New wallpaper for download Red Dragon flames

I’ve been in a rather dark mood lately, so had to change up the look of my desktop to match. If you like dragons, celtic designs, and/or tribal flames, you might want to take a look at this one. Free to download from my DeviantArt account. Enjoy!

Dragon Flames WP by ~webwenchginger on deviantART

Self hosted WordPress blog admin take note

I know I’m probably a little late commenting on this, considering the size of the WordPress community, but for those of you that depend on my blog to keep you in the loop as to what’s going on I’ve got to post this. A recent worm virus has been targeting older, outdated WP blogs. There’s been much buzz on the Internet about the “security measures” you should take to secure your install of WP.

I went right to the source, and decided to take Matt’s word for it. I wasn’t surprised to see that he had already addressed all the “alternate security measures” being thrown out all over the place.

There is only one real solution. The only thing that I can promise will keep your blog secure today and in the future is upgrading.

Overall, his summary is basically how I feel. Just update, it’s the best way to make sure that future manifestations of popular viruses have a hard time getting into your install. All the security scanning plugins I’ve tried have compatibility issues with the other plugins I run, rendering them useless… plus the load on the server is too much.

WordPress is a community of hundreds of people that read the code every day, audit it, update it, and care enough about keeping your blog safe that we do things like release updates weeks apart from each other even though it makes us look bad, because updating is going to keep your blog safe from the bad guys. I’m not clairvoyant and I can’t predict what schemes spammers, hackers, crackers, and tricksters will come up with with in the future to harm your blog, but I do know for certain that as long as WordPress is around we’ll do everything in our power to make sure the software is safe. We’ve already made upgrading core and plugins a one-click procedure. If we find something broken, we’ll release a fix. Please upgrade, it’s the only way we can help each other.

Strange things are afoot + Links of interest

Twitter’s turning out to be a great resource for news of what’s happening across the internet. I wanted to do some work on my laptop earlier, (after the last two site redesigns here and here, I needed a break!) and was confused when my Dell updates and GMail just wouldn’t work. After fighting with some of my security software, I left it running a scan and went to my office to at least check my email.

HootSuite is set to automatically open with my browser on my office computer, so when I opened that up, I saw a friend had sent a Tweet about GMail being DOWN. What? GMail doesn’t go down, or so I thought. It only took a couple of clicks, due to the trending topics links and hash tags used in posts to see that GMail had in fact been completely down for hours.

As HootSuite updated my Tweets, I saw news of Dell having uptime issues today too… at exactly the time I was trying to run my updates. Ahh. Mystery solved.

If nothing else, Twitter is proving to be very useful in staying “in the loop” as to what’s going on in cyberspace. With connections to the right people, I’m also finding tons of great resources to recommend to clients and readers of my Design Blog. Thanks to @cheth for the constant stream of important info!

The normal progression for me while I surf and keep updated through Twitter is to see a link to a resource, follow it, then if I find it’s something I might want to reference again, I send it to my StumbleUpon account and review it. This way, no matter where I am (I often have my laptop with me to cover client events and/or meetings) I can retrieve these important reference materials via any web browser. No need to ’sync’ my browser favorites, it’s all right there on StumbleUpon.

I use the Google Reader to bookmark other links that I may not want to show publicly… like client sites or my own obscure site links. I wouldn’t want to be accused of “spamming” my StumbleUpon account with all my own stuff lol.

Anyway, here are some of the links I’ve found recently that I will probably be referencing in the future…. some of them are bookmarked just because I want to remember to blog about them. What a great way to gather topics for future articles, I’m so happy to have found all this! (links below will open in new window)

Links of interest:

MYOWS – The 1st app to offer free online registration and management of your copyrights.

25 Incredibly Useful CSS Tricks You Should Know

55+ Extremely Useful Online Generators for Designers

Best 5 Social Bookmarking Plugins For WordPress

Get full control over the placement of Adsense ads in single posts *(for WordPress.org sites… love this!)

Twitter Postings: Iterative Design

Getting Started With HTML5: Part 1

If Famous Graphic Artists Were Web Designers…

Twitter Security Exploit Still Hasn’t Been Fixed

15 Twitter Netiquette Rules You Must Know

Why Do People REALLY Tweet? The Psychology Behind Tweeting!

There ya have it… everything from geeky web stuff to Twitter tips. I can’t help it, I’m simply not happy unless I’m constantly learning! Oh… can’t forget my dose of daily cuteness over at IcanHazCheezburger…

Today’s kitteh giggle

Promising feedback for Vintage Line

Black Vintage Bundle

While in the planning stages for the Vintage clothing bundles, I tried to design a more “authentic” look than most present when trying to go for the “flapper” look. The stereotypical sequins, fringe, and feather boas were not what I wanted to do. I had visions of muted shades, smokey speakeasy’s, and delicately ornate dresses with matching accessories that you probably wouldn’t wear with any other outfit. Ahh the good ‘ol days!

There was a scene in a recent episode of True Blood that flashed back to the roaring 20’s, and I think that inspired me to go for the more ‘affluent’ look of the era. I was absolutely thrilled when I found a mesh for the type of hat I wanted, because in my opinion, the short vintage hair is done to death for that look on IMVU.

“Thank you for developing such wonderful 1920’s inspired clothing. I couldn’t believe that’d I’d found such high quality and original garments from that era, in your catalogue- which admittley I’d stumbled upon by chance. What luck!, I thought when trying your peach version of the Flapper dress, so you can imagine my elation when I discovered your whole range. You are ‘ The cat’s pajamas’, WWGinger. Have a marvelous day.”

Vintage Inspiration

The above feedback from a shopper today convinced me that there is a more mature audience on IMVU after all. One that appreciates authentic, realistic products. Now, I’m not saying that my lil 3D products look “real”… I mean they look like what real people were wearing in the 20’s. I mean, it’s not like the Desperate Housewives of the era went to church or high society events wearing feather boas. Well, maybe they did! LOL

I’m just enjoying the outlet for creativity that IMVU provides me. For a while, I was able to get lost in the fantasy of what I might want to wear if I were going to a secret speakeasy for a night out with Mr. Right. The only thing missing from my bundle is a sleek long cigarette holder, but *sigh* that would have made the bundle available to adults only, and not everyone my age is able to buy products in that category since you have to purchase the “Acess Pass” to wear and use those things.

Vintage inspired shoe, with a modern twist

For as much as I enjoy trying my hand at replicating ‘authentic’ period outfits, I will admit that I had fun putting a modern spin on the vintage shoe. There was a definite cause and effect here… because I couldn’t find a decent mesh with a low heel that didn’t make my feet look like a neanderthal, I had to take a non traditional heel and create a shoe ‘reminiscent’ of the flapper era using a modern mesh.

[A mesh is the 3D object that I decorate with my hand painted textures. I haven't yet started to make my own meshes only because there are so many that do it so much better than I could at the moment. I have everything necessary to do it since I still have all the programs from school... I just don't have the time to perfect those skills at the moment. Besides, I get to help support the very talented 3D artists in the IMVU community this way. ]

I’m very pleased with the result, and went through quiet a few different tries before coming up with something I was satisfied with, but I would still like to find a nice low heel mesh that I can turn into a more authentic vintage shoe.

Three out of the six vintage bundles have been submitted for Peer Review. Bundles always take a lot longer to clear than the individual items, so I have time to finish doing the sales pages for the remaining three colors. Black, Peach and Rose have been submitted. Lavender, Green and Blue should be done soon. The entire collection can be viewed by clicking the banner below.

Vintage clothing line for IMVU by WWGinger available in 6 colors

True Blood changes ending to cut episode by 15 minutes

True Blood is one of my favorite shows, that I used to watch during the week after setting it to record on the DVR. I’ve become so enthralled with the show that I now wait anxiously every Sunday night for it to start. He hates to admit it, but hubby enjoys watching it with me! It’s wonderful entertainment, and as Episode 10 proved the other night, it can be really funny, in an admittedly strange way.

I went to the HBO site for True Blood, and read the synopsis of Episode 10 that just aired on Sunday night, “New World In My View”. I did not see this in the episode as it was aired!

If you haven’t yet watched Episode 10, which aired this past Sunday night, you’re not going to want to read the rest of this post, as it contains spoilers! I’m providing a cut at this point so that I don’t ruin anything for anyone that might find this! LOL