Jai's Laboratory

What’s with all these wild fires? There are 400 wildfires reported in BC earlier this week, and let me tell you, my lungs sure can tell. I cough a lot more, and getting up the 3 flights of stairs to work makes me feel like a 400lb competitive eater after a bacon-eating contest. UGH. It reminds me all the time of the Firestorm I lived through in Kelowna, about 7 years ago. The air was heavy, had a tinge of woodsmoke in it. Now, when I smell the same air, it makes me homesick for Okanagan Lake. Maybe I’ll head back there soon & see the fam.

Work has been awesome, and in the name of science (SCIENCE!) I found a new app that lets me track my work. It’s called IOGraphica and it’s a great little tool. Basically, you set it to record, and then it tracks your house movements, rest points, and clicks. Then it turns it all in to a really great data map that you can do whatever with. I see a lot of long-term potential for this app, not just for professional purposes (see: tracking user behavior when launching new sites), but also for art.

Here, I made one over a day of work, coding a new site at the office (notice the dual monitor):

…and one I made at home while working in Photoshop for a client:

I think it’s interesting that on the first one, it’s all over the map where I click to access the code I need to edit in both windows, and the major clicks are where my browser windows overlap so I can select them. In the second one, since I was only using Photoshop, and Firefox, you can really see where the layers palate is, and where on the canvas I do most of my work. I can also notice where I color with my tablet, just like a real pen, diagonally.

Have an awesome weekend & be excellent to each other!

J

I’ve had the pleasure over the last month or so, to be working with a great talent like Jason Danielson. Aside from being a pretty amazing human being, he is also multi-talented in many different disciplines. An accomplished musician, and nigh-expert coder, he never ceases to amaze me. When I got the call from him that he wanted to work together on a new project he is starting, I of course jumped at the chance.

Jason is building a music website that will function both as a record label for DJs & Producers, but also as a place to purchase new music, templates, stems, and DJ tools to be used in programs like Ableton Live. I think he’s on to something here, since most online resources for DJs tend to not cater to producers who also perform live.
So, the company is called “Swingset Sounds”. It gets it’s name from a bunch of different places, and has various meanings behind it. First off, is the musical inflection. In a swing-set, the drummer hits the ride cymbal with a double-1/4  beat before the 2 & 4 of a 4/4 time bar (If I’ve lost you, don’t worry). You hear it all the time in Jazz, Blues, and Swing tracks.

<<Pictures & more reading after the jump>>

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Happy Friday, everyone. It’s been a long week for me, and it’s going to continue right through the weekend with working on projects. No rest for the wicked. Today I completed some work for a client and am just waiting to hear back from them. The proof was good, and so was the milestone deliverable, so I think things will go over well.
I am almost done designing the site which I mentioned on Tuesday. It’s been slowed down a bit from where I would like to be on it, but working through the weekend should keep me on track.

For reference, I can’t recall where the above image originated. If anyone knows the photographer, please contact me so I can give proper credit where it is due.

JF

So, one of the projects I’ve been hard at work for the last while has been branding and creating a music sales site based out of the Okanagan. The owner and I have come up with a color scheme, and I have a PSD mock-up 70% done. Where I really think I got the nail on the head was here in the logo. I’m not really sure this will be the logo as it is placed on business cards, or even on the letterhead, but it will appear on the site in multiple locations. The Business is called SwingSet Sounds, and deals in DJ tools as well as functioning as an indie record label for artists.
The image above achieves two things right away. It has the flow of a scripted letter S, as well as it is a swing seat, all contorted from the moment that someone leaped from it at the apex of the swing. It’s that one moment where you let go of the only thing you have control over, and you’re feeling like you’re flying. That was the emotion and the energy that the client was looking for, and I think we achieved it.

Today has also been fraught with frustration and lots of head-scratching. I am trying to find a good way to integrate my shadowbox-run portfolio in to this PHP framework. As Wordpress PHP won’t accept the shadowbox script in it’s pages, I am left with recreating the layout on a stand-alone HTML page. Not too bad, but I don’t have a ton of experience with floating properties in CSS, so there have been lots of moments where I am saying to myself “What the heck? Why in the world is that floting way over THERE?? ARGH!” Followed then by a lot of single digit fixes, browser reloads and, of course, more cursing the digital gods.
It IS coming along, tho, so I am going to plug away a bit more on it. As much as I love this work, I want this done so I can focus on other projects. I just want this site to work, and I’ll worry about making it look how I want at a later date.

no time for secret roll-outs when there are updates to be made, and work to be done. Plus, PHP, and Shadowbox can’t be tested on a native hard-drive. they need to be live. *grumble* Maybe it’s time I got MAMP and tried that out.

So much I want to do, so few hours in the day.

Well, there has been a bit of a hiatus. Since I started doing some motion work for the excellent people at Sequence Post, my life has been a complete blizzard. I just completed 2 freelance contracts last week, and got another one to make a friend’s webpage (which I think I’ve already mentioned.)

I’ll update more on this as soon as Jason gets back to me with his next image.

Until then, check out this photoshopping contest over at worth1000.com that @JennyMcBryde tipped to me. Thanks Jenny!

Have a good one!