Last June, something changed. Maybe it was luck! Maybe it was the laptop I sacrificed on an altar of Adobe Creative Suite DVDs. I’ll probably never know for certain. All I know is business suddenly took off, and I spent the next 8 months frantically running after it. The only proof that I ever caught up to it is that I’m here, writing this post, instead of under my desk huddled over my laptop, hissing at anything that ventures too close.

My portfolio resembles a bit of a ghost town at the moment, which is unfortunate because I have so much new activity to post. The only problem is that it’s in dire need of a structural re-design. This website, while pretty, isn’t working as hard for me as I need it to, which I’ll address very soon… just as soon as I can find the time.

In the meantime, however, here’s a brief run-down of recent and current website projects:

Completed Projects

Design/Development:

Tahoma Choirs
Todd Pacific Shipyards
Northwest Essay

Development:

TORQworks

Current In-Production Projects

Design/Development:

Clinical Workshops
TheSockMonster.com

Development:

Deb McCarroll
James C. Richards
Sally Clark

Design/Development projects were designed and built entirely by me. 100% Watson-Design input! Development projects I built and developed, but were designed by the lovely and talented Deb McCarroll (of Studio Pacific).

Stay tuned! More activity to come soon!

“The image you provided is too small, do you have it in a vector format?”
“It’s a rasterized image, so if we size it bigger, it’ll become pixelated.”
“To cut up the letters, we’ll need to rasterize them first.”

Confused? Well, I’m here to fill you in. Follow me down the magical path to Print Essentials 101.

There are two ways of classifying digital images, and objects that make up an image (such as text, photos, etc). Those classifications are “Vector” and “Raster”. Vector images are essentially just a wire frame, that’s filled in with a solid color or a gradient. They’re created using geometric shapes, such as points, lines, and curves, and are easily edited. Raster images, on the other hand, are static “flat” images. A good example of rasters are digital photos.

Vector images are everywhere in our digital lives. Fonts are really just lots and lots of vector images. What determines the shape of a vector image is the Vector Path.

The blue line in the image above is the path for this vector. The little boxes are the vector points, which are used to determine the curve of the lines in-between the points. Because the points are really what controls the shape of the vector, you can change the image drastically by moving the points and adjusting the length and curve of line between them.

Because vector images are a defined by geometric equations, they can be easily resized smaller or larger, without constraint.

Rastered images also abound. Photographs, web image files (such as JPEGs), and scanned images are all examples of rasters. Rastered images are composed of pixels. Pixels are very small squares, which contain a small piece of information about their color and shade/gradient. Put altogether, they create the image or photo.

Raster images can be resized as well, but unlike vectors, they have limitations. Every time a rastered image is resized, it becomes distorted. When a raster is sized smaller than the original, several pixels are compressed together into a single pixel. There is some distortion, but it’s usually not very noticeable (unless the sizing down is really drastic, like sizing a 1000px by 1000px image down to 100px by 100px image). The quality of the “shrinking” compression will vary depending on the graphics program you’re using.

When a raster is sized larger, however, the distortion is much more obvious. A single pixel is expanded and stretched over several pixels. Because of this, the pixels are more apparent, and the image looks “boxy”. Which is where the term “pixelated” comes from.

As you see in the image above, while you can’t really see the distortion in the smaller icon, the distortion in the larger icon is much more noticeable.

If a rastered graphic is going to be printed or displayed on a website, the designer or printer will require you to provide an image that’s the exact size they need for the finished product. No designer or printer will “blow up” a rastered image, because the quality of the image becomes so poor. Most designers and printers greatly prefer vector images, as they can be easily sized and resized to fit whatever medium they need.

So, there you go! Hopefully that all made sense. I hope you took notes, because there will be a quiz on this next week. Class dismissed!

I supposed I should clarify here. When I say we couldn’t open the windows or balcony-door, I don’t mean that they physically wouldn’t open. I mean that our apartment was literally a stone’s throw from I-5 and an freeway off-ramp.

