midnightvamp

Okay, here we go for a third time. Thanks for everyone's suggestions so far! For the original background, I actually did use brushes. But the basic ones that come with Photoshop, nothing special there. I didn't use any filters in these images. And I like that fade thing too. I wanted to have another render, to make it a little more interesting. But I didn't want another one there, because then the visual focus wouldn't be there anymore. I resized the height of the image, sorry, I wasn't aware that it was too big. I'll keep that in mind for the future. I found the brushes, and managed to install them... but I'm still not good at using them. I'll have to play around with them more and get some practice. It's nice to have so many to choose from though. Yes, I really should be sleeping... seeing as I was up for most of the night, doing all those vampiric things I hold so dear, but my laptop does call me to it, and like an entralled school-girl, I find myself gravitating towards it, like I haven't a will of my own. Anyway, here's the third try:

Okay, here, I tried to keep in mind with what you mentioned, and adjusted the image accordingly. Here's the new one: Is this better? Still a pretty plain background, but I'm not too sure about how to make all those fancy ones. I'll have to look up some tutorials on that. Mind you, with this render that I chose, the images are sort of 'dreamy-like' so I don't know if I want too much in the background anyway. Still, will accept comments on both images here from anyone. Thanks!

Hmmm..... Some interesting stories here. Mine isn't, but I'll give it a go anyway.My name is Amanda. I don't mind it, it's just soooo many people around here have it. There are three of us with that name at my work. And there's only five workers there. Sometimes it's chaos.Actually, I had a french class with five Amanda's in it. That was during high school though. And the teacher made each one of us sit in a different row, as to not add to the confusion.Anyway, my name means loveable. Which, of course I am I think it's from Latin or something.Other than that, most people call me Mandy.It's all true. I swear

Ooh... pretty! I like it. I agree with what you were saying about the muted / pale colours. I think it's nicer (more elegant - and easier to look at when you've been staring at the computer screen for *way* to many hours now....Anyway, isn't it fun to get techie dreams. Last night, I dreamed that I had finished coding off this big part of one of my other sites. (I'm trying to redo the site...) Anyhow, when I woke up and realised it was a dream, I was kind of bummed, because now I'm going to have to start doing it all over again. At least I'll have a sort of head start with knowing what I plan to be doing now...Anyway, nice work with the template! I like it!

Not too bad... I don't think I'm too crazy about the text though. Mind you, I found text really hard to do when I work with it, so it isn't that bad. It's a bit hard to read for me though.Well, not so much now that you've told me what it says, but if you hadn't, I'm not positive that I'd be able to make out the 'ME' in METROID. Plus, as someone has mentioned, it is a little too close to the border.Speaking of borders, I like yours. It's a good colour for the sig. In fact, all your colours match well, so that's a good sign.Anyway, pretty good

I don't know. I kind of like the colours the way that they are. It's different then all the other sigs that you see out there, and that is, in my opinion anyhow, refreshing.Sorry, I'm not up on just who those people in your sig are, but that's not uncommon for me. You could have told me one of those people were you, and I'd probably have believed you too :)Anyway, this is really good for a first sig, and I'm not sure about the program that you used, but judging by the comments it's a harder one to make graphics in, so you are doing great!Oh, and I do agree with the comment made about the larger border. I think it would help to pull it together a bit more. Still - good work!

Hey, I see so many good sigs on here, I thought that I'd try one out myself. Hey, I should give my Photoshop a work out every now and again, right? Wouldn't want it to just there and do nothing *all* the time, lol. I'm pretty happy with it. 'Specially since it's my first go at it, but anyway, let me know what you like, don't like, what I could do better - that sort of thing. Thanks.

I like the colours. Very cool. I can't stop looking at the eyes, a real focus point for myself, probably because of the difference in colour. I like it though. Perhaps a bit heavy on the white though. It's a bit distracting.I agree with the 'not putting the words and stuff over the image'. It looks likes it's in the way. At least it does when it's covering the face of the person. Perhaps it would be okay over a less essential part of the picture.Anyway, still, good work!

