Old news for Me & You

V. 7 - Possession News

02-20-2008: Starting March 1st, 2008, I will be on hiatus from all my TCG's. I'm going up north to spend about six weeks with my grandmother, and then will be going out west to visit a friend directly after. Once I get settled with my friend, I might be able to come off hiatus, but it will be dependent on whether or not my computer has Dreamweaver, since that's what I use to upkeep my site. I can't find the CD with the program on it, and the computer I'm taking doesn't have the program on it. *SIGHS*

So, this is your notice. If you want cards from me... get them now. The only one I'm not already on hiatus for is SCM-r. Sorry for the trouble!

- Lady Chani -

12-15-2007: I think I've finally gotten about 90% of the transitioning to PHP done. So, at this point, if you found broken links or bad links or weirdness in my site, I wouldn't mind if you let me know. Somewhere, I'm sure there's a page or three that I've missed somehow. *sighs*

I'm trying very hard to resist the temptation of joining a new TCG, especially since I'm technically part of four, even though two of them are inactive now... but it looks so cool~ *sighs again* Watch... I'll join it, soon enough, because I'm stupid and don't waste enough of my time already.

11-06-2007: So. Chani's finally learned to use the basic PHP include command. Go me. It took about a millon reads of the basic PHP tutorial on my host's site, but I'm glad I got it. FINALLY. It means my web layout skills are one step closer to being able to be used for a profession like I wish it to.

Over the course of the next week while I finalize my deliberations about which games I want to keep and which games I don't want to lose, I will be switching over to the PHP-based system for ease of... well, everything. It'll make everything so much easier for some of my games if I can just do like I see everyone else doing and make up four or five separate pages depending on if it's cards I'm keeping, collecting or trading. It also means I can keep this layout through the cull of games. I like this layout a lot, and it took me forever to code it (and it probably has a a few niggly things that if anyone looks at my source code....)

LINKS WILL BE BROKEN WHILE I WORK OUT THE KINKS. Don't tell me about them right now. After the switchover, yes, that's fine. Right now, NO. Thank you very much.

10-22-2007: I think I may have gotten everything back to the way it's supposed to be. I'm still not sure, so please still e-mail me if you find any weird errors.

I also have a new trading buddy. I've replaced Bakaelf with SuperDoe, as Bakaelf is no longer doing the TCG's. It's sad, because she's my friend outside of the games, but I suppose I'll live. I sort of wish that I had a few others, trading buddies, I mean. I don't remember them from my initial run through TCG's so many years ago, but they're a terrific idea.

I'm very tempted to drop the two new games I added a little while ago. Bookworm has pretty much died, I'm sad to say, and Sonzai is far too complex for me. I also don't know enough about the series to really be able to participate. I mean.... whose eyes are these? I don't know. I know a dozen characters. And it's not any of them. *sighs* I don't know. I'm really only active in SCM-r. The rest I'm one of those sort of half-active people. It could be my layout frustrations, too, though. I just don't know.

10-01-2007: Okay, all of the pages should be working perfectly now. I'm not entirely sure that they all are, so if you'd be willing to e-mail me if you find any errors, I would greatly appreciate it.

Here's a personal little gripe of mine. I work on a dial-up connection, so looking through other people's card pages is a pain. I rely almost completely on forum messages to trade cards, or other people to e-mail me first. Now, my buddy Nyla has one of the easiest to navigate TCG pages I know. Everything is nicely organized and understandable, and if I want to see at a glance all the cards she has available to trade, it's easy to find and I don't have to scroll through a million other things.

Personally, I have the majority of my tradable cards so they load first. Granted, if you want to know if I have any puzzle cards or special cards to trade, you have to wait through the normal cards, but it's still the same theory of letting people see what they can have from me as easily as possible. Now, maybe I'm fussy, but if there's one thing that turns me off trading with someone faster than anything, it's having all the cards that a person is collecting show up first. I want to see if you have anything I want before I see if I have anything you need.

Oh, and when did Livejournal become a viable place to put your TCG trading posts!? ..................... That clinches it. I'm just fussy.

