2014 Bucket List by Chase

You ever get that feeling, especially when you’re writing, when you just don’t know where to start?  You know what your subject is, but just do not know how to open that topic?  When I started writing this post, that’s just how I felt.  I wasn’t even sure what a bucket list was, so I think the best way to open is to come up with a definition for the word.  Here’s what I came up with.

Bucket  List — A number of experiences or achievements that a person hopes to have or accomplish during a set time frame.

So after a bit of thought, here are a few things that I decided to do before the end of 2014.  I’m not sure if I will be able to accomplish all of these, but I know these are things that interest me and caught my attention.

First of all, I would like to learn a bit more about writing code.  I’ve been writing basic HTML and other basic languages for fun for a while, and I’m pretty good at some of them, but I want to begin working with other more advanced languages such as PHP, C++, and CSS.  Although all of these are website languages, I also want to learn other languages for operating systems, apps, and more. Now these other languages that I’ve been learning weren’t completely useless, even though the languages themselves had little or no use.  The most important thing they taught me wasn’t the language, it was the layout and order of code. Before I started using these languages, I didn’t know anything about coding. Now, I know how to write strings, functions, etc.  Even though no language is the same, a lot of them are similar in form and style.

Using the languages mentioned above, I will finish my website. Although I could go ahead and build it without coding, That’s just not really fun, and it limits your creativity.  Lets say you have a little bar in your website, off to the side that divides your site into two neat halves. But it just so happens… that your bar is hot pink… and you can’t change its color. This would be a complete tragedy for anyone who can’t code, because no one wants a site with a hot pink line down the center. And I’ve actually run into some problems on my site relating to color and limited styles, but once I know more about coding, I can go in, change that ugly pink into a normal grey or something, and there, your website now looks 100 times better.  It’s for these reasons, that I want to learn coding.  

To finish mastering Photoshop is also a goal of mine.  I’ve been able to do a lot of the stuff needed to use Photoshop for a long time. I’ve created some great photos, but there are still some aspects that baffle me.  For instance, the 3D aspect, as well as creating styles and effects.  All of these are valuable in creating great and wonderful pictures, and I’m looking forward to learning all of these and becoming a professional user.

Macro photography is something that interests me too, and it goes with Photoshop.  Contrary to what you might be thinking, macro photography is not taking pictures of large things (Like the word “macro” implies),  It’s actually taking pictures of small things and making them appear big.  I’ve actually been working on this for a while and I’m pretty good at it, but I’m planning on getting even better. I learned almost everything I know about photography at lynda.com, and I recommend it to anyone who is new to or just wants to learn more about photography. (They have a free trial right now too.) Once I’ve got a few nice pics I’ll most likely sell them online for anyone to use.

Another small thing that interests me is getting to know my surroundings better.  By that I basically mean taking more days off and going to do random fun stuff in my general area.  Here in Tennessee, we might not have the Grand Canyon, but we still have some cool stuff, we’ve got mountains, caves, underground lakes, and more.  No, I certainly don’t plan on visiting them all but a few would be nice.

These few things, my website, coding, and Photoshop and photography, and days off for personal hobbies and things that I love to do.  And by the end of 2014, I plan on having more experience in all of these areas.

After writing this post, I learned a valuable thing or two about using photo editors.  Although in general, I think Adobe photo editors out rank most others in terms of excellence, I found a different editor that I really like.  I used PicMonkey to design the header of my post.  This site is very user friendly and quick for simple image manipulation.  We have the Royale account, which gave me more options than the free one.  I plan on using it a lot more in the future for my blog posts.