New Desktop Wallpaper!

I couldn't let November go by without offering something, so here's a desktop wallpaper to chase away the winter blues. Yeah, I know it's not quite winter yet in the Northern Hemisphere, but it sure feels like it.

This wallpaper is of the shoreline at high tide at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach, California. It's not too far away from Half Moon Bay on Highway 1, subject of another desktop wallpaper on page 3. At low tide, all sorts of marine creatures that inhabit the tidal zones can be viewed, such as sea urchins, anemones, starfish, crabs, limpets and more. To read more about this fascinating park, go to its webpage at the San Mateo County Parks web site or visit the Friends of Fitzgerald Marine Reserve's web site.

To download a desktop wallpaper in one of three sizes, click here.

Visitor 12000 Acknowledged

Just wanted to take the time to acknowledge visitor 12000 who came on November 20th via the MSN search engine. He or she was looking for floral desktop wallpaper in 1024x768 resolution despite the fact that their computer (or the computer they were using) was only 800x600. They were surfing with Internet Explorer 6 on a Windows XP computer. The visitor hails from Kuwait.

Thank you for stopping by! Hope the Big Orange Flower desktop wallpaper was just what you were looking for.

Another New Top Header Set!

This is an exciting set which has nothing to do with Halloween. It's a set I created for a personal web site and decided to release here because it's that cool. My web site deals with a certain online web host's webpage builder and the photo I used from Morguefile reflects the technical nature of my site. It is actually similar to what I have now but without the hands and in a totally different color scheme.

The photo is from member "justcola" of a keyboard in shadows. I don't know if he/she used a filter or maybe a paint software to color the photo but it's in blues. I thought the photo was so good I downloaded it knowing I'd use it for a set, whether my own or for Arride Graphics. I ended up doing both.

So, check out the set yourself. I call it "Coolin'" and it's set number 308. Go to the Top Headers page to view the thumbnail and click it to go to the page itself. Remember to use the username and password provided on the page. It'll open in a new window.

Enjoy!

New Halloween Side Border Backgrounds!

You know, I'm sure I made these two backgrounds last year but since I got started so late I didn't release them then. You now have the chance to make a neat Halloween web site or web page with either or both of these side border backgrounds that I call "Jolly Jack One" and "Jolly Jack Two."

These two backgrounds feature a smiling jack o' lantern on the left side on a black background, natch, with tiny pumpkins rimming the border. The difference between the two backgrounds is Jolly Jack Two has a couple of sinister glowing eyes peering above the jack o' lantern. The choice is yours.

View the thumbnails and access the backgrounds on page 5 of the side border backgrounds section. These are linkware so please link back to Arride Graphics on every page the background is used by either a link button or a text link. Thank you!

New Top Header Set!

As I mentioned in the previous post, this is one of two sets I was working on in September which I call "Watching Grass Grow." It was created from three photos by two photographers who offer their wares at Morguefile, one of my favorites places on the 'Net to obtain free or inexpensive stock photos.

This set has the three photos as a top header and comes with two custom color tiles that match the colors in the photos. The dark tile is not exactly black and the light tile is not exactly white, although you can substitute standard web-safe color codes for the graphic tiles if you wish. There are no other graphics such as navigation buttons, bullets or page dividers. All of the graphics are zipped up for you and have no watermarks as in the page sample.

For personal and non-profit web sites or users, except web designers or developers hired to create those web sites, it is free of charge. For professional, commercial or hired web designers/ developers, there is a small user license fee. Please see the Fees page for prices. Everyone must read the Terms of Use page for details before downloading this set.

All copyrights to the photos belong to the photographers.

Click here to view the thumbnail image of "Watching Grass Grow" and see the download page at the Top Header Page.

Visitor 11500 and Upcoming Graphic Release!

I've been anticipating visitor 11500 since earlier in the week as I saw the count get closer and closer. This visitor is from Clarkton, North Carolina, USA, and uses Windows XP with Internet Explorer 6.0. They came searching for background tiles on Yahoo! Search in the wee hours of the morning today. They didn't stay long -- I guess they didn't find what they were looking for here. I hope they bookmarked the site or the page anyway. Thanks for stopping in nonetheless!

I'm working on a couple of sets at the same time and thought I'd be able to release at least one today. I don't think it'll happen, so I'll save them for release in October. I'm really excited about one of the sets and I think you will be, too. It's a top header set that I call "Watching Grass Grow." If I wasn't releasing it for you, I'd use it myself on my site or one of my other web sites or blogs. It's that cool. Look for it in the coming week or so.

New Double Border Background Graphics!

Double border background sets have been offered on this site for awhile. Now, I'm offering just the backgrounds. (Why didn't I think of this before?) The first offering comes in five colors for the borders with decorative black squares on each of the two borders. They're 1000 pixels wide and 24 pixels high, optimal for use in 1024x768 resolutions pages with slight bother for those with smaller and higher resolutions. People with smaller resolution monitors will have to scroll to the right if you've got content there and people with higher resolutions will see a repeat of the left border.

Check out the double border backgrounds now. I'll continue making a few more of these graphics for your web pages.

New Desktop Wallpaper Revisits Alaska!

