OK, it ain’t pretty, but it’s mine. And it’s just an iteration.
I had been pondering, mulling, deliberating,… about updating my site for some time. I like the theme, well enough, but it’s commonly used in the WordPress community. I had updated some of the style sheets a long time ago, but couldn’t accomplish any sort of graphical treatment. There seemed to be too many obstacles to what I had in mind.
Last week, I realized that my deliberation (OK pathological dithering) about my site’s look and feel was keeping me from updating my blogs. I have several fractionally-written blog post waiting to completed and published. However every time I went to update content, I had this sinking feeling about my failure to pull offa visual update and was reluctant to write/edit any further.
A few days ago I saw a derivation of the British WWII motivational poster-turned meme. This one said, “Keep Calm and Iterate.”
That led me to thinking through an iterative approach to my banner update. Naturally, I downloaded a copy of GIMP and then tore up my undershirt.
I had the idea of expressing the “invisible fist” in the style that would be a tribute to Claude Raines (and H. G. Wells for that matter). Though each attempt at such was met with obstacles.
Two of my obstacles to which I’d previously surrendered: my inability to find white cloth bandages and the fact that my older edition of Photoshop no longer worked since I upgraded my operating system a while back.
The undershirt sliced nicely into some bandage-size strips, though the Kirkland brand was a little on the thick side. Doesn’t matter it’s just an iteration, right? I wrapped my hand and snapped a few photos on my kitchen counter.
Another thing I have been dithering about was whether to make the plunge into Adobe’s Creative Cloud so that I could have Photoshop. Though I just don’t feel that I create enough of that type of content to justify the expense. Truth be told, it seemed a little on the buggy side when I demoed it a few months ago.
GIMP (a free and open source Photoshop alternative, gave me enough of an image-editor that I could accomplish a few simple tasks: a clipping path, some freehand touchup, motion blur and a fog effect. Like my preview of the Creative Cloud it seemed a little buggy, but I prefer my buggy tools to be free rather than $50/month.
I didn’t really like my product in the end, but hell, it was a product. I made into a banner and added it to my site, because it’s just an iteration, right. The fact that it’s out in public, I think I am infinitely more likely to try to make it better.
Now back to writing, editing and hopefully publishing a backlog of blogs.