"A Good Skin"

Not exactly a feat in design, but a feat in code optimization.

This skin was made as a proof of concept long time ago, when I designed the Custom Windows feature. As skins get more and more complex (Trillian Cordonata is 700+KB of hand code), the goal is to create a new subsystem that allows creation of skin in the least amount of code possible.

The solution is to have a base skin that encompasses everything that needs to be skinned, and to allow major parts of the skin (e.g. Contact List, Chat Windows) to be swap-able. It is unprecedented in any skinning engines in the world, as Trillian slowly becomes highly intricate and increasingly complex.

Originally based on Stixe, Custom Windows allow creation of skins that is semi-dependent on the base skin. The result is the ability for users to mix and match bits and parts of a skin, and the ability for skinners to easily create a skin as a weekend project.

"A Good Skin" contains around 20 lines of code, and only take an hour to bash out the graphics and codes.

Comparing the months and years spent on Trillian Cordonata, this is quite a feat.

You can download the skin here for a test drive.

An Icon for a Group of Chat Rooms

Another day, another incremental build forward for Trillian Astra. As the new build 77 features a new Chat Room Browser UI design, I designed a few new icons to accompany it.

The main problem of a "Chat Room" icon is that there is hardly ever a general icon designed for it. A search on Google Images for idea reveals nothing particularly interesting:

Most designs retreats to the method used by Chinese characters as concepts get more and more complicated, i.e. 3 chat bubbles imply that it is not 1-to-1 conversation, thus a chat room or a conference:

This design would work, but, until the concept of "Chat Room Groups" come up in the Yahoo! Chat Browser. And very soon we would find ourselves drowning in the vortex of the most complicated Chinese character if we put forward such logic:

The solution is to replace the icon with a new concept. In this case, I drew a little House with a chat bubble blowing through its chimney to represent a Chat Room. As users learn that a house represents a Chat Room, they will also understand that a few houses represents a group of Chat Rooms. (Let's see how many other chat clients and chat sites would rip this idea off.)

I know, this is pretty minute, but it saves you from a bubble bath in the Chat Room Browser. :)

Think Different (Part 3)

This is a 3-part series on porting Trillian across platforms, particularly Mac OS X. It would make more sense if you start reading from Part 1. Thanks for your interest!

Coherence across platforms

Meanwhile, the second question is the coherence of the product between different platforms. If the user switches between Web and Mac OS X often, it would be nice if their experiences are around the same. Our web version is a very delicate replica of the Windows version, so that transition between Web and Windows is very smooth. Users don't need to re-learn how to use again, as it is conceived as one single product. It would be not convenient if in one OS the toolbar is at the top, and in another the toolbar is at the bottom.

In order to provide a familiar experience for all Trillian Astra users across the platform, we use the same skin through out. While we made a lot of changes to accommodate the ease of use in Mac OS X, the form of the contact list window remained the same - with its signature curved bottom housing a variety of controls - and it works well for the identity of the instant messenger as well.

The OS X version of Cordonata has an overall flatter "lacquered and polished steel" appearance that is based on Leopard. I am not completely sure about the darkness of the window yet, but it seems most windows in Leopard are very gray. We have also flattened the bottom buttons to follow the new toolbar buttons in Leopard.

Font choice varies across the platforms. It makes sense because certain system fonts do not exist on other systems. Default font of respective operating systems are used as a result, while in Flash we will try to adapt to both.

Other Trillian-centric behaviors are kept in spots where familiarity between Trillian products weighs more beneficial than familiarity between Trillian and OS X, and where there were no precedents in Mac OS X. For example, we use the same toolbar in both Windows and Mac to showcase all the IM services the user is using.

So this concludes my 3-part series on porting the design of Trillian to Mac OS X. Please feel free to send me comments on what you would expect on the designs of Trillian. Thanks!

Think Different (Part 2)

Coherence with Mac OS X

 

There were two stages in the design of the windows. While critics may say it is unnecessary to design anything new with the use of HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) from Apple, it is in no doubt instant messaging requires a large variety of new controls.