Yep, pretty much what everyone else said. Welcome... it's a great place to be. I'm sure you'll agree very soon. The people are great, the hosting is amazing, and these boards... well, you learn so much from them. (At least I have!)Anyway, take a look around the site, have fun, and if you ever have any questions or comments to something, either reply to the board, or start one of your own if you can't find a thread that's handled the question before. A good thing to do is search the board if you are looking for a specific thing.Anyway, that's it from me. Hope you like your stay, and come back often

My two cents... the hosting here is amazing. The people rock, the features they give you rock -- it doesn't get much better than this.I love the fact that there is such a great forum here. I've learned so much off you people that I couldn't thank you enough if I tried, but thank you, thank you, thank you...Anyways, I think that posting here is great, because it keeps me in touch with all the new things that are happening in the world (and the webworld!) and it keeps me inspired to keep making better and better work

You can get it for free off their official website? That's great! I was interested in learning it, because we used a couple really simple parts of it in class last year, and they seemed really cool, but then we never really got into it. I'm hoping that this year we do learn more of it though. It seems like a pretty essential thing to learn.

Yea, I have no life... and I know this! Anyway, that is very cool, on my seach through tons of google maps today, I came to this page that shows a plane flying just off from the Tokyo Airport. It's a very clear picture! https://www.google.com/maps/preview?ll=35.573209,107604&t=k&hl=en&source=newuser-ws Notice from snlildude87: When posting links, you don't need to wrap it around the url tag. IPB does that automatically.

Wow! I can't believe I'd never heard of this before. It's a very interesting story, I'm going to have to look up more about it. I hope there is lots of information out there - mind you, how much information can there really be for a mystery. If it was known, it wouldn't be a mystery anymore.Anyway, this is a very cool thing to read about, thanks for posting it. I hope they find something good down there soon, because I'm going to go nuts until I can know what is down there.

Nope, didn't die... just the crazy people in the white jackets took my laptop away from me! So I'm on a limited computer time lately... had lots of it today though In all honesty, I had to return my laptop to the school for three weeks, so they could reimage it, and load in the programs I'll be needing for next year. I still have another 8 days to go until I get it back. As for the layout, I just noticed the Japanese characters in there. A neat effect, very sneaky!

Ooh... nice! I like it. I think it's very striking, and catches the eye well with the bright colours. And yes, it does work well with the colours in the butterfly.And I do like the film effect on the side, but the images feel someone disjointed to me, like they are a part of it, but not quite. I'm not sure if I'm explaining well, but still, it's an interesting layout and I like where it's going. The 'White Tea' text is very good too!

Heh, that was pretty cool! How long have you been skateboarding? I've never even been on one in my life, but it looks like fun. Mind you, if I tried what you just did, I'd probably be on my face in about half a second... but hey, that's life.I really liked the video though, nicely done! Congrats and keep it up!

I did a lot of zooming and panning, and think I've come to an answer: The number of air planes in that picture is... 1276 (give or take a few) I tried to get a real number here for you, because I was curious myself. I actually spent most of this afternoon looking through google maps at different things around the world. I can't remember what the site was called off hand right now, but it was like a blog with links to all sorts of neat things you can find in the google maps

I'm not sure, because I'm not far enough to get paid yet... still slowly getting there, but I've heard lots of good and bad things about google, so I'm not really sure what to believe. I do have my doubts some times though because it seems that google couldn't possibly pay so much for each click. I've gotten quite a bit per click on some, and barely anything on others, and I can't honestly see advertisers paying the amount per click that I'm seeing in my stats, but I'll just have to wait and see... I'd love to hear from other people about what you've experianced or heard about this though...

Yes, a birthday wish is always good, so happy birthday! But, as a reminder, try and remember that topic titles / descriptions are very important here, so try and make the topics names descriptive of what you will find in the post, and the description can go into further details about what will be found.

