I created some new wallpapers yesterday. This time, nothing all too modern and shiny. No, this time I tried to create some classic wallpapers. At first I just wanted reds and greens. But after I'd finished those, a golden version was added. Then I looked and realized that I didn't have anything blue. And I love blue myself. Imagine that.

So here they are! If people like them enough, I may just create matching PSP and iPhone wallpapers.

Fullscreen Resolutions:
• 1600x1200
• 1400x1050
• 1280x1024
• 1280x960
• 1152x864
• 1024x768
• 800x600

Widescreen Resolutions
• 1440x900
• 1280x800

Just click the color you want below:

Officially it isn't even winter yet, but we did get some snow yesterday! If only we'd have snow during Christmas. Seems like that never happens. No, we in The Netherlands get snow in November. Sometimes even in March...

Just a month ago we were walking outside and noticed how the leafs of practically each tree were falling down, or were already gone. With this snow, which is already melting again as I'm writing this, we feel like putting up our Christmas tree already. I'm a huge Christmas person. So is ChEeTaH. We like to have our tree up for months, a whole season if possible!

During the Christmas week, we'll be traveling down to my mom's. I'm looking forward to that. We don't have a lot of money to spend on gifts this year, but at least we'll get to spend time together. I already planned dinner for each day that week. I'm going to have to make my famous chocolate mousse. Let's not forget corn chowder, cheese puff pastries and cheese fondue! Oh, I can't wait

We already bought Seth's Christmas present. In our tiny cold little country, we also celebrate Sinterklaas in the beginning of December. That's actually the same thing as Christmas. Just read on Wikipedia. Christmas as it's known in the US is basically Sinterklaas taken out of proportions. I love Christmas more, because of the tree, the family time and the food. Sinterklaas is all about the children, whereas Christmas is about the whole family. We haven't gotten Seth a Sinterklaas present yet. The Sinterklaas tradition starts in November, when Sinterklaas arrives on his steam boat with all his "Black Petes" who all help him with all the presents for all the kids. From the moment Sinterklaas has arrived in The Netherlands, kids place one of their own shoes somewhere in the house in the evening, every day. Then, when they go to bed, Sinterklaas will add candy or a present in the shoe. Some kids get candy, but others get gifts. The big day really is on December 5. During the night, Sinterklaas will bring the larger and more expensive gifts to the children. The next morning, kids will wake up and be overwhelmed with new toys and games. That's basically the tradition of Sinterklaas. And Christmas was/is based on Sinterklaas, but most people just don't know that.

Our Christmas presents will be some new parts for our PC's. Except for my HDD's, TFT, keyboard, mouse and DVD drive, I will have everything new. My PC worked great in 2003/2004. Since I work on this PC each and every day, creating and designing as my job, I need it to be fast and reliable. In my spare time, I also use this PC for gaming and such. And it's getting slower and more annoying each time I use it. My old PC will be used as a storage system for tv shows, movies and music. The stuff I don't necessarily want on my PC, but also would like to watch or listen to every once in a while.

I finally have MySims on my PC. It's all very nice, but it seems none of my friends own it? So now I can't exchange essences with anyone. I will get back on that subject soon.

I am currently working on a few more projects. Two more are practically online, but not officially. I will post these projects as soon as they are open to the public. But my work on those particular projects is done, thus I have moved on to a few other projects. If all goes well, you will see three more new projects appear on my portfolio before 2009.

I haven't posted any pictures in a long time. This is mainly because I'm busy. But it's not just that. The Canon camera is starting to act up. With each picture, it has a purple-ish border on the top of the picture. That's really annoying. We won't be buying a new camera anytime soon. Got to save up for some new furniture first

I've been offline for a long time. This was mostly because my HDD (the 500GB I bought as a birthday present back in February) gave up on me and acted all weird. I got BSOD's, the HDD made funny noises (ticking noises, not good), it made my PC sooooooooooooo slooooooooow. I could save my important stuff. But I do not even want to think about what could have happened if I would not have bought a new one. I couldn't exactly afford it, financially. However I considered this to be quite an important issue, so we decided to buy a new one anyway. Now I've got 1TB instead of the 500GB. I will be sending the 500GB back one of these days, hoping they can either fix it or send me a new one.

The important thing though is that I am finally back. But not entirely (yet).