09-25-2007: A new website design! This one is also completely by yours truly! It's a DIV layer design, and I've found a workable way in Dreamweaver to replicate the simplicity of updating a DIV layer design through php. I haven't had the chance to learn php, though it is on my list of thigs to learn. If I really truly want to be a professional webmistress one of these days, php and Flash are the two things it seems I need to learn. ^_^

To celebrate the new design, I also have a new icon! The base image for this icon is compliments of Razara, a person on the IRG forums who plays a lot of the Sims 2 and made Sims of some of the IRG forum members. That image you see depicts my sim-self being subjected to movie-Akio's way of love. ^_^ And if you don't get that, well, you must not have ever seen the Revolutionary Girl Utena movie. ♥

Please expect some insane errors while I get everything back to snuff. My grand idea may not have worked as well as I originally thought. The only pages currently working completely properly are the Trading Academy page and the main SCM-r page. More will begin to work right as the days go on.

V.6 - Under the Stars News

08-23-2007: So much for thinking an unannounced vacation would go unnoticed.

SCM-r notified me of my being kicked off through e-mail, but is reinstating me with a change in member card number. I won't be a Set 1 member anymore, but I'll have all the Pre-join stuff, I assume. That'll look really odd to me, but I think most people won't care.

Trading Academy simply booted me, no announcement, no e-mail, nothing. Pulled me off the member list AND the forum. I contacted them to see if I can be reinstated at my previous level, or if I have to start all over. I'm thinking if it's start over, I'm going to be pissed.

Loved by the Night closed. That depressed me when I saw that. I know how much Rahenna loves her Castlevania, and that game is really her baby.

And I'm wondering how that person who wanted me to make cards for their Utena game is feeling?

Personally, I'm feeling pretty shitty. Like, you know, I've done something really wrong, other than go on vacation. Like, if I'd have told everyone I was going on hiatus (not that I could have), maybe Loved would still be around. Or, maybe I could have done more before I left. I don't know.

I'm reassessing a lot of my life right now. I'm not the best person I could be, not even close. Part of me is wondering why I keep hanging on to things of my childhood, like wanting to play online TCG's. 'OMG, look how many pixels I have. Aren't I just so cool?' I don't know. I love the games, but so many of them are so complicated. What happened to the original innocence and simplicity of TCG's? Or is it just that I grew up? I don't know.

I'm going to keep playing, though. In fact, I'll probably add a couple games I've been meaning to join forever. I found a nice Naruto one (Sonzai)... might join that. There's Davy Jones' Locker, and Bookworm, and who knows what else. I'll definitely join Sonzai and Bookworm, right now, in fact.

Now to reorganize my website.

06-06-2007: All right. I think everything's back up and running once more. I certainly hope so. I do believe that was part of my insane lack of interest, the roughness of having to reorganize everything on my webserver to accomodate the changes I'd made. On dial-up, doing anything past basic updates is a major pain. But, I'm the one that chose to do things this way. *laughs* The point is, it will be much easier for me to be able to do things now, so I have no reason to not update, other than lack of online time and laziness. And those are NOT good excuses.

I'll be catching up on the games for the next while or so. Please be kind to my slowness in reactions.

05-14-2007: I'm terrible at making updates to this thing. I'm seriously starting to think that I'm not truly able to have a website for any length of time. This sort of unplanned lack of updates happen regularly. My Livejournal goes through the same phases. I'll update nearly every day for a month or so, then only update once in the next month. I don't know what causes this, but it happens across the board. And it's not that I lose interest! I just simply don't do anything with my interest. More apt is perhaps the term 'waning interest'. *sighs* I'm like the moon with my interest. How very annoying.

Not to worry. I'm not hiatusing. That's more annoying than what I'm up to. I'm simply explaining why my website's not been updated recently. I'll try to get better about it, honest. I've got to get better about a lot of things soon.

04-28-2007: Wow. Not a whole lot has happened, and yet, quite a lot has in the past month. I've been asked to make cards for an up-and-coming Utena-based TCG because of the templates I made last update. I admit to a certain amount of laziness on my part to the actual card-making, but I hope to overcome that in the next week. I'll probably be using the base6 design... which means nothing to a lot of you. *grins* Whatever then.

I've quit two TCG's and another has closed, thus creating the need for two more navigation stars to be used. I now have pages linking to Closed TCG's and Quit TCG's. I'll be leaving up the collections of those that have closed in the vain hope that eventually they may reopen. I'm keeping the files of those I've quit, but not showing them off. I'm strange like that.

