WILLKOMMEN! BIENVENUE! WELCOME!
  • home
  • Demos
  • About
  • Samples
  • Resume
  • Training and Behind the Scenes
  • Contact
  • Audiobooks
  • Commercial
  • eLearning
  • Video Games

And now for something completely different...

Take me home!

Code Red

4/25/2023

0 Comments

 
Virginia Lee · Code Red
 
​I don’t know how people who code for a living keep their sanity in check.

For context, I made my own website, using Weebly (now Squarespace). I originally used the free template, then I moved onto a paid tier so I would have a cleaner url and F E A T U R E S like SEO (that’s “search engine optimization” to you (and me) non-IT nerds. (Basically it’s a way search engines find your website. The more SEO tags the page has the more likely google and its ilk will find the page (God, I love parentheticals))).

I liked the idea of a website template that is simple to use, is drag and drop, and doesn’t have too many options to slog through. A friend recommended I try Weebly when I was first facing the fact that I needed a website.

As if being an artist isn’t expensive enough!

But I concede the importance of being easily found when one wants to be seen. Or in my case, heard. A website equals online presence. A good website, in my mind (me not being a coder), is something that is clean, easy to navigate, visually pleasing and balanced, and most importantly WORKS.

A few iterations of my website ago I decided I admired the simplicity of a smooth scrolling webpage. That’s one single page with buttons at the top that take a visitor to a specific part of that one page instead of having to slog through multiple pages of material. Considering how little time I know I have to catch someone’s attention if they’re visiting my page for the first time, I wanted to give them the pertinent stuff and weed out the fluff. I think there’s still a little too much fluff on my home page, but I have a tendency to cut too much of the fat when we all know fat equals flavor (did I mention I was a chef once?) so for now it remains.

ANYWAY, genius I am, I decided to try my hand at coding. Lord save me. I now have a lot of respect for what coders go through, after the little I was exposed to! Like any technology, it’s beautiful when it works but damn when it doesn’t it’s such a pain in the ass to figure out why it won’t.

It took days of feeling like my eyes were getting smaller and smaller as I slogged through instructions that oft didn’t work. Until finally. FINALLY. It did. And it was glorious! And glorious it remained.

Until I started this blog.

Turns out smooth scrolling only works on the page it’s coupled to! I wanted to have a separate page for this blog, to keep some kind of divide between my writing and my work-related VO stuff (check it out here!). But whenever I tried to click on the navigation link to my vocal samples or to my contact page from the blog I couldn’t get it to work. Nowhere seemed to have an answer to solve this particular coupling issue. I nearly bricked my webpage a couple of times. I felt like I was inching closer and closer to being SOL and needing to buy yet another webpage. Knowing how little time I have to keep a visitor’s attention I needed to figure out a way to remove any guessing and confusion. 

If nothing else, I am very, very good at just making things work. It took me hours but I did it! Kinda! Now I’ve got a shiny, simple TAKE ME HOME! button for visitors who somehow end up here.

Sorry! And you’re welcome! ?

0 Comments

Inaugural Post for Nerds!

4/16/2023

0 Comments

 
Virginia Lee · Inaugural Post For Nerds!
It's been a whole minute and a whole half since I wrote anything more than a few sentences on the internet for the rest of the world to see. I don't know why, to be honest, the idea of blogging is so alien to me, considering I write almost every single day. Maybe I felt no one would read it.

Maybe they won't! But that's okay, because I want to now and what I say goes, nya-ha-ha!

Weirdly enough, I always felt (and frankly still do) like my diaries aren't fully personal. I can't be the only one who feels like this. It's not like I have anyone sneaking peeks at my musings, but I always felt, I dunno, like someone's eyes would eventually end up on them in a thrift shop somewhere or something.

Actually, that'd be kinda cool. The history nerd in me would like that very much.

So I write nearly every day the things that go on in my life, the trends I see, the feelings I have, and for a while now I've been doing the tedious but rewarding task of editing a manuscript I've spent the last 5? 6? years on since completing it in NaNoWriMo (that's "National Novel Writing Month" to you non-writing nerds). God, I want to be published so bad I can taste it.

Anyway! Writing isn't all I do, I'm also an actor! On the stage! *dramatic cape swoop*
And also in the booth. That's right, I'm a voice actor! I've been doing theater for over a decade now and the voice stuff for 4 years (actually 3 and some change, if I'm honest). I have a lot of feelings about art and beauty in the world, how it's learned and experienced, and I've always had a soft spot for the humanities.

Before I even begin in earnest, in case anyone makes it this far, I'd like to share some VO (that's "voice over" for you non-VO nerds) resources I've found to be helpful over the years. This is in no way a comprehensive list, but maybe it can help point some people in the right direction, if that's a direction they wish to pursue:

For beginners?:

https://iwanttobeavoiceactor.com/
https://www.blumvoxstudios.com/

For everyone else?:

https://halpnet.com/
https://acting.skillshub.life/
https://www.thevopros.com/
https://www.thevoiceovernetwork.org/
https://georgethe.tech/



0 Comments

    Va the Vo

    Actor, Vocal Pro, and Writer Extraordinaire!

    Archives

    May 2023
    April 2023

    Categories

    All
    Accountibility
    Acting
    ADD
    AI
    Almost Famous
    Artificial Intelligence
    Arts
    Blog
    Brain
    Branding
    Business
    Coding
    Conferences
    Contacts
    Contracts
    Crying On Command
    Experimentation
    Failure
    Frankenstein
    Future
    History
    Humanities
    Kabuki
    Language
    Method
    Music
    Names
    Pcap
    Perspective
    Philosophy
    Protection
    Resources
    Seesaw-method
    Seo
    Smooth-scrolling
    Spectrum
    Speed
    Squarespace
    Stanislavski
    Strasberg
    Tear-stick
    Technology
    Theater
    Time
    VA
    VO
    VO Atlanta
    Voice Actor
    Voice Over
    Website
    Weebly
    Writer
    Writing

    RSS Feed

    Picture
Picture
  • home
  • Demos
  • About
  • Samples
  • Resume
  • Training and Behind the Scenes
  • Contact
  • Audiobooks
  • Commercial
  • eLearning
  • Video Games