Monthly Archives: July 2005

Firefly

★ Posted on at 12:10 am ★

Firefly is undoubtedly one of the best scifi series I’ve watched to date. Heh, well, I can hardly call it scifi because it’s more like a western in space. It’s really sad they cancelled the show, and there were only 14 episodes that were made in total.

I’ve heard about all the rave reviews on this series, and since it was only a season’s worth of episodes, I’d thought I’d give it a try. The characters really bring out the show and there’s really good chemistry between all of them. Each of the 9 cast members has a role on the ship and no single role is more important than the other, so everyone gets plenty of screen time together.

Firefly has less restrictions on it, so it’s slightly more violent, graphic (plenty of blood oozing all over the place) and some adult themes. This gives the series a slight unpredictability in the sequence of events, making it all the more fun to watch. Things are never dumbed down too much for the viewer, nor are they made with fairy tale endings. The stories and people are all quite believable and probable, sucking you into the atmostphere even more. Even with so few episodes, you get to know the characters quite a bit, and their history is inserted into the episodes quite seamlessly.

Heh, screwed up my internal clock with this series. It’s been a long while since I’ve had any reason to stay up pass 2am these days. It was only one night, but I usually don’t mind leaving things for the next day, especially when it is warmer to sit in front of the computer to do things. This series is that good.

Just waiting for the film feature Serenity to be shown on cinemas soon. The trailer looked cool and I’m definitely hoping to see more of the characters and plot explored in that movie.

Version 3.0 – Chocolate Orange Mint Edition

★ Posted on at 01:38 pm ★

I got hungry. So decided to just finalise some bits of this current design and let it go live. There might be a few discrepancies, but I’ll fix them as I see them.

Here you have it. Nice minty freshness.

I’ve been working on this design quietly over the last few days since the 8th. Never really thought of doing an overhaul, but when you tinker at it a couple of hours a day, you get a fresh perspective on it the following day when you look at it again.

No pretty girl and flower this time round. Heh, I find that drawing a girl and then digitising her as a banner logo takes up just as much time as doing a whole design template to begin with. No more RED. Heh, needed a new colour scheme and red was starting to be limiting as I could not use a bright red since it’d kill your eyes and drive you away from my site faster than I could pick up visitors. I picked the chocolate orange and green theme as I had some fascination with food that week. Seemed to want to eat everything and my thoughts were focused on food. Since red was no good, and I wanted some other vibrant colour, I stuck to orange. Orange goes with chocolate (well, orange cream anyway) and chocolate goes with mint. So there you have 3 nice colours that complement each other.

Design Issues

Returned to 800 pixel screen width friendliness. It’d fit in that screen res but you really need to have 1280 screen res to read my site comfortably.

Added a livesearch tool on the top right corner. Just type in a word and results will be updated instantly. Something useful for me I guess. There are over 200 posts on this blog already (not all of them useful) and having a search function would help me find things easier.

Okie, so the previous design did not last the 6 months I intended it. First of all, it felt flawed from the very first time I let it go live. There is a clash of design concepts (straight lines and torn edges and shadows) that did not really seem to meld together. I’d like to revisit those concepts again, but only after I figure out how to get them to work, on an individual basis of course.

Then there was the colour issue. The colours work, but maybe it felt too saturated because of the design. Heh, and also cause it’s winter now, and I want to look at something bright and bubbly on a daily basis to keep my cheery.

As usual, the navigation for this site is something I usually leave to the last as an afterthought. It’s not visually pleasing, neither is it clearly visible (bad design on my part) but it will have to do for this design. Am still wanting to do something snazzy with it, probably in the next design though.

Technical Issues

Internet Explorer has some quirks, but overall displays this design more consistently. Opera has a weird bug in rendering CSS and the underlying tiles appear on top instead. Might give a go at fixing it. Heh.

Could discuss all the other technical aspects of this design, but since I’m not really a web designer, and neither does this blog cater to a designer audience, I’ll just skip it.

Constructive comments are welcome. Anyway, need to find food.

Tense

★ Posted on at 09:23 pm ★

Tense…

Doesn’t actually look right when I spell it.

The last few months have been a roller coaster ride. Although there were more lows than highs. They say you can get used to almost anything. Probably have. It’s just odd. Life doesn’t feel as exhilarating, or as scary as it should be. Maybe you just get numb. The feeling I’ve concluded towards having is being tense.

Heh, wonder at times, that my mind is just like an intricate city network. You are travelling to your destination, but an accident upfront may cause a traffic jam a kilometre away and you won’t even know the cause of it. Having no control over things is annoying I guess. Not knowing what is making you lose control is even worse.

It’s been hard to focus lately. Can’t seem to do anything without my mind wandering off to worry about other things that need to be done. Time seems to be rushing by. Try to watch an episode of anything, and I have to shuffle myself off to work. Try to free myself from social commitments to do serious work, and you have the mobile phone and internet to get connected again.

Where to go, what to do. Heh, ask and you shall receive. I said this before I think. Only problem is, I don’t know what I’m supposed to ask anymore. No, I’m not feeling bleak. Just tense.