This month's first offering is a desktop wallpaper of a boat just outside Skagway, Alaska, taken off the cruise ship my hubby and I were on while on our first cruise aboard a large ship ever. You may have seen another wallpaper of Glacier Bay, Alaska, on the third wallpapers page made from another photo from the same trip.

Back to this photo, our ship left dock in the early evening and this boat was right alongside for awhile. I'm not sure whether this is a fishing boat or one of the Coast Guard boats. Anyway, the original photo was treated to Virtual Painter's airbrush effect. I tried them all and liked this one. Kind of gives it a dreamy appearance.

Comes in four sizes, count 'em! Click one of the sizes that best fits your monitor's resolution and set it as desktop wallpaper. Remember, don't use this for your web pages because it'll load so darned slow it'll upset your visitors. It cannot be altered, i.e. cut into smaller pieces to be put back together either. Read the Terms of Use for details.

Site Down

As I write this around 11:30 a.m. PDT, my site is unaccessible. The reason why I write this now and have not reported these occurrences in awhile is that I'm trying to upload a new Resources page with the font used in the latest set. I discovered my error of omission earlier this morning and am trying to correct it. So I will wait. Perhaps later today whatever problem that's causing this downtime will be corrected.

I will no longer report these downtimes because they're usually so short in duration.

Two New Desktop Wallpapers!

Forgotten and quietly awaiting their debut are "Supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud" and "Liquidamber in Autumn," two new desktop wallpapers that I had finished some time ago, I think. "Supernova..." comes in four sizes and will most likely be the last of the space-themed wallpapers that I'll issue. The image comes from my usual source, GRIN. "Liquidamber..." comes in three sizes and is a photo of a young liquidamber tree in my parents' back yard. At first I thought it was a Japanese maple tree but upon closer inspection, it looks more like the leaves on the mature liquidamber tree I have in my front yard.

Enjoy these wallpapers!

Supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud is on the Wallpapers 2 page.

Liquidamber in Autumn is on the Wallpapers 4 page.

New Interface Set!

At last! I was able to finish this set I started in July and wanted to release then but didn't get around to it. This latest set uses a navigational interface graphic. Primarily neon green on a black background, it looks totally out of this world with the swirling lights. The image was photographed by "ppdigital" (Darren Hester) and uploaded to the free digital stock photo site, Morguefile.

Copyright to this image remains with "ppdigital" even if it is changed from the original full photo. All pieces of this set are invisibly watermarked. The visible watermarks on the sample page graphics are not on the graphics in the zip file. I have not enclosed the html page in the zip file. But if you need to view how the graphics are set up, you can "View Page Source" or "View Source." Then you can copy-and-paste the html for the page onto Notepad or similar or your web page editor. If you do that, please, please, please delete all of my text including the copyright notice and the Sitemeter script at the bottom of the page before you even put a line of text or photos for your own web pages.

This set is free of charge for personal or non-profit web sites/ users but commercial or professional web sites/ users and web designers/ developers need to pay a user fee via Kagi, my payment processor. While the set is zipped for your convenience, if you cannot open zipped files with WinZip, PKZip, Stuffit Expander or similar I can send the pieces by e-mail. Just e-mail your request using the form on the Contact page or e-mail your request directly using the address on the same page.

View and download Neon Green Abstraction here. Click on the thumbnail image and enter the provided username and password in the popup window.

Visitor Number 11000!

While the hubby and I were away on vacation, visitor 11000 stopped by on the 15th. This visitor had JavaScript disabled so I'm unable to tell how long he/ she stayed and where he/ she went other than to the first desktop wallpapers page. Visitor 11K is from Clarkston, Michigan, and uses a computer with MS XP and IE 6.

On another note, it looks like I probably won't have enough time to complete the set I promised. Been so busy after coming back home from vacation, it's like I never left! Maybe I'll make it, maybe I won't. We'll see...

New Summery Wallpaper!

I'm getting psyched for vacation! Here's a desktop wallpaper featuring footprints strolling across sand.

This wallpaper was made with Paint Shop Pro 7 and tubes. Comes in three sizes; choose the one that fits your screen resolution best. All free!

Remember, these aren't for web pages as they are each one huge graphic and will load exceedingly slow for any user not on a high-speed internet connection. You don't want to lose any visitor and create a bad rep for yourself and your site. Desktop only!

Check out the thumbnail and download here.

End-of-the-Month Notes

I wanted to release a new linkware web set today but don't have enough time to do it. So it will be released sometime in August. It's a really cool interface set and worth waiting for!

I will be unavailable from August 9 through August 23. If you need to contact me, go ahead and send that e-mail. If received before or after those dates, I'll reply as soon as possible. I don't intend to check e-mail during that period though. Work never interferes with play!

Contacting Me

If you need to contact me, whether it's about one of the graphics you downloaded or about this site, you can use the form on the Contact page. The form will send me your note to my e-mail address.

Now, my e-mail address is not in the form of my name at arride.com or webmaster at arride.com at all. I do not use my domain. Instead, I use a webmail service provided by Fastmail.fm with the domain of allmail.net. If you write to me, please include allmail.net or my full address in the whitelist or filters of your webmail or e-mail client so that it does not get deleted or sent to the junk mail folder. You should review your junk mail folder regularly anyway so that legitimate e-mail does not get removed accidentally.

