Minor Confession Thread

I often feel like the protagonist of Steinbeck's Winter Of Our Discontent

I've been sinking countless hours into Diablo 2 with the release of the fan-made mod Project Diablo 2.

It's almost like it's 2000 again, and I'm picking up for the first time after years of playing the original.

Gonna be difficult day/week in my house. I'm used to being separated from my family. But my wife is tight knit with hers. Her father and sister that live local to us are moving out of state today. Next sister is 3 hours away. Gonna be a house full of emotions I'm not ready for..

I have eaten nothing this weekend but double cheeseburgers consumed in pairs.

McDonald's are very sweet with all the corn syrup in the burger patties and ketchup, Rally's taste like grilled meat and veggies.  And are 67 cents cheaper.  But there's a McDonald's on every street corner and like three Rally's in the Cleveland area.

Rented an Airstream for a couple days to get out of the house. Now I think we need to buy an Airstream. We've been (tent) camping with the 2 year old maybe....5 or 6 times, and he has slept terribly every time. I'm sure him getting older has something to do with it, but camping is so much easier when both of the kids actually sleep.

BlueInGreen - Jon (Forum Supporter) said:

I’ve probably said it before and I’ll say it again.

I love the LEGO Batman movie.

I care nothing about the source material, but the LEGO Ninjago movie is excellent - highly recommended. 
 

Sometimes I think about hunting down one of the old Eaton blower kits by Blitz for my DD Yaris. The car is excellent but it needs another 20hp.

Included for humor: My friend Mario's review of my Yaris around the local racetrack

Im seriously planning ahead for dinner tonight. 

McDonald's fries, hardees cheeseburger, cookout milkshake. 

Then, angioplasty!

So, I find myself struggling with the graphical design aspect of what I do. I've never been able to visualize something (like a logo, or backdrop to an image, etc.), but I can do it easily when it comes to engineering a solution to a fabrication problem, or when making my wooden furniture. How is it that my creativity just E36 M3s the bed when it comes to graphic design? Is it truly something where you've either got it or you don't?

Struggling with this billboard I've got to do, and I can't seem to come up with a nice backdrop for behind the individuals that are meant to be on it. It's a team of lawyers, and the whole "Halls of Olympus" and courthouse columns seems very trite/cliche. I've attempted to meditate, take a walk to clear my head, and I just can't seem to reach that "Ah-hah!" moment I'm so desperately looking for.

That said, I received my Raspberry Pi 4B yesterday, and I'm already loving it so much, I'm going to buy at least two more for various experiments. My first task was to play around with Sonic Pi and code a quick little song. Neat!

In reply to Azryael :

Making a "thing" is a lot easier than an abstract idea.  When you make a table, you know it is going to be a certain length/width/height, number of legs, etc.  Then you are just working within that framework.

I wonder how one could break down "creative" into simple steps like that.

I've lost about 20lbs over the last 6 months. I celebrated with a king size Reece's for an afternoon snack. 

In reply to Azryael :

Creating pleasing visual graphics is definitely challenging. When I was doing more of this type of stuff I would sit down with samples of logos I liked and analyze them to determine what elements I liked about them. Sometimes ot was a font, or the inclusion of an image in the word. Then I would have an easier time incorporating those ideas into my design.

For the background to your billboard, perhaps an image that signifies trust, since that's what you want to have with your lawyers. Something like a closeup of a handshake might be a good fit there. 

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to Azryael :

Making a "thing" is a lot easier than an abstract idea.  When you make a table, you know it is going to be a certain length/width/height, number of legs, etc.  Then you are just working within that framework.

 

I wonder how one could break down "creative" into simple steps like that.

Good point. I guess my problem is that I'm so used to doing things efficiently like an automaton, that I attempt to break down the idea of creative into steps; I don't think it's actually possible to that, and I lack the ability to be spontaneous and think outside of the box. I don't do abstract, as much as I'd like to be able to.

EastCoastMojo (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Azryael :

Creating pleasing visual graphics is definitely challenging. When I was doing more of this type of stuff I would sit down with samples of logos I liked and analyze them to determine what elements I liked about them. Sometimes ot was a font, or the inclusion of an image in the word. Then I would have an easier time incorporating those ideas into my design.