I kept quiet for a while, even though I've been back for some days now. In the beginning of August, we had an event in Amsterdam for The Sims 2 Apartment Life. It was a lot of fun, but exhausting for me personally. After the event, I spend my entire weekend on two extensive, in-depth previews. People loved them afaik, but they did cause me to spend my days and nights on them, without taking breaks, without having normal meals and sleep in between. Ironically enough the game has been released and I've written awesome previews, yet I haven't gotten the game myself yet. No time, but more importantly, no money either.

Well, after the previews, my HDD pretty much died on me. It did work but it kept getting more messed up each minute. Then, when we finally had some money to order a new one, it suddenly was out of stock (the website didn't say it was, so we ordered it, and ended up having to wait for our money back - a week or so). We ordered another one, from another store. A different HDD as well, as the one I had in mind wasn't available anymore. So I've been back for a week or so? I installed most of the applications I need by now.

In some ways I am finished and ready to go online again. You know, answering mails, being on my websites (and more importantly, working on my websites), moderating other sites, create and upload downloads and so on.

But I can't, yet.

Last week I was invited to go to a Spore event in Brussels. Too bad I couldn't make it there. Traveling there would have been too expensive. It was either traveling there and not being able to buy Spore's Galactic Edition or well, not going there and instead having the Galactic Edition. The latter was my best option. You see, I would have liked to do an interview. But I already played Spore several times in the past two years. Waiting another week wouldn't be so bad.

Because of the time I couldn't really use my PC properly, I was way behind on the websites I was working on (websites for clients, not my own projects). So the past week I have been busy with some websites. I will be posting some the next couple of weeks. But I can show you one I finished today! It's a Dutch site though. That shouldn't matter though, it's about the website, not its content.

The website is valid XHTML strict, CSS 2.1 and CSS 3.

Tomorrow is such an important day for me. Spore will be released officially on September 4, 2008 in The Netherlands. Some people were able to get their copy today, pre-ordered the regular Spore, not the Galactic Edition. We called in to see whether or not ours was there yet, and it was, but they didn't have the list of names yet. So we're going there tomorrow.

I should also warn my frequent visitors that I might be offline for a while the next couple of days. After 1,5 month without (cluster?) headaches, the pain is returning. And that's not a good thing at all. If this continues, I won't be able to work, relax, play, (fill in some normal activity here) at all the next couple of weeks.

That reminds me of my doctor. I may have found another doctor who may just be right for me. I had some chats with people who work in the health sector and they gave me tips of some doctors. Now, with my headaches returning, I see many reasons to switch doctors.

Last but not least I wanted to let you all know that my cat (Snowy) has been sick for some time now. We're unsure what's wrong. We visited the vet a couple of times and gave him meds and special food. It seems that he is doing better now, but still not completely recovered from whatever got him sick in the first place. I will keep you informed if anything should change.

Just a quick note to tell you all that Jean and DeKDeS joined our teams. Jean joined our Sims websites as a team member and will be working on the forums. DeKDeS will be helping me out on the Spore websites, as will Hexer. You may already know Hexer from SNW, he has been working on SNW (SimsNetwork) for quite a few years now.

Now, Hexer already joined the SNWeblogs a while ago. However Jean and DeKDeS are new bloggers! Jean can be found here and DeKDeS might use this address every so often

Now the bigger news (don't get me wrong, I love the fact that we have new team members, but I'm short on time and this is my portfolio, so I should focus more on portfolio stuff). I made a fancy template/theme for the SNWeblogs! I promised this a while ago, here it is!

It's widget friendly. It's valid XHTML Strict, valid CSS 2.1 and valid CSS 3. Oh and it matches the current SNW too of course. I will be making another one (for Spore) sometime soon. But for now this will have to do.

You can view this theme in action on most of the SNWeblog sites. I suggest you view this theme on Paul's SNWeblog though. He has a fair amount of posts and some extra widgets as well, that way you can see what the theme is capable of!

I know it has been ages since I blogged. It's not that I didn't want to. I love blogging. But I've been very sick (headaches, I will tell you more about that in this post, continue reading). And I've been busy when I was not sick.

I've been having major headaches for months now. Ever since January 2008 or so, I've been having these awful headaches. I went to see my doctor and he just told me "it's stress". Well, yeah, whoopie. But that doesn't help me one bit. Now he basically says, I can't change anything. If the pain killers won't help, you're on your own. Great.
I've read an article about headaches in our news paper a while ago. After that I began to do some research. And as it turns out, my headaches are a lot like cluster headaches. If you do not know what kind of headache this is, please read the article on Wikipedia. And here is a website specialized in cluster headaches as well. I will go and see my doctor again soon, and I will discuss this. If he won't do anything about it (I want him to send me to a specialist), then I will go and find another doctor who will.

