Life

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

May 20, 2010 in Life.

Wow, it’s been quiet around here. I am wrapping up my semester at AAU this week. It’s been a really intense semester, and I’m looking forward to the break.

I have some cool conferences lined up this year that I thought I’d mention:

Needless to say, I’m stoked about the events. Also, I’m really late on posting my new featured artist, but look for that soon!

Think Vitamin CSS3 Online Conference

January 30, 2010 in Life.

I will be speaking at the CSS3 Online Conference with an amazing group of people: Andy Clarke, Ethan Marcotte, and Matthew Smith. Topics are:

  • CSS3 Transforms, Transitions and Animations
    Learn how to translate, scale and rotate DOM elements, transition smoothly between CSS properties and animate elements utilising key frames.
  • Typography in CSS3: @font-face, font embedding, licensing fonts and columns
    Utilising the @font-face construct for font embedding along with practical solutions where licensed fonts are concerned. Also covering the splitting of a single element’s content into multiple columns.
  • CSS3 Best Practice & Graceful Degradation
    How best to implement CSS3 right now, the considerations relating to browser support and the use of vendor-​​specific properties.
  • Visual effects with CSS3: RGBa, box-​​shadow, box-​​sizing, border-​​radius, border-​​image and multiple background images
    Understand how to effectively use CSS3 properties to create compelling site designs faster and more efficiently than before.

Please register today to attend this exciting event!

Late

January 21, 2010 in Life.

Yep. This is just a journal entry to note that I was late. If I had written this post one day ago, I would not have been late. But I’m late. Not even a whole month into it and I’ve already failed at Project 52. Awesome.

I’m going to set the publish date for this post to be set for yesterday. Muhahaha. But I know you guys will all know the truth. I’m late.

Moving toward Minimalism

January 14, 2010 in Life.

I hate that I am a packrat. I always have been. My grandmother is a packrat, too, so I’m guessing that’s where I get it from. I tend to collect things that for some reason at that point in time in my life seem worth collecting. Then later, I realize it’s just all junk. It’s definitely a challenge when your whole life you’ve spent collecting things.

I’ve been reading Dwell, Apartment Therapy, Remodelista, Real Simple, and Design Sponge. I’m constantly amazed at the beautiful spaces they feature, and something I find common in almost every one (at least the ones that particularly catch my eye) is that the space is clean, clutter-​​free, and minimal.

I want that.

So going forward, I’m going to keep trying my best to get rid of stuff. I figured I could start out slow and gradually, by making myself get rid of 10 things (whatever they may be) every week. There is a lot of stuff I have that just aren’t needed.

I am also going to have a friend (who has a good eye for clean, minimal design) to come over and just point out all the stuff they think “has to go”. I’m sure that will be hard, and I will try to resist on some things. But it’s all just stuff, and it may be the kick start I need to get the minimal, clean space I want in my home.

I’ll end this post by linking to some spaces that I find very beautiful and inspiring. One day I will get there!

Art in My Coffee

September 23, 2009 in Life and Made by Jina.

coffee

Earlier this year, I began putting together a collection of photographs I had taken of coffee art. I noticed that my collection was growing pretty quickly, so I created a photo blog on Tumblr called Art in My Coffee. Shortly after I launched the blog, Tumblr released their Submissions feature, which made it really easy to accept photos from other people. Through this small project, I have found that it’s pretty fun having a blog where I get to curate some great photos that other people contribute.

As Art in my Coffee slowly grew in popularity among my friends and colleagues, I invited Meagan Fisher to join me as a curator. This was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. She has been keeping the site updated and fresh, which is fantastic since I can get pretty busy sometimes. She has also been finding some really great, high-​​quality coffee art.

Yesterday, I received a very pleasant surprise: Tumblr featured Art in My Coffee in their Tumblr Tuesday post. I am very excited to have the project featured, and I am amazed at how quickly the blog is growing. I guess it’s pretty clear that people love coffee art.

I invite you to submit your own coffee art, and you can follow us on both Tumblr and Twitter. Finally, there is an exciting update for the blog coming soon, but I’ll post on that when it happens.

Revamp

September 2, 2009 in Life and Notes.

