The Darkest Evil

I am working to redesign the Darkest Evil so I can see what I can do to find out more about myself and I want to finish up Blackthorne. This redesign of my weblog includes a logo, a cool little printed version, a business card template and other things about the site. And this redesign hopefully gets me into design galleries such as Light on Dark. But I really hope that it gets a few people reading my site as I believe that everything I write about my life experiences can help people. In fact, even though some of it is really random, other things are really helpful to some. And with the podcast I am creating, I want to be able to promote the latest episode and still be able to avoid alienating my current readers. (more…)

Okay, before I say anything, let me tell you that I do like the design of the Famfamfam Silk icons and I will be using them (as sparingly as possible) in my design. Now that I’ve said that, I can rant without any fear of being labelled a hypocrite later. But I have dabbled in using something else (despite being unable to find any other icon sets that are of as high quality as Famfamfam - for free). (more…)

I am a designer and I became one out of ethical principles. It’s not about the money (even then, it’s not like I make THAT much anyway) I am a designer because I am an artist. A visionary. An idealist. And most of all, a creative professional. I make my living by creating works of art which make people think. I turn boring, drab business websites into pieces of art that can spring them into a creative set of mind. I am a designer because it is the field which appeals the most to me. And it’s something that I can do ethically. (more…)

Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to explain my biggest rants about other people’s weblogs. I am going to bitch about everything that bothers me in the world of blogging from usability to design. From archiving to the software. And yes, I am even going to throw in rants about hosting, software and other stuff that just makes my skin crawl. And yes, I am very likely going to step on a few toes here and there, but this article wasn’t written to make friends. It is written to help improve the blogosphere. And yes, I will include screenshots of some examples.

Now that I have secured the name - I can announce my secret project. Yes, 15art.com was my secret project that I am talking about and it is still under development. It is a my personal portfolio and also includes programmes and plugins I have made - as well as a design portfolio, a manga style sketchbook, a couple of manga series that I have been wanting to do and it integrates with content on my blog here. It will do more in the near future but I am working to make sure it can handle THIS. (more…)

Shaun Inman released Mint 2 and it looks GREAT! But there is a small problem - you have to pay to upgrade to Mint 2. In fact, you have to pay $19USD per licence and that can get to be pretty expensive if you own a large amount of licences. In fact, I will have to pay $95USD more to upgrade all of my licences to Mint 2. In fact, I really want to update all my licences to Mint 2 but I really only need 3 upgrades now. One for this site and one for my new project (coming soon) and one for theanime.net (yes, it’s going to launch soon - very soon). (more…)

We all have IRL friends that use some kind of shitty blogging system. This could be LiveJournal (or rather, anything by SixApart), Blogger, Xanga, b2 or even worse - MySpace blogs. When I talk to friends about WordPress and even how easy it is to set up a WordPress.com blog, there is one concern that they express. It is a valid concern so it kind of shuts me up, but shames me as well. This concern is usability and I see their reasoning behind it. WordPress’ Administration Control Centre is nice, but it could be better. So, it is time to make WordPress even more usable. This also renders the question - what IS Blackthorne? Is it something constant or is it something that changes with my whim and desire? (more…)

Well, I have been singing about it all the time here on this blog but you have seen little progress after I took down K2 and uploaded Sandbox. Basically, Blackthorne is still in development but I am aiming to release it to the blog next month, maybe mid-February. Bear in mind, however, that it is more than just a style. It is a revolution in the way you can navigate wordpress, from Archives to Single Posts. I am working really hard so that you can see what is possible through WordPress. However, there are a few things that I want to make clear about Blackthorne. (more…)

Okay, so I got burned by another girl. Yeah, this was NOT cool. But the cool thing was that she was a little less rotten than other girls that I have talked to online. I am just so tired of this and I would just like to find someone that I can hold and embrace. Someone that I can walk life’s path with. Someone that will accept and appreciate me for everything that I am. Someone that will love me with an agape love that I will love them with. You see, I have never been loved by another human being. Not my family, no girlfriends and no reliable friends in this world. I am not very popular because I refuse to conform to other people’s standards.

I am not in the mood to talk to many people. And if you do wish to talk to me, you had better be able to withstand many minutes, if not hours, of ranting about how hard it is to find someone of the opposite sex that will love you. About how everyone with a loving family or close, reliable friends is blessed. I am not in a mood to pretend to be happy. Forgive me if I refuse to respond to your private messages or what not, I would not be in a good mood anyways. I am also writing a whole number of posts for four days (8 posts) so I don’t have to respond to comments. It’s evil, I know, but I am not in the mood to play comment police.

To my faithful clients: You will receive everything you ordered. Plus, I will remember this when you want another project so you will very likely save money on your next project. However, when life continuously shits on you, it does not allow you to focus on your work. It’s only two days more in many cases and I apologise for the additional time required. I just need time to centre myself.

While working on Blackthorne, I was wondering how to do the header images. I have decided to use both Onegai Teacher and Onegai Twins screen captures (Does anyone know of a better screen capture tool than CaptureMe for OS X? I mean, one that works while DVD Player is running.) for the header images and other art on the site that isn’t my own. I just hope it works out as well as I imagine. I am pretty certain on what fonts I will be using for Blackthorne, but I still consider Trebuchet, Helvetica and Verdana at times. The Blackthorne style does NOT work with sans-serif or semi-serif fonts. Right now, the hardest task I see would be slicing it and coding it in CSS. I have not done a full CSS layout before and I would like to get much better at this. Plus, I would like to update this homepage and make it look much better. Thus, I will be working a lot more in CSSEdit than Photoshop in the next few days.

But one thing concerned me. Blackthorne was looking WAY too much like the original Aries Project. In fact, Blackthorne started getting too close to it for my own comfort. I had to do a few modifications to the design so that it was a complete derivation from what it was supposed to be. But the important thing is that Blackthorne is supposed to be something that is mine and mine alone. Is that selfish? Possibly. But hell, this is something that I am going to be working hard on and I want it to be mine and mine alone. Plus, I want something that is purely mine and not reminiscent of Bryan Veloso’s Avalonstar. Sool, I will show you a preview of the .psd I have so far and hopefully, you will get a vision of what I am looking forward to.