Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Overtaken...

Wow. My "A Shot Every Day"-Project has after less than two weeks more views than this blog. Now That's motivation.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Feels like..

... I will have to do a lot of snow photos next days.
... I have to hurry the BIBEL lesen project.
... I have to hurry some mockups for some other hobby projects.
... I have to reach the next level in CSS writing.

... I will have a great time!

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

A Shot Every Day

... keeps the doctor away. Or at least the psychotherapist.
In order to reanimate and train my artistic skills (lately, I've been mainly a designer and developer only), I started a new nlog for the next year.
It's goal is inspired by this TED talk. This guy shot a picture, made a drawing and wrote something every day for one year. I can do this, too. I will take a photo every day for the next year.
 Yeah!

Lets start!

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Register and Login reworked

Hi everybody!

I was working most of this saturday to create the new register page on the bibel reading plan web app. I had to drop the beautiful book cover background image, beacuse it was just a mess to work with on so many different resolutions, screen sizes and devices. And it did not provide a good legibilty. So I had to replace it back with a simple repeatable background.

Here are the results. I even borrowed a friend's iPhone to make some pictures. Yeah.



Register page on iPhone

Updated Login page on desktop Browser

Register page on desktop browser


Saturday, September 29, 2012

Login Screen Design is done

So, I finished the login screen design.
My first try did not include any graphics but the logo of "BIBEL lesen" and the icon of "Registrieren". This was really plain and very straight forward. But after replacing the opaque color with a repeatable background pattern image, I did not want to go back.
I showed them to a friend of mine. He was polite saying the design was "nice". Since nice is the little sister of ugly I decided that this login screen needed a better appearance. So I used rounded corners instead of sharp ones, replaced the greenish linen background pattern with a stockphoto fullscreen on background-size: cover;.

I also want this app to be mobile friendly. But having no time for developing two or more separate apps, I go  for one app with media queries to the rescue. I chose one basic css and for each higher resolution I add more information. So I work with min-with.I think this matches the mobile-first philosophy better than the max-width approach.I will hopefully result in good (i.e. less) CSS code. But now: The screenshots:



Mobile login screen (320x480)

Mobile login screen showing "wrong password"-error message

The login screen at 1600x900

The same screen showing the error message



Saturday, September 8, 2012

Started my bible reading plan web app

I've started a new project: A Bible reading plan web app.
Will post screenshots when the HTML mockup is done.


Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Procrastination

Just a prime example how procrastination works: Planned to write an article about procrastination. Moved that todo-item to "someday/maybe".

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Top 5 Movie Soundtracks for Programming

5: Lord of The Rings - May It Be



This one is a calm one. Enya is always great for programming. This one is very relaxing when It's great for something slow like waiting for the finish of compiling or some upload to finish.




4: Gladiator  - Now We Are Free



This is a calm one. It helps me to regain focus when it starts to slip away. I become more focused when hearing this song. I think about why I'm doing the stuff I do and hence knowing. This software may be hard to implement now -- but it's be the right thing to do it and not giving up.



3. Transformers - Arrival To Earth


I like this one. It's calm. It's motivating. It's heroic. Great for typing. Great for refocusing. Great for thinking. Great for programming.




2. Iron Man - Driving With The Top Down


This is a burner. It love to hear this song after some intense thinking resulting in a great idea. This song is great at keeping your typing speed at a high level. :) It's just like having fought an evil enemy, being victorious and now flying home at super-sonic speed.



1. The Dark Knight - Like A Dog Chasing Cars


I love this one. It's darker, more serious, and even more pushing than any of the songs before. It's great for working at the highest pace possible, typing as fast as possible, exactly knowing what you're doing. Programming when hearing this song makes you feel like a super hero saving the world by creating the best software ever seen.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Just a classical shot

Just take a shot of this one. Used it for a wedding invitation flyer. Enjoy. :)



Thursday, May 24, 2012

Quitting is good

Some years ago I learned the saying "Winners never quit and quitters never win.". It was on a promotion show of network marketing firm. At that moment that sounded reasonable to me. How could you ever win if you quit everything prematurely? I was willing to win and to whatever it takes to succeed. -- Some months later I quit this company because I could not stand it any longer.

So I quit. But I would say, I won, though. Why? Because I'm happier not doing that strange job than doing that job. Money could not compensate how bad I felt during that time. I was in constant worry of talking to people, trying to sell them something I don't identify with. That sucked big time.