Opening a window or outsider door would mean the apartment was filled with the extremely LOUD sounds of cars flying by said window. Also, general traffic sounds, people yelling angrily at whatever, and, oh yeah, AMBULANCES. Did I mention that we were right by three major Seattle hospitals? Yeah. THAT.

So after kicking around a couple of ideas, we settled on West Seattle, and moved into a lovely 2-bdrm ground floor apartment. Even though we’re still pretty central to West Seattle’s “downtown”, our new place is so. unbelievably. quiet. The street we live on runs parallel to the main drag (California Ave), so while we still have access to plenty of great place to eat, drink, and be merry, our home and the street outside our windows is very quiet and peaceful. Right at this moment, I have both patio doors wide open, and all I can hear is the sound of trees rustling in the summer breeze, and little birdies chirp-a-chirping. BLISS.

One of my conditions for finding a new place (aside from the noise thing) is that I needed to have room for an office. Due to the odd layout of the old place, the only room that was big enough to accommodate a desk (and not much else) was the living room. Which became more of a problem as time went on. It was the default space to put things when the coffee table was too cluttered, and often I’d come out of the bedroom in the morning to discover that my desk was covered with dirty dishes, wadded-up kleenex (allergy sufferers, yo), and old pipe tobacco from the night before. HRUMPH. I never felt like I had my own space, and the space I did have was severely lacking in storage, or a way to keep myself organized.

Well, no LONGER! Our new apartment has an office that’s large enough to contain both our weights set and an office area for me. When we first came view this apartment, I practically dropped to my knees and wept for joy upon walking into the “master bedroom”. SERIOUS.

So, after a couple of weeks of transition (and “working” at the kitchen table), I took a trip to the Land Of Ikea, and bought myself a new desk, bookcase, and filing cabinet.  I know fellow office-supply nerds out there will understand my glee. I finally have enough space to properly store my equipment, office supplies, peripherals, and client documents (which, previously, was living in a big pile on the kitchen table), all while still having plenty of desk space. I can stand or sit at my desk, and cleaning and organizing is easy and painless

I can’t even begin to describe how refreshing it is to walk into my office every day. For one, it’s an actual OFFICE. Everything is neat, clean, and tidy. I have plenty of natural light, and no longer feel like I’m working in a cave. And best of all, I have a sliding door that opens out onto the patio, where I can step out to sip my tea and take a mental break whenever I need. It’s incredible how much easier and more enjoyable it is to work in this setting than at my old desk crammed into a living room corner. It’s HUGE. It doesn’t matter how chaotic the rest of the house is: once I walk in here, I can close the door on the rest of that (literally), and get to work. SWEET JOY. Praise be to our new apartment, West Seattle, and Ikea! I had no idea working from home could be this goooood.

How have I been? I’ve been busy. Very very busy. Specifically, busy, then moving, then busy while moving, then unpacking, then dead, then frustrated, then busy again.

About a month ago, I was making updates to an existent client’s website (RosetteRoyale.com), and then immediately launching another website for Rosette, The Naraya at Wolf Creek, 2010. I really love working with Rosette, he’s hilarious and flexible, and he thinks everything I do is just fantastic (ego booooost). The Naraya site was a particular joy to work on, because it’s such a great cause and they really needed web help. The Naraya is a spiritual Native American dance ceremony that lasts three long days and nights. Over a hundred people attend, and the folks organizing it are all volunteers. They needed a website to make managing the event easier. So that’s what I made for them!

The site is basically just a registration form for the participants, where they can express food preferences, and volunteering preferences, and make donations. The really fun part was the Admin panel. The Admin panel allows the managing volunteers to see who’s registered, how many omnivores/vegans/vegetarians there are (with special diet needs noted), who all volunteered for what job, how much money has been donated (and how much is donated online vs. checks coming in the mail), and printer-friendly release forms. And a whole bunch more. It’s great, it’s solid, and Rosette keeps raving about how helpful it is to have everything in one easy-access place.

Right in the middle of that, my husband and I moved to a new apartment in West Seattle. Which was a little crazy, but we managed to get everything out, clean the old place, and even get a little bit of our deposit back. SCORE.

