It all started a few months ago. Some of you may know, I am a big fan of the show Medium. Unfortunately I never had time to watch it when it was on so I recorded each episode with my HDD recorder to watch at another appropriate time. My recorder can record up to 160GB, which is about 80 hours of TV on it, all ready to be watched.

Up until 3 weeks ago I still had the three-part series finale episodes to watch, but because they were all part of a set I wanted to watch them all together or at least in the space of 2-3 days. Unfortunately, as usual, I didn’t have the time to watch them and soon it became forgotten, except the occasional time I would go through my recorder to choose a previously recorded movie to watch.

So around 3 weeks ago on a Saturday I had some time to sit down and watch the final episodes of Medium. I made myself some popcorn and a cool drink; I sat down with remote in hand ready to indulge in just over 3 hours worth of ghost-sighting TV.

Only it wasn’t Medium. It was House.

Somehow, which I really have no idea how; I had set the recorder 1 hour earlier than it was supposed to. It was and still is confusing to me as I have always used the same pre-set (record once a week-same day, same time) and all my other episodes of Medium I had watched were fine. So I tried the other two episodes and realised they were all House. It couldn’t have been a TV mistake, unless House had been moved into Mediums spot (which I really don’t think it was, because I distinctly remember the advertisement telling me of the three-part series finale of Medium at 9.30pm). I have suspicions it was my recorder telling me, ok, ok enough of Medium, lets watch something different.

So there I was, remote in one hand, popcorn in the other and thinking, crap, what do I do? I had never liked House before, even when Amanda, and other blog owners, had made confessions of a crush on House, I remember I replied “Ew, Medium is better” or something equally lame.

But this was 3 hours worth of episodes! Three precious hours that took up space in my HDD recorder, when I could have used it for that late movie I was recording, but had failed because the hard drive was full. I couldn’t just delete these episodes that have been sitting there for months. Especially when my fiancé had asked me if he could delete them so many times and I had always put up a great fight.

So I watched the first one, just to see what it was like. I had seen bits and pieces of House before, but nothing ever caught my interest. I honestly thought it was boring and didn’t understand the hype. But this episode was good. This was really good. As soon as that episode finished I watched the next one. And then the last, at which point I had made up my mind that I now loved House.

Fast forward 3 weeks and I have not missed an episode since. I even watch it live instead of pre-recorded. My fiancé has gotten into watching it too (he used to claim it was crap too), and now he is always reminding me when it is on, or to not make plans on Wednesday nights.

So alas, I did miss the three important Medium episodes, but who cares now that I have House right? Now all I need to do is buy each season by the box.

QOTW: When have you become addicted to something you swore you hated or would never like?

Fancy Fonts are only for headings. By fancy I mean Georgia, Times New Roman, and every other serif font. You cannot read (online) sentence upon sentence of type with little curls, and hooks on them. It just gets too messy and unreadable. So save those fancy fonts for headings, and headings only.

Controlling links in new windows. Ever been to a website and clicked on a link and it opens in a new window? Annoying right? Well to most users it is, as the user/visitor of your website wants to control where they want the links to open. This applies to internal and external links. Don’t be fooled into thinking that by opening a link in a new window is good because then the visitor doesn’t leave your site. It isn’t good, if the user doesn’t want to leave your site they can click the Big Back Button that is on all browsers. I find it so annoying when I want to open links into (Firefox) tabs, yet an obtrusive new window opens. Plus most users can right-click-open-new-tab or click on the mouse-scroll to open that page in a tab or window by themselves.

Keep my browser size the same. Just the same as how I like to be in control of where links open, I also like to be in full control of my browser size. I have a huge monitor, and most of the time I don’t like to open my browser to full size so that the browser sits neatly in the center of my screen at the right size so when a some website automatically changes my browser to full size I get annoyed, especially if I am reading something in another tab (waiting for your page to load in the other tab). Remember, an annoyed visitor is a visitor lost.

Did I really subscribe? Do not subscribe me to your newsletter because I registered to view posts. Do not subscribe me to your comments RSS because I simply made a comment. Do not annoy me with unsolicited emails. You are making it easier for me to associate your website with negative connotations and most likely I will not return.

