It's probably obvious to those of you who've noticed I never change my blog template. Most designers change their templates all the time, trying new things. I've mentioned several times that I want to make some changes, but for the most part I've left it alone...not because I think it's perfect like it is, but because I dread going into the code. It's horribly out of date--it uses tables, for goodness' sake--and if I ever get into a serious redesign, I know I'm going to want to start over from scratch.
I'm not the type of person who can just use a WYSIWYG editor and be content. I have to mess with the underpinnings, make them the best that I know they can be.
That perfectionism makes me despise web design, because nothing is ever perfect. What works in one browser doesn't work in another. I can't always do what I want, either because I lack the coding ability, because it's unsupported by major browsers, or because it's simply impossible with the tools we currently have. To get certain effects I have to cheat and then be annoyed that the site doesn't live up to standards. I use JavaScript to do certain things, for example, and I just have to hope that the majority of site visitors won't have it disabled. There are so many factors to take into account, when all I really want to do is make a nice, pretty design.
Despite all this, for some inexplicable reason I keep taking on web design projects. What's wrong with me?
I've lived with Apartment Arrangement Option 5 for two weeks now...and I've decided I hate it.
My goal was to create comfortable home bases for me and Sean while expanding seating areas for visitors. What ended up happening was Sean would sit on my couch to play video games or watch DVDs. If you remember, I moved his area to be against the wall. That ended up being fine for using his laptops, but not for just relaxing, so he'd lounge out on the big couch when he wanted to do that. I like sitting next to him, don't get me wrong, but if he feels like stretching out, there's no room for me.
Another problem is that the loveseat, along the wall next to him, became a dumping ground for stuff while serving zero purpose in terms of seating. It turns out it's just awkwardly placed, with no decent views of anything.
Yesterday I came home to find Sean and his dad sitting on my couch, and that made me fully realize how inconvenient the layout is. The couch offers the best view of the TV, so obviously guests would want to sit there...meaning I probably get cut off from my laptop, which I don't really like moving around.
It didn't solve the problems after all; it just shifted them.
I'd been unhappy for days, but that galvanized my need to do something. So I went back to my Photoshop file and messed around some more. A lot more. Until eventually, finally, I came up with Apartment Arrangement Option 10, a revision of Option 5.
See how Sean and I will have our own departmentalized seating areas? But we can both move to the main couch, directly in front of the TV, and snuggle together if we want. It's the best I could do, given our ridiculously narrow living room with its inconvenient doors and bizarro closet jutting into the room.
Sean's agreed to try it, but he said "Not today". ;> So we'll see how this does, here in a couple of days. Wish us luck :>
Today I spent some time rearranging the second bedroom, which has multiple uses: guest room, office, and general storage facility. I want it to also serve the purpose of a workout room, so I was trying to clear a decent amount of space in front of the television. I was marginally successful; you can see pictures here. (Note that I do someday plan to put the Christmas decorations away...)
Doing that put me in the rearranging mood, and I decided to start thinking about how I want the living room to look. I found a floor plan of our apartment at the rental company's website and, armed with my trusty tape measure and Photoshop, added in all our furniture. Here's the current layout:
The big purple block is our couch, and the gray boxes in front of it are Sean's area. (Light gray is the floor where he sits; dark gray is the kotatsu.) The red blocks are the loveseat and chair, and the long, darker red rectangle is the coffee table on loan from Brooke. The big black rectangle is the TV, the big black square is the dinner table, and the smaller black boxes are the bar table and its chairs, the media cabinets, and a file cabinet.
It's actually a pretty decent layout, given the awkward utility closet jutting into the room and all the doors I have to work around. I really like the way it looks. However, it's inconvenient in a couple of ways. First, Sean is facing the back wall and not the television. This wasn't really a big deal before, but lately he's taken to sitting in my seat (the loveseat) to play video games on the TV, only to have to move when I get home. Secondly, having Sean's sitting area right in front of the largest couch means a lot of sitting area is wasted. No one who comes over wants to squeeze in and sit behind him, so the couch is limited to perhaps one seat, rather than three or possibly four. I am also somewhat unhappy with the placement of the bar table in the dining room; I kind of like it, but it annoys me that the stools aren't next to it, and it isn't serving its normal purpose.
