Posted on July 27, 2006

• It’s been a long week for the Bliss family. Last Wednesday my grandfather’s wife of 25 years passed away (after a long illness). We had intended to leave Friday for Arkansas to visit with Jessie’s family (who had yet to meet Jason) and have him baptized in her brother’s church (he is a Catholic priest). We made the trip but cut it short by a day to be back on Monday for the funeral (in which I served as a pallbearer).

  Tuesday I got back to work tweaking “Ring of Fire” (as I mentioned last time). I made a few changes (gave the water a more tropical color, added some flowers in the foreground, adjusted the palm fronds so more of the volcano is visible, and a few others). As the changes are not really that drastic, I have decided to overwrite the original rather than keep it around in the Pickle Jar. This means I have cleared out the ratings for the original. Please feel free to vote again if you like.

  Shortly after I posted “Ring of Fire” last week I received a number of requests for a night version. You’ll find both the updated day version and a new night version on the New Images page. I hope you enjoy them.

  I had some trouble rendering this project on my current workstation (there’s over 13 billion polys), so I think multi-monitor versions may have to wait until my new machine arrives (hopefully sometime in the next couple of weeks).

Posted on July 21, 2006

• Now that I’m finished tinkering with the website (for now) it’s time to get back to the creating wallpapers. My latest render is called “Ring of Fire” and it is now up and available on the new images page. To be honest there are a few things about it that I would still like to tweak, but some family business (some of it planned, some unexpected) is going to keep me away from the computer for the next few days. I hope you like it!

Posted on July 17, 2006

• A quick note about the ratings. Since I keep track of which images you have rated (so you can only vote once), I had a decision to make about what to do with that record after (heaven forbid) your account expires. If I delete the records, then if you renew again you will need to vote on all of the images again in order to view the rankings. If I don’t delete the records, then if someone else signs up and uses your old username they won’t be able to vote on the images you had voted on.

  Jessie suggested that I give a 30 day grace period, but that doesn’t solve the unlikely problem of someone signing up during that time and picking your old username.

  In the end, I decided that the records will be deleted along with the expired account. The ratings you gave will remain, but the record that says that “username x voted for image y” will be deleted. If you renew again you will be free to vote again (whether that is a joy or a burden is up to you).

  Thanks everyone for voting. It’s been very enlightening for me!

• Some of you have written asking for updated pictures of my children. I really need to make a page just for them so I don’t need to post here. In the meantime however, here’s one of Ian I took this evening (he will be 3 next month) and here’s one I took of Jason taken a few days ago (he will be 2 months old next week and doing great).

Posted on July 16, 2006

• There’s been enough votes that I can now add “Top 10” pages for each year (check the gallery links to the left) and and “All Time Top 10“. Thanks for all the votes so far!
• By popular request, I’ve extended the image ratings to the “Pickle Jar” versions. I’m not sure what I will do if the Pickles rate higher than the images in the gallery though. I guess we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Posted on July 15, 2006

• If you are familiar with my free gallery you know that I ask users to rate the images on a 1 to 10 scale. This morning I added the rating system to the members gallery. Now you can rate your favorite (or least favorite) images and when enough ratings are compiled I will be able to add a “Top Rated” page to track the most popular images in the gallery. I will also be looking at the least popular images as examples of what not to do in the future.

  As with the free gallery, you get one vote per image (so be certain before you hit the submit button). Unlike the free gallery, however, you don’t need to load the full size image in order to vote (each thumbnail has a rating button). If you’ve never viewed the full-size image, however, I would appreciate it if you check it out before voting. Sometimes the thumbnail doesn’t do justice to the full-size image.

  Please drop me a line if you have any questions. Thanks for helping out!

07/13/06

• I’ve added dual and triple screen versions of “Cosmic Dawn”.

07/10/06

• Added “Cosmic Dawn” to the gallery this morning. Jessie and I were watching “2001” on HDNET Movies a few nights ago and I was inspired to create a new planetscape. Multi-monitor versions will be available shortly.