Where is that music coming from? Do not play music when your website loads. What if I am listening to my own music then suddenly I hear something else interrupting my track? Do not make it impossible to find the stop button. If I can’t see a stop button within 3 seconds I close the tab. End of story. If you must have music, let me decide if I want to play it by showing me the play and stop button before ramming N*Sync down to my ear drums.

Kill all splash pages! I don’t care if I need to use Internet Explorer 6, use 800X600 resolution, have a tolerance for swearing, and respect for the owner. Instead you are just giving me reasons to click my browsers Back button and get out of there quick. Do you really think I am going to load up Internet Explorer and change my resolution just to view your site?

Complex URL structures? Not only does a simple keyword based URL structure improve your search engine ranking, but it also makes it easier for your visitor to know where they are going before clicking. If a visitor bookmarks your page and sees your link in their bookmarks a few weeks later they are not going to know what http://domain.com/p=?321 means. A structure such as http://domain.com/blog/illustration/design_is_good.html gives them more indication.

Where has the navigation gone? Use text-based navigation links. If you must use images, specify an alt and title attribute. You wouldn’t want someone visiting your website with images disabled and not seeing any navigation at all. For the simple reason of search engine ranking, don’t use JavaScript or Flash navigations. These are also not advised in case the visitor browses with JavaScript disabled, or Flash player not installed.

Tell me it’s a .PDF first. I hate when I search for things on Google and I click on a link quickly before looking at the URL, and suddenly my browser freezes and starts to load something. It is then that I realise I clicked directly on a .PDF file from the search engine results. It has happened on other websites too where the link was not labeled as a .PDF. There’s no need for an external link arrow or image, but a small text warning in brackets next to the link will do.

Is that a link or normal text? Do not underline normal text unless absolutely necessary, especially if your links are underlined. Also don’t have so many styles in one paragraph. I come across these all the time on websites where not only is the colour changed for a bolded link, but it is also a different font and different size than the rest of the text. You may think it looks cool having random colours and emphasis everywhere, but really it just looks tacky.

For the past month or so, I was without a internet connection at home (and being unable to blog at work as my site was blocked). In this time I realised I am not fully dependent on the internet as I once thought I was. I could still get on with life without blogging and without checking every blog in my feed reader every hour. Well almost. See I still needed my daily dose of JingWen, PSGR, Violent Acres and Babblative.

Whilst I was gone there was some kind of drama about IP and PSGR, but since my work computer blocks IP I could only get Rhiannon’s side of the story, and the thread on Snark and still not fully understanding it. I have since gone and read IP and really saw nothing that bad. Whilst I agree you shouldn’t do something in that manner to a friend, it didn’t seem as mean as it was made out to be. Plus Rhiannon is now sporting a sexy new layout (not that I agree her last one was bad, I loved the colours in the other one-whoever said colour was bad?)
This is old news though so I am not going to go on any more about it…for now anyway.

Now I don’t really have anything to post about so I am going to give a dot-point list (which may go in depth at any time) of what I have been doing in the past month.

• Work and some more work.
• I started Cert IV in Business marketing. So one day I can have a business of some type, preferably graphic design.
• Turned 21. Also had my 80s theme party which was great. The pacman cakes were delicious.
• Recently got back into the One Million Masterpiece. You can see my work here.
• I bought 4 new domain names. Two are of my name and will direct to my portfolio Blee Designs. The other is for my sister, which I will eventually make an online portfolio for her.
• I designed a logo for my name and also a logo for my sister’s portfolio website.
• Watched so many movies. I especially loved Transformers, TNMT and Fantastic Four, rise of the silver surfer.
• I have been offered an opportunity to curate two upcoming art exhibitions, one will be out of town with travel and accommodation paid for.
• Decided to sell an unused domain chicdesire.com with hosting included. If I don’t get any offers I might have a competition and give it away, though I don’t think many would like it(?)
• Thought of many articles to write about, but haven’t started one.
• More work.

And that’s pretty much my boring life as far. Hopefully I will get my blogging rhythm back in action.

Everyone wish happy birthday to Amber and Amanda for tomorrow too.