So for about five hours I've been rearranging colored blocks, trying to discover a better arrangement. Here are the phases I went through:
This kind of works, but the loveseat is facing a chair that is at a 90 degree angle, which is bound to look ridiculous. Meanwhile, the chair is floating in the middle of the flow of traffic.
I thought maybe putting the TV on the opposite wall would help. It's a neat idea, but ultimately results in a Family Circus-style path through the apartment. I kind of liked the thought of having an artificial hallway leading to the bedroom door, but it's not really practical and possibly unsafe.
Perhaps, I speculated, giving up on 90 degree angles would do the trick. This is the result. Ultimately the seating problem still exists and most of the seating has a very poor view.
What if I used the TV as an artificial wall? Well, someone would knock into it, of course...especially given the small passageway between it and the loveseat. I liked the effect this closing-off had on the dining area, but that's about it. There still wasn't a very homey feel, and few decent views. Plus, Sean was probably too far away from the TV.
But then, finally, I came across this arrangement:
I'm not perfectly happy with it, but it feels like this is the best I'm going to be able to do. The TV stays where it currently is, to keep it in sight of most of the room. The loveseat rotates 90 degrees and moves to the corner; Sean slides up next to it, leaving enough room for him to walk around and for people to sit. The full couch becomes my seat, with the coffee table in front of it and plenty of room for others to sit, and then the chair rounds out the room, leaving an open area for the bar table. Sean's file cabinet ends up next to the loveseat and becomes a much-needed end table.
What's nice about this is that the flow of traffic isn't changed; people can walk in a straight line from the front door to the back door, which is optimal with this floor plan. I don't really like how the TV looks right now, but once we get a table for it I think it and the media cabinets will fill out the wall better.
Of course, I haven't actually moved anything yet...I'm so exhausted from thinking about it that I think I'll just relax for now ;)
This desk needs to support two monitors, one CRT and one LCD, an oversize keyboard, and a phone. Ideally it would also have room for a printer or two and a way to keep the CPU itself off the floor.
The work surface should raise and lower so that I can either stand or sit.
The desk should have one file drawer and one or two miscellaneous drawers.
It should also have a fold-out treadmill and a fold-out exercise bike that will retract into the desk when not in use. Ideally the controls for these would be built into the desk, as would retractable hand grips.
I can almost picture how this desk would work. It would have to be at least L-shaped, if not U-shaped. The arm or arms would contain the exercise equipment. There are already products that can raise a monitor and keyboard; for this desk they would just have to raise two monitors at once. I'd prefer it to look snazzy, so instead of a product sitting on top of the desk, I'd prefer the desk itself be adjustable. That would ensure that there would be space for the exercise equipment to fold out and lock in, as well.
Okay, universe, you have your assignment. When can I expect to see this desk in my office?
So I have the TV on in my office today, and I'm flipping between the US Open and HGTV. There was a show where two 22-year-olds were buying their first house after living with their parents and saving up money like crazy. Neat story. The two of them had two inspirational decoration pieces that the guy's parents had brought back from Japan. One was a wood carving of a Chinese character that meant good health, good life, or something. The other was a painting that looked to be in the Chinese style, at least to me. The guy said he was definitely interested in "Oriental" designs--I think it's still okay to say "Oriental" when you're talking about decorating, but it seems weird to me.
The narrator kept referring to the new homeowners as "Grasshopper", as though kung fu had anything to do with Japan (I think the Shaolin monks might have something to say about that). Meanwhile, the designer decorated the kitchen cabinets with horrible renderings of Chinese characters, but at least he had a sense of humor about it--he mixed the traditional "honor" and crap like that with stuff like "candy" and "chicken".
The thing I was most interested in was the dining room, where they laid out bamboo mats to cover the ugly floor and then put in a low table. The designer made the table by hand, and he designed extensions for it so it could be used at a height that's normal for westerners.
I have been trying to figure out how to design a table with extensions for awhile now. I would prefer that the legs either fold out or be latched under the table, so the extra legs don't take up additional space in the house. I want either a black table, to go along with all my black furniture, or a more traditional natural wood, stained/lacquered? table.
It was neat to see someone actually doing something like what I want, even if in this case the extensions had to be stored.
I've also thought about putting down bamboo mats in my dining room, but it doesn't seem like it would work right with the kitchen entrance. Plus the chandelier just doesn't go with a Japanese style room, so I've been loath to decorate it at all.
