A day before the official first day of spring, my friend and I sat down on a Coal Harbour bench after a refreshing, sunlit bike ride around the seawall. He pulled out a sketchbook and pen and started sketching out as many sights as possible, as quickly as possible. That strategy, while energizing and capable of branding more visual memories, is not one I frequently employ. In fact, I hadn't done any kind of artistic sketching for months — not since the fall when my visiting nieces, who are nuts about drawing, inspired participation. So when he tore a sheet from his sketchbook and handed it to me with a pen and a book for my lap, I felt a blushing hesitation, a brief resistance. An unfamiliarity with the drawing tool. Overcome that I was left just with deciding what to draw.

There was a large holly with yellow berries just ahead of me that provided the detail to which I'm addicted. I like to draw subjects as close to their form as possible, so botanical drawings are quite ideal, providing intricate and random shapes. I had forgotten this pleasure, as I had forgotten how much I enjoy capturing light and shadow (as much as I do looking at it). It took me a minute to get back into the swing of it, to have some patience and see it as a relaxing exercise with a tangible outcome. It's so easy to just take photographs and yet if I remember anything vividly it's the image of that holly, in full colour, not the pansies and daffodils I photographed two days later. That sure makes one think about the media we use to write memories.

Digital scan converted to greyscale from original blue ink.

I could write about how fantastic last year was for me... or I could just show you. Through my lens, last year looked, and felt, like this.

January

In January, I wrote about what I missed when I did not bring my camera, accompanied by photos taken the next day when I did. Of course, the scenery was altogether different, but no less remarkable. There was still evidence of the bewildering snowfall that lingered an unusually long time.

February must have been particularly grim as I only have blurry shots of a crescent moon riding beneath a star or planet.

March

Our team at DSF has been working steadily for months to bring you a new website that lets you — people who care about environmental issues, sustainability, and health — share your ideas, questions, and stories about how we can all make a difference. The site also makes it easy to learn about relevant issues and take action in meaningful ways, big and small.

The design is a significant departure from our old site, which is cluttered and inconsistent. We've taken on a new strategy as well: most content is written to fit into either the Learn, Do or Share category, then pulled into project pages where relevant. This allows content to fit into two projects without duplicating pages, gives us flexibility when projects come to an end, and helps you get the freshest content. It's a more accessible approach than organizing content around our programs, and avoids dividing complex topics like climate change into single issues. Everything is interconnected.

Three years ago today, I started a blog at Blogger and didn't really have a name for this new "thing," didn't know where it was going, and didn't know precisely what to write about. I'm still writing about topics almost as broad as my own interests, and frankly, I don't think I know much better where it's going but at least it has a name: thirteen cent pinball.

About eight months ago I decided to upgrade my blog from Movable Type version 3 to the much improved 4. In the process, I wanted a wider page with larger font, bigger images, a cleaner and easier commenting section, and better typography. I wanted to eliminate extra steps and hurdles for users, and streamline my own process for updating content across the blog and eventually my portfolio as well.

Regular visitors will recall the blog originally looked like this:

I've been working for awhile on giving my blog design a facelift. As tends to happen with design projects that are drawn out at length (as is the case when it's not my full-time work), I know more at the end than I did at the beginning. I mean, yeah, that's supposed to happen, naturally, with any project, but these ones that would otherwise be condensed into a short time frame take place over the course of months that are packed with learning that occurs outside their context. That learning tends to fall into either design (look at how much better I've become!) or programming (look at what I've learned how to do!). Sometimes it's outside influences like new technology that didn't exist before, or of which I did not know. Well, this time around, it's not so much my visual skills or my technological skills, but my thinking that has changed and grown since I embarked on this miniature quest. And it's quite, quite recent.

Blogs and websites are constantly evolving. As a result one can probably expect users to be evolving too — in fact, with the presence of RSS readers, we hardly need spend time on people's blogs in our web browsers save to comment. User behaviour changes with technology. This is clear. So when I have a model for my blog that is almost 3 years old, I have to wonder... what is still relevant? What features do users actually use and how do they find information?

I googled this already but Google help me I didn't find an answer. That, therefore, is where you come in. The question I pose you is: how do you use blogs? When you arrive at a post, what helps you move on to another post (assuming you enjoyed the content or found it helpful)? How do you navigate the information — through tag clouds, categories, recent comments? Are lists overwhelming or redundant?

Your feedback will help me determine what features are of most use to you when you read my blog. Thanks in advance for helping me out.

A side note: in its next incarnation, I expect comments to appear immediately on thirteen cent pinball. Hooray! The facelift is a modernization, rather than a redesign, so the overall visual "flavour" of the blog, if you will, shall remain the same.

Saturday night I attended the ever-popular Emily Carr Undergraduate Exhibition, more commonly referred to as the "grad show" among my peers. There is some stellar work there, as always, and I strongly encourage anyone interested in art, communication design, industrial design, film or animation to get down there in the coming week and see the work of this year's group of 350+ talents.

The show runs for a shorter period this year so you only have until this coming Sunday the 11th to see it for yourself! The show is open 10 am to 6pm at Emily Carr Institute, 1399/1400 Johnston St. on Granville Island. More info »

For myself and my class, today marks one year since our graduation and grad show... how time flies! The feeling walking to the show opening on that perfect sunny evening and the energy of the night itself has a nostalgic magic.

This year I helped put out the grad site again but with a much different set of roles. The student volunteers and coordinating faculty gave a tremendous effort; many thanks and congratulations go out to them for producing a fabulous grad 2008 website!

Note that many projects showing at the school are not on the website, and vice versa. This is particularly true of design projects which were not yet complete at the time of submission. So do visit the show, pick up a printed catalogue, and check out the website. Enjoy!