It’s all about compromise

May Thu 20 2010

It is coming up to the end of my first week back at work. I’m having a good time. It has been great to meet new people, and I think my team is really lovely. They have been incredibly welcoming and extremely helpful. I’m also enjoying having new challenges in my day. I don’t like it when I don’t know something, but the journey and that feeling when you finally work something out/learn something new is awesome.

Anyway, next week I’m hosting a “team meeting” using Adobe Connect and apparently I need to prepare a 5 minute piece to introduce myself. First things first, I love Connect. I really wanted my team in my previous company to start using it, but for some reason they weren’t so keen. But on the other hand… this task feels like homework! Lol. My manager said “do something quirky”. What on earth is quirky?

I think the problem is that because of my background (in creating interactive learning presentations) I may be overreaching. A 5 minute quirky, online presentation, all about me? Theoretically speaking, there is scope to do SOOO much. I can imagine it now – a bouncy, quirky, not-powerpoint-driven presentation. Practically speaking… unless I do it after hours, it’s going to be a little more bland :)

I realise I need to find a compromise. Any ideas?

Inspiration Wall

May Wed 12 2010

So yesterdays post got me to thinking what I would do with the blank walls in my apartment. Above the desk in our study is a very blank wall… so in what was meant to be a 60 minute sketch, and which turned into about 1.5 hours of “looking for the right photos” time in addition to the 60 minutes…

Those are my cats, Holly Berry (the majority black one on the left) and Karamello (the more white and ginger one). Then it’s a photo of Vincent and I being silly on our engagement shoot (before our wedding). The photographer told us our silhouettes would make a really good photo, so we decided to make shadow puppets. The little inset up the top right hand corner is of the part of the grounds of the Château de Versaille, above which Vincent proposed. The bird and the foliage vectors are what were used on our wedding invitations. The colours used are also the colours I used for my wedding!

There are three quotations. One from James Gleeson, one of my favourite Australian artists. One from the lyrics of the Lifehouse song, “Storm”. And the third is from Martin Luther King Jr.

I did an extremely bad job superimposing this picture onto the wall, but I imagine this is what it would look like.

I could waste hours and hours of my day doing this for each room in my apartment.

HomeIdeasShop dot com

May Tue 11 2010

Today I had grand plans to go out, buy a few last minute things before I start work next week, do my grocery shopping, and make a delicious meal of Chicken Adobo (possibly with garlic rice) for dinner. Yes, that’s right, I’m missing the Philippines :)  Unfortunately after an hour searching for my keys, I discovered Vincent had taken both sets of keys to work with him!

So I’m at home today, watching NCIS, and searching for things to preoccupy myself.

And I found something I thought would be nice to share… HomeIdeasShop.com.

We’re currently renting our apartment and it would be really nice to personalise it. I love floral designs and birds (as may be evident from my current website design now that I come to think about it). The great thing about the wall decals and stickers from homeideashop.com is that they are easy to remove without affecting your paintwork.

I feel like taking photos of all the rooms and walls I think are a little plain and seeing the kinds of combinations I can come up with!!

A slow upgrade

May Sat 08 2010

I’ve started to put together the framework for a more “inclusive” website. Look forward to a wider variety of posts as time progresses!

My shoulder is killing me from all the mouse work (when I use programs such as Photoshop I tend to switch back to the right handed mouse rather than using my left handed Evoluent mouse) so it might be a week or so before I put any new images up on to this website, but I’m sure I can think of a few other things that I have been aching to blog about.

Please note this design has NOT been tested across multiple browsers!!

It looks best in Google Chrome and works passably in Internet Explorer 8. Internet Explorer 7 is a total bomb. Firefox has ceased to work on my laptop for some reason, so I’m unable to test it there – let me know how you go! And I no longer have a copy of Safari or Opera, so if you use either of those browsers your feedback is greatly appreciated.

I’m going to fix bugs slowly. This whole cross-browser thing is no longer an enjoyable challenge, so we’ll see how I go…

Expanding this blogs PoV

May Sun 02 2010

I have been struggling to update this blog, and have decided it’s probably because of the narrow format I’ve given myself to work in. My job has changed significantly and I think I want the opportunity to start writing about work experiences that don’t have pretty designs and funky flash animations!! And I’ve also started to embrace cooking more (something which  few years ago I had absolutely no talent in at all) and am thinking it might be nice to start sharing my experiences.

So I’m thinking about the ways I can improve it – for myself and for you.

It will take a while, but be on the look out for changes!