Like I stated in my previous blog post the reason to my absence has been school. I’ve done an extreme amount of studying. I wish I could say I now don’t have to think that much about school for a while but unfortunately I still have tons of school work to do. I need to start working on two final project works and be done with them this month. I have to create a site for my CSS class and make a movie for my Flash class.

This week I made my very first Flash movie ever. Have a look at it here and then praise my excellent movie making skills. I’m expecting an Oscar and worldwide recognition for this work. It’s safe to say this will grant me my own star on Hollywood Walk of Fame. What did you say? You don’t think I’m serious? HELLO did you not watch the movie?! Don’t come here and tell me this isn’t better than Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and every movie Quention Tarantino ever made combined! XD

Oh well, moving on.

I’ve set up a new computer desk setup. I connected my new laptop to a external keyboard, screen, mouse and speakers. This was always the plan since there’s nothing wrong with the accessories from my old computer. Besides, I couldn’t possibly go from using a 20″ screen to a 15″ one.

Speaking of computers. I’ve bought a Wacom tablet. I decided that I needed one not just for fun but also for school. I plan on continuing with computer studies so a Wacom tablet will come in handy. Not to mention how many possibilities this opens up for what I now can do with my site. I’m not good at creating computer graphics. Actually I’ve never really created digital graphics from scratch before I made my Flash movie. Drawing I’m good at though and now I can make drawings on the computer. Awesome! Unfortunately it turned out to be slightly (a lot) harder than I thought it would be. It will take a lot of practice to get the hang of it. The tablet costed me 1700 SEK + 100 SEK shipping (€ 175 + 10) ($ 238 + 14). It was available in two Swedish online shops. In one of them it costed 2000 SEK (€205) ($ 280) and in the other 2100 (€ 216) ($ 294). The last store had discounts for students though so I got it cheaper. You gotta love student discounts. <3

Here’s my desk with the new setup and the Wacom tablet. .

My desk with the Wacom tablet in the front.

Today I decided to do a EFIT which is a photo project in which you take one photo an hour during one day. I haven’t been a member of the project for years but after seeing Maria do a EFIT I felt like doing one as well. So here it is. This is what I did today (yesterday really since it’s 2 AM here right now).

11 AM – Woke up 10:30 AM, started doing the dishes almost immediately.

12 AM – Went shopping with my mum and sisters. At the toy store I saw something that upset me.
So the box for this cleaning wagon is pink with a photo of a girl on it and on top of that the text on the box states “4-Girlz”. I doubt it’s possible to make it more gender specific than this. Good thing teaching girls that household work is their choir from a young age. Cement it into their minds so that one day they’ll make good wives. Allow me to puke. This is not cool. Not cool at all.

1 PM – Standing outside my friends shop waiting for it to open.

2 PM – This is what I bought today: a scarf and shoelaces.

3 PM – Sunshine through my window.

4 PM – Sarah + my not too exciting view.

5 PM – Outside my house waiting for my dad to drop off some stuff. The snow has melted a lot in the past few days.

6 PM – Cleaning.

7 PM – Cooking.

8 PM – The box for my new Wacom tablet.

9 PM – Latte Macchiato with whipped cream.

10 PM – Looking at a video tutorial about my Wacom tablet. It was awful. The instructions were read slooowly and told in such a way it seemed the video was aimed at kids or mentally disabled.

I spent the last two hours of the day browsing E-bay so there’s no photos from the rest of the night. And that’s all folks!

I just thought I’d let you know that no, I’m not dead. My lack of blogging and activity on the blog scene is due to dealing with a lot of school work. Expect me back some time next week.

I am still active on Twitter though. Follow me there if you like: http://twitter.com/cherienoir. Yeah, I made a new account. If you’ve been following my old one (B147CH) please follow my new one instead.

Here’s me earlier today in my parents front yard.

By the way, I got a DeviantArt account. Add me if you’re on there.

It’s weird to think that we know so much about so many things but because of all our technology we’ve forgotten some of the most basic things. Just think about what would happen if we took away all grocery stores. We’d starve because we don’t know how to grow or hunt our food. Or take away all stores selling clothes. Even if some of us knows how to sew there aren’t many who can make the fabrics or the thread.

If there ever was a disaster ending world as we know it people like me – like us – wouldn’t be the one who survived. Tribes in Africa living in huts would stand a greater chance because they already live without technology.

Anyway, moving on to something entirely different, you might wonder why I haven’t blogged in ten days. Actually the reason to that is pretty simple. I just haven’t felt like it. Uninspiration (yeah I know that’s not a real word) stopped by to say hello, killing my muse. She’s back now though, I think. We’ll just have to wait and see.

