Something Interesting For Once

Sorry for the lack of updates. A relative's computer came down with the worst strain of Vundo that I've dealt with before, I've been trying to clean it up because she doesn't want to reformat. Needless to say, it was a nightmare.

Nonetheless, a combination of root-kit trojan removers, Avast's pre-boot scanner, the judicious use of a registry editor, about ten pots of coffee and a six-pack of beer have obliterated all traces of it from her computer system. Let's hope it stays that way.

Forget about that, though - that's depressing.

I realize that I never talk about much that's interesting in this blog and it's bound to drive people away. So I'll talk about things I'm excited about.

Obviously, games. Wrath of the Lich King will be coming out soon and everybody is going nuts over it. I've seen the trailers and I admit that I'm excited, too. I stopped playing World of Warcraft a while back, partly due to the cost and partly because it eats up so much time - but I may start when WotLC comes out. I just started playing Warcraft III again earlier this summer and it reminded me exactly how much I loved World of Warcraft. I know why I quit (after all, you're here at this website, which only exists and is updated because I gave up my WoW habit...) From what I've gathered - rumors about the beta and such - it is likely to be "ZOMG amazing".

On the other hand, I really miss playing with my brother, my friends, and my old guild mates (I miss you guys...). Sometimes WoW is the closest you can come to hanging out in-person with distant friends. I usually wind up dropping the game once I get to max level simply because end-game raids don't interest me all that much. Call me a n00b if you will, but I really prefer questing and the sense of accomplishment that comes with leveling up. It means I end up with alt-itus (a zillion different alternate characters on various servers). Gear doesn't fascinate me all that much, beyond the fact that it makes things easier to kill. WotLC will mean that, once again, I get to level up by questing.

Thinking about all of that good stuff has put me in a much better mood. Hope it brightened up your day, too. Here's wishing everyone a few months of anticipation and sweet dreams of sugarplums and undead armies.

Creepy Cat Wants You

...for breakfast.



Now available in the horror section.

Impending Updates

I've got some new wallpapers, but they don't really fit in any existing section. I'll be updating the wallpapers section to include a 'photos' section.

New Wallpaper

There's a fierce new wallpaper available in the Fantasy section. Go check it out!

New Tutorials

Two new tutorials up!

For those of you who'd like to emulate a cell-shaded effect (all the rage on the Internet these days), head over to the Mock Cell-Shading Digital Paint Tutorial. It focuses on using GIMP, but the techniques are still perfectly applicable to Photoshop.

There's a much simpler tutorial on using the Scissors (magnetic lasso) tool and Paths tool to create selections in GIMP here.

New Dragon Icons

If you head over here, you'll discover some new fantasy dragon icons I've created from the new wallpaper posted yesterday. Available in all of the usual resolutions, and 50x50 unwatermarked for Yahoo! Answers users. Enjoy!

New Wallpaper

Sorry for the delay.

The power surge that knocked out the power source on another computer must have also gotten to my monitor. The monitor already had issues, they just became worse and worse over the past few days. I had to stop working on the wallpaper and basically go out and buy a new monitor. I've switched from a CRT to an LCD, so far so good.

Here's the new wallpaper, click the thumbnail to view the full sized (1440x900) image. Other resolutions will be available and the new wallpaper will go up in the Fantasy section as soon as I've finished resizing and watermarking the images.

The subject matter - dragons, waterfall, flowers... three things I like. I hope you like them, too.