CRDESIGNLAB

Part 1: The Big 1/12th

1 blog.

2 people.

31 posts.

259 comments.

2,662 hits. (palindrome)

1 month.

It make you wonder what the future holds in store.

Part 2: Standing Against Yoda

Well, as you may have guessed from the seemingly random facts listed about, this blog is now one month old. Actually, it turned 1/12th at about 3pm.

I have talked quite a lot about the direction that CRDESIGNLAB will be taking both here and here, and so I won’t bore you with any more repetitive details. I would just like to add that with every passing day, I become more and more devoted to expanding and improving this young site. With every passing day, I realize just how much potential the 2.0 web holds, and how with a little hard work, almost anything is possible. With every passing day, I become more and more enlightened as to the possibilities that exist within the Mac Lab. And with every passing day, I try harder and harder to make CRDESIGNLAB the best it can be by being the best I can be, by being everything that the Mac Lab is about, and I do so with a happiness and sense of gratification that I do not get anywhere else.

And that is why this site is great. Because I try to be great. I try. And sometimes I succeed, and sometimes I fail. Luckily for me, my successes are far more numerous than my failures.

On Saturday, I commented on Philip Behnam’s brilliantly beautiful new blog header pattern and I asked him how he managed to change the header. He said the setting was in the appearance menus. I looked, but to no avail. I desperately wanted to trash the horrid grey gradient  that had been sitting atop CRDESIGNLAB for a month, and so I turned to my last resort: Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). I bought the CSS Styles upgrade for WordPress a while back, but to be honest, code kind of scares me, so I have been reluctant to delve into it. I decided I would brave the unknown and try to dig the code for the header out of the current theme’s CSS, and as you can see, I succeeded. I was ecstatic! I left a jubilant comment on Philip’s blog and literally jumped for joy. I had actually, on my own, figured out how to make something happen by using code! Man, I was happy. And to be completely honest, it was a piece of cake. It took me two minutes and the result was really cool.  The moral of this seemlingly pointless little anecdote is that I TRIED!!!! For two minutes, I gave it my all and to my great surprise, I succeeded. Whoever heard of such a thing!!!

Basically, I am trying to tell all of you people who are sitting there thinking “how in the world did they do that stuff” or “how in the world did they find the time” or “how in the world are they so smart” to take a moment to try. Just try to do something. Anything. Just not nothing. I challenge you, I dare you, to put forth some effort and I guarantee you will be shocked at the outcome.

Yoda (from Star Wars) said “Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.” I would like to think of Yoda as a wise old Jedi Master, as his 900 years surely lent him some experience, but I stand conflicted on this statement of his. I believe there is a “try”, and I also believe that if you “try”, the “do” will come naturally. I believe that you cannot have the “do” without the “try”. And so I think the Master is wrong, in a sense. Trying is part of doing. And the latter cannot exist without the first. And the first inevitably leads to the latter. Did I forget to mention that I like circular logic?

Bottom line: try.

Man, ranting is fun! And shockingly tangential sometimes. I started out talking about the blog and ended by telling you to try. It’s it amazing how the lessons of the web 2.0 world can be so relevant in daily life.

Part 3: The Lines of Light

Now for the feature of today’s post. The featured photo was taken when Kyle and I went to downtown on 1/17/2010. The 43 second exposure captured cars as they drove past and then stopped at the red light. It is not as good as a few of the other light painting we did that day, but I think the cars make it very cool. Also, during the car ride downtown, we opened the shutter for twenty seconds or so at a time and captured the lights of the cars moving down the highway. The results of four such experiments are now on the light painting gallery, along with the car picture. I don’t want to devote too much time to these images, as the tangential point of today’s post is discussed above in Part 2.

Well, I guess that is all. I kind of exploded into my computer during 7th period today, and this post was the result. The title was the last thing I wrote, because I feel like that simply is what this post is. My mind exploded. I just threw a bunch of stuff at you. Now do with it what you wish.