■December 22, 2009 - The Unforgiver

[Mood:Inscribing] Today I will be talking about a kind of person whom I've encountered several times. I'd say this year alone I've come across three of them. I've come to call this person The Unforgiver. As the name suggests, this person doesn't forgive. Sure, at times when we're emotional we might be unforgiving. It's normal for us human beings. However, The Unforgiver NEVER forgives.

The Unforgiver doesn't have many friends. This is because The Unforgiver has a strict set of guidelines for accepting one's friendship. You see, The Unforgiver is insecure and has allowed himself/herself to get burned by people. I wouldn't say they're afraid of people. More like, The Unforgiver doesn't have much faith in people. They're quick to condemn and burn the bridge.

The Unforgiver can be set off in a rage for an array of different reasons. But each reason revolves around one thing: attention. The Unforgiver requires a specific manner of attention for different things. For example, an Unforgiver might require contact on a regular basis. Or an Unforgiver might require a specific protocol for coordinating an event.

When you have violated The Unforgiver's guidelines for friendship, one of two things will happen:

1. Without any forewarning, The Unforgiver will burn the bridge. You'll be removed/blocked from Facebook (or any other social network) immediately. They won't tell you they did this - they'll leave you to figure it out. Any means of contact will be ignored, or retaliated with a nasty guilt trip.

2. The Unforgiver will erupt into a rage and contact you (never in person, only via phone or Internet) to give you a nasty guilt trip.

What makes both of the above awkward is that they occur very early in the friendship, as early as the period when you're still getting to know him/her and they're not considered a friend yet.

As you probably guessed, The Unforgiver's guilt trip is very unforgiving. There's nothing you can say or do to defend yourself. Facts and reason mean nothing to The Unforgiver at this point. All that matters to him/her is that you are a horrible person!

What makes The Unforgiver's guilt trip different from normal guilt trips is that it is very weird. The Unforgiver will give you strange remarks that do not make any sense. Because, remember, he/she is not a friend yet and you don't know them very well. Since The Unforgiver doesn't have a real reason to be upset at you, instead they use their personal guidelines for a friendship as their reason. They throw it at you like a judge throwing the book!

The outcome of the guilt trip should be obvious: either you or The Unforgiver will burn the bridge. At least this happens early in the friendship, so the ordeal isn't too bad.

So far, because I'm cool like that, I've managed to keep some sort of connection with most of the Unforgivers I've encountered. I'm just the kind of person who believes in keeping bridges. I don't do anything to instigate a friendship (because they're CRAZY), so they're kept at a good distance as an acquaintance.

■November 7, 2009 - FantasyAnime renovations

[Mood:Satisfied] Wow, so it's been forever since I've posted an entry here. Life is good. I actually like my current job. My boss is awesome. The people there feed my ego (lol), which is what I need to get stimulated to work, otherwise I'm a lazy bum. This is exactly what I've been looking for. As you can see by skimming through this blog, I've spent the past several years complaining about my jobs and the industry. Now everything is great. The proof is here by me not posting a blog entry in months; I haven't felt the need to complain about anything.

My social life is active as it always is; lots of parties and going out to bars/clubs. I'm still updating my FantasyAnime. I even have a shrine coming along the way! And speaking of updates...

As I'm sure you know, my FantasyAnime is gigantic. There are literally several hundred pages. The challenge with having such a large website by myself means only a portion of it is updated with my current level of web design skills. So every now and then I pick a random old page and remodel it. Here's an example (shown toward the right): I recently remodeled my SaGa Frontier Main Characters page. The left side is the ooold version, and the right side is the new version. Big difference, huh? Notice all the text is HTML text. It doesn't make the page look as fancy as it could be if I created graphic text in Photoshop, but the HTML text is important, and I'll tell you why. Quite a large chunk of my site's visitors come from people in other countries using a translator. The HTML text allows everything to be in their language. Here, check out the image toward the right. I passed the page through Google's Chinese translator. I don't know about you, but *I* think that's awesome! :) I love it how it retains most of my styling (like the title).

■May 20, 2009 - US Army & Sega.com loves FantasyAnime!

[Mood:Proud] I've been showered with praise lately! Firstly, you should know that I assist a handful of people each week via e-mail with any questions they have in reference to RPGs and emulation. One person I happened to be helping was in the army, and stationed in Afghanistan of all places. He was stuck and couldn't figure out how to play SNES games with ZSNES. After assisting him, he sent me this:

Thank you so much for your help! My buddies and I are stuck in Afghanistan for the next year or so, without a whole lot of entertainment. With the info you just gave me, we now have probably several months worth of games to keep us busy. Thank you again.

