I’m glad I’ve finally figured out how to keep things balanced, at least a little—I remember one summer when I was on an internship, and I was so deep in workaholicism I didn’t go out at all. Summers here are so brief, it’s nice to be able to enjoy them! I actually have a suntan (although very few people believe it—basically I’m just “less glow-in-the-dark white) and have been running around doing summery things in spite of having spent nearly the last three months with my arm in a fibreglass cage. (It comes off in six days! I am keeping a countdown, written in Sharpies, on the cast itself.)

I was so proud when I got this background to work. It’s made of three different pieces and a lot of prayer.

Eventually, I’ll update my website with some new projects. There are lots of things I’ve done in the last little while that won’t make it to my portfolio, of course, and some larger projects that are still very much in-progress, but here’s an idea of a few things I’ve polished off recently:

• a monster of a website, comprising around 4,500 Movable Type entries: actrees.org
• a WordPress website (and business cards) for appliedlogic.ca
• a logo, hangtag, business card, and website (almost finished!) for nightmarenibbler.com
• steppinguphalifax.ca (more WordPress)
• another WordPress website for an author: heartofthedreaming.com

Actrees, in particular, left me a lovely client testimonial for my giant list of client-love:

Triggers & Sparks revamped our website with a clean, fresh look that made navigation much easier for users and revealed the wealth of content we had created. We’ve received many compliments from our nationwide network of members. (“Great job, love the look, easy navigation on the new website!” “Far better format! Congratulations!”)
With her technical know-how and design vision, Sarah created a website that surpassed expectations, all within budget. Our website is now the public face that we want representing our organization.

I would rather not admit how long this website has been in production for, but suffice to say, I am NOT a fan of Movable Type. However, I am a fan of the client, which (mostly) overrides any frustration. And, surprisingly, I’m still rather pleased with the design.

Now, whenever I finally get some spare time, I might actually get around to updating this website—it’s starting to suffer from “cobbler’s children” syndrome again. Honestly, I love being busy, and I love the feeling that my business is doing well, but I’d like to feel like I’ve got things under control again. Hopefully, that’ll happen soon, without my needing to resort to Extreme Workaholic Behaviour!

Of course, after spending forever (I stopped counting somewhere along the line) spent making it work precisely (and pixel-perfectly) to my liking, it’s now broken. Every single image in my portfolio is now displaying with jagged images. Cue panic! It was fine last time I checked! What on earth happened? I still have no idea, and I hate to think how long it may have been broken before I noticed. (Note to self: keep an eye on these things, alright? Sheesh. My contact form plugin had also deactivated itself without my noticing somewhere along the line. Not good.)

So I’m ditching the SimpleViewer. (I am guessing that much of my weekend will be spent tweaking and implementing the change, so things are going to look terrible between now and then.) I found an alternative that I think will be better, and simpler in the long run, although of course it does mean that I need to go through every portfolio post and upload new galleries: Gallifrey, based on Galleriffic. (If you’re nerd-chic and/or British enough, you’ll recognize this as The Doctor‘s home planet, which rather delights me as I’ve just started falling in love with all things Tardis-related.) It works with WordPress’ built-in gallery functions, is super-customizable, and will even finally allow me to implement my triple-bordered image display that I wanted initially for this site. Simpleviewer, you were fantastic, but it’s time for us to part ways.

When I originally designed this gallery display, most people didn’t notice the difference between the triple-border here and the single thick border unless I explicitly pointed it out. Turns out I’m a touch anal-retentive.

Can Flash go into the ground already? There was a time when it was useful for websites, but with jQuery and a myriad of other frameworks as well-developed as they are, there really is very little excuse for it anymore. There are all sorts of reasons why Flash is bad: it’s horrible for search engine optimization, it mucks with usability, it’s often slow to load, it refuses to display on an iPhone, and it won’t print or display itself in a feed reader (at least, best I can tell). While the number of websites relying on Flash has decreased dramatically in the past few years, it’s still a little too prevalent. No more Flash, okay? There’s always an alternative.

Sometimes you just need to screw up enough to find it.

Anyway, new projects!

• WordPress theme for Jaye Wells
• menu design
• website for Marilyn Hicks
• and I’ve updated Marilyn’s identity page, finally

Jaye Wells

I’m working on a number more, too, that hopefully will see light soon. It is definitely time to rework this website, but of course that’s way on the bottom of my list. And I need business cards beforehand–I think I have less than ten left. It is seriously time to start buying myself a pair of new shoes every time I do work for myself.

