Yzabel / December 14, 2005

Dilemma of Writing

From www.gamerselite.orgWhat is the best method when dealing with an inspiration overload? Yes, mine is not over yet (somehow, I hope it never dries out, because too much is always better than not enough when it comes to ideas), and I’m torn between the two main choices that I see lying in front of me.One of the roads leads to dropping the novel I’m finishing these days, to jump to another idea, fulfill my desire to write that one, then come back to the previous novel—with the risk of this taking weeks or even months.The other road goes through forcing myself through finishing the work in progress first, even though this may feel very painful and end up in written crap just for the sake of “getting rid of it until the moment to edit comes”.Read More

Yzabel / December 13, 2005

Misunderstandings Or Real Attacks?

I’m pondering this matter today, after having considered a discussion I’ve had (well, started, too) on a forum in the past few days.The thread itself turned out in an unexpected way. I was ready to wake up to a flood of insults and to an angry mob flaming me for my “evil” views (which all readers here know of: I don’t want children, and am tired of seeing certain people trying to persuade me into it); instead, I discovered that a place I thought ridden with angst and immaturity was in fact also home to a good deal of sensible people respecting others’ opinions.Save for one.Read More

Yzabel / December 11, 2005

The Way of the First Draft

After a good week spent reattuning with my drawing desires and abilities—which is something I needed to do since long before November and NaNoWriMo, due to various reasons—I’ve gone back to finishing my first draft, and setting a final goal for it. I’ve decided on 75,000 words; it seems balanced enough for me to reach it, while not needing to focus so much on “writing fillers”, which I’ve never liked doing, even in the heart of NaNo. My problem very often being the contrary, I don’t think I need to worry much about running out of material. The daily amount I want to put in is 1,000 words, since in the frenzy of Christmas, I don’t want to eat more than I can chew. This will carry me to the end of the year without problem, I think.Thus the evolution of the WIP bar in the sidebar of this blog. I’ve also settled on the title for the moment, but evidently, if by the end I find one that sounds better, I once again won’t hesitate to change it. If I follow my plan, I still have three scenes to write, including two action-filled ones, which still frighten me a little (I must confess that, as much as I’m at ease with dialogue these days, I’m still unsure of how to properly write fight scenes). After this, I’ll be back to deciding on a final plan for The Second Continent, and get this trilogy going the right way.Wish me luck and commitment, please… I’ll need both * smiles *NaNoWriMo, novel, writing

Yzabel / December 9, 2005

Free Blog Hosts

Not that I need any myself, but I thought this list of free blog hosts could be interesting. Since I’m a user of WordPress, and since I consider it like a pretty good platform, here’s in excerpt a list of hosts that function with the WP system:http://www.wordpress.comhttp://www.blogsome.com/http://weblogs.us/http://www.wpblogs.com/http://www.blogthing.com/http://globbo.org/http://www.theblog.cc/http://learnerblogs.org/http://uniblogs.org/http://edublogs.orghttp://hrblogs.org/http://beblogger.com/http://www.evilsupergenius.net/Personnally, among all of these, I use WordPress.com, and for one blog only, so I can’t really tell more about the rest. As they’re free, though, nothing prevents anyone from trying them, then switching to another one if it doesn’t strike one’s fancy.(Via BlackhatSEO and The Blog Herald.)blog, blogging, free, host, wordpress

Yzabel / December 8, 2005

When Projects Get Unexpected Attention

Something a little weird happened in the past two days, within the frame of my work.Not really believing in it, I had suggested a few ideas/improvements for our technical manuals. You see, I’ve never received any teaching/training to become a technical writer. Everything I know in that domain, I’ve had to learn it the hard way, through trial and error, through personal research. Since I’ve felt, in the past months, that things were stagnating and that it’d be a shame to not try and make them better, I had taken upon myself to push said research to another level, which in turn made me realize how much I still had to learn, as well as how much I could improve things in the job itself.It looks like this may actually go further than what I had in mind, and that my idea struck the right nerve at just the right moment. This is, in fact, very exciting. It means tons of work in perspective, but I like and need having deadlines and structured schedules, as I already mentioned it here. It’s writing, too—not fiction, but writing all the same, and I somehow have the feeling that being able to produce good manuals in that regard will further my craft no matter what, even if not adapted to novels themselves. (I write these manuals both in French AND English… hence my expected improvement with the language itself.)projects, technical+writing, writing

Yzabel / December 5, 2005

The Power of CSS

I really need to find a good book regarding the art of wielding stylesheets to their full extent. I’ve only used them for basic formatting, I admit, and this is a shame, since there’s just so much I could do with them if taking the time to dive deeper into it.

