WHOA!!! Baby? Interesting choice of a website name… I’m sorry, but my teenage immaturity is
totally finding a lot of sexual innuendo in the choice of words linked together as a website name. I apologize for my utter infantilism.

Moving on to a more useful advice and comments… Whoa Baby is “represented” by an incompleted cut out image of Ashlee Simpson also known as a “PSD” or “PNG” by teenage dingbats when clearly PSD and PNG are image file formats, not transparent background images of useless celebrities. Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, the bogusly innocent and dodgy image of Ashlee is plastered over brushes that contribute less than a person walking into a wall. At least the colour scheme is maintained. Tip #1: Smaller height. More optimization. More originality.

The CSS is nearing the borderline to being atrocious. First off, the text margins are way to close to comfort. I know you obviously wanted to maintain the colour scheme of the header image, but you need to choose darker tones of the two main colours because the contrast between the bolded text and white background, for instance, is melting away my vision as I type. At least the text size isn’t making me smash my retinas into a blender…

Uh oh, I see redistributed content in the content page! Danielle even lists where she jacked them from. LOLZ, her terms and conditions page even allows for others to redistribute her “work” with permission. That’s just hilarious! I know that colourlovers.com is a site that allows users to share their “creations” (I never knew it took skill to match colours and come up with a “deep” sounding names, but I give the site some kudos for the patterns) to others for distribution. Anyway, it’s not right to provide other people’s work as a service from your site. It is okay to use their work in conjunction with the layout. The gradients are also “works” of that site. Whoa Baby inconvienitly makes its visitors download “their” colour schemes onto a mysterious program that has a .grd file extension. Danielle, you should make the courtesy to tell your visitors what program they will be using when they download those inept gradients. As for the coded layouts, I see a lot of HTML in the Cascading Stylesheet (CSS). When clearly Danielle separates the “coding” from the “CSS”. Aren’t they both coding? The layouts aesthetically are clones of your PSD-PNG-WHATEVER-THEY-ARE-CALLED-BRUSH COLLISION image headers. Tip #2: Better quality and more useful resources! If you cannot accomplish that task, then you shouldn’t be providing graphics/resources to guillible teenage crowds. Oh wait, they wouldn’t know the difference anyway. That explains the millions of hideously useless graphic sites that either worship celebrity “PSDs” or that pretenious “novel” series, Twilight.

As for the tutorials, Danielle definitely over-exaggerates the difficulty level of them to prove to herself and to the visitors that her site is useful. Par exemple, the “advanced” picture tutorials—come on, even a blind dog can follow the input instructions with ease. The little intro blurb in your PHP Includes tutorial really fascinates me. Yes, PHP can be really tricky, but what’s tricky about PHP Includes? There are barely any PHP needed in PHP Includes. I guess this concept of copy and paste could be difficult for ditzes like yourself (just kidding…). Tip #3: You should explain to your visitors why one would use PHP Includes or why one would image map. A list of instructions isn’t the only thing that makes up a tutorial.

It’s CREDITS TIME! I’m going to go straight to what Danielle has forgotten: paper-hearts.org, colourlovers.com, and Paint Shop Pro. Also, you need to credit where you learned about HTML, CSS, and PHP Includes. I highly doubt that an average girl who dresses in Hollister and takes pictures of herself from a mirror came up with the internet’s markup languages. I give Danielle kudos though for crediting most of her sources.

After all these discrepancies, I am rather surprised that Danielle reviews other websites. What on earth is with this trend in reviewing websites when clearly the reviewer has no or little skill whatsoever? Anyways, I find that Whoa Baby’s reviews are has helpless as a broken telephone. Come on, you should be more honest and helpful in the review. I don’t blame you though, your lack of experience should reflect a borderline useless review. You should also explain in more depth why marks are taken off each section—unless you totally randomize the mark to your liking. Okay, I’m going to stop there before I’m rejected from the pearly gates.

Altogether, Whoa Baby is a place where all my pet peeves of the internet meet up for brunch. With much more experience and experimentation, Danielle should be able to take her level of web/graphic design to a much more unique and useful level. The only question is, could she handle the truth enough to make change? We’ll see…

Let’s see: eye-friendly layout colours and CSS, not under/over sized header image, generic-less site name… Things in the mirror appear closer than they seem.