The reason why I'm writing this is that a person named Eve contacted me via the form and I sent an e-mail back to her the same day, but have not heard from her. I've sent two e-mails in total within a week and I'm afraid both of them have been junked. So this is a public message to her.

The following is my valid e-mail address, coded to deter 'bot harvesting. I willl put the same link on the Contact page for anyone not wishing to use the form.

Email Arride Graphics

Click the above to send me e-mail using your e-mail client. Otherwise, please use the form on the Contact page.

Credit:

E-Cloaker from Codefoot - an e-mail address or text encoder using unicode

Page Changes

I've made some changes that will affect your viewing of some pages as well as possible bookmarks.

1. In order for the backgrounds pages to load faster, I've divided up the top border pages further into three pages and the side border pages into five pages. All of the pages are accessible on the other pages by page number. The newest backgrounds are on the last page of each section and subsequent new backgrounds will be added to the last page.
2. I've changed the username and password to access each background to easier to remember words or acronyms. The new username is "bg" and the new password is "look," both in lower case only and without the punctuation marks.

I hope these changes make for a faster browsing experience. In time, I may remove the username and password requirements on the backgrounds pages.

Thanks for visiting Arride Graphics!

Cat's Eye Nebula Desktop Wallpaper!

I saw I hadn't offered this wallpaper before and started making it only to realize I had already done it but not uploaded it. Talk about senior moments! So much on my mind, I'm getting flakey.

Anyhoooo, I like the new version better than the old, particularly the colors I used with the text, so I dumped the old sets. Version 2 comes in three sizes to fit your monitor's resolution. Most of my visitors use 800x600 or 1024x768. You can find the thumbnail view and the download links to all three wallpaper sizes on the Wallpapers 2 page. Nice lime greens and oranges, just like my cats' eyes.

Check out the other wallpapers, too, if you're new to this site. Links can be found near the top of the page and the right side of the page. Wallpapers 1 contains 800x600 and 1024x768 space-themed wallpapers and Wallpapers 3 contains all non-space themes in up to three sizes (I changed the sizes offered in mid-page).

So stop by and see the site! More than just desktop wallpapers...stuff for decorating your web pages, too!

Visitor 10500!

I knew early last week this visitor was coming but totally missed his/ her arrival until today.

Visitor number 10500 actually came to the site on the morning of July 10th, their time. He or she hails from Germany, I'm guessing, as they use Deutsche Telekom AG to access the internet. They were using a computer with Windows 2000 and Internet Explorer 6, possibly at an internet café, though. The reason why I say this is this person was looking for a download of FontClerk, which is software that converts Windows True Type fonts to be compatible with Mac OS 9. I can't imagine a Windows user being able to use that software because it's made to be used with Macs.

I know that software is a little hard to come by and even the download of the software by that name at TuCows states that is does something else. I think it's the same one that was offered at the Yamada Language Center when I first had the link to it on the Resources page, though.

Anyway, the search engine of choice was Google. Thanks for stopping by and hope that link helped.

New Side Border Background!

Drawing from school days (yes, I know it's still only July and no one is ready to go back to school yet much less be reminded of it), today's offering is a side border background reminiscent of spiral bound notebook paper.

Note that in most cases the lines will not necessarily align with your text nor with the text anyone else sees on their monitor because everyone will have different default font settings. The workaround to this is to set the background in the table cell or content box to white or to use a white background tile. A white background tile can be found in the tiles page of this site.

Spiral Bound can be found here. Click the thumbnail image to open a new window with the full graphic on the page. Remember to enter the username and password found on the page. Then follow directions for downloading the graphic to your hard drive.

(note: edited 02/07/2008 to change link)

Latest Space-themed Desktop Wallpaper!

Today's offering is a montage of Neptune and of her largest moon, Triton. The "computer-generated montage shows Neptune as it would appear from a spacecraft approaching Triton," which is the larger of the two images on the wallpaper. Neptune is a beautiful blue, but I prefer our own gorgeous blue planet.

Download the wallpaper from the second wallpapers page. Choose the size that fits your monitor's resolution. And please, do not use this for web pages!

Quoted from image description at GRIN.

Outage? Really?!

This is really odd. After being out-of-town this weekend, I just logged into my e-mail and found one from one of my uptime monitors. The e-mail said my site was unavailable just two minutes before I logged into my e-mail account. So after making sure I would not trigger my Sitemeter counter, I visited my web site. Hmmm, looks fine to me.

The main page is accessible. One of my other pages is accessible from a link on the main page. All pages, as far as I can tell, are accessible! Now I'm beginning to wonder about this monitor's accuracy. My other uptime monitor hasn't been triggered at all. Usually, if the site is down both monitors would be triggered, I thought. I wonder if the past reports from this monitor are false. I'll need to check it all now -- the entire history through the e-mails I've received from all of the monitors.

It may be time to shop around for another uptime monitor.

Oh, brother!

New Baseball-Themed Set!

What I taketh away, I bringeth back. Baseball on my mind, this new set combines my photo of a pro ball team (without showing who) and some clipart graphics made from dingbat fonts.

Oh phooey! I just remembered I didn't watch today's game. Argh! That's what happens when you're busy trying to release a set. (Just a quick peek at the team's web site to see what happened.) Oh shoot! It's happening right now -- top of the 8th! Gotta post this quick.

