A Happy 19th Birthday Indeed!

Stayed up late watching a lot of YouTube videos on 'Standing arabian' for Spongebob gig. Slept at around 4:30AM. Woke up saying "Sh*t!" repeatedly as I woke up at 11AM where our call time was 9AM. Felt really bad. Promised 'street' I'd treat them breakfast. Rushed to Bonifacio Global City open field. We had two sets of lunch. Food from Spongebob crew and another from Skechers.

Whole family attended and supported :D Lara was surprisingly there all the way from Lipa, Batangas! Danced twice. 'Gainer' was sucky but was safe. So was 'Standing arabian' which was not quite an arabian but more of a 'Full-twist-to-side-of-the-leg-landing' Hehe.

Rushed to outdoor foodcourt to meet with Family again. Ate at 'Seafood Island'. 'Street' was lucky that breakfast didn't go well so that they had a big dinner. Haha. Kidding! Lots of good food! Couldn't breathe from chewing non-stop.

Lara gave me customized shoes as a gift with the help of her sister. Best gift I didn't expect! Something I want to do but she did it for me and really well! Will upload shoe photo album soon.

Thanks to everyone who greeted! I have a hard time replying to you all because of my new phone. Its so hard to keep track of contacts but "Thank you!!!"

Downloading iTouch 2.2.1 Firmware FAIL

Been attempting to download iTouch 2.2.1 Firmware so that I could jailbreak my mom's iTouch but I failed each time because it always pauses when it reaches 52.6MB of the 277.7MB.



I even tried using a different link address. Maybe it's because of the university proxy.

Does anybody know how to fix this?

Twitter Locked Me Out!

https://twitter.com/account/locked

So this is what happens if I'm not able to distinguish between my different passwords.

My New Desktop's Look

I've had a hard time recently keeping my desktop clean and I thought that the best way to keep it clean, along with not having to choose limited amount of icons to show on 'Quick Launch', is to install one of those softwares I've seen others use which holds icons quite similar to that of a Mac. At first I stumbled upon ObjectDock but my friends said that RocketDock was better and looked more neat. So I visited http://rocketdock.com/ and downloaded the installer. 

I removed all my icons and added all the icons I needed on RocketDock. I changed all the icons to ones that have higher resolution and looked better. So I downloaded a LOT of icons with the help of the two links below.

600+ Free Design, Twitter and Social Media Icons: A Collection Motherload!
40+ Stylish and Trendy Icon Sets

Some of the icons were in PNG format only so if you couldn't use it without having the ICO format you could download 'AveIconifier2' which converts ICO to PNG and vice versa just by dragging. You could convert multiple files at the same time too. Its just so easy.



After installing RocketDock, I added the items that I needed which were:

• My Computer
• PaperStainer
• My Documents
• My Music
• My Pictures
• DLSU
• TweetDeck
• Google Chrome
• Yahoo! Messenger
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe Dreamweaver
• iTunes
• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Powerpoint
• Evernote
• Counter Strike: Source
• Left 4 Dead
• Windows Mobile Center
• Control Panel; and
• Recycle Bin
  

I then changed the icon settings and chose better-looking icons. And it turned out to be like the image below.



I also chose a wallpaper which both looks good and means something of value.



I spend about a half of my day using my laptop and it is quite useful to have a background that would remind me that the everyday decisions I make would affect my status in the after life.
RocketDock also lets the icons "bubble" when you let the mouse hover over them just like in a Mac.

I noticed that I've been sharing a lot of stuff recently. Maybe it's because of all the free time I have from my summer vacation.

GOSH! I LOVE CUSTOMIZING!

This has been another PC user's attempt to get as close as he could to a Mac.

Time Used to Practice Art Skills

I've had so much free time after my 'early' end of the school term recently that I was able to browse so much information on the web and learned so much especially with the help of international contacts on my Twitter. This was an advantage for me as I am not formally educated in creating digital artworks.

Below are the outcomes of some of the work I've done with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator with the help of some online tutorials just for the fun.

Super Happy Octopus Character - April 9, 2009

This was my first attempt in using Adobe Illustrator to create vector images. I've created vector looking images before but with Photoshop and Illustrator does have its advantages in creating vector images because it's easier to create complex shapes.

The tutorial I followed, titled "Create a Super Happy Octopus Character" could be found here: http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/illustration/create-a-super-happy-octopus-character/

Vibrant Light Effect - April 16, 2009

This was the outcome of following a tutorial on creating simple vibrant light effects on Photoshop which could be found here: http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/create-a-simple-vibrant-light-effect-in-photoshop

The image of my name, "efren", was from an image made by my girlfriend's sister, Erika Rellora, months ago:

Desert Trip (Vintage) - April 16, 2009

I could probably say that I gave my heart in creating this one. I had an early vacation going back home to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to visit my family and we always had a stop-over at Dubai International Airport because we rode on Emirates Airlines. I had to buy Lara a present and I knew that she wasn't 'that' materialistic. A picture frame at Dubai Duty Free caught my eyes. It had an antique arabian feel with its bronze-plated surface with two functional opening doors.

It left room for me to be creative so I made this image to complement it. It was fun making. What was challenging was to make it appear that 'we' and the background weren't separate images. I also added a sort of sepia/vintage/damaged feel to the image to suit the theme of the frame.

A tutorial on creating vintage effects on Photoshop could be found here: http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2007/10/15/create-a-vintage-photo-effect-in-photoshop/

I hope you enjoyed them as much as I have enjoyed making them! :D

The worst thing that lasts for an hour...

This feels so weird. I've been twittering non-stop and typing a limit of 140 characters, but now... 

"Twitter is currently down for unscheduled maintenance. We expect to be back in about an hour. Thanks for your patience."

Nooo! I need to Twitter! 

My Wordles

DISCLAIMER: I did not create these images. They were created using http://wordle.net/

LSDC-Street Wordle (Light)

LSDC-Street Wordle (Dark)

My Twitter Wordle