After we finished moving, I took a good long break from work and went all crazy-organizer on our apartment. Of course, there’s still SOME stuff that hasn’t been unpacked yet. I can see a box a miscellaneous crap on the table right now. That’s the curse of moving, I guess… you get 90% done, and think “f*ck it, that’s good enough”.

After THAT, I kind of fell into a burnt-out coma. I did lots of reading, walking, and exploring West Seattle. WHICH I LOVE. I also felt intensely guilty for not working. So eventually, I went back to my old nemesis, Craigslist.org. “Alright, Craigy,” I said. “I don’t like you, and you don’t like me. But you’re where the gigs are. Try not to be too much of a dick about it.”

And after about three weeks of frustration and angst, SUDDENLY, I’ve gotten contacted by a good handful of people looking for someone just like me. First was from the Tahoma Choirs in Tacoma. When I was in high school (plus my first year of college), I was in the Tahoma Girls’ Choir. That’s right, folks: Choir Nerd. RIGHT HERE. Heck, I spent all of high school and college in academic choirs, and two years had some TGC thrown in too. Is it any wonder I love Glee?

Anyway, they are sorely in need of a website re-design, particularly one which will make it easier for them to update their website on a regular basis. I am all OVER that. Can anyone say ExpressionEngine?

The next one was from this really nice therapist named David Calof (website over here). His problem is similar to TGC’s: need a new website, need a way to manage it, need it to be easy, plus a few bells and whistles. Helllooooo ExpressionEngine! You know I love you. Let’s make this guy’s life a little easier. I just wrote a super-long proposal today, and sent it off to him. Hopefully he likes my crazy wacky ideas.

And another! A West Seattle Web Designer named Deborah McCarroll in need of a Web Developer to build the sites she makes designs for. Oh! OOH! Pick MEEEE! She seems pretty DAYUM awesome. Matter o’ fact, we’re having our first meeting tomorrow morning, at my favorite West Seattle coffee shop, Coffee To A Tea. Good coffee, great tea, and itty bitty cupcakes. AwwwwYEAH.

And there are a couple more opportunities drifting on the horizon. And it feels good to be busy again, even if I’m a wee bit exhausted at the moment. I realized that when I’m busy and have a lot to do (assuming it’s related to web design and development), I’m ridiculously happy. When I can’t find work is when The Depression hits. I get all bummed out and start considering working at a grocery store, or becoming a bus driver. That’s the downside of freelance work. In between jobs you really have to pound the pavement and try to drum up more work, because the alternative is horrid. Hello Angst! Hello MopeyFace! Hello FeelingsOfDoubt and SelfLoathing! Why don’t we all sit down and feel BAD about ourselves, hmm? Doesn’t that sound like FUN??

So, anyway. I’m alive. I’m working. I’m happy. Summer’s coming, too, which helps enormously. Now if I can just convince myself to start running again….

But first! An exciting announcement (probably more so for me than for you): I’ve started working on a new site design for Watson-Design.com! Eeeee!!

You may be all “so what?”, but trust me, this is a big deal. I’ve been wanting to tackle a new site design since last November. Don’t get me wrong, I really love my current design. It’s so bright and pretty, and really fits my design style. However, it needs some refinement, pizzazz, and polishing.

For one, the column widths are really much to narrow. I became aware of this issue most of all when I started half-heartedly attempting the NaBloPoMo project (writing a blog post a day). I’d write something of a reasonable length (400 - 500 words), post it, and look at the final product on my blog. “Good Lord!” I’d shriek. “It looks like I wrote a freakin’ novel!” Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but 500 words does NOT equal one freakin’ novel. That’s the aesthetic result of shoving 500 words into a column that’s only about 5 inches (or more accurately, 375 pixels) wide.

So, step one is to change the layout a bit, and create something that’s a bit more text- and image-friendly. Step two is to introduce some shiny happy jQuery to provide a snazzier and more enjoyable user experience. I’ve only just recently started fooling around with jQuery (late to the party as usual), and already I ADORE it. Lots of flexibility, freedom, and impressive animation effects. I think we’re going to become good pals, oh yes.

