I finished NaNoWriMo, whoohoo!

To put a slightly more relevant spin on it, that is a good thing because the basic framework for the story is finished. It's going to require one hell of a total rewrite before it's ready for public viewing, and I'm rather tired of it at the moment and so won't be taking an axe to it until January at the earliest, but hopefully it shouldn't be too difficult and I'll be able to start posting the story sometime next year.

You've probably noticed the two new layouts. Actually, they aren't "new" at all; they were the first two layouts I was working on when redesigning the entire site, but I swapped the colors and images around at the last minute so that they used the more simplistic ones instead. What possessed me to do this when these two layouts are perfectly good and a little more interesting (and not as garish-looking on Macs) I do not know, but all that matters is that I got sick of the previous look and switched back to these today. They still need some minor aesthetic tweaking, but they should be entirely presentable and functional as they are now. If you experience any problems with them or something looks odd, email me and let me know so that I can fix it.

The fall quarter of school is over next week and I have a comparatively long break ahead of me until winter quarter starts in mid-January. Hopefully I'll have time to add more actual content to this place. I haven't added any right now (aside from the layouts), as my current obsession with creating fake Pokémon–and, by extension, the project site that goes with them–is eating up a lot of my attention span, but I hope to get something substantial done over the break. When I've finished the fakemon project site (who knows when that will be) I'll probably move the requested fakemon over there, but they'll stay for now; I might upload some of the artwork of my own and the newer requests later, in addition to anything else I happen to finish or semi-finish.

I did add a shiny Golbat to the sparklies page, though, so if you want one then go ahead and make me an offer.

Most of my dcNET design time has actually been focused on the other sites that will eventually be a part of the network, which means that this one's been left alone for a while. I haven't forgotten about it, certainly; I've just been preoccupied. Hey, it's still progress, right?

Anyway, what I'm actually here to say is that I'm participating in NaNoWriMo, which started today, and since I actually intend to finish it this year I will not be able to update the site for the month of November. The upshot of this is that, should I actually finish the story I'm writing, I will be able to post it in the Fanfiction section here. So... consider the NaNo progress a bunch of updates to the site that are just a little delayed. Or something. And wish me luck!

So I don't leave my two semi-regular visitors hanging completely, however, I have added some more pictures to the Fanart page, two of which are actually *gasp* recent! I added another section to that page for artwork I've drawn for other people: requests, gifts, stuff like that. So, uh, go look at it, and be envious of the people who were lucky enough to get artwork by moi! But look at it slowly, so it'll last you until December. Cool? Cool.

I went back to college starting this Monday, so that combined with various other things has kept me busy and distracted. I haven't really had the time to write much and haven't been in the mood to draw a lot lately so there isn't anything particularly special to update with. I did, however, throw together a page (under Inane Nonsense) with all of the shiny Pokémon I own: Phoenix's Sparklies. I'm willing to trade most of them as well (as long as you don't have a problem with clones), so you can check that out and maybe send me an offer if you see something you like. Dunno.

Might have a new type of fancontent up here, at least temporarily. It's actually something that I intend to put on one of the "network" sites so it has its own space, but that's taking a while and so I might put it up here while there's only a little to deal with. It depends on how well I can weasel something into the layouts' CSS. We'll see.

I also killed the link to my sketchblogwhatever LJ because I don't feel like dealing with it atm. Might turn it into something else later, but yeah. Ignore it, please.

I was working on something for someone in Photoshop and happened to pull out some old Garchomp lineart. I decided to color it in on a whim, and when it was done I went ahead and added it to the Free Renders section. It isn't in the same cel-shaded style the others are, but I think it looks good anyway. Better, even. (Doesn't help that I suck at cel shading.)

I'm currently working on my Platinum failblog and so playing Platinum is taking up most of the time I'd be spending on writing up articlethingwhatevers, but I'm adding notes and sections to the ones that are currently in the works. I've also added a "last updated" date to the failblog link on the side, just in case anyone wanted a heads up.

Aha, and you thought dcNET was dead. I fooled all three of you, didn't I? ;)

Long update is long but read it anyway.

Yes, well, I posted that update back in July promising to add at least some stuff that night... and I didn't, because by then the site as a whole was annoying me to the point where I didn't see any reason to update that version of it. Most of it was actually the mess the layouts were in, but other little bits and pieces were bugging me and there were a few new things I wanted to try.

Thus the revamped dcNET you now see before you. I worked on it on and off for those two months and finally came up with something I am semi-satisfied with. Not that I'm ever fully satisfied with anything I do. The layouts, which were previously heavily and poorly modified versions of a free skeleton layout I found, have been redone completely from scratch (except for the drop-down menus, which are modified versions of Stu Nichols's CSS-play dropdowns) and are now 100% valid CSS and XHTML Strict. None of you care about this, of course, but I do because I'm studying web design in school and I feel like valid and compliant layouts are something I should be striving for. They're simple and quite possibly boring and ugly, but they'll do for now and at least the Blaziken layout is no longer eye-hurtingly godawful.

Most of the content so far is the same as it was before–I've removed some of the old fanart pics because they were effing huge, and I may or may not put them back up, but at least when I do they will have been reduced to a reasonable size. There are a few new pictures (and a few new-old pictures) in their place, though. I've also finally gotten around to writing up some of that "miscellaneous fancontent" I never know what to call, and that's probably the biggest and most impressive addition. Currently the only articlething is an "Animé-Style Battling for Dummies" type of thing that I will keep adding to and revising, so if you've ever thought about joining your forum's ASB league you might want to check it out.

Um, what else... there are some free Pokémon images in the new "Free Stuff" section up there, so you can go use those for whatever. I'll probably revamp some of them, but later. I've also gotten a new ASB team following the TCoD forum explosion back in June, so if you're one of those people with no life and you actually found the ASB team page semi-interesting you can go see that. The old page is currently in hiding, but I may put it back up (with moar valid code this time) for nostalgic purposes eventually. Oh, and I've rewritten/revised the About Me/About dcNET pages. Got a more reliable styleswitcher, too. At least, I hope so. God but those things hate me.

Last but not least, I've linked to a few of my other internets thingamabobbies over to your right. Eventually I'll have some actual project websites up there, but for now it's just my dA, my LJ sketchblog and another LJ I set up as a blog for the Platinum version I got the other day. Why watch a boring YouTube playthrough with sound and video when you can read a sarcastic diary-review-rant-blog?! Yeah!!! but um yeah it's there if you want my opinions on stuff in the game and such. It's pretty cool so far.

That's pretty much everything. So, uh, look around, enjoy stuff (yeah, right), suggest stuff... whatever. It's late and I need to go to bed because I have work tomorrow. Today. Um. Yeah it's late.

Phoenix out.