Yeah, preparing for finals is not fun.  Neither is trying to work out last-minute details with housing sign-outs, coordinating move-out times, plus flying out to Washington DC to start my internship with NPR.

At least for this semester only one class I have has a real final that involves an exam.  My other classes just have final projects/critiques, or I don’t even have to show up at all.

I’ve slowly been working on my website, www.nathan-wells.com.  There was so much more I wanted to do with it in terms of interactivity and design, but since I’m putting the site together as my final project for a class I can’t spend forever tweaking minor details.  It will have to do for now.

Yes, I know it’s been a while.  Busy with school and all that, same old excuses.  Anyway, right now I only have a few minutes to talk.  I’m busy studying for my second Design in Society exam, which I am not happy about.  The class had the potential to be cool, but the teacher is not very good, which makes the whole class not enjoyable at all.  I am learning some interesting history though, and I’ve discovered a few designs and works of art that I like.

I’m also working on my take-home open-book exam for Internet Production and Performance, which is incredibly easy.  No complaints there.

Time to hit the notes again…

So, I love Portal (Heck, I love all of Valve’s work).  I also love the work of surrealist painters, such as Salvador Dali, M.C. Escher and Rene Magritte.  Portal certainly has some mind-bending Escherness infused in it, at least.  Anyway, I was sitting, bored, in my Digital Applications Basics class, when the instructor introduced the next project (and the first one I was interested in): create a surrealist image in Photoshop in a style of the great three mentioned above.  She presented several examples of their work in class, including a favorite of mine, Magritte’s The Treachery of Images:

(image courtesy of Wikipedia)

I was suddenly struck by the seeming similarities between “This is not a pipe” (the English translation of the French phrase above), and the oft-repeated iconic “The cake is a lie” found scrawled throughout the game in Portal:

(image courtesy of GameSpot)

Then I was struck by inspiration: Portal + Magritte = HUGH SUCCESS.  Here is the fruit of my labors after an hour of work:

You can read up on the details of the piece here, on my Flickr page.  You can also download many different sizes if you want it for your desktop.

The proper title is The Treachery of GLaDOS, an obvious pun on The Treachery of Images, and also a reference to the antagonist of Portal.  It was a fun thing to make when I had a spare moment.  Obviously it isn’t going to for the class assignment, but I already have some ideas…

WALL-E deserved more awards.  That is all.

PS - I never had much respect for the Academy Awards anyway after a Pixar film lost out to a film that consisted entirely of DANCING PENGUINS.  Granted, the Pixar film was Cars, generally considered not the best of the Pixar bunch, but still, Pixar should never have lost out to dancing freaking penguins.

One of the reasons I really haven’t tried to get into the blog is because I keep trying to perfect the it’s look and design…and I keep changing it and keep changing it and I am never satisfied.  So I decided, screw it, I’m just going to leave it how it is now and worry about the looks later.

For a long while, nathan-wells.com was just a placeholder redirecting to my much less ignored YouTube channel.  Now, finally, there’s actually something there to look at when you type “www.nathan-wells.com” into your favorite web browser.  Granted, it’s only an image, but it’s something.  Thanks to a class I’m taking this semester, I’ve finally got enough motivation to actually make and FINISH a website, and even come up with a design I’m fairly satisfied with.  I’m still trying to find “my” style, and it really is quite hard.  I like what I have so far for my placeholder, but the general opinion of those I have talked to is that it is a bit too Tim Burton/Henry Selickesque at the moment, and I agree.  I’m huge fans of Burton and Selick (still haven’t seen Coraline yet, I know, I suck), but I do want make something more that makes people think of me, and not someone else.  Or, at least, make something that doesn’t make people automatically think of someone who is not me.

So, please, let me know what you think of the style, and don’t be afraid to critique!  I want to know your thoughts.  This, also is probably the first post most of you are going to see, since after I publish this I’m going to actually start publicly promoting my blog.

And suddenly I ran out of things to say.

Yes, I actually do have a blog…even though I haven’t updated since….it doesn’t matter.  No one even reads this blog, mostly because I haven’t shared the link with anyone.  Well, except now I’ve shared the link with my girlfriend, Lindsey.

I need to start blogging.  Several times I’ve felt the need to blog, and I had a lot to talk about, but then I got lazy and didn’t feel like it.  But I do need more of a presence online besides my YouTube channel, and since I can’t work on my website until I get back to school I might as well revive my blog.

I’m too tired to talk now, but I will have stuff to say.  This blog is not dead.  Really.  I mean it.

I have an excuse or two for why there have been no updates.

But I can’t think of them right now.

What can I say?  Well, a lot.  I’m now living on campus at San Jose State University, and loving every minute of it.  My first week of classes has wrapped up, and I think overall I’m really going to enjoy my classes, though of course I’ll like some more than others.  I’ll go into detail about each class in later posts.

I actually remembered one excuse as to why I haven’t updated this blog: it still looks terrible.  Hopefully I can change that…eventually.  Also, no one is reading.  Of course, that is my own fault, since I haven’t bothered to link anyone to my blog.  That will soon changed, and once people actually start reading this darn thing, I’ll be forced to keep it updated.

For now…and as usual, stay tuned, and hopefully I’ll have more interesting and insightful things to say sometime.

It’s taking some time, but I’m slowly working on tweaking the template to make the blog my own.  Still haven’t figured out how to change the background or add background images.  Hmm.  At least I was able to replace the banner image with something of my own, though it clashes with the rest of the bare-looking interface.   I suck at PHP.

Give me a few more days, and I’ll be blogging often.  I’m working on some concept mockups of my website, so expect to see a some pictures in a few days.  Also, I’m going to be working on expanding my links, adding friends’ and family sites and blogs, as well as links to other places on the internet I hang out. So..stay tuned, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, this is an “under construction post.”  Bear with me while I sort out the kinks.