Prime design / time design

It has taken me until now to finally practice my refreshed web design skills in earnest. I started taking the web designer course at AcademyX in late January, so it's about time!

And the time in this case was the Cesar Chavez holiday, which makes for a welcome early start to the weekend. It also makes up for not having a day off on Columbus Day.

I started this morning on messing with the design for the Rasputin Manifesto site for my own amusement, and had run into some frustration with linking to the style sheet I was trying to create. As Noon approached, I put my work down and went for a swim.

It took until well after dinner for me to finally sit back down and get to it -- there were plenty of distractions to engage me, such as setting up the new external hard drive I bought, transferring and deleting files, laundry, etc. Anything to put off linking this stupid style sheet! Well, once I finally got it linked and got around to adding some IDs, I realized what one of my other problems was earlier in the day -- I was adding the "#" symbol to my div IDs, which explained why none of the formatting was sticking. The "#" symbol (or as our Dreamweaver instructor enjoyed calling it, the "octathorp") belonged on the ID in the style sheet, not the div ID. Got it.

After that I was jammin', until padding in one of my divs started creating more headaches. It was a good run though. It just took the right music to get me going. And the music that made it happen was...

Miles Davis' Get Up With It.

I should have known. Miles' music from the '70s has inspired me in the past. Witness the craziness that my pastels created while listening to Miles' Dark Magus live album during my sophomore year of college:



There's just something in the music, some sort of energy, that puts me in a place to create. It must be Miles himself, for he had the same effect on the musicians who played with him. This is something I know, yet consistently forget.

I cannot forget anymore!

An introduction, part 2

So here's the lowdown on FrontParlourblog:

Most of the posts you will read here will likely revolve around music in some form or another. And when I say music, I mean that in a very broad sense. I enjoy listening to, reading about and writing about everything from the Beatles and Bob Dylan to Prince to Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis and Juliana Hatfield and Slayer... and the list goes on.

I also enjoy playing guitar, and as I am due to start playing in a band workshop next month, I may be posting about those goings on as well.

I am taking a course in web design at AcademyX in San Francisco, and when I start really practicing the skills I am learning in earnest, I may be posting about that here. The site I mentioned in the previous post, the Front Parlour, will receive a makeover in due time to become part of my portfolio.

Whenever I have a piece of writing published somewhere, I will post about that here. Some outlets that have carried my writing include Performer Magazine, the Rasputin Manifesto, the Harbus, Ear Candy, jefitoblog, and even ucsf.edu.

And then there's the miscellaneous stuff... comments on current events, other blogs, all that good stuff... will go here.

As you see in my profile description, I am currently working as an office manager. How exactly I manage to make it work when my brain is going in so many other directions, I can't quite say. My desk is often a mess, and my brain feels that way a lot of the time too. Yet somehow it all comes together. And it must, for this job must feed my passions, as they cannot yet pay their own way. And so it goes for, I presume, at least a million or three other like-minded individuals out there. Raise your hands in solidarity!

So stick around, and think of this place as your own little front parlour, where you can kick back and relax while reading and tuning out. It's good to have you here!