go donate blood with her. I wasn't very optimistic or interested at first because I wasn't taking the time to think it over, subconsciously preferring to preoccupy myself with my professional life. I decided this afternoon that I would donate. But I didn't think I wasn't that sufficiently nourished. I was also having a bit of anxiety, both from stupid childhood traumas from needles and all the side effects and problems that could (rarely) happen. I'm just a worrisome human being who stresses too much, but is trying to beat those habits.

So me and my sister took off earlier this evening around 19h. I was a bit stressed, naturally, but was very optimistic (or I was at least pushing myself to be). After punctuating me with the needle, the stress and anxiety disappeared. I felt okay, I was honestly optimistic now. Everything was going fine until about 4 minutes into the donation when I began feeling a lightness in my chest, that slowly climbed into my head. I knew I was having a drop in pressure at that moment and began wondering if this was normal. At first I thought it was normal, I am loosing blood after all. But after a minute, I decided to put my arrogance aside and I asked the woman taking care of me if it was normal feeling a lightness to my head.

"Yes, its normal." She said.

Six seconds later I was lying fully on my back, the needle was out of my arm, cold wet rags where placed over my head and neck. Four nurses were around me explaining me I had a drop in pressure, that I already knew. She asked me to hold the little white thing (I can never remember the word for it) on my arm and told me to keep my eyes open. My dizzyness lasted about a minute and then I was okay. They insisted I stay laid down. I began laughing at how this could of happened. The nurses also joked with me.

After a five minute wait, my back was uncomfortable, that sucked even more, they asked to walk to some other nurse for the bandaid. Me and her chatted for a while as I waited for my sister to finish. She loved it, it went well for her, which is great. I wish it would of gone great for me too.

I feel bad for messing up my first donation, but it was better for me to call it off at that moment than let my pressure drop worsen. I will try to donate again as soon as I can.

What's up or down?

It's been a while since I've last posted. I've been very very busy with freelancing, mainly. 'Been trying to get my life together too, organize things. I've spent a good two months searching for a job with a company, no luck there. I finally ended jumping into the world of freelance since contracts where coming to me. Last tuesday I finally completed my second contract. It went terribly bad for me. I realized I was more rusted in HTML/CSS/JavaScript than I had hoped. It caused a lot of delays and deadlines pushed back. I really hate myself for it. But then again, it's my first real stance in the working world, so I kinda forgive myself. Do my clients forgive? Who knows.

Volunteering

Now that I finished my second contract I'm gonna try and aim for smaller contracts, free up some of my time to work on some projects I volunteered upon:

1. Full package (branding and website) for a small business my parents want to start. I won't go into too much detail right away, you know, not to let anyone else steal the idea, even though it's already been done... in a way.
2. Redesign the personal website and portfolio of my friend, Alex Leblanc, who is currently in his final semester in photography at the Matane college [ I used to go to ].
3. [ Long planned and needed ] website redesign to my Patrick Loranger's space-opera roleplaying game, Technotron.
4. Webdesign (and possible building) of a roleplay book publishing company and game for my friend, George Cotronis.

Working on myself

I also got a few things I need to work on for myself that I really want to launch before the end of next month if possible:

• Finally getting around to doing some business card designs for myself. I'm aiming for some sort of moo card mosaic that I could also resell for those interested in collectibles.
• Sitting down and getting my business plan written so I can officially declare myself a entrepreneur/freelancer. Then build my reputation...
• Getting around to giving an [ at least ] nice looking design for my landing page. I haven't done one that satisfies me since 2005.
• I've finally taken the time this weekend to design the website for the, soon to come, relaunch of the little known Infornography project. I'll leave this vague to all of you for now. Only a handful of people know what this is (mainly 'cause they participated in its intial birth) and I'll talk more about its history at launch. ETA unknown BTW.
• Starting this tuesday (April 1^st, 2008) I'll be joining the thousands of others on the 365 Days Challenge which, for those who might not know, is to take one self portrait each day for a year.
• I have to dedicated myself at least a few hours a week to work on my screenplay I had started and I dearly want to continue but lack of organized time for it. It's something that I really *need* to do.
• Spend some much needed time to draw some more or at least redraw my sketches and ink my more solid works.
• Find some friends, head out to a bar, have fun, maybe find a nice girl. (I'm a sucker, right now)

Getting around to playing with my toys

Today I've also took a bit of time to play with my Samson CO1U USB Microphone. I had a lot of problems with it at first, barely audible sound, a lot of noise and static. It was weird. The first time I plugged it it worked fine. Afternoon a good hour of cursing and madness I tried just for the hell of it, Samson's SoftPre app for their microphones. The funny thing is on their website they say the app doesn't work with Leopard. And the first time I installed it the app didn't work at all. I reinstalled it today and strangely it works fine. Now my mic is adjusted with some settings which are satisfactory for the moment. I have to increase the gain to around +26 to get good input from it. But it also picks up everything else, including mouse clicks. If I hit the keys hard enough, I can hear my keyboard.

Now I just have to find good times and organize myself with my sister's and parents for when I want to record serious stuff with it. I live in my parent's living room and its a small old apartment. So you can imagine lots of noise, cracking floors. When there's a wash spinning, the door to the living room rattles franticly. The best time for me is truly between midnight and 6am. Which I wouldn't mind, but its kinda late and I don't want to shift my biological clock around all the time.

What's coming

I'll also try this week, for my 365 Challenge to buy myself a small digital camera for picture taking. Something very small and easy to carry as well as quick to draw with great performance. I've seen a few good one's at RadioShack, but I'll have to check out Wall-Mart too, since I can get a discount from them. I wanted to do a vlog today, but the timing hit bad when my mom and sister got back from shopping a bit early. Well actually, I decided to do it a bit late.