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.

This isn’t going to be one of those average blog posts I have. Well, perhaps it is, a little. But I will be ranting a lot - beware of the work-at-home-mommy.

This weekend my mom is coming over again. During my pregnancy, we had to find ourselves a place to live *really* fast. This was not an easy task. It actually was horrible. Luckily we found something through ChEeTaH’s family. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had an apartment by the time Seth was born. But we did. And we’re happy here.
Thing is, that we kind of had to move away from my family. I know in foreign countries they think we all live next door to each other, because The Netherlands is so small. Well, I still have to travel two full hours to get to my mom. I don’t like taking the train with a baby. And buses here are horrible. We do not have a car. Yes, there are people without cars on this planet. We don’t have that kind of money. Anyway. It’s not an easy task to visit my family. To be honest, the last time I visited my mom was in the summer of 2007, when I was still pregnant and lived in a city near her.
My mom has been visiting me ever since I moved here. She doesn’t exactly have a lot of money herself. So she can only drop by once a month, at most. So my mom is visiting this weekend, just a day. We’ll cook dinner together. She’ll help me sew some curtains (well I already have the curtains hanging on Seth’s room, but they’re too long). We’ll walk a little outside with Seth, near the Meuse and if she can, she’ll also go to IKEA for me to get some things I couldn’t buy last time. It’s something I’m looking forward to. Ever since I gave birth to Seth (which has been 9 months now!) I’ve only seen 4 of my own family members; my mom, two cousins and an aunt. My mom and one of my cousins come visit me frequently. But the rest of my family members have either just send a card (in which they stated that they planned a visit for Seth’s birth), or nothing at all.
I’m just glad my mom visits as often as she can. I’d like to see her more often though. However we can’t move back there (too much of a hassle, no money, no transportation etc and we kind of like it here). And she can’t come and live closer to us, for the same reasons. Of course there’s Internet. But I guess it’s pretty normal that any proud grandma would like to see her (grand)children often.

I also visited the hospital today. And I don’t have any news. Except for the fact that the internist kind of made me come over for nothing. A phone call would have been good enough. The blood tests, urine tests and x-ray photos all showed nothing to worry about. And now I just have to start eating healthy (I am already eating healthy!) because I can’t stay on these medicines forever. I know that too - but that’s not a solution. I’m on my own again. I try my very best at becoming a more healthier person. But there isn’t really anyone helping me. The fact that I have (severe) constipation problems is something doctors need to take a good look at. It seems I’m all alone again. What’s wrong with the health care in this country? I pay a *HUGE* amount of money every month, but for what? I’ve had it with the doctors. I’m even too tired to rant about it.

Remember the blog post I did a few days ago about the new SNWeblogs themes? Well in the beginning I had the feeling it had been a waste of time. As it turns out, some of my team members are gone and I don’t know anything about their whereabouts. I know from certain people what they are doing, because they informed me (and the rest of our team) in our team forums. Apparently not everyone thinks it’s a good idea to do so. I am going to clean out our team very soon. If any of you read this, consider yourself warned. If you know you’ve been neglecting the whole team, including me, but especially the site, I won’t put up with this any longer. I’m pretty sick of this. I can’t do everything alone. Yet all my team members seem to have vanished. I’m not complaining about those that have informed me. But I am pissed at those that have been gone for months and have done zilch on the sites.

The whole team matter brings me to this following subject: relaxing, having fun, playing some games, perhaps even some Sims. While everyone is having fun with their personal life, their online life and their gaming life, I haven’t been enjoying anything lately. I still do enjoy creating websites. However, I wake up in the morning, start working right away until somewhere after midnight, get a few hours of sleep and start again. This is starting to break me. I can’t keep this up. I love the work, but I’d like to have some fun sometimes as well! I have fansites to bring people interesting news, forums and downloads. But what’s in it for me? I haven’t played a game for months now, except a few creatures made in the Creature Creator. I have decided I am going to play Sims very soon.

But I’m a nutcase. I want to have new recolors. So I’m making a few hundred (real amount: somewhere around 1000 recolors+walls/floors) first. I’ve done most of it already. But I can’t play without these items I’ve had in my mind for a while now. There are some things my son has in real life and I want to make those for my Sims as well - just an example. I made 600+ walls recently and I am going to use those pretty soon!