For instance, Apple had to introduce chat bubbles in iChat to distinguish individual messages in a conversation. In the contact list, there are no standards between how contacts are laid out. Some have two lines, some have one line. iChat has buddy icons in the size of 28x28, which is not a nice size as it has to shrink down a buddy icon usually 48x48 or 50x50 in size. It is also difficult to pick which control to use. Windows Live Messenger for Mac is the only messenger that uses the true list control from OSX, while iChat simply do away with groups for tidiness.

Tabs are also another questioned area in OS X. While iChat in OS X Tiger have tabs at the bottom, iChat in Leopard moved the tabs to the left for the new Source List look, and Safari still have tabs at the top. Yahoo! Messenger followed suit to have tabs at the bottom to be as 'authentic' as possible.

Therefore, custom controls are needed no matter what, but the question is how we can design it so it looks like a part of the OS.

Of course, the necessity of custom controls is not the license to go crazy in the design. In order to pay respect to the users of Mac OS X, we paid attention to a lot of details so it can be easier to get used to.

We made numerous small changes in the base version of Trillian Cordonata, the default skin of Trillian. Of two most obvious changes, the window buttons are moved to the position where OS X users are used to. The Zoom effect also maximizes the contact list to its content only. We are also going to make the scroll bar comply with the system setting so the arrow buttons will fall into the right place. The glow and selected states of list items will also correspond to the color settings in System Preferences.

And in fact, concepts from Mac OS X were referenced heavily in the design of Trillian. For example, the Trillian preferences window is based on System Preferences in Mac OS. Even though it has a Windows look in the Windows version currently, the Mac version will spot a Mac look with authentic controls. The design of the skin also has a feel of a 'remote control' in mind, similar to the widgets on Dashboard, or the controls of the Apple DVD Player.

In future, we would hopefully allow the possibility of having other interfaces. While I would love to see a 'normal' OS X window or a minimal black slate window also, the current plan is to develop Cordonata first, which is essentially the superset of these other alternative skins. Those other skins may be beneficial to those who only uses IM on a Mac.

Next up, I'll talk about how Trillian Astra for Mac lives well with its brothers on the Web and on Windows.

Proceed to Part 3...

Think Different: A Lesson in Porting

With the release of the alpha of Trillian Astra for Mac, there are lots of comments and controversies stirred up by the new design of the software. In the following 3-part series, I will attempt to explain the reasoning behind the design and open myself to critiques and comments.

iTunes: a straight port

Apple's Mac OS X is the Mecca of desktop user interface design. Despite how many times Apple itself breaks its own interface guidelines with iTunes, Time Machine or Dashboard, such new experiences are justified by good logic and craftsmanship, no matter how they deviate from the norm.

As we move along in the future of software, I envision that the distinction between downloaded desktop software and web software. And this is how the design challenge began.

Designing between Platforms

Microsoft Office: a culture-specific port

We first saw software from OS X coming to Windows (e.g. iTunes, QuickTime), and software from Windows coming to OS X (e.g. Office), when their user bases were distinct, i.e. Mac users always stay in Mac, Windows users always stay in Windows. That was relatively easy. Windows and Mac OS X could be a metaphor of two different nations with different culture. One could simply translate the software directly into another and call it done, or one could also design the software to be culture-specific. The latter means that, Office for Windows have a Windows layout and Windows features, while Office for Mac have a Mac layout and Mac features.

Adobe Photoshop: an in-between port

And then we also had software that are designed to work on both platforms (e.g. Photoshop). Back in the days, they were mostly professional software. Such software exists as its own entity; their users will be unhappy to relearn the software if they switch OS. Therefore, it is always interesting to look at Adobe and Macromedia products, in the way how they designed the UI to make users of both OS-es happy. In my observation, Adobe is getting more aggressive these days introducing its own UI elements, while still respecting the fonts and metrics of the OS.

