Andrey Vystavkin Blog

Finally, I have some time to read the books I’ve bought few weeks ago. This is a quote from “Graphic Design For the 21th century” by Charlotte & Peter Fiell:

While the boundaries within the possibilities of design are changing day by day, the creators are becoming more responsible for the messages hidden in every piece of their work. Graphic design will spread a lot more than simple matter, beauty, emotions or style. It could even be a vision for life. The only thing missing so far is a bit more pathos…

Mainly, the book contains the quotations and interviews of successful graphic designers, where they give their vision of the design & its understanding.

Lee Odden in his blog brought the news that Google Analytics service, became completely free. The official Google Analytics blog proved the info.

If before, you had to fill in the form and wait for the invitation, now Google Analytics took off this routine.

Now, Google Analytics is for everybody!

Enjoy it!

Surfing the web, I found an article in AboutDigital.ru, where the author is trying to explain the reader how insignificant it is to have livejournal account, and how useless the data becomes when more and more people join livejournal sector of blogosphere.

The other aspect of criticizing was the appearance of people who’s got more then 1000 friends in LJ and can manipulate public opinions.

The feeling that the author was taken offence from these popular lj-users was going through the whole article, or the other case of witting this article was self-promotion by using an old dispute on the question: “What is better: <variable> or <variable>?”

Some times this kind of dispute works for the promotion sake, but mostly these arguments are denied by the vainess of discussion: reminds an enternal dispute about Linux vs. Windows, - useless and boring at the same time!

Talking about WP as stand-alone blog, in my opinion it’s the best blog platform, powerful and simple in utilization. LJ is good in its simplicity, as any public blog service - just log in and write!

Of course, the witting feedback is bigger in LJ then in WP on the first stages of its utilization, but it’s the matter of taste, what you want from your blogging platform.

For the beginners in blogging, I’d advice to start from blogspot or Livejournal, to localize in blogosphere.

I like Cyprus in summer, and it doesn’t matter if the air condition is working or not at home, or if the computer becomes your own personal stove.
You think it can’t be worse, but when you go out to the balcony and understand – it can be worse!
The groups of lost tourists are walking around with no idea what to do and how to entertain themselves. People go nuts because of the weather and absence of good tourist facilities in Limassol.
But the summer in Limassol becomes a typical madhouse when friends start migrating during vacations in Cyprus, and you have to entertain them, because the parents are working, and unfortunately you are on vacations, you’ve got nothing to do, so go and get busy!

Suddenly, people start to find something interesting on the island. It’s good if they are interested in churches and monasteries – most of them are located in the mountains, and it’s not so hot!
After a week or two of making rounds on the island, visiting Paphos to show the main sightseeing’s, then go to Polis, next to Nicosia, Agia Napa, Larnaca and, finally end up in Limassol, I was just falling down on the sofa and was N/A for the rest of the day.

Fortunately, the friends went back home, and I can enjoy the life of the islander for few days, until the next group of friends and relatives will come over…

Recently, I’ve decided to leave the programming until the beginning of the studies in FIT, and do something not related with programming (at least directly).

Thinking about the earned experience, I was amazed with the directions of my interests which I can write down in my CV. For more then 2 years I was keen on audio editing by using Sony package software.

Lately I got to video editing, and moved to Adobe software, from Sony Vegas to Adobe Premiere in video, from Sony Sound Forge and ACID Pro to Adobe Audition and Propellerhead Reason, not mentioning Adobe Photoshop for a bit of design, with further experience in Web-Design.

Nope, it’s too boring to list all the things I was interested in (and still interested in some). To create the full picture of it, the only aspect of design was missing – 3D modeling, which I decided to get into. The myths about the difficulty of working in the 3D disappeared in few days with a help of tutorials, manuals and other literature concerning the subject. 3D Studio Max shocked my with built-in abilities of modifying the 3d models, and creating anything you imagination sees; well-designed interface with overloaded quantity of functions doesn’t bother the user, few hours of practicing, already gives the user the understanding of menu & function placement concepts. No wonder why 3ds max is one of the leading 3d platforms right now for 3d graphics.

I hope I’ll have enough patience and courage not to study the main concepts of it, but also to work with it in future.

“I’m scared of white paper lying in front of me!”
“Well, it’s ain’t the paper at all!..”
“Yeah, you’re right, but it’s still white!”
“Go ahead, write something, and you’ll get rid of this color!”
“What about the topic of the report?”
“Just start, you’ll get to the point in the process”