ADIÓS!

Photoshop CS6 and a picture from my trip to Melbourne last year

I have two pieces of TOTALLY AWESOME NEWS!!!

1. I downloaded Photoshop CS6 (beta version) for a trial! I haven't had much of a play on it yet, but I love the new interface!

2. Tomorrow I'll be going on holiday to Serbia and a few other little European countries for 8 WEEKS! I'll be in Serbia mostly, but I'll be going to Vienna and maybe even Italy or Switzerland!

In other words, I won't be hanging around here so much. I will have the internet over there, but I'll probably be too busy having fun! ADIÓS!!!

Illustrating a point

Info graphics make anything look official!

At work, as part of a HR tax thing, we can request to salary sacrifice for laptops and iPads for work purposes. That means we don't need to pay GST. So they'll take out part of my pay each week to pay for the laptop minus GST if that makes sense. In other words, I SAVE SOME MONEY!!!
Anyway... In order to do that, I had to lodge the form and get it signed-off by the Editorial Chief of staff! I'm guessing it would've been okay, but I quickly made a little info graphic to go with the form about why it was necessary, in case anyone asked. You can turn just about anything into an info graphic!
So today, I found out that he approved it! Now I just have to take the form over to HR for final approval. ^_^

New toys for the office

Toasted Marshall and Happy Gumdrop (orange) — 64 Colors 

Skeletrino — Tokidoki 

Tic Toc Apocalypse (blind box-Bat) - Amanda Visell. It can also hang upside-down!

Piggy Bank (pink) — Joe Ledbetter. That's my new laptop in the background! 

I've been shopping online again! Designer toys this time. Now my cubicle is even more awesome! So what are Designer toys? They're toys (usually vinyl) designed by illustrators/graphic designers for other illustrators/graphic designers to collect. They're almost always limited editions and not exactly cheap either. This is what they look like.

If you want to find out more about designer toys, visit Kidrobot, GUNNZO, Ningyoushi and Rotofugi.

———————————————IN OTHER NEWS———————————————

I now have a brand new, fully functioning laptop! It arrived last week. I was too busy setting things up properly and just revelling in its AWESOMENESS to write a new post. Anyway, it's a 17" MacBook Pro with an anti-glare screen and 8gb of ram! My old iMac only had 1gb of ram. The other night, I had 4 programs open at the same time and it DIDN'T DIE!

I'm going to watermark all of my original pictures from now on! Some random Thai online store used my pictures without permission to sell Melt iPhone covers. Here are the original pictures. And here's their store! Needless to say I was quite pissed! I always hoped it wouldn't have to come to this, but it's totally not cool when someone steals your designs or pictures without crediting you.

In case anyone was wondering, I'll start the Pen Tool shortcuts sheet very soon!

My computer died!

Okay, I won't know for sure until tomorrow, when I take it to the Apple Geniuses, but it's not looking good!

For the last week or so, my (almost) 6-year-old iMac G5 started making these funny noises every time I turned it on. Then this morning, I got the question mark folder of doom! It wouldn't even go to the log in screen, so I restarted a few times. Then I unplugged it, plugged it back in and it worked. I backed up everything on my desktop onto an external hard drive, because I'm guessing things won't turn out well tomorrow. A friend of mine said his girlfriends computer died when the question mark folder appeared. OMG what'll I do, I can't even go 3 days without internet!!! =(

Anyway, thanks for visiting and sorry for the inconvenience. I'll be back as soon as I have this whole computer situation sorted out. Farewell for now!

——————————  Monday, 26/03/12 ——————————

It's official... MY COMPUTER HAS DIED!

I could replace the dead hard drive for about $380, but it would be rather pointless to save a nearly 6-year-old slow machine with only 1gb of ram. Everything I installed and all my settings and iTunes stuff would be gone anyway, so it would be easier to start from scratch with a fancy new laptop. Anyway, as I said before... Farewell for now!

Step into my office

Pen Lid Desk Tidy — Designed by j-me. Available from the National Gallery of Victoria store

8-Bit Flower Bouquet — Available from ThinkGeek

Ollie the Twitterific Bird -  Designed by The Icon Factory, Available from Neatoshop

Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (No words version) — El Lissitzky

Flamingo from Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital Florist. Melting Clock – From ThinkGeek

Andy Warhol paper toy - Designed by Matt Hawkins. Download the template here!  

Have you ever wanted to see the rest of the cool stuff in my little cubicle? Now you can! I recently joined Pinterest, another one of those social networking sites. And I made a board of stuff from my cubicle. I should point out that I don't actually have my own office (and I probably won't for a VERY long time). So check out my Pinterest page if you have a spare moment. It's AWESOME!!!

Here's another MYSTERY TRACK!!!

My favourite monkey

Simon Green A.K.A Bonobo

Last night, I had the amazing privilege of watching Bonobo perform live at Capitol in Perth. He also brought Andreya Triana with him. She featured on a few tracks from Bonobo's latest album "Black Sands". I managed to squeeze myself into the mosh pit, right up the front. I was seriously less than 3m away from Bonobo and Adreya Triana! Luckily no one stepped on my (still) broken foot, even though I went without crutches. The concert was just brilliant and I had an AWESOME time.

I also got some really good photos with my iPhone. It's a shame I didn't have a proper camera though. Ah, why didn't I become a fancy photographer instead... Anyway afterwards, I asked one of the stage crew guys for a copy of the set list! And he gave me one! =D

Mike Lesirge who played sax, clarinet and flute!

Andreya Triana. I know it's blurry but I like the colours.

Simon Green rockin out! He's actually quite HOT in person!