And now we have the third type of software: Software that is always connected, across operating systems and across platforms of desktop, web and device.

So here's the challenge: Design a unified interface across all OS platforms, desktop and web, while retaining an identity. This is Trillian Astra.

Admittedly, Trillian Astra is one of the few first software out there that attempts such triumvirate. Here at Trillian, a lot of users use IM across OS-es and devices. For example, one would have a Mac at home, while a Windows PC in the office, and also an iPhone on the run at the same time. There would also be users who have a Windows PC at home, and always on the run in libraries and Internet cafes. The user does not stay at the same platform all the time in these cases, as we encourage them to use Trillian across the board. In this point of view, coherence is not simply between the software and the operating system, but also between the software in these different incarnations.

I would like to start a conversation with any UX designers out there, and I hope we will have a better reach to do this with the release of the Mac edition. Please feel free to drop your comments in.

Next up, I will talk about how Trillian is designed to be coherent with Mac OS X.

Proceed to Part 2...

Things Learnt From Making Trillian for iPhone

Phew! The week was quick! The idea of making Trillian work on the iPhone did not come around until two weeks ago, when we are convinced that Trillian Astra may be able to run on the phone.

There are a few engineering challenges concerning the connectivity of a mobile device, and design limits due to the size and processing power of the device. Since the iPhone is designed as a gesamtkunswerk (a total work of art), my main concern is to create a user experience that is as coherent with the iPhone itself as possible, while still retaining a brand identity: something that won't make an iPhone user feel like they are contaminating their dear phone, while keeping Trillian users proud.

Here are some quick things that just come out of my brain in regards of designing applications on iPhone:

1. Ergonomics: After dissecting the iPhone UI, I concluded a very simple rule: Buttons need to be the size of a finger. And it cannot be too close to each other.
2. Metrics: Apple keep sizes of things fairly straightforward, everything is around multiples of 10 pixels, which translates to 1/16 of an inch. A button is usually 40 pixels tall, which is a quarter of an inch.
3. Color: The iPhone interface, in fact, uses very similar hue ranges as Trillian Astra. But then all these are just guessing unless we can actually take screenshots from the phone.
4. Interface Inconsistencies: While reading from the iPhone applications, I realize that their interface is actually not very consistent: Sometimes the bottom is black, sometimes is blue, sometimes it's used as a status bar, sometimes a toolbar. Some screens are black, some screens are white. Nevertheless, it is still pretty tied together because it's intuitive and minimal enough.
5. Font: Apple loves Helvetica on the iPhone. Humanist fonts seem to go out of style when Microsoft begins adopting them in Windows Vista. Surprisingly enough, the phone includes Helvetica's archnemesis, Arial, probably for viewing Google, who is obsessed in the font.
6. CSS Compatibility: Most of the time was spent on getting the perfect CSS. I coded all the HTML using just <DIV>'s for reusability. It was a great experience to code a web page that works for just one browser. Makes you wonder why we should all suffer from browser wars. Safari on iPhone also spots some CSS3 features that other browsers don't have, and I can use them happily with no worries.
7. Testing: You need to have an iPhone to test no matter what. Safari for Windows or Mac may help you verify your stylesheets, but it will not reflect the exact rendering on the iPhone and the way user interacts with the application.

With that said, I have yet to get an iPhone... I know, it's harder to design if I cannot immerse myself into 'knowing' the device I am designing on.

A Screenshot of Trillian Astra (for the Mac and the Web)

This is ecstatic!!

Can you tell which one is in vector and which one is in bitmap? Cordonata is designed in Adobe Illustrator from ground up, so the conversion has been easy. Scale9Grid feature of Flash 8+ played a pivotal role in composing these windows. It took a week or two of experiment, however, to get bitmaps to scale properly in Flash. Since Flash does not support blurring and drop shadows without turning shapes into movieclips, I used a lot of the ancient "Soften Fill Edges" feature to get my way. The feature turns out to be incredibly effective and shaved lots of KBs off the window, ensuring a fast load for our dear new web users.