For the background to your billboard, perhaps an image that signifies trust, since that's what you want to have with your lawyers. Something like a closeup of a handshake might be a good fit there. 

 

Hmm, you might be on to something. I often forget when doing things like this that I need to set my own personal tastes aside, and realize that this is meant for the masses, not me; in which case the cliche might just be the ticket. On the road today I was looking at various billboards for other firms, and they often capitalize on the same elements. Every fiber in me wants to be "different", but at some point I just need to face the truth that sometimes you just gotta roll with crowd.

Definitely appreciate it! I'll see what I can come up with. The sooner I can knock this out, the sooner I can move down the list to the next task.

Finished up this project and sent it off for review by the client at around 4:30 this morning; all I've heard is the roaring choir of crickets.

I looked through some previous projects, and discovered a background I'd already made that seemed to fit well enough. A nice gradient, that I was able to rescale for use on this one. Looks plenty serviceable to me, minus the font I elected to use. I wanted to keep their color palette and font choices in line with their most recent commercials/videos; I like consistency.

I took off next Thursday to stay home and play Cyberpunk 2077 all day

Sometimes I wish I were more of a shiny happy person. The treehouse company that owns all of the other lots where our cabin is located is getting started on another project on one of them, and the electrical for it will have to tap off of the transformer in front of our cabin that terminates the run of electrical line that we had to pay to have run to power our cabin. It cost us like $10k to have the line run (has to be buried, and we had to pay for the digging and the line itself). 

One of their other treehouses already taps off of the line mid-run, and they 'generously' kicked in $2k toward the electrical line run (that we had to pretty much hound them for half of since it was coming from two different people). It doesn't look like they're planning on reimbursing us anything for this- granted it will be costing them a lot more than the previous one (since the line already ran right in front of that property) since they'll have to have more line run to reach the property they're building on. The digging will likely make the cabin unusable for a day so they're having to schedule it when the cabin isn't rented- I came really close to telling them that they should rent the cabin for that day so we weren't losing any potential income from it, but without really annoying me or pissing me off I'm loathe to even be that much of a jerk...

C'mon Ash. This cabin is a business. Run it that way. Be the shiny happy person, get your money - otherwise you're letting them be the bigger shiny happy person.

mtn (Forum Supporter) said:

C'mon Ash. This cabin is a business. 

My mind read those words (without having seen the post above) and went off in an entirely different direction.

Duke said:

mtn (Forum Supporter) said:

C'mon Ash. This cabin is a business. 

My mind read those words (without having seen the post above) and went off in an entirely different direction.

You and me both.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

Duke said:

mtn (Forum Supporter) said:

C'mon Ash. This cabin is a business. 

My mind read those words (without having seen the post above) and went off in an entirely different direction.

You and me both.

Third!

Confession: i left work early for tailor appointment.  Needed a dress shirt first. 

I feel fat. And old. How do people enjoy this?

I just discovered a new-to-me musical genre: synthwave.

I like some electronic music, namely industrial, but synthwave seems to hit me just right.

I guess part of it is growing up in the '80s? Nostalgia is a powerful drug.

I heard a cover of Blinding Lights by the Weeknd and just kinda fell down a neon magenta rabbit hole.

In reply to stanger_mussle (Forum Supporter) :

Blinding Lights is a really catchy song. I've been down a similar rabbit hole the past week or two.  

stanger_mussle (Forum Supporter) said:

I just discovered a new-to-me musical genre: synthwave.

I like some electronic music, namely industrial, but synthwave seems to hit me just right.

I guess part of it is growing up in the '80s? Nostalgia is a powerful drug.

I heard a cover of Blinding Lights by the Weeknd and just kinda fell down a neon magenta rabbit hole.

Please try this album:

Wally (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to stanger_mussle (Forum Supporter) :

Blinding Lights is a really catchy song. I've been down a similar rabbit hole the past week or two.  

Full disclosure:

This is pushed me down the rabbit hole. I first saw it on Imgur and that was it.

I just pulled over to read an historical marker that turned out to be the back of some kid’s basketball hoop.