Okay, that is cool, so does that mean, that if I added that code to my site, and someone put a shortcut link to it on their desktop, it would be the icon I choose? That would be pretty neat. Or will that only work too if the page has been bookmarked?

I really can't say one way or another whose fault it is, because in all honesty, I don't know. I can tell you what I do believe and what I don't though...I believe that everyone has a free will and will do whatever it is that they please, unless someone or something prevents them from doing it.I'm not sure whether or not to believe in God or Satan, because up to this point in my life, neither one has decided to prove to me that they do indeed exist, and I'm not the kind of person that can go on blind faith.Maybe they will curse me to eternal damnation the day I die, maybe not. Or perhaps they will even come to me in some form that I can believe and fill me in on why things are the way they are. Even if they do, no one will probably believe me anyway when I try to tell them what I do know.So, I think everyone is to blame for any wrong actions that they perform, but I do also agree about how if you had grown up to certain morals, it may not be completely your fault, but you do have to take some responsibity for your actions.Some things like disease and famine, can be helped and some can be cured, but they can be blamed on nature, or people, or god, or whoever you want to blame to put a face on, so we think we can fight it. Somethings out there like famine, could be eradicated, but because of our inaction, it isn't. And I even take in some of the blame for it.Don't get me wrong, in small ways, I have tried to help, but I still feel like I could do more. And when I think of disease, so many of them have cures, but we won't help cure millions of people because they can't afford it.Again, this could be blamed on a great many things, but I think that if people put the effort into curing the diseases that have cures, and finding cures for the ones that don't, that they put into things like television and playstations, we could cure anything that came our way.But, I too, am too blame for some of it, because I sit infront of my television, enjoying my nice and happy life, while people are suffering horribly around the world. I feel bad, and do little things to help now and then, but could be doing so much more.So, I don't know who to blame for the bad things that happen, but being the kind of person that I am, I tend to not blame beings that I don't even know if they exist, and rest the blame on the people who could stop committing the bad acts, or the people who could stop the bad acts from occuring.

I believe I read somewhere that you can re-apply again later, if you don't first get accepted, but if that is the case, I'm not sure if the credits go down or not for it. I remember when I was first accepted, my credits that I'd been building up, went almost to nothing, so I had to start building them again.

No, I do get what you are saying, but I explained myself badly. I do that quite a bit. Sorry. What I was going after, is that not 'everyone' is going to link back, but the more people that find that page, the more people are going to link back to it. And the more people to link back to it, the higher in the search engines that page will be so that even more people can find the page and possibly link back to it, starting the circle again. I'm not sure if that makes a little more sense now, but hopefully it does.

Nah, spelling isn't everything. I myself like it, but mess it up good on my own sometimes too I figure that so long as things are readable, then you should be good to go. Oh, and about the criticizm, I used to get really upset over that sort of thing. I loved to hear the good reviews, and dreaded (not a clue if that is spelled right lol... it looks wrong to me somehow, oh well) the times when I'd get the bad ones. But then, I came to realize, that people take a lot of time and effort to criticize, which means that they cared enough about what you are doing to put forth such an effort. If you can get past the hurt of reading the bad stuff, you can usually find something to improve yourself with whatever you decide to do next time.

Okay, so I would like to say welcome! Xisto is great, you'll love it I'm sure! Anyway, I don't have all the answers for you, but I do have the one to your question about vacation time. Xisto is great about letting you build up your credits, so that if you are busy, or not around for a while, it's okay, because your site will stay active so long as you have credits. It's really pretty easy to build up a pile of credits by just looking through the posts and replying to ones where you find them interesting, or you have a question, or an answer. If you plan to be on vacation for a week, make sure you build up enough credits to cover that week of you being away. (and try to have an extra 10 credits on top of that, because they suggest that amount for everyone, so that you are covered a little extra.) If you are going to be too busy to post for a month, save up 30 credits + the extra 10 for good measure, and you will be fine. They won't close your account if you are away so long as you have some credits left over. I hope that helps, and I'm sure that other people will be by with the answers to your other questions soon