I’ve been mostly unsuccessful and had few followups, even fewer interviews. That much isn’t unusual.

Recently I’ve in fact received a reply to one of my emails.

Date: July 11, 2009 19:27:38 GMT+03:00
From: XXX.casinomarketingneeds@gmail.com
Subject: graphic design

Hello Adi,
Would you be able to meet up for an interview Sunday at 4:00pm?
I really am interested in your work.

Best
XXX

I was pretty convinced it was actually spam but had my doubts. For one thing, it’s from a gmail account, and I rarely receive spam from those. Secondly, it seemed to at least be targeted at me. I took a chance and replied, said that, yes, I can meet her Sunday (which is actually a work day in Israel, too). I mentioned in my email that I would like to speak to her on the phone as well.

Fun fact: I got the email Saturday evening. The email didn’t say where other than what city, which isn’t really saying much at all.

The call came Sunday afternoon. After the meeting was “supposed” to happen. Not very professional maybe? She spoke “good” English, with traces of something else in her accent. This time she said we should meet at a café somewhere along Diezengoff which is slightly more specific. Slightly. Very slightly.

The company, she said, was “the first of its kind.” Some sketchy outsourcing business for casinos. Like that’s supposed to make me feel comfortable. A casino isn’t really where honest men and women decide to make their living – be it as a player or as the owner.

But what bothered me more was that it seemed like an attempt, and a very poor one at that (extremely, in fact) to make me work and then just disappear with that work and me not getting a cent back.

You know, if she at least, say, used the company’s domain name to send me email, stuck to the actual times and just overall didn’t make this sketchy – I would have probably gone for it. But guess what.

Makes me wonder – there are people who actually fall for these types of “traps”? Would you have taken that (freelance if I may add) job even at the risk of not getting paid?

Date display

Edit: It’s here!

I thought I’d share “gum”s progress with the world.

Here we’re seeing the date display which I’ve worked on. It only shows the date of the post for the first post of that day. For any post following that, only the time of day is displayed. The year is only displayed if it’s not this year.

It’s quite similar to what dushkin.org had in the older design, except redone. And this time, done right instead of being thrown in at the last second.

Gum's nested comments

As well as avatars, “gum” will also introduce nested replies. I have to say, it was actually a lot easier than I thought initially. Now you can reply to others’ comments and at the same time not appear as some idiotic smiley I put together at the last moment.

WordPress has so many features the old theme just couldn’t use.

I’m really looking forward to implementing this new design I’ve got in the works. It makes me as happy as… something that is usually quite happy (I’m such a wordsmith) to know that, yes, soon, I will replace this horrible poorly thought of design.

I hate the old design. But that’s not a bad sign, at all. It means there is change. It means I am becoming developing as an individual.

No joke! Good artists hate their work too. Kafka wanted to burn his works. Luckily, they were not burned though.

The other thing is that the web changed a lot since two years ago. Creative use of Javascript only really started coming into the picture around two years ago and the social media is taking invading the TV as well (youtube clips and tweets being scrolled in the ticker on CNN). I don’t regret the old design. I simply know how to make it better.

Developing a theme (and touching up on some plugins) for WordPress has been an interesting experience overall, and very rewarding. They’ve made it simple to customize all the elements involved in making the theme work (except for those damn comments) and I salute them.

So off to a fresh start soon. And damn you, IE for making me work so hard.

I’m going to bring my website’s design up to more up to date standards in terms of looks. Long, long, overdue. I think this is the 3rd (if not more) year I’ve not done a major overhaul.

I don’t feel that reflects what I’ve actually done. I was in fact very active, and did a lot. No, my gallery doesn’t reflect that sometimes, but I most certainly have.

But why not just fix the problems with the current one first? Because I always felt it just didn’t cut it. That it wasn’t appealing enough. But I used it anyway, and just got incredibly lazy.

So here’s the photoshop mockup of what I have in mind:

Mockup of the new design of Dushkin.org

It’s not final, no, but this is version 1. I also intend to have only my latest tweet (or two) up on the site somewhere in a “what am I doing?” kind of box. (Probably under the menu)

It’s a little unrefined, true, but I like it.

I’d be glad to write more, but let me just tell you that I got some work to do, sorry everyone. However, I’m more than willing to hear some advice about this design, mainly complains actually – if you have any – please tell me.

I decided to officially name my plant Cornellius by the way.

This time there will also be a new section coming up, and hopefully a more functional design.

By the way, this will be the fifth reincarnation of Dushkin.org so far.

I hope you’ll all like the new design.

I can give you a clue as to what it might look like by saying that it was inspired by the LP sleeve of David Bowie’s Lodger.