Last week I planned to hike all of the Rothaarsteig. 154.something km. I had some new trekking shoes, a great backpack a friend borrowed to me, I was in a good mood and well prepared for a one-week-long trip across the Sauerland.

On the second day, after about 42 km,  I quit. I felt very sad about my shortcoming. The moment I decided to go back home I felt like I give up something wonderful. I loved the hiking. But there was one big problem for me: The blisters on my feet. One on the right foot, two on the left one. When I started on the second day, it was not a problem. But slowly, without my full realization the blisters on my feet grew, making me walk slower and slower. When I arrived in Winterberg, (after 24 km) I could hardly walk. I hoped that eating something warm, having a good rest and eight blister pads would help me to go on. But they didn't. Thinking about my situation I called a friend and he said: "Blisters will become worse if you don't let them cure." And curing meant that I had to rest for two whole days or something like that. So I preferred to rest for the rest of the week near my wife and my children. So I quit.

Do I regret it? Kinda. Perhaps the blisters would have gone away and I could have keep hiking all of the remaining 112 km. Taking the train back home meant to me leaving this wonderful landscape waiting for me until next year:




But I think, being realistic, it would have just been a huge pain. I would not have embraced the loneliness, as I did on the first day. I would not have enjoyed walking up the Kahler Asten and being amazed by the view. I would have been whiny all the time and wish this sick trip would end as soon as possible. So it made absolutely no sense for me to go on.

So I have to say: Quitting was good. Being in an miserable situation, without any hope that the miserability will go away; Quitting is a viable option. Better than running deeper and deeper straight into your personal life hell.


Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Icons for mp3Genie

I made some icons. Again (made already some hundreds for my employer).
These icons are for the mp3Genie software. There are supposed to mimic the style the logo on the splash screen uses.

It's fairly simple. No big deal. Enjoy ;-)

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Focused Writer


It's time to show some of my software development stuff. On the January 2nd I wrote this really minimalistic app for focused writing on a Windows PC.

I know there are plenty of these apps around. My approach was to write a an app that saves the text to a specific file for simple retrieval. So I don't have to mind about saving each text I write so some files across my harddrive where I won't find them any more.


Features:


Minimalistic user interface.
So minimalistic, there's even no closing button. Whoah.


Saves your text to your Windows documents folder in a convient way.
For example, under Windows 7 Focused Writer would save a text written today (March 27th, 2012) on C:\Users\Lorenz\Documents\2012\03\27.txt


No fuddling around with fonts, colors or other boring stuff.



Requires Windows and the .NET Framework.

Focused Writer was until now an app just for myself. So I had absolutely no testing but my own computer. So use it at your own risk. Nevertheless, it should work under Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

So, I hope some of you might this app as useful as I do. :)

Oh, okay.. Here is the download link.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Splashscreen for mp3Genie

Hi everybody!

I created some days ago a logo for mp3Genie.  Now I took the time to create a splashscreen for this application. I wanted a technical-looking, but lightweight splashscreen. I changed also the logo itself. The headphones are now bolder, fitting better to the rest of the bold font. This is what I came up with. I Like it, period.


Saturday, March 10, 2012

mp3Genie Logo // just for fun

Hi everybody,

Following the idea "Design for Customers you don't have", I created a small logo for a small one-man open-source mp3 database app (http://sourceforge.net/projects/mp3genie/). Its purpose is to easy and quickly find all your mp3 scattered across your multiple hard drives. I think it definitely needs some tuning in terms of font weight, especially the headphones aren't that great, yet. But it took only about half an hour to create, so it thinks it's okay, period. :)


Logo for mp3Genie


Saturday, February 11, 2012

Final Result of Invitation Flyer for EFG Verden

So, there were no big complaints about my first shot on that flyer. Just some smaller text changes resulted in the second version. 

Great "clients" so far. ;)

 


Sunday, February 5, 2012

Invitation Flyer for EFG Verden


Well, this is an invitation flyer for the EFG Verden. It's an invitation to the Youth Church Service.

I have not really a clue what the real subject will be. Well, I know the subject is called "2012". Something with "end of days" or some stuff like this. The guys at that church told me to create a flyer addressing this theme. I hope they like what i came up with.

Oh, yeah: The back side of the flyer:


Still wondering why they have this kinda weird "basic" logo. I think they could use a new one. *new idea to come up with*