matt hackmann - web developer - artist - nerd

It seems that since I began school this blog has gotten more and more deserted. I was reading through old entries last night and I feel that things may be beginning to get empty. So, here I am once again poring forth my soul into the void that is known as the internet.

Last month ended my two month journey that was motion graphics. I am sad to have to leave these classes as I seem to have found my calling in mograph. To be frank, I had way too much fun and I probably created my best work ever in those two months. Of course, just because I'm not in the class doesn't mean I won't be dropping it and forgetting about it. No, I plan on doing small projects through out school that I can dump into my demo reel down. Even now I am working on a small advertisement for a friend. After that, there's a Dockers "make your commercial and have it aired on TV" contest that I'm thinking of entering. The more I can get my work out there, the more chance I have of going immediately into the industry after I graduate.

But enough dwelling on the past (or the future), and let us reflect on the present. This month I have probably what is going to be the easiest class off all time: web development. For anybody who doesn't know me personally, I've been involved in web dev for going on eight years. All that YPN stuff and what not. Of course, for those of us who are already fluent in web dev they're going to try to get us to use modern and clean coding practices (tableless design, emphasis on CSS, etc). Oh, wait. I already do all that. I feel like a jerk talking about this class like it's useless crap, but it's really not their fault. However, I don't want to be talked down to as if I know nothing or am new to the whole web stuff. As with most technologies I've taught myself, I not only learn forwards, but backwards as well. I'm well versed in tricks of old as well as new. Alright, enough of that borderline ego stroking.

My other class, which I haven't actually attended yet, is, or will be, developmental psychology. I really don't know what this class has in store for me, but at the very least it should be more interesting than web dev.

Today, I got to get my feet wet in the field of game testing. EA's Tiburon division, which develops most of their sports titles, resides just seven small miles from my house. Once or twice a month they bring people in to do a couple hours of game beta testing in exchange for a free game. I've been on the mailing list since December after Ian Cummings, lead director of the Madden series, put in a recommendation for me after reading my Rock Band drums post. Of course, that was for a full-time job doing game testing, but being a full-time student as well these two hours sessions were the next best thing. But, I digress.

Anyways, I got to go to the EA building, which I must say is very, very nice looking. I even got to sign a non-disclosure agreement that forbids me from telling anybody what I played or what I saw. Kind of cool, actually. I will say, I enjoyed what I played and the best part of all is I obtained myself a free copy of Command & Conquer 3 for PC. I haven't actually installed or tried the game yet, but I'll probably post something when I do.

Well, I suppose that about wraps things up for now. I'll be putting up a post about my final project for motion graphics soon (currently waiting on something). Oh, and for all those tiny little updates be sure to check out my Twitter account. I've also placed a convenient little box above the RSS feeds that shows my latest tweet. Until next time, keep your staplers running.

As I write this I am taking a hiatus from, once again, coming up with a new design for my blog. The major question I'm sure that's on everybody's minds is "Why do you redesign your blog so often?" After pondering this question myself I have come to the conclusion that I just enjoy coming up with new designs. This in turn begs the question why go live with every new design? Why not just create the designs on the side and leave the live version alone? Because I end up liking what I've just created more than what's currently implemented.

The relationship I have with any piece of art I create is generally a strained one. I'm very self-critical of everything I create. It is very rare that I make something that I like for any extended period of time. I think the problem stems from the fact that every time I see one of my works I begin finding flaws. These flaws are not necessarily seen by others, but I can see them. This is generally fine for, say, a movie or a drawing. I don't have to look at them once they're done. My website, however, is something I see fairly often. I come to see if people have left comments, to post entries, etc. It is hard for me to turn a blind eye to any flaw I see in the design when I am faced with it over and over.

As stated earlier, I also just plain and simple like creating new designs and trying out new things. As I surf the internet I am constantly bombarded by all sorts of different color schemes, layouts, etc. and these intrigue me. I get all excited and before too long I've got Photoshop and Notepad++ up and running and I'm hacking away at the latest entry of my long list of designs. Excluding the Wordpress and Blogger themes, I have made live three designs for my blog since June of '05. That's not including the designs I had from '01 to '03, anything I created for any of the various other sites I've managed (YPN, my church's website, Digital Double), or the designs that never saw the light of day.

