Yrae Chronicles

I'm calling that done :D

I'm SO PROUD omfg. Rather than challenge myself on the technical aspects (like galleries and jQuery and php and whatever else I've been learning) this time I challenged myself with the design. Every page is laid out differently, relating to exactly what the page does and the content on it. A big trend in graphic design right now is for things to be a little off-kilter, which is of course really easy to do in print--you just move boxes around with the click of a mouse--but doing that with html where everything lines itself one after the other by default, it's a bit more fiddly. I'm so stoked with how it's come up.

Mobile is less varied, because of course there's a lot less screen real estate to play with, but the background for each page are different and the borders of images are still wonky :D

The only little thing I'd like to change and can't quite figure out how to is with the fanart gallery. Images that are too large shrink to fit the box, which is fine, but images that are smaller than the box grow to fill the box, which I don't want. In reality, though, there are only half a dozen images that small anyway, so I'm over it enough to call it done.

WOO!

I DID IT I applied to all the jobs currently listed on Seek. There are NINE. This is insane! I never see more then two or three. Honestly you're lucky to see more than one. Included in the mix are two part-time, one junior position, two which have technically expired but they're still listed, one that forced me to apply through Seek, where the biggest file you could upload was 2mb, and I physically cannot get my portfolio under that, so I didn't attach it and instead directed them to my website and if they want to see the print version they can jolly well look at the 8mb version like everyone else. There are five studio positions, one at a hair care and beauty products place that has a super confusing website (they also do printing??? But the job ad specifically mentions hair care and beauty products???), one at a fertiliser and one at Bickford's. Every single one of them, with the exception of the casual junior position, is paying more than what I'm currently getting. Three make me salivate, one in particular which would be The Dream, which also mentions illustration in the 'this would be useful but not vital' section and I've heard of them and holy shit that would be an awesome role. I've put everything into that one.

There are nine jobs. I know from past experience that roughly 60-70 people apply for each job, so normally I'm a one-in-65 chance. Now I'm a nine-in-65, so that's better! I can't possibly be second-best at all of them. SOMEONE HIRE ME. This is the best opportunity I've ever had. Pleeeeeease work out. Tomorrow I'll have a look at the ones on Indeed. It's got 13 listed, but a cursory glance shows one as being a store manager at Typo, and half of them are offering over 100k so I highly doubt they're mid-weight graphic design jobs, either. Still, might be something worth going for.

Meanwhile, I'm hungry. I don't care that it's only 5pm I'm making dinner.

EDIT 9:41pm FUCKING SHIT PISS ARSE FUCK. I WAS HACKED AGAIN. ONLY MORE SUBTLY. Gmail just told me it hasn't updated my bloogum emails since March 2. Check bloogum and sure enough, there's another page there saying 'Account Suspended' though it looks different this time. Go to lodge a support ticket, and find this 6-ticket long thing that basically follows this:

27 Feb: We have received an abuse report that your site is hosting a phishing site and is involved in criminal activity as per the following details: (something about Bank of America). We were forced to suspend the account to block any further criminal activity and abuse. Please get back in contact with us within 24 hours to prevent further actions against your account.
28 Feb: We have not received any reply from you. If we are not receiving any update on next 24 hours regarding the spamming we force to suspend your domain.
1 March: I've suspended the account. You need to take actions to secure the account by changing all passwords and updating all scripts/plugins/themes to the latest version
2 March: We have noticed suspicious files/folders in other folders as well. Please perform a thorough audit and remove all vulnerable files/folders from the account and secure all third party scripts in the account.

This is UTTER BULLSHIT. Why did nobody contact me about this? I haven't received anything by email or phone, for something so serious as suspending my account. I've given them one hour to fix this, and if I don't have bloogum up and running within said hour, I'm finding another host. I don't care if I've been with them for almost 15 years, this lack of communication, not to mention the lack of security and my site being hacked twice this year, is shit.

I've directed nine prospective employers to my beautiful, mobile-responsive web folio. If it's not fixed by 9am tomorrow morning I am fucked.

EDIT 10:51pm Progress is being made. Apparently some permissions on my Wordpress sites were extremely dangerous and he's made them 400 instead of 664 or 666. Idk what that means. They also pointed out two malicious files/directories that I've now deleted, and they've released bloogum itself back into the world. They're scanning now to see if anything else comes up. Whyyyyy the shit does this happen? And why just as I'm applying for jobs and need bloogum to be working?

