Monthly Archives: January 2012

January Review

31st January, 2012 on Life, Photography No Comments

I’m going to try and do a monthly review of how I’m going with my resolutions for 2012 to make sure that I’m keeping on track! I won’t bore you with every month (probably), but here’s how I’ve gone in the first month of the year. If you’re struggling with your new year’s resolutions or goals, consider breaking it down into smaller goals and reviewing them regularly to see how you’re going.

1. Re-commit to a maximum of three servings of carbs per week day, or four on weekends - SORT OF

Okay so I haven’t been completely good with this (oh how I love bread, and beer!) but definitely an improvement over the excesses of December. Despite my indiscretions I’ve still managed to lose about 1.5kg, more than I’d planned to lose per month. I have a feeling it’s because of the crazy heat we’ve had – even at night it’s barely dropped below 25 degrees, and we’ve had several 40+ days. It’s like that crazy yoga that you do in intense heat, except instead of yoga all I’m doing is housework and drinking beer (okay, and some pretty intense group fitness sessions). Whatever, it’s working right? I’m going to consider this a sort-of win.

New health/weightloss interim goals: 1) attend Saturday morning boxing class every week; 2) stop drinking beer.

2. Stop buying clothes and accessories; start thinking about a minimalist wardrobe – WIN

I’m actually doing great on Project 333, and thus have not had any reason to buy anything new. It’s really made me think about what makes a good capsule wardrobe, and I think what I’ve picked out actually works really well for me. Obviously I have my ‘cheat’ allowing me to add clothes and things that I make to my wardrobe, but that’s just making more excited about making my own clothes, fulfilling another vague goal of mine. I don’t think I’ll have any issues keeping up with this for the rest of the 3 months, and it will definitely help me make more considered choices for the rest the year.

New Europe/money saving interim goal: Investigate extra forms of income – affiliate programs, photography work, stock website templates etc.

3. Investigate the best and cheapest way to light food photography at home, hopefully without having to buy any new gear - NOT REALLY

I made some half-hearted attempts, but haven’t really come to a positive conclusion in terms of working with lighting. I’ve found that my speedlight bounces light nicely in our courtyard and reasonably well in the kitchen, but on the dining table it just doesn’t look as nice as my regular lamp lighting. I think my post-processing has improved though (Sab’s post-processing tutorials are a huge help), so that’s something.

New photography interim goal: same again – spend more time playing around with lighting options.

So I haven’t stuck completely to my resolutions for the past month, but I’m still making progress overall! How are you going with yours?

Wai-Con 2012

30th January, 2012 on Crafts, Photography 3 Comments

click to see the BIG version

This year I managed to score a media pass to Perth’s anime and gaming convention, Wai-Con! It was a super warm and hectic weekend, but as always at these things I was blown away by the intricate cosplays (that’s costume + play, or dressing up as fictional characters for the uninitiated) and the energy of the event. Now that I’ve had a taste of the perks of having a media pass I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to being a regular con-goer – not having to line up for the cosplay competition and getting one of the best seats in the house was the best!

I struggled a little with stage photography (so many coloured flashing lights!) but managed to get at least one decent photo of every entrant. Perth’s cosplay competition beats every other one that I’ve seen interstate, for one main reason – the MCing of local comedian John Robertson, who even got talked into doing a rather terrifying crossplay.

These One Piece cosplayers were my absolute favourite – besides the great costumes, they stayed in character throughout their interview, made all the more hilarious and bizarre by the fact that John was still in his crazy nun outfit.

I spent the rest of the time wandering around the main hall taking photos, bumming around friends’ art tables, consuming an awful lot of Pocky and doing a few quick photo shoots outside (to be posted here soon).

Big congratulations to all the cosplay competition winners, props to everyone who had the courage to cosplay or step up on stage for the first time, and well done to the organisers for putting together an excellent event!

