For ages and ages I’ve gone through life complaining that my life is boring and I can’t do anything. Well I was sick of whining and I’m sure a lot of others were to, therefore I decided that over the summer I would achieve something and I suppose I have. I’m very computer orientated, I really enjoy using them and talking about them, I’m a usual surfer and forum poster that enjoys using MSN to chat a bunch of nonsense to friends. After a while, using computers gets boring; you do the same things, click the same buttons, say the same things and it all gets a bit “whats the point?”. But because I’m such a Neek I still stare at the screen anyway, willing something to happen.

As some of you may know, staring at the screen does nothing (and really hurts your eyes!). Thus I decided to become more involved with what you can do with a computer. For a long time now I’ve enjoyed graphic design but have been really rubbish at it (overuse of Drop Shadow ftw), I used to do it for fun then gave up as I didn’t feel I was going anywhere with it. But being a member of a Graphic Forum since 2006 and not being involved with graphics seemed a bit moronic and I still had an undying love for it so decided to try again. I’ve always had a dream of being a freelance designer; that typical overworked, 4 hours of sleep a day kind of freelancer. They do what they love and make money by doing it!

Charlotte needs money + Charlotte loves all things design = Charlotte becomes a freelancer.

So that’s what I’m going to do, become a freelancer. I’ve been on my way to being a freelancer for about two weeks now and it feels nice to open Adobe Photoshop CS3 again and do some designs. About a week into practise I was asked to do a design and be paid but the Client ran into some errors (the “error” being the money wasn’t given to me) so I’m not a freelancer at the moment and I would say you need to start being paid before you can have the almighty title!

However, I’m now technically a hired designer at the wondrous “Computer Penguin” , it’s a brilliant new site owned by my friend that offers technical computer help to people via Remote Desktop Connection. CP is also branching into design where it will sell templates and that’s where I come in! So rather soon (Late September!) I will hopefully be getting some kind of income thanks to my buddy. I’m going to keep designing when I have the chance and I’m also going to try a bit of illustration. If you’d like to follow my progress you can view my work at my DeviantArt. I have also decided to teach myself the coding side of web design and it is going okay, I now know (X)HTML 1.0 and a lot of CSS, I just need to put it all together to code a layout, then I will learn PHP.

Re-reading this post has made me realise that although I have turned this into a personal blog I still mention a lot of Neeky computer-type things, it must be in my blood, instead of the usual blood types of AB and A, my blood type can be C++ !  I would like to continue talking about technical things so why not start a new little fun thing to do at the end of my posts? I shall call it Neeky things that have made me happy today (Note: Think of a better name).

Neeky things that have made me happy today!:

  1. The new MSN 9 Beta 2 download, it’s freaking amazing and I recommend that all of you get it! It is very different and very well designed.
  2. Microsoft are getting things right, not only have they succeeded in a lovely design of MSN/WLM they are succeeding with Internet Explorer too, I’ll always be a Firefox user but I hear that it loads faster and does snazzy things like Web Slices.
  3. Google, my happiness with them has been ongoing for the past week, I have just discovered RSS readers and now I subscribe to everything! I love Google’s mail, reader, calendar and everything else! It’s the most handy website out there for me at the moment.