Jaz Design

2/5

I don’t know where to start with this book. I’ve not read ‘The Rainbow’, nor have I ever read any other D. H. Lawrence books, so I had no expectations or frame of reference. I picked it up for £1.50 about three years ago and read about three pages while I was waiting at a train station. I picked it up a week or so ago to give it a proper try (trying to read up all the unread books on my shelf).

I don’t think I enjoyed it, however I was compelled to read the whole thing. A lot of the time I felt it was trying to tell me important things, but in such a roundabout and confusing way that I never quite grasped it. I felt like it would be a book I’d really enjoy if I had to analyse it for class or something and get other people’s opinions on it.

I understand it’s quite acclaimed and I’m sure there’s good reason why, but for a sleepy bedtime read it mostly went over my head. The biggest example I can think of is the sex scenes – if that’s what they were, we’re still not sure (the mister and I are immature and had a bit of a giggle trying to work out if that was in fact what was going on, although we’re fairly certain it probably was – “invisible fluid lightning”!)

If you’re a literature buff, read it, if you like romance stories, you’ll probably like it, but if you just want something to drift off to, there’s probably a better choice.

Amazon Summary

“Women in Love” is widely regarded as D. H. Lawrence’s greatest novel. The novel continues where: “The Rainbow” left off with the third generation of Brangwens: Ursula Brangwen, now a teacher at Beldover, a mining town in the Midlands, and her sister Gudrun, who has returned from art school in London. The focus of the novel is primarily on their relationships, Ursula’s with Rupert Birkin, a school inspector, though he gives that up, and Gudrun’s with Gerald Crich, an industrialist, and later with a sculptor, Loerke.

I read this one in full and it was pretty interesting stuff. Like ‘How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul’ it has lots of tips and things you can expect entering the design world. It has case studies and interviews and McCormack has some good life experience to share. Well worth picking up – I even considered buying it, but I’m terribly broke at the moment.

4/5

the art of promotion

I won’t say I read these books in full, more like skimmed them and pulled out the relevant and interesting information and interviews that I needed.

the art of promotion is very interesting – I like looking at other people’s work and the primary goal of this book seems to be to show you work and deconstruct it. It’s an inspiration source really and I found some innovative things which will work very well to inform my development of my self promotion. The accompanying text is both informative and interesting too.

3.5/5

Becoming a Graphic Designer (2nd ed)

Again, skimmed and pulled out relevant info. I’m a web designer so there was quite a lot of irrelevant stuff that I’m sure is really interesting for people in those different fields. The web design section had some interesting interviews and while I think this version is a bit dated, it was still worth the read skim through.

Both of these were on the reading list for my self promotion unit and they are both useful if you’re going into the graphic design/web design field. Probably more so for graphic/communication design.

3.5/5

We started our “Self Promotion” unit today. I’ve had this book about a year and a half but don’t think I ever managed to read it all properly. It’s on the reading list for this unit, and with working full time being imminent I read it over the weekend and found it to be very useful.

I will say that I skipped the chapters on setting up your own studio as I don’t plan to do this just now. I did read the interviews at the end however.

That was one of the things I quite liked about this book, the useful information with the real world experiences and then an interesting interview with a working graphic designer. I thought the format worked quite well.

Things like how to present your portfolio in an interview – simple things you’d expect to be common sense – for example showing it to the interviewer, not yourself, I think are incredibly useful.

If you’re about to go out into the real world, I think you’ll definitely find useful things in this.

4/5

I read this book over Easter – I’d picked it up cheap at HMV I think and it had been on my shelf for ages. I thought it was pretty good. I always find it a bit odd reading a book that’s in first person from the perspective of a woman, when it’s written by a man. I think you can always tell, you know? But other than that, it was entertaining, a bit rivetting in places, a bit upsetting and times and to be honest, well, I don’t want to spoil the end, but I think that was probably my least favourite part of it.

I watched the film not long afterwards (not all of it, I was just curious as to the actors and things) and wasn’t terribly impressed. The characters in the book come through much stronger than they do in the film.

Worth a read.

3.5/5 

Another new month. Where does the time go? WHERE? I’d like answers!

So a goal for April, something to track. Since Easter is in April (a time of chocolate apparently) this is probably the worst possible time to start tracking this, but, food. I have a terrible diet. I’m a vegetarian, but more of a cheese-a-tarian really. I haven’t had chance to look into those two cookbooks I bought yet, however when I return from Harpenden that’s something I will start looking at. I found tracking expenses you really do question what you spend, so perhaps tracking food, I’ll start looking more closely at what makes me tick. I think I’ll split it into good and bad, I can only go so far with that but I don’t know how else to measure things.

