I'm Dorian Douma, and this is my page
- it's not even a site yet
- I always wanted to do this
- ...make the most super-plain, text-focused page
- use text in a somewhat new way
- break the typical navigation flow
- I think this is a fun way to make a site
- start out with all the text, in outline form, on one page
- and then organize and rewrite
- when it becomes real obvious what should go where, and how it should all go together, split 'em up into pages and test the hell out of it
- as a page, it's probably 1/3rd done, and as a site, it's maybe 1/5th done
- if you're looking for my web design portfolio...
- my "some websites I've helped out with" page on my Design Notes blog is the next best thing
- folio-building was easier when I was showing off web layouts
- it's taking forever to document my new stuff because it's complicated and hard to demonstrate
- my old folio sites never got any attention from my potential clients, and I admit I got bitter about it
- I do want to show off, really, and I am working to gather some stuff up
- I have a bunch of blogs and stuff
for all my activities
- I live in Toronto, Canada
- I moved here from Victoria in
January 2007
- ...moved there from Whitehorse in the early 90s
-
I feel right at home here, it's great
-
except I could use more Montreal trips
- and I want to see more of the north
-
I live in Rua Acora, a great spot on the west side
- with some nice roomies in a little flat, what I always wanted
- the public here are seriously so
sweet and polite, and they don't mess with each-other too much
-
the cycling is great!
- the city's against you though, all the way
- I take them back alleys and side streets
- I even do it in the winter, it keeps me so sharp
-
Toronto is a mess though, for sure
- we could use a street sign or two here and there
- we have so many unmarked heritage stuff, I know this guy who started a great thing called the "missing plaque project"
- the whole thing, including the TTC, would make a great usability study, in fact I'm not surprised some of the big usability firms we birthed here
-
I have really taken to the streetcars
- I'd feel differently if our subways were more like Montreal's, and didn't disconnect your phone and computer
- streetcars tame traffic and make it easier to jaywalk, I love it
- taking your bike on there is not that hard
- I just dated students
- some effort was made to find a suitable program, but the good ones were all total pressure cookers, plus I was already in the game and my friends in university were taking pills and pulling their hair out
- since moving to Toronto, I've gotten to know a ton of OCAD people and work with a few, they're cool
- U of T has an information architecture course but apparently I'm already there... this keeps happening
- I was gonna attend this
Emily Carr course on User Interface design but it was cancelled
due to lack of interest - that is comedy
- what I need is either a workshop or an internship in Usability, Information Architecture and User Experience Design
- I've learned a bunch of great stuff
- HTML, CSS, web standards, web graphics, basic networking and tech support, IT training...
- my great small business clients hooked me up with skills to pay the bills, while I helped them develop and promote their thing
- working with artists is great, I've learned how to collaborate, draw up specs, divvy up work, understand someone's vision
- I can design, draft and produce a ton of stuff - graphics, multimedia, objects, information systems, some good ad copy...
- I can do a lot of useful stuff with sound and music
- I've fixed up and sold a few bikes in my day
- people have paid me to cut their hair - not many people but it's coming along!
- I have this dream of living in an apartment, in a tree, in the city
- I want someone to show my why it's not the future of city livin' ...apartment buildings in the trees, tons of space on the ground, loads of shade...
- we could train them like bonsai trees
- I really don't know anything about trees, I just think it'd be a great way of living
- whatever, no way it's legal in the city, but I want to draft it!
- I have so much DIY fun
- tapedeck hacking and synth building at the InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre on Ossington
- Toronto's great bike co-ops, Bike Pirates and BikeSauce are a ton of fun and useful and a nice example of a different way to learn
- I've been volunteering at the Sketch Studios art workshops... where pretty much anyone can learn to make pretty much anything
- My family are with me on the "too much thinking" tip
- the whole family on both sides is into creative problem solving
- it's either arts, engineering, design, music, language, religion, communications
- and always with the business-to-business entrepreneurial situation going on
- thinking way too hard, and making a bunch of cash, that's what we're into
- I'm into working with computers
- I have been to the Linux side and it's great
- but now I'm back for Ableton Live, Propellerheads Reason, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, AfterEffects, and believe it or not, Adobe Media Encoder... believe it or not on Windows XP!
- my favourite era of OS history was
Windows 2000 vs. MacOS 9
- they were fast, stable and refined, at last
- instead of building on it and keeping it fast and stable, they rolled out these crazy new systems
- they were super slow and buggy for years
- the new features didn't bring more value
- we missed out on a bunch of great stuff in the shuffle
- the new systems didn't look better
- I like a nice modern computer for web work, nothing too crazy
- the Finder keeps getting nicer and nicer in MacOS, great for production work
- I still love WindowsXP, and 7 looks nice as well
- whatever I'm using, it's nice to have a couple monitors, a ton of ram, and a nice media management program - I even like Adobe's!