So, I was down to only two TCG's. Note the 'was'. Rahenna, my lovely host, owned the TCG that closed and re-opened what she hopes to be a smaller, less time-consuming and straining TCG, namely her Castlevania-based TCG, Loved by the Night. So, being the avid Castlevania fan that I am, I joined it immediately. Therefore, I'm at three TCG's. That's enough to keep me happy for a goodly while.

03-23-2007: I need to stop doing such terrible things. For starters, I joined another TCG. >>;;;; Stop making yourself waste time, Chani. But, at least it's a book TCG. *shrugs* That's Amore. That's the name of the new TCG I've joined. WTF am I thinking!? Never mind. I know the answer to that. I'm not.

Second terrible thing.... I'm actually considering making an Utena-based TCG. I can't do that. I don't have the time or the patience or the willpower to actually go through with it. But it's such fun to make the cards. And the ideas I'm having are quite fun. It'd be impossible and it'd die quite quickly. All the same, it's such fun to think about.

03-19-2007: Let's all celebrate! This is so my happy face. I am finally free of that ad-inundated host with terrible service. I am now hosted under the domain of Rahenna, on her clavis-sama.com domain. Granted, that means I have to tell all the TCG's and all my buddies and the like to change the address they have me as, but considering the alternative! I'm so much more willing to do that than deal with the.... gleaugh. *shudders* Free hosting like that is terrible.

Anyway. I'm uploading my site to my new home and will be changing links ASAP. If things are down, please be patient. Within the week, they'll all be up.

Pre-Clavis-sama hosting News

03-17-2007: Still pissed at my host. Luckily, my rant last time may have made for a way to escape poor hosts and crappy service until such a time I can actually afford my own quality domain and hosting (which, considering my spending habits, will be NEVER). I won't count my chickens yet, but I am keeping my fingers crossed in hopes that things will work out well for me.

I reorganized my entire folder layout for the website. It's something none of you can see, but it makes my life a little easier. I'm also attempting to learn the skills of PHP. It looks easy, but I'm not sure that it really is! Considering that I have nothing to practice with (because testing and using PHP means having a reliable FTP server), I'm surprised I understand it as well as I do. Personally, I can't wait to activate it. It'll make creating and upkeep on a trade form easier.

I've added a new page. It's 'About'. As the title suggests, it's all about stuff: the site statistics, the site's history, me... whatever there is for it to be about. There's only the aforementioned three, and only the history is truly fleshed out (though there's not much else to do for the statistics, really). Still, it's there. And now you know who I am!

03-13-2007: I am having pretty big issues with my hosting space. I can't seem to FTP anything. The ads, once tolerable, have become rather... for lack of a better term, AGGRAVATING. If a page has frames, there is no need for an ad to be displayed on every page within the frames. *sighs*

Anyway. The images may or may not be loaded in. I don't know. But to upload each and every TCG card by hand through a file manager will likely drive me over the bend. This is not to say I'm quitting! No, not so soon. I just wanted to let you know not to expect images, and to expect broken images all over the place. All the cards have alt text, which should be visible, even if the image isn't.

So, this also means I'm looking for somewhere else for my website to live. >>;;; Damn you, banner ads and 'free' hosting. I'd swear harder and longer, but I have a feeling some of my page perusers may be of the younger variety.

03-09-2007: Most times when I decide to make up my website, I make it for the TCG's I'm joining. There's generally very little else actually there, but I try to make it a comprehensive site, and end up getting tired of updating such a poor site. This time, I'm making it simpler for me. This site only has TCG's now. I'm not going to try to pretend about anything else. There will be some other stuff about me, but I'm not going to even try to make the TCG's a sideline when it is obvious they're the center stage.

On a side note, this is the first ever layout I have designed and coded by myself. It took me a couple days to properly colorize the image you see to the left, about a week of whenever-I-could-spare-the-time coding, and a few more days to prettify it with CSS. I separate CSS from coding, because most of my CSS is decorative and non-essential to the layout. I'm not that good at CSS yet. >>;;;;

I've also changed the icon I use for my updates to one featuring Leon Belmont from the video game Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. If you know me from a multi-genre TCG, that's the image you'll know me by, so that's my image for online.

v.5 - Hasty Implementation News

02-07-2007: The new host seems to be treating me very well, luckily. I wonder about the ads sometimes, like maybe they're for naughty things, but they're ads. Only idiots pay attention to internet ads and click 'em. Okay, maybe not, but still. I think you have to be a little nutty to click on internet ads.