So now him and his army buddies can enjoy the wonders of classic gaming in their spare time thanks to me. ^_^ I feel great! I've done my part to help our soldiers.

The second plug was from SEGA! Yes, SEGA.COM! Sega Blog writer "Edward" was blogging about Shining Force I & II for the release of the "Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection". He plugged my FantasyAnime as a fan site reference for people. This was the plug (click it to view the page):

Cool, huh?!? =D  I am so flattered.

■May 5, 2009 - I'm (dramatically) hired!

[Mood:Persistent] So on March 27th I typed up like two pages all about a potential job at a big-time ad agency and my 'accidental' scheme to get me in. Well, I typed up all of that for nothing! They never called me back. However, Lady Luck smiled upon me recently! With a BIG smile! And I think she even blew me a kiss! Here's what happened...

Two weeks ago I got called for interview by two different potential employers on the same week. These potential employers include:

• Job #1, "The Hotels Company"
This job is web designer for an international hotel company. They own luxurious all-inclusive high class hotels in Mexico. This company is big money!

• Job #2, "The Ad Agency"
Yes! Yes yes!! Finally! My dream come true! I've always wanted an ad agency job, and here's one knocking on my door!

But which job did I end up choosing? Which one indeed. I surprised myself with the final decision. First I will discuss the job interviews.

Job #1 The Hotels Company interviewed me twice! They really liked me. I met with my potential boss in the first interview and one of the owners of the company in the second interview. The first interview began with the potential boss saying "From looking at your portfolio I know what you can do. The purpose of this interview is to see if we connect." And we ended up having an involved conversation for nearly two hours! What I liked most about this job so far was that it was SO CLOSE! It's been YEARS since I've had a job so close to my house!! It's just a 10-15 minute drive!

Job #2 The Ad Agency interviewed me once. I kind of rushed to the interview and totally forgot to bring a copy of my resume AND to make sure my laptop was fully charged. But it ended up okay, because he already had a copy of my resume, and we went into a room with a computer so I can show him digital samples of my work. At first I was hesitant with this job because the job ad suggested this was more of a web development position. At the interview he seemed to change his mind and favor my abilities with Adobe Flash. Towards the end I met with one of the owners of the company. And she favored my abilities with 3D! The guy concluded the interview by saying "I think your work is outstanding." However, this place was 45-50 minutes away. :( The next week (last week) was the dramatic week of salary negotiation...

So the next week (last week), Job #1 the Hotels Company was the first to call back. They wanted to hire me! The salary they offered was around $10k more than my previous salary!! Hellz yeah! After discussing this news with my family, I went ahead and told them YES. The next day Job #2 the Ad Agency called me back! And, get this... they wanted to hire me!! I'm like "...shit!", but I already said Yes to Job #1. As for salary, they were offering a measly $1k more than my previous salary. I told them I was given an offer from another company, offering around $10k more. They said they would discuss it and call me back. And then I re-calculated Job #1's offered salary and realized I made an error. They were in fact offering $5k more than my previous salary, not $10k more. Eventually, Job #2 called back and stated that they cannot match $10k more, but can give $5k more. WOAH! Not known to them was the fact that Job #1 was also giving me the same amount. So BOTH JOBS were offering the same high salary!! WOW. This was intense! So which job did I choose...? Such tight competition for my talents!

I discussed the scenario with my entire family. I made a list of the pro's and con's:

>> AD AGENCY JOB
PROS:
• Better experience with a variety of projects
CONS:
• Commute is 45-60 min away
• Longer hours, less time off
• Company is smaller; local

>> HOTELS JOB
PROS:
• Commute is short! It's 10-15 min
   away
• More time off
• Company is international; bigger
CONS:
• Experience is fixed to a handful of websites

*Salary at both jobs is the same, as well as benefits

And after such a PROS/CONS list, it became obvious to me which one to choose. As much as I wanted to work for an ad agency, the benefits of Job #1 were more promising. I especially considered the fact that we're in a recession. This is the time to look for being with a stable company. Plus the short commute will save me a great deal of gas money! But the one thing that most definitely made me decide to choose Job #1 was something my father told me: "Alex, you want to produce great things - but on your own time." In other words, he's talking about my FantasyAnime. While it is true that I've 'dreamed' to work for an ad agency, I've also mentioned many times in this blog that the thing I value most in this world is time. Time to work on my Fantasyanime, time to go out and have fun with friends, time to work on my art projects... time to LIVE. I agreed with my father. At this time I don't think I'm ready for the pressure and long hours of working for an ad agency. Besides, with my (apparently fantastic) portfolio, I can try for an ad agency again later in the future. So I chose Job #1.

