I am happy to announce that my new design is up and running fairly well. This morning, I made a dynamic menu/title (the former, thanks to this article, the latter a result of some very basic programming — but I’m not here to brag). I’ve been working on this for about a month, maybe a little longer, and the final result is a great deal more polished than my original mockup — but it’s not that different either.

My process

Most of the mockups I’ve ever made in Photoshop are unfinished in some critcal way. Maybe the color aren’t quite right — that always takes a lot of tweaking once you have to see them all over the screen — or maybe that logo isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe it’s not your logo at all, it’s a logo that was swapped for yours at birth, and now it’s a hunchback with tentacles, and you don’t know where you’ve gone wrong as a parent, but it’s happened, and now those angst-ridden teenage years are coming on fast and—

That was not the metaphor I had in mind. Moving on…

Mockups and markup

A lot of people have probably already read Meagan Fisher’s article on mockups vs. markup, and if you haven’t, do it right now. Photoshop mockups are extremely inflexible. While I think it’s important to play around in Photoshop just to get your bearings, know that 90% of the work you will be doing will be with markup. Every now and then after I exported the images for my design, I’d return to Photoshop to grab a color (although Colourlovers helped out a lot), or refine an icon, but that was it. When you know what you want to do, Photoshop is pretty much useless.

So as soon as I got out of the whirlwind of possibility that is Photoshop with a decent design, I churned out Version One, which will never be seen by human eyes; then, Version Two, which is similar, but better; Version Three was nearly there. I broke away from the vertical menu to tabs, which I hadn’t done in a while. At any rate, it seemed to suit the theme, and left the sidebar open for content — delicious, delicious content.

Trial and error

I initially tried to get pointed tabs at the top of the page, but the varying widths of my tabs made that a bit more trouble than it was worth. I compensated by…using -moz-border-radius around the place. Because those things totally go hand in hand.

I hadn’t tried rgba before this design, and I wasn’t sure if it was worth it. Within seconds of applying it on the navigation (I thought it would be unwieldy and superfluous everywhere else), I changed my mind. It is extremely easy to use, and very pretty if you use it right.

I also tried out Cufón and @font-face for the first time. I stuck with @font-face, because it was the easiest to manipulate. I could change weights and fonts without having to upload a new Javascript file every time. But I have to say, Cufón is very neat. If you’re using sIFR, Cufón is infinitely easier to use. I mean, for chrissakes, there’s a generator. And it renders very smooth. @font-face renders a bit choppily (this might be caused by other things as well), but unlike with Cufón, I won’t have to worry about selecting text or :hover (this is apparently supported, but I couldn’t get it to work).

Then, I thought about upgrading from Movable Type 4.1 to Movable Type 5, which was released a couple days ago. After a few minutes of playing with my installation, I decided not to. The interface is gray and boring, the navigation is a bit confusing. I’m not sure why they got rid of MT 4’s UI, because it seems infinitely better.

So that’s a wrap! I have a few more things to clean up about this design, but I’m pretty happy with it. Let me know what you think! :)

Two months of Indian TV — and if I see another ad for Maasilamani, I will hurt someone badly — have gotten me thinking about the quality of the movies and shows I watched. I said earlier that women only play a few set roles in Indian cinema — housewives, lady cops (which I don’t understand — the other extreme?), and pretty young things in search of love. The thing is, men don’t branch out a ton either: The villains are mustachioed; the heroes, also mustachioed, are either too poor or too proud, or, if right in the middle, have no faults.The same characters wind up doing the same things. I have seen three lady cops now, two businesswomen — but no other professionals — and about ninety housewives. This might be a slight improvement over male characters, many of whom only star as bad guys, husbands, and fiances. But it’s still not very interesting.

The national and international scale

An op-ed piece in The New Indian Express was upset that India’s most successful export (in terms of acclaim), Slumdog Millionaire, wasn’t even directed by an Indian — that India is incapable of producing an Academy Award winner on its own. I agree to some extent. There is a tremendous amount of talent and passion in the industry, but not enough diversity — for me or the Academy. Bollywood produces almost one thousand movies a year, and they’re all virtually the same. Most are about love, some are biopics, and I think it’s telling that one of the best movies to come out of India, Black, was about neither of these things.True, it is an Indian adaptation of The Miracle Worker, and it stars Amitabh Bachchan, the Godfather of Bollywood. But it was different. It’s the same with Lagaan, which was actually nominated for an Oscar in 2001. If you have to tell a story, either tell one that’s been told before and tell it better, or make up something completely new.

That being said, Bollywood has made its name on a totally different foundation than its western equivalents. Bollywood is about song and dance and tradition. It’s not necessarily about reality, but idealization. Bollywood doesn’t do grit and anguish. Nor do I think its movies fit nicely into any one genre. Indian movies have a lot of love, a lot of music, and always a happy ending, which is what people like seeing. Believable? Absolutely not. But mildly stimulating and entertaining if you can get into it.

I thought I would never be able to say this, but I finally beat The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I ended up playing a lot of my little neighbor’s game because he couldn’t get past the beginning at all. And while I found that bit with the cat very frustrating, I think on a whole this game was one of the most fun and challenging I’ve played so far. I haven’t played too many games all the way through, so this isn’t as special a designation as one would think, but on with the review! Some spoilers are ahead, so be careful!

