July 11th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Housekeeping
Hey bitches! You may have noticed that I cleaned up my layout quite a bit. It’ll change over the next few days once I figure out what I want the header image to be, but I’m already happy with the way things are turning out right now. I also learned some things about WordPress that make my life a lot easier, like that you can have themes based on other themes so that one serves as a template.
My parents bought our cats a new “cat tree” recently, so Igby’s been all over it. I saw an unsuccessful attempt by him to jump from the bottom to the top yesterday. He almost seemed embarrassed when he fell down because he immediately walked in the other direction, but I know that assigning him with a human emotion is relatively foolish. I take too many pictures of him.
Working at UCLA has been good, especially since I only need to go in once or twice a week. It still requires a lot of work at home though. I finished laying out a lesson plan, but I have another one to complete soon as well as two cover designs. I’m just happy that I have another thing to put on my resume. In addition, I’ve been learning far more things about using InDesign than I did when I worked on EyeCandy. (Primarily because I only dealt with a two-page spread in EyeCandy as opposed to a fifty-page booklet.) I impressed my boss the other day with my ability to quickly convert the National Center for History in the Schools logo into a vector object. Nerdery pays off, sometimes.
I’m seeing my friend Elizabeth tomorrow afternoon and then Troy (exboyfriend) in the evening. It’ll be comforting to feel like less of a recluse. There have been things happening in my life lately that haven’t been very conducive to making me feel like a rational human being, at least in terms of intransigence. I don’t know. I never know.
Anyway, I’ve been listening to M.I.A.’s latest album sporadically over the last two days, but not because I think it sounds good. I’m actually really creeped out by it. I talked to my friend James about it and we agreed that “overstimulation” was a good term to assign to 2010. There’s definitely a lot self-parody in MAYA (yeah I’m not even going to bother with the punctuation) that extends beyond the kitschy album art, in that she’s singing about things a lot of musicians loftily push aside. The tracks are an electronic clusterfuck of memes with lyrics that praise the internet, Twitter, texting, and whatever other mediums we as a society have willingly plugged into. I’m still not sure what to make of “Born Free” (and its ginger genocide music video)–I still can’t listen to it without being constantly aware of Suicide’s “Ghost Rider” looped in the background–but I thought this blog post on Lady Gaga brought up a lot of interesting points about the inherent hypocrisy of preaching individuality to the masses. To me, the most striking similarity between Lady Gaga and M.I.A. is that they’re both accused of being “edgy” for the sake of creating buzz for themselves, of putting on some crazy front so that we can talk about them all the time, even if it’s just to say that they’re insane. Lady Gaga, however, has a career that very obviously mimics Madonna’s. Inverted crosses and melodramatic performances will probably soon lose their novelty (again). M.I.A., on the other hand, seems to embody all that weird [seemingly omnipresent] self-referencing shit that I sift through when I’m browsing the internet, and sings about detachment as a result of our twinkling gadgets. Which is precisely what leaves me so horrified.
June 1st, 2010 at 3:10 pm
It feels so 80s or early 90s to be political
So I’ve decided that I’m going to post every day in this month of June for the following reasons.
- Today is the first. It’s rare that I post on the first.
- I need to stop being so critical.
- School sux.
Anyway, here’s something obscene and sparkly quoting some dude I heard yesterday.
That sentence was followed by “and then after I’m done, he’d probably say something witty–something so witty that I can’t even think of it right now–and I’d smile and he’d stroke my hair” but the sparkly word generator isn’t very good at rendering long blocks of text.
Along that same vein (of kitschy gifs and attempts at wit), apparently Tumblr loves sloths? I posted this picture of a baby sloth three days ago and it’s gotten 512 notes (“likes” and “reblogs”) so far. My dashboard is full of notifications obscuring what would otherwise be hentai and Zooey Deschenal and macarons and naked ladies. I guess that means I’m Internet famous now.
I’ve moved passed the need for friends and instead only accept followers. Follow me, children. Validate my regurgitation of stolen content. Maybe I can reblog your pictures of RDJ and you too can bask in the limelight.
March 11th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
I’ve found my new procrastination tool
February 19th, 2010 at 9:49 am
IT’S FRIDAY NIGHT!
February 10th, 2010 at 1:30 am
My name is Ferdinand
I gave my blog a facelift because I decided that although the smiley sun, bunny with propeller hat, and cloudy background accurately represented my tendency towards the ‘retardedly cute,’ I felt that these symbols were incongruous to a lot of my writing. It’s confusing to scroll past convivial illustration only to learn that I think life is shit, man.
For the moment, I say that in jest.
In addition, I’m attempting to create some sort of cohesiveness between my various Internet dwellings. Please note my Tumblr’s color scheme.
I have more stuff (and perhaps, things) to say, but I’m pretty tired and have decided to save my thoughts for tomorrow. Or, I suppose, today, but when it’s like, not 1:30AM.
“I can never have a real conversation with you. You never have ideas, only feelings. That’s not true. There are ideas in feelings.”
December 15th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
The Writing Process
If there’s one thing I can’t stand about reading personal blogs, it’s the apologetic entry. Such entries begin with a “Hey guys I’m sorry I haven’t updated in a while…” and end with a “I promise to write every day!” So rather than give you, my loyal readers, a false agenda, I’ve taken it upon myself to explore why I have a difficult time with WordPress.
There are too many FUCKING BELLS AND WHISTLES.
My solution? http://www.ommwriter.com/
Seriously. Fuck you and your formatting options, WordPress. Your tiny text box turns me off.
(ETA: I’m completely aware of the fact that those images display comparably small workspaces, so I suppose it’s all that other junk on the screen that gets to me.)
August 16th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Only death will kill me
Although it may not look like it, I gave Not Kelsey a complete overhaul. I learned how to convert my layout into a WordPress template rather than begrudgingly “integrate” the bloated blog software with my design and cleared out old entries that didn’t seem to contribute… well, much of anything :D It only took me a few nights and a few too many headaches to figure it all out.
In the meantime, keep me in your bookmarks! I’m excited to work on my website again, especially since adding content to it should be considerably less difficult now.
February 4th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Yourfonts.com
I’ve always wanted to make my own font but didn’t want to deal with complicated (and often expensive) programs. Which is why I LOVE THIS WEBSITE. After I scanned in a template, it created my own personalized font based on my handwriting. Nifty!
September 11th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Hide genre column in iTunes 8 browser
I was so excited to download the newest update of iTunes because of the Genius playlist. However, I was angry to discover that they removed the option to hide the genre column in the browser! How annoying! I mean, who in their right mind browses by genre?! Who even tags their albums with a genre?
Anyway, I found a solution (Mac only):
1. Open terminal
2. Enter the following command and hit enter:
defaults write com.apple.itunes show-genre-when-browsing -bool FALSE
3. Close and reopen iTunes
To reverse changes, enter this command:
defaults write com.apple.itunes show-genre-when-browsing -bool TRUE
Other observations:
- Apple can’t seem to make up their mind about whether bands starting with numbers or symbols should appear first or last in the alphabetical artist’s list.
- I haven’t met a single person with more than 10GB of music who browses their library by album artwork.
- The Genius playlist looks awesome (I haven’t tried it out yet), but a sidebar? Really? As if the left sidebar doesn’t take up enough room as it is…
August 8th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Big brother is watching
I always have to laugh when Washington Mutual or Amazon refers to my website. Wamu, however, appears to have an identity crisis whereas Amazon simply wants to know more.
Happy 8/08/2008 :)