Weblog Quotes

As I receive a few emails regarding the up-dating of the All Woollie Sheep skin for Windows Live Messenger, I have decided to make a little post.

First of all, I thank each of you for your emails; and for using the skin. It means a lot.

As I now work full time as a Chef, my activity on the web has drastically decreased; which has meant a rather saddening halt in any projects I may have been working on during the time I was un-employed. This covers the WLM skins; forums skins; and the websites themselves.

On a lighter note, I have recently up-dated to the latest messenger version myself; and have made a start on up-dating the skin for it. (I actually managed to crash it trying to open a conversation window, yay!). However, I do not have an actual date for when it may be finished.

There will not be a beta version at this time, since I have not modified any layout files; so you won’t see anything different, other than an icon or two. I have to re-learn the layout files slightly, since bits have most possibly changed between versions.

I do have the intention of up-dating though, but it just won’t be now. Paid employment is a little more important for me at this point in my life, so everything related to the internet has been pushed to the side. I’m also heading back to college next week, so I no longer have a day off to relax.

I hope you can all understand, and thank you again for your support.

Or somewhat.

Over the past five weeks I have been in full time employment at a hotel / restaurant / bar; where I am working as a Chef.

The time has been enjoyable; but it has impacted on my already lack of sleep. So much so the past three days have held very little hours of shut eye. This has caused me to stress out a little; with the added fact that on Fridays I have to peel and quarter three large bins of potatoes and one bin of carrots for Sundays. This is repetitive; tedious; and takes four hours.

For some un-known reason tonight; I have realised every single one of my issues relate to my on-line activities. I no longer have issues in my life, other than being single I suppose. Because I’ve already mentioned it three times to three separate people, I’ll just paste it:

I have a large number of projects that I will just never finish, yet I don’t want to ditch. I was happier giving support as a member, but if I leave the bl00s, I will leave for good. I only visit two sites frequently (support and hnz). Having to put up with the odd argument, or Nicola’s “oh, I have a job so I can’t do this” posts every three days is getting to me. There is little to no communication from the three reds I volunteer my time for; and have done for the past four years. It basically holds no significance anymore. I feel the internet is just not important.

Re-reading that, I’m tempted to correct the icky grammar. But I won’t. It’s authentic; un-edited; and what I said originally.

All of the issues I had with Zathyus Support shortly after the promotion still stand now. And I’m still disappointed.

Since I am now working, any projects I have started will be on hold, and I likely won’t finish them any time soon. Thank you to those of you who have emailed me, but I have to apologise again. The website and weblog won’t be up-dated either. And the community forums will just continue to die. My newest foodie board won’t be going anywhere I would like it to .. basically everything will stop. If it’s linked from here, or my profiles, don’t expect any changes.

Over the past few days, I have been working on a handful of up-dates for two of my Windows Live Messenger skins; All Woollie Sheep and Enhanced Live.

Enhanced Live simply reverts a number of changes, as well as a bug fix or two, with nothing new being added.

AWS, at this time, has also had one or two fixes; and one or two reversions, but I plan on up-dating compatibility to the latest version of messenger (9.0). I’m not sure on when this will be, as I will need to re-learn a few pieces; and actually up-grade;¹ and extract the resources; and see what 9.0 looks like; and plan on the best attack; and possibly other stuff. It will take a while.

I have also up-dated the screen shots for use within the projects, and made some thumbnails for light-box. That was ‘fun’.

¹ After this, I will cease designing for 8.5.

WordPress:

WordPress is now in the beta stages of 2.8, which should be a nice release. The team has been hard at work again to bring us users a great piece of software. A list of new features can be seen on the codex.

I have somewhat been waiting for the 2.8 release more than the others, but I have no idea why. :/

IP.Board:

A few days ago, the first release candidate for IP.Board 3.0 was released to customers for additional testing and bug finding. Having installed the release to test out features and fixes I’m a little happier with the work put in than I was previously. There is no e.t.a on the final release, but I’m starting to get excited for it, as I will finally be able to update the community forums; since they appear to be a little neglected at this time.

Over the following months I shall attempt to keep up to date with both of the above software’s, and maybe actually give a better opinion on them.

Two, maybe three days ago I set to work on finishing up/cleaning/updating the main style sheet used within the sites and weblog; since I often became side-tracked by other items and what-not.

Testing the fresher design locally, I was quite pleased with it, aside from one or two minor pieces that I would iron out a day or two later. Or at least I thought, until I updated the lightbox style sheet; and proceeded to upload both that one, and the main style sheet to the live server.

Oops.

Not what I had planned, but oh well; it looks great at the moment and can hold off a week or so for any tweaks I decide to make.

Each of the form elements; text areas, inputs, drop downs, etc have had a makeover; and are better that I thought they would be. It’s nice to have that feeling of accomplishment.

On top of the style sheet updates, I have started to use jQuery to achieve a couple of nice effects; most notably Lightbox and the toggle features available on the Projects pages. As I discover more plug-ins, I shall decide whether it’s worth adding or not; and I may also be using curvy corners in some places soon.

These where part of the minor tweaks I wanted to have finished first, before updating the site.

As the projects weblog is now up and running, I decided it was time to release an updated version of this skin.

This time around, the future updates procedure will be handled by Messenger Plus! without a necessity to download anything manually.

The main feature for this release is the Plus! toasts now fitting the skins style, with status icons no longer the defaults.

Several small parts have been updated as well, to fit around the projects area.

I’m not sure on where I plan to take this skin, but as new ideas are tried they will most likely be added in. If you have any ideas let me know and I’ll get to work.

All information and downloads for this skin have been moved from the forums, and can now be found here.

Thanks for the continued support.