Well, let’s get started!

Här är jag! Picture taken with my webcam today.

1. I speak Norwegian, English, French and some Swedish.
2. I like to compare the temperature in Norway with what it’s like living in a freezer.
3. If you want to make a movie that will scare me, try to include bot sharks and dolls. I rarely get scared.
4. My favourite TV-channel is TV4 Fakta. It’s full of documentaries about crime and hospital-related stuff.
5. Some genres I like: Industrial, J-pop, J-rock, Japanese hip hop, psytrance, trance, metal, house, folktronica, eurodance, 80′s-2000′s pop, 17th of May related songs and English-speaking hip hop older than 5 years.
6. I’m a proud IB student in high school.
7. I like drawing noses.
8. I’ve coloured my hair once, and I did it on board on a boat. Back pain!!
9. I was in a car/bus crash when I was in Scotland. My friends, family and I were sitting in a bus when a Finnish man in a rented car met us in an intersection. It wasn’t that dramatic, but the point was that the man was looking in the wrong direction (i.e. the direction we are supposed to look in Norway and Finland)
10. Out of all the countries I’ve been to, Denmark is my favourite.
11. The only thing I find annoying about May is when I hear some loud music, and I’m hoping that it’ll be a “Russebuss“, and I can’t see the bus.
12. I don’t know what this fact is supposed to mean.
13. I’m trying to write in Swedish when I remember to do so. Jag försöker att skriva på svenska når jag minns att göra det. That’s why the sentence underneath the picture is what it is.
14. I’ve been outside Europe 1,5 times. Tunisia and Tenerife (It is outside Europe, but it belongs to Spain, so I like to count this as 0,5 of the times I’ve outside Europe).
15. I’m pretty sure I’m going to study either graphic design or Japanese.

For some reason, I suddenly felt that this blog was turning anonymous. It’s kinda sad, isn’t it? And it can be changed so easily. So, this is a picture of me as of 17th September 2011.

The girl with a fringe.

I can’t believe how fast time goes by, nor do I know whether that’s a good or a bad thing. Everything just happens, and there is nothing I can do to change it.

During the last weeks, we have had a whole bunch of different tests and presentations. I was hoping that it would fade away last week, but it didn’t. I don’t think it will fade away until late May, -or maybe even June.

Another thing that drives me crazy is the fact that tons and tons of snow are still covering our garden. It’s supposed to be April, isn’t it? I want the snow to melt as soon as possible. I have never been into winter, just to mention that. I am more of a May-June-person, mostly because of the weather and how everything is so colourful!

Colourful clips

Yesterday I went to a store I normally would not even think about going to, and I found a scrapbooking book/album and some really cool scrapbooking paper sheets (I’m not a huge fan of scrapbooking). I loved the colours and the designs on the sheets. Then I got the idea of creating an inspirational book for my future graphic designs.

I did already have a few boxes that i had collected for a few months. The boxes were originally used for product packaging, but I removed the parts that didn’t include the logo and the design on the front. I also had some stickers and some flags used for decorating cakes.

This is the paper.

Finished product pt 1.

Finished product pt 2. Do you recognise the chocolate packaging?

To do something similar you basically need a scrapbooking book, and something you find inspirational. It can be almost everything, and the topic of the book is of course chosen by you. Examples of topics to be covered might be makeup, fashion, architecture, cars, whatever.

Q: What do you think?

Banana yoghurt with colourful crisp.

I got a comment on my last entry about the water pipes-that they might look cool in black/white/greyscale as well.

So, what did I do then? Well, I decided to try it out…

…And this is the result. What do you think?

Personally, I like the black/white/greyscale version more. It looks more mysterious and “older” than the coloured version does. Thanks to emmieverlasting for the tip.

Who said that it’s hard to make a good website layout, and does really need to be that advanced? The answer is NO. It isn’t really that hard, and almost anyone can do it.

1. Colours
The first thing you need to do is to think about what colours you want to use. You are allowed to use neon colours, but try to avoid using them on larger areas. You don’t want to send your visitors to the eye doctor just because they visited your site. Pastel colours are great to use on larger areas such as the background, neon is better for brighten up your site.

2. The header
The header image is one of the most important items on your site. This is probably the first thing your visitors will see. You don’t need to use an image of yourself if you don’t want to. How amazing your pose is, is not the factor that counts when to tell if your header image is good or not.
The header image needs to be of a certain quailty, so try to avoid noisy images such as web camera images. They are not only noisy, but the lighting often looks worse than it is.
Be lazy if you want to! Your header doesn’t need to be a super amazing graphic. Instead, do what I did; use an image that you like, add some effects and a fancy font to it, and you are done!

3. Backgrounds
This step is really important if you want  your visitors to be your readers (If you have a blog). On areas with text, never use a background with colour variation. It makes it hard to read the text. Try to keep the text backgrounds as light as possible. Let your body background be light if you don’t use divs or tables.
If you use divs or tables, then you are allowed to have fun with your body background (the background on the body tag). You can make a nice pattern if you want to, but do not go totally crazy with neon colours if not necessary. Again: the eye doctor-thing.

4. Fonts
Fonts used for longer texts should be basic serif or sans-serif fonts. Crazy fonts are cool, but they might be hard to read if your text is long.
Your headlines can be whatever font you would like, but please try to keep it readable.

5. Learn CSS
This is the most important step. Learn some basic CSS, and make it look like you have some control over your layout. No one likes “missing” sidebars and chaotic items. Your CSS knowledge is the key to everything.

6. Check in multiple browsers
Do you have a number of browsers on your computer? Check your site in all of them, because your site does not always look the same in every browser. You can also use browsershots.org.

Was these tips helpful?