You Can't Kill Time

I thought I would use this blog entry to look back and reflect and the first part of this year.

Firstly I can’t believe how much I have learned in the year so far, I didn’t imagine that I could have learnt so much and yet for it to feel like natural progression.

Looking back at my blog entries I can see that I have been quite stressed out in regards to keeping up with the work load, I know this is due to working a 34 hrs outside of college. The problem with this has been I never feel much like sitting down to my work after a hard day at the grind.

I know that I can continue to improve and work hard and I’m looking forward to the new term when there is promise of learning to use Dreamweaver.

The one area that I think will need to be addressed for me is time planning. I think that this has been my only downfall in the past semester. The problem is that if you get your time planning wrong it has a domino effect on everything else.

Something that I am very happy with is the design work that I have done. I believe that the ideas I have produced have been to a good standard and are better than a lot of examples that can be found on the internet already.

In the upcoming semester I am going to be looking at my time planning and hoping to finally get this right, I know that this will mean making some sacrifices in other areas of my life.

Overall I have really enjoyed the first semester and I always look forward to coming into college on Wednesdays, I just need to now manage my time instead of killing it.

When Life Hands You A Lemon...

I have to say it is a relief to have this assignment out of the way now and handed in; I am looking forward to having some time to relax over Christmas and having a few festive drinks.

Unfortunately, this week, my Grandma passed away on Monday night which was obviously an upsetting time and I attended her funeral yesterday. It hasn’t been a very good few weeks.

So back to topic at hand, I am pleased with the final designs I made for the web site and that I was able to get all the work I on time. I was cutting it fine though, I hadn’t factored in that my printer alignment was off and everything was printing with the wrong margins. I couldn’t for the life of me work out how to solve it and I almost threw it out of my window. So it was a last minute printing session on Thursday morning in college to meet the deadline.

This is something I will need to consider in the future as if I had finished sooner I could have had time to print all the work of at a more relaxed time, though personal issues did mean that my time planning this week was a little of mark.

Here are the final designs that I have submitted.

Hopefully now I can sleep at night, as long as I don’t dwell on what mark I might get too much.

Stereo Typical!

This week at college was another week to just crack on with our work, which I believe was what everybody needed it to be.

It was good to come in and have something to occupy my mind having just woken up to find my car had been broken into and my stereo stolen, at least somebody will be getting a new(ish) stereo for Christmas. Personally I find shopping at Argos easier.

The position I found myself in regarding work was that I had produced all my written work and put it into the template and that I had left the design work to the end. This was intentional as a falling point in the last project was that I spent too much time playing with my design and left putting my written work in the template to the last minute. A mistake I won’t make again.

Having the written work finished a week in advanced helped me identify a few changes I need to make. Also Dean pointed out the word count to me and I myself had written just short of 5000 words. Although I was pleased to have exceeded the word count it will now be a task to edit the words down choosing which to leave out.

Next time I will make sure I am aware of the limitations on words so that this, hopefully, will not be a problem.

I have gotten the feedback page finished and I am now putting the finishing touches to my homepage, let me know what you think of the design.

I expect that this won’t be the final appearance as at the moment I am not completely happy with the design myself.

Am pleased with the stage I am at currently as I feel much more relaxed than I did at this point in the last project, especially as the only work remaining is the design work, which is my favourite part.

This is a method of working I shall maintain, to get the more dull and/or monotonous work done first so that I can work towards doing the more exciting work.

Do Not Pass Go

Well nothing really eventful this week, just a good old get on with it session on Wednesday. This of course is not a bad thing as there is more work to do than I have time to do it in so the session was much appreciated.

I was able to use the day to get some extra feedback on my design ideas, just to make sure I was going down the right root with my design.

Although my retro idea was equally popular I decided to stick with Grass Roots as it fits in more with my vector line art design style. Also the use of green will be relaxing for those vexed computer novices.

Not only was it useful to get this feedback but it gave me opportunity to talk to some of the class that I hadn’t spoken to that much before.

As always I had been under the impression that I would be behind my peers, so it was a comfort to know that we were all at similar stages.

Not the only comforting event of the day though, as I resubmitted my newfangled A2 project which had been transformed and is now quicker, faster, stronger, smarter, better. After submitting it in the morning I was so happy to see a pass next to my name on my way back into class later in the day. Hopefully my plan to submit a shrubbery will get me passed this time.

A lesson has truly been learnt, I will always complete ahead of schedule now so I can iron out these problems in the final week.

I do not intend to get a referral again, not that I ever did. I can now look forward to getting my work well on the way to completion this week, which I am quietly confident I can achieve, providing there are no unforeseen circumstances.