It's been three days working at Job #1. My thoughts? It's cool. It's easy. I LOVE LOVE LOOOOVE driving only 15 minutes to get there. Wow. You have no idea! I've been driving to work for nearly an hour back and forth for three freakin years. I HATE TRAFFIC. Again, I HATE TRAFFIC. South Florida is so damn over-crowded! Anyway, so yeah, I'm very grateful for the short commute.

And that concludes my job searching venture! I was unemployed for only 4 months. My job search ended with my first two (real) job interviews wanting to hire me and offer a great salary. This proves a statement I made months ago "So you hear about recession proof jobs? Hell, *I'M* recession proof!" - RAWR!

■April 13, 2009 - FantasyAnime was hacked...

[Mood:Pissed] Well, it finally happened! My beloved, delicate FantasyAnime was a victim of website hackers last month. I don't know how the hell it happened. Before this attack, I was completely unaware of website hacking and had no previous experience whatsoever to help me. I was totally caught off guard. Articles stated that websites get hacked in of three ways:

1. They infiltrate any old scripts on a website. I.e. Any old message boards or online albums.
2. If the webmaster connects to the website via regular FTP.
3. If the webmaster has a trojan on their computer that records the username/password when the webmaster connects to their website.

I was a potential victim of all of those methods! :( So the hacker infiltrated my entire website. It was a bot that was programmed to scan my entire FTP (FYI, I have 3 websites, and it got them all) and add a batch of code to EVERY index page. Basically, what they do is add a very tiny iframe (inline frame) that opens a door to another website. A website that uses a Javascript to invade your computer to load a trojan virus.

My FantasyAnime had this virus for around three days. The sequence of events was like this:

>> DAY 1
My message board stopped functioning due to a strange error. I brought this error to the attention of phpBB Support.

>> DAY 2
phpBB Support said my message board has a virus. I spent the rest of the day struggling to figure out how to fix the message board.

>> DAY 3
I discovered that it wasn't my message board that was hacked... it was my ENTIRE website that was hacked! I freaked out, panicked... the whole package. I immediately Googled article after article to learn as much as I can about what happened to me. I notified my web host about it, too. Eventually, I learned what to do and removed the virus from my site. To do so was to simply re-upload all of my index files. I changed all my passwords. I switched to connect to my site using SFTP (secure FTP) instead of regular FTP.

>> DAY 4
Reinstalled the message board and fixed any loose ends I missed.

My FantasyAnime attracts on average around 4,000 visitors each day. I probably gave around 10,000 people a virus. :( But now that I am aware of the existence of website hacking and prevention, I'm confident this won't happen again.

■March 27, 2009 - Fighting for a great job!

[Mood:Persistent] For the first time in my job search, a prestigious ad agency puts up a job ad for a web designer. In addition to that, I'm PERFECT for it; I meet all of their requirements. This company is called Zimmerman Advertising. Their job ad came up on Tuesday and I applied for it on the same day (since I obsessively check CareerBuilder.com). On Wednesday (or Thursday?) I called to ask if I was considered for interview. The secretary said they're still reviewing resumes and they'll call me if I was considered. In other words, calling and asking to speak to the hiring manager isn't an option.

»Plan A
In an effort to find a way to help improve my odds of getting hired, I spoke with my experienced HR friends for advice. One in particular, named Mariano, was the most helpful. You see, he used to be an HR manager. I told him that I was considering to come to Zimmerman Advertising in person and hand my resume to HR in person. He replied he had a better idea. He said it's more effective to get the e-mail address of the decision maker behind the job. He also offered to do it for me! And so he did! He called Zimmerman Advertising and to the best of his ability went through with his plan. Well, it didn't work. The secretary was strict with upholding the company's standards (it's a large corporation). Hence, their HR department is paperless and any such attempts to submit a resume other than the official way is not an option.

»Plan B
Yes, I have a second plan. And this plan isn't deceitful at all! It's actually quite valid. I found TWO problems with their job site. Firstly, I will brief you how this job site works. This is a large company so they have their own website to post their open jobs and accept resumes. Just like any regular job site, they make you fill out a form to create your resume in their standard. My issues are with this form.

