Ever since getting the news of a portfolio based scholarship, I’ve been trying my hardest to get it ready to send of. I’m a piece short of completion, and like always, I lack inspiration. However, I have gotten smarter *cough* when it comes to certain things, so I’m making a list of sources of my inspiration. Maybe it’ll help you, maybe not. This is just a record to go back to 19mo. from now.

• Colourlovers.com has been very useful in providing colour palettes, and they’re amazing! Especially those coming from this lover. Many patterns have given inspiration to some ideas, and the Blog is genius–containing colours, science, psychology, history, etc. It’s a good read.
• Design Meltdown is also another site to check out. An index of the most creative and aesthetically pleasing sites, as well as tutorials and links to other helpful sites. A lot of my inspiration and techniques have come from this site.
• Music. Music has also been a great source of inspiration to me. Passion behind Jason Dunn’s voice screaming after a breakup, or the intensity of Stephen Christian’s vocals in “Paperthin hymn.” Every song is a beautifully written piece of poetry.
  “The beauty of grace is that it makes life unfair.” - “Be My Escape,” Relient K
  “With downcast eyes, there’s more to living than being alive.” - “Alexithymia,” Anberlin
  “The chord that struck; an angel fell; skies went dark.” - “Say the Word,” The Classic Crime

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Josh Groban was on American Idol last night. He sang ‘You Raise Me Up,’ and he had an African choir back him up. Mm, mm, mm. I could die happy now.

I was able to get a new battery for my iPod, Malachi, last weekend, and I’m beyond ecstatic. It’s been nice to have Malachi resurrected especially since I had a long van ride with a bunch of kids last weekend. I’m hoping to download some new music pretty soon to get me psyched for the SAT next weekend.

Yes, I just said psyched.

While I’m not to thrilled over taking a timed test that has control over which scholarships I’m eligible for, if I go in with a better attitude, I’ll probably do a lot better.

Speaking of which… It’s college time!

It’s also time for Rachel to pull out whatever remaining hair she’s trying to grow back because of the over anxiousness college picking/scholarship filling/SAT testing creates.

Huzzah!

Read more…

Josh Groban sang on American Idol…

*Drools*

So hopefully this layout will stay up longer than the others… With the Wordpress themes, I just haven’t found the right one for the site just yet. They all contain one specific element I like, but there hasn’t been one layout where it has all the elements I like. And with my computer still broken and downstairs… I can’t exactly create the layout I want.

On the Weblog Tools Collection site, they had an interesting post, ‘What’s in your Blogging tool kit?’ I think that’s a pretty nifty idea seeing as I how love checking out the new plugin/theme releases, and I’m always figuring out the best way to update, best browser to use, etc. Anyways, here’s my tool kit:

• Wordpress for blogging tool. I’ve used CuteNews and b2 before, and Wordpress has always been my favourite. Even at my old host, I whined (yes, I’ll admit it) about not having a database connection, so I could have Wordpress installed in my site. I use A LOT of plugins, and they can be viewed here. My favourites ones, though, are ‘Breadcrumb,’ ‘Comment Plugger,’ ‘Hide/Cut Text,’ ‘Update Twitter Status,’ ‘Verse of the Day,’ and ‘Wp Grins.’
• For my browser, I use Firefox, Flock and IE. Mainly, I’m a firefox-kinda girl, but Flock also gives some nice advatages of being able to upload to both photobucket and flickr and creating hyperlinks from each account as quick as I snap. I still say IE is the tool of the devil, but my dad doesn’t believe in browsing happy. ‘Stuck in his old-school ways,’ I say.
• As a sub-division for my broswer, the plugins I use in firefox/flock are ‘Foxytunes,’ ‘Download Satatus Bar,’ ‘Del.icio.us Bookmarker,’ ‘Web Developer,’ and ‘FireFTP.’ Both are essentials (at least, in my opinion as a humble blogger/web designer slash coder of three years)
• I use Gmail and Trillian for keeping in contact with my peeps. Word.
• Feedburner organizes my feeds for you, the reader. Last.FM also organizes my music history (like no one has ever heard of last.fm before stumbling upon my itty bitty site :P).
• I also use CuteFTP as my FTP client.
• I’m signed up with the Wordpress mailing list, del.icio.us bookmarks my sites, and I frequently check the Weblog Tools Collection.

Hopefully, my list will help someone… If not, it’ll make an interesting read to someone else.

And so Avril Lavigne has a new single out called ‘Girlfriend,’ and believe it or not, I downloaded it from iTunes today. It’s kinda catchy in it’s pop sorta sense. I despise her swearing, and the fact she uses three (maybe four) guitar chords in the chorus, but it’s pop… What else do you expect? At first this ‘punk rock princess’ made the whole emo vent of ‘Yes, I am Emo Rock!’ And after two albums, she went to the pop scene like so many other good artists. She’s been pop from the start, but her new single proves it even more. I’ve never really been a fan of her, but I figure, ‘Hey, this is a good catchy upbeat song to clean the bathroom to!’

And hey, I’m so emo that I know All-American Rejects, My Chemical Rejects and Avril are not emo. Or, I’m so un-emo, that I know AAR, MCR and Avril are emo. Figure that out, kids.