190306 – Image Dump

10 random images from my stolen images folder with as much context as I can remember… (and I will try to find the source at some stage as well)

screenshot from terrace house. can’t remember why they were apologising. link
was searching for the Honda moto compo after seeing it on mighty car mods. link
zine inspiration, looks like a risograph print – source
katamary damacy – you have to play this game, and there is a new version on the switch. link
I save anything OSAKA related. my spiritual home town. source
tough little audio player I wanted to a show a friend – source
this has been my background for the longest time. I want to find the artist. possibly Cameos who I have been following for a long time.
photo taken from the instagram of an awesome restaurant in Surry hills… Chin Chin. source
Umeda Sky Tower in the north of OSAKA. some of the best views of the city.
An animated gif of the bathhouse from Spirited Away I found while looking for inspiration for my own spirited away drawing. source

Finally happy…

with my website.

its been a long journey, but I am finally happy with what my website has become.

As an illustrator and photographer, I feel the need to have an up to date and good looking website. but I didnt want yet another WordPress portfolio.

For a while now I have been interested in making websites, and making them easily updatable without having to have databases, cms, logins or other things.

My solution isn’t perfect, and the menu still needs work, but its at a place I am happy to use and share, and I can update it as often as I want.

The goals of my website were pretty simple:

  • display images in a nice way
  • be easy to update
  • be responsive
  • work on pretty much everything

Check it out – www.baka.osaka

I like how it works. A PHP script pulls in images from a folder, showing the most recent image first (based on my naming structure that starts with the date), then it displays them in a flex box gallery. On a portrait device, it will show them as 1 column, landscape device has 2 columns, everything else will show 4 columns.

The Menu is a PHP include on every page, so as I add content, I just copy the file/folder structure into a new folder, and add a link to the universal menu, which will update across every page. It also shows the current page based on CSS only, using a body tag class and some css. very happy with this.

Currently there is no javascript, but I might add a simple Lightbox in the future like my old side.

All that is left to do is add content, but I need to go through all my old hard drives and organise over a decades worth of illo, photo and design work into something that resembles an archive.

If you are looking for a portfolio site, and don’t know much about coding, get in contact and I would be happy to share the source for my portfolio.

I have a website…

currently, my site looks like this

I’m pretty happy with it, it looks good on mobile, but there is no real menu and the grid is pretty messy when there isn’t a full line.

I have spent a good number of hours to get it to where it is, but I’m starting again.

See, flex, grid, css variables, all these new properties that can be used are super new to me, which turns out means that I was using some of them wrong, and adding things like media queries (which I didn’t really understand 5 years ago) just adds up to a messy experience. I want my code lean. I want people to be able too borrow snippets from my site if they want (I’m talking about illustrators and photographers that know zero code and want something similar to my site).

I will get there, but I’m going to start again, fresh…

you can see my current website at www.baka.osaka – and it will stay until I get a new, cleaner version up, I just need to learn more.

Lets talk about…

I have been making some good progress on the website – www.baka.osaka – by getting up at 5 in the morning and coding for about an hour an a half. I probably only do about 30 mins of actual coding, as I spend a lot of time reading up on current css and html, which has come leaps and bounds since I last made a website…

CSS Variables?!?!?! amaze.

anyway, I thought I would make a post talking about some of the regular features I plan to have on this blog… there have been a few in the works for a while, but there were some issues that stopped me from even starting them (more on that later).

Here are the (work in progress) titles of some regular features I want to include in this blog.

WORK//WIP – drawings and photos I have taken, or that are works in progress.
Occasional snacking – snack blog
Ok let’s talk about – open discussion on a topic
I want that – things I wanna buy
I got that – things I bought
Creative Problems – just things I have learnt and likes
Data Hoarder – backups and downloads
Fontophile – fonts I like

these will probably just be the category tags and not the headings, but who knows…

I wanted to start this blog at the end of last year, with a focus on illustration, but also sharing the peach cola drinks from Japan. Unfortunately I had to delay it due to a cyst in my eye, which has since gone away, but it was affecting my ability to focus, and so drawing was taken off the table for a few months. I also wasn’t allowed caffeine, and how can I talk about peach cola drinks if I can’t even drink them. So here we are, 5 or so months after I wanted to start this blog, starting this blog.

here are some photos from Osaka… there will be plenty more of these in the future.

New Portfolio Website

It has been a while since I have built a website.

the last one I had made was hacked together from bits and pieces over the years, and it worked well on a computer but was far too javascript heavy to work well on a mobile phone.

you can see my old website here – www.baka.osaka/2017.

I want to keep some of the things from that website, but make it more streamlined and nicer, still with the main focus being on my illustration and photography, but I also want to make sure all the code I use is clean and fast. I will be trying to use only HTML and CSS if I can, no idea if everything I want to do like that is possible, but we will see as I go.

I will be keeping an archive of the site as it gets updated, with live working versions of everything along the way being archived so I can look through, see the progress and make sure I don’t make the same mistakes I have made on loads of other portfolio sites.

this is how the website looks.

my portfolio will be hand coded, learning and using bits and pieces from all over the place. I plan on having lots of comments in the code so if anyone wants to read into that, it will be there.

This website will serve as my blog, as I move away from social media. I will be updating this quite regularly with my thoughts, website progress, illustration and photography, as well as a few regular topics I plan on posting about.

And I managed to find one I made back in 2010, which I will be taking some ideas from as well. – www.baka.osaka/2010

I hope you enjoy it.

peace

BAKAkid