chiiyo

Rudy, it looks good so far! Although I think if you just erased the "links" on the picture on the left it will look a lot more professional!

Hey saxsux~ Welcome to Xisto~ I'm kinda new here too, but seeing how your first post is not a one-liner already, I think you'd probably stay here quite a bit.. *wink*I don't think there's a custom of having introductory posts here, so just pick a topic and plunge in, make your first few posts good ones and have substantial and useful replies (my motto is be sincere, if I really have something valuable to add to the discussion, then I will reply... sounds like the criteria for class participation in my courses... =_=) you won't have much problems getting hosted here!

You know, telling us that the rest of the banner is just made up of pure brushes (although I suspected as much) kinda makes it not so nice anymore... I don't know, I'm one of those who never goes out to find brushes or extras. The only things I download are fonts. Always figured using your own imagination and the limited tools at hand makes the banner more special, but that's just me...Does the banner fit into an interface, or is it just a banner? If it's a standalone banner maybe you should make it thinner, because the white space, as Opaque mentioned, in between the bottom bit of the banner and your LCD screen looks wasted.

Oh goodness a member after my heart, someone who loves L'Arc~en~Ciel, AND Hyde... I see Utada Hikaru, Tetsu69, Kontani Kinya and Megumi Hayashibara on that list too... not to mention Gackt, Moi dix Moi, Dir en Grey, Psycho le Cemu, Malice Mizer, X-Japan, Luna Sea AND Miyavi! Wow.Yamato have you heard acid android or SOAP? Or move? Those are gorgeous too!

Basically, does anyone know any scripts or programs that allow me to have a weblog commenting system on my website? I used to use Enetation, but I need something that I can check all my comments at a central area, because I'm not just using the system for a blog, but for almost all my pages all over the site, so checking the pages one by one is quite out of the question. Because of this I've been trying to set up Nucleus and other CMS and blogging software and make use of their centralised commenting system, but setting it up is taking so much effort and time wasted I'm wondering whether I should go back to generating static pages myself and having a separate commenting system like I used to... So, any suggestions or recommendations? (Can a moderator please merge this post and the one above? Thank you!) =_=. Posted the question, and then went and googled "commenting systems" and found my answer. Blogkomm looks really good, and you can tweak it to create your own guestbook and tagboard with the same installation. PLUS it's XHTML 1.0 and CSS 1 compliant, which means no iframes and no tables. Great! Relatively unknown though, anyone else uses this? Notice from vizskywalker: Merged at chiiyo's request

>_< I'm taking the easy way out, writing (off-site) next to all the links I used to make pop into new windows, and writing a line in my introduction that says that all links marked with (off-site) lead out of the site and visitors are advised to open them in new windows.Does away with the whole target and javascript thing. Sometimes the easiest ways are the least thought-off... By the way, just asking, would this particular javascript still allow people to open the window in a new tab or other similar shortcuts? As in would it override all other ways of opening the site?

So let me confirm this: there is no other way to open a new window without using Javascript under XHTML1.0Strict??

I took a look at Arachnophilia... it looks really cool, cross-platform too... But I guess if you're a noob you might be wanting something more guided... How about CoffeeCup HTML? Back when I was still using Windows I used Notepad and Editpad, but this looks like it's pretty guided. And it's freeware. To be honest though, it's much better to build up a good foundation of HTML skills. Try looking through the very well written tutorials on basic html over at the tutorials board (1 and 2) as well as those at W3Schools and HTMLDog. Hope it helps...

How about using divs for your layout? I'm actually a table-layout junkie myself, but I've been trying very hard to comply with the whole presentation goes to CSS and data goes to HTML thing and learning how to use divs to create a layout instead of using tables. Try http://www.htmldog.com/guides/css/intermediate/layout/ . I'm currently scouring through the page to try and find a way to convert my current table layout to a more XHTML compliant version...

Wow... I love the fire pictures! They're like the ones I see on my photography magazines... Guess it helps when you live in an area where there are festivals like that...What kind of shutter speed and aperture did you use on that thing? Looks like 1 to 2 seconds to me. Cool. I've always wanted to do long exposure photos but I've never had the equipment... first the lens and now, I don't have a tripod.

