Color Tools

Finally found some goodies online. I've actually been looking for something like this for quite some time. Once I even bought a small application to help me with color combinations but it didn't run on my computer. (no, I won't whine about my lame PC...I'll blame developer error)

Anyway, here are some tools I'll certainly make use of every now and again. Hey, it's HARD to keep coming up with unique color combinations that work sometimes!

COLORSONTHEWEB: I like this one. You get a source color and have this tool suggest all different types of good color combinations with it. Not to mention it generates the hexadecimal code for you too. (color numbers for us web-geeks)

SPIN THE COLOR WHEEL: If you're particularly ornery, you can just leave it all to random chance and spin random color combinations that might turn out looking ok. You'd be surprised how much cool design can come out of blind luck sometimes.


I took my wife shooting on her birthday. Nah, I'm not a big fan of the NRA or anything like that. It just so happens a friend of mine was involved with a yearly event to raise money for the food bank...something about firearms and fishing. How those 2 activities are related is anyone's guess. I guess if the fish you catch are not dead enough yet, you can always shoot em.

Anyway, I figured it was something totally different from anything she's ever done on her birthday before so it'll be fun. I think she did great. She'll be doing our home defense from now on.

This one is unrelated to anything (how typical of my posts huh?), but for those of you that check your credit reports annually (you should), my brother found this discount code online that is good to the end of the month for MyFICO.com:

MyFICO 20% off order SCORES4LESS Exp 09/30/2007

I encourage you to do so every so often. It's well worth the money because you get to see how your scores are, and track anything unusual if anyone's ever used your credit cards or personal info.

Hand Itchy

Another happy customer. Now I can finally show something. I kind of like how this logo turned out. The process was a little different on this particular project because my client had some very specific details about how he wanted it to look. This made it both easy AND hard because I knew what he wanted, but had to find out how to make that look good. In the end, he said I exceeded expectations. So, I guess that's good.

My computer is screwed up. After writing this blog, I'm going to basically reformat my computer and spend a long arduous day trying to reinstall everything and set it all up again. In Chinese there's a slang term that literally translates as, "Hand Itchy". I guess you can say it's similar in effect to saying, "You got ants in your pants"

"Hand Itchy" is the term we use when we say when you just were too curious with your hands and you got yourself in trouble. Remember when you were a kid and you just HAD to touch that elevator button even when your mom told you not to?

Well, that's what happened to me. Everything was fine on my computer yesterday morning and I got this little pop-up asking me if I wanted to upgrade my Acrobat Pro. Before thinking, I clicked, "YES". An hour later I find out that this upgrade was buggy -- I'm getting errors and now I can't even run any of my Adobe applications. That's basically my whole business. I can't uninstall it, I can't reinstall it...I've even tried manually wiping it out and cleaning the registry. I think nothing short of a full reformat and reinstall of my system will solve the problem.

My dad has "Hand Itchy" all the time when he installs programs on his PC. Ends up I have to be tech support and go over there and fix things all the time. It drives me crazy. Now here I am.... like father like son.

I'm SOOO ready for a MacPro already. Fuck this Microsoft crap. Who knows if it's even Window's fault, but I'm just sick of this whole thing. UGH. I'm not a happy camper around home these last couple days.

Lucky I got some of my aggression out at the NIN concert last night. They were pretty good. Trent Reznor looked fat now. What happened to his skinny drug addict look back in the day? Oh the memories. I don't know though... I enjoyed the TOOL concert better then Nine Inch Nails. Sorry Trent. I know without NIN, perhaps TOOL wouldn't even sound the way they do.

My wife survived the experience at least. On her birthday this weekend I'm taking her gun shooting. hehe. I'm overdosing her with all these crazy things this week. I wonder if she regrets marrying me yet?

This and that.

I had the chance to try out a quick portrait photography session with a new associate I met this past week. Pam Chambers is an established public speaking coach. I had lunch with her lately and we got to talking about needing photos for her website. I figured I wasn't a professional by any means, but maybe we might get lucky if I brought my camera along and tried out some shots. I don't think I did half bad.... it's no National Geographic. I haven't developed a keen enough eye to recognize subtle color casting or to recognize the low/mid/high tones without using histograms. But I'm getting there!

You know, I'm still eyeballing that Canon camera. Now they just came out with a new model called the 40D. Yeah, the 30D model is now a little cheaper. But the 40D has some parts that are adopted from their top end cameras the Mark-series. Oh how can I resist?! Yeah I tell you how...you get a wife who wants to save up for a house that's how.

Talking about that...it's probably not a good time to buy right now. DUH, who can afford a 2 bedroom condo going for $720k?! It's insane. HiCentral has their affordability chart. My wife and I are just keeping an eye out right now. Predictions are all over the place how the housing market will go here in the next 3 or 4 years. We'll just watch carefully.

On the design front, I haven't been able to show much lately. I'm dying to though, but I shouldn't show anything till it's really pau. I got at least 2 new logos that's done and just waiting for my clients to sign the dotted line. I think they came out pretty good.

I've been trying to tie up loose ends. Florence finally helped me whip up a great print portfolio the other week. It's this leather-bound snazzy display portfolio. I'm pretty proud of it. Now I no longer have to lug my giant laptop around to meetings or bring a stack of loose-leaf samples with me all the time.

I really should work on my own site.... the hardest thing to do is my own website. /sigh

I'm only about 90% recovered from this darn cold that caught me last week. Ho that sucked. Not only that but the medication the doctor gave me (which wasn't covered by my stupid insurance) made me loopy and drowsy every day. I'm sure that made for some very interesting designs last week.

Tonight I'm taking my wife to her first rock concert (in her LIFE) for the Nine Inch Nails. She's either going to trip out and have the time of her life. Or she'll be forever mentally scarred if her head doesn't explode from the sheer volume alone. This will be interesting. I still have a small cold, and my friends that I'm going with -- one hasn't been sleeping because of sleep apnea, and the other has the flu as well. What a motley bunch of concert goers we will be tonight. Is this because we're old now? Shit, the band members are older then us...so nyah nyah. We're still good.

It's nausea, it's nausea...

It sucks being sick. This is the first time in something like 2 years....although my wife seems skeptical. I'm like a walking germ to her. I've given up trying to convince her, "I don't usually get sick like this I really don't!"

I got all the symptoms of a Nyquil ad....the sniffling, sneezing, coughy head aching, blah blah blah. Add on a body fever and an eye infection and you get the picture. I'm half expecting the CDC to come wrap my apartment in plastic.

Being this way sucks.... I'm drowsy from the medication, but yet I know if I sleep more I'll end up with a huge headache.

Perfect, now Beck's "Nausea" song is playing in the background. That's not helping.

I just want to crawl up in bed and be my little miserable whiny self. Uhh...