Since the focus of this blog seems to have become geeking out over webby things, and since no one else really cares about these things (and no one really reads this blog), allow me to fangirl over some classes I may be taking in Spain next semester.
First, there’s a class I found months ago that honestly had me, like, hyperventilating with excitement. All right, perhaps not hyperventilating, but I definitely got really, really excited because it’s totally my soulmate. It’s called “Diseño y programación en internet,” or “Internet Design and Programming,” and I really think the class description was written as a love letter to me. Typography! Image formats! Color palettes! Photoshop! Flash! Gahhh too much for one to handle! I’m sure a lot of it will be review, but, the thing is, I never actually learned any of this stuff officially, just from teaching myself, so it would be really cool to learn it for real. Plus, there’s some stuff I don’t know how to do, namely Flash, that would be really useful. Also, I found the professor on Photoshop (I swear I wasn’t stalking — it was just one of the first Google results for his name), and he looks like he’d be a nonstop party, don’t you think? I definitely based my entire schedule for this semester around that class, even though it won’t count for anything.
Second-of-ly, I just found this class like ten minutes ago, thus prompting this entry. It’s not quite as cool, but it would still be fun. It’s called “Hipertexto y multimedia,” which I guess means, well, “Hypertext and Multimedia,” although who uses the word hypertext? It reminds me of HyperStudio, the program my elementary school computer teacher was convinced was superior to PowerPoint for years. Anyway, lord knows why, but it’s in the linguistics department. I love linguistics, so I’d really be okay if it somehow incorporated it. The class sounds like it’s a basic overview of what a website is and should include. I could wind up really, really bored in this class, but it’s hard to imagine being bored when talking about something as exciting as websites, so, yeah. Plus, my priority in Spain is travel, not school, so I’m not too worried about not challenging myself academically. Oh, and you can either choose to take a final exam or make a website as a final project, so, heck yes! I probably wind up HTML-ing instead of studying for most finals anyway, and this time I won’t have to feel guilty!
YESSSSS. I’ve been feeling less than great lately, and this is the first time in a while I’ve gotten really, really excited over something. Laugh all you want, but I’m the one who gets to take two classes about something I’m super passionate about next semester.
And, yeah, so neither of these will count toward my major or minor, and I have no idea what I’ll do for a career after I graduate, but no matter what I do, web design will come in handy (either in my profession, as a side job, or as a hobby), so these will be quite useful.
Eh, I just figured out the other classes I’m hoping to take may not be quite as Comm-major-counting as I thought, so I may have to change things around, but I am definitely taking that first class.
Fun fact: I officially (whatever that meant) opened this site eight years ago today. December 14th, 2001. I can’t believe I still have it. It’s gone through a lot of changes, of course, and *starsparkle* became Star-Sparkle.net, which became KirstieJ.com that’s not-so-secretly still hosted on star-sparkle.net, but, yep, here we are still today. How cute. Considering this site came pretty late in my web design years, dang, I’ve been doing this for a hella long time (oh lord, did I just use the word “hella”?).
The exciting “blog entry” I wrote that day was:
muahahahaha! after about 2 years, ive finally completed my site (although i have only been working on this for about 3 days) like the layout? fill out some forms. more sections soon.
What a riveting first entry that was. I guess I referred to it as a “weblog” back then. How old school of me. And every entry is incredibly cringeworthy.
I’m also laughing at my pathetic attempt to make money by selling ad space on my website. But I was in my PayPal account the other day for the first time in years, and it looks like I made like $8 off of it, so that’s not bad considering I had no other source of income at the time.
Since I don’t actually use this blog for much other than reminiscing about my Geocities days, I’ll say goodbye now. Happy birthday, *starsparkle*! May you and your tacky, asterisky name have a fantastic day.
In honor of Geocities shutting down, I’ve compiled some highlights from my Geocities-era graphic designing days. Warning: your eyes may burn from the sheer horror of it all.
First, a button for others to link me. Wtf is up with the rainbow basket weave? As far as I remember, *starsparkle* featured no information on baskets. I also used that font, Violation, in, like, every other graphic I made.
Blinkie! Oh man, guys, blinkies were so cool, and I was so into making them. I think I even paid like $30 once for Jasc Animation Shop so I could continue with it. Nothing compares to animated gifs.
From svhsy.net. I guess I was trying to edit something out of the background (probably the book title), and I thought the black scribble in Microsoft Paint would do the trick. And that font, Sevenet 7, I think it was called, was all the rage.