Photos from around the con on Saturday and Sunday are up on my ChiGarden Facebook page – if you’d like a high resolution version of any of these photos of you, please get in touch and I’ll send them on through.

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Games for Design Geeks

29th January, 2012 on Art & Design, Geekery No Comments

I’ve come across a few of these little online games for design geeks, and can never resist playing them! Here’s a few of my favourites:

Color - a color matching game by Method of Action

Try to match up colours on the colour wheel, for hue, saturation, complimentary, analogous, ternary and quartenery. It times you and gives you a score at the end, which made me panic a little. Surprisingly fun, and extra geek points for being made entirely in HTML5 and having support for colour blindness.

Munsell Hue Test

Arrange color blocks in order of hue from left to right. Definitely not for the color blind (or those with badly calibrated monitors).

Kern Type

Adjust the kerning (spacing between letters) to make the letters as readable and visually appealing as possible. A lot harder than you would think!

Shape Type

Manipulate the bézier curves to fix letter shapes (I was the worst at this one!).

The Rather Difficult Font Game True to its name, this game is rather difficult. Since I work primarily with web, it’s only recently that I’ve been able to use much more than Arial, Verdana and Georgia (all of which did come up in the test), and I’ve actually never heard of a few of these fonts. You can sort of figure some out through a process of elimination though. The game didn’t seem to be working/scoring properly when I tried it, so click through to the mobile version if your score/font numbers aren’t increasing.

Happy playing!

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I want to go to there

28th January, 2012 on Home No Comments

Between the current heat wave (it’s been around 40C all week, and not cooling down much at night), being sick and impending deadlines, this hasn’t been the best week for me. In quiet moments and middle-of-the-night coughing fits, I’ve been flicking through Cabin Porn on Tumblr – page after page of beautiful little places to escape to, even if it’s only in my imagination.

Hope everyone here in Perth is staying cool this weekend!

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Freelance Friday: On being a woman

27th January, 2012 on Freelancing 1 Comment

One question that people ask me (okay, no one has yet, but if they do I’ll direct them here) is “What is it like being a female freelancer, a woman in a male-dominated tech industry?”.

To be honest, from my (limited) personal experience, I don’t think it’s awfully different from being a male freelance web/graphic designer. I don’t feel marginalised, underpaid or intimidated, and I’ve never had any indication that a potential client has decided whether to hire me or not based on my gender. I don’t think I’d win more jobs or get paid more money if I had man-bits. Around half of the clients and people that I work with are female too – intelligent, driven and successful women doing pretty well for themselves in this man’s world.

That said, I do tend to be a bit oblivious to this sort of thing because I was brought up surrounded by tech and never saw any reason why I shouldn’t be as good at things as boys are. I never saw myself as being disadvantaged in any way by being female; if anything, I felt that being good at traditionally male-dominated things just made me more special. I’m also in a country and culture that’s fairly progressive in terms of women’s rights – I wouldn’t have the same opportunities if I wasn’t born into a privileged middle-class life in a Western first-world country, had less encouraging parents, or married a less awesome husband.

I’m interested to hear if anyone has had a different experience – are you like me in never experiencing any real disadvantage to being a woman, freelancing or in a male-dominated industry? Have you ever suspected a client decided whether to work with you or not based more on your gender than your skills or portfolio? If you’re a freelancing mum, how do you balance that with work? Are you ever suckered into doing more chores and errands than is fair because you ‘have more flexibility’ or are ‘always at home anyway’? Any guys out there – what’s your opinion of women starting their own businesses and working in traditionally male-dominated industries?

I have to admit my thoughts on this topic are not particularly well-formed at the moment, but I’d be really really interested in having some discussion around it!

I’m going to try and write a weekly post each Friday about what it’s like to be a freelancer! This is something that I find a lot of people are curious about, and there’s a lot of incorrect assumptions out there. If you have any questions for me on freelancing, leave a comment here or on Formspring.
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