Looking for aesthetically into the website layout, I find that images can be more optimized. The image used in the footer headers appear to be a blob of smeared poop that slightly resembles a butterfly. I know you take a lot of pride in using the “transparent-follow-you-down-a-page” horizontal navigation bar, but you should jazz it up a bit so that the links are more noticeable when they are both still and moving. Since we are on the topic on the main navigation links, the order of links should be changed. I find it more organized if they are ordered by: HOME, SITE, RIN, REVIEWS.

The credits page! Wow, I acutally have nothing to say. Never mind, I do (not much though). You need to credit Feedburner, PR Checker, and of course, Extreme Tracker. Excellent job with crediting the credits. How creditable.

You have a good style of reviewing: you review both layout and coding. Kudos are enforcing eye-friendly text You should also concentrate more on the website’s content and review truthfully the quality and accessibility of the services they provide. I know that appearance is top-notch in this physically sustained world, but it’s nice to dig a little deeper.

Arrgh, I’m running out of things to say! Anyway, the truth is that your website rocks in terms of organization and its current content. Create more content to attract more varieties of visitors. It doesn’t necessarily need to be pre-made graphics! Patch up on some grammar and you’ll be set to sail.

(Wow, this review is so minuscule..)

I re-wrote my auto-biography, which I think is concise enough for those who want to get to know me more. I updated my graphics portfolio too. I know everyone is anxious to see my painting and other artwork, but I am still working on collecting everything at once. I hate slowly adding things one by one. Plus, I’m not allowed to touch the good camera. I have to use my sister’s stupid “HP Photosmart”, which is crap. That’s why she has it

Nine new textures

To remind you all, I have a ten year old, non-verbal and severe autistic brother. So you all can imagine how interesting my life is. It’s more than interesting. Autistic kids have “fazes” in their lives where they perform certain “rituals” because they have strong physical senses. Anyway, my brother’s current faze is rolling circular objects and chasing them around. Most Autistic kids do this when their in kindergarden. He’s ten years old, you do the math. Today he was rolling his favourite plastic wheel as usual when it rolled underneath the couch. It was funny, he was trying to pry his head under the couch in order to reach it. Then he tried to use other objects to fish it out. Of course he started to scream and yell because he was frustrated (that wasn’t so funny). After I pushed the couch over and retrieved his long lost plastic wheel. And all was restored in my household until he rolled the wheel outside on my driveway to the road. Another headache. Meh, I’m used to it.

Here’s some new music:

(Until We Burn in the Sun—Bedouin Soundclash)

** For those who are following with the missing runaway “obsessed with the Call of Duty 4″, his death was was not a homicide—it was most likely an accident. The police say that he most likely fell from a tree. To read more, click here. RIP, Brandon Crisp.

My tour begins at the homepage of Leaving-Town.org—a site that provides avatars, futile colour schemes, link bases, “gorgeous” brushes, colourization tutorials uselessly disguised as icon tutorials, and hopefully soon-to-be resourceful reviews. I give you kudos though for not having confusing and misleading names for the main navigation links. Well you know I’m going to ask this question, but I’ll ask it anyway: will this website make me want to leave town?

The layout mainly uses colour blocks from the CSS, which itself has advantages and disadvantages. The overt contrast between the blue-ish-green-ish colour blocks to the obscure gray toned background manifests itself with an uncentered navigational bar and main header image that shows up lighter in browsers that support older versions of PNG. Although PNG image fromats are better for smaller sized images, it’s useless when the image is plastered over a hexadecimal colour coded background. Tip #1: If you are going to use a hexadecimal colour code on the background, save the header image as a JPG file. Although your header image may appear satistfying on a browser like Internet Explorer, it doesn’t on others. If you still wanna stick with PNG then have the background be a PNG image file. You choose. Another point I’d like to bring up in this little tip blurb is that you need to fix the positioning in the #navigation so that the navigation bar “auto” centers itself to any computer resolution. You don’t need to use the longer <li> codes to achieve a slightly centered job. All you simply need to do is:

width: the percentage each link will be taking up out of a hundred;
float:left;
text-align: center;


That was a mouthful. Another kudos for not using the despicable CuteNews. BlogBox, a newer alternative made by another-perfect-world.org. The only thing that bothers me is the whole number achieves link business that’s happening at the footer. It’s not really appetizing. What if you entries reached a hundred pages? Tip #2: This can be found in the previous sentence which is merely self-explanatory.

