Crimsonietta.net

I’ve mentioned it to a few people, but yesterday I formally agreed to help revamp the K-Meleon site. I’m really excited because this is the first -serious- site I’m going to work on. I mean, yeah, I’ve made, for example, fgRO’s site and Valenti Island’s site, but I feel.. I don’t know. I feel like I’m actually being an asset by doing design for a software site (even if I dislike the software they’re promoting).

Unfortunately, since it seems a significantly more important project, I’m also feeling a little bit more nervous and pressured to make it look nice. Earlier today I pored over the Bible of web design (non-literal) in an attempt to refresh my memory about good organization and navigation. I’m going to start on my rough sketches tomorrow, and hopefully I can get a mockup done by this weekend. I’ll have to take a two-week break due to AP tests and Intel ISEF, but after that I should be back full-time to working on this design and making it amazing. I’m excited! =D Here is my chance to show off a bit of web 2.0 without overdoing it - a challenge indeed.

Approximately three days ago, I was faced with the harsh reality that I should be getting my science fair board made and sent off (seeing as how the deadline for receipt is May 7th, and I’m sending it via UPS Ground). The first piece of software that came to my mind for utilization was Adobe Pagemaker, which I had used extensively in Newspaper Production my sophomore year. It was a bit clumsy at times, but for the most part I was satisfied with the program’s performance. Despite the crappy preview resolution, the lack of support for any non-16-bit colours, and terrible text rendering, I thought I could actually get something done in the outdated program. Unfortunately, when I revisited it, I didn’t find the functionality I was looking for. I torrented a copy of Adobe InDesign CS3, but not only did I hate the UI, I found it extremely complicated. I mean, I’m sure if I actually had the time to sit down and experiment, I would find it an amazing tool, but the fact of the matter was that I needed something easy-to-use yet powerful. Like with Sony Vegas, I felt nothing but frustration when I opened up InDesign.

Little did I know there was a humble little piece of software out there of which I would soon be a huge fan. That little piece of software would be Scribus: an open-source desktop publisher. Used in conjunction with a powerful image editor (I used Adobe Photoshop CS2), Scribus has the ability to do anything. Seriously.

Of course, there were a few items I wasn’t all that happy with. For example, I thought their table formatting tools were terrible. Maybe because I couldn’t even type in more than one cell. Also, border colours aren’t implemented, hitting the arrow keys nudges the selected item a good inch instead of a pixel, holding shift -doesn’t- force straight lines, and text editing was a bit of a pain at times. Despite these shortcomings, however, I truly believe Scribus has the potential to be amazing, not that it isn’t already. I found it incredibly easy to arrange things the way I wanted them, and the conversion over to .pdf was seamless and easier than anything I ever had to do with Pagemaker. The irony in this is that Pagemaker is an Adobe product.

Hello again everyone. This seems to be the 10th or so time I’ve installed Wordpress. I was greatly tempted to install Nucleus CMS instead to see if it could brave the level of abuse my WP installations seem to have attempted to withstand. Alas, it seems Nucleus has nowhere near the level of support and customization that WP seems to have.

Anyways. I’ve decided to take a more organized approach to my blogging endeavors. I’m hoping to put forth a notable effort to start writing about pertinent affairs instead of my daily frolics. For example, shitty operating systems… or scripting languages with overexcessive use of goto… or sites I have to redesign… or podcasts actually worth listening to… and the occasional expression of adoration for Internet memes.

Hope you enjoy the new Crimsonietta. Until later, good morning.