I realize that changing up the site design so frequently is not necessarily a good thing, especially in a commercial environment. It can confuse people and probably would piss some off to the point of not returning. Granted, there are sites that do this (digg comes to mind). However, since this is my personal blog, my sandbox as it were, I'm not worried about too much. I generally try to keep the overall aspects more or less the same breaking everything down into navigation, body, extras.

Though it is beyond the scope of this article, one thing I have messed up through all the redesigns is my URL naming conventions. Usually when I roll out a new design I'm also rolling outa new CMS (conent management system) to go with it and these don't always use the same naming conventions for internal links. This causes links in older posts, google's index, etc. to become broken and raises general chaos. I'm happy with my naming conventions now and this will remain the same even when I do change the back end. Permalinks will be exactly that.

So, that is the "logic" behind my madness, tune in next week to watch the evolution of my designs and learn the rules behind them.

No offense to the state, just a little thing Dave Berry is always pointing out (you can't spell Florida without the "duh"). If I haven't mentioned the fact that Dave Berry is one of the funniest columnists alive, I will do so now and tell you to go out and get some of his books. The Guide to Guys and Money Secrets are my personal favorites. But, this all really has nothing to do with this blog post so I will move along.

I guess the first thing I want to say is that Guitar Hero II is pretty much the best guitar-based game ever created. I kind of sat on the edge about it for a while because the song list seemed kind of meh compared to it's predecessor, but I decided to give it a chance and GameFly'd it. I was unimpressed for a while and then I hit the boss song. Freebird. All 9 and a half glorious minutes of it. Needless to say I went out and just bought the game the next day and now I rock out on it all the time. Maybe I'll post a video sometime. Oh, and a sidenote, this whole Guitar Hero madness made Chris buy an electric guitar so maybe one of us'll be the next Van Halen or we can form a band and resurrect the glory days of the 80s. Maybe...

I'm back to my old self again and have created a new design for the site. With everybody going "Web 2.0" I figured I'd better jump on the bandwagon and stay current. However, in my defense, the original Tetra design used rounded tables before rounded tables were the thing to do, so I'm a trailblazer there. I'm going to wait to implement the new design until I've gotten a new backend written. Wordpress is nice and all, but all the spam (which you lucky souls never see) is really driving me insane. Besides, I can make a less bloated piece of software to suit my needs. When it comes to web stuff I usually trust my own work over that of others. Maybe I'm an egotistical jerk that way :-P.

Shifting to my public life, things at work ar fairly normal. However, I did drop the CSM charade and joined Robin Hood's Merry Men, or as everybody else knows us, cart pushers. You're probably thinking "Wow! Why did you take that kind of a pay cut just to push carts, a lowly job made for the slime of the Earth?". Firstly, I wasn't actually being paid CSM wages, so I lost a whole .40 an hour. Secondly, that .40 an hour has bought me some sanity and hapiness. The lot is a nice, quiet place to be. The carts don't complain about their credit card being denied, or that something rang up the wrong price, or.... you get the picture. I don't know about people in other towns, but Bartians seem to be a whiny bunch (I'll admit I can be whiny as well).

Well, that about wraps it up for this blog post. Tune in next Friday as maybe I'll make this a weekly thing. It would do me some good to get into some sort of schedule of doing things.

To celebrate my laptop being back I decided to finish up the new design and launch it. So, here it is! Everything is as it should be; my laptop is back, my blog is running on my own design again, uhhh.... other stuff... yeah. So, anyways, enjoy :-)

A while back I worked up a new design for the site and I've been working on getting it finished the last few days. Comment posting still doesn't work and the "My Digg" bar is broken, but I think this is probably one of the best designs I've had in a while. But don't take my word for it, see for yourselves. The comic page is also done in this style, though it's not quite working yet.