Problem #1
Their job ad asks that you submit work samples. YOU CAN'T! The online form doesn't have a Comments field to allow that. This is very important because their form to create a resume doesn't have a place where you can put a web address. What's messed up is that if you choose to edit an existing resume, it ADDS a Comments field! Which is very unusual because the Comments field is definitely not present when you choose to create a new resume. Just in case I'm not crazy, I went through the whole resume process a second time, and the Comments field is indeed not present.

Problem #2
Their online form starts by asking you to submit a text, Word or PDF resume so that it can attempt to read it and fill in fields for you. And then it converts your resume to text-only and keeps a copy of it. I'm hardcore and I already have a text-only resume prepared for job sites like this. At the end when you've filled out all the fields, it shows everything for your review before final submission. This is where Problem #2 is found. Their job site outputs my text-only resume by breaking all my soft returns, resulting in everything being jumbled up into paragraphs! What's screwed up is that I DIDN'T use soft returns!! Their resume--to--text-only conversion reads a line under a line as a soft-returned sentence and pulls them together as a single sentence. Instances where I used a double space (pressed Enter twice) are preserved. HOWEVER, if I choose to edit this screwed up resume, it DISPLAYS FINE! WTF? This confuses me. I don't know how my submitted resume will output to the person who will review the resumes; if it will (1) output in the messed up web version, or (2) output the perfect version seen in Edit mode.

So those are the two problems. Since their online form doesn't ask for work experience, I am assuming that is why they keep a copy of the submitted resume, so the person reviewing the resumes can refer to that for work experience. The important thing to note is that is *DO* have a link to my portfolio website in my text-only resume. But because of Problem #2, if my text resume is jumbled into clunky paragraphs and the decision-maker is too lazy to read through all of it - then the person reviewing the resumes is going to miss it. My portfolio website is KEY. That's where all my work samples are! That's what will make my resume stand out from everyone else! The person reading through my resume MUST KNOW I have a portfolio website! And because of Problem #1, I am ROBBED of my right to emphasize my portfolio website in a Comments field.

PLAN B is my attempt to bring these two problems to the attention of Zimmerman Advertising. I called them today to do this and the secretary transferred me to the web guy. He wasn't available and I left a voice mail. If this guy doesn't call me back, then I will call again on Monday. My hope is that by voicing out these problems my resume might get a spotlight. If not, my second hope is that this web guy will allow me to re-submit my resume with my portfolio website in the Comments field.

The mystery that haunts me is wondering how other people are submitting their work samples. As it stands now, the text/Word/PDF resume submission is the only way for extra comments to be thrown into the resume. It *IS* possible to submit a resume to them with the Comments field, but to do that you need to have already created a resume on their site before visiting the job ad AND have chosen to EDIT the resume, which is the ONLY way to view the hidden Comments field. Considering these variables, it must be a nightmare for the person reviewing the resumes to do so. Everyone's text-converted resumes will be converted to jumbled paragraphs. The only organized and easy-to-read information will be the information entered in the form fields (reminder: these form fields don't ask for work experience).

The following is the sentence on the job ad that asks for samples:

Please submit your detailed portfolios/samples in a true .pdf format (not scanned) or provide links to your work.

Considering the two problems I found, let's analyze this sentence. "Not scanned" means they need a PDF resume that contains text. This comment isn't necessary because on their job site it specifies that; in addition to saying that they also accept Word and text-only formats. The second part "or provide links to your work" - you can't! Unless someone already has a habit of putting a link to their portfolio site in their resume.

The web guy might hit me with this argument: "So you're telling me no one can submit links to their work? That's not true. People can put links in their resume. You can even edit the resume field in the end to include them." While that is true, IT'S NOT CLEAR! And doing so is UNORGANIZED. THIS IS 2009 FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!! EVERY DESIGNER HAS A WEBSITE! Their online form doesn't have a field for a website, nor do they have a 'special' field like a Comments field to give you the freedom to put whatever you want.

And this web guy better not give me the web browser argument and put the blame on Firefox for displaying the text resume with all the soft returns broken. Please, everyone uses Firefox these days. If there's a problem with viewing the site on Firefox then he needs to correct it.

Anyway, out of curiousity I decided to check how much I'm supposed to be making. Salary.com is a little confusing by offering profiles for two different web design positions: "Web Designer" and "Designer II - Web", which is the same thing. (Naturally, I'm disregarding "Designer I - Web" because I'm beyond being a beginner.) On average, Salary.com states that my salary should be somewhere in the $50-$60k range. My previous two jobs had me in the $40-$50k range. So since I've had two jobs in that range, it's time for me to graduate to the $50-$60k range!! I need more money! I want to get rid of my debt and obtain a master's degree in design.