Not today though. We’re being picked up in a few hours for dinner at family. I’m guessing I won’t be back before late in the evening - maybe even night time. And since I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night - 2 hours to be precise - I’m guessing I will collapse once I get inside the apartment again.

One final rant, DeviantArt and any other online photo/art service. I’ve uploaded a few nice shots of Seth the other day, as well as some websites to show on the portfolio. Not a single soul responded on the items. This is exactly why I think I can do just fine without those lame online photo services. No one replies anyway. And if you reply on their items (multiple items!) you get maybe one or two comments back.

Original black and white photograph:

Edited version - High contrast:

Another edited version - Soft Tone:

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 added this item to my portfolio of this year.

I was recently asked by Maxis to become a SporeMaster on the official Spore website. I decided to do it, however I know I won’t be able to work there 24/7. I will try my best of course. You won’t see me uploading many (if any) creatures on my SporeMasterRosana account though. I’d like to keep those on my “normal” Spore account (Rosana).

I’m not the only one who was asked to become a SporeMaster (that would be weird). I have a lot of company there! See here all the new SporeMasters in alphabetic order:

• SporeMasterArti
• SporeMasterHydro
• SporeMasterJube
• SporeMasterLadym
• SporeMasterLupine
• SporeMasterPetreak
• SporeMasterRob
• SporeMasterRosana
• SporeMasterWydraz

I’m looking forward to work with each and every one of these people!

The members on my own Spore sites won’t have to worry me being gone too much and not doing anything for SporeNetwork anymore. I’m currently developing a whole new system for our Spore sites. Don’t worry! But be patient, because I still have a lot of work to do.

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!

If you have read my previous post about Spore’s Creature Creator, then you also know I already have the Creature Creator (legally, yes). In the Creature Creator, you can make fancy pictures, hi-res pictures. I love a fancy desktop image. And I am ready for a new one. My most recent creature is “Blue Firebird” and I used him (or her, it?) in a new set of wallpapers:

They come in 3 normal resolutions:
• 1600×1200
• 1280×1024
• 1024×768

But I also made 2 wide screen resolutions:
• 1440×900
• 1280×800

If you like my creature, be sure to rate it on www.spore.com

There’s a big chance that the people who read this blogpost, know me through one of my own gaming sites. I run Sims fansites and Spore fansites. For Spore, I traveled abroad to visit E3, so I could see Spore with my own eyes. That was well worth it. Not only did I get to enjoy Spore, I also found true love there! Anyway, back on topic. I visited the Games Convention as well, also for Spore. You can definitely say I am a true fan. Because I can’t think of anyone else who would go on several expensive trips only to see a game.

Now, in the beginning of this year, I was invited at Electronic Arts to play with Spore. Even though I had seen Spore before on E3 and Leipzig, I only got to play with a few things like the Creature Editor. At Electronic Arts, I was finally able to play with the game itself! This was so awesome, you will find out about it when it launches on September 7! If you are curious about what my experience was about Spore itself, read my preview on SporeNetwork!

Tomorrow (June 17) is the day that Maxis will release the Creature Creator. You can download and play the free trial. But as a real fan, I suggest you download it at the EA Store or perhaps buy it somewhere else. It’s definitely worth it. And how would I know this? Well if you read this blog post, it should say enough about the many times I already played with it. However that’s not the only reason. Because Maxis has given me the opportunity (like many other press and fan sites) to download and play with the full version of the Creature Creator before its release tomorrow.

I have made a ton of creatures already. Most of them are online on Spore.com (check them out!) I even made a creature (The Froggurrr) which I also made at the Games Convention. See picture below:

See how it has changed in two years?! I used all of the same parts. But some textures have changed (like the small yellow dots).

Anyway. I would just like to take the opportunity to thank everyone at Maxis for making this possible. I can’t wait for Spore any longer. But I’m so happy I can play with the Creature Creator in the meantime. Tomorrow everyone can finally play with the Creature Creator. That means that the official Spore site will probably be overwhelmed with new members and creatures. Because of that, I am preparing my Spore sites as well and I’m currently working on SporeNetwork and Sporepedia.co.uk where I will offer creatures. ChEeTaH from TheSporeZone will also upload his creatures on Sporepedia.

Well, I blogged about the “all new” social networking site Plurk yesterday. I was curious to check it out. I am a social networking addict. I like to try everything out. I usually have a beta account before a service launches to the public. But I just found out about Plurk. People on Twitter were talking about it and some even called it the new Twitter. I wasn’t happy at all yesterday with Plurk, as you might have read in my previous post. Today I tried the service again. And I will share with you what I experienced today.