Lastly, there’s a few structural things I’d like to change, like making navigation easier in my portfolio, being able to filter portfolio pieces by tag (logo, poster, business card, etc), and adding category navigation to my blog. Ha, I’m such a nerd! All of this stuff is so exciting to me, I can’t even tell you.

In other geeky news, Emerald City Comicon is fast approaching!

We are a mere 11 days away from one of the biggest, nerdist, and most awesome comic events in Seattle. Am I excited? You bet your sweet bippy I am! Expect a squee-filled “it’s going to be soooo awesome!” post later this week.

That’s all for now! Over ‘n out!

Let me give you a bit of background here. I am a tremendous webcomics nerd. Tremendous. I love webcomics with a passion that is unrivaled even by my great love of the more usual nerdisms, like Futurama, Firefly, and BoingBoing. Sure, I like print comics too, but they’ll never quite compare to the GLORY that is webcomics. What can I say? I, like any good web dev/designer, am a total internet addict. Thus, webcomics are nestled in that perfect niche of adoration and obsession that no web geek can deny.

So, imagine my delight, when yesterday and this morning, the Hourlies Comic Day 2010 forum began filling of with hundreds of entries. Many were truly fantastic, as well as funny, honest, and personable. I thought I ought to share a few of my favorites with you.

Justin Peterson
Joseph Bergin III
Amy L.

John Allison
Adam Cadwell
Lucy Kinsley
Kate Beaton
Meredith Gran (start at the bottom)
John Campbell

Pranas T. Naujokaitis
Box Brown
Ste Hitchen
Joe Hunter
Steff Bomb

Maddi Bradt
Susannah Beckett

This is but a small sampling of the wealth of comics that are to be had at the Hourlies Comic Day 2010 forum. You would be shocked. I was shocked! The sheer volume of posts is impressive and staggering. Aside from the folks I knew, and a couple I had picked at random, I only managed to get through the first 2 pages (of 6) before my clicker-finger got tired. But trust me, there is comic GOLD in those pages. If you’re a fan of the webcomics, I sincerely suggest that you check it out.

November and December were incredibly busy, both in my work and personal lives. It seems that I’d completely forgotten to account for major holidays in my work schedule. What had originally seemed like a leisurely development schedule for a major website project turned into a mad dash to meet my deadline. I had wildly unreasonable ideas, like “oh sure, I can fit in 5 hours of work a day when we’re in California visiting relatives we haven’t seen in two years”, and “I can definitely work 11 hours a day with no consequences”, and “implementing that payment API should only take a couple of days.” Ha! Looking back at my naive and in-denial self, I want to pat her on the head and say “sure you will, sweetie. Sure you will.”

But despite my wacky ideas about super-human productivity, I managed to make it to January without losing my mind. And with a few trophies clutched in my sweaty, deranged fingers!

The first is a print design package for the Bergey Voice Studio in Aberdeen, WA. I’m really thrilled with how beautifully logo turned out, and how well the design adapts to print materials. In another month or so I’ll get to work on the Bergey Voice Studio website, and I can’t wait to get started. Right now there’s just a placeholder page (or there will be once the nameservers finish updating), but stay tuned, there’s more to come soon!

The second is a complete website re-design/overhaul for WatsonPiano.com. WatsonPiano.com is the website of a Tacoma-area piano teacher and accompanist, Robin Watson. And before you ask, yes we’re related, but I like to think that she hired me more for my design and development skills than the fact that we share the same last name. All of the particulars are discussed in the project portfolio page, but aside from the technical details I’m thrilled with the end result of this build. Sure, there are a few bugs (there always are), but overall the transition went incredibly smoothly, and I know that my client is very much enjoying her new website tools.

Oof! What a couple of months. Now that I’ve climbed back on top of my work life, though, I’m hoping to be much more chatty. I have a bunch of new projects on the horizon, and if I can manage to be reasonable in my time expectations, you’ll get to hear all about them as they come along.Wish me luck!

Part of the reason my work buddies were surprised by this news is that I’m not a particularly “dramatic” person IRL (that’s In Real Life, meaning my personality outside of the internet). I can’t handle confrontations in person, which is probably why folks think I’m so nice. Where I truly excel at creating drama is online. Blog comments, e-mails, and tweets are the medium I use to exhibit biting, passive-aggressive behavior. I am the online drama mastah!

