Ever since then it has been something in the back of my mind that I would love to support. I plan on supporting their work by buying some of their merch. They have stylish shirts and hoodies that stand out and make a statement.

You can support them too. Join me and nearly half a million other people for the 2nd annual TWLOHA Day today by writing “Love” on your arms. This is not an official TWLOHA event, but you can never go wrong by spreading the message of love.

Check out the Flickr Group, Facebook event and the official To Write Love on Her Arms website. Here’s some art that I did for the event:

I recently came across a reference to Aviary on Amber Mac’s blog and thought I should check it out. Since buying a MacBook I have been sans-Photoshop as I can’t really justify the cost for a Mac version of the software I have been using to create layouts and website designs for years. I have never been able to embrace GIMP, running it through the X11 windowing system on my MacBook frustrates me and I haven’t found a decent image editor that can replace Photoshop. Could a free online image editor be the solution I’ve been looking for?

What is Aviary?

Aviary is developing a suite of free online creative tools, each given the moniker of a bird all housed within the… er… Aviary. Included in the flock are tools for many different creative-types. Image, video and sound editors. Pattern generators, desktop publishing tools, layout tools and an interesting take on content licensing. By requesting a beta invite and stating in my request that I was focused on image editing I received access to Phoenix, an online raster image editor (à la Photoshop), and Peacock, an online algorithm-based pattern generator.

What Makes Aviary Different?

The philosophy behind Aviary is enabling “rich content creation and distribution”. You will be able to create a vector image in Raven, import it into the Phoenix raster editor and take the result to the Owl desktop publishing layout editor. From beginning to end you can generate a creative peice and take it straight to market, all without opening a hard drive-based program to do it. You can also choose to allow other Aviary users to edit your work to end up with a collaborative masterpiece. Each week Aviary features a “Collaboration of the Week”, where a starter image is posted and the Aviary users are given free range to create their own image using the original, or using another user’s derivative of the original.

Free, Online, Downloadable

Aviary plans to make these free online tools available as Adobe AIR downloads, which will no doubt make the programs faster than the web-only versions as well as cross-platform compatible. There are a lot of exciting things happening at Aviary.

Currently I have 5 invites to Aviary. If you would like to try it drop me a line in the comments!

Really more to test and have my blog look like it will be used from time-to-time rather than to say anything meaningful.

I am currently working on a new layout for my blog and it has been quite the pain! Working to get the code XHTML compliant, the CSS working in all browsers and the graphical work to make it look good takes a lot more time than I anticipated but I am happy with the result so far.

I’m finding it really hard to get really involved in it though. I really want to have a blog where I can post what interests me and capture the thoughts that stew in my brain. I also wanted to have a level of control over what the layout looks like and what advanced functionality I can incorporate, so I decided to install blogging software to my site and design a layout from scratch.

To start off, I will post my progress with David Allen’s GTD suggestions or training, or whatever it is he would prefer having it referred to. From there we will see what piques my interest and go from there.

Keep an eye out for the new layout that will be up soon!