%$#^* credit cards.

Sometime either last month or this month, our credit card information was lost or stolen from a gas station we visited at some point. (We don’t even remember using a Wesco station, but apparently we did.) As a precation, Mastercard and our bank froze / canceled our credit card. We have a new card on the way, but it won’t be here for another 10 days.

Since we pay for our domain every three months, this month (December) was the month we paid. As a result, our domain has been taken down.

I’ve already checked with out host and they say all our data is intact. Once I clear the balance on my account, Luna will be fully restored. Overall, not how I wanted to spend my day after Christmas.

I have a bad case of procrastination when it comes to my final paper for WRI 115. I simply do not want to do it.

I started off in college so well, but now I’m back to my usual habits. Oh well, last minute turn-in like everything else.

Okay, since I *think* I’ll have Christmas break to get some things done, here’s my tentative to-do list.

1. Finish eFiction Skinning Tutorial.
2. Finish Luna’s copy of Shuriken
3. Help Jass fix the Pink skin
4. Help Jasson program the new features.
5. I’d like to do something with my blog here.
6. Maybe do another new skin for Luna if I have time.

I’m just not sure how much I’m going to get done. Some of these projects are going to take a while. eFiction 3.0 is still awful buggy, though. We might push the upgrade and programming back a while to give the live version a chance to settle down. I don’t think Jass or I have the time anymore to redo our mods a million times like we did for 2.0 when it came out.

Since I’m directing more and more people here to pick up eFiction stuff, I really should redo the blog with my career in mind too. I’m going to have my resume and portfolio here, so I need to redo. Even though I made this layout for my final, I never quite finished it.

Jasson, though, has started to redo the Pink skin to address all the graphical bugs. If he and I worked diligently together like we did on Shuriken, we could have it done in a day. Ah, decisions, decisions.

Description: This will display a “View Profile” link to the account menu in user.php, which will take your users to their author profile page.

Requirements: eFiction 2.0

Difficulty: Easy

Modification History:
June 23, 2006 — Released Modification
November 30, 2006 — Updated, forgot a step

Files Involved:

• user.php
• languages/en.php

Instructions:

I’ve been making layouts for eFiction for a couple years, but it suddenly occured to me just how many fanfiction sites there are that look exactly like Luna because I’m using the same layouts I’ve released. XD

We need a fresh, creative, and distinctive look that strictly belongs to Lunaescence. No release or sharing, it’s ours in the biggest sense of the word. Pink really doesn’t count, because it’s too girly (and glitchy, sorry Jass) to be a primary design.

Sure, I’ll keep my other skins available, but there’s several hundred sites now that have some combination or derivation of Shinigami Blues, Marauders, and/or Zenlike. Shuriken is starting to make the rounds too. Don’t get me wrong, it’s thrilling seeing so many people using my designs and seeing them translated into so many different languages.

I just suddenly realized we don’t have a look of our own. And that bothers me.

Even though I probably can’t claim it on a resume, this site has been a huge education for me. I want it to succeed and thus, I’m going out of my way to learn things they aren’t teaching me in college.

I guess the problem is, I’ve started researching area companies and realized that I’m about to enter the big picture. Some of these design firms and agencies I’m looking at blow my mind by how cutting-edge they look, especially compared to my sites. I know I simply have a bad case of artist’s vision and inferiority complex, but I really need to up the ante.

I’m just not sure where I’m going to find the time to do that! XD

Additional Files for Shuriken

Raw Graphic Files: shuriken_raw_graphics.zip

Readme File: SHURIKEN_READ_ME.txt