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 1st, 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.

12:31 PM