I miss the pink hair I had back in 2006 but I won’t dye it that colour again. Extreme colours needs so much pre-bleaching that it just ruins my hair.

Speaking of hair colours. After almost two years of dying my hair black I’m getting a bit sick of it. I think black suits me best and I love the colour but I like change. Since I’ve been growing my hair long for almost two years now and plan on growing it even longer I can’t change my hair style so what has to change is the colour. There’s a problem though. My hair is about as dark as it gets so dying it another colour really won’t do much good. My reddish blonde roots will change colour but that’s it. There’s of course bleach but there’s no way in hell I’m doing that to my hair again. That leaves the option to grow out my natural hair colour and then dye it but that would take like three years. Oh well I guess I’ll have to stick with black. Or perhaps I could just buy some clip-in hair extension of a interesting colour and wear once in a while. That way at least part of my hair could be pink again – without bleach.

CSN is short for Centrala studienämnden which translates to National Board of Student Aid. Basically it’s a governmental board which handles student benefits and student loans. I go to college and get money from CSN. Most of the money is a student loan but some of it is student benefits which I don’t have to pay back.

Anyway, I’ve had major problems with my student loan. First I wasn’t getting any money at all, then I got money but would have to pay back part of it and then all of a sudden I find out I get to keep all the extra money I got. I’m not going to go into details about how and why since it’s all very complicated but basically CSN made a mistake and paid me more money than I should have and since the mistake was theirs and not mine I get to keep the money. Of course most of it is loan money which I still have to pay back one day when I’m finished with college but it’s still great since there’s a limit on how much money you can get from them each month and this means that I got a double income for January. It was quite a turn of events after all the trouble I’ve had with them these past months. So, that’s why I love CSN today.

I’m going to save part of my extra money for summer and with the rest I bought a laptop. This one to be exact. Lovely!

So many people in the world live so much harder lives than you and me. So many doesn’t have a home of their own or food on their plates. We should think about that more often and feel lucky, because we are. I need to think about that more often.

Not only do I have the material things. I also have a loving family and the chance to get an education. I’m blessed. In so many ways.

Blood Vial Amphora Pendant

Morbid Spooky Bottle Covers

Can you say COOL AS FUCK?! Now I just need to buy a couple of cheap bottles of wine to put my spooky bottle covers on.

I went to my old job (the thrift store) yesterday. The book section looked chaotic. Whoever’s in charge of it now clearly isn’t as good at organizing things as I am. It was a bit hard to see after spending hours and hours making that section of the store perfect. I had to remind myself that it’s not my problem since I don’t work there any more. Still, it made me kind of sad seeing something I’ve worked so hard with ruined.

Speaking of something entirely different… I’ve reorganized my showcase.

This is what it looked like in December.

Then because of my ever-growing book collection I had to put some books in it. I also removed the glasses since I realized decorating your home with wine glasses doesn’t look that good.

Yesterday when I put even more books in it I reorganized it again to make room for more stuff since I don’t have many places in my apartment to put stuff like this (vases etc).

Lantern, pirate gun replica and vase.

Oil burner, small chest + dragons and bottle.

I’m kind of obsessed with having my entire site validate correctly but why shouldn’t I be? Valid code is like correct spelling. Sure you can read a text that’s badly spelled but it’s probably harder to understand. It’s the same with browsers. Sure they can display invalid code but often it looks kinda funny and not at all how you intended it to look.

What I hate even more than invalid code is code that’s valid but works differently in different browsers. This layout should work fine in all browsers besides maybe the most unusual ones but I think that has more to do with those browsers not being that good than my code. Still, it’s annoying. I remember back in the days when you coded for one browser and put up a disclaimer stating which browser (and resolution) your site should be viewed in. Not very user friendly, but still, easy.

It’s interesting to think about how coding has evolved in the past ten years. When I built my first web page back in 1999 I coded in HTML and didn’t use any CSS whatsoever. My first site was basically two frames. One with a text link menu and one main window for the content. The menu frame had a black and white background with tree branches (a photo I scanned) and the main frame was black. It didn’t look too bad considering what many other sites back then looked like. I’m proud to say that Whirlwind never have contained ugly clipart, dolls or annoying moving GIF images. Besides my celebrity blend phase I’ve always kept it pretty simple, not using too many colours or too much graphics.

I wish I still had my first layout saved but every layout I made up until 2001 were lost years ago. There wasn’t that many of them but still, it would have been cool to be able to look at them.

When did you start web designing and what did your first layout look like?