Living the Creative Life

Have you heard of Songza ? I recently discovered this website (they also have an iPhone app) and it's pretty amazing. Basically it knows what day/time it is and recommends playlists for you based on what you might be doing. Monday night? Maybe you need an instrumental playlist with no lyrics to help you study? Friday night? Maybe you need an update dance playlist? You can also search by "popular playlists", artist name, etc. I mainly use it for when I'm studying, for background lyric-less music, but you can also find many Pandora-like playlists on here as well. Anyway, I've been meaning to give a shout-out to this app for awhile, so hope you find it useful! First I picked "Working (No Lyrics)". Next I picked "Acoustic Guitar Instrumentals". Then I started playing the playlist! If the one you first try isn't your cup of tea, they also list similar playlists to choose from, or you can choose any playlist that you may have saved ...

I was just realizing the other day that it's been awhile since I've reviewed any tv shows/ movies! I do watch things pretty often, if only to relax after a long day's work in the graphics lab. Time to actually review said movies... well, that's a little harder to come by! Premium Rush Speaking of New York City, Premium Rush definitely makes you feel like you are right in the middle of Manhattan. It follows a day in the life of a New York bike messenger (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who's been given a package to deliver that a mysterious stranger would do anything to get back from him. It's definitely an edge-of-your-seat kind of movie and has absolutely beautiful street views of the city. I loved the storyline and the characters and would definitely watch this one again. The one word of warning I would give is the high level of swearing in this movie. I give it 4.25 out of 5 stars. Reality of Love Reality of Love was an very interesting movie ...

I tried an experiment last night with an iPhone app called Sleep 101. It's supposed to be able to tell you how well you're sleeping based on the movement you make during the night. It also has an alarm clock that can wake you up w/in twenty minutes of your alarm by figuring out when you're in the lightest sleep and waking you then. I'm not entirely sure how well it worked, since it reported that I had 99% efficiency in sleeping last night and I happen to know that I woke up at least 3 times and actually got out of bed once. Not sure how efficient that is. Lol. Still, I thought it was an interesting concept for an app. You put it on the corner of your bed and it uses the gyroscope in the phone to sense movement in the mattress so it can tell how restless you are. It figures if you haven't moved in 5 minutes that you're probably asleep. Tonight I'm going to try the Sleep Cycle app. It promises to be a little more accurate in the monitoring, and also has a ...

Okay just to clarify... I've never actually been to New York, but... based on extensive research (via YouTube, Google Maps street view, and all of the many, many movies and shows that have been filmed there), I just feel like New York and I would agree with each other. 1. New York seems like a rather personable, friendly town. And by that I mean, strangers walking down the street would actually stop to help you if you needed it. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the vibe I get. 2. New York seems to have a very creative, anything-is-possible spirit. I don't know if this is because of the pulse and noise of the city or just because creative people tend to move there, but it seems like there'd be a mindset there of creativity and trying new things. 3. New York seems very grounded / here and now / tangible / touchable. Not sure the word I'm looking for there. Basically I mean that it isn't one of those places that you only ever see from the safety of...

Last week we were given a phrase (randomly drawn out of a hat) and were asked to illustrate it in pastels. We were not allowed to use any words in our drawing, and the goal was that 90% of the people who looked at it would be able to get the impression of the meaning of the phrase (if not the exact phrase). So... here's my pastel composition. I may have to tweak it some more today when we turn it in (our teacher is notorious for saying, "That's great... now just change this and this and this and this..."). Lol. So the bigger question is... was I successful? Can you tell what this is supposed to be saying?

Just thought I'd share that I have sponsor spots available again! I did the swapping thing for awhile, but that gets very complicated very quickly, so decided to go back to straight up sponsoring. I love posting things for you, but time is money, so I wanted to give you an opportunity to support me in my creative endeavors! If you're a creative blog or small business, I'd love to help spread the word about you! All sponsor ads are $10 a month and rotate for maximum exposure. I don't like to spam my readers with a million giveaways and "Meet the Sponsor" posts, but if you'd like to write a guest post, that could probably be arranged. ;) My audience tends to be... Female, 20s & 30s, typically creative students, entrepreneurs, mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends. I tend to blog... Several times a week. Now that I'm in school again, it tends to be less than before, but I do have loyal readers who would love to click on your blog ad! I l...

I recently went on a blog subscribing spree and I discovered something new that REALLY ANNOYS ME on a blog: centering all the text in every post. Just... no... don't do it. Please. Maybe I wouldn't have noticed it before studying graphic design, but now I know that centering your entire article is a HUGE NO-NO mainly because it taxes your eyes/brain to constantly start a new line in a different place. Your eyes are less stressed if they always know where the new line of text is supposed to begin. Trust me on this. Centering has it's place... mainly on very formal publications with very little writing on them (say... on a wedding invitation). But on a blog article... this is where you want to left-align everything. Not justified, not right-aligned, not centered... left-aligned. (Justified doesn't really get used much as it causes weird spacing between words, and right-aligned is best used in small chunks for a specific purpose since it also has the problem of not startin...