Thursday, January 28, 2010

I realize I haven't been updating nearly as frequently, and while I'd like to blame it entirely on my new and busy schedule, full of classes and group meetings and just running around doing errands, I feel like that's a major cop out. On the up side, I do have good news. I just went to the open house for The Breeze, which is JMU's biweekly newspaper. As of, well, tonight, I'm a contributing writer for the news section, and I already have my first topic. If all goes well, I'll be published in next Thursday's edition and well on my way to sparking my creative writing skills! I've only read about a thousand Writer's Digest articles that encourage aspiring writers to enter contests, write short stories, or just generally exercise their brains with some form of writing on frequent occasions. I'm hoping this shift will be a step in the right direction - both socially as well as for my writing. To be honest, I ultimately got myself there because of the social aspect and the well-advertised mention of free pizza. But now, having talked with the news editor, I'm genuinely excited to see where the whole endeavor takes me.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Now that I have a blog, I'm much more exposed to blogs in general - the good, the bad, the ugly. And it's my conclusion that some blogs have a ton of multimedia- you know, links to other blogs in the sidebars, photos, embedded video files, etc.- and others are minimalistic. Both come with pros and cons, but some of the blogs that are dripping with photos just bore me. Maybe they're not set up right and it's just an endless page of scrolling through half-loaded pictures of some stranger's life.

Just today, I started taking a class in web design and the professor threw out a whole laundry list of vocabulary used that I didn't really know much about at all. However, by the end of the 8-week class I will have to have 2 designed websites, so it's my hope that I can incorporate my education into this website, maybe changing up HTML, adding some more pictures, and cleaning it up. Functionality says a lot about websites these days and a poorly designed website turns people away quicker than most companies or organizations probably realize. I'm hoping that this class helps me spruce my website up and attract more readership.

On a side note, I'm also starting a class that's focused on Photoshop CS4 and maybe if I'm getting the hang of that I'll be able to put together a mock book cover for Keep In Touch using my new skills. No promises though. Make sure to check back and see how the classes are going, and maybe you'll be more inclined to stick around if I put my skills to use on this site!