So if you're a big fan of baseball, download this set and try it out. Lots of graphics but no pre-printed nav buttons -- sorry -- so you can create a really cool fan web site or blog.

Check it out here. It's called -- ta-da! -- Play Ball!

Ooh, I just noticed they're behind big time. Argh!!!

And ooh, I almost forgot -- Happy birthday honey bunch! XOXOXO

New Graphics!

Hey everyone! I've got three new side border backgrounds and a new desktop wallpaper in three sizes for download.

The side border backgrounds are called Metallic on Black, Metallic on Gray and Metallic on White. Rather than just offering the metallic left side border on one color background, I made it on three. You decide which one you like. The border has enough room (about 150 pixels) to put text links or small link buttons to other pages on your web site, or for small graphical ads not more than 120 pixels wide. These are linkware which means you need to post a link back to Arride Graphics on every page this background is used.

The desktop wallpapers are called Mars: Four Faces, Four Major Features, and come in three sizes from 800x600 to 1152x864. I obtained four separate images of Mars from the GRIN web site and combined them for the wallpaper. This is the third version I made and liked the most. These wallpapers are meant to be used on your computer's desktop not on web pages. Choose the one that most fits your monitor's resolution and follow the download instructions. While you cannot post a link back to our web site, if anyone asks where you got it, send them to Arride Graphics at http://www.arride.com. Thank you!

Just to whet your appetite, I'm re-doing a baseball set I removed earlier this year. I was using a third party graphic in the previous incarnation, which I decided wasn't a good idea. Don't know if anyone actually downloaded that one, since no one has e-mailed me about using it nor has anyone triggered Sitemeter by its use on a temporary web page. This new incarnation uses a photo I took at a pro ballgame. Naturally, I tweaked it in PSP so it looks generic. I really like the image. I may use some of the icons from the previous set or I may create new ones for this set. Still a work-in-progress. You'll get notice of this new set on this blog and on the main page of Arride Graphics in the near future.

Downtime

One of my uptime watchers reported downtime for less than one hour (again!) Friday night at about 7 p.m. PDT.

New Background Tiles!

Alright, I'll admit these have been sitting around in my computer for who knows what reason. Anyway, here they are - more basketweave background tiles in larger weave than the lonely one already on the page and in more colors! Can you find a use for any of these? Good!

I've got another desktop wallpaper in a space theme coming up. This time it's Mars. Look for it soon!

Okay, gotta watch baseball, so bye for now!

New basketweave tiles on Page 1 of Patterned Tiles.

New Stuff!

As promised, here are three new things to decorate your web site, web page and desktop!

• Right border web page graphics set called Statica. The colors are green and violet with two page backgrounds you can work with. Comes with 20 navigation buttons, a blank button if you don't like the font I chose, a matching bullet, a matching page divider, and two Welcome header gifs that coordinate with whichever background you use.
• Top border background called Rainbow Paper Chain People. Could possibly be used for a child's web site.
  
• Finally, a hot and sunny desktop wallpaper that I actually created last year and forgot about. I think I was going to add some people to it but that never happened. So here you are, plain ol' sun on warm colors that I call Hot Fun in the Summertime.

All of the above were created solely with Paint Shop Pro 7 and with tubes as in the case of the latter two things. Hope you enjoy them! See ya next month.

Visitor 10,000!

I don't know how to report this accurately. On one hand, the person who triggered Sitemeter to record number 10,000 should be just that. But on the other hand, I did trigger two visits myself (at least) accidentally when I forgot to ignore my visits, so visitor number 10,002 ought to be the rightful owner of the honor. But, to simplify everything, I really should go back to the person who actually triggered the 10,000th visit count. I'm all for simple!

So he or she hails from Jackson Heights, New York (I have no idea where that is), uses a computer with Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6.0, connects to the internet using Verizon Internet Services (I thought they only did cellular phone services), and used MSN search engine to look for palm trees wallpaper. This all happened on Saturday, May 27, at 8:22 a.m. (such an early bird for a weekend day!)

Anyway, they did not stay long enough (or maybe they used some blocking software) because they looked at the palm tree wallpaper I have. Maybe it just wasn't what they had in mind, though.

Thank you anyway for your visit!

Keep coming back, everyone, because one of these days I may have what you're looking for!

Downtime Two Days

My uptime watchers found downtimes both yesterday and today, both for less than one hour each. Yesterday's occurrence was at 3:31 am PDT and today's was at 11:30 am PDT.

I wish my host had a system monitor page so that we can see what servers are/ were affected by downtimes. My previous host had such a page which I found informative. I'm only informed about outages caused by scheduled maintenances. I don't like being kept in the dark about unscheduled downtimes such as these, though. I'd like to know what causes them. Still, the downtimes are not severe, so I can't complain too much.

In an unrelated topic, I believe I can release three things before the end of the month: a new desktop wallpaper, a new top border background, and the new web page set I promised. Also, we're getting close to seeing the 10,000th visitor. I think that will happen very soon if not today, or may have already happened yesterday.

New Background Tiles!

I was looking at the solid color background tiles today and noticed in the brown-tan-beige section there were three too many that looked almost the same color. So I removed those three (they were blah-looking anyway) and created five more in different shades to replace them. One of them looks a little pinkish but was created from a brown color starter. I named that one Tad Pink Tan.

