What a long, strange trip it's been. Well, it was about time for a revision. The old page, while interesting in it's own right, was WAY too dark, and didn't play well with Internet Explorer. Not that I've grown any fonder of IE, but compliancy is important, at least when it comes to W3C standards.

So, without further ado, Welcome! This is this the online portfolio of one 'Frank Avery'. "But wait, Frank, it says 'knarfishness' at the top!?" Well...yeah, it does. 'knarfishness' sounds a lot cooler than 'Frank Avery'. Take one name from the 1800's, add an equal length, non-demoninational last name, and you've got a savory recipie for boring. If you wanna know more about where 'knarfishness' came from, see the About this Site link in the footer.

Other than that, portfolio stuff that I'm working on/completed is categorized in that top menu up there. Feel free to browse around, and if you've got input/feedback/cake/cookies, please use the information on the contact page to give me a shout.

Thanks for looking, it means a lot.

.:knarfishness:.

 I've been messing around with a Photoshop effect called VistaAeroFX, which is basically what Windows Vista does to attempt text overlay without ruining an image or being unreadable. Here are my first 2 experiments with it.

As the frontpage made clear, my name isn't 'knarfishness'. I'm Frank Avery, a junior in the Web Design at Radford University with a heavy interest in graphic design. I'm scheduled to graduate in May of 2009. Whee, exciting, I know.

I tend to dabble in Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and the rest of CS3 really, minus InDesign. Print design is an interesting study but not particularly my cup of tea. I've had experience with 35mm photography and developing, but I tend to stick in the digital realm (darkroom chemicals make my head hurt, heh).

As for hobbies, I spend most of my free time surfing the internet and watching old episodes of amazing shows that aren't aired anymore. Though I've been described as musically inclined (my poor guitar skills beg to differ) I don't really work a lot with audio, besides the occasional cut-and-paste edit in Audicity or GarageBand.

For those interested, my resume is linked at the bottom of this page.
Hope you enjoy poking around my various experiments and projects.

Here's the comprehensive list of all the connections I have to the outside world. See if any of 'em come in handy.

• Home - (804) 469-3604
• Cell - (804) 731-9267
• Apartment - (540) 831-4110
• Personal Email - popperthepenguin@gmail.com
• School Email - favery@radford.edu
• Home Mail - 21810 Rainey Road | Dinwiddie, VA 23841
• School Mail - 704 Howe St. Apt. 2 | Radford, VA 24141
• AIM: PopperThePenguin

Some things to consider:

• I don't always pick up my cell phone. The geniuses at Motorola designed a phone with a speaker on the back, so when pocketed, it's really quiet. Don't think that I'm ignoring you, just leave a voicemail. Unless I am ignoring you, and in that case, go away.
• The apartment phone is a really good way to get in touch with me, and no one seems to use it. It rings, it's loud, and it's batteries don't die randomly.
• The email from Radford gets forwarded to gMail, so send your mail to either one, I'll get it.
• Please remember that I'm not at "home" most of the time, so if you call my house during the semester, most likely, you'll get my mom. Be nice.

Talk to you soon.

Web design is really what you could call my passion. I've been at it for the last 5 or so years, and it's been a blast. It took me about a week to graduate from Windows Notepad, to Microsoft FrontPage, to what was then Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. Ever since then I've been messing around with tutorials on the net. Despite taking college level courses in this kind of stuff, there are some really cool scripts and templates out there that can really put you on the fast track to figuring out XHTML, PHP, JavaScript and Flash out there on the web.

Below is the basic scraps of what I've done over the last year (although some of it is rather old : /). 3 separate experiments with knarfishness.net's design, and the recently halted proposal for the RU School of Communications, which is the basis for what became this site. The rest is recent experiments with web 2.0 style effects, and a little history on the orignal 'knarfishness'. He wore a dress, and he was still cool. There's a life lesson for you. Enjoy!

Graphic Design, while no longer part of my current major, effects most of what I do for the web. The theories and concepts are very important to understand how people see things, what order they see them in, and how much they like it. The following works were completed in an Introduction to Graphic Design class here at RU.

 While 35mm photography was a bit of a passing hobby, I did enjoy it. This gallery consists of photographs taken during 2006-07 both in Radford and my hometown of Dinwiddie. When I got a zoom lens...well...I became obsessed with trying to catch the many squirrels on campus.

This site is a culmination of many things. While most of the CSS was written by hand (save the browser specific functions and such), some of the effects need to be credited elsewhere. If I was that pimp with JavaScript, I'd get paid more. Both MooTools.net and PhatFusion.net contributed heavily to some of the cooler things on the site. The 'Sliding Image Menu' comes directly from phatFusion.net, and even that code is based heavily on the MooTools development kit, which also runs the DOMReady functions. The links to these two sites can be found below.

The origins of the word 'knarfishness', as promised, is this. WAAAY back, early 2005, I started playing the MMORPG World of Warcrack...er...Warcraft. I needed a cool name for a character. Well, I'm Frank. That was taken. Tried 'thefrank'. Also taken. So I thought...backwards. Knarf. As so Knarf was born, in some shallow grave, or wherever zombies come from. After a poorly thought out server transfer, somebody took the name Knarf, and I had to rename him. I thought about just 'Knarfish', but people kept asking me what kind of fish that was. So I ended up, after about 2hrs of deliberation, at 'knarfishness'. It stuck, and when my graphic design teacher informed me that a catchy business title was necessary to success, I knew I already had something unique. Thanks for visiting knarfishness.net. :)