What You'll Find
at happydaric.com
Lite-Brite® is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc.
If you miss your Lite-Brite, which was big in the late 1970s and early 1980s, or if you have never used one, here is a web version that has no pegs to lose (or swallow)! Lite-Brite is a simple but fun toy that lets you make lit-up pictures out of clear, multi-colored pegs. A light bulb sits behind a honeycomb-style grid of holes, which is then covered by black construction paper. You can then insert pegs, one at a time, to create a picture (these pegs were like really big pixels). The grid used here has the same arrangement and number of holes as the real full-size Lite-Brite. I recommend viewing this site in 1280x1024, or in 1024x768 with a maximized browser window (and all browser toolbars hidden). A help page is also included, just in case.
In addition, there is now a gallery of simple Lite-Brite image examples.
This is the first site I ever put on the web. I created it to practice both organizing site information and implementing a scalable navigation scheme. The site navigation lets users know where they are at all times, but also allows the site to be explored in a linear fashion, if desired, using "previous" and "next" links. Most of the images were created years before the site, so some pages are less detailed than others. I first used Adobe PageMill (free on my iMac) to create the site quickly, and later went over each page by hand.
Part of international internet law states that any graphic designer having a web presence must make desktop wallpaper images available on his or her site. This gallery is composed of graphics I made from scratch (yes, they include the mandatory fractal graphics), as well as photos from my summer 2001 trip to China. Click on a thumbnail image to view its corresponding 1024x768 image.
Devoted to photorealistic image alteration, correction, and restoration. This micro-site shows several examples of manipulating different types of source photos, without losing realism. You'll be impressed. These examples are arranged somewhat by technique. The techniques demonstrated here are equally applicable to both print images and web images.
Four pages of thumbnails allow quick access to a few of my favorite photos, which were taken during my two-week trip to China in the summer of 2001. This micro-site was originally just tables of text listing contents of my photos for those who traveled with me, so that I could give them any prints they may have wanted to have. The tables summarize and grade the contents of the thirteen rolls of film (385 exposures total) I used during the trip.
A very brief outline of Daric's approach to designing web sites.
This site provides information for guests of a wedding, at which I had the double honor of being both the information web site designer and the best man. The map pages for ceremony and reception sites use CSS to layer partially transparent GIF images over map images (clicking map toggles display of these annotations using JavaScript). I was pleased with how this site turned out, so I like to show off how simple it is, while it still provides any information that guests may have needed before the event.
For those who like to cook (as I do), here is a very flexible recipe for chili. After the first time I threw this chili together, whenever planning to make it again, I would have trouble remembering one of the seven ingredients (a different one each time), so I finally recorded it in HTML. This recipe is my earliest attempt at writing HTML from scratch. It was not on the web at first, because I coded the two HTML pages before I had internet access. One page has the recipe, and the other adds details about each of the ingredients, including substitutions.