Fully Operational
4th December 2011
At long last, I’ve got my work posted on the website. Please head on over to Work and take a look!
At long last, I’ve got my work posted on the website. Please head on over to Work and take a look!
Hello friends. You might have noticed that things are looking a lot different around here. You might also be wondering, “Hey, where did Hattie’s work go?” I’ve been undergoing a major overhaul of the site to make it better reflect who I am and what I do. I also wanted to make the site more of a living entity by integrating flickr, twitter, and other social medias.
My work will be back soon. It takes a while to re-format all those images! But once it returns expect:
+ MORE projects!
+ BIGGER images!
+ LESS clicking!
+ FREQUENT updates!
+ Smiles.
I’ve made a mini-website for my latest studio project at the GSD. Interested? Go here: http://hattiestroud.com/studio_sp2011
In other news, it’s the spring! This is highly welcome after a winter in which a total of 81″ of snow dumped on Boston. I’m planning on staying here through the summer in order to form a better impression of the area. Long nights in Gund Hall and excessive snowfall aren’t conducive to exploring a city, as it turns out.
Well, after all that waiting on grad school applications, I got in everywhere I applied to. Which felt amazing.
After participating in the migration of potential grad students up the East Coast to various programs’ open houses, I chose Harvard.
I’ve now been in Cambridge for about a month-and-a-half, settling into a new apartment with a new roommate, trying to get back in the habits of school. We’re a week-and-a-half into classes now and wow is it going to be a lot of work. I need to head to studio now and work on preparing topography files for the laser cutter…
It’s that time of year when grad school decisions have been made and word of those decisions is SLOWLY making its way to the people it pertains to. Despite the slowness I am pleased to say that I’ve only received good news so far! I’m accepted as a Masters of Architecture student at Yale, Columbia, and Princeton! Still waiting to hear back from Harvard and RISD…
After several months of searching I have found a job! And as an architect, no less. I’m now an “Associate” (read Junior Architect) at Daniel Frisch Architecture. We’re located in Midtown Manhattan, which is wonderful because it not only means that I get to go into the city every day but it also means that it has become economical to purchase the monthly unlimited MetroCard. We’re also only a few blocks South of Central Park which will be nice in the summer.
I’ve been there for about a month now and I’m really enjoying it. I just missed buildings so much before and now I work on details and models and document sets all day. Ahh.
If you want to see what the office has built, please take a look at http://www.danielfrisch.com
I am now a resident of Brooklyn, NY! After months of living at my parent’s house in Michigan I have relocated to beautiful Williamsburg. I already feel more creative and productive just from being able to walk down a city street in the morning to get coffee and a bagel.
So, friends come visit me! New York design firms hire me! To quote my Grandma, “Here I am! What would you like me to do?”
After fiddling with the technical side of the rollovers yesterday I decided I didn’t like the visual side of the rollovers. So, I’ve changed the look of the category index pages. I think they’re quite fetching now.
In other news, I made some corn fritters for lunch that were delicious. Although I guess this is true of most things that have been fried. Still, yum!
I’ve made a few more “under the hood” changes recently – mostly geared towards speeding up the rollovers, which have been bothering me. At first I was using Dreamweaver’s default Javascript for rollovers which, fyi, is ridiculously inefficient and makes your html a huge mess. Second attempt was using a jquery plugin to define a “rollover” class for the links (cleaner but still slow). And now, finally, I have come around to using sprites for the navigation. Sprites work by simply moving a background image instead of swapping it out. You have one image file with both states of your rollover and use the css to define what part of the image is showing when. It is speedy and also requires fewer image files, so less clutter.
Hooray for a:hover!
I intend for this site to be mostly a professional sort of site but dedicated to artistic pursuits. I am starting on a new project, one that may or may not be of interest to anyone but myself. But what is a personal blog for if not self-involvement?
I generally suck at cooking. I have actually forgotten to stir Kraft Mac & Cheese before and ruined it. But, I am sick of eating Ramen noodles and then suffering for it. So, I am going to learn to not suck at cooking. My first guide on this subject is Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, which bills itself as a “more hip” Joy of Cooking. So far, I’m impressed. He makes me feel like I can manage.
My first attempt was Coconut Rice, which seemed straightforward but tasty. After about ten minutes of waiting for the rice to boil on medium heat however, it occurred to me that the phrase “bring to a boil” might mean that I should increase the heat instead of staring at a tepid bath of coconut milk, hoping. The final product tasted like coconut but felt like, well, not entirely cooked rice. Mostly but not entirely.
So to salvage the effort I am trying to turn it into rice pudding by adding milk and 1/2 a cup of sugar and some cinnamon to the leftovers. Wish me luck.