View all of them on page 5 of the solid color tiles page.

Just an update: I'm still working on a set I will release as soon as I find a font/ typeface I like for it. I thought I had just the right one, but it didn't work with the pattern after all. So I had to hit a few font archive sites to look again. Hopefully I'll have the set out before the end of May.

Down Again Over the Weekend

One of my most reliable site uptime monitors reported Arride Graphics down on Saturday night beginning around 7:15 PDT for less than one hour.

I was away visiting my mom and dad for Mother's Day weekend, so I couldn't report this until today. Hope all you moms had a great Mother's Day!

New Desktop Wallpaper: Saturn System Montage!

Just uploaded another GRIN photo montage, this time of Saturn's system including her moons.

I discovered this oversight today when I was going through my collection of GRIN photos. I haven't done a wallpaper for it! So here you are. This may be the last desktop wallpaper I make of the space series. I think I've run out, although there are photos of astronauts I could possibly use.

I hope you've enjoyed the entire series.

Look for another web page graphics set to come out soon.

View thumbnail of the Saturn System Montage and download the size you need on page 2 of Wallpapers.

Outage, Again

Another one of my site watchers reported an outage early this morning, my time, at 4:05. It lasted until an hour+ later. If this continues, it'll bum me out. I just paid for another year of hosting.

Not to worry, though. There is no perfect, 100 percent uptime all the time with any host.

Outage

Another outage lasting less than one hour occurred in the early evening PDT on Monday, May 8th. This will not be posted on the main page of Arride Graphics. Kind of droll, no?

Visitor 9500!

Hey, as I predicted, visitor 9500 came by before the end of April...today, in fact.

While this visitor is recorded as 9502, I tripped the counter accidentally twice this month and added to the count so this visitor really is 9500. If I count the visitor tripping the counter at 9500, it would be boring to report because that visitor was Inktomi Search.

Anyway, this visitor uses an ISP whose address I won't divulge and I don't know exactly where there are, but they are somewhere in North America. They are using a computer with Windows 98 installed and IE 6 as their browser. They were looking for some linkware and found Set 131 - I Don't Believe in Time. Their total time here was 4 minutes, 35 seconds. They were good and looked at the Terms of Use page. *pats on back*

Cool! Hope that the set was of interest and they come back to download it.

So here's to the end of April! Wishing lots of visitors next month and see my first 10k visitor.

New Web Page Graphic Set!

Just as I promised, the latest web page graphic set was uploaded today. Today's release is called Aqua Gel and was made purely with Paint Shop Pro 7. It's another one of those sets I started last year and never got around to finishing until this week. Check it out on the Simple Table Sets page.

In looking at the other unfinished sets, I decided to move a few of them out of the non-exclusive side to the exclusive side. That means that I will be offering those sets to just one of you. No one else in the world will have that set because it will be sold to only one party, first come, first served. Of course, if someone takes the graphics from your web site, then it will be around elsewhere. But that's stealing. As with the non-exclusive sets I give away for a link back to Arride Graphics, the copyrights to these sets remain with me and with any third-party whose photos or graphics I use with their permission.

When will the exclusive sets come out? I don't know right now. I do hope to start releasing them sometime this year, though.

So take a trip to my web site and check out the latest set and the other graphics I offer. Maybe you'd like a new desktop wallpaper? Those are my most popular graphics!

Have a great weekend!

New Background Tile!

Hey there! Just uploaded the newest background tile which I call Sierra Granite, because that's just what it is. The tile is made from a photo I took of a granite rock up at Lake Tahoe, California, which is in the Sierra Nevada range. Although I tried making it seamless, you can tell it isn't quite so. Nonetheless, you should not use this background tile alone for your web pages. Please use a solid-colored tile or color designation in a table or content box so that your text can be seen.

In a departure from the usual, I've created a sample page so that you can see how it looks tiled. My notes, which are similar to what I've said here, are included.

So head on over to the Patterned Tiles page 3 and check it out!

Also, I may be releasing another set on Friday and that will be all for April.

Outage Again

My web site was out last night (Sunday 23rd) between 10:17 and 11:15 pm PDT but I couldn't report it because Blogger was not available. Less than one hour so not too much to worry about.

Also, at the rate visitors are coming to Arride Graphics, I expect to see visitor number 9500 before the end of April. Nice way to start May!

About the Desktop Wallpapers

(from the Linkware page at Arride Graphics)

I have noticed people looking for web page backgrounds and sets wander over to the desktop wallpaper pages. The desktop wallpapers are meant to be installed on your computer's desktop, not as web page backgrounds.

Your computer's desktop is the image on your screen after you log in. That's where your shortcut icons to your installed programs and your system are located. The wallpaper is the background image. Because the image is one piece, many of the wallpapers are very large in size, meaning as far as kilobytes and megabytes are concerned.

If you use these on web pages, the pages will load very, very slowly, as you notice when you try to download them. If they load that slow for you, imagine how slowly they will load for your visitors if you use them as web page backgrounds. That will really annoy them and drive them away, never to return to your web site again. Not good. So please do not use desktop wallpapers for web pages. Enjoy them on your computer.

If you find a desktop wallpaper appealing enough to want to use something like that for a web site, please contact me and I will consider making a web set or just a similar background for download.

