This is what I do in my spare time

Under: Webdesign by Bobbi @ 7:10 pm
Nov
22

I have this really bad habit of being totally absorbed in some kind of project and then forgetting about everything else. It’s really hard to come back and focus on other things, even of a small personal nature… such as blogging or keeping this place updated.

I’ve been working really hard the last few weeks on Avaricia, my avatar community. I’m in the middle of a huge project involving taking thousands of graphics and items and converting them over to a new style avatar base. It’s a lot of work, but it’s really rewarding seeing the results. I’m hoping that pretty soon, the site can earn enough money so that I can do more advertising ventures. I want to advertise on Facebook. But I’m also planning on getting some postcards and flyers made up and distributing them at various conventions I go to. I’ve probably invested a few thousand dollars on the site already, but a lot of that was money that the site made itself. So, I’m actually not making much with it right now. :P Maybe one day!

New Bases Anyway this is what the new bases look like. The arms move fully and independently of themselves, and the facial features are entirely customizable. I was going to go with 3 different body sizes, but it’s a bit too much work for me to do right now. It’d never get done! I originally made these new ones in 2008, but it’s taken me forever to finish them. We didn’t start using them until April of 2010. But I’m REALLY happy with them!

Old Bases Here’s one of my former avatars using the old bases. These were made originally in 2007, but my art has improved so much since then. I actually tweaked these bases several times before just redoing them entirely. The wide hips weren’t very popular, even though people who stuck around enjoyed the curvier figures. I just wasn’t a fan of the posture, and with everything the new avatar system we developed can do, we needed a really nice avatar base to go with it! Plus… we had so many people doing items on the site that nothing was really consistent. Also, my own style had developed through practice.

I hope that one day, the site will end up being a really nice enjoyable community, with a lot of fun features and games. Eventually!

Sunday!

Under: Love and Romance,Web Nostalgia by Bobbi @ 11:55 pm
Oct
24

Ah! Sunday! It can sometimes be the only day off I have during the weekend. During the week, it’s Thursday. So I really kind of relish these two days by sleeping in as much as I can get away with. However, it’s not possible when you share a bed with someone else.  I was having a nice, wonderful happy dream about something or another (I don’t quite remember exactly) when I hear “omnomnomnom!” a second later, “omnomnomnom!” He’s trying to eat my shoulder. We went to bed unusually late last nite (3am) because he was playing a new MMO. So, I really didn’t want to wake up at 10.

We went out to eat at Penn Station (a sub place) and then I went on a search at the local Target and Toys R Us for Monster High dolls. Apparently the one character I really like was recently released (the zombie girl) so I was hoping to find her. Nope! I did find the Dawn of Dance version of Frankie Stein, but I really didn’t want to pay $25 for her. So, I suppose I’ll wait.

While at Toys R Us, we were looking around at all the neat toys. Mark loves Legos and Nerf guns, so he was eyeballing those. Then we stumbled upon the scooters and… Power Wheels. There’s one massive one that goes up to 7mph and can hold up to 130lbs. If I got down to my goal weight, I could probably ride it! We decided that once we have kids, we are definitely giving them all the things we wished we had as a kid so that we can play with them (and probably break it). If I have a girl, she’s going to HATE Hello Kitty by the time she’s 3. If it’s a boy, he’s going to hate Mario/Nintendo/Pokemon.

After that, we took a walk. It was a really warm day today. Pretty sad since it’s late October. Soon, we’ll be freezing under 3 feet of snow.

I’ve been spending a bit of time working on a webdesign pet-project of mine.  It’s been pretty fun and enjoyable thus far! Plus, it lets me make some use of old files I’ve kept ahold of for almost a decade.

While I’m at it, does anyone know of any good cliques/webrings to join? Looks like all the ones I used to be a member of are dead. I know it’s a pretty dead trend to begin with, but… I’m hoping there’s still some out there.

A post in which Bobbi waves her cane.

Under: Web Nostalgia by Bobbi @ 7:20 pm
Oct
20

Every now and then, I’m stricken with a bit of web-nostalgia. I think it’s pretty common for most of us who have had an online presence for quite awhile. Next year marks 12 years since I’ve been making webpages. It’s really hard to believe how much the internet, design, the world, and myself have changed in that period of time.

What I really do kind of miss is the days of the personal homepage. Back in the late 90′s there was no Social Networking. If you wanted to put content on the web, you made a website somewhere, usually on Geocities or space provided by your ISP (like AOL for instance). While it sucked for people who were terrified of diving into site-building, it was also kind of neat being one of the few out there with a website. Your own website provided a multitude of creative capabilities that social networking as it stands today, just does not compare.

Also there was the added benefit of anonymity. You could take up a pseudonym, rant all you wanted about the girl you dislike the most at school. Yet nobody knows who you’re talking about, and it doesn’t come back to bite you in the butt. I never really took up any pseudonyms until… fairly recently. Nor did I ever rant about people online publicly. But still, the benefit was there if I needed it. I mostly used my websites to talk about my dorky obsessions, share my fan art and talk about my life. None of it effected me offline, except the few friends that did see my sites.

Now you can find out everything about a person from their Facebook. Everyone’s on Facebook. Oddly enough, I post more blog entries on my LJ (and hopefully soon, here) than I post Facebook status updates. Yet, there’s far more information about me on my personal websites, but their a lot harder to find. I like it this way. I think I really keep my Facebook to keep in touch with my non-web-savvy friends and relatives. This unfortunately boils down to just about everyone I know IRL.

Sadly, a lot of websites out there just went forgotten and abandoned. Today, there’s far fewer people that run and maintain personal websites. It’s kind of sad. But the people that do maintain them these days tend to really know what they’re doing and they’re awesome. This means there’s a lot less copycatting going on than there was 5-10 years ago. I’d find copycats twice a month at least back when I primarily used sweet-essence.net as my domain.

I don’t think I can or will move on to just a social networking account (or twelve). I like the ability to fully and entirely manipulate the way everything looks and feels. You just can’t do that with other places. Sure, you can make your (now dying) Myspace profile look all shiny and snazzy. But no matter what you do, it will still look like Myspace!

I for one, definitely will not ever abandon my own unique spot on the web just for me, be it a domain or just a site hosted somewhere.

How about you? What are your thoughts on this?