Anyway. I'm being a nit, talking like this. My major news is that I've preapplied to join another TCG, this one dedicated to pixel-art spirtes, silly girl that I am. I'm also thinking on joining a couple others, but I'm not sure which at this point. I'm currently only planning on joining Trading Academy soon, though I have considered joining Fictional, Bookworm and Moonlight Legend. I will definately be joining another once it comes back: Lunacy. I can't be a part of one of the old-school games and not another. And Lunacy is decidedly old-school TCG. I just wish I'd stop finding Sailor Moon TCG's to join. I really don't love the series THAT much. An Utena-specific TCG, that'd make me seriously happy. *grins* Just don't tell me the obvious, that I should be the one to make it. >>;;;

02-02-2007: I've decided to throw most of my website on hold until I can find a better place for hosting. I'm going to keep my TCG pages as active as possible within the limitations of a Geocities-style hosting service. This means, more than likely, I'll be doing a lot of text rather than images for the time being. I'll try to keep the hiatus as short as possible, since I don't know how difficult it will be to do what I am thinking of, especially with graphics-based pages such as my TCG pages. I've broken the links to things such as my aforementioned Graphic Donations page, so don't try to look for them. Wish me luck...

It looks like I've done just that, found a new host. It's very... ad-y, but I suppose I'll live with it the month or so it will take me to get my real domain. Sorry about the trouble for all of you.

02-01-2007: I finally have things on my 'Other' page. Yay for me! Right now, it only links to a single other page, the one containing the completed graphics I've made thus far for SCM-r. It's got buttons and level badges, and a type of graphic I find extremely useful in keeping my online TCG pages neat: card placeholders. The game doesn't ask for placeholders to be donated, so they probably never will be, but they're available for people if they really like them and want to use them.

I've also realized my way of doing websites entails a lot of folders for neatness, and that sort of layout is incomprehensible (and utter madness for updating) on a Geocities-based website (read: any webserver that doesn't rely on FTP uploading). So, I'll be going on a bit of a free hosting hunt for a while, until I can find the money to buy a domain for myself like I've wanted for ages. My criteria on the free hosting: no need of a domain, ability to use FTP, and non-integrated banner ads. Maybe I'll get lucky with the money situation and be able to buy my own slice of webspace instead of going that route, but it never hurts to be prepared. Though, I still have no idea what my domain name would be for my website... Any ideas?

01-30-2007: My SCM-r page is becoming insanely complex. I dread the day I decide I need to join more TCG's than just the one I'm already in. I mean, my goodness! There's three separate spin-off pages, one for the special badges I keep getting, and one each for the Member Cards and the Grey Cards I'm planning on collecting. Not to mention, I'm planning on a pageset in my Other section (which is currently terribly bare (read: completely empty of anything but holder-text)) to be all the graphics I donate to whatever TCG's I'm a part of. >>;;;; I thought I wanted this poor website to be SIMPLE. *le sigh* The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, I suppose. It wouldn't be so well known if it weren't at all true.

01-26-2007: Well, I've edited my SCM-r page quite a bit. It looks a lot neater, and I'm certainly glad I've finally gotten a handle on how to code CSS to make things look pretty. It does indeed look pretty spiffy, and I can't wait to get my cards for the game. I just realized I was a part of some long-forgotten game... I really need to track that one down again. *winces*

01-23-2007: I decided to bring Insanity Squared (it looks better as I2, with the 2 as a superscript, but I don't know how to do that sort of thing in HTML) back to the 'net. The new layout's a free one, as all my layouts always have been, edited by me to match the current color scheme of my LJ. *amused grin* I pretty much threw it together when I realized I wanted to bring it all back (which is really the fault of a Miss Calico, because she brought back SCM! and, well, old obsessions die hard)... thus the version name, Hasty Implementation. There's not much here, but what's here is for you to look at. Well? Why are you still reading this?