Plurk has quite a different timeline than Twitter. Twitter has the newest tweets on the top. Plurk has the newest plurks (not sure what to call them yet) on the left. I myself did not have any trouble adjusting to the timeline. But many people seem to have trouble getting used to the timeline.

Plurk has the same option ‘follow’ like you have on Twitter. But on Plurk, you can also add someone as a friend.

Plurk has a very good way to follow conversations, something I often miss on Twitter. I can keep track with older messages on Plurk. Twitter seems very limited and won’t even go beyond page 3 or so. When I haven’t been able to go online for hours, my timeline on Twitter has grown so big that I have to guess what all my followers were talking about while I was away.
Some people may want to argue with me on what I am about to say. But I actually think Plurk is less messy than FriendFeed. I am no n00b, but I am often having a hard time keeping up on FriendFeed. There’s just too much happening in a short amount of time. And it’s hard to read back everything. I personally prefer Plurk in this case for the conversations. But maybe everyone has a different feeling about this. I wouldn’t blame you. I just feel more comfortable having conversations on Plurk.

I have mixed feelings for the collapsible/expandable Plurks. I do think it looks nice (neat, tidy). But to hover and click on every one of those Plurks does cost extra time.

Some people find the default creature of Plurk disturbing. I do not know what to think about the default creature (a dog with no head). But I do like most of the other creatures. They really remind me of Spore. Anyone who knows me a bit, knows I am a Spore fan. I mean, I even have a few Spore fansites! Visit SporeNetwork to talk about Spore. I could use some company there! I could also use some team members to help me out a little. I’m usually the only one working on all sites. Anyway, continuing with the subject of Plurk.

The name, well, I think it’s an interesting name. I don’t hate it. I don’t like it either. It’s something I won’t forget for a while. But overall I think it’s a weird name. No offense to whoever has come up with this name.

I love the fact that you can use emoticons on Plurk! I would have been nice to see unique ones. But I don’t care that much. The ones you can choose from now are good as well. Doesn’t really matter. It’s just a fun addition to have which I didn’t have on Twitter. I can live without them of course. But it’s nice to have.

I love the whole fancy linking. Just typ an url followed by (text or title between parenthesis) and it will show a nice text link in stead of just a plain url.
http://www.plurk.com/user/rosiewosie (Find Rosie on Plurk)
The above code will give you:
Find Rosie on Plurk

Hmmm let’s see. I love the fact that we can choose color schemes. But I would have liked to create one myself, like I can on Twitter. I like my own ’styles’. Most designers would like that. I would understand it if you would need some Karma points to do this. But right now I don’t think it’s possible at all.

I adore those different colors you see with each verb you can choose. I’d love to see a few additions to the verbs list, like ‘can’, ’should’, ‘would’, ‘could’, ‘agrees’. Stuff like that. But there’s always the freestyle option which you can use for missing verbs. Doesn’t have a fancy color though

Even though right now I don’t have a phone to use for Internet, I do like the fact that Plurk has a mobile site. You can visit it here.

Something I really didn’t like it that I invited myself for a group account for a new website I share with some others. I tried inviting myself/us on Plurk. I got the invitation, followed every step and became a member. But for some reason it did not add me as a friend and my invites count wasn’t updated either. It’s not a matter of time, because it’s been hours and when you get invited by someone, you also have an instant friendship. I don’t mind that one invitation didn’t work properly. But it does show a bug they might want to work on.

I do not like the ‘rules’ the creators of Plurk have set up. There’s a page called ‘Safe Plurking habits guide’. I’m sorry. But it’s obvious they’re taking advantage of the Twitter downtime and server issues. You can expect a bunch of Twitter peeps signing up for this new service. Then don’t expect they will use Plurk any different!
I myself only stick to #4, #7, #9 and #10. And #4 doesn’t even apply to me if responses also count as Plurks.