This was my definition of a downloadable wallpaper. I love the shadow effect, the blurred edges of her face, and the stock flower images. I’m considering using this as my wallpaper again. At least it’s better than the other one I had on svjh.net, which said “SVJH Rocks!” in size 72 Verdana with stock rose images that had nothing to do with anything.
Another Jasc Animation Shop gem = the star transition. So, so classy. Also classy is that font that everyone and their mom used. I think it was called Font Diner.com Sparkly or something. Wait, what? Oh, never mind. I thought that name sounded too ridiculous to be true, but that’s in fact what it was called.
This is mostly here for me to comment on the “teehee.” So cringeworthy.
Yet another star transition! I think I had like twelve of those on every site. Also note the Sevenet 7.
I guess there was a page where you submitted your favorite Sweet Valley Junior High pairing in exchange for a graphic. The fonts! The terrible quality! The faded edges!
WHY are there stars in her eyes? And what’s with the terribly unsmooth text?
Wow, what a shame. And I’m sure I could find even worse examples if I looked harder.
Check out XKCD if you haven’t yet today. The site’s redesign for the day is amazing. Best thing I’ve seen all day (perhaps all week). Also, I’m very happy that “RIP Geocities” made it as a Twitter Trending Topic. It’s good to know I’m not alone in my mourning.
Let us take a moment to bow our heads in silence for the passing of a very dear friend, Geocities.
When I first read that horrible message greeting Geocities fans upon logging in, the one that announced, “GeoCities is closing on October 26, 2009,” I knew tragedy had struck, although I was happy to know that at least I would have a few good months left with my dear friend. But the world kept spinning madly on, and, at last, the day arrived. Today. The day before the death of Geocities.
I’ll give you a few moments to dry your tears, because it’s difficult to read the screen when your vision is obscured by sorrow. No need to tell me that you haven’t been crying, it’s just been raining on your face. I empathize with your distress. How come we’ve reached this fork in the road, and yet it cuts like a knife?
Okay, all exaggeration (and Flight of the Conchords lyrics) aside, I am pretty sad to see Geocities go. I doubt I would have even logged onto it in the past few years had I not known it would be shut down soon, but it was nice having it out there, because so much of my early teen years was spent on that site.
I actually hated Geocities at first. I was a hardcore Homestead fan and refused to use Geocities, mostly on the grounds that I didn’t like its pagebuilder as much (these were the days before I knew anything about HTML), so, as a result, I came to Geocities pretty late in the game, probably around 2000 or so. I don’t have a screencap of my first Geocities site (on this computer at least), but I remember it being light blue with small Verdana font and a picture of me water-skiing. That soon transformed into a two-frame site with navigation at the top and a few pages of content, and eventually that site turned into *starsparkle* (what a quality name), for which I bought the domain Star-Sparkle.net in January 2002 and still own today. What’s funny is that even after I owned the domain with hosting, I still kept most of my files on Geocities because I was so used to using it. Classy.
Even though that was the first Geocities site I had, the first one I really used was SVJHNet, a fansite for the book series Sweet Valley Junior High (yeah, super awesome), which I co-owned with this girl from Washington named Jessica. I don’t remember how I ended up co-owning the site with her, but she knew some HTML while I was still using Geocities Pagebuilder, but I began looking at the coding for the pages she had designed, and, from that, I figured out HTML, which would end up being a very handy tool for years to come. That site is probably my favorite Geocities memory, just because I learned so much from it. I think that was early 2001-ish, when I was 11/12. I had been into web design for a few years before that, but learning HTML was definitely much more legit. I believe svjh.net was also my first domain (it forwarded to the Geocities page), so that’s another fun milestone. It cost $35 for a year of domain registration, which, geez, that’s expensive, considering I registered kirstiej.com for a year for $1.09.
Aside from those two, I had a ton of other sites, ranging from other fansites to award sites to “cliques” (the early version of fanlistings, I guess, but I guess even fanlistings are rather passé now) and tons of other sites. Sadly, in my attempt to archive them all before tomorrow, I found that many of them were deleted off the Geocities servers. I would have loved to have them all for nostalgic purposes. At least I have the few I found.
So, Geocities, my dear friend, thank you for the years of fun and all that you taught me. You were a huge part of my life years ago, and I wish you a very fond farewell.
I spent more time today playing around with this page, adding the background to the header, making the font size a bit bigger, and installing a comment reply plugin. Unfortunately, I’m failing at making the comments nested. Sigh. Also, I really ought to get some schoolwork done today. Sigh again.
Here, have a picture from my highly amateur Flickr account.
