Today is just another ordinary day.

My (and his™) iPhone alarms went off at 8am, but I woke up half an hour later because I couldn’t sleep properly last night. Despite the insomnia, I was in a pretty good mood, humming softly while I brushed my teeth and got into my running shorts. I made sure I had a 30-min run today by taking a glimpse in my miCoach schedule on the iPhone and briefly checked my e-mail.

I was pulling my hair up in a ponytail when he™ got in the bathroom and told me the news.

I rushed to my iMac to find my Twitter stream exploding. I briefly scrolled through the messages while plugging my iPhone to sync some new songs from my iTunes running mix. Closed the iPhone 4S tab that I was checking out last night, as well as the keynote (is it called now a Timnote?) presentation from the iPhone event. I opened up Apple.com. Then Wired.com. Then Google.com.

I typed some half-assed tweet in my Apple keyboard and shuffled around my Macbook Pro to find my sunglasses and my iPhone armband. While running, I was thinking how cool would be if we could use Siri on our Macs. Surely it’d be amazing to tell Siri create an appointment in iCal while I’m typing in an article in Pages…

Today is just another ordinary day.

* This is a really personal post for me. You have to allow me the lack of comments. Thank you.

This September (apart from my cat’s first birthday, according to his vet) marks another anniversary, personal this time: it’s been a year since the moment that I got tired of being full-time sedentary and started running¹.

What’s in a year? 400 kilometres, or 30.000 calories, or 180 days out in the park, putting one foot in front of the other and trying to shake my previous lifestyle off my shoulders (and legs).

I’ve written this post to help people who are thinking about starting to run. It’s been one of the few habits that stuck with me and I really want more people to get up from their chairs and start moving, because it’s a life-changing decision.

I have to admit though, I’m not a pro athlete nor a doctor, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

Ready…

First things first: you’re gonna sweat. Don’t expect to look like a supermodel when running, and if you do, well, it’s not really working. I’ve got to terms with my looks while running. I call it “stroke chic”.

You’re not gonna lose weight just by running. You’re going to feel lighter and healthier, yes. You’re going to feel like you’re ready to conquer the world because of the whole endorphin rush. But you’re not losing your beer belly or muffin top without altering your eating habits. I know I didn’t get much slimmer (because I love good food).

Get good shoes. I’m a fan of the Asics GEL Kayano series, I have the 16 ladies model. Very sturdy shoe, perfect for all-around running. I’ve been wearing it for almost a year now and it shows no to very little damage.

Get good tunes. Sure, you can run while listening to Barry White, but why not opt for something more upbeat? My usual workout playlist is a crappy mainstream mix I’ve found on Spotify. It helps me keep my rhythm, and by now my brain is wired to go into running mode as soon as I start listening to it. If I’m not in the mood for mainstream music, I switch to my iTunes to listen to friskyPodcast for some proper mixes (thanks Graham for the recommendation).

Get coached. If you’re like me, you’re into RPGs and you love the quests and achievements mechanism. Both Adidas miCoach and Nike+ iPhone apps have coaching programmes you can use to set goals and motivate yourself. I started with Nike+ (they’ve got an excellent Walk to Run programme) and then I switched to miCoach, which offers perfect control over your training schedule.

Steady…

Be patient and build a solid base. Don’t expect to run a 5K just like that. At first you’re going to sweat blood – when I started, I could run non-stop for maybe 45 seconds before seeing black spots. Things get better though. Even if I sometimes stop running for 10 to 20 days when I’m busy, I know I can keep running for 25 to 30 minutes when I come back.

Find your rhythm. Don’t run for 45 minutes one day and 10 minutes the next one. Don’t start too fast, you’re gonna burn out. Keep a slow steady rhythm and only go faster when (if) your coaching programme says so. Don’t forget to rest between runs.

Run when you feel like to, but preferably early in the day or late in the afternoon. That’s especially aimed to beginners who live in warmer climates. If you keep running at noon under the scorching sun for days on end, things are going to get ugly. It’s dumb and it’s dangerous. Bonus: if you run in the morning, even if your day is crappy and unproductive, you will still have accomplished something. Keep that thought.

