Announcing the first design project to be made available publicly on the website:Â the Official Digital*Impulse Desktop Wallpaper.
I had a piece with this kind of composition stashed away in my WIPs folder on my drive for a while and never really found a real use for it until now. I thought it would make a great submission to make freely available here. 
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So it’s Friday night here right now and yeah, it’s the beginning of the weekend. 
The site design is pretty much complete. There’s still a couple of things I’m toying with (post ratings being the most visible of these right now), but everything else is pretty much set and carved in stone. Some things may be adjusted or “perfected” as the whim strikes me. Oh and also, my similarly graphically-inclined younger brother, Juan, has something in the works to contribute to this site, but more on that at a later date. 
Anyways, to celebrate and properly inaugurate the site, I thought I would begin work on some kind of tutorial to put up here hopefully by the end of this weekend. As such, I’m tending to lean towards something simple and quick, but very useful.
Coincidentally, this is where post ratings will really come in handy. Posts like this one are more for informational purposes and ratings are kind of useless but with instructional posts, ratings will determine the true impact and effectiveness of the content. So if you like the content, please by all means rate! 
As I was saying… I haven’t yet settled on what kind of tutorial it will be but I’m leaning towards showing something quick and simple -yet flashy looking- in Adobe Fireworks, which is one of my favourite and most-used applications.
If you have any suggestions or ideas for future tutorials with any of the software that i use (click here for a list) let me know in the comments. I’m certainly open to sharing my (dare I say) expertise. 
So the Dell technician came around today to take a look at my lappy. He took it apart, poked and prodded here and there and then called me over.
As it turns out, it seems like it really had nothing to do with the video card. He showed me the CPU’s exhaust/heatsink which had a thick layer of dust which was preventing the entry/escape of hot air. I was amazed at how much dust it collected. It fully looked like a bit of fur coating or something. 
Anyways, after he showed me, he said that though that’s was the most likely cause of the overheating problem, he would still replace the parts since he had them here anyways. I was like, “Yeah sure, go ahead!” I mean why not, right? 
I actually wish I’d brought my camera to work so I could’ve taken some happy snaps of my lappy all spread out over the desk, and the dust-burger on the heatsink, but alas, I left my camera at home since I’m waiting for the case I purchased to arrive. 
So anyways, he went about his task of installing the new components and putting everything back together again, then once it was all solid again went on to test it by turning it on and running it for about 15-20 minutes. He then made me sign the receipt and went on about his day.
So the other day a dude I work with, Sam, told me I should up the refresh rate on the 2nd monitor I have set up at work which I connect my Dell Inspiron 9400 17” laptop to. So, being the curious geeky always-wanting-better performance customizer that I am, I happily obliged. And all seemed well…
A few days later things started going south. After a few hours of normal use, the CPU use jumped up to 100% and didn’t show any signs of subsiding. 
I fiddled around as best I could on a system running at top speed (which ironically slows it down to a crawl), killing processes and frantically trying to ascertain what could possibly be causing such slowdown but alas, I could find no reason or rhyme.
Looking through the Task Manager I could find no process using anywhere near 100% of the CPU so I figured it must have been something else. I even downloaded Process Explorer from Microsoft TechNet, which provides detailed information on processes and other information, but could still find no culprit!
After several days of this kind of behaviour from my computer and hours spent on troubleshooting, I remembered that I upped the refresh rate on the monitor and figured that could be a possible cause.
Turning down the refresh rate helped, but the PC continued to experience slowdowns. I got the bright idea to turn off the dual monitor support and that stopped the CPU drain completely. So I’m left to conclude that the video card on my little beast is dying. 
Luckily, a quick review of my Dell warranty plan revealed that I still have over 6 months warranty left! So I emailed them today telling them about my problem. Hopefully, they’ll come around and get it fixed this week so I can do some actual work. 
Well… with this site finally nearing a somewhat stable usable form I guess it’s time to begin the process of filling it with some actually worthwhile content and begin writing.
I suppose I should begin with a somewhat brief description of how this site came about.
Arriving at the look and feel for this site has been a somewhat arduous project but I think it’s really turned out ok. Finding a suitable layout that I actually liked and could use on a regular basis was a task in itself, what with the thousands of available themes and designs available freely. I must’ve actually settled on a theme at least 4 or 5 times (many of which Steph hated )!
I should mention from the outset that this entire site’s design and not an inconsiderable amount of its construction were inspired and aided by the many talents and technical expertise of one Stephanie (a.k.a. BebiBulma). Her help and support during this entire process (which coincidentally is still current and ongoing ) have been instrumental. From getting me onto WordPress in the first place, then suggesting and setting up plugins, to positioning elements on the page for the notoriously design-unfriendly Internet Explorer and endlessly tweaking bits here and there, Steph’s help has been crucial to the successful functioning of this site.
Thank you, Steph, really. 