Sneak peek of the upcoming redesign
Over the Thanksgiving holiday I had some time to do some personal work on three evenings, so I started coding the new template for my redesigned portfolio. I’ve been working on this design in Photoshop for years. Seriously! (Although only in fits and starts, with long gaps in between.) But I’ve been planning for the past four months to take off this December from all other work, to concentrate on finally redesigning the whole website.
Here’s a sneak peek of the new design. This is actually a screenshot of the HTML-rendered page. It’s coming out almost perfectly identical to the PSD, so I’m psyched about that. “Every pixel matters.”
So far so good — no major coding problems so far (had to ask my friend Aaron to help me debug one JavaScript I couldn’t get to do exactly what I wanted) and all my code is validating (although it’ll break as soon as I embed the first YouTube video on the new site — meh).
Labels: design, enews.org, Mark Bult Design, web design
Russian Heinlein book featured io9
One of my rare Heinlein books has been featured on io9,
Gawker’s sci-fi blog (
“In Soviet Russia, Space Opera Really Was Operatic”).
io9 was doing an article Russian science fiction book cover artwork and must’ve seen the book cover I posted to
my Flickr group Heinleinia.
The book in question (pictured here) has always been a bit of a mystery to me. It’s a Russian edition of
Stranger in a Strange Land published in 2003, but because most of the text is in Russian, I can’t get much information from the title and copyright pages. I found the book for sale on eBay last year.
One of the commenters on io9’s post noted that the cover of the Heinlein book features a painting by
Donato Giancola, which was a nice find. Giancola’s produced some great work in his
portfolio. Though I’ve never been able to figure out why this particular piece was chosen for the Heinlein book, as it bears no resemblance to anything in the story.
io9’s post also linked to
Russian science fiction fan club Solaris (text in English), which features a gallery of
other Russian Heinlein editions.
Labels: art, books, enews.org, Heinlein, illustration, sci-fi
Possible new logo
I'm thinking of using this new logo I came up with yesterday. I've been sketching logos and symbols for over a year, trying to come up with a logo that I could use for personal use as well as my design company.
I was playing around with the concept of a coat-of-arms sort of design, where the illustration is symbolic of my ideologies, similar to the way a family's coat of arms tells a story of their history.
It's a skull and crossbones made out of a coffee mug, a pencil, and a monkeywrench ; )
If you don't get it, that's alright. I don't mind. Just means you need to get to know me better.
Labels: design, enews.org, logos, Mark Bult Design, misc. personal
New list of friends et al
I finally updated my sidebar with a list of friends, colleagues, et al (see "con-conspirators" below-right). If you're listed please check to make sure I linked to the site you'd prefer to be your public face. If you're not listed, either I couldn't find your link in my bookmarks, or you just haven't greased my palm lately. So pony up and maybe I'll show some love.
Labels: enews.org, friends, misc. personal
Updates to the blog
I added some links in the sidebar to some of my past posts that are popular (get a lot of in-links or referrers), or that are overlooked but potentially valuable. And a few that are just for fun. Gentle reader, please do let me know if your favorite was left out.
I also updated my
Never-ending list of projects, and I predict Velma will be astonished at how many of them have seen action taken.
Labels: enews.org, misc. personal, projects
Posting new photos
I got behind in posting photos to
the photoblog last fall when we were rapidly approaching
the Hitchin' and I had to devote time to that. I wanted to post a photo every day, and I'd been able to do it for quite a while, but after I slipped behind, it was compounded by several other delays, like our honeymoon and then moving.
I'd tried to catch up by back-posting a few weeks' worth of photos at a time, but it seemed I'd never catch up, so I've decided to throw in the towel and just pick up from now and go forward. Maybe I'll be able to back-fill the hole sometime in the future, but I'm not going to worry about it anymore.
I've got over 10 GB of photos from 2007 alone that I want to show some of, so screw it! Onward!
Labels: enews.org, photos
Number one on a Google search
A couple years ago I was
considering whether to rename this blog. I'm still considering it, but how do you give up being number 7 on a Google search for
"splain"?
For
"espouse" I've dropped from 4 to number 16, but I guess that ain't half bad. I guess. If you're looking for an espouser.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of other ranters and whiners out there on the Internet (you've heard of
LiveJournal, right), so searching for "rant" or "whine" doesn't include me even within the first few pages of results. Meh, with that kind of competition, why bother.
Of course, when you search for
"rant whine" I'm number one, and you can't beat that.
So...yeah. That's marketable, right?
My dear reader, I'd be eager to see how many of you even realized this blog had a name. If you already knew it, did you remember what the name was when you started reading this? Leave a comment and let me know. And if you want to suggest a better name, let's hear it.
Labels: blogging, branding, enews.org, espouse, Google, humor, Mark Bult Design, naming, rant, rants, splain, whine
Hmm...that background looks familiar
Amsterdamn designed a WordPress theme called
Royaline that looks an awful lot like
my portfolio.
In fact, I'm pretty sure the background tile they used was swiped right off my site (compare
theirs to
mine).
The rest of the design isn't really a blatant ripoff or anything, so I'm not concerned. They basically just swiped my background pattern and my color palette, which I don't mind. Frankly, the WP theme is decent but not all that great.
Labels: designers, enews.org, web design, wordpress
Aaron
Alexis
Anne
Anya
April & Matt
Ari
Bo
Brian
Bryan
Chris
Dave & Terri
Dave H.
Debby
Drue
Fibu
Four Waters
Fwegan (aka Ynnej)
Holly
Hilary
Internet Rockstar
Jason
Jen
Jesse
Jessica
Kansinee
Karl
Laura
Leah
Marc
Martin
Matt
Mike
Morgan
OkayDave
Olya
Paco
Peter
Rick
Rocky
Ryan
Stellah
Tatum 
Trent
Velma
Veronica
Yuliya
Yu-Po
