Personal

I've been struggling with some things as of late. It's mostly been with the way I want to promote myself. Obviously, I want to do it loudly, but there's always the consideration that you have to be weary of what the potential clientele will say/think.

Really? Well, that makes me feel like a whore. Don't get me wrong, I'm not really good enough or established enough to say "to hell with the clientele, if they don't like me or my art, then they can go fuck themselves." That's obviously the wrong approach, but surely there's a way I can radiate my personality without fear or worry I won't find work to pay my bills.

And then I get asked to change the name pretty often. 413U doesn't sit well with people, it's too vague, ambiguous. Once they find out its my name, they attempt to steer me towards something more catchy, easily remembered. Well, if my images don't do it, then a fucking name isn't going to get me very far.

AHHHH SHIET MANG

OFFICIAL. Yeah, that's me.

Been running around like a chicken with its head cut off as of late. This week is going to be vicious, but not as vicious as this:



THAT'S WHAT 22 STORIES LOOKS LIKE.

FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Every bit of good news has been hiding that nasty trick under its trenchcoat since last night...

FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

So I'm launching my website, and in case you didn't know about it, it's www.413u.com. I'm using a program called simpleviewer to organize the galleries for viewing online. I take painstaking time and effort to edit each photo, resizing and compressing for optimal viewing online with a good mix of size and image quality; the average photo is 200kb. Simpleviewer goes and increases the file size twofold after making the gallery.

WHAT?!?!?!?!

How the hell does the size of the file increase twofold WHILE DEGRADING IN QUALITY?????? Of course the image degradation is minimal, but the fact that the file size WENT UP while LOSING quality is totally blowing my mind.

'Hieu, so what? 200kb to 400kb ain't so bad.'

Really? It's not. We're all on broadband for the most part, and downloading 400kb of anything is pretty much an afterthought. However, when I take 3 days just resizing all of my fucking images and compressing each one to fall within the parameters I set, to then have it all thrown out the window by some illogical process that makes ZERO sense, then I'm steamed. Not only does it increase the size of the image, it also changes their naming convention, because apparently parenthesis' are outside the realm of being in acceptable file names.

This has added days to my work. Days I don't have, because of school, work, and personal obligations. Days spread out can mean a month. A month can mean people are still looking at the stupid splash screen saying they're looking at a 'work in progress, please excuse the vomit in the corner.'

Then I receive news that my GF and I wont tickets to the Muse show in Philly. She then tells me it's on the same day as the corporate gig I'm shooting... in the same time frame. I'm ready to punch someone in the face. I honestly can say that I'd rather never have heard the news of us winning tickets, because this corporate gig is so goddamn mandatory.

All of this within 8 hours. I'm a veritable explosion right now. I haven't felt this angry in a long time. I'm surprised my monitors are still intact. [sigh] I've done so well holding everything together, why does it feel like it's unraveling now?