The Design Blog has Moved

Soo, we've finally finished upgrading to WordPress!

What does this mean?

• You should probably change the URL in your feed reader for http://www.belinkddesign.com/blog/feed/



• I will no longer be posting here; however, I will keep this blog linked to my freelance website design site.
  
  
• I will still continue to read blogs here on Blogspot. I have added their feeds to my Google Reader.

So check it out!

And Announcing: The Cyber Smoothie Cafe!

Are you in the greater Las Vegas area? Looking for a place for a great smoothie, some refreshing boba tea, or just need to surf the internet?

Then The Cyber Smoothie Cafe is just for you!

The owner, Mr. Randy Parker, is a great person all around. Offering many services, from smoothies to great water, to health supplements, this store is everything you expect and more. Back before I started being a full-time freelance designer, I used to take my lunches at the Cyber Smoothie Cafe every day; my personal favorites are the India Smoothie, Arctic Chill, Honeydew Heaven (boba), the Coconut boba, and I love to request chocolate in my Coconut boba (it tastes great!)

The internet is great as well; with other Internet cafes closing their doors, whether or not you have a laptop isn't a problem. There's always at least one computer free when you walk in the door, and the internet itself is fast!

The decor itself is great as well; with fresh, energizing greens and violets, you feel like you've walked into a tropical haven. Art from local artists line the wall, and there's a large, comfy couch for you to plop down in after a long day (while sipping your smoothie!) The lunch menu is great as well; I tried some of the pizza, and it was fantastic!

Incoming Design Changes!

BeLink'd will be getting a redesign!

With this redesign will come new features... Such as this blog will become an archaic symbol of the past, when I needed to have something online as quickly as possible.

Time permitting, this weekend I will begin to finish off BeLinkd's planned upgrade to Wordpress software. This will include a new site design; it will be similar to our current very plain yet elegant trend, but with more features.

Stay tuned!

Why I Become a Designer

Remember when you were a kid in high school, and the counsellor asked you if you had a million dollars, what would you do? Not necessarily with the money, but with your time. Some people said that they would work on cars and were told to be auto mechanics, and some people said that they would play sports or games all the time. I had far too many answers for this question, but in the end, I think I would do several things: work with animals, draw, and continue learning.

Now, web design isn't necessarily an art, but I was pulled into it through art. I remember when I was a little kid, my mother gave me some books to teach me how to read. I wormed my way in and out of these books from the moment they were pushed into my hands, starting with A and moving right into the chapter books that didn't have any pictures. Once I was done with them, I asked my mom, what now? Well, I can't really recall her answer, to be honest, but soon after I began drawing, and writing my own stories.

Over the years, these two things diverged. I still write in my free time of course, but the art grew from drawing and pastels and paints into learning Photoshop, and then Illustrator. When I was twelve, I began to admire how interesting web pages were; I checked a book out of the library, and soon set up my very own web site, complete with in-line JavaScript (which was kind of new in those days), in-line CSS (I don't believe there were external stylesheets at the time, and if there were, they were rare), and a table-based layout (divs? what're those?). A close friend of mine, Maggie, actually helped me set it up - without her and the copy of Photoshop 5.0 that she put into my hands, I don't think I would have headed down this path. Even so, at the time, I couldn't decide what to do with the site; would it showcase my artwork, or would it be centered around my writing, or both? I chose both.

Then I began to realize the crunch on server space. GeoCities only allowed 5 megabytes of hosting space at the time, and as my site grew and expanded, it was using well past that much. A friend of mine offered me a subdomain; I snatched it as fast as I could, and as I began to create my new site to the current standards, I grew and learned more than I ever thought I would - and discovered that I truly did love working with computers and design.

So then, I began my journey to delve deeper into design. I created things for teachers at first - simple sites, easy to make pages that weren't difficult on the eyes. But I wanted to learn more. So I began BeLinkd Design.

I'm not going to post screenshots of my old design. It was elementary, to say the least, and has slowly grown as I have grown more and more experienced. Its fifth makeover, during which I will put it on WordPress just like most of my client sites, is currently in the works right now.

Maybe I'm not necessarily writing or drawing, but I am still doing something I love. I am still, of course, working on an engineering degree right now, with an associate of design alongside that (yes I should focus on just one, but it's difficult!), and I think that I am definitely one of the luckiest people alive to have been given what I needed to spread my wings at such an early age.

What are your stories? How did you begin to do the things that you do now? Do you have any regrets?

The things I love

I love...


...looking outside over my laptop, at the trees in the garden and watching the dogs trotting over the rocks


...the smell of warm, black tea as it perforates my entire room from beside my Mac

...the deep, deep blue of the sky

...the way the song on my iTunes makes me feel

...those special moments of inexplicable happiness, even when things aren't necessarily going superior, but this remarkable feeling washes over you

...the warm water flowing over my tongue, and down my throat, warming my already fluttering chest

...the feeling that life gives as everything finally begins to fall into place


...being here, and alive. :)

WordCamp Las Vegas 2009

Today was the exciting day of none other than WordCamp Las Vegas.

I missed it yesterday due to working on some files that really needed working, but I have been looking forward to this convention for quite some time now, and I hope that next year I am either able to attend the San Francisco convention or attend the full one here in town.

From Twittering to book promotions, this convention was certainly interesting. I can't even begin to go in-depth with all of the great speakers which attended this year; frankly, I think that it was very, very well put-together. The people were very friendly, and the general atmosphere was great.

There was just this quiet buzz; people discussing themes, blogging, and the blogosphere in general. Making a blog into a community was discussed, as well as having your very own personal brand- both of which I am attempting to of course work on :)

WordPress is a platform which I greatly admire. Many of my client sites are built upon it, and I am planning to eventually convert my main site to a WordPress template. I'm certainly looking forward to utilizing the new information and insights I gained today to put BeLinkd further, and to move forward with things.

If you want some direct quotes and general commentary from the morning/afternoon, I did a great amount of Twittering today: http://twitter.com/maidenx

It's Like a Ferrari with a Bad Engine

Surely some people reading this have browsed older cars. Sometimes you'll come across one that looks great on the surface, but once you look under the hood, there's something wrong with it, or it makes a strange noise when you turn the engine on.

I view some sites much the same; they can look great in the browser, but once you open up the hood and view the code, they slowly sink. And by sink, I'm looking at things such as:

• In-line JavaScript or CSS


• Utilizing JavaScript when HTML or CSS could suffice


• Not documenting code.


• Bad naming conventions

In-line JavaScript or CSS is simply bad. It makes your code more difficult to read, and if you are trying to edit something, say change a link for image rollovers or change the color of anchor text, then it can be a damn pain just to edit one element of it.

With this, I notice many sites utilizing JavaScript where HTML/CSS can easily suffice (and what's worse, many of these sites put it all in-line). This can cause compatibility issues with certain browsers, and cause slower, older computers to not even run the script correctly. I have an iBook that I test things on (as I am spoiled with several quality machines), and can't even begin to name how many times sites have caused it to crash because of their extensive use of JavaScript. As a person who strongly believes in accessibility, I'd definitely label this as something which limits it.

Further, not documenting script code is just as bad, especially if you are writing up templates for, say, WordPress, or trying to rearrange divs. I can't name how many headaches I've had while trying to fix sites other people have made, only to be unable to simply because they did not document their code properly.

Along with documenting code, naming conventions are one of the most elementary ways to organize your code. It's very annoying to have to go back and make edits later on, and not know what .omkpc is supposed to stand for, especially if it is handed to another designer.



These four few and easy things make things much easier for many people; not just yourself, but anyone else who may need to go back and make edits to your code.