Go!

Don’t give up. Cliché? Maybe. Just DON’T GIVE UP. Even when you feel you’re going to throw up, when you’re sweating like a pig and feel you’re ready to faint, keep going. It’s years of sedentary life that scream in agony, not your body. Put one foot in front of the other and keep moving².

After a while, it gets to you. I promise. I used to hate running, but nowadays, if I don’t run, I gaze longingly at the park I usually train every time I drive by. Really.

¹ Well, running, fast shuffling, what’s the difference anyway?
² That is, unless you have some heart condition or anything that could get worse with exercise. In that case, consult a doctor first.

About two months ago, I was invited by Basilis Kanonidis of creativeg.gr to speak in the second greek WordCamp, which would take place in Thessaloniki in early June.

At first, I reacted as I always react to new challenges: I won’t be good at it. I won’t know what to talk about. I will stutter and lose my train of thought. An ACME anvil will fall from the sky right on top of my head. You know, it’s a cruel thing, sabotaging yourself, but I’m trying to get over it.

Then I realised, there is something I want to talk about, something that disturbed me every time I checked the Wordpress premium themes marketplace. So I forced myself to steer clear of procrastination and work on this idea, and soon realised I really, really liked working on it after all. Plus, I’d get to visit beautiful Thessaloniki again after 11 years and have fun with some dear friends! What more to ask for?

Skip to 4th June morning.

Mild pre-presentation stress. Rehearsing the slides in my mind while brushing my teeth. Arrived early with Thanos, so we had the chance to break some glasses socialise a bit more. Marveled at the weird Thessaloniki weather – scorching heat, cloudy and then, pouring rain? Wow.

Then the event started, Basilis gave us an intro and Dimitris hopped on stage to talk about what he loves more, blogging. Since I was second in the speaking schedule, I tried to focus on what Dimitris was saying without worrying about that ACME anvil – I think I succeeded.

Then, it was my turn. And I talked about this:

(I hope it makes sense without my presenter notes. If not, leave a comment and we can discuss it over e-mail.)

Phew, done! I think it went well. Worry-free now, I sit comfortably to watch the next presentations.

Apostolos gave us some hints on good theme design practices from a blogger’s viewpoint. Thanos talked to us about typography (and his project WireframePlus – do YOU know what WireframePlus does?), Vasilis gave a very informative presentation on using Wordpress as an advanced CMS, Gerasimos introduced us to the pros and cons of Wordpress frameworks, Fotis decided that merging CodeIgniter and Wordpress would be fun so he told us to go for it, Basilis showed us how easy it’d be to setup a mini social network using BuddyPress, while George Kanellopoulos from Microsoft gave two presentations, on Wordpress & Microsoft Web Platform and on HTML 5 that I’m sure many found interesting.

It was excellent.

I love the vibe of this kind of events – many savvy people in a room, talking about what they like best and socializing, networking, having plain stupid fun. If I changed one thing, it’d be the fact that I didn’t talk with as many people as I wanted to, as I’m kinda shy – next time, if you see me around drop by and say hi!

These two days were such a welcome break from my routine – walking around the city discovering places (and ruining my feet – damn you, strappy sandals), having good food, being lazy in Navarinou Square, gazing at the lovely Roman Forum view from our hotel window, walking by the sea, all lovely and a great start to my summer.

Thanks to everyone involved and special thanks to Thanos, Yiannis, Gerasimos and Eleni for showing us around the city. You rock, peeps.

Here’s to a great third WordCamp next year!

…because in the end of the day, people you love come through your door and you know, you just know, that you’re really not the stuck up ambitious bitch you think you are, you don’t have to anyway, you’re just a girl who likes to dance and is still scared of lightning and would give it all up anytime for a small house with a big garden in the countryside.

I’m the worst freelancer in the world.

I wish I was one of those industrious web designers that can work for a focused 4 hours and produce small miracles, but alas, I am not. I never was. As I’ve already explained in My (totally) Paranoid Way of Working, design is such a heart-wrenching procedure for me, I sometimes wonder why I chose to do this for life.