Although it is internally codenamed "Express", it is not a separate product unlike, e.g. AIM vs AIM Express, but instead a subset of the grand vision umbrella-ed under Trillian Astra. :)

For more information and signing up for testing, the brand new Trillian Astra web site says it all!

Technorati tags: Trillian, Trillian Astra, Web, Flash

"A Celestial and Futuristic Landscape"

...and that was how I described it back then in 2001. The windows are sculpted in a specific shape so that they would line up and create series of choreographed waves going up and down, like rows of mountains... hence the name, "Cordillera".

I had to design the most versatile, sensible and attractive interface. There was a month's time to finish the skin, in order to enter the skinning contest. The design underwent a long scrutiny until the final draft. It was not an easy design:

1. All windows need to be resizable, i.e. it has to look in virtually any size - or at least normal sizes - it is unusual in the realm of design.
2. You can have any amount of windows, and that means it has to look good whether there are sixty flowers or one flower in the vase. Both the design of a flower and the vase are equally important and difficult. The Contact List (or "Main Window" as we called it back then) is the only unique and always visible element, while you can have a variety of Message Windows and Status Windows, and so on.
3. The design challenges above still exist today, but to make more difficult, back then I had limited technology to work with. I could not stretch or do fancy calculations (now you can!). I could only tile. I could not overlay things on top of one and another. Text boxes, contact list areas and display areas must have opaque backgrounds. You couldn't align things at center. Oh, and you couldn't change any fonts either.

After spending a month of summer vacation working on it, the result was a curvy skin in cerulean blue called "Trillian Professional 1.0". It was very well-received, and eventually chosen to be the default skin for the then-future version of Trillian "0.64". It was a great feeling back then to have my work recognized, and also the first time working with strangers over the Internet. I had won a few awards back in high school on designing computer programs for education purposes, but then nothing really happened in college ever since until a few years, so that came as a little surprise. It was pretty exciting back then.

Months of refinement and collaboration led to a total redraw of the skin, soon widely known as "Trillian Cordillera". Along with the release of a brand new 0.70 version of Trillian that featured file transfer, the software was propelled into stardom within days, gaining momentum and attention from media and enemies alike. Trillian became very popular and eventually its image landed on the cover of PC Magazine and the pages of Wired Magazine and more.

Of course, success was not without price. A few months later, while Trillian was blocked by AOL, Cordillera was also ripped and copied by other skinners in the forum and from other softwares. It took me very long to accept such harsh reality, and realized that it was actually no threat to me since rippers and imitators are always people who are much less talented. But of course, I didn't know that, and instead, I wasted too much time on defending the skin being ripped off, and eventually became uninterested.

That also was probably the dark ages of the world of Trillian skinning. To push for a professional image, we decided to use Whistler as the default skin for Trillian Pro 1.0, since the other choice "Trillian Cordonata" (a totally different Cordonata than the one you see now) was not good enough. And so we neglected the fluid forms of Cordillera, and were stuck with the corporate rectangle for good four years.

During that period of time, I had designed "Trillian Cordillera 03" and "Trillian Cordillera 2004", but neither of them got released, because it required a lot of time and it had limited audience. I also designed for a lot of things that required better skinning technology that I always expected to be included in the next version but they never made it. And so, we were stuck in the middle ages with Whistler.

Trillian Astra project changed everything. With the introduction of Profile+Widgets, Trillian Astra is geared more towards a crowd who likes to express themselves, and as a result, a more expressive skin is required in order to attract such a crowd. The versatile and elegant design of "Trillian Cordonata" made its debut, with a nice balance between the pragmatic Whistler and joyful Cordillera. But the nicer thing is, developing Cordonata results a great by-product: better skinning technologies that we had been looking for since 2001.