Outage

An outage lasting less than one hour occurred on Saturday, April 15, beginning approximately 10:18 a.m. PDT and until 11:16 a.m. PDT.

New! A Set and A Wallpaper

As I promised last month, a new set is released today and a new desktop wallpaper, too.

The set is called "Wish You Were Here" and features a dream-like photo of two lonely, empty lounge chairs on a tropical beach just waiting for you and your honey to sit in them. If you're sick and tired of the rain and snow like I am, here's your set to make a sunny web site for your summer vacation photos, of your paradise home, your travel web site, if you're a travel pro, or whatever's your fancy. See and click the thumbnail on the Top Headers page for more.

The latest desktop wallpaper is one I've been enjoying on my own computer's desktop now. It's a detail of the largest pillar of the Eagle Nebula. You've probably seen NASA's full photo taken by the Hubble Telescope before of the Eagle Nebula with its three pillars of gases and dust. The Eagle Nebula is also called M16. Read more about this fantastic nebula at NASA's GRIN web page. To download one of three sizes of the Eagle Nebula Detail, see the Wallpapers 2 page.

Visitor 9000!

Been asleep again, but not for long. This time I "caught" the visitor only one day behind.

Visitor number 9000 uses Verizon Internet and Windows XP with the Mozilla browser. He or she was looking for spring web borders graphic but apparently didn't find it on my site. :-( They got as far as the top border backgrounds page and looked no further. Too bad.

Maybe it was just too late to look as it was just after 9 p.m. their time in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hopefully they bookmarked the site for further viewing when they have the time.

Thanks for visiting, anyway, and hope you come back later!

Three New Desktop Wallpapers!

I have to confess that these have been sitting around in my 'puter for probably the past year. Sometimes I make things and let them "age" a bit. You know, sort of like what you do with red wine. Sometimes they come out better; sometimes not. I hope these wallpapers are well-aged.

The first one I call "Mexican Sunrise" although initially I called it "Mexican Sunset." I believe the former is correct, because I recall getting up early one day in our hotel room in Puerto Vallarta and watching the sun rise as the workers began coming in for their shift. You can see a little bit of the mountains surrounding the city through the fronds of the palm trees near the room. It was my first trip to Mexico and a really interesting one. Some parts of it reminded me of California, especially when we went on a bus ride through the countryside to a treetop zip ride excursion in the mountains. Anyway, I digress.

The second wallpaper I call "Color Bump." It comes from experimenting with some of the features in Paint Shop Pro. Kind of fun to play around with things in the software program. This is nice because it is just colors on your desktop. Bright and cheery, I think, not to mention a little psychedelic.

The third wallpaper is just as colorful and I call it "Wild Colored Bubbles." Again, it comes from experimenting with Paint Shop Pro, this time with tubes. I just let the mouse go wild with a bubble tube. Maybe not for adults but certainly nice for a kid's computer.

You can see all of these new desktop wallpapers on page three of the wallpapers section. You can also access them from the main page of the site.

This is it for March. I do have a set in the works and I will release it next month. Promise!

Who Is This? Or How Not to Use the Graphics

Going through my Sitemeter stats today, I found an entry for a page that is not mine on someone's desktop (again!) Obviously, someone is using either a background graphic or a background graphic from a set with my HTML code fully intact with my Sitemeter code and viewing it on their desktop.

While I do not mind people copying the layout from a sample page, you really must delete my text and my Sitemeter code from the page. If you do not know how to do that, don't use the code. Start from scratch with your own HTML editor.

What is also disturbing is that this person may be viewing a pornographic web page either saved from the 'net or he/she is the one who created that horrible page. That would be in direct violation of my Terms of Use. Section 8: It is absolutely forbidden to use any piece of the linkware collection or any of the bits-and-pieces within pages promoting child abuse, hate, bigotry, racism, animal abuse and/or illegal or legal pornographic activities."

I have taken screenshots and printed out the pages from my Sitemeter stats and from my search on Google for this page. While the page name is not exactly the same, it is easy enough to change the filename within the directory where the file is stored on the computer.

Edit: It appears that this visitor is using the set for legitimate purposes but I wish he or she would remove my Sitemeter code now. They are also using my page name and adding number 1, 2, etc. on subsequent pages of their site. That is why I thought what I did in the stricken paragraph above. I'm somewhat relieved now. I'd hate having to take legal action; it'd be such a mess.

Visitor 8500

Forgot to mention the stats for visitor number 8500 yesterday.

Actually, the visit occurred on March 11 so I'm late again with this report. He or she comes from near Euless, Texas using a computer with Windows XP and IE 6. They used Google to look for interface sets and were disappointed to find only one on my site (alas!) so they didn't stay long.

Sorry about that. I do have some interface sets in the works, but nothing near being released yet. I have spring on my mind so that's what's coming out next.

March Update

Hey there! Unbelievable how time flies when you're very busy. I'm glad I was productive last month, because I'm not this month. I've been busy with a home remodel, so this weekend was the only time I could work on anything. I've started a vacation-oriented set and hope it will be completed and released before the month is out. I will post details of the set on the release date, so come back here or check back at the web site.

I don't know about you but I'm ready for spring and summer!

Downtime

Recorded on March 1 for less than one hour.

New Top Border Web Page Background!