For over a year, I’ve been going around claiming to be a freelance web designer and I had no real portfolio to show. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

I worked my derrière off in numerous projects throughout 2010 and I had nowhere to showcase them. On a whim, I created a Behance.net profile and started populating it with my work, but it never felt right.

During all this time, I kept working on it, on and off, based on an elusive idea I had in early 2010, an idea that said I should divide my work into two separate fields: design & content. I liked that idea a lot, however, I never found enough time to really put my soul in it and I kept pushing this particular to-do list to the bottom of my favourite GTD app.

So my portfolio design lagged. And lagged. And lagged some more. Pressing deadlines and client projects always got in the way. My own perfectionism, always a huge problem, whispered in my ear all the time that if you gonna do it girl, you must do it well.

All in all, it got me over a year to put together something that could be done in a week or less.

But I don’t really regret it. Working on this thing for so long has given me the luxury of sweating over small details that I wouldn’t normally sweat over (for example, how to create miniature Safari, Coda and Mail.app windows for the different kinds of work I’ve done).

I can now safely say that a huge burden is off my shoulders. I have a place I can call home, where I can properly showcase the projects I work on.

In that sense, Sugarenia.com was so worth the wait.

Thanks all known (and unknown) suspects for keeping up with my whining and nagging me to finish this thing.

Hat tip to all of you for the warm welcome. Now, if you want to hire me, you know where to find me.

I’m on Facebook. I’m not that active there, but I use it sometimes to stalk learn more about the cool people I meet online.

For this ranting, I’m gonna use Petros’s profile, because he’s a cool guy and I know that he started working on github some months ago. He also went on a trip to San Fransisco! How cool is that? I wanna see photos of that trip. How difficult can it be?

The mysterious case of Facebook photos

That’s Petros’ profile page, complete with goofy avatar. I see some random photos on the top strip, but I wanna see all of his photos. On the left sidebar, there’s a (6) right next to photos – so I guess there’s only six photos of him on Facebook? Puzzled. I click on it.

I don’t see 6 of anything, I just see two sections – “Petros’s photos” and “Photos and videos of Petros”, I guess posted by other users. That’s twelve thumbs, so I guess the (6) metaphor got lost in the way.

Let’s start with “Petros’ photos”. The six albums shown seem fishy – I know there must be more! There’s absolutely no other indicator for that, only a tiny link on the top right with a label “See all: Photos”. So there must be more, right? If you click on a link, you’ll see that there are more, indeed. sigh

Anyway, back again. There’s another link to see all videos by Petros. Video’s cool! Let’s click on it.

Nada. My question is – why have a perfectly normal link to something that doesn’t exist? Make it grey. Add a (0) indicator. Remove it altogether. sigh

Underneath that section, there’s “Photos and videos of Petros”. Well first of all, which of them are videos? You guessed it, there aren’t any, eventhough the title hints to it. And there’s a cryptic link on the top right that says: “See all Photos”. I click on it – nothing happens, except that the link text changes to “See all Photos and videos”.

Excuse my french, but what. The flying. Fuck.

Why so unusable?

There’s no question that Facebook is huge. Their developers and designers are hard-working and I understand their struggle to keep up with millions of users every day.

But they should get theis grip together and properly address the gaping UX holes they created over the years.

The whole situation is foul and dangerous. Not for the future of Facebook per se, I couldn’t care less about that – plus, people don’t really care about usability when they stalk their exes or poke random blonde girls.

I consider it dangerous for the future of all web applications though, and for user experience in general. I can already see a full generation of people, hardly ever using web services apart from Facebook, sitting baffled in front of perfectly functional design patterns because they learned it the Facebook way.

Naysayer? Maybe. Pissed off? Definitely.

And I didn’t even touch the “tiny 11px Lucida Grande font” or “horrendous new photo viewer” subject.

Last night, while I was walking towards home, a stranger felt up my derrière.

Thought you misread? Let me rephrase: while I was returning home last night from my weekly trip to Stelios‘ place for our podcast, a random man on a scooter approached me, slowed down, grabbed my bum and drove away.

Here I was, thinking about wireframes and workflows and a Mac app, when suddenly I felt a hand on my ass.