CREDITS TIME !!! Looks decent—I’m not loving the clash of the underlined links in general. However, you forgot a truck-load of stuff! For instance, website host, domain host, HTML/CSS/FTP/PHP tutorials (come on, let’s get real this all didn’t come from the top of your head no matter how “dorky” you are!), fonts, BlogBox, photo manipulation program(s), FanUpdate (for your review site), and that handy-dandy mail form. I think that’s just about it! Whoops, I forgot Vasili’s (another-perfect-world.org) ask and answer script.

For the resources part of the site, I find that it is slightly lacking in terms of usefulness. Ah, the dreaded colour schemes shows itself again! Link button bases… Not very beneficial. I know it helps with the whole affiliates-advertising thing, but come on it doesn’t take a rocket scientist… no, I’ll stop at that. Besides some of the reused graphics made into link button bases are too cluttered to put any visible text—no matter how much glow and flash you overdose into it. Tip #3: More useful resources like textures, stock images, HTML/CSS/PHP tutorials, and even more brushes will have your visitors not leave town (stupid parallels…)

It’s interesting having sites with “review” services request a review from you. I like the previews on the main page. What a feeble cliffhanger—ooh! Whoa? Why aren’t you also reviewing the CSS and or PHP of a site? You know, I think coding is the most important “element” cause it pretty much allows for a accessible and un-eye-burning experience. I find that your reviews aren’t as beneficial as they claim to be. Listing every possible trendy web application doesn’t make a review a review. And you grade so tediously! Come on, give the grade or kitties they deserve. You telling them that their “awesome” doesn’t help anyone. I found that some sites that disappointed you were even better (in some terms) than the narrowed text-blendy banner sites that marveled you. Well at least the colour scheme owns the one on the actual site. I know you don’t review “Facebooks” (bad grammar! its facebook accounts/user pages), but come on why would you include that restriction anyway? How can you review a Facebook user page? “Oooh, Highschool Musical 3 is a no-no!” What I am a saying? You probably dig that prosy movie secretly. Just kidding…hehe

I find that you judge sites more on appearance although you mention some additional advice, which obviously isn’t fair. I know that appearance is an important factor, but a great website isn’t a great website for its nice layout only. I know that aesthetically appealing sites usually equate to great resources. But who knows? People vary. Plus, the sites that you admire based on appearance aren’t very mind-blowing in terms of well-made and original graphic design. If I were to take a glimpse at your website’s layout without checking out other pages, I would see an almost colour-scheme-less layout with dodgy un-optimized text smashed over a collision of “artistical” brushes. What do you think? Doesn’t sound awesome, does it? It definitely doesn’t. Nonetheless, you have a great site altogether. And you said it yourself, life is way too short. It’s way too short to waste on glimspes. But it’s long enough to find some truth.

P.S. I might come back for some visits. More souvenirs please!

So when I story about a nine year old from Yemen who has divorced a man who abused her strikes me, it really strikes me. Arwa, was sold for $150 by her father to a man in his forties who was interested in marriageable girls. Abdul Ali, the man interested in marrying Arwa, promised Arwa’s father hat he would wait for her to reach puberty before living together. However, he changed his mind and decided to move in with Arwa’s family. So for seven months, the “blossoming” couple shared a small room together in the family home. I’m sure that Arwa knew that she wasn’t in store for a nurturing marriage. Whenever Arwa disagreed with Ali’s demands, she was beaten horribly. Arwa had to endure emotional and sexual abuse from this horrible man dehumanized her. Eventually, she was able to loan enough money from a neighbour to get to court. Fortunately, the judge had enough humanity in his/her heart to grant her freedom from the monster. Source: BBC News

I know that Arwa’s father did not want all this to happen to his daughter. But you should never bargain with someone else’s life. I know he wanted some money to provide for his family, but do you really provide for your family when you allow for your own family member to be dehumanized? I am so proud that Arwa had the courage to take action on her disastrous situation. Not only did she escape, she did something efficient about it—she made sure that he would never come back again to any marriage. I know that she made history for being the youngest person to have a divorce, but honestly, who really cares? I don’t think she cares. But, this historical happening, reminds us all that the world is cruel place for even the youngest of people.