Controls and movement

The Wii is some sort of miracle machine. Playing Zelda on it feels so intuitive (Calculus made me hate this word, but here it is again). I was convinced that I would get carpal tunnel just from the final battle with Ganon, but it is so much easier to kill people when you don’t have to hit [B] all the time and you have that freedom of movement from the remote and nunchuk. The only things that I found jerky about the controls are the bits where you get to ride a giant boar, and you hit [A] to dash, but I imagine that giant boars going at very high speeds are not very agile animals, so I’m fine with that.

I wasn’t very comfortable with Wolf Link, but this is probably the case for a lot of people. Although enemies fall just as fast regardless of which form you’re using, I always found it easier to switch to Link for fights when I could. Still, the best way to handle the twilight beasts is Wolf Link’s AOE. It takes a lot less precision than Link’s charged spin attack. Additionally, I thought that the sensing options were very interesting. I scared the pants off of all of Hyrule Castle Town by tracking the medicine scent in broad daylight, but there aren’t any hard feelings that I know of.

Story

Although Link is always going to be the archetypal fantasy hero, at least Twilight Princess managed to deliver some maturity to the series. I thought the Zant subplot was pretty cool, although having two villains diminishes them both. Still, the Zant fight was very fun. I had to remember how to take care of him in all of the stages, but I picked up on it decently fast. Alright, GameFaqs helped quite a bit in some areas. I usually didn’t use it for boss fights though — only when I hit dead ends in dungeons. That’s a little better, right? Please say yes. I can’t repent my sins now that I’ve beaten the game.

The twilight

This game looked gorgeous on a whole, but nothing moreso than the swirling, seething darkness that looms over Hyrule in the absence of light. I found it nice and gloomy and creepifying, which I had only noticed before in the Shadow Temple in Ocarina of Time. The portals were especially nice. I kept thinking of the portals to Hell or otherwise in Diablo II. I liked the Twilight Realm a lot. And although I kept screwing up the Giant-Floating-Creepy-Hand bits in the left side of Zant’s (Midna’s?) palace by accidentally dropping the Sol (very clever, Nintendo, very clever) or losing it when I fell down from the floating platforms into the mist.

I also thought it was cool that, whenever you were weighted down and you switched to wolf mode, you discovered, much to your disgust, that you were covered in rats (Ah, I’m covered in raaaats!). And the ghost soldiers and castle ghosts looked so sad! And the pointing! Nice and eerie.

Midna

This storyline could have been fleshed out some more. The game was actually pretty short, if you think about it. This is the first time I can say that I’ve finished most of the side quests (still looking for Agitha’s bugs and finishing up my heart count, and I never do well enough at fishing to try those quests out). I thought Midna was an interesting character, and I liked how she was like Zelda’s aggressive, snarky half. But I also feel like I spent most of the game looking for artifacts that I still didn’t know a ton about, like the Fused Shadows. But I really like how violent the game gets once Midna starts to get more power for herself. The last few fights definitely played up the epic side of the whole game, which I definitely appreciate. And how cool was Ganondorf’s death? That closeup of Zant’s face and then the sudden crank to the left as he died. That was amazing on so many levels.

Miscellaneous

I do have a few lingering thoughts. First, I have to ask: who came up with the Oocca? Never have I seen a more ungainly and disturbing race. First, Ooccoo Jr. is little more than a head with wings, and a creepy head with that. Ooccoo herself is a chicken with a gender-neutral human head, and cold, staring eyes. And the way she scuttles after you when you get into the Sky Cannon, or when she just happens to find herself in pots in your vicinity? I also kept getting lost in the Sky City — really a matter of me getting to areas I wasn’t supposed to be in yet, or missing doors, but trying to do stuff in that area anyway (the area with the boss key, where I really wasn’t thinking at all), but I won’t hold that against them.Although I really want to. The Snowpeak dungeon was also on the hard side, but I made it through alright. And I came out of it with Superb Soup and tons of hearts made from good ol’ homemade Yeti lovin’.

My favorite part was probably that Castle Town was FULLY OCCUPIED! There were people everywhere, and all sorts of nooks and crannies. It just feels more alive than it ever has before. Castle Town in Ocarina of Time was realy just the market square and the set of three alleyways on the left side with the dog lady. Clock Town in Majora’s Mask — which I am now inclined to try again — was exceptionally busy, but all the action happened in the town anyway. In hindsight, Castle Town was more of a happy medium between Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, but still, I loved seeing all of the vendors in the streets and the cacophony in the square.

Hidden Skills

My only complaint is that I never found an occasion to use Mortal Draw. I tried to use it on Ganon, but then he kicked me in the face.

The final battle (countdown?!)

The light baseball was fast, and possessed Zelda was really cool, but Phase One was very easy. Phase Two, the horseback fight, was also easy. I managed to get three hits back to back, one of them just before he summoned his ghost riders. I expected that his riders would be chasing us around rather than trying to knock me off Epona. Phase Three was really cool (although, would a single arrow really hurt Pig Ganon that much?), up until I had to switch to Wolf Link. Sometimes, I would be barely off-center, and instead of Midna’s hair working its magic, I would be knocked off to a side. I decided to make the fight last a bit longer so that I could avoid the charges that weren’t optimal for me, and instead waited until he was right ahead of me. Or I closed my eyes and held [A] down anyway. I did like how heavy Ganon apparently was as Pig Ganon (what? He’s evil!). It took at least five seconds of holding down the control stick on the nunchuk to get him to flip over — or keel over?

All things considered, Twilight Princess was a great game and I can’t wait until another Zelda comes out on the Wii. Too bad I only get to play it during holidays.