What. The. Fuck.

My first (and only) reaction was shock. I just stood there, totally speechless, and watched him leaving without as much as a shout.

At first I thought I was stupid for not screaming. Then I thought, maybe it was someone I know. But then, I don’t keep grab-yo-bum relationships with anyone apart the boyfriend™, and even he wouldn’t dare to do that in plain sight, while I’m walking alone at night.

Then I realized what happened. And I felt like shit.

Do you know what’s worse? I momentarily felt guilty. I thought – hey, maybe my jeans were hanging too low. Maybe they were too tight. Maybe I moved too much while walking, do I do that really? I must stop it, then, it’s provocative. That stupid female remorse that’s wired in our brains.

I’m not big on feminism and I’ve been quite vocal about it. I think it creates a huge divide between the two genders that’s uncalled for. If we, women, want to be treated as equals, we have to start behaving like we are. The whole thing seems a bit whiney to me.

But one jackass in a motorcycle helmet managed to lessen me and my big mouth to pulp.

That prick.

The subject is touchy. Therefore I won’t tolerate jokes in the comnents. In fact – screw it, I’m closing them off completely for this post only.

As I sat down on my desk to start typing the obligatory enthusiastic blog post about New Adventures in Web Design, one thing dawned to me: I really don’t know what to say.

Other than I had a terrific time, that is.

The place

Maybe I see things through the tourist’s rose-tinted glasses, and maybe I like UK a bit too much for my own good, but I loved Nottingham.

The city is pretty and clean and friendly. People were eager to help and cheerful. Everything was just a walk around the centre – none of the usual London hustle. It was cold but not too cold – even though the temperature dropped below zero at nights, I felt quite nice for the exotic bird I am.

It was a great place to host a conference – not too big, not too small, just perfect.

The talks

I spent a full day hearing web design supernovas talking about new ideas and perspectives. What’s not to love?

Each and every presentation had its unique charm. If I had to choose one as a highlight, that’d be the one lovely Ms. Veerle Pieters gave. Not that it was the most innovative, but because it felt like it was made directly for me, procrastinating little me that always struggles to find inspiration and turn it to something useful. It’s good to see that people as insanely creative as Veerle is face the same dilemmas and anxiety as everyone else.

The people

Conferences should be all about the people though. And what matters the most to me is that this particular conference was a terrific chance to see Yiannis again (and share a room, school excursion style) and finally (emphasis please) meet Maria, aka acidsmile, aka one of my favourite people on the webs since time immemorial.

I also had the chance to talk briefly with Mitul, who I’ve only met through Twitter (cheers friend!). Being an introvert person, I really didn’t jump at the chance to start talking to other attendees and I now regret it. Maybe I should. Maybe it’s a goal for the next conference.

The host

I’ll bow towards the general direction of Nottingham, because Mr. Collison has done a great job in making us all feel warm and welcome. He really looks like a sweet, humble person, instantly likeable. A terrific host. The standing O at the end of the conference didn’t do him justice.

The outcome

Please, mr. Collison, can we have another? People seem to have liked it a lot.

I have a love/hate relationship with web design.

It’s what I like to do. When I first coded a website, looked at it and thought “hey, that’s nice”, I decided that’s what I wanted to do for a living. Even though I have a Computer Science degree and I’m lacking in graphic skills, I love learning about the basics of design through trial & error.

On the other hand, empty Photoshop documents scare me to death. When a project starts and I have to start thinking out of the box, my mind shuts down. For a person as dependent on method and rules as I am, creativity is a huge struggle sometimes. I can prototype and wireframe a project’s ass off, but when it comes to design, I feel like a rabbit in front of headlights. So many possibilities!

Long story short, I get quite paranoid while designing a website. And I thought I should share it with you, dear readers.

Here are the phases I’m going through while designing:

1st phase: Fear of the dark blank slate

Launch Photoshop. File > New. Stare at the screen till eyes feel tingly. Shut down Photoshop and open WoW. Play till eyes bleed.