Recently, I was flipping the pages of an old computer arts-related magazine that I had grabbed at the office (or was it at school?) and never finished; that’s when I stumbled upon an article mentioning effects that could be created on images through the use of stylesheets. The image on the right is a screenshot of what I obtained in my browser thanks to the Alpha filter, and to do so, a simple line of code did the trick. No need to fire off Photoshop or any other graphic tool. This is the reason why I want—no, I need—to learn more. I don’t want to remain standing here with the feeling that I’m brushing past something interesting, when I could in fact embrace it with both my arms.Of course, there’s the problem of browser compatibility, but this is where all the fun lies, isn’t it?

Yzabel / December 2, 2005

Website Update Finished

And I didn’t put any Flash into it.

Not much got written nor prepared today, since most of my free time has been put into finishing the redesign for Paradygma. It’s not totally done yet—I may decide later on to add some more information to the pictures, among other things—but at least, it’s now rid of the blah-blah, the frames and the iframes, as well as of the guestbook and news-with-comments that were attracting spammers and spambots faster than a porn mag does a teenager. Who needs these toys on a portfolio, anyway? I like simplicity.

PS – It’s in such moments that you realize that a Spam Karma or an Akismet is a two-clicks blessing.

Yzabel / December 1, 2005

Websites and Flash

As I was working on a redesign for Paradygma—among other things, I want to make it more of a portfolio, not a showcase for every tiny bit of an illustration I’ve done—I realized that I’m really not fond of Flash. Not fond at all.

Every graphic-designer, illustrator and their dog seems to have this liking to creating their webpages in Flash. Alright, it’s pretty. The first thirty seconds. After this, I grow tired of not being able to open links into a new tab/window, of having to cope with intros and images displaying square by square or line by line only, in other words: all the bling-bling. I’m not really for the tacky stuff, and my, some of these are tackier than the deco of all of our five local Chinese restaurants put together.Read More

Yzabel / November 29, 2005

Inspiration Overload?!

I’d never thought I’d say that one day.

I believed the lack of inspiration was the worst thing in the world. That when it hit, it was a catastrophe. Well, I’ve just found out that the contrary can just be as problematic; there are only 24 hours in a day, and my chronic lack of focus really becomes a hassle in this case. (I can’t focus well nor for long, really. I hide it well, but I can’t.)

I’m currently in the throes of inspiration overload. Too many things going on in my head, too many things I want to do, much more than what I can do, in fact. Ideas for short stories are bursting out of my mind every ten minutes, and when it’s not for stories, it’s for illustrations. I can’t focus on work well, I can’t focus on finishing my novel, since five minutes into my writing, I already feel like doing something else, not out of lack of inspiration, but out of wanting to concretize other thoughts.Read More

Yzabel / November 26, 2005

A Color Scheme Generator

A quick link for today, but one I’ve found useful when it comes to web-design and picking the right color schemes: Wellstyled’s Color Scheme Generator.

Through the use of a wheel of colors, you can pick a color dominant, and see how other colors fare against it. Different options are available; whether you wish to prioritize the view of simple contrasts or to see how multiple color schemes are rendered against the chosen background, it’ll be easy to get a first idea of what a webpage will look like. A whole set of options also allows you to check how the displayed scheme will appear to color blind people (protanopy, full color blindness…). There’s much more you can do with it, but these are already a good preview of what this color picker lets you do.

I keep a stack of such little tools nearby. I always find them useful to see in a few clicks if the idea I have in mind can work or if it’ll be a visual aggression all by itself, this without demanding me to modify my stylesheets and upload them first.