Sorry about the downtime that hit AO and the rest of the sites on my server for about a day. The short version is that I had some software uploaded on a different domain for testing purposes that I intentionally left outdated at first; after a while I no longer needed it and just forgot about it. Apparently that version of the software was vulnerable to some file inclusion attacks, and someone hacked into it and started sending tons of spam emails via my server. My host shut the server down for a while so they could resolve the problem. As you can see, everything is back up now and should be back to normal.

The domain/site/etc. that was affected didn't have anything of importance on it, and everything else appears to be untouched. Altered Origin, 649, the Phoenixdex and anything else important I had hosted on this server are currently fine; they were just inaccessible for a while. Nothing that happened should have affected you in any way, and you should be able to continue using the AO network sites as normal.

I know several of you were trying to access the site while it was down and were unable to; again, sorry about that. Lesson learned, and it shouldn't happen again.

Bugsy tells some of the other gym leaders that he still believes in Santa Claus.

He also tells them, more specifically, that he believes that Wattson is said Santa Claus.

He may or may not be incorrect about this.

needs more in the way of actual plot but WRITE IT Y/Y

...in other news, in case you haven't noticed, I have a Tumblr now. I still think WordPress is superior when it comes to longer stuff like the beautiful and intelligent specimen above, so it's not a replacement or anything; it will probably contain more art (or fakemon)-related stuff that is slightly less substantial and more frequently updated.

Apparently I have a Tumblr now. I'll be using it mostly for small things like pictures or fakemon previews or what have you; longer stuff, and probably most fanfic-related stuff, is still going to go on the WordPress blog (though, as an aside, I am tentatively considering switching back to LJ for reasons). Follow it if you want, I guess; I'll probably follow you back, at least if I know you. Still kind of figuring out how it works.

I'm not going to bother adding it to the Network Updates thing up there, since it's mostly going to be little things and will be updated more frequently than my main blog, at the very least. But it is in the menu now and it's, uh, there if you want to look at it or something.

Actual progress on actual site-related stuff pending.

While I was ultimately unable to get as much AO-related work done over the break as I would have liked, I do have a few simple things for you. The biggest of these is the addition of a third section to the Zodiac Pokémon section: the Unova zodiac. I've been spending quite some time in front of TV sets in my White Version trying to compile all of the "Personality Assessment and Horoscope" shows, and after finally finding September, November and December last night (whyyy does this show come on so infrequently compared to stupid Koukan Talk and Eyes on Unova whyyy) I was able to put these together today. It's silly and purely for fun (not that I take real astrology very seriously either), but if you'd like to see which Unova Pokémon you are you can go check that out.

Those of you who liked the plain Suicune sketch that has been sitting in the gallery for a little while now may be pleased to hear that I've finally gotten around to coloring that in; it's also visible in the gallery now.

I also found a way around the bizarre problem with my affiliate buttons occasionally not displaying, at least for me; the buttons should be working again and there should no longer be any extraneous text. If you still can't see the images, let me know. I still have no idea what the hell all that was about so I don't know that I can fix it, but I can try and find some other workaround in the meantime.

I've been having second thoughts about whether or not this other new game I wanted to add to the site is really worth it (no, not the interactive fiction stuff—that's just on hold due to lack of time/attention span); I would still like to give it a shot, though, so I may put up a really simple test version at some point in the near future. We'll see how that goes.