Spring will be here soon and in anticipation of that event I've created a top border background with a red flower from the Spring Flowers tube. Not to be satisfied with just plunking it down on the graphic, it's softened with Virtual Painter into a watercolor and embellished with Bezier curve "leaves."

View the thumbnail here.

Be sure to use the username and password required to view the full-sized page which has more details and suggestions for the layout.

This will be it for February's offerings. Only four days left of this month. How time flies!

New Background Tile Graphics!

Did some quick creations of two new mini-tiles and a solid color background tile. One of the mini-tiles is a jell heart, which, unfortunately, is a little too late for Valentine's Day but can be used for any "sweetheart" page. It has a white background. The other mini-tile is a shamrock, just in time for St. Patty's Day or whatever. The regular size tile in a solid color is green. This tile can be paired with the shamrock tile in the CSS code for the background, if you want something other than a white page which is the background color of the shamrock mini-tile.

View and download the mini-tiles here.

View and download the green background tile here.

All of the above background tiles created with Paint Shop Pro; mini-tiles created with PSP tubes also.

Another Milestone: Visitor 8000!

I'm so late in reporting this as usual. My husband and I have been busy remodeling a kitchen, entryway, and half bath which has taken up our weekends since September. Plus, during the week we've gone shopping for materials, etc. The spate of graphics I've been able to release lately are rare nowadays. So long story short, I missed the arrival of visitor number 8000.

He or she is on Earthlink and hails from the Chicago, Illinois area. This visitor was looking for the Aramis font using the Viewpoint search engine on February 9th. They are a PC user with Windows XP and IE 6. Their search for the font would have taken them to my Resources page and then on to 1001 Free Fonts. They could also download the font on that page since it is okay for me to distribute it.

Thanks, visitor 8000, for visiting Arride Graphics!

New Desktop Wallpaper: Jupiter System Montage

Man, am I on a roll this month!

I've just uploaded a new desktop wallpaper with a space theme of Jupiter and her moons. Comes in three sizes: 800x600, 1024x768 and 1152x864. Nice warm colors with this one.

Go to the second wallpapers page then click on the size you want to place on your computer's desktop. A new window opens with the graphic on the page and follow the directions at the top of the page, mainly using your right-click or hover menu to set the graphic as desktop wallpaper or background.

Remember, these graphics are not meant to be used for web pages. Way too big. Enjoy!

Yikes! It's Another Heart Graphic

Before I get to the newest background tile graphic, I need to apologize profusely for making it difficult for anyone to download ANY background tile. I use a template for my main pages and those pages had a right-click disabling script and meta tag on them. So no one could use the right-click menu. I've fixed the affected pages.

On to the newest graphic: I call it "Heart-y" and it's another fancy heart background tile. In a change of process, I've included some sample pages where you can see how it looks tiled using both HTML and CSS. Hope you enjoy this addition to the Valentine or love-themed background graphics!

View the newest graphic.

New Valentine's Day Side Border Background!

Hey, just in time for Valentine's Day web pages or other such "love" pages is Fancy Art Heart. Originally created as a heart only graphic giveaway on my personal blog last year, it's reincarnated as a fancier web page background.

Okay, I confess. I didn't want to start from scratch so I dug up this graphic. I really like the look. It's made from Microsoft Webdings and prettied up using Paint Shop Pro 7. I'm thinking of making a smaller version of the original graphic to use as a mini-tile or maybe even using the original size for a background tile. Let me think about this a little more...

Anyway, enjoy using the background and remember to link back to me!

Short Downtime

The site experienced a short downtime today, Feb. 1, at approximatedly 7 a.m. PST as reported by one of my uptime monitors. It lasted about one hour. No other monitors reported this.

New Desktop Wallpaper: Sunflower Row!

In anticipation of spring and summer, I've just released a new desktop wallpaper called Sunflower Row that'll chase away the winter blues. It features a row of large sunflowers, natch, at the top of a graduated green background. It's available in three sizes to fit screen resolutions from 800x600 to 1024x768 to 1152x864. Created with Jasc Paint Shop Pro tubes, it's sure to brighten up your day every time you get on your 'puter.

Be sure to check out the coordinating but not matching top border web page background called Sunflower already featured at Arride Graphics.

This will close out January's graphic offerings. Be sure to check the main web page or this blog often for new stuff next month.

New Side Border Background

Just uploaded a new side border background called Snowshoes.

This background has old-fashioned snowshoes criss-crossed on a bed of snow. The snowshoe graphic starts at about 130 pixels from the left edge of the background with enough space for your menu or other links on the left side of the graphic. The sample page shows how you can use it.

View the thumbnail on the main side border page and click it to access the full page in a new window. Please remember to use the login information provided on the page as all background graphics are now in a password-protected directory.

Left Border Backgrounds Page

New Old Look and New Desktop Wallpaper

Just updated the pages on the site with an old look made new with changed Flash header and graphics. Layout is a little different, too, with rollover navigation buttons.

More important, there's a new, wintry desktop wallpaper called "Snowy Shrub." Created from my photograph of a lonely, snow-covered shrub in my mountain back yard. Kind of makes you feel chilly, especially if your house is cold. Brrrr!

See the third wallpapers page for it. Comes in three sizes.

Happy New Year!

Wishing all the best to you for 2006!

Wishing for lasting peace and harmony among us all.

Wishing for a better world in which our children and all following generations can live.