I think the fact that there are very little sites on oboe, and none of them are good, that is PRECISELY why you should set up your own site, and make it really good, so it'll be the benchmark. I don't know how many really content and community-rich sites I've seen, introducing themselves as the first really good site for this particular genre, because at that time all the other sites were crap. Go for it! I think it'll be better than if you were making a site where there are already a lot of good sites on the subject.I think the reason for why there aren't so many sites out there in the first place would be, 1. Very little other oboe players have the passion and the drive to set up a good webpage, or maybe they're just not well-equipped enough to make a webpage. 2. There hasn't been a benchmark good site yet, and they're all thinking like you right now.My advice would still be to go for it. I think with your kind of enthusiasm and idea for the site, it'll turn out good.

MANA!!! *fondles*Sorry. *cough* Mana-clothes fan. He is gorgeous, isn't he? I used to call him "her" all the time, before my friend, the true Mana-fan, kept on thwapping me and telling me to call him "him".I have my own wallpapers, that I make using art I download off the net. On the mac the system preferences can allow you to change the wallpaper to any frequency you like, once in a while if I'm bored I'll make it rotate the wallpapers every 30 seconds. Really cool, looks like a screensaver! *wink*This is one of my favourite wallpapers. Made it from two images my friend drew and coloured.You can see the dock and the title bar in the picture. Don't have a lot of icons on my desktop...

By MP4, I assume you mean video players (the mpeg4 codec).Well, certain things to note about mpeg4 players, is really what type of codecs they accept, what is the size of the screen, how long is the battery life, and what kind of shows you'd be watching on it. For example, for me, I watch a lot of fansubbed anime episodes, where I really need to see the subtitles, so a screen that is too small for me to see the subtitles would be bad. On the other hand, since each episode is only around 30 minutes, battery life isn't that big an issue for me. Now if you would want to watch, let's say movies, on your player, battery life would probably be a big factor for you, as opposed to screen size.I think the price is okay, you can plunge in now, mpeg4 players have been around for some time now, the major price drop has already happened.

I've seen quite a few cool ones... I remember there was a time modding your case was an underground thing and it was so much cooler then, because the skills were known to few. I saw a person make a CPU out of a breadbox, a pyramid, and I saw the advertisement for a man who would draw traditional kimono motifs using cloth and traditional kimono dying methods on your CPU.Nowadays, with modding so popular, it's hard to find really original mods. When I walk around the computer mall I can see so many ugly but bling modded cases, with like blue coloured lights and transparent windows, but no sense of art. It's really hard to find a good modded case nowadays, those two are a breath of fresh air!

Okay since you didn't draw the pictures themselves I shan't comment on them. Did you do the colouring? Or just work with coloured pictures?For the actual bookcover, if you're trying to use it as a bookcover for a manga (comic) or a novel, I suggest maybe you should use a more professional font. The one you're currently using has a slightly childish and amateur feel. What font you use is really up to what the comic is about. As in the plot. The font and the cover in general should give a general feel of what the manga is going to be like. Let's say it's going to be a fantasy manga, and you use, perhaps, an elaborate cursive calligraphy font like Classic, and as a fantasy manga reader, I would zone in on the book. As opposed if the plot was a love-love kind of story then you would use a more cutesey font with little hearts and stuff like that. Currently, the book cover doesn't really have an identity, it just looks like a picture with some words. No offence meant! Just trying to give some constructive criticism...You might consider a border around the picture. a slightly thick one, all around the picture, with the top part of the border thicker so you can put your wording on the border. You can probably use the blue you currently have. That's the way most of the japanese comics do their covers anyway. Or you might want to do some effect around the edges of the picture, like gradual noise or faded tv-lines, and then do the same effect on your letters, put it at the side. Experiment with different positions of the letters if you want a more eclectic and artsy feel.I actually like the two inserts (the black and white one), you've got the japanese manga feel down-pat. Good job so far, I really think it's going to turn out well. Be sure to post up the final one to let us see!

Hmm, besides all the previous pointers brought up about how a logo should be functional and simple, ways to improve your current logo:1. You should probably either shorten the banner or put more inside, the "white" space on each of the two ends feel wasted, especially since it is only three letters. If you had spelled the letters out, or spaced them out more, or just added some more stuff at the ends, it would look much better. Either that or crop the banner so that it is not so wide.2. The letters don't stand out. Not only in terms of the fact that the colour of the letters is too similar to the background colour, but the whole fact that the letters feel a little blurred loses the impact of the three letters. Maybe make the letters sharper and of a slightly more impactful colour?

