I often feel overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge and skills that I feel taht I need to learn. I’m sure many other web designers feel this way. We have to know Actionscript, PHP, CSS, AJAX and tons of other technologies. We need to keep our skillset up-to-date to be able to stay competitive.

In the past few years, since I was in grad school, I’ve been trying to this. I know a little bit of many things.

Recently I start to realize that this is a losing battle. There’s no way I can master everything. Even if I have the capacity to do that, I don’t have the time for it.
I’ve decided that I should focus on what I’m very passionate about. The very thing that can consume me completely and make me lose track of time: being creative.

I believe that is my gift. Yes, I can do cool effects and interactivity in actionscript and DHTML, but technology is not where my heart is. They’re merely my paint and brush. My art supplies.

I need to go back to where I started. I need to pour out my heart into my work and use anything I can get my hands on (including web and other technologies) to deliver the message embodied in the work of art that I create.

a vector art created based on a photograph. I followed a great illustrator tutorial on this subject from N.Design (How to Trace/Draw People from Photo with Illustrator) which turned out to be relatively easy. Of course, the help of my wacom tablet made the task much easier than if I used mouse, but in any case, the tricks from N.Design really helped.

Another inspiring site that shows a designer’s dedication to his work.

In addition to his portfolio, Nick La makes available various resources for the design community: icons, tips, tutorials in illustrator and dreamweaver , links, illustrations.

Inspired by Adhemas, I tried to create my own photo/illustration hybrid using a photo that a friend of mine sent me.

After few steps of treatments in photoshop, I brought the image over to Illustrator and added the organic shapes to enhance the fun feel that the model has in the photo.

I’m pretty pleased with this first attempt which was relatively easy to create with the pencil tool and tablet in illustrator.

A friend of mine told me about this site with a note: “Cool Illustrations!”

I expected a flashy site that’s heavy on transition effects. Obviously, that’s not what I found. I was pleasantly surprised to find a site that shows the passion for art that this artist has. There’s no way anyone could do ellbaorate illustrations like what he shows there if he doesn’t enjoy what he does. Don’t get me wrong, the flash site works nicely. In fact, it works so well that it doesn’t distract me, as a user, from experiencing the art presented there, which should be under the spot light.

My friend was right, this site definitely shows cool illustrations. Personally, I think it’s beyond “cool”. It’s inspiring. That level of passion and dedication to his/her craft is what every designer/artist should strive for.

Here are couple links to articles that explain how to set opacity with CSS:

• Ove Klykken: CSS Transparency for Internet Explorer (IE), Mozilla and Safari
• Mandarin Design: Exploring Opacity Step-by-Step by Michelle Goodrich

If you just need to grab the CSS code that does the trick with brief explanation, Ove’s article will give you what you need. However, if you want to really understand this topic, the extensive coverage on Mandarin Design will explain various aspects of using opacity wih CSS.

Recently I’ve been pushing myself to learn new technology and keep updating my skillset.

It is, of course, a good thing to do, but it also frustrates me because the more I learn, the more I realize that there are so much more that I don’t know. How can I ever be one of the top players in my field?

Then I realized that my focus was wrong. I wanted to be really good with my technical ability and lost sight of the core of what I do.

It’s like a painter who develops superb techniques to mix paint, hold brushes, creating interesting strokes, but never employ those techniques to paint. No matter how well he does those tasks, if he doesn’t express himself by painting, they’re worthless.

I remember watching an interview with Bono where he said how they (U2) saw other bands who had everything: looks, technical skill, attitude, but they didn’t have “it.” U2 was the band that didn’t have anything else, but “it”.

That’s what I need. I need to go back to where I started by focusing on what I’m passionate about. Develop my technical skills with that in mind. To manifest “it” in my work.

Recently I need to take screen capture (still images) from a long video. When I do the usual Alt+ PrtScrn, I get the windows, with black box in the image area.

I thought that was caused by some kind of copyright protection feature that comes with Windows Media Player.

After doing a little research, I found out that it’s actually caused by “video acceleration” feature of WMP. After I set that setting to “none”, I was able to take the screen shot just fine.

Here’s the page that revealed this issue and solution to me: Windows XP Common Issue>Capturing Still Images from Windows Media Player