■March 26, 2009 - What I gained from video games

[Mood:In thought] Do you think you've gained something from your passionate interests as you grew up? I do think I gained some special things from video games. Most particularly RPGs.

In the 8-bit days when NES was all the rage, video games were the hottest toy. Playing fun games and anticipating new games was incredibly exciting for me. Only the excitement of a theme park could compare (and I looooove theme parks and rides). In other words, video games at the time were one of the reasons that made me really happy to be alive.

In the 16-bit days when I was depressed/anti-social, mega hit RPGs like Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger were some of my good friends. Their superb stories and enthralling gameplay took me away from reality to a beautiful world. RPGs made me a fan of fantasy and magic for life. They influenced my growing artistic abilities, inducing me to draw fantasy comics and theme most of my art-related projects to fantasy.

In the 32-bit era, RPGs and my genuine interest to share my happiness pushed me to pursue web design. Hence, FantasyAnime was born. At this time, the PSX allowed for RPG music to sound a lot more like real orchestrated music. As Squaresoft churned out masterpiece after masterpiece for the PSX, the soundtracks of these games influenced me to expand my musical interest to real orchestrated music.

In the present, my continued effort to maintain FantasyAnime made me an expert in web design and design software. Ultimately, I can say video games determined my career.

■March 20, 2009 - Screw the recession!

(Note to new readers: I do web design for a living and I got laid off in January due to the recession.)

[Mood:Eager] Everyone's talking about the recession. A couple friends have lost their jobs and some know for sure that eventually their position will be dissolved. There's talk that things will only get worse. Blah blah blah. You know what? I'm over the recession. My "fear" of it barely lasted a month. As a matter of fact, I'm confident enough to say that I'm ABOVE the recession. I'm RECESSION PROOF. Why? Because I'm da shit! I was a successful college student who graduated with honors. I know so many different mainstream design software inside and out. Unlike most web designers, I know HTML/CSS by heart and I go pretty far into the realm of web development. And another thing I've found out recently is that a lot of web designers use a pre-made template for the portfolio website. HA! My portfolio website is 100% original! To top it off, I'm passionate about web design. My Fantasyanime.com is vivid proof of my immense love for it. I remember back in college when I was taking web design courses, I was shocked to learn I was the only person in my classes with a personal website. I assumed everyone interested in web design had their own website. So for all these reasons and more, my background puts my skills and knowledge in web design at an above average level. Hence, I re-state I am ABOVE the recession. I'll find a job soon enough.

One day I read an article on Career Builder that stated web design is one of the fields that's secure during this recession. I'm inclined to believe that! For the past two years web design declined into a hole. There was maybe... one or two new web design jobs popping up every month on Career Builder and Monster. Things have approved! Now there are maybe 2-5 new web design jobs coming up every week. In addition that, Craig's List has become a better resource for web design jobs. In the past it was a complete waste of time! I suppose penny pinching mainstream companies are leaning more on Craig's List during this recession since it's free.

Anyway, I'm still truckin. I'm being very persistent during my job search and checking all my resources. So far this is my stats...

Jobs applied to so far: 30 (rough estimate)
Interviews: 0

Now now hold on, there are more details to my job search that can't be stated so easily above.

- I'm signed up with several staffing agencies. Staffing agencies require an interview before they enter you in their system and offer you jobs. I did an interview with another staffing agency a while ago. They offered me two jobs, but they were temporary jobs so I passed them down. Plus they were far. I'm looking for permanent placement!

- I received 1 callback. A job I applied to last Fall is looking for a web designer again. I received a callback from these people after I applied to the new job ad. During the call I pointed out that I was interviewed at this company before. She said she would contact the person who interviewed me and give me a call back. She never did. Three days later I called her back (which wasn't easy because she never gave me her contact information). She wasn't available; I left a voice mail. She called back an hour later and told me the woman who interviewed me still believes I'm not an ideal candidate for the job. No reason was given. My closest guess is that they were looking for someone stronger with graphic design. Although I know everything about graphic design and can perform it very well (better than most people), I don't have any strong graphic design samples to show for it in my portfolio. :\

