its not *quite* finished (still want to add some more content to it) but its at a good place now for me to put it out there before i leave for south by southwest.
some details you may find mildly interesting:
- contains over 700 lines of code, though a more efficient programmer probably could’ve done it in much less
- rss reader dynamically grabs headlines from this blog
- projects and info are all stored in a separate XML file (which I will use to create a text-only version eventually)
- full page flash positions content with respect to browser dimensions
- executes the MovieClipLoader class to preload the image files
- uses the tween class to move the bottom content up and down, but timeline animation for the heart transition
i have the tendency to hate my portfolio designs after about a month. let’s see if this one stands the test of time.
Filed under: portfolio
yesterday i happened to discover that the previously unavailable www.digitalemma.com was released. domains are so ridiculously cheap (especially compared with the $70 they used to be 10 years ago) so i bought it… and then a couple more: www.emmawelles.com and www.emmawelles.net. you know, in case there’s another nerdy emma welles growing up right now and eying my internet identity, i gotta claim what’s mine.
Filed under: portfolio
lets risk being trendy and web2.0 and call it a “beta” version 
there are still a lot of things i want to improve: projects i want to add, some of the actionscript is buggy, i’d like to include more info about each project and much more stuff to look at… but, it’s a start!
ideas? comments? critiques? pretty please?
“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot—albeit a perfect one—to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work—and learning from their mistakes—the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”
from www.lifeclever.com. i’d say that’s pretty true about a lot of things in life. I need to just make more stuff, all the time, be making stuff, and then i will get better. the problem is that i havent designed a portfolio page in a while… a year! i gotta stop putting so much pressure on myself, and just make it and then improve it.
i am having a serious problem finishing this damn thing. i am filled with questions, am i good enough, am i creative enough, am i in the right field… i love learning how to do things but i can’t seem to develop ideas from scratch, and when the pressure is on, like this portfolio is weighing heavy on my shoulders right now, i seem to have even less confidence.
i see so many awesome sites out there and think, i could do that! or, i could totally make that! but, when the time comes i don’t come up with the ideas. and the more skilled i get, the more i realize how uncreative i am. i feel like ive had this problem for a while, definitely in college but even earlier. i enjoyed creating and designing websites and working in a creative setting (x-files original art archive) but i really didnt create that much art on my own. and in art classes, it was so stressful to try and come up with ideas for projects.
maybe i need to keep a journal more, i guess this blog might be helpful. or carry a sketchbook. or take more photos. or something. or maybe im just not an “out-of-the-box” kind of thinker. that would suck, id like to hope that someday i will be really good at what i do. whatever it is.
and the patriots lost. that sucks.
and its really cold. and lonely. and those suck a lot too.
got some kinda negative feedback on my portfolio today… apparently my colors were clashing. whatever.
anyway, i realized i wasn’t terribly excited about the direction i was going in… i decided to strip the design down to the pieces i was really excited about and start again. i think it will be better now 
Filed under: portfolio
today i spent a whole $3 on some vector graphics through istockphoto. they have some pretty sweet stuff, and it saves a ton of time when you don’t have to draw everything out by hand.
Filed under: portfolio
i had plans to get some work done on my portfolio this week. i thought about it quite a bit, while i sat sneezing and wheezing on the couch at my mom’s house in florida. yeah. awesome.
i did watch a whole lot of HBO and IFC:
- sisterhood of the traveling pants
- harry potter and the goblet of fire
- singles
- beauty and the beast (the original french one – holy crap it was weird)
- prime
- kinsey
- the perfect man
- wedding crashers
- just like heaven
i must do this. i want a beautiful texture to take up the whole page, and flow with the size of the user’s monitor.
i asked Mel if she knew how to do this, she pointed me to these references:
david stiller’s blog
mm livedocs
Stage.scaleMode = "noScale";
Stage.align = "TL";
var stageListener:Object = new Object ();
stageListener.onResize = positionContent;
Stage.addListener(stageListener);
function positionContent():Void {
//set clip coordinates
}
positionContent();
