Ahh, whoops, that’s not the right picture, is it? Let’s try that again. The future of the web!

That’s better. In my lightning talk, I gave a very brief introduction to the awesomeness that is HTML5 (and its friends – most of these things wouldn’t happen without JavaScript, too!). It was fun seeing lots of people get excited about some of the new things they’ll soon be seeing in their browsers. Sadly I couldn’t cover even close to everything, but the advancements I talked about are among some of the most exciting, in my opinion.

If you’re interested (or are one of the attendees who asked for a copy), click here to download my slides (in PDF format).

In more web-related news, I spent a lot of July working on the Toronto Kiss Map, an superfun interactive web app dreamed up by Chris Kay Fraser where people place kiss stories on a map of Toronto. This was definitely the most comprehensive project I’ve done to date, in that I did the design, front-end development, and programming. I’ve made a lot of websites before, but I’d never made anything quite so interactive (or JavaScript heavy, for that matter). It was definitely a challenge, but totally worthwhile. It also proves that you can use WordPress for almost everything these days – I routed all of the map submissions through WordPress and have them storing as comments (for ease of moderation and spam filtering). Totally not what WordPress was ever intended for originally, but there you go.

Notes: You need Flash to view this (sorry, iPhone and other non-Flash enabled users!) and you can click to see the portfolio in full screen, much like a Youtube video. In fact, it looks nicer in full screen. Navigate the document by clicking the arrows to the right and left of the pages.

Sweet! I approve.

In conclusion, trees with pink flowers are awesome.

Today I went to High Park for what is probably the last day of Toronto’s cherry blossom season. In other parts of the world, they bloom earlier and last a bit longer, but because of the climate here, our peak cherry blossom season only lasts for a few days to a week! Tomorrow calls for rain, which will probably wash most of the niceness away.

But hey, that’s why cameras were invented! And on that note, here are some of my own photos from today.

In conclusion, I’m excited that spring is finally here! I’ve been keeping busy these days with a few freelance web projects, as well as doing some graphic design. I just completed a fairly self-centered project: designing my own business cards. I can’t wait ’til they show up some time next week! I’ll post pictures once they arrive.

Notes:

• The collage above is made with my own pictures, using one of my favourite toys, Poladroid. I know I’ve mentioned Poladroid enough, but it’s so fun (and kitschy) that I can’t help myself.
• Post title is referencing the song — wait for it — Cherry Blossom Girl, by Air. Have a listen. It’s pretty.

Changes:

• My primary domain is now daraskolnick.com instead of openedeyes.net. I started with openedeyes.net back in 2006, and while I still like the name, I didn’t feel like that represented my portfolio website anymore. I used to have daraskolnick.com redirecting to openedeyes.net, but now it’s the other way around. I still own openedeyes.net and I have some plans for how to use it in the future!

• All of my pages run on WordPress now. I used to have a setup where my blog was running on WordPress and all of my other content (Art, Design, Photos, etc.) were static HTML pages. I felt like I wasn’t using WordPress to its fullest potential that way, and to be honest, updating all of the pages manually was annoying. After a bit of coding and tweaking, I now have WordPress running everything. It’s much better this way.

• I’ve replaced some images that were GIFs with PNGs. The transparency support is way better… that is, unless you’re using an old version of Internet Explorer. If that is the case, I have one word for you: Firefox.

• This isn’t brand new, but it’s still worth mentioning: I now have my email running through Google Apps. Basically that means that all email addresses I set up @daraskolnick.com run through Google’s servers, get the Gmail interface, and work with Google Calendars, Google Docs, and other such services. Love!

• I finally made myself a Favicon (the little icon that shows up next to the URL in your browser). I also added some shiny buttons at the side linking to my Twitter and Flickr accounts. I hang around on other social networking sites as well, but I’m the most active on those two. I might add more in the future. Or I might not. We’ll see.

That’s about it, really. To thank you for sticking with me through my nerdfest, here’s another picture that I took. This time it’s of Sacre Coeur.

(By the way, both pictures were made using Poladroid. If you miss polaroid film as much as I do, I encourage you to check this out!)

Here (or hear), Kitty Kitty!

Ohh, so pretty. Down by the river.

Only 5 cents! Relieves fatigue! If this picture were a bit more zoomed out, you’d see that this is referring to Wrigley’s Spearmint gum.

(I guess people didn’t take the sign too seriously.)

As a Canadian, this was the first time I’d seen The Onion out in the wild like this. I was obviously pretty excited.

• In other related news, Lego is launching a new range of digital cameras and MP3 players.  I’m not quite sure how to feel about this!

• 5 Ways Blogging Can Make a Difference for You in This Economy from Problogger.  Something positive to think about in this glorious Recession Season.

• Show Us Your Desktop at Bittbox takes a look at various designers’ desktops. I find it really interesting to see how other creative people organize their things.

• Last but not least, XKCD’s I’m An Idiot.  This will surely be a classic.

♥ Dara

Speaking of the new year, I rang in 2009 at C’est What, a restaurant/bar/all around cool place in downtown Toronto. Pool, poutine, and awesome people were involved, so it was a really good time.

Every time I see a pool table I think of The Music Man. Anyone with me?

On another note, I’ve already completed my first poster design of 2009, and I’d like to share it with you!

For this poster, I used both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.  In the past I was more of an exclusively-Photoshop kind of girl, but nowadays I really do like Illustrator a lot.  If you couldn’t tell, I created the happy ghosts in Illustrator.  I love vector images (which is what you’re creating in Illustrator) because you can blow them up to any size and they retain their smooth edges.  This is because the images are actually based on mathematical formulae instead of pixels.  It seems that math has come in handy in the real world after all!

♥ Dara

Sorry, friends, readers, strangers, and bots that are perusing my site!  I’ll chalk it up to starting school and settling into a new routine.  If you don’t know, I am taking Graphic Design courses at a certain college in Toronto.  They’re definitely interesting!

Here is another poster that I created a little while back:

One positive thing that I can say about design school is that I will never take computers for granted again!  Most of our work is done by hand, so we draw thumbnails by hand, collage by hand, and draw fonts by hand (!!).  Crazy stuff!

♥ Dara.