Speaking of shoes, I wrote a guest post over at East Coast by Choice. So if you’re looking for tips on how to wear stilettos in crazy weather, you should go read it!

I have many stories and photographs, which are forthcoming. For now, two new projects: the holiday cards I mean to do every year, and a redesign and rearchitecturing of Fernwood Publishing.

I’ve been using WordPress for everything lately, and have totally fallen in love with it. I seem to always be a little behind the curve on web trends (as a side note, I’m now on Twitter, though I still don’t really understand the point entirely) due to my general distaste for trends (if everyone likes it, it can’t possibly be any good, right?). But I really wish I’d discovered the power and flexibility of WordPress earlier on—it’s brilliant and I’m beginning to use it for more and more of my client projects.

I was first introduced to it earlier in the summer when I did a website and serial novel page for Lilith Saintcrow. I used it for another Orbit Books author website, Brent Weeks. Most recently, I’ve used a highly customized version for a community website for Maplewood on the Lakes. I’m developing a few more sites using it, and have discovered that, generally speaking, it’s actually much faster, simpler, and more powerful that creating my own customized administration panel (though I’m still doing this for more complex database-driven websites).

In non-Wordpress related news, I’ve also added the design work I did for Sebastien’s Bistro, and the identity materials developed for the Walker Inn.

And that’s all the updates for now! I’m going to keep trying to make my updates happen on a regular basis, but I’m like the chef who comes home and eats frozen dinners (and I’ve met a few) in this case.

and a “new” website (that was completed months ago). I really don’t like updating my own website!

But I’m determined that it’s about time to do it, especially given that I’m about to move again, and that means that my address as listed on the website will be even more wrong than it is currently. (Sure, in theory it only takes two minutes to change it, but that’s not how I work…if I’m going to spend two minutes, I’m going to be there three hours trying to fix all the little things.) At any rate, all the little things have really added up, and it’s time for some major-ish rearranging.

Actually, the most dramatic upgrade has already happened, and that was my finally giving in to the whole “blog” phenomenon. It took years, but I finally buckled, and I’m sort of enjoying it. What sold me on WordPress is how monstrously simple it is—I actually started using it the place of a word processor, and I find it much smarter: it auto-saves constantly (good for those of us prone to data loss), it’s totally un-bloaty, it’s faster than typing out my own html, and it auto-formats my smart quotes. God, I love smart quotes. I actually spent an hour or so today formatting a client’s novel to get rid of all the dumb quotes, hyphens, and “period” ellipses. I don’t know why these tiny details are so important to me–but I suspect that there’s a place where the grammar-fascist in me meets the typophile, and proper typography is born. Or maybe it’s just that I, embarassingly enough, didn’t know about smart quotes and such for so long that I now consider them to be something of a litmus test for “quality” design?

Smart quotes aside, the news/blog section has all been redone, and I like it a lot, and may even get into the habit of using it more frequently. WordPress is really great and easy to develop themes for (once you figure out what you’re doing), which I’ve been doing of late for Lilith Saintcrow, who writes novels about girls who kick ass and take names (all told, the best kind of lady). I’ve got a couple more weblog-based websites in the works, so I’m learning a lot these days.

On a side note, why is there always an elephant (in the room) on my to-do list? I’m a notorious list-maker, and I’ll sometimes prioritize my lists in order of importance, not that I follow my own order religiously. For example, today I’m at #12, but #3 is still sitting there patiently, un-crossed, with three exclamation marks following it. It’s the most vital thing on my list, but I’m betting it’ll be the one thing that’ll end up being neglected. Is this some kind of subconscious self-mutilation wherein I’ll always sabotage myself for the work that is most important? How do I trick myself into thinking “eat three tubs of chocolate fudge icing” is the Elephant Task, instead? I’ve read a few productivity-type tips that recommend things like offering to wash a friend’s car, or pay them $50, if you don’t complete the Elephant by the end of the day (the theory being that we’re all inherently lazy, and the only way to make us do something is by threatening us with something more unpleasant), but I feel like that’s somehow compounding the pressure of the situation, thereby inflating the psychic block.

Anyone know how to take down an Elephant (or a run-on sentence)?

I am, naturally, enamoured.

In other news, I’m moving out of my little room in my little apartment into a commercial space just up Lincoln Street—it’s an oddly-shaped little three-room affair with hardwood floors and just the sort of character I like. I‘m hoping this will help me segregate my home from my work life and give me a little more space to stretch out in. As an added bonus, I won’t need to clean up my apartment when a client comes to visit!

A few new projects have been added to the website, and there should be more finishing soon.