Ze Home of Evan Samek

Enjoy friends…

Here is my colorized version of Robbie’s site. Some of you may remember the previous version a few weeks ago that was in black and white.

I started doing a design a little while ago for a friend named Robbie Cooper, and I decided in my design to incorporate some depth and 3-D illustrations to help give the site more pop.  While going through some tutorials in the various blogs that I read, I noticed that this is a design trend which, I believe, will become popular this year, if it has not already.  Here are some examples:

CSS-Tricks.com

Robbie Cooper (by me)

GayaDesign.com (@gayadesign)

Sarah Longnecker

Cognigen Corp

Do you know of other examples that I missed?  Leave a comment below or tweet me @esamek.

Hey All!

Welcome to my new blog.  It hasn’t changed that much but at least I’m finally heading in some direction with it.  I thought for my first new post I would write about the plugins I’m using this time around.

• Contact Form 7 – This plugin is amazing.  Really simple to use AJAX form, that even has a form generator in the admin section for a truly customizable experience.  It even has a built in option for a CAPCHA area, to prevent spam. (However you have to download this as a seperate plugin to use the functionality.)
• Flickr Gallery – Really simple to use Flickr implementation plugin that allows you to important your Flickr photostream in a variety of customizable ways.  Currently I have mine set to display the most recent uploads.
• Twitter Updater – Automatically sends a tweet to my twitter profile to let my followers know I just posted a new blog post.
• All in one SEO Pack- Everyone should know about this one already.
• Google SiteMaps XML – Again, a great SEO tool which everyone already knows about.
• Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu – Now this plugin is incredibly helpful.  It makes all admin section navigation in drop down menu format with CSS.  I couldn’t stand having to click through the various higher-level nav to get to the lower-level admin pages.  This saved me about 15 minutes of clicking time.
• Sociable – Easy integration of social networking and bookmark services. (Which is below this post…tweet me please!)

I’m also using various other plugins, but they are technical and/or aren’t important enough to talk about here.  Anyways, enjoy the new blog look and feel.  Hopefully now that I have a more presentable blog, I will write more.

Evan

That’s right.

While walking to class today, I had a pretty sad epiphany.  I will be working for the rest of my life; constantly.  As I approach the end of my academic life, I have been getting more and more detached from school and social life, and more integrated into the professional work lifestyle.  Clients are becoming more available, I have become ever more skilled in my trade, and I find myself enjoying what I do far more than going to school.  And its worthwhile.  I see results from my web development, and I also have been receiving recommendations from previous clients happy with my work.  I think its safe to say that I have started to make a name for myself.

But, this is the end. This is the last year that I can goof off and relax more than normal.  Its sad to say the least, because I have some qualms with my current direction.  Success is nice, but I feel like I now know how to make this transition while staying happy and relaxed.

Do something you love, and make sure you explored the possibilities.

I love what I do.  Its just that simple.  Most people go into a general discipline that they think they would like to work in, but that will most likely lead to unhappiness.  You need to experiment!  I switched my majors about 5 times.  Here they are in order, so you can see the progression:

1. Undecided
2. Music
3. Film
4. Psychology
5. Neurochemistry and physiology
6. Philosophy
7. Computer Science
8. Undecided
9. Philosophy

I mean come on! I thought it was only 5, but I guess I have changed my major 9 times!  I consider this to be a good thing however, because i tested my tolerance to what I would like for four years, and finally settled on just doing philosophy to graduate and go into web development full time.  My journey led me to web development, and after all of this exploring, I have strong cause to believe in my cause.

You have all the time in the world.

I will be in school for an extra year, but I really don’t care.  You have all the time in the world to graduate, there is no point in sacrificing sleep and stress to graduate when everyone else does.  When you graduate has no measure whatsoever in how successful you will be.  I see too many people who are a mission from hell to graduate on time, and honestly they are unhappy.  This also follows from the previous section in that you are working so hard to graduate at some date, that you never take a minute to explore other disciplines.  This is what I believe causes so many people to eventually become what they worked so hard at becoming, but realize after all that work that they may be interested in something else.  Such a common mistake.

Don’t follow family trends simply to impress

I also never understand why people whose whole family’s members become a lawyer, feel that they should also become a lawyer.  Think for yourself!  You are not your parents, and honestly, there is no gene that you get from heredity that predisposes you for a particular discipline.  Maybe you are good at math, but that doesn’t mean that you have to be specifically a mathematician.  You could truly do anything in the science field.  If this is you, you are limiting yourself so much, I beg you to just take a semester or two to just take classes outside of what your parents took, you are not them.

I know this post came out of nowhere and has nothing to do with the web, but every once in a while I will be posting more personal thoughts that I have.  Hope you all don’t mind.
Evan