So here we are. With much better vector rendering skills and expertise, and with the use of Trillian Astra's new technologies for alpha-transparent windows, bitmap stretching, PNG layering, skinnable contact list area, color themes and a lot more, let's welcome the new "Trillian Cordillera Astreme", a total redraw, rethinking and redesign, a triumphant rebirth of the classic. Though she had now surrendered its crown as the default skin to Cordonata, she remains a shining jewel that we will love. And I hope you'll like it too.

What's more, it is not just a screenshot. It is available for download already. Of course, you need to be a tester in order to use it. Enjoy!

Have a very Merry Christmas to everyone!!!

What to Blog About in the Next Few Months

Now that the news is out, the sneak preview of Trillian Astra is released, my brain is unnerved and my veins are untangled.  There is so much to talk about in the preview.  While I will leave the crucial material for the official blog, here I will talk about the design process, how things are done, and boring theoratical things.

While I will have some personal blogs once in a while, I'll outline a list of things I want to cover for Trillian Astra, which is based the things I invented for and contributed to this 2-year-long project:

1. The Very Front-End UI: Trillian Cordonata with its contact list, chat windows; its birth, its construction and its evolution.  Lots of sub-topics such as the bottom 'Intelligent Toolbar', the new chat tools, new emoticons, etc.  The skin underwent more than 100 builds and adapted to design changes throughout a whole year.
2. "Social Widgets" + Social Profile: The most brilliant idea ever!  My invention of one of the highlights of the show!  Turning boring social profiles into dynamic data and information space is one exciting idea to be explored.  Today everyone's profile either look like a crappy HTML site or a medical record (I do understand the value of the former type), but Trillian Astra is going to blow all these away.  So...How it came up, designed, turned into specs and its potential impact to the web.
3. Widgets: Each widget have their story behind them.  Our goal is to make the client "as alive as a living creature", like the Web personified.
4. SkinXML: The most nerdy type of art ever invented.  Geek talk.
5. Promotion material and things like web site, sneak preview, etc.
6. Last but not the least, it is the exciting and censored (hahaha) TRILLIAN ASTRA VERSUS THE WORLD DEATHMATCH. I will compare Trillian Astra with other messengers 'fairly', in terms of UI, of course.

So... stay tuned!

P.S. In case you're wondering, the skin was all drawn in vector.

Trillian Astra... is here!

As Trillian Astra is finally exposed and now sending shockwaves (literally because it's in Flash) across the Internet, my company and I feel more liberated with higher spirits than ever before.

(Pictured above: Trillian Astra with Cordonata skin doing its zen.)

The sheer mass of information delivered by the Trillian Astra Sneak Preview is enough to get everyone excited for months to come.  We have been working under cover for so long, as some of the features introduced in Trillian Astra are truly unique and creative.  We don't want the "Vista disaster" to happen to us, where people over-expect things for 5 years, just because we can't keep our mouths shut...  (No offense to Microsoft here, I applaud your Office 2007 team.)  It's some sort of Zen of patience for us, and for our users too, to wait for more than a year, as we build up our software and servers.

To announce "how Trillian Astra will change your web" is a great undertaking.  And to explode the clogged tubes of Web 2.0 is whimsical, but requires a great deal of courage to make that joke in front of millions of people watching it.  But we are that confident, well, we have to be.

So... with so much happened, so much happened throughout the past year, I can finally sit down here and talk about things that aren't professional enough to go into the official blog, like stuff happening behind the scenes.

For those who read the Trillian forums zealously, you probably know about this already:

The fire is spreading all over the web now, but to light it up is just a mouse click - as Scott clicked the "Publish Blog" button on our Blogger account, at around noon on Tuesday, 21st November 2006 (after we had a meal at the Burger King and Andy got all the three Xbox 360 games that they offer, and I like the 'Sneak King' game the best).  We didn't have any champagne, and I guess we'll have to wait for Kevin to come back from Thanksgiving in order to really celebrate. (He worked till midnight on Monday though!) We had a plate with 3 plastic cups, and we poured a can of Coke into the cups - champagne style.  We should have done it with Red Bull.  Then that will be total caffeine style.  Oh, nevermind.  Someone send us a bottle of champagne. ;)

Riding the Wave of all these New UIs

Okay, so now is another serious blog about UI design.  As an architecture graduate and also a 'Head' UI designer, I keep in touch with what's going on around the UI world.  A few heroes of mine in this genre is Apple Design and Jensen Harris of the Office 12 team.

