about

I've been trying a number of free hosts to find a service that is reliable for me and that I like, where I can make an old-fashioned kind of site, without one-click installs, without automated publishing, without "like" and "share" buttons, even without built-in commenting. All I have here is FTP and a file manager, so it's like my first website all over again - except that my coding skills are vastly improved and my connection is faster than 14Kbps.

I didn't want to get into the whole persona thing but also I wasn't comfortable using my real name, because this project (and other stuff I've been doing lately online) is separate to everything I've done before, and I haven't told anyone where my current sites are, so I'm really trying to start afresh. My name starts with L but most places require some kind of name (not just initials), so I've been going by "Lucy".

The username 'shadowgirl' wasn't my first choice, but the one I've been using and currently prefer isn't always available, so I had to think of others that wouldn't be too limiting. I have used it online before but not since about 2003, so it feels fresh again now. It's taken from Vurt by Jeff Noon (I love the book although don't necessarily love everything by Noon).

    content

In the near future I plan to provide some visitor content in the form of tiling backgrounds to use for websites or wallpaper, digital art to use as icon or layout bases, and a few simple coded layouts. When I eventually find a wordpress host where I can edit existing themes and thus bring my wordpress knowledge up to date I want to make wordpress themes as well. In the way of personal content there will be some photos, a bit of writing (I had an idea for a way of writing very short but quirky stories, and I want to explore that), maybe a few reviews (books or films I feel strongly about).

    credits

The girl on a swing image is street graffiti I photographed one night on a hoarding in town. I have changed it a little in photoshop so it's not identical to the original - mainly because I wanted it in shadowy tones, and also because the original photo was very grainy because of the low light. I don't know who the artist is and I hope that if he or she ever finds this, they will be flattered and not upset (I'd love to see more of their work, too!)

Image manipulation in photoshop, html/css coded in notepad, design tested in Firefox 3.6 and Internet Explorer 8, best viewed at 1024*768 and above, but should be acceptable in 800*600.

Hosted by geocities.ws

2:59pm, Friday 27 May 2016

Um, what? This is still here??? Woweee. Two computers later I have no clue what I was up to. Don't expect updates (unless I get motivated to do something else with this space, which is unlikely). I'll probably delete this later. Ahah.

3:44am, Thursday 23 December 2010

Merry Christmas :)

8:29am, Saturday 18th December 2010

I'm working on a gallery of digital art, but things are pretty busy offline so my computer time is limited.

8:30am, Wednesday 15th December 2010

My blog is ready, more-or-less (still doing minor layout tweaks, but it's okay otherwise): 11pm: confessions of a night owl.

2:37am, Monday 13th December 2010

Once I uploaded the layout and viewed it online I saw the fault with my method of coding - I used exact positioning instead of 'float', so the ad banner was at the top rather than the bottom, and covering part of the header pic (which I'd set as a fixed background). *eyeroll* So I've modified the image to take that into account, although I am annoyed about it (it looks better the other way, truly).

On the plus side, I found a suitable wordpress host, so I've been transferring my blog and it should be ready to go live in a few days.

2:06am, Sunday 12th December 2010

Yay, I managed to get the new layout coded (in its simplest form) enough to post it here already. There is still a lot of fine-tuning to be done and as it looks like there is no php support and I won't be able to modularise anything, there'll be a lot of manual templating going on and probably some little differences from page to page while I tweak. But still, I feel like I achieved something (I can get hung up for weeks on tiny design details and feel like I can't post anything until I have fixed it, or I lose patience and start again on something completely new... and then wonder why I never update).

Still need somewhere to port my wordpress blog to. I have tried several free wordpress hosts but they all have problems, the main ones being: I can't manually edit the templates/css; there are very limited template choices available and it's not possible to install any others; the bandwidth allowance is pitiful; the media storage is pitiful (2mb dude, really?); your site gets canned if you don't have at least X number of visitors per month; the ads crash the site; private posting and/or passworded posting disabled; the script installer has an old version and there's no way to update it because there's no FTP access on the account. The main problems, yes. There are others... but I am fussy... maybe more so than most? Anyhoo, the search on that front goes on. I really can't commit to paying for any hosting at this time. Wah.

4:35am, Saturday 11th December 2010

The good news is I got inspired and I'm working on a layout. The bad news, sort-of, is that I won't have much time to work on it over the weekend. Hopefully I can have it up in 3 or 4 days - meantimes I will add a little update of some kind each day so you'll know I haven't forgotten :)

11:05am, Friday 10th December 2010

So once upon a time I had a geocities.com homepage... like everybody else. It was a book review site. I put quite a lot of work into it. Now....? I can't even remember the address much less the username or password. The wayback machine is only useful if you can remember your old address :(

Anyway, hi. I'm checking out various free hosts to find a new home for my current site. Seems the only way to find out if a host will be suitable is to test-drive it. There's always something not stated in the faq or not put clearly or something I forget to check up on. Eh, whatever. It's Friday and my brain is out to lunch already.

Must admit I thought there would be more here than just a file manager - wow, it really is like the geocities of old! haha.

Okay, I gotta go. Stuffs to do...