Of course, I’m not actually proud of this. Believe it or not, every time I lash out at somebody online I regret it. Sometimes it’s within an hour, sometimes it takes a day or two, but I always feel like a tremendous ass afterwards. Then it’s feelings of guilt and damage control for the next week or so, all the while reminding myself to never, ever be so judgmental again. And that usually works… for anywhere from 3-6 months. Late one night, probably while reading something that’s got my holier-than-thou senses tingling, I attack like an drama-cheetah on steroids, and wham, bam, I do it again. Rinse, repeat.

Last June, a month before my wedding, the bitch-switch flipped again. I laid into a “friend” of mine via e-mail (the air quotes are because I rarely treated this person like a friend). She’d recently gotten married herself, eloped actually, and I’d convinced myself that she was somehow sullying the concept of marriage with how she’d gone about it. I’d been looking down my nose at her for weeks, and a recent blog entry convinced me to express my opinions. I went off, going on and on about how she wasn’t taking marriage seriously, and what the hell was wrong with her, and travesty! shame! horror!, etc. To say that I was a complete and utter dick would be putting it nicely.

She responded as one might expect, saying essentially “what the hell is your problem, bitch” in a very cold and angry tone that was 100% justified. Reading that e-mail was like the slap in the face that I needed. I re-read my e-mail and was completely shocked by the appalling bullshit I’d written. Here I was, leveling judgment after judgment on someone who was only doing what I would be doing a month later: loving someone, and pledging my life to them.

Even though I apologized profusely (which she accepted, shockingly), the audacity of my behavior shook me more deeply than anything else ever has. I felt like the worst scum on the planet, and I was finally aware that my brief moment of self-righteous satisfaction was hurtful, selfish, and never worth the hangover of self-loathing that would color my days afterward.

Sometimes, you need to see the ugliest parts of yourself in such a painful contrast in order to realize that you truly, honestly, want to change.

These days, I still find myself judging people. It happens, it’s natural, and every person I know does it, to one degree or another. The difference now is that how I treat that judgment. Step one is to take notice of what I’m doing. “You’re judging that person,” I say to myself. “You don’t really know anything about them, or what they’re going through, and you’re sitting here, judging them like it’s going out of fashion. Stop it.”

Step two is to stop myself from the usual course of action (leaving a comment, writing an e-mail, etc) with this single question: will my comment help them, or me? If I’m only commenting because I want to lecture, don’t do it. If I’m commenting because it might legitimately help this person, proceed with caution. Be caring and compassionate, not high-and-mighty and “right” (whatever the hell that is).

If I may stand on my soapbox for what I think is a good cause, allow me to say this: If you’re moved to speak out of true concern for this person, show that feeling obviously, out-loud, and right on your sleeve. But keep your judgments to yourself. Judgments hurt two people: you and the person being judged. They don’t always come back to bite you in the ass, but they’ll hurt you regardless.

The same idea can be applied to environmental thinking. So much of what I gained from my last truly epic drama experience was awareness, the awareness that I could be really hurtful to another person. The same is true of sustainability. The first step towards becoming environmentally-minded is to become aware of the impact you’re making on our planet. That awareness can first be achieved by education (reading books, articles, etc), and then by examining your own habits. In fact, the reason we’re in this mess in the first place is due to a global lack of awareness. We act, use resources, and create waste, all without even realizing that we’re impacting our home.

Awareness is the key to bring about the crucial change we so desperately need, and permanently change our way of living. So this weekend, think about your impact, your habits, and consider how what you’re doing may impact the world around you.

After two days of web silence, I’m climbing back in the ol’ bloggin’ saddle, so to speak. I think the break was good for me, helped take a bit of the pressure off. Hell, yesterday I even had the leisure time to watch several episodes of Glee on Hulu.com, which were hilarious. The writing is fantastically funny, and Sue Sylvester cracks me up. Only Jane Lynch could give Sue the right combination of dripping sarcasm and deadpan. Beautiful.