Apple designs are often worshipped for their simplicity, and their ability to convince the engineers that removing features is actually a good thing.  With intelligent solutions, Apple's remote control for Front Row only has 6 buttons, and it pretty does all the things the Windows Media Center remote does.

Believe it or not, cutting down features is not easy.  On one hand, it is a lot of design decision and intelligent guesses (since we don't have user data unlike rich companies such as Microsoft).  On the other hand, it's like telling the developers to cut an arm off their babies.  Thirdly, the geekiest crowd will cry, no matter what.

This happened in the 2.0 to 3.0 era of Trillian, when we were faced with an increasingly complex Preferences window and context menus.  There were always a desire to simplify Trillian, but there was never the guts to do so.  Rethinking, reorganizing and removing is the process, and knowing what should be removed and which goes where was a difficult process.  There were also technical limitations as well that would dictate the position of certain items, which I have to design around and justify them.

It was pretty much like cleaning up your room.  However, instead of tucking away all the junk in boxes that you will never find again, you are building a whole new shelving system that houses everything and lets you access their quickly without creating a visual mess.

Most of our new features in Trillian Astra do not occur in the Preferences window, however, and instead they would be mostly present in the most often used windows such as the contact list and chat windows.  It presents a whole new problem as this is a software that presents changes in real-time, and a hierachical tabbed model in Preferences window does not always work because certain real-time information needs to be visible at all times.

Since Trillian Pro 1.0, the UI has adopted the default Windows-like Menu+Toolbar model, a common way to lay out a software, in attempt to lure commercial users since the previous UI in .7x was considered too wacky.  Having a standardized UI similar to the rest of the OS makes it 'easy' for new users to learn Trillian because menus and toolbars behave in the way they expect them to be.  However, the problem is that most of the menu items were forced - Trillian does not really have that many menu items and tools to choose from.  Back then, since we had limited functionalities in SkinXML, the menu bar becomes a place for items that would be given too much focus if shown as a toolbar button but too little focus and out of context if shown as a context menu.  A lot of items are duplicates of toolbar buttons as well, e.g. the edit bar button.  Therefore, the menu bar, especially the ones in chat window, is more of a filler to create a sense of familiarity for users (or for us so we are confident to sell it?).

Trillian Astra faces the problem on both sides: On one hand, we got a lot of fillers for the menu bar; but on the other hand, we have a lot of new features to fill up the windows.  Can't we just put all the new features in menus?  No, because doing that just buries the new features and requires users to click a few times in order to get it.  So instead of trying to fit these new items into the current menu and toolbar model, why not just do away with the menus and toolbars?

That was the 'radical' decision made more than a year ago in August, when Microsoft has their new Windows Vista new UI waving around with no menu bars.  I was skeptical of their decision, but felt good because I could finally find a plausible excuse to break away from the Trillian Pro UI and "return to form".  I don't understand necessarily when Vista removed all their menu bars because they do have a lot of features need to be accessed, but I certainly agree that Trillian does not need it after all, since we don't have much.  Office 12 demos came out a few months later, and confirmed my theory.

Even with a new vision, new technology was needed in Trillian to execute the new UI.  Back in 2.0, we could hardly make anything exciting because we were only limited to buttons, and the buttons could not change any other aspects of the window.  3.0 got worse as we had video and audio chat, tons of new buttons flooded in with panels and stuffs, making it impossible to make any freeform skins.