This week I have visited the hospital for some physical (blood and urine) exams and an x-ray photo. I will get the test results tomorrow. I'm pretty nervous. Anyone who knows me a little, knows why I have visited the hospital. I don't feel like talking about it right here, right now. So I just won't.

Spore's Creature Creator has been released for a month now (well, in two days anyway). I have made a ton of creatures. And I will offer more creatures on Sporepedia. But I am still finishing the new website. It's almost finished, however it's not quite done yet. It will launch soon. That's all I will say.

There are a few "secret" projects I am working on, projects for "me". With that I just mean it's non-profit, and not for anyone else. Just a website by me, for me. I can't spill the beans just yet. But one of these new projects will be a very happy project. Expect to hear more in early fall 2008.

Because of the headaches (and many other physical disabilities) I haven't gotten many chances to work on existing websites, including SNW and some others. I am however busy on Fast Finger's website. That one is almost done.
I have two (but possibly three) other new clients who asked for my help with their new websites. And I will be focusing on those for the next couple of weeks. I'm hoping to finish all these new websites before August. Because I planned to work on the new SNW during this entire summer. Until now, I haven't gotten one chance to do so.

I am also happy to announce that my new gallery is almost ready to go live. I'm still finishing up a few minor design things in the css. The problem again is not that it's difficult, it's not difficult at all. It's mainly the lack of time and just me being sick. I decided to use Gallery2 instead of any other (paid) online service. Here are some reasons I decided to start using Gallery(2) again!

• I don't like having my pictures elsewhere. If some website or service decided to change their TOS or whatever rules they apply on the content uploaded on their website, I may lose my rights on my own content. They may even abuse their own TOS's in such a way that they are free to use the content I upload for their own purposes (like advertising, or whatever). I just don't like that. When I host my own photos, my own rules (and rights) apply and no one can take those away.
• I don't want to pay an (annual) amount of money to be able to upload as many photos as I want
• I like to customize and style my gallery. Many online services do not have this option at all. That's fine, but I want something that fits my websites.
• I want to be able to customize each "set", "group", "folder" or separate page on my gallery.
• I don't get a lot of feedback on my pictures on websites anyway. So it doesn't really matter which website I choose for my pictures. The amount of comments is in general very low (most of the times I don't get a comment at all). There is one website where I can get comments on my pictures (MyShutterSpace) and it's a nice website. But those are mainly real photographers. They don't want to see a whole bunch of family pics for example. And I don't want to bother them.
• There is just one website who offers to have a watermark placed on your uploaded pictures, and that is DeviantArt. But it's a DeviantArt watermark. And I want to add different kinds of watermarks on different kinds of pictures.
• I want to be able to disable my gallery with one click. With disable I really mean just put it offline for maintenance in a second. None of the websites I know can do this. You can delete everything, sure. But no gallery is capable of disabling something for a while.
• I don't want an upload limit for the amount of pictures, not daily, not monthly, not annual.
• I don't want an upload limit for the amount of space.
• I don't want a bandwidth limit.
• I don't want a limit to the amount of sets/folders/pages/groups I have.
• I don't want anyone to tell me I cannot upload something because it violates the TOS is any way. I don't think I ever will. But I don't want to worry about that either.
• I don't want to sign up on a website using another name than Rosiewosie, Rosie, Rosana or SNW. If it's unavailable, I don't want to become a member.
• I want to be able to use (java/php) scripts on my gallery
• I don't want to rely on another host or service for my websites (including my gallery). If I host my own gallery, I won't have that problem. If the site would go down, it's my own problem. But at least I would have the means to solve that problem.
• I want a gallery with RSS feeds.
• I want something to show off on my portfolio.
• I want to use my own favicon.

I'd say those are plenty of reasons I should get my own gallery. I won't leave the websites I joined in the past. But when I'm done uploading most of my pictures (or an acceptable amount of them) I will remove some old ones from the other websites (Flickr, DeviantArt, MyShutterSpace, Facebook etc).

I'm also considering to start creating new (custom) templates for Gallery2. I am not one to say that the existing ones are ugly. But they certainly were not something I wanted to use for my own gallery. I can imagine the lack of nice templates for Gallery2 is a reason for some people not to setup their own gallery. You should though, it's awesome software!