- Around two months ago I actually got hired somewhere! But quit it after two days. It was a false job--let me explain. I found this job on Craig's List (not a high quality resource) for web design for a safes company. From the job ad and the job interview, it REALLY sounded like a web DESIGN job. After a day working there I quickly realized that it wasn't a web design job. What she actually wanted me to do was tedious research for the website. She also wanted me to assist in sales, pick up the phone, do paperwork, etc. WHAT?! In other words, this was a secretarial job. She called it web design because the work was related to the website, not with the website. Plus the salary wasn't that great and there were no benefits; this was a small company. Forget that! These are the kind of jobs that fueled me to get a college degree so I don't have to do this kind of grunt work. I'm a designer and my passion is with designing. All this confusion happened because the lady who hired me has done research on what entails web design, but she did not do proper research and it gave her a wrong understanding of it.

■February 25, 2009 - The net's emotional learning curve

[Mood:In thought] I have a theory. I believe the internet has an emotional learning curve. Or more specifically, the rate at which someone learns not to take the internet so seriously. I believe when people first get the internet and partake in text conversation (e-mails, IM's, forums, Myspace, Facebook, etc. - or even cell phone texting), it's easy for them to misunderstand others. And when that happens, since we're human, our initial reaction is to view the misunderstanding as something negative and take offense to it. The misunderstandings occur because it's a totally different world to interpret people in text conversation, which is conversation without looking at peoples' facial expressions and body language. Another variable that creates misunderstandings is that everyone writes differently. Things get more complicated when people interact with others from different environments (i.e. a city person talking to a town person) and different countries, where culture and mentalities are different.

As people continue to use the internet they eventually learn not to take text conversation so seriously, in order to prevent continued misery from misunderstandings. The rate at which people learn this varies. Some people learn it quickly, while for others it takes longer. Or some people might learn it partially and under certain circumstances they easily fall victim to misunderstandings. I've also observed that older people have more trouble learning this than younger people, since they haven't grown up with computers.

In rare cases, people may NEVER learn this; these are the kind of people who shouldn't be on the internet. I'm inclined to believe that people who do not learn this are genuine assholes who WANT to misunderstand people so they can call them an asshole and bring them misery. (Hence the 'angry at the world' picture.)

■February 24, 2009 - Final Fantasy IX blog: Part 2

[Mood:Dedicated] I'm still trudging away with the Final Fantasy IX shrine! It's almost done. :) Here's some more blogged progress to show you the work I'm putting into it.

• THE MAIN PAGE TRAILER
A recent thing I like to do with my shrines is to put a fast-loading 1-2 MB intro movie on the main page to immediately introduce the given RPG to curious surfers. Naturally, I'm doing one for the Final Fantasy IX shrine. At first I thought of just putting the game's original opening movie. Then I thought it would be more interesting to replace the movie's song with the beautiful remake from the 2002.20.02 Final Fantasy concert. Then I thought it would be more interesting to replace the less interesting parts of the movie with more exciting CGI scenes from the game. I put all of this together in Adobe After Effects (as shown in the thumbnail toward the upper right).

When I finished my new and improved opening movie, the next step was to convert it to Flash video and throw it into a Flash document with a preloader script. The thumbnail toward the left displays the Flash document; in the Actions panel the first half of the preloader script is showing. The thumbnail toward the right displays the Flash scene which plays the opening movie. Oh, and I also bordered the movie with a green "grunge" border (made in Photoshop) to make it look more organic and dirty.

• STYLING THE SCREEN SHOTS
When it comes to showing people hundreds of large screen shots, I prefer to toss them into a web application (CMS) that generates an online album for me. The one I like to use is called Coppermine Photo Gallery. The cool thing about web applications is that with just a few clicks you can apply a different "theme" and it completely changes how everything looks. Now, the only drawback with Coppermine is that it has a limited amount of good design themes. It's difficult for me to make a custom theme from scratch. A much easier thing for me to do is to edit an existing theme. Web applications are a MESS of complex code! To save myself from a headache, I use Firefox and a plug-in called Firebug (shown toward the right). Firebug is an incredible plug-in that lets you simply hover over any part of a web page and it will show the HTML and CSS that builds it up. Doing so makes it much easier to find the code I want to make edits to. In this case, I'm changing around the color scheme from a gray-ish palette to a pale green palette. I am not perfect with picking colors, so what I always use to assist me in color scheming is a program called Color Schemer Studio (shown toward the right). The best part of this program is that it lets me pick any color on the screen and color scheme it!