Fortunately, SkinXML in Trillian Astra, like (the better part of) 3.0, will continue its curve to introduce more variables, thus the ability for a much more flexible UI.  It allows us to create a richer user experience by categorizing new features in tabs (similar to Office 12's "Ribbon" Menu Tabs but they are actual tabs as well).  I surfed the wave of these new UI trends and took advantage of it, creating the new re-organized default skin to be known as Trillian Cordonata.

With that said, it doesn't mean we were trying to follow trends, but the trends allowed us to rethink what we are and should be.  There were other reasons for a brand new skin, which I will talk about later.

My Own Dot Com Refreshed!

So now here's the acid test if you did stay tuned or not!  Sorry for the lack of updates last week.  I mainly worked on personal projects during weekends (this blog and web site, Trillian Cordillera, to state a few), but I spent last last weekend in Providence doing a yard sale to get rid of my junk.

This weekend I went to participate in Agora II and GGRD so there wasn't much time left.  My diary has been blank for the last two months not because nothing was happening... but TOO MANY THINGS are happening and I have no time to write them down!  I have also been constructing my own kitchen, and I'm still doing it this week, all the way till NextFest coming this weekend.  Hopefully I'll get done with it because my friend is coming to visit.  More updates from all these personal and public events soon.

Back to business.  I re-launched my own main web site yesterday with a new design that aligns with this blog, my resume, portfolio and the upcoming web portfolio.  I did away the link to my old blog and added links to the portfolio.  They are all very Tadao-Ando-ish clean designs, as it wouldn't be nice if the web steals all the thunder from my individual works.  It also reminds me of Stanley Sy's site somewhat.  (Where did he go these days?)  After all, the web site is just a container and it doesn't need to be extravagant.

P.S. Nice surprises hidden in the page.

Status...

To keep you posted, here's a small update of what's going on... since two days ago.

In the office: Like what Scott had said, there is a pair of new skins to be a coherent set for the branding strategy of Trillian Astra.  They are pretty much all coded, polished and set to go and will be updated as each new build adds more features.  These days I'm off to do the less mission-critical things, like a finalized full implementation of Stixe Icon Packs.  So expect some serious fun when public alpha comes.

At home: I worked at home today.  Not very productive.  Spent too much time reading the forums and comparing Xbox 360 and the iTV.  I went to Home Depot early morning to get wood for building the lamp rack for my new kitchen...

My car was also fixed yesterday with a new and (unfortunate) expensive catalytic converter for the exhaust, so now it doesn't sound like a biker driving down the street anymore.  Andy also taught me that all car mechanics tended to make oil seeping (normal) sound like oil leaking (big big problem).

What I'm working on right now...

Nothing so secret... Aha! You guessed it! This is exactly what I'm working on right now: a new layout and CSS for this very blog. This is what is going to look like, as told by Adobe Illustrator...

It is pretty plain and simple. Not that I am lazy, but I do want to set up the site as soon as possible so I can show you the real stuff. It is in line with all the other personal stuff I have. (well, I guess the only thing you can see right now is outdated resume (PDF link)...)

Even though the stuff that I do are mostly much more complex and colorful than this, I want this site to be as clean as possible because it is a museum of my own. The subtle gradient background is pretty much the most obvious design decision here, in which it mimics a clean wall white-washed by Ultra Pure White with natural sunlight shone on top. It is slightly khaki-ish to match my theme color, which has always been red and orange.

Just a very architectural setting here and there. Futura is my default font, due to its architectural quality and its affliation with concrete poetry, the Fluxus and Barbara Kruger. Very strict and thick borders at 40px.

I was thinking if I should put an image in the header, but then I realized that it was just a fad after an hour of trying to fit black & white photographs in there. Since the header image appears in every single post in future, there is no image on top of my head that would be complimentary of the content all the time. It was be just an annoying reminder of an unrelated image, and such header image would put unnecessary contrast with the image in the post. Therefore, no image. Clean.

Now the next thing I need to do is to figure out how to WEFT the Futura font into the page. :)