…

I actually have some site updates! I re-vamped the graphics section of my portfolio. Also, I re-vamped the textures section and added some new textures.

You’ve all probably read like a million blogs praising the victory of Barack Obama. Although I live in Canada, I’m am so relieved that a wonderful leader like Obama will be having relations with with Canada. I’m not going to assume that he’ll be the most rocking president of America, but I guarantee that he’ll attract more awareness and interest, especially in the youth. Well, he already has, there were so much more younger votes!

So what’s up with my life? It’s good even with loads of self-stress on me. I am working on the reviews for all you people who were wondering where on earth their reviews were. In real life, I’m not organized by material means—meaning I don’t have the cleanest room or the most organized files. The same goes for my review “services”. I consider them as more of a leisurely blog that is not bounded by rubrics and sub-headings. Yet, I have very good time management skills. I’m really good at planning and remembering things—you know mental stuff .

The Review Special: I’m going to revisit sites I have reviewed and see if they really improved. I’m going to call this little segment, “Blast the Past”. It’s a little play on words from the popular phrase, “blast from the past.” Beware (hehe, just kidding!).

I think you’ve gone too far. You hurt far too many people. Please be careful of what you say, and who you say it to

It really got me thinking on my personal style of writing and how I like to exaggerate the degree of something in other to point out a statement. I’m not going to totally disagree and bash the somewhat anonymous person who took the time to type this out. However, I’d like to clarify that radical and open-minded opinions that aren’t self-righteous are perfectly acceptable. I know sometimes the reality of subjects, like trendy novels, can be hurtful and disappointing, but that’s the fun of reading blogs or literature in general. I’d rather be more aware of what I’m being exposed to than accept and not question everything that’s thrown at me. Come on, some people your age aren’t even allowed to speak up on their viewpoints! Use your benefits in living in an accepting society to speak up for righteousness or even a different idea towards a popular novel series. You have more power than you think.

Moving on to a lighter topic, as everyone may notice, I’m back on track with my freelance and unorganized review “services” called, Nothing But Truth. If you wanna read my latest work of literary genius, scroll down or click the “reviews’ link on the main navigational bar. Anyway, I came up with the coolest concept ever! After I complete around ten reviews, I should have a little blog-reviews special where I return to the sites I’ve reviewed and see if they really handled the truth. You know, if they actually evolved as a web/graphic designer. Sound good?

I am welcomed to “Fusion” by a multi-coloured mess of blends, “stylized” fonts, and a random brush of writing. And for the icing on top, there’s a revolting meant-to-be-texture background that completely clashes with the meant-to-be-trendy header image that isn’t even aligned properly to the top of the page. Why the hell are texture backgrounds with completely un-matching header images trendy? I know people are trying to go for a “vintage” or “grungy” look, but it looks really horrible. At least Pat (can I call you Pat?) didn’t put the text on the texture.Tip #1: Make sure everything matches in the layout. Don’t use brushes for the heck of using a brush. Make the website name more visible and matching with the model images.

Time for the rest of the layout. *Scrolling… * Whoa?! What’s with the white background for the text? I know it’s “eye-friendly” with the black text, but come on—the contrast between that and the hideous texture background isn’t so hot. Tip #2: Stick to the colour scheme established by the header image, s’il vous plait. In general, layouts with random headers attempted to be blended in random backgrounds doesn’t work out—especially when hideous text boxes follow right underneath it.

I’m gonna try to make this part quick. The CSS is okay. The text size could be a tad more larger to balance with the grotesquely large header text. The colours are good though. But, the main navigation bar isn’t very complimenting to the rest of the CSS. First off, the dotted border below each link is unnecessary. Secondly, that annoying and pointless pink bar to the left of each link is just a stupid decision. Lastly, try not to centre the some of the text in the navigational bar when clearly the headers above them are aligned to the left. Okay, I’m not finished yet—it’s not a good idea to tell your visitors that your layout is only viewable in IE. Try to make your layout more browser compatible.

Time to learn about “Miss Patricia”! Again with the mis-alignment of text! If you want the text to be centered then center your header text. Also, try to describe yourself in full and complete sentences.

