Celebratory Last Blog Post

When I came up with this idea for my last blog entry I initially believed that it would be a fairly simple goal to accomplish, but I was quickly proven wrong. I knew exactly what I wanted to create, but I was at the mercy of the photo editing software I needed to use. My first idea was to simply upload the animated .gif files onto my blog. However, this was insufficient because I wanted music and several images playing simultaneously. The solution had to be YTMND.com, a user friendly website for creating unique web pages. At this point I had a good idea of what I wanted to create and was left with the challenge of crafting the images I needed. My original plan was to have a tile pattern of different animations acting as my background, a single animation centered in the foreground, and the some catchy disco music. In preparation, I searched the internet for appropriate animations, downloaded and installed the image editing programs Gimp and IrfanView, and searched Google for information on how to make this software do what I wanted it to. Hours of frustration later I was nearly defeated. Dealing with .gif files turned into much more of an arduous process than I had hoped for. I was forced to scrap the tile idea and look for alternatives. Not wanting to give in without an original image that I could take credit for, I tried to find something that I could create given my limited knowledge of the programs I was using. The result of this experiment is what you can now view at the above link. I ended up choosing dancing Carlton for the background as a classic expression of sheer joy. For the foreground I used Gimp to create a series of popular animations portraying people dancing out of celebration. The final touch was using the music editing programs VirtualDj and Audacity to make a loop of the Kool and The Gang Song, "Get Down On It." Finally, I was able to upload all the pieces to YTMND and release a sigh of relief for finishing my last blog post!