• CREATING THE FLASH NAVIGATION
I created the Flash navigation using programming...! Or Flash Actionscript 2.0 to be exact. Check out the screen shot toward the right. The original document (behind the overlaying window) has "Asdfjkl;" all over it. That's just placeholder text I put. Notice the navigation in the overlaying window has all the proper button names "About the Game, Characters, etc.", because I'm controlling the buttons entirely with Actionscript. Notice the timeline (towards the top) says "onstate" and "offstate". That's the animation that plays when you hover over a button and when the mouse hovers away from the button.

But wait there's more! I wanted to spice up the logo by adding a 3D model of the crystal globe thingy behind the Final Fantasy IX logo, and animate too. I did so in Swift 3D, the program that makes it easy to add 3D to Flash. I didn't bother making it too detailed because it would be small. Check out the screen shot toward the right to see my Swift 3D workspace. Cool huh? As I anticipated, it made my FF9 navigation come out much better.

■February 2, 2009 - Final Fantasy IX blog: Part 1

[Mood:Dedicated] So one of the things I am doing to pass the time during my unemployment is my project to create a Final Fantasy IX shrine. The following is my blog for the creation of the global template that will be used to decorate the entire shrine. I want you guys to know the detail and passion I put into my shrines. I've prepared a series of screen shots to illustrate my progress.

• PHASE 1
Kind of like the Star Ocean shrine, I'm going to have a global border around every page. Different pages will have different decorative backgrounds within the border. This so called border will be based on the image shown toward the right. Yep, I'm recreating the pillars in that screen shot; in Maya. My next step will be to recreate the top of the pillars. My Final Fantasy IX shrine will be the first that I'm creating a 3D model for a shrine's design.

• PHASE 2
This is the initial 3D rendering of the columns (shown toward the right). The 3D work is done. Next step is Photoshop! I need to stain it with darks and lights to give it more depth, gloss, and a ruggedly feel. Then I need to perform some Photoshop surgery and break apart this image in such a way that it can stretch vertically infinitely with HTML/CSS. The shrine's navigation will be on the floor below the columns.

• PHASE 3
I finished staining them in Photoshop. This is a After & Before comparison (shown toward the right). Next step is chopping it up and integrating them into HTML/CSS. I already have a plan for that, too (shown toward the left).

• PHASE 4
My 3D pillar rendering has been successfully implemented into HTML/CSS. (Image towards right) This is how sex looks like in CSS, heheh. I have several DIV's (the backbone of CSS) putting together my Final Fantasy IX 3D columns that stretch infinitely vertically. One sets the background color, five insert the different images, and one controls the text within it.

The inner spread repeats infinitely and the railing on the footer stretches up to 1920-pixels in width - so people up to 1920x1200 resolution will see the shrine as it should look. The background between the pillars is swappable with anything else. In addition, my code passed the compatibility test between IE/Firefox/Opera.

I made sure to only give a Width variable to the DIV containing the text. If I gave a Width variable to anything else, the page will stretch past 1024-pixel width and then people would have to scroll right to view the whole page. So even though my pillar images are pretty large, even people on 800x600 resolution will not run into the problem with having to scroll right to view the whole page.

Under cases where people's browser height exceed my page, it's set with a pale green background color. If you look closely at my footer image, there's a gradient there so that it doesn't look so weird when the footer blends into the pale green background color. Yep, so when I said it'll look good on resolutions up to 1920x1200 - I meant it!

■January 6, 2009 - The bad economy slapped me!

[Mood:Uneasy] Monday (yesterday) morning I come into work. It's a normal morning. I come in a little late around 9:10 AM, as usual. I greet the copywriter who sits across from me, who came in from a 2-week vacation. He briefly told me about his trip. My supervisor comes in even more late than me around 9:15-9:30 AM, as usual. The graphic designer comes in around 9:45-10 AM, as usual. It's a typical quiet Monday morning. I begin a 40-hour rendering of a video I edited in Adobe After Effect from last week. I spent most of the morning shuffling through my many e-mails and organizing my tasks for the week. Yep, a normal Monday morning. Around 10:30 AM I head to the toilet for my usual 10-minute morning poop. (Yes, my body clock has me on the can every morning. Hey, my body has a good flow of fiber okay.)