2nd phase: GTD

I’m feeling quite guilty at the moment, so I usually break up the design process in itsy little steps and enter them in OmniFocus. I start working on the first todo, typically “Launch Photoshop”. Something fancy gets my attention on Twitter. 90 minutes and 12 clicks later, I launch Photoshop and create a new document.

3rd phase: Procrastination

I start translating my wireframes to .psd talk. Typically, that means that I just copy my wireframe to Photoshop, trying as hard as possible to avoid any kind of creative thinking at this point. I obsess over grey boxes and alignment, till I remind myself the finished result will hopefully not look anything like it. I try to switch my mind to creative mode.

4rd phase: Guilt

By now, quite some time has passed and I’ve got nothing to show. I turn to the web for inspiration. It dawns to me: every web designer out there is more productive and creative than me! Every single link I click on is a nightmare. There’s a devil on my shoulder whispering “See how well she’s done it? And in so little time? Try to beat THAT”.

5rd phase: Denial

This is the worst phase, both for me and the people around me. I become moody and unapproachable. I answer to questions with grunts. I mope around the house, wearing pj’s and eating trash food. I’m convinced I’m a fraud, that I somehow managed to cheat people into thinking I’m a designer. No colour scheme works, Photoshop tools give me hell, I can’t even draw a straight line. I sometimes cry. I sometimes have fits. All in all, I behave like a brat.

6th phase: Spark

While browsing every website from Dribbble to Youporn [NSFW obviously / but safe for MY work / mwahahaha / yeah.] and squeezing my mind trying to come up with something, I see it. My spark. My inspiration igniter. It doesn’t have to be a full website, it can be a background or a button or a textured line. The world shifts, everything clicks into place, a feeling of warmth inside me tells me: Everything’s gonna be alright.

7th phase: Execution

That’s where the real design happens. I form a bubble around my design. I’ve been known to talk to myself during this phase – things like “Oh I know! It’ll look exactly like this” are occasionally heard in Casa Sugar. I design like there’s Devil hot on my tail. Sometimes I forget to breathe. Double rainbows all across the sky, unicorns fetch me sandwiches and I keep wondering “Gee, how could I question myself? I’m a great designer”. Yeah, modesty doesn’t really work in this phase.

8th phase: Delivery

[Save for Web|Archive]. Fire up Gmail. Attach & send.

And this happens every. Single. Time.

If that’s not a love/hate relationship, I don’t know what is.

This month, I officially celebrate my first 6 months as a freelancer. Surprisingly enough, one of the reasons I quit my day job and went the self-employed route was because I wanted to work less, not more. I don’t want to get rich sacrificing my personal life. I just want to achieve a balance.

So this year, I’ve done the unthinkable: I gave myself a full month of vacation time. August is a (really) slow month in Greece anyway, since temperatures have the bad habit of raising to and beyond 30C (~90F). Surely not an appropriate environment for slaving in front of a text editor.

The moment my vacation started, I thought I was in heaven – one full month without commitments, apart from a 9-day trip to UK? You’re kidding me, right? I felt like a schoolgirl again.

However, these idyllic days now belong to the past. As any good thing (insert horrible cliché here), they’re history. And I find myself struggling to get back to work, starting one of my favourite months of the year.

So what have I learnt from this one-month sabbatical? I keep reminding myself these three things:

• When you’re busy making plans, life is busy passing by. Stop making plans. Never stop doing things and having fun.
• There’s never enough procrastination. You’ll never bore yourself surfing the shiny ‘nets. It’s in your hands to put an end to your ever-worsening ADHD.
• Don’t leave any “someday/maybe” plans for your vacation. Vacation time should strictly be time off. Your body won’t let you work anyway.

I was planning to finish my portfolio page this month. Liven up my blog. Work on various personal projects. Improve my web design knowledge and practice.

Instead, what have I done? Nothing really. Read about 9 fiction books, walked around most of London, got a slight tan, went to a kickass beach party and visited relatives & family. Also started a tiny vidcast. And that’s it.

Will I try this prolonged vacation again? Most probably, yes. Maybe even more. But I’ll start my future vacation thinking about what I won’t do and not about what I’ll do.

That’s always a more realistic point of view, I think.