We did another car boot sale this morning, I did fairly terribly. Seems people don’t want Beanie Babies and things anymore. Ebay and television have ruined car boot sales, everyone wants something for nothing. Cheeky. Getting up at half five for it seemed pointless, it was freezing, sunrise did not lighten my mood at all. Never mind, we shall prevail in the end I suppose! We’ll have to, one month until the move. Or 30 days.

Also, if you’d like to check it out, we have a preliminary website for my Enterprise group’s company, Clockwork Green. We aim to start trading after Easter so if you like things environmentally friendly, stylish and retro – check it out. Products will be available on Ebay and at sales in Portsmouth, Hampshire.

April 1st

Italics = bad

1 slice sunflower seed bread with lemon curd
2 small donuts
Some tortilla chips
Some Minstrels (chocolate)
1 sandwich (sunflower seed bread) with vegan edam, marg, houmous, celery (1 stick) and cucumber
Couple of slices of pizza (four cheese), oven fries, 2 veggie waffles, 1 red pepper, celery, cucumber
Chocolate chips
1 litre water
Tesco effervescent vitamins
A few yoghurt covered raisins

3 portions of fruit/veg – not brilliant. More than usual. Chocolate and donuts notwithstanding.

I’m not doing so well with the not spending unnecessary money it would seem. I’m going to try to rectify that since I only have about £100 to last me until April 16th…

I also missed a few expenses off of this, car insurance because while it’s come out of my account I’m still not 100% sure how much it was because they made changes. When it shows up on the statement I’ll consider it gone. Also, I ordered two books off of amazon – totaling about £12, but I plan to get reimbursed for that as Easter presents.

They were…

I’m working towards a goal of a more varied and healthy diet and I’d heard good things about these books. Once they arrive I’m going to aim to try one recipe a week and work out what I like, don’t like and can grow to like. I’m an incredibly fussy eater and a huge cheesatarian so it should be good to get some variation…

Monday 19th March

Broccoli £0.42
Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream £2.50
Curly Fries £0.99
Waffles £1.69
Pepper £0.78
Organic Goats Cheese £1.29
Pasta £0.85
Crisps £0.48
Quorn Escallops £1.99
Bagels £0.70
Lindor Egg £0.50
Cheese Baps £0.20
Butternut Chunks £0.75
Houmous £0.99
Birthday Card £1.85
Gift Voucher £10

Totals so far…
£192.71
Necessary £141.46 73.41%
Unnecessary £51.25 26.59%

I don’t think I’ll have time to evaluate this tomorrow, so I’ll look at it now.

The two weeks of normal spending is pretty much up. It’s so easy to see the common places I waste money. There was also the near miss with Sonic & The Secret Rings (Wii) (would have been £17 as my boyfriend and I were going to split it, but in the end we completed it and returned it :S haha) and also I get so tempted by books but I’ve been really good with that for quite a while now.

Amazon used to be my worst thing, but I really tried to cut that out at the beginning of the Uni year. Although as a result my wishlist is triple it’s usual size :S (Or it was until I was really cruel with it yesterday and hacked it to pieces)

Looking at my old Amazon orders, I’ve only ordered myself one book since the end of August and it was a uni book. I did however blow £350 on a camcorder not long after that…

Anyway, looking at the spending… The totals for two weeks and the cost should I live like that for a year (which is unrealistic but it’s a nice shocktastic way to curb the spending)

Alcohol - £13.55
Cost – £352.30
I doubt I’ll be drinking again for a while anyway, considering the other night…

Chocolate – £8.29
Cost – £215.54
That’s really scary… although I did vow at the weekend to not buy myself chocolate

Other junk food – £9.42
Cost – £244.92

Total – £812.76

Not really surprisingly, since I already curbed the book/music/game outlet at the end of summer, it’s all foooood. Vending machines are definitely my downfall. I’ve been taking a bottle of water to uni to stop myself buying Ribena and I really have got to remember to eat before going to uni. I’m sure that would stop the vending machine snacking. As for supermarket bought snacks… I’m trying.

It’s definitely been interesting. The next two weeks are no doubt going to be difficult, I do so love my M&Ms

I’m contemplating keeping a food log in conjunction with this, although I’m really not sure I want to know what I’ve been eating. I’m sure if I have to blog it I’ll think twice before looking like a gluttonous heifer… so maybe it would be a good thing.