Maybe someday when we move I'll have the Japanese-style dining room I envision :)
I recently subscribed to Better Homes and Gardens.
My mom used to get this magazine when I was younger, back when the boys and I all lived at home and I shared a bathroom with Mom and Dad. There was always a basket next to the toilet filled with magazines that I would sit and read longer than necessary, and BH&G was one of those.
My favorite parts were always the floor plans and photographs of home and garden makeovers. I loved seeing the unique ways people would dress up their existing spaces. I still remember a tiny yard with a high wall that was transformed into an English garden, and what a strong effect that had on me. I learned then that you can do a lot with a little...even though it was years before my dreams of living in a mansion transformed into a quiet desire for a small, functional, pretty home.
There is a gorgeous little Massachusetts cottage in the June 2007 issue that was originally a boat house. That kind of coziness and simplicity really appeal to me now.
There's also an 850 square foot California house that serves as the first home for a young couple and their baby. The story boasts a floor plan, much to my delight.
The magazine is bigger than I remember. I don't know if it actually is bigger or if I've just grown accustomed to the size of Taste of Home, which is small enough to be saddle-stitched. BH&G is held together with glue, like a book. It made it a little more difficult to yank out all the advertising inserts.
But the size is a good thing, because it means I have plenty of reading for the basket in my bathroom :)
MySpace doesn't like its profile pages to be legible, so it does everything it possibly can to ensure that they're not.
Right now I'm trying to use the new editor to add a nifty Live Free or Die Hard theme to my profile, but the theme isn't set up right. It puts black text on top of a black background! And when I try to use the editor to fix it, it destroys other parts of the code.
I keep going around and around with it and it's driving me crazy! I'm way too much of a perfectionist for MySpace ;P
In the Links, I have finally gotten rid of my old "Things We Lost in the Fire" Amazon wish list. It's been almost two years! I did, however, move the items from that list that I still want to have into other lists.
I've broken out "Reference and How-Tos" from "Nonfiction", and I've changed "In My Dreams" to "Electronics and Appliances". I've also added my "Games" list, which I'd created on Amazon awhile back but never gotten around to linking.
I've also made some changes to Fun Stuff. My Twitter, Ficlets, Dandelife, YouTube, and MySpace profiles are all linked now. I've grouped these with other communities/sites I'm affiliated with. The next group of links are fun Flash videos, then Japan-related stuff, and finally various cool things, to which I've added NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Finally, down in Comics, I've removed Bruno, which is over, Venus Envy, which updates so slowly that I don't even care about the story anymore, and Help Desk, which used to be interesting but is now just "meh", and I don't have time to read "meh" comics. (I don't think the content has really changed...I think I'm just tired of that kind of humor.) I have added Achewood, which I could never get into before but for some reason am finding intriguing now, and Evil, Inc.
I'm more and more wanting to redesign my blog template. I know so much more about web design now than when I first put it together. I'd like to keep the main features--the checkered background, the colors, even the style of the boxes around all the content, if not the boxes themselves. But I think the site could flow a lot better, and I would like to lay out my sidebar in lists. I mentioned before thinking it'd be a good idea to have the search as part of the header, and I'd still like to do that. I'm also interested in creating an archive drop-down up there. Of course, ideally, my design would be achieved through CSS, with none of this table garbage.
We'll see what happens as my ideas congeal. Hopefully this won't go the way of my fabled shift to WordPress.
(Speaking of which, I probably won't make that shift. Blogger has had its issues, but it works for my purposes. I like the fact that I essentially have a backup of my entire blog--the static files here on my server, and the Blogger database of my posts and comments over on their server. Plus, WordPress gets hacked regularly, which means I would have to update my software all the time. Also, one of the main features I found attractive on WordPress is obsolete these days. That feature is dynamic pages, and the reason they're obsolete is that they use too much bandwidth. So, there you have it.)
I've added a Twitter box to my sidebar. (I also moved the search box to the top. Now I'm thinking I'd like to put the search into the header somewhere, but I'll worry about completely redesigning my template later ;P)
Twitter is basically a quick way you can let people know what you're up to. Now I won't have to put one-line posts on my blog anymore!
Don't worry; I'll still do it. But maybe not as much?
All views, opinions, and statements expressed on this website are exclusively those of Heather Meadows, who assumes full responsibility for all opinions, statements, and other content presented herein.