I also still dislike the Karma system. I don’t want to invite a bunch of people if I’m not sure they want this. And I’m not going to ask each one of them individually either. Like I said in my previous blog post, the Karma system is something that could hold me back.
See, I don’t like the fact that I cannot change personal information like my real name, biography, location and relationship until I reach 40 Karma points. That’s plain ridiculous! I’d want to know who I’m dealing with on any site, including Plurk. So if people do not have any recognizable information on their Plurk page, I often have a hard time recognizing them. I do recognize most people by their username, but not all.
I do understand that a Karma system is fun for extra benefits like extra creatures, more emoticons, stuff like that. And I don’t mind the barrier set to 40 to be able to change your username. But I really hate the fact that I can’t tell about who I am until I have spent a whole week Plurking full time. I have contacted the Plurk staff about this. But for some reason I doubt they’ll take it serious. I hope they will.
(Edit: I just found out you have to fill in your birthday first in order to be able to edit the rest of your general profile information. Stupid that it’s not stated clearly, but it does solve some issues for me and perhaps for others as well!)

For some reason I cannot check my mail accounts through Plurk to see which buddies and friends have joined Plurk without me knowing about it. It just keeps giving errors. Doesn’t matter which mail account I use, error after error. It states I have entered incorrect information, like a false password. Well, I don’t think so. It’s working just fine. Only not through Plurk. Another thing that isn’t working for me is checking buddies through IM accounts. I hope this will get fixed soon.

Overall I think Plurk can make a good social networking app. I may not be the most technical person around. But I know what I like. After all, I am a user on that site and they usually know best what they would like to see, right?

It does need some work on widgets though. I’m used to my fancy extended Twitter script with support for own style/colors, a friends timeline, links and user icons. I would like to add a fancy customizable Plurk widget in the near future if I will continue to use it as much.
Another point I’d like to bring up is the lack of support in programs like Twhirl. I would like to see some good apps with support for Plurk, working in both Windows, Mac and Linux. I’m a multi-user and I like my desktops to be similar to one another.

If you’re new to Plurk and feel like the standard F.A.Q. page on Plurk doesn’t offer you all the answers, this page might bring you some extra information.

Maybe I will post a third post about Plurk. But for now, I think I have explained both my positive and negative experiences here in this post. Feel free to comment!

And don’t forget, you can find me on Plurk here as rosiewosie and here as snw (for Sims and Spore updates).

Another blog post about Twitter? Really? Wow! Well, no, not exactly. I have been pretty inactive for the past couple of days. I was in need of some calm and relaxing activities. It also meant I was going to be offline for a bit. Yes, it’s really me. I’m not sick. I just felt like taking it slow for a few days.

So today I came back online, checked Twitter and noticed people talking about Plurk. Quite an interesting name, right? Some people call it ‘the new Twitter, except for the downtime’. Well, some people have spoken too soon. Because Plurk has been experiencing some downtime (or at least many server errors) today.

I signed up as well, you can find me here. But so far, I don’t really like Plurk. It does look nice, that is true. However, I don’t really hate the looks of Twitter either. Here comes the ranting and complaining part. Their servers are hardly stable, but there’s already a ‘Karma’ system. You cannot edit certain parts of your profile unless you have Karma points. And you cannot get Karma points unless you invite people. Well, even though I hate inviting people without a good reason, I did invite Junior to see what it would change. Until now, nothing has changed. The site does reckon my accepted friend invitations, but it doesn’t update my Karma. What’s up with that? Back to the server issues. I cannot change my avatar because of their server issues. Yet I have to change my avatar in order to get Karma. Strange system so far.

I cannot review a service if I cannot test the features. A huge part of those features cannot be used because I don’t have Karma. And another part cannot be used because of the server issues. I guess I’ll have to wait until all is stable again.

So far, it does indeed have some similarities with Twitter: the server issues. You can add me on Plurk if you want, but I won’t stop using Twitter now Plurk is around. It’s too soon and it isn’t working properly.

I had promised Alex a new blog design a while ago. He’s a team member on SNW. Our SNW team members were all offered a free blog. Alex is a frequent blogger so I figured he deserved to be the first team member to get a decent custom blog theme!

The theme was made for the newest Wordpress (version 2.5.1). It is widget-friendly (two sidebars), something Alex really wished for. The theme is supposed to have a web 2.0, clean and simple look. I think it turned out pretty good. Alex is really happy with his new theme. I myself had fun making it.

Although I have decided to take it slow this week. I haven’t had a decent weekend in months. I haven’t played any game since the beginning of February. And if it wasn’t for those games, I wouldn’t even have SNW. I will start working again after the weekend. I’m already working on some new projects. So keep an eye on Miss Design if you want to know what I’m up to!