At 10:50 AM my supervisor comes to my desk and asks me to follow him. We were heading to the warehouse so my initial thought was that maybe he wanted to do something extra for all the video work we did in the warehouse last week. But then we took a turn into the HR lady's office. My supervisor closes the door behind us as we walk in. My curiosity is aroused as to why the privacy is necessary. At this point the only thought running through my head is "...are they going to fire me? No, they wouldn't. Would they?" We all sit down. The HR lady begins by telling me how the company isn't doing so well. My supervisor adds to the conversation with some light sarcasm, like "Remember how we were in the warehouse last week and it was fully stocked with products that should be selling?" The HR lady proceeds by saying that they're letting me go. I'm hit by a plethora of emotions: shocked, sad, excited, happy, nervous, scared... but in general I am indifferent since my body can't settle on a single emotion. She proceeded by saying the company is laying off many people, especially in their California location. She added that they intended to lay off people two months ago, but they wanted to make sure everyone had a happy holiday season (a lie, I doubt they care). My memory is a blur as to the rest of the stuff the HR lady and my supervisor said in an effort to explain this and comfort me. It was a blur until the HR lady offered a referral to two staffing agencies she knows of. At this point reality hit me and my persistent drive to find the next job was set in full motion. I immediately responded to her with a "Yes, please refer me to those staffing agencies. I would appreciate any help you can give me." I was then presented with my severance package. The amount was just a little more than my usual paycheck. :\ It pointed out that my insurance benefits would end at midnight tonight. Goodness, that's quick! Gee thanks. The meeting was concluded by her saying that I can go home and I will get paid for the rest of the day.

So I went back to my desk. From the way she worded it, it sounded like it was an option to go home early. I thought I would stay for a little while to finalize my projects and inform the graphic designer and my supervisor where all my files are (what I have always done when I left my jobs). I thought wrong. The HR lady was quick to come to my desk with a box for my things and denied me access to my computer. They were giving me the boot! Around 11:10 AM I was out the door and on my way home. So within 20 minutes I was given the news and kicked out. Yeah, just like that.

At home I spent the rest of the day performing my unemployment protocols. I updated all my resumes and my profiles across job sites I'm signed up with. I updated my profiles with the design staffing agencies I'm signed up with. I especially updated my portfolio website. Across all these sites, including government sites, there was nothing. :( No jobs I could apply to.

Something eventually hit me. If this job intended to lay me off earlier, then that would mean I helped them find a replacement. Because about a month ago my supervisor was all gun-ho about hiring an intern. Such an idea gets me excited because I love sharing my knowledge with others and mentoring those with less experience in design. So my supervisor had me gather all the local universities with graphic and web design programs. Then he had me type up a detailed summary about my position and responsibilities for the career services of these universities, which took about half an hour. So... my supervisor had me do all that work to get my replacement.

My thoughts about this ordeal? Well, now I can say I'm another victim of the declining economy. It seems yesterday was a popular day to fire people, as it was the first official business day of the new year. My best friend Robert's wife got laid off, as well as another friend of his.

So now is a good time to point out my likes and dislikes about my employment at Stanton Group. I worked there 7 months. As for my dislikes, that was pointed out in detail in my previous entry: the company's reoccurring theme with its situations was lack of information. The flow of information was poor; everyone wasn't properly informed about things. If you read through previous entries you'll learn about all the drama I had with this job. I was indirectly threatened to be fired on multiple occasions, and for silly reasons. All of which could've been prevented if people were properly informed. It was as if they were smoking something.

The upside is that this job indeed fulfilled my prediction of offering me valuable experience. My initial task was to remodel all three of their company sites (Stanton Group is made up of three brands of audio and DJ products). In the time I was there I finished one of them: KRK Systems. I finally have a LIVE professional company website on my resume, entirely created by my hands alone. That's GOLD for a web designer's portfolio. Their third site, Cerwin-vega, was next. Concepts I made were approved and I had the green light to go ahead and start building the new web pages for it. In fact I just started doing so. Then I got laid off, so nothing happened with it. Still, although I didn't make anymore sites for this company, I still made heavy updates to all their other sites - I can put that on my resume.

Also, at this job I learned to be more independent. In my previous two web design jobs I was a drone who was to follow all orders. At Stanton Group I was encouraged to speak up at meetings and offer ideas. In other words, it was almost as if I was one of the bosses. I was this company's sole and lead web designer. This was a first for me. It was a challenge for me to balance what my superiors wanted in the websites and what I believed how things should be done. In addition to being encouraged to give ideas, I was also faced with the challenge of defending my ideas.

Ah well. With all the spare time I'll be able to catch up on projects for my FantasyAnime. I've been slacking with updates! I didn't update at all in December. My Final Fantasy 9 shrine is on the way. I also have a whole bunch of full sets of game saves I still need to put up.

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