EDIT 12:29am FIXED. BED TIME omfg I do not need this shit. I was going to go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight to be fresh for the beginning of the week and last day of Clipsal closures. But no. It's 12:30. Any other time I'd have said 'bugger it' hours ago, but I need this working for job applications. UGH. Thank god it's over (again).

Facebook: Good afternoon, Anna! Clouds are clearing today in Adelaide. Enjoy the sunshine!
It's 34 degrees, you irresponsible dickwits.

In other news, I had my first lady-date on Tuesday! I've turned off the 'looking for men' option on Tinder and also downloaded Bumble to do the same, and by golly, gee whizz, does that narrow the options. There are literally six people to cycle through of an evening, across the two of them together. I've significantly lowered my bar to the point where even people without any text in their profiles are being swiped right.

Anyway. So I finally got a match! Chatted with her a while over text, discovering we're in much the same boat of having had boyfriends but never a girlfriend, so we met up on Tuesday after work :D First to Cocolat for a nice cold smoothie where we talked for a good hour and a half, then to The Apothecary for a cocktail and impromptu platter of antipasti that ended up constituting dinner because the smoothie had been pretty filling, and finally once the sun went down to the Parade of Lights on North Terrace, where they've illuminated a whole bunch of historic buildings (museum, art gallery, uni buildings, that sort of thing) with basically painted light animations. It's part of the Fringe Festival, which started last Friday. This was the highlight. They have a bunch of smoke machines around the lawn in front of the museum, and fire big flat sheets of lasers through the smoke above your head, so you lie back on the lawn and just watch this play of light in the smoke. It's seriously awesome. So surreal, like being on an alien planet, or maybe under the sea, sometimes like the Northern Lights depending on how the smoke was behaving at the time.

The date itself was no more than a friend date at this stage, just chatting about family, work, the Fringe, wine/food/cooking, small talk that lasted until about 11pm. She was suuuuper nervous at the start so I didn't want to make any moves or scare her away XD She's also tiny. I have a good foot on her XD She's a PhD student, previously worked for the CSIRO, super into sciencey physics, kinda shy but opened up a lot as the evening went on. Easy conversationalist, almost as much of a foodie as I am, and just a fun, casual, relaxed time. Already so much less pressure than any first date with a dude. See where this takes me X3

Unrelated, last weekend I finally presented Katie Hawtin with her first proof of her website. This is something I instigated a good, oh, two+ years ago now. I designed her business cards at work and we print them every couple of years, and the last time she ordered them she mentioned in passing that she hated her website and didn't want it on her business card because it's so outdated and ugly. In an effort to add some real clients to my digital media design portfolio, I offered to design a new site, bells and whistles and all, for $100 just so it felt more like a business transaction. TWO YEARS LATER and she has a proof! She's phenomenally enthusiastic, absolutely loves where it's going, so I'll get started on actually creating it in March with the aim to finish it by mid-April.

I'm also in the middle of updating my own portfolio, which is slightly broken and very out-dated. I have no idea where the slightly broken came from, since I haven't updated it since I made it, but the navigation icon up in the top corner now scrolls instead of sitting there nice and fixed, the gallery images on the print page are off-centre by about 70 pixels, and there's a 5-ish pixel gap at the beginning of each client. Also the header on the blog is now an error message. NO idea where all this came from, but that's this weekend's task. Just what I want to spend my weekend doing, bug fixing of my portfolio. Yay.

And I saw Black Panther on the weekend. It was pretty gosh darn awesome. The warrior ladies had the most badarse character design, omg. Also the villain was probably the best Marvel villain in a while. His motivations were just bang on. Loved this movie!

Herb garden created :B Missing basil because for some reason Mitre 10 did not have basil. They had mint basil. I don't even know what mint basil is. That sounds like a weird combination to have in a plant. ANYWAY. I'll buy basil tomorrow after work from somewhere else. Aside from that, I'm now the proud owner of oregano, lemongrass, rosemary, chives, thyme, a sad little mint stalk which I'm sure will perk back up again now it's back in soil with water and sunlight, coriander that will likely go up to seed within the week but I'm going to try it anyway, and... I'm missing something. Lemonbalm because it smells nice. Um. Parsley! That's the one. YAY HERBS.

Also I've signed up for this brush lettering workshop thing. FINALLY. I anticipate it will be fun and informative and very useful :D Also since it's career development I can write it off as a tax deduction so that's cool.

I'm cold and hungry I'm making dinner.