Counting Down...

We're now into our second to last week of school and the final deadlines are looming on all of us here in the Interactive Multimedia program. Everybody seems to be handling the pressure fairly well over the past week or so. There's no time to cry; we're running with the wolves now!

For this Friday, I have two one-minute videos for the College to edit as well as my own demo reel. Tuesday is our Industry Portfolio Review day, and by the following Friday, the last day of class, we have to have our bookstore project, web & DVD portfolios, and term projects done.

I am currently putting all of my video clips for the College videos through image stabilization in iMovie which is going to take a couple of hours minimum to get through. Bad for me as it's eating into what little time I had set aside for this, good for you because it gives me a chance to blog! (Assuming, of course, anybody finds these blogs entertaining in any way).

The school project deadlines are not, surprisingly, making me too anxious -- it's the looking for work after school that's working me up. School is easy; life is hard. In the past, I've even given up on trying to find a job in my field and have picked up minimum-wage joe-jobs just so I could stop looking for a while and spare my ego further angst (besides, the bills always need paying and they don't care where the money comes from). This year, I'm determined not to do that again.

I WILL get my dream job THIS SUMMER!

So, if you or anybody you know is looking to employ a slightly used graphic designer/web programmer, please give me a shout. You and I will both be glad you did!

PHP & I Are Friends Again

One of our biggest projects this semester was to build a website with a content management system. Each of us in the class had to come up with a new interface design for the Holland College bookstore and code it using HTML, CSS, mySQL, and PHP. This is a mockup of my interface:

I was working on this website off and on over the past few weeks and got it to the point where I only needed 3 more of the site's pages coded... then it all went into the toilet! I don't know how I managed it, but I ended up screwing up my code so badly that by the end of the week I had 10 pages to code like I had gone backwards in time!

Today, I found the errors and fixed them all myself (thanks to Googling some php forums). I am the first person in the class to get the site done, and I am really proud of myself. Last week I was ready to give up on it entirely... I am so glad I stuck with it!

The 2012 Media Arts Student Showcase is at Hand!

It's official: The Student Showcase is here! In my previous post, I included a conceptual of the installation design for the Interactive Multimedia class. This is the final result. 

A few modifications were made from the original design concept. The background is now a series of painted record albums instead of a picture of a pile of tvs. The child has also been removed. I think the robot turned out fairly well for a homemade, tinfoil affair. It definitely looks better in the showcase than it did next to my desk, that's for sure!

Check out the Interactive Multimedia program's installation at the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown

Although I'm excited for the Showcase, I found the past few weeks horribly difficult and fraught with angst. My final semester is winding down here at the College, and I'm struggling to get my ducks in a row. Term project, portfolios (both web and DVD), a huge database website project and documentation for all major projects will all be coming due in the next couple of weeks. I'm not sure if I will ever be ready in time.

Hopefully, you'll be hearing from a much less frazzled Holly when I next post here. I hope so. To quote Scottie of Star Trek, "She can't take much more of this captain!"