Minor Corrections

I just noticed three bad Blue Vinyl Fonts links on the resources page and corrected them. I also corrected some info and link to Paint Shop Pro -- it's now at Corel and now in version 10 instead of 9.

You'll now be able to go to the correct pages. My apologies for the inconvenience of sending you to the wrong places earlier.

Holiday Wishes

Since I will be visiting family for an assortment of things including a niece's birthday and my brother flying in for the holidays, I want to wish all of you now a merry Christmas and happy Hanukkah, both falling on the 25th this year. And since I don't think I'll be near a computer on the 26th either, happy Kwanzaa and Boxing Day for those who celebrate or observe those holidays.

Me, I've been bad by not releasing any sets yet. Winter just started yesterday so I think I still have time to put out another wintry set. If not, then look forward to something for spring.

2006 will be more busy for me because I need to take an outside job to support my hobbies and other household expenses. Bye, bye jeans. Time to put on a business dress for those interviews!

Visitor 7500!

Another milestone reached today before noon PST. Happened sooner than I thought it would but how nice it did.

Visitor number 7500 hails from Nicaragua and surfs using a computer with Windows XP and IE 6. This visitor was using Google to find butterfly wallpaper. Unfortunately, all I have is the Butterfly Nebula wallpaper, so this visitor didn't stay long.

Thank you, anyway, for stopping in.

Snowflake Font

Around this time a lot of people search for snowflake dingbat fonts and how to use them. While I don't offer fonts at this time, I can point you to places where you can find those fonts.

P22 is a commercial font foundry. They offer a lot of cool fonts to buy. If you subscribe to their newsletter (and what fontaholic wouldn't?), you sometimes get free, limited use fonts. Their snowflake font was one offered awhile ago to us subscribers, but you can still download it on this page. Consider buying one or more of their cool, reasonably-priced fonts as well.

Chank! is another commercial font foundry that offers free fonts from their on-site and guest designers. A free dingbat by Spunk called Spunkflakes is your key to snowflake font heaven. Available in Mac and Windows formats. Consider buying for cheap, Chankflakes or FriskyFlakes (really cheap!), both available as Mac or Windows versions. Snowflake dingbats are also available in an open type package of multiple fonts for only $49 on their site.

Aenigma Fonts offers a PC only free dingbat font called Faux Snow. Click on View to see one example or on CS to see the whole character set. Clicking the name opens the download window. Another possibility is the font, 90 Stars, which actually look like five-pointed snowflakes to me. Check out the character set first.

You can also find a servicable snowflake (one style only) in the Microsoft Wingdings using capital T. It's not the prettiest snowflake but it has the requisite six-sides. I created a background tile using this font that you are free to download to use on your computer's desktop or a web page. Go to my patterned tiles page at http://www.arride.com/ptiles5.html to view and download this graphic.

How to use:

After you download the font, open the file into your fonts folder in your computer's hard drive. In Windows navigate to your control panel then open the Fonts folder. Once inside, click on Install font then navigate to your downloaded font. Be sure you've unpacked the font from its zip file first or else you won't see it to install it.

Most PCs using Windows will have a built-in paint program called Paint (duh) and you can use that to create a snowflake from the selected font. However, it is not a sophisticated enough program to create one as a transparent background .gif usable on different colored web pages nor with layers on another graphic such as a photo.

For that I suggest looking at some of the graphics software listed on my resources page. I might add that Paint Shop Pro is perfect for this purpose.

If you want to use snowflakes in a text document such as a letter, you won't have to worry about any of the above. Just use the dingbat like you're using a different font by changing the font selection in your document. However, keep in mind that unless your recipient also has the same font in their computer, they will not see the snowflake in the document as is. In order for the recipient to see a snowflake, the snowflake has to be added to the document as an image. A printout of the document from YOUR computer will have the snowflake, of course. This caveat is true of web pages also.

Those are just a few of the places to find snowflake fonts and use them. You can find more by searching in your favorite search engine or directory using the words, "font dingbat snowflakes."

(edited 11/27/2007 to add disclaimer in paragraph 9, on 11/28/2007 to add another font in paragraph 4, and on 12/14/2007 to add the link to a snowflake graphic)

A Change in Resources Page

Matthew Petty finally closed down his font site, Disturbed Fonts. All of his fonts are now in the public domain. I offer a download of his "Trash" font for both PC and Mac but you can also find this font and a few others at DaFont. I've changed the resources page to reflect the new status.

I managed to download all of the fonts he offered before he closed his site. I'm not sure what to do with them now, but I may open a font archive in the future that includes his fonts. A new web site will take more effort on my part and my life is changing in ways unanticipated a year ago. So, time will tell.

Down, Down, Down...

My web host reported a network outage at the datacenter on Dec. 11th as did my three site uptime monitors. One of them also reported an outage on Dec. 12th. Both outages lasted about one hour. No reasons given by the host.

Hmmm, Downtime Ag'in

This is getting old, folks. Downtime late Tuesday evening until early Wednesday morning for about an hour. Got a question turned into my host to find out what's going on, but I doubt I'll hear anything pertinent. Maybe the server is going kaput or there's too many sites hosted on it. Wouldn't doubt either.

Still trying to decide what set or next graphic to release. Busy month for me inside and outside of Internet