Which brings me to something that’s been bothering me the last few days. Someone told me recently that they thought my blog was boring, too analytical and science-y. “Where’s the wit? Where’s the humor?” Honestly, I don’t particularly disagree with that assessment. That doesn’t mean the comment didn’t sting, because it certainly did (my poor bruised little ego, woe woe woe).

The thing is, while most people who know me would describe me as “funny”, I’ve never been much of humorous blogger. My blog in college was mostly about me and whatever drama arose in my life. Now I’m writing about sustainability, personal responsibility, and the environment. The problem is that sustainability isn’t terribly funny. In fact a lot of the time it’s really, really depressing. I’m trying to write about it calmly, rationally, and instill some hope about an otherwise melancholy topic. My goal is to get my readers to think differently about how they impact the environment, and point them in the right direction if they want to start changing their habits.

In a conversation with my husband last night, I described my passion for environmental sustainability as being “a frantic near-religious fervor, which would rival the convictions of any hard-core evangelical preacher”. The lifestyle project, this blog, and the chance to make a difference is something I take very seriously. I think it’s likely the most important thing I can spend my time on. So it’s difficult for me to think about it humorously.

However, I think my critic has a good point. I need to work on my writing. And so I shall. I’m temporarily postponing NaBloPoMo: partly because I’ve already missed four days, and partly because I’m just not ready to blog daily and have it not suck. I’m still in the middle of data collection for the lifestyle project, which I’ll write about soon.

And now, a quote from Venture Bros. to amuse you.

Dermott: “Yeah, is this gonna suck the whole time or is this, like, the only part that sucks? I just wanna gauge how much suck I’ve gotta friggin sit through.”

I have a confession to make: I am really, really behind. Not just on NaBloPoMo, either. I’m behind on development, behind on e-mails, behind on professional development, behind behind behind. I have a ton to do, and the minutes/hours/days are ticking by without any regard to how well I’ve used them. At the end of the week is a deadline that I think I’m probably not going to make, which means I’ll have to make another deadline-extension. And that’s where the heart of my anxiety stems from.

I hate making excuses. I hate e-mailing a client (total stranger, good friend, family member, whoever) and telling them that I have to push back a deadline. Even if it’s only by a couple of days. It makes me feel like a liar, and a slacker, and a thief. “Yeah, remember when I said we could launch on _____? Well, it’s really going to be a week later than that. Oh, wait, did I say one week? Let’s make it two.” Ugh, I feel all slimy and guilty doing it. I’m pretty sure that come Wednesday, I’ll have to make another deadline adjustment (again, only by a couple of days), and I’m going to feel sick and awful from the minute I start writing that e-mail to the minute that my client replies and says okay.

With my writing/environmental project, I’m also behind, and feeling wildly disappointed in myself. Why? It’s all for fun, right? It’s not terribly important, and it doesn’t really matter. I have a handful of readers (who I LOVE, by the way), and I’m sure they won’t be horribly upset with me when I miss a day.

But here’s the thing: these things I’m stressing out about, they may not much matter to anyone else. But damn it, they matter to ME. They’re important to ME. What drives me in website development, and now this blog isn’t fame and fortune. Hell, I can’t even afford health insurance. One part of it is the hope that if I follow my passions now, eventually I’ll get to do it in a more professionally sustainable way. But the other part of it is that it doesn’t really matter to me if what I’m doing (designing, coding, writing, sustaining) matters to anyone else. It matters to me, and even if I never make a dime off of my efforts, I’m just going to keep on doing it. I can’t help it… this is what I want to do.

I can’t promise I’m always going to be great at it. With this, with my career, there are plenty of times when I’ll downright suck at it. But I’ll keep trying. If there’s one thing I can promise, it’s that I’ll keep trying. I have impossible standards that I’ll probably never be able to meet. But I’ll keep trying.

Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. said “Success is a journey not a destination. The doing is usually more important than the outcome.”

So while I can’t promise (for now) that I’ll stay on schedule in all of my assorted roles, I can promise that I will keep doing. And I hope you’ll stay along for the ride.