Here’s my favourite of the review: the premade content! Above the link that lead the visitors to the resources are set of rules:

No stealing in any way, which includes: redistrubuting without permission, taking off or erasing credit or claiming as your own. Do not send any hatemail. Do not claim that I have stolen anything from anyone. Thank you and enjoy!

I’m like a hundred percent sure that Pattiecakes broke rule number uno herself. Okay, maybe she did credit her celeb photo sources—you’re lucky

With a world where we strive to find more ways to perform an action, there are simple actions that are useful and there are also simple actions that are pointless and sometimes time consuming. For example, having to drag the texture previews onto your address bar to see their full size. What if some visitor out there with an old, unupdated browser wanted to use your textures? And somehow they weren’t able to drag the image previews onto the address bar? Even though the majority of people have updated browsers, it doesn’t mean this means of getting a texture is handy. Doesn’t having to drag an image to the top of browser sound so unprofessional and unnecessary when a handy thing called link exists? I rest my case.

Apparently it’s trendy thing to offer colour schemes or palettes. It’s not a difficult thing to match colours together. Maybe for you it’s a little hard seeing that your layout isn’t very matching. Did I add that your bullets completely clash with your so-called colour scheme? Why would you give credit to someone who can match colours together? The real question is, how can you tell someone stole your colour schemes/palettes? Colours are almost infinite! All in all, colour schemes/palettes are a stupid resource.

Let’s check out the premade layouts kids! Again, with that stupid dragging action! Pattiecakes doesn’t even mention that you have to perform that frivolous action to view the images. The premade layouts are mass productions of dodgy blend of images blended horribly to a colour-scheme-less background. Tip #3: If you are going to make graphics, make graphics that are actually aesthetically appealing. Just cause you make a lot of graphics it doesn’t entitle you to quality graphics/resource site.

Pattiecakes, you need to review what CSS is. Possibly this tutorial I’ve written will be easy enough to comprehend. CSS is not HTML. CSS pretty much defines the properties of the HTML. Tip #4: Don’t educate others with incorrect information that is not even explained through good old copy and paste.

After all these problems, I am actually surprised that Patricia attempted to compose a credits page. Unfortunately, she left out a lot of other creditable credits. Par exemple, HaloScan, CPanel, Extreme Tracking, Tiny Pic, Plug Me, your FTP Server Program, your free MyFlashFettish music player, the stolen music of that music player, the list goes on… Tip #5, and hopefully the last: Credit everyone and everything (I won’t even bother to type that in capital letters).

Patrica/Pat/Pattiecakes, I respect that you’ve taken the initiative to start a graphics site. Always remember though to take the initiative to face the truth. There’s nothing wrong with experimentation and advancing your graphic design skill to a level beyond trendy teen blends and colourizations.

On the topic of candy, I completely overdosed on chocolate bars. Chocolate is pretty much the only thing I’ll eat from the trick-or-treating, except for those occasional gummy bears. I got a lot of ‘Kit-Kats’ and ‘Coffee Crisps’, so now I’m sick and tired of them. Here’s a little list I’ve composed of my all time favourite chocolate bars in no particular order:

Well, my plan to achieve Halloween-themed activities didn’t really work. There’s always next year! I’m going trick-or-treating with my younger siblings. My brother who’s ten years old is a severe non-verbal Autistic (hehe, funny I didn’t mention that before) so it’s hilarious when he trick-or-treats! He’ll grab the person’s candy bowl and pour the entire thing in his bag! Then, my sister and I will have to explain that he isn’t a greedy child. I’m used to it. I’m used to his behavioural problems, tantrums, hair pulling… the list goes on.

Here’s a a Halloween e-card I made for my friend: Clickity click! . The character in the image is from a Spanish movie called “The Orphanage”. It isn’t a horror movie with gore, it’s more of a tragic and suspense story about a woman who suffers because her son is missing. She finds out in the end that her she accidentally killed her son. Jam-packed with ghost themes and tragedy, the movie is a great alternative from over-exposed Hollywood blockbusters.

& yes, there’s a new layout with the old CSS! I will be definitely changing that after I return from my quest for candy. Man, I’m gonna piss off the neighbours again. They always complain about my age and how I’m too old to walk around begging for candy. For my costume: I have no bloody idea, I guess I’ll see what my spontaneous skills pull off