Okay. So I’ve been busy. With what? Well, there’s this:

Job change

For those who don’t follow me on Twitter or talk to me regularly, I no longer work at Apple. I am now working at Crush + Lovely, a creative studio located in both New York City and San Francisco. I do interaction design primarily, but I also have my hands in visual design, front end web development, information architecture, etc. So far, I’ve worked on fun projects like Fifty People One Question, By/​Association, Crush + Lovely’s own website, among other exciting projects.

Not available for projects

I am no longer taking on any freelance work. Between going to grad school half time and working full time, I just don’t have time to take on side projects. However, I am still accepting speaking engagements and occasional small writing projects.

Book coming soon

I just finished coauthoring a book for SitePoint. That should be released fairly soon.

New Tumblrs

I just really got into Tumblr. I started a couple fun ones:

  • Art in My Coffee, a blog that showcases coffee art, which I curate alongside Meagan Fisher
  • OMG True Blood, a chaotic True Blood-​​related Tumblr, which I post to, along with several friends. (Sometimes it’s not safe for work, but that’s to be expected with an HBO show about vampires, right?)

New apartment

I just moved to a sweet apartment in SoMa! I’m stoked. Photos and more information later!

New diet

I gradually moved toward becoming somewhat pescetarian, which means I do not eat meat unless it’s seafood. However, I do eat dairy and eggs. I’m not doing this for any particular ethical reason. It’s an experiment to see if this new chosen diet feels better. I’ve already noticed that I have fewer stomach problems.

New site design

Okay, so as you can see, I have a new site design. I’ve been working on this design for a very long time, and at late hours after long days of work or school or both. It’s still not 100% complete, but I’m happy with where it is at the moment and decided to go ahead and make it live. I hope you guys like it.

You may have noticed that my home page has the same artwork by Jim Mahfood as I had on the previous design for Sushi & Robots. They now rotate randomly (refresh the page to see). I plan to feature more artists in the coming months, and I already have some amazing artwork by some amazing artists queued up. If you’re interested in Jim Mahfood’s work, look for my next post which will showcase his work and include a small interview with Jim.

I’ve temporarily moved my site back over to WordPress, but this isn’t a permanent change. I’ve also disabled comments on my blog as an experiment. I don’t know yet how long this will last, but I want to see if I like it this way.

Since comments are disabled, if you want to share your thoughts on my design, you can either send me an email, write up your own blog post and ping back here, or post your feedback on Twitter (@jina). I look forward to receiving feedback because I’ve been staring at this design for far too long.

Waiting

May 4, 2009 in Life.

Hi. For some reason, I started thinking about you tonight. I don’t remember what brought the thought of you to me. But it prompted me to search for you again. And it’s made me realize that I really know nothing about you. I know your name. But what if you have remarried? I know your age… I think. 17 + my age, right? I know the city that you live in. Or have you moved?

Continue reading ‘Waiting’

Ridiculousness!

April 15, 2009 in Life.

A little over a year ago, I was out with a friend, three partners at the company I knew I would probably go to work for, and a guy that I had just started dating. I was still suffering from the famous SxSW Plague, so I was hopped up on medicine, and a bit tired. I also had a little too much to drink, and got completely wasted from it. Yeah, it was pretty stupid of me. And this one night of drinking has caused me so much annoyance it’s just ridiculous.

Continue reading ‘Ridiculousness!’

An odd and slightly creepy moment.

February 27, 2009 in Life.

Usually, all you hear are crickets and frogs. Sometimes the occasional late night Caltrain — though that isn’t as common by this time of night. The 23rd street bridge going over the Caltrain tracks is steep, and there’s not much there. Pennsylvania Avenue has a few lofts on this side of the hill, but otherwise, it’s very industrial; just a few warehouses and parking lots to said warehouses. To hear a sound other than a train whistle (or a frog croaking, or a car going overhead on the 280 bridge) is quite alarming.

Continue reading ‘An odd and slightly creepy moment.’

Why all the hate for 2008?

December 31, 2008 in Life.

On Twitter, there seems to be a whole lot of hate for 2008. I’m all for looking forward to a new year, but really, was 2008 that bad? While any year has it’s ups and downs, 2008 was pretty good to me. Continue reading ‘Why all the hate for 2008?’