- I like Coda and Dreamweaver for HTML editing
- I like using visual editing for some things, and handcoding for others - a good pro knows how to integrate them both, I think
- Dreamweaver's great for writing and editing, and it's got all these little tools for speeding things up
- the Find and Replace features, and the file management in both these programs are great and that is superkey
- in Linux, I'm grateful for Geany as a text editor
- those Linux web design suites are terrible software, it's sad
- the best tool for web designers in Google Chrome
- the inspector came a long way through other programs in web history, but Google made it more usable than Firebug and more useful than Apple's implementation in Safari
- because of the inspector, I can draft changes right in the browser - a unification of testing and design
- we all needed a task manager inside a web browser, along with useful resource measurements, so we can find out what's slowing down a site
- Adobe abandonware for
complex web graphics
- ImageReady was Adobe's answer to Macromedia's Fireworks, but they tanked it in CS2, and didn't move its most useful features to anything
- I keep it around for complex web graphics work
- Sony Vegas is a great video editing program
- yeah - not Final Cut Pro, not Premiere, although I can get a thing done in those apps, Vegas is it
- hook it up with AfterEffects and it just pops
- it works like Sonic Foundry Acid... because that's where it came from - like Nuendo came from Cubase
- Traktor and WinAmp are great DJ tools
- yeah, I said WinAmp
- you can set that thing up to be the best computer music DJing thing, even better than Ableton, if you have to choose just one app
- there were so many different versions of Traktor, and so many of them were so terrible, that I have to go back and find the one that's best
- that program had the best-sounding tempo shift, even better than Ableton, and then the next version sounded awful
- you could do all sorts of crazy creative stuff with this app, but it would also help you stay organized about your music
- Ableton Live is great for music and video
- it is much less professional than Cubase or ProTools - in a good way
- it's easier to use and more stable
- it doesn't try to be some old kind of gear, or do things in an old way, it does things in a computer-y way, and works with you in a friendly way
- it brings together the most
important aspects of brainstorming, composing, arranging,
recording, producing, and mastering music, from beginning to end
- you can use it for almost any kind of computer music work - it's not "for" any specific task, but it is uniquely great for mashups, DJing and performance
- it makes each part of the
process easy to get into, easy to do, and easy to bring into the
next stage
- it's not a barrage of bad
design choices and sad usability fails
- there are no overlapping
windows
- great for tasks large and small
- the interface is super clear and smooth
- I used to have an eMate 300 and
it was so cool
- and I see them on eBay for $25
- and I totally want one
- somebody get me one for my
birthday
- it's so great for writing
- I really want an install of
NextStep
- feel like Next was the
pinnacle of productivity computing and I want to touch it and
learn
- I have not been able to get it
to work in VirtualBox, and I have no idea what I'm doing
- I'd love to get it going on my
ThinkPad T21, but I know it might be too new of a laptop - but my
T21 has no windows key, and I take that as a sign
- I still do web production, but I want to do more web usability, officially
- I've always put usability in with my general web services, because you can't do anything right without it, but generally I want to get earlier in the planning phases of projects
-
I've been sort of "touting"
Blogger as a great loophole for people who want to do super easy,
quick, free web publishing
- it's got what most people need in a website, and it's easy to use
- you can make a totally normal site with it, nobody has to know you're using free tools
- I've figured out how to do some pretty crazy stuff in blogs, using CSS and really awful javascript
- I'm ramping up my computer training situation
- doing some volunteer work to polish off them instruction skills
- maybe teach at a college or something
- corporate training has always been part of my work, and I want to build on it and make it a bigger part of my business
- am in the process of designing and
prototyping the synthesizer of my dreams
- the first software prototype is
being refined
- I made it in Reaktor
- it's a refinement and extension
of an old idea I had and some earlier Reaktor synths I made
- once the software prototype is
finished, I can start on the first hardware prototype
- I'm going to use a netbook
inside a keyboard case, and set up the controls on the case
through a MIDI control setup
- I'll use the first hardware
prototype to refine the control layout, the case, and the
software prototype so that they all work together
- once the first hardware prototype is refined, I can build the second and shop it out for production
- this will be the 100% real analog deal,
- made out of the most common, cheap parts so they'll have long, healthy lives
- it's the synth I want, but it's not just for me - it's got what musicians need
- it'll appeal to those who would
gravitate to vintage analog synths but aren't necessarily interested in
owning and fixing a piece of history
- I want to call it the Turquoise Hexagon Sun and hook it up with a turquoise wood case but we'll see
- the competition's hard to control and no fun to play, and I want to save musicians from menus
- I also have an alias: Pema Tsering
- it's the Tibetan word for the Lotus flower, which blooms in muddy ponds under the moonlight
- it rhymes with "Emma"
- the "ts" sound in "Tsering" is like "artsy" and the "r" is hard
- I've always had friends who were interested in Buddhism, but I grew up with it, and I keep getting more and more into it