Don't say that, friso, as Opaque mentioned, mine are not professional enough! Working on another set now...Hmm, I like your banners, the wording is good, so are the phrases, maybe you should use another font for the big words? I think if you just changed the font for the big words, maybe change the border a bit, it'll look a lot more professional.

Thank you very much! The second picture was actually one of those random shots... My camera is an old manual one so usually I take a few shots in the beginning that may or may not be developed (those are the ones that are not part of the 36 shots). The statue of the lion is at my gates, and the red ribbon was like... dying... heh heh. Quite happy with the hot, because it was my first time using my friend's 135mm lens and boy did my hands shake when I took the photo! Was quite happy it turned out sharp at all...

I've been thinking a lot about this subject too, because the new update to Mac OS X, Tiger, also has this type of technology, they call it Spotlight. Basically it's supposed to beat the proposed WinFS hands down, but I keep wondering, if I'm already super-organised as it is (which I am), how is this going to benefit me? One way I did think of is that if you're really organised, you might have several layers of nested folders, like Documents>School>Note>PPT>Term 2, something like that. Then if I use Spotlight, or the proposed WinFS, I just type the document I want in my start-bar or title bar, and get it almost instantaneously, that might be faster than if I had clicked through four or five layers of folders. That, so far, is the only real reason an organised person would need to use integrated file-indexing-searching functions, I think.

Urm, just a short note, M^E, he was talking about m4p, not mp4. m4p IS a protected format by iTunes, but mp4 is different, and belongs to the same family as mp3.Funny how you mix up the letters you get different things altogether...

Thank you for the mac client! Now I can join... this is going to be fun!

>_< Doesn't seem to have a mac client? Too bad. Can't join.I love how all the posts are so spammy but fun.

Nicely done! I like how the flower is nicely focused somewhere near the top, although it feels like if you had focused right at the tips of the petals it would look better. I like the lack of depth-of-field, very nicely blurs out the background, although the colour seems a bit lifeless, perhaps the colour is running out through the top left hand corner? Red usually makes the colour run out. I would have probably put the flower a little more to the side or straight in the middle, the current position is a tad off, not really dead-centre and not really following the rule of thirds... But it's a really nice picture! How did you get that angle? Lie on the floor? Come, let's critique one of my photos in return! This one has not been edited in photoshop except to change the resolution. Took this with a 135mm lens at f3.5 on Fuji 400 film. Unedited, so you might see dust on it. By the way how do you link to photos and have that "click to enlarge" thing? Is it some kind of code?

Urm, don't want to sound picky, but the new OS is called TIGER. O-o. Panther is the CURRENT OS. Was a bit O_o at the title of the post. Maybe you should change it. *finds it rather amusing*To be honest though, it's very hard to explain why exactly the mac is so appealing to some people. All I can really say is, please just try one out for like a month or so. Everyone loves their mac for different reasons, and sometimes I don't even know why I love my mac, but I know I do. So much more than all of my previous PCs. My principle is always: Don't diss what you haven't tried. Not saying any of you have been complaining about macs in general, but Trekkie101, just try a mac out, if you're already that curious. I've had friends who are equal parts Linux and Mac lovers, one of them had a Sony Vaio before he got a Powerbook and ran all types of flavours of Linux on it (he told me about distrowatch), and when he switched over to the Mac, he still told me, yes, the mac is so much better. He now dual boots the Mac OS X and Linux on his powerbook.Although... stable and running for 4 days is a good sign? O_o. I've had my Mac for a year now, and only now it's having some problems, and I think it's because I dropped it on the battery side and the battery is dying. Back when I had my PC, the two months mark was the furthest I could go before something cropped up and I had to clean up the computer. If Windows wasn't stable and running for 4 days, perhaps died on the third, I'd be very worried for Microsoft... O-o. I don't want to put windows down too much, I've lived and coped with it for what, ten eleven years of my life? But seriously, compared to windows, Macs are a haven to me.On a not-so-related note, taking up my own advice of not dissing what I haven't tried, REALLY feel like kidnapping my brother's computer and installing linux on it.

You could do "Map"+"of"+"Asia" if you really want your small words in. Usually I start off with a wide sweep of the net with something like "Map"+"Asia" and then I narrow it down depending on what kind of wrong or roughly right answers I get through googling.