Yesterday I learned a valuable lesson

Yesterday I I learned why saving your work is not only important but a modern marvel as well.  I had been working nearly nine hours on a project for my drawing fundamentals class when I reached for the eraser and knocked over a can of Mountain Dew. I lost more than a full work day's worth of hard work with one small accident. After the frustration of starting over wore off I started to remember how many other projects I had worked on digitally that were lost due to power outages, blue screens of death, automatic updates restarting the cpu, etc. and noticed that this wasn't the first time I've essentially screwed myself over. But after coming to the realization of how many mistakes have cost me hours of work something hit me; the importance of saving projects as you work. True that wouldn't have helped with the Dew incident, but all those other projects could have mostly been unharmed if I had only saved as I worked. Well I decided that since I never seem to remember to save as I work I would have to find some way to save my work automatically. I am proud to say that after nearly half an hour of searching through google links, yahoo answers, and a few computer tech message boards that such a tool does exist! The tool is called AutoSaver and it works with any program that uses Ctrl+s as a hotkey for saving! You can even set the tool to save every 15s, 30s, 1m, 5m, or 30m! I have to apologize to Mac users because this seems to only be compatible with windows :( The Autosaver program is a freeware application so you won't have to pay to download it and you can open and close it as needed or simply  have it open itself when windows starts.

The link to download AutoSaver is here for the .exe file http://www.door2windows.com/wp-content/downloads/AutoSaver.exe
or here for the .zip  http://www.door2windows.com/wp-content/downloads/AutoSaver.zip

Reach anyone?

Today I finally got Halo Reach and lets just say...  It is awesome, more awesome in fact than Captain Awesome from Chuck. Bungie and Microsoft really stepped it up for this game.  It has all the flare of the past 5 titles (Halo: CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo Wars, and Halo 3: ODST), as well as amazing detail in the graphics department.  The campaign as usual truly immerses you in the game from the beginning.  You start out as the new team member of Noble Team, which is a group of 6 Spartan soldiers who seem to be the cream of the crop, and immediately walk onto a seemingly deserted colony outpost on Reach only to realize the Covenant has started to invade.  The graphics, game play, and cut scenes make this game an incredible assault on the senses.  Some of you may say, "oh its just another Halo game, what's the big deal?" The big deal is the huge amount of overhaul the series went through just for this game.  Fully customizable armor, new weapons, including both traditional matchmaking and firefight modes, new story, better graphics, and space combat, etc. make this game worth buying.  The propaganda released to promote this game were both enormous and stunning and have gone farther than ever previously done to promote interest in the game.  The typical Mountain Dew, websites, public beta testing and media ads ran on the impressive side, but they are common for Halo releases.  The short films created were incredible and lead me to wonder if a full fledged Halo movie is now possible, they simply left me wanting more and more.  A Halo movie has long been a fantastic rumor that has flooded the web and has always been stifled by claims that the technology to make it seem real just didn't exist yet; however, these 1.5-5 minute spots have proves now that the technology not only exists but has been proven to work.  For those of you who are anti Xbox, this game could change your views forever.  I recommend to anyone that hasn't played this game to find a friend who owns it, rent it, or buy it because this is the greatest game to date.

Reach Overview
Screen Shots
VidDocs

Welcome to the L7 Media

This blog is dedicated to all things graphic design.  It mainly will focus on new techniques I have learned and I will hopefully be adding links to tutorials I have created later on.  I will also use this as a showcase for my work, both professional and recreational, and I hope you enjoy it. Watch for the occasional random posts that talk about my life or things going on in the world that I feel are important (please note I will not bring politics into this blog).  There will be much more to come so stay tuned in....