zombies???

So. Umm. Hi. Probably no one reads this anymore, but I felt weird changing the layout without updating.

So. Yeah. New layout. Features Yuna Ito and a lot of blue, as usual.

I kind of just wanted to code a Xanga layout. I had to go and re-learn the template by staring at the source code and OHGOD IT MAKES NO SENSE. None at all. None whatsoever. What's with the random table cell with an empty paragraph in it?! Now I remember why I don't make Xanga layouts anymore.

So, uh, Dreamscape is down and has been for a while. I thought about going through all the layouts at Skye Sanctuary and revamping them, but, well, laziness prevailed and I never got around to actually doing it. Plus half the images are broken and I don't have any of them saved, so.... that might be difficult. Will probably add Oath later, though, meaning after I get back from vacation.

As for life in general, I've gone through a year of college already and am about to start my second. I attempted to delve into other areas of art, like drawing (failed miserably) and actual graphic design (also failed miserably), but that didn't turn out too well. Looks like I'll be a computer science major -- a code monkey, as my EECS friend calls it.

I wonder how long this xanga is going to last?

you can say so much with one sentence

Apologies for the swearfest that was my last post. I was, shall we say, in a mood.

I've had ideas for a new layout for a while, but I haven't been inspired enough to Photoshop. Something new next time, maybe. Skye Sanctuary's layout is pretty old as well.

I recently discovered onesentence.org. Some of my favorites:

"When I was little, my mom told me that the bottom of the pool smelled really good."

"Our relationship ended when she was fantasizing and comparing me to a fiction character: Edward."

"Today you shaved your hair into a mohawk to make my mom laugh over losing hers to chemo and today I realized that you are my hero."

"I conduct job interviews for a living and nothing gives me a better sense of wielding karma than giving the job to the nervous kid instead of the better qualified arrogant prick."

"My online dating service matched me with my cousin." (This one was titled "Probably Not Okay.")

"My mother called me to do a chore and I responded, 'What you need, Woman,' to which my father chided, 'Your mother is NOT a woman!'"

"As I woke up from my nap to find written on my feet 'This is my momma and you can't have her,' I realized that my child is very, very strange."

"I was nearly sent to the hospital because I could not convince the school nurse that my head had always been this shape."

"I took a neuropsychiatric test and realized that I don't have a mental illness after all: I have five."

"Recently I realized that I waste my life on the internet ... and published this insight in a blog."

parents are a real downer

My mom called home today to check up on me and my brother and brought up the topic of my upcoming UCLA and UC Irvine oboe auditions.

She wanted me to ask my private teacher what she thought my chances of getting in are.  "Because if they're not very high......... well, you might as well not bother."

........What the fuck?

Aren't parents supposed to encourage you?  Aren't they supposed to support you in your decisions?  Aren't they supposed to let you try things for yourself, to let you decide what you want to do, to let you learn from your own mistakes, and to not decide right off the bat that there's little chance you can make it -- especially when they have absolutely no experience in that field?  What the hell happened to all those "never give up" talks you gave us as kids?

I shouldn't be surprised, though.  They've never supported me in this area, not ever since I brought up the idea that I maybe wanted to go into music (when they themselves were the ones who forced me to continue piano lessons when I was a kid.  I just love the hypocrisy of it all).  Oh, they say they'll support me, but they strongly suggest I go into something else and keep music as a hobby.  They throw my cousins in my face as examples -- several doctors, a wealthy architect -- cousins who kept their art-related passions separate from their careers.  They would even rather see me do graphic design instead of music.

And if I were to give in, to give up on music and study what they'd rather see me study, that would be like putting the rest of my life in their hands.  When would I be free of them?

Goddamn relatives.

the moral code of webdesign

I'm feeling slightly jipped and extremely guilty.

A couple of days ago a link exchangee of Dreamscape emailed me about an old Xanga layout I had on Skye Sanctuary.  It was extremely similar to one of the premade layouts on her site, and she asked for me to remove it.

To be honest, I'd completely forgotten about the layout because let's face it - how long has it been since I made anything for Xanga?  I had used her layout for "inspiration" (I know it now as "jocking," to put it kindly) - of that I was guilty.  I didn't take her images or anything like that, but I remember trying my best to replicate that particular layout because I liked the style, the image, the feel, everything about it.  It ended up being almost the same, with just a few differences.

So I deleted the layout and emailed her back explaining, and hoped against hope that she wouldn't remove me from her link exchange list because she was - is - a great designer that I really admired. (She still hasn't replied yet.)

Today I went and visited my neglected site and clicked around my link exchanges, just to see what I'd missed.  I came across one link exchangee who had updated with a new site layout that seemed....... very similar to Dreamscape's current.  One of the images was the same, and the affiliates display was extremely similar, and this line thingy to separate the header from the content that I spent days thinking up (unoriginal as it may be) was also very familiar.

My first reaction was, of course, anger, because that was just so unfair.  Then I was torn - should I email her about it and ask her to take it down, or not?  I've known this designer for a long time, back from when I still made Xanga layouts (on a regular basis, anyway), and it just felt wrong to call her out on it.  I mean, the similarities are there, but small, and I'm sure she knows what jocking is and just might not see it as such.

I kept being indecisive and second-guessing myself when it hit me - what I'd done to the first link exchangee (the one who emailed me) was a hundred times worse than what this second link exchangee had done to me.  What right do I have to ask that something that vaguely resembles my work be taken down when I myself am guilty of practically copying someone else's work?

In essence, I'm just a big, fat hypocrite.

all the avatars are gone......

....the ones in the previous entries, I mean. That's because I was lazy and direct-linked them from Dreamscape, and now that Dreamscape's moved to a new URL, the image URLs don't work anymore.

Why yes, this is just a cheap ploy to plug my domain. Thanks to Kururu of Owaranai Kiss Design's Scramble! contest, I won a free domain, Sylfaerien.net. There's nothing there now because I haven't decided what to do with it yet, but I've moved Dreamscape to the domain, and it has a new layout up too that I'm extremely proud of.

I've been meaning to make some more Xanga layouts for a while now, but moving Dreamscape was such a big task that I've found myself reluctant to touch Photoshop lately. I'll be gone for a week for ECYS retreat, so maybe when I get back from a weeklong abstinence from the computer, I'll feel like making stuff.