I thought that my novel had stagnated off to a line a month, a cohesive paragraph every season, but every time I find myself drifting off in class, I start working on that instead. It’s just enough to get me through calculating marginal revenues and molecular geometries. And my weekends, which used to be my most productive days, are simply days where I have to find things to fill the hours of empty time. Today, for instance, I opened up Photoshop this afternoon, and just half an hour ago, I came out of it with a mostly finished family tree for my story. What’s the benefit of that? Well, I can’t be devious about creating story lines — and I have been extremely devious recently — if I keep going into a fantasy cliche about creating ageless characters and that jazz. Nope, everyone dies. Don’t take that literally, but expect it. I don’t write your granny’s fiction.

Part of the reason that I’ve overloaded myself with five generations of fictional characters is that I’m surprisingly finding out that there’s not much for me to do in the gaps between meals and trips to various locations around campus, to break the boredom. All in the company of friends, of course. So I’ve watched at least ten movies in the past two weeks (Across The Universe, which the Beatles geek in me highly approves of, Everything Is Illuminated, which left out the juicy historical parts of the book much to my disappointment, and The Hours, which was a beautiful adaption from the novel are the new ones — as well as The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle), and I don’t see myself breaking that cycle until I can find a better hobby. I think it’s time for me to get over my fear of playing piano in the lobby. Stupid acoustics!

And then of course, there is my excessive music listening. Ever since I started using Last.FM, I’ve been hypersensitive to the fact that I name my songs a bit differently than what Last.FM deems proper. I run into some problems when I listen to songs from musicals and movies soundtracks, particularly Evita and Gladiator, because surprise, surprise, these happen to also be the names of bands. But if I’m looking for a song on my playlist, it makes a lot more sense for me to look for “Evita” and “Gladiator” than “Andrew Lloyd Webber” and “Hans Zimmer/Lisa Gerrard.” It is both hilarious and frustrating to see fans of the bands comment that the “Artist - Song Title” format is absolute, because as much as I want to try to resolve the situation, only one side really ends up benefiting. I am aware of the fact that Evita (the musical) was not in fact the artist who created the soundtrack, or that Gladiator (the movie) did not provide that haunting instrumentation, but it’s not a crime. At the very least, it’s a pardonable offense. I’m just trying to listen to my music!

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There’s something wonderful about rectangles. Circles go around for ever, embodied by tireless life and activity. But rectangles resolutely close in on themselves; rectangles secure; rectangles contain. No matter how many things I design in the thousand or so years I’ve got left, I’ll always find myself coming back to rectangles. But because they’re the medium of most designs? Or because I personally just find them beautiful?

But here it is at last! There’s no pink to be found (unless you try to scrub clean my images directory — in which case, would you mind taking the green away too? It’s awfully familiar) — and the site has a new name too — to the extent that, well, a certain geographical entity is now long gone from your beloved title bars. And after having played with serifs for a couple months, I finally felt confident enough to try them out in a design.

Anyways, definitely let me know what you think — every gory detail! And if you see any bugs, tell me as soon as you can! I owe my dog so many walks/victory laps that I’ll be lucky to have a spare minute for the next three years.

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Ten thousand years ago, lead developers of the wheel turned to a new project shortly after the wheel’s (mostly successful) launch — a creation that would force mankind down to its scabby knees and the earth that bore it. Some suggestions went further than others — the man who suggested the zucchini was thrown from a cliff, and his brother who wrote a powerful ten-sentence paper on the necessity of tree frogs was eaten the next morning. And then, there was the man who suggested the box — and was killed for being a “goddamn renegade; straight edges, what was he thinking?”

Still, they gave their best effort, didn’t they? Without further ado, I announce the launch of my first free icon set, Tiki Mojo: 12 basic icons for your website (lines form right here, kiddies). Be careful, that RSS icon is a little rough!

• Color-independent: Color Overlay to your heart’s desire
• Transparent: They’ll work on any background!
• Easily amended: I’ll keep updating these, don’t worry!

If sir/madam would be so kind, I appreciate all sorts of comments and constructive criticism.

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