Spring Update

Hello everyone! It's been 3 weeks since I've launched this site, and it has been officially spring for a week. I was late on getting the new banner made and put up, but it was a bit more difficult than I'd imagined it would be. I'm fairly new at this sort of thing, so it may not look like much. Hopefully I'll get better as we go down the road. If anyone is interested, here is how I made it:

First off, I'd like to thank David Shao for lending me his services. He took the photo that is the basis of the banner. I believe he used a Canon digital SLR, along with several lenses. I don't know the exact specifics as to which lens he used, but if anyone is curious leave a comment or send me an email and I'll get in contact with him. The picture is of the tachometer on my 2005 Honda S2000 hitting redline, or at least close to it. Here's the original prior to modification, aside from a resize. This is 1/10 the size of the original, which was close to 10 megabytes.



I used Photoshop CS2, which was once again provided for by David, to create the banner. I cropped the tachometer and resized it to my liking, and placed it on a black background. The background was filled with a gradient, going vertically from black to gray. In order to produce the blurry and pastel-like texture on the tachometer, I used a filter effect called cutout.

Next, and perhaps the hardest part, was finding a font that fit the whole theme. I went through loads of different fonts, from handwritten calligraphy to graffiti type fonts. One website that I highly recommend for downloading free fonts is www.dafont.com. That is where I found Wolf Rain, the font that you see on my banner. I feel that it fits in quite nicely with the tachometer's font, and stands out from the usual everyday fonts.

With that said, please feel free to leave a comment as to how my blog is going. It's still very new and I've been making modifications to the layout nearly everyday, but once I'm satisfied with the layout, I will focus on writing original content. I've been averaging close to 100 unique visitors and over 200 page views a day. These numbers are a pleasant surprise, and I'd like to thank all of you that read my blog.

P.S. I hope everyone in school did well on their finals. Spring break is here!