About the Author#
I am a designer, and if you can open this page, you must have seen my portfolio.
I am an INFJ introverted male, and I enjoy reading, writing, raising fish, drawing, and various electronic products.
Currently, my work mainly involves two aspects:
- Business operations for my own company.
- Personal projects.
For the business part, it's all about getting paid and doing the work, purely for survival. Most of the things I do in this area won't be included in my portfolio, even though they are done by me. They involve clients and colleagues, and I don't consider them as my own designs. They are products, not artworks. The few projects that I do include in my portfolio are the ones that I feel relatively good about and worth putting more effort into. Some of these projects are related to my interests, some align with the aesthetic preferences of clients, and some challenge my abilities, which always catch my attention.
To be honest, since around 2019, I haven't really worried about not having clients come to me for business. Maybe because of this, I relaxed a bit during that time and had a procrastination mindset. Another important reason is that commercial design products are essentially the result of negotiations, and negotiations are ultimately an art of compromise. I still have a long way to go in mastering this art.
But fortunately, I didn't waste that period of relaxation.
In my work, I deal with computers all day long. I am naturally interested in computers themselves and often secretly rejoice that I can live in this great era with computers. Naturally, I immerse myself in various interesting things related to computers.
Just like skating on an endless dark ice lake without wearing ice skates. From setting up a personal server, DIY NAS, to building my first truly personal website, I slowly experience the simplicity and elegance of controlling computers using only keyboard commands and shortcuts (because as a designer, I have always used a mouse and a drawing tablet, and I feel that using them is a bit clumsy). There is an indescribable pleasure in this process. This brings me to the second aspect, personal projects.
About This Site#
This site is one of my personal projects. I have been thinking about it for a long time and have always wanted to have my own container on the internet.
The content in this container is my publicly accessible spiritual world.
The main means of creating this spiritual world is CG Art. The entire creative process is also a spiritual experiment, so let's call it the "CG Art Laboratory."
Tools are Extensions of Human Limbs#
You may have heard the saying, "Tools are extensions of human limbs." For example, a fan is an extension of the hand, a wheel is an extension of the legs, and a telephone is an extension of the mouth and ears. By extension, it seems that a computer is an extension of the human brain. I have also written an article called "How to Create a Second Brain," in which I roughly discuss how I view digital note-taking as a tool. In fact, whether it's design, writing, or coding, broadly speaking, it's about how to use the computer as a tool to create and understand better, to become familiar with and refine this tool, and to make it obedient and proficient in its tasks.
Computers are designed by the smartest people on this planet, and it is difficult for ordinary people like me to truly adapt the computer to ourselves. We often don't know where to start. In response to this, I have a set of underlying logic: find the right problems, improve my skills to match the tools I want to use.
Finding the right problems is easy, but finding the right problems is relatively difficult. Since it takes a lot of time and effort to find them, recording these problems, including the process of solving them, is inherently valuable.
Writing is Thinking Itself#
In the past, I never thought about recording every problem I encountered, whether it was looking up a keyboard shortcut or building a Hackintosh. I thought it was troublesome, and I thought that these methods might become outdated quickly due to the rapid pace of technological advancements. Now, I realize that I was completely wrong.
Although these techniques and methods are all "skills," this kind of thinking does not conform to the "way."
I have decided to honestly record these processes. They belong to my own creations, skills, experiences, and thoughts. The journey is always walked by oneself, and sharing them publicly is more about letting these contents pass my own scrutiny.
Let's talk about whether you like it or not.