Newest Skins

All Skins

Total: 162

.hack	(18)
Asian Kung-Fu Generation	(2)
Bleach	(12)
Code Geass	(2)
Cowboy Bebop	(1)
D. Gray-man	(4)
Digimon	(7)
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children	(4)
Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core	(1)
Final Fantasy XII	(4)
Fruits Basket	(1)
Full Moon wo Sagashite	(4)
Fullmetal Alchemist	(10)
Gankutsuou	(2)
Get Backers	(8)
Inuyasha	(2)
Kingdom Hearts	(13)
Kyou Kara Maoh	(1)
Legend of Zelda	(2)
Megaman	(2)
Naruto	(4)
Okami	(5)
One Piece	(2)
Other	(3)
Ouran Koukou Host Club	(4)
Phoenix Wright	(1)
Pokemon	(10)
Princess Tutu	(1)
Reboot	(1)
Resident Evil 4	(1)
Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure	(1)
Samurai Champloo	(5)
Shakugan no Shana	(3)
Sonic the Hedgehog	(6)
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu	(5)
The World Ends With You	(1)
Tsukihime	(1)
Wolf's Rain	(3)
Xenosaga	(4)
xxxHolic	(1)

Welcome to SpaceCatSamba.com, my personal domain. If it's your first time here, click here for a more detailed introduction. Otherwise, the main menu's up top, the skin menu's on the right - enjoy your stay :)

Category: Site Related

SpaceCatSamba v.7

09/27/08 12:39:00 pm

New site version! It's been long overdue for a revamp, but a lot of work has gone into improving functionality.

Some new features include:

reorganized gallery
commenting now available for gallery images
lightbox images (no more pop ups, so long as you have Javascript enabled)
AJAX comment forms
easier social bookmarking with AddThis.com widget
easier-to-read color scheme :)

There has also been a lot of optimazation of the code and database (which is more or less negligable to the viewer, but helps the developer - me - keep things running smoothly). The site has been tested on Firefox 3 and MSIE 7. Due to inadvertent circumstance, there has been minimal testing on MSIE 6 as well, but please remember that I do not intend to support it anymore. If you find anything that looks odd or isn't working, please don't hesitate to email me about it.

Just Kidding

08/06/08 07:38:26 pm

Okay, so it seems I lied a little in my previous post when I said there wouldn't be any new content updates for awhile. New Crisis Core skin available. I've also got some drafts for Soul Eater skins...

And I fixed an error that was messing up the comment forms on the newest news posts. This is why the site needs some code development attention. :]

Vista, Comic Con, jQuery

08/02/08 04:48:02 pm

I might've made this post last weekend, but my draft of it was sitting in an unsaved window when Vista decided to reboot itself in the middle of the night for updates. It's a new computer, so I hadn't turned that setting off yet, but it's always been something I hate about Windows - don't turn off my computer without my say-so.

On that note though, having had this computer for about a month now, I don't see what all the negative fuss about Vista is for. I can't name anything specific to complain about, and certain tasks are easier than they were in XP. I can understand that perhaps people were hoping for some innovation from Microsoft (...wait, really?), and this "Midori" project sounds interesting (if anything ever comes of it), but it seems like if you were fine with XP, you should be fine with Vista; it's just another iteration in Windows.

Anyway, on to whatever my original topic was... Ah yes, Comic Con. It came to town last weekend, as it does every year around that time, and it feels like the internet has descended upon San Diego. All the niche-popularity webcomic authors, media companies hawking sci-fi entertainment, anime product retailers passing out cat ears, and dorks dressed up as MySpace.com (true story) flood into our little downtown enclave... which isn't so little, really, but feels moreso when there are an additional 125,000 people in town.

Myself and Rirath attended the con on Sunday morning, browsed the expo floor for a few hours, and saw John Cho and Kal Penn (of Harold and Kumar fame) on a panel, where they were quite amusing. Neil Patrick Harris was supposed to be there too, but apparently skipped town to go direct a play in London, boo :P

Commentators are starting to wonder whether the "comic" is going out of "Comic Con," to which I must say, "you're only just starting to think that?" Last year was the first time I went, but it had the same feeling as this year, where the TV, movie and video game attractions seem bigger, louder and better than the comparatively plain comic book booths. Personally I can't say I'm opposed to this though; digital media is of greater interest to me. If the comic guys pull out of Comic Con, I'm sure they'll be missed... but not by everyone.

In other news, I'm working on some website development (...for this site, I mean), so I may not be updating with much content for awhile... but hang in there. I've adopted, and am really enjoying writing in jQuery. Javascript is such a cumbersome language that I'm usually reluctant to use, but jQuery makes it make sense. Why put up with some convoluted method of DOM selection in plain JS, when jQ makes use of the CSS selectors we already know? It's intuitive, which JS never has been for me before.

No More IE6

07/19/08 04:23:42 pm

After about 5 years with my previous computer, I've recently invested in a shiny new PC that I am quite pleased with. :3 However, while my old computer had Windows XP, and could therefore run the convenient Multiple IEs program that I used to test my site in IE6, my new computer has Vista, which apparently cannot run a standalone version of IE6 so easily. Because of that, and the fact that I virulently hate IE6 anyway, I am officially discontinuing support for it on my website. This doesn't mean IE6 users won't be able to access the site, but that I won't make any attempt to fix things that are only broken in IE6.

If you are still using IE6 - as my traffic logs report that approximately 26% of my visitors are - please stop. IE6 is slow, very insecure, and is the bane of web developers because of its numerous bugs that will never be fixed. It wastes my time on a regular basis when I have to find non-standard solutions to support this archaic browser that should be exterminated, not coddled.

If you need a new browser, I highly suggest the latest version of Firefox. Here's a good list of reasons why. Or if you prefer to stick with MS products, just get IE7.

Just get rid of IE6, okay? I am nothing but serious when I say that the internet would be better off without it.

Happy 4th Ramblings

07/04/08 07:39:14 pm

Happy 4th of July, to those of you who celebrate it. Nothing to post today but some random thoughts from the last few days.

Bookstores. On two separate visits, we've noticed a certain breed of person... Usually it's a teenager, usually reading a manga, usually while seated smack in the middle of a narrow aisle between bookshelves. While we spend awhile finding the book we want, this person remains stationary, even while other customers attempt to go around him (this person is also usually male). I suppose the responsibility of dealing with this person falls upon the bookstore staff, but it's awfully rude all the same.

Gaming. I've just started up Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core, which is the first game I've played on a PSP actually. While the visuals are lovely, the battle system feels flawed, at best. There's not much challenge - you can mash X to beat most enemies - and the roulette-like DMW thing dampens the difficulty even further by bestowing numerous power-ups and special attacks throughout the battles. It also feels odd that you have absolutely no control over the DMW wheels - they just spin and stop whenever they please. The game's story and dialogue also feel rather silly, what with everyone quoting poetry or proverbs and sprouting random wings. And how weird is it to see Sephiroth acting normal? Still fun though, and Zack is a likeable lead.

Website. Hopefully some site improvements will be coming along soon, if I can spare some time to work on them. I know the skin menu on the right is a bit broken in Firefox 3 (which only a small percentage of you are using... and I thank you), but I'm probably going to leave it that way for now.

Cleaning Up the URLs

04/08/08 06:45:24 pm

I have been tinkering with the site's .htaccess directives to change the URLs from variable-laden to "clean" versions, because it's user and search engine friendly. This might cause some links to go AWOL however, since well-defined redirection rules can be tricky business. If you find a link that's not taking you where you expect it to, please email me (or leave a comment on this post) with the full URL you used. Don't tell me about the links in the RSS feed though - I know about those already.

A Quiet Anniversary

01/14/08 02:23:36 am

Today marks seven years that this site has been online. Seems like just yesterday I was writing the announcement for six years... Sadly, I have nothing new to upload today; work has been particularly time consuming this week.

I did however spend a lovely New Years with my accomplice, Rirath. I think there's a picture of it somewhere... 2007 was certainly a memorable year, and 2008 has great potential as well.

But, maybe I'll have actual content to post next week :)

New Host

11/19/07 06:51:46 am

I haven't been updating lately because I haven't been able to - I had completely run out of disk space, and the site was down a few times because of it too. But, if you're seeing this update, then you're seeing the site on its new host, where there'll be plenty of space and plenty of bandwidth! Hurrah! So... hopefully there'll be new content... somewhat soon.

There's also this game though, called Super Mario Galaxy... It rocks. I should have a rather more thorough opinion of it posted soon over at TwiddleGeek.com. Also recently completed Phoenix Wright: Trials & Tribulations, if you'd like to know what I thought about it.

You Solve One Problem, Find Another

10/21/07 10:20:45 pm

My PC is up and running again with a replacement power supply! All was going swell until I found my site in disarray this morning, apparently caused by inability to access its database, which itself was caused by the site having exceeded its disc space quota with my host. After deleting some unnecessary files, I got under quota again and the problem resolved itself. That's quite the temporary fix, however.

It's not yet at the point where I have to say, "I can't update anymore for lack of space," and even if it were, such an announcement would also be only temporary until I can migrate to a new host. I'll certainly be looking into it in the meantime...

The System is Down

10/08/07 10:38:58 pm

Recently my PC decided it did not want to turn back on after being turned off one night. And while I still have a perfectly functional laptop, the PC is my primary machine and thus houses my most relevant files. I think the drives are okay though. In any case, it'll be needing parts and labor before it's up and running again... "but we can rebuild it!" Less explodie.

In the meantime I've got my laptop hooked in to my widescreen TV and quadraphonic speakers for what I think is a pretty sweet little set up.

Edit: Ha, apparently I'm lucky that my PC's power supply lasted as long as it did (mine's about four years old... ancient really, in computer years, but this is the first serious problem that's afflicted it). But this leads me to believe for sure that the power supply is indeed what's wrong with it, and that swapping it out should fix things. I've ordered a new one that should get to me next week...

The Usual Jabber

09/22/07 10:53:33 pm

I think the best way to understand why a website is not updating - at least those sites which are run by just one or two people - is to start up your own site, run it for at least a year, and see for yourself the sorts of things that distract you. Even when we're fond of our sites, other things in life can push their priority lower and lower.

Lately a dip in my health took a hit at my energy, but other, more pleasant factors have been a welcome diversion too. It may also be relevant to note that I've pretty much stopped watching anime on a regular basis. I still like it, but the quality of recent series is failing to impress me, I suppose. I'm also turning more to gaming for my passive geek hobby instead. So it's possible there'll just be more game skins here too.

Thanks to all of you who have left a kind word here and there! My apologies for being a bit negligent of commentators and contacts. I can't promise I'll get any better ;)

I Can Has Update?

07/18/07 12:39:15 am

Yes, you can. But not now.

I've been working on some fan art lately, which takes significantly longer than skins, and tends to get less regard ^^; But I still get the urge to make some every now and then, so... bear with. There will be both more skins, and more WP Themes.... eventually. I'd say "maybe this weekend," but the last Harry Potter book comes out this Saturday, so I have a feeling I will be dorkily incapacitated.

I'd also like to do some significant updating to the Gallery section - allow comments, and redo the format. But, after a full day of coding at work, delving into my own code is not typically what I want to do when I get home. Still, sooner or later I ought to get to it. There just need to be more weekends in the week.

...I'm gonna go play Wind Waker now.

Freedom to Add New Features

07/04/07 03:44:20 pm

Happy 4th of July! Today I'm rolling out what I hope will get bigger and better with time: a WordPress themes section! For now there's just one, and it's probably pretty amateur compared to others. ^^; For me it was more of a learning experience than an attempt to make a killer theme, and indeed I learned a lot. Oh yes, here's a preview shot:

You can grab it if you like, from the Themes section that will, for now, be listed under the Misc Pages header in the left hand column of the page. The section itself is rather rudimentary, but like I said, it's a start - I'll expand on it when the need comes ^^;

Lazy Summer?

06/27/07 10:32:42 pm

Yeah, I know it's kinda slow on updates here lately. I don't really have any explanation, either. In any case, added a scrapped pic to the gallery - MirageGaogamon Burst Mode. There might be some actual, finished fan art coming sometime in the near future. And here are two in progress skins - FFXII Revenant Wings and more D. Gray-man.

The Feeds Have Moved

04/25/07 02:09:59 am

Among other efforts being made to reduce bandwidth consumption (see previous post), I've moved my RSS Feeds over to Feedburner. I also stuck the old Feed URLs with server redirects, which supposedly should've made the change seamless, but my Live Bookmarks in Firefox appear to be busted. So if you too are experiencing feed issues, please re-subscribe to the feeds at their new locations:

Updates Feed | Skins Feed

Sorry 'bout that.

Overconsumption

04/22/07 12:30:57 am

After several consecutive months of coming close, it seems this is the month that the site's finally gone over its bandwidth quota!... And it's only the 21st. Thankfully my host doesn't do what most will do in this situation, which is shut down the site until the month is up. I did some image compression to try to cut down on some transfer, though it's not much, it still cuts down a little, and makes the site load faster to boot.

In any case, I take this as something of a compliment. Along with increasing hits, increasing bandwidth consumption is a sign of a growing site (especially since I blocked hotlinking). So, thanks y'all.

Reformtastic

04/07/07 01:06:59 am

Sorry for the general slump in the rate of new skins lately, but my mind has just been on other things; one of which is improving the usability of the site. Thus I present to you: the "Posts by Category" menu, now showing in the left-hand sidebar of the site. Since my "news" posts have gotten more blog-like, I've been implementing various blog organization features, so it's easier to find what you might be looking for.

I love the development cycle of my layouts - make a layout, add things to accommodate new content, but those things don't fit so well or aren't getting properly showcased, so then you make a new layout to better suit what your site has become. Then repeat. This layout is still holding up fine, but I keep coming up with new little ideas to put in here and there. I have an inkling of when the next major rendition will come, but it's contingent upon other factors rather than being a date set in stone.

And yes, I'm also still playing KHIIFM+ (such an ugly acronym), but I think I am nearing the end (of the Re:CoM disc, that is), so I'll probably not write about it again until afterwards.

Change is Good

03/24/07 07:05:12 pm

Winter Quarter's over and it's Spring Break! Of course I'm... still going to be working all week... Oh well; unlike school, work doesn't intrude into my off-hours.

Anyway, spent a good part of the day fixing up various little things around the site, not all of which are visible changes, but things I wanted to get done nonetheless. So I'll be getting back to skinning now.

Just Because You Can't See it...

03/16/07 01:57:30 pm

A little note about the comment forms - when you submit a comment, it goes through a word filter that picks out swear words, potentially malicious html, and the names of popular prescription drugs, among other things. If it finds a blatant excess of such words, your comment will be rejected. If there's just one or a few however, your comment is accepted, but won't show up on the site until I've looked it over and approved it. Lately there have been a couple of repeat submissions of comments, presumably for this reason that they're not showing up immediately. Particularly, the term "Code Geass" gets caught because the filter sees its last three letters as a swear word.

Yeeeah, I really ought to explain this stuff where it's more relevant; like, on the comment form itself, perhaps. This is one of the many "little things" I want to touch up on the site, but have not for lack of time and organization. The plan is to remedy such things over spring break. In the meantime, consider me a basket case.

The Student Webmaster Conflict

03/04/07 02:18:52 pm

I try to post to the main page at least once a week, usually on the weekend, and I missed last weekend. It's the end of the quarter, meaning I've got a lot of projects, papers and studying to do for school. So I don't have a lot of spare time for my leisure activities at the moment. But anyway... Two Code Geass skins on the way, probably sometime next week - at the very least I get a couple of hours in lecture to skin on my laptop (I mean, really, it's not like you need to be listening to every word... and I'm good at multitasking). There're a lot of little things I'd like to get done on the site as well, but they'll have to wait 'til Spring Break.

Notice: If you email me (or have emailed me recently and not gotten a reply yet), I will probably not respond until April (which is not to say that email isn't welcomed, I'm just pressed for time right now).

CSS stands for "Guess and Check"

02/19/07 10:52:41 pm

Just noticed and fixed some rather obnoxious CSS errors that were appearing in IE7. If you ever see something funny with the layout, especially if you're using IE, please leave a comment or email me about it, because I probably don't know it's there ^^; I don't use IE, but I'll keep supporting it while it has a ridiculous majority on the world's browser usage.

I dream of a world where all browsers render CSS consistently.

Anniversary

01/13/07 02:31:35 am

Today is the site's six year anniversary! I'd serve cake, but, that's rather hard to do on the internet. I've posted several finished request skins, including Takuto, Axel and Impmon, and the two Ajikan skins as well. Some of the next subjects on the chopping block* include Hitsugaya, Haseo [that super cool version of him from volume three of GU], and Tabby [also from GU... and that awful awful .hack//Roots anime]. Oh yes, and that Twilight Princess Modern from a few posts ago [I'll often have up to six Classic skins in progress at any given time, but one at a time is the limit on Moderns ^^;].

*Skins mentioned in Updates are subject to cancellation without prior notice.

Attention Duelists!

01/03/07 04:36:12 pm

The Firefox-related skin downloading issues should be fixed now, thanks to a suggestion from a certain... hmm... geek (*cough*). I wouldn't have bothered making a post about this, except that in a previous post I said to right-click the Download link if you were having trouble. Well, that's not going to work anymore, so, please don't do it ^^;

Skins mentioned in the previous post [and then some] are still on their way. And remember folks, the comment forms are not just for Rirath* - they're free for all of you to utilize! :D Thanks to those of you who have used them though :)

*I plug your site like, every other post nowadays...

Merry [Post] Christmas

12/27/06 12:51:05 am

With the busier part of Winter break over (the part where you run around buying gifts and decorating, that is), it's time to get back to my recreational activities. As usual, I have a number of half or semi-done skins lying around. Here're the ones I'm letting you see.

The top two are based on Asian Kung-Fu Generation CD case art (I like Ajikan and the art's neat, that's why... and seriously, what's cooler than a chimp with a telescope?), bottom left is a requested Takuto, bottom right is Twilight Princess [which is super early in development here; wanted to use the image, but it just wasn't working out on a classic... so it ended up Modern].

And now, a short and pointless rant about flash drives and similar portable USB devices. I got one such device for Christmas, and it's the second one I own now that has its strap loop on the USB cap rather than on the device itself. I find this rather foolish - if I'm going to attach this thing to a strap and carry it around, if by chance it comes apart, I'm not gonna be too thrilled that, although I've lost my flash drive, thank goodness I still have its cap.

Yeah, pointless rant like I said, but I'm a designer - I notice these things. :P

In other news, the site is running out of available disc space on its host's server. But I was already looking to migrate hosts anyway. It's just a matter of when I'll be able to get it done... But, updates should continue regularly; if I run out of space, I'll compensate.

Tweaks

12/17/06 05:40:39 pm

Fixed some of the stuff a certain agitator (*cough*) was putting in his two cents about, including:

Comment forms are better explained with which fields are required, and added an option to hide your email
Also fixed the awkward tabbing order on the comment forms, and the awkward appearance of the form in IE
Newest skins list in left-hand column increased to 5
Added total skin count to right-hand column

And some things that I wanted to add or fix:

Newest skin image is a link
Re-added Copyright page
Adjusted times on the site to be accurate with my timezone (PST)

More tweaks coming soon, but I think the rest are mostly ones you won't actually see...

Color

12/16/06 12:29:52 pm

Hmm, so, for the most part I was designing this layout on my laptop, and it looked fine there, but on my desktop, the colors look a lot more saturated and don't work as well as I thought they did on the laptop. The same thing happened with the new Zelda skin, which I tried to bleach in Photoshop, but then it just looked washed-out. Hmm, no more development of anything involving color on my laptop? Eh, suffice to say I may tweak the color scheme a bit some time soon...

SpaceCatSamba v.6

12/16/06 10:00:00 pm

So this is why I haven't been updating for the last couple of weeks (well, also because I had final exams for fall quarter). Welcome to the sixth rendition of SpaceCatSamba.com!

New Site Features:

Quick n' Easy Skin Nav : Skin menu on all pages.
Archives : News posts are now being archived; this is in part for the sake of having an Archive, but also because I've done away with my blog and will be making blog-esque posts on the front page when I feel like it.
Comments : You can now leave comments on both news posts and skins.
Guestbook : Leave a message.

I've tested out the layout on Windows in Firefox 2.0, MSIE 6 and 7. As far as my traffic log tells me, those are the only browsers worth supporting for my audience. If errors are found, please email me about it.

Also for the occassion, I've released eight new skins for the following categories: Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu, Legend of Zelda, Digimon Savers, Ouran Host Club, Final Fantasy XII and One Piece. Enjoy~

Fox Bug and Hotlinking

11/29/06 11:57:05 am

Good day, viewers! I am not updating lately because it's the end of Fall Quarter at school, and I've exams and projects to deal with. But expect a big update sometime around two weeks from now. Anyway, there're two things I wanted to address here.

First off, it has been brought to my attention that, when using the most recent version of Firefox, the skin download links produce a page of gibberish when clicked, rather than properly downloading the skin. If you're encountering this problem, simply right-click on the "Download" link and select "Save Link As" to save the skin to your computer. I don't see this error happening on IE, but if it does, do the same thing (except in IE the option is called "Save Target As").

Secondly, lately my site's bandwidth consumption has skyrocketed beyond reasonable proportion to my site's traffic. You know what that means: hotlinking! So I've disabled image and skin linking outside of my domain - if you were linking an image of mine and it's disappeared now, that's why. You know, I really don't mind if my images are used, so long as you don't hotlink them, and put a credit link back to my site if you would.

Finally

09/26/06 09:43:08 pm

It seems as though, finally, the issues with my host are ironed-out (for the time being). I think I'll be in the market for a new host at the end of my current billing term...

Anyway, kinda... "funky" new Megaman skin up. And that's the last of my [current] backlog, hooray! School just started up for me, so, updates are probably going to get slow...

Downtime

09/07/06 07:16:52 pm

Due to my host migrating servers with little notice in advance, the site was down for a few days without my prior knowledge. I wasn't too thrilled about that. But it looks like all of the recent updates are still here. If anything is missing, I'll have it restored shortly.

Hello from China

07/31/06 01:05:24 am

So I found enough time to make a skin (it's under Pokemon - it's not in the skin release list; I'll fix that later...), will wonders never cease? I want to make more Haruhi skins, but apparently I left those files in America (so they will come later).

A wayward air conditioner leaked water on my laptop and now the keyboard is, for all practical purposes, unusable. But I am still thankful for air conditioning, that my laptop is a tablet (and so can convert my handwritten input to text), and that it's still under warranty.

Other than that, all is well and I'm loving it. It would be nice if I knew more Chinese... I'm a visual learner, so the hanzi come to me with relative ease (and the knowledge of them in Japanese doesn't hurt either), but I'm completely tone-deaf, so the spoken language is posing a difficulty.

Teaching English is also posing a greater difficulty than I'd imagined, for diverse reasons. Reason one is, perhaps, that I've never done it before. But who would let a petty thing like lack of experience get in their way? :P

Anyway, we're still on hiatus here. Hang in there.

Hiatus

07/07/06 12:29:57 am

As mentioned in a previous post, I will be going to the PROC for about a month to teach English. And once I return, I will be in a busy fit to find a new apartment for the coming school year. So, the site will be on hiatus until mid-August or later. It's not impossible that I might add something or other between now and then, just unlikely. Have a nice summer and come back in fall :)

O RLY?

06/27/06 02:10:09 am

While poking around the tables in my database, I noticed a discrepancy between the skin table's auto_increment numbering and my personal numbering records. Apparently, I miscounted, and the Haruhi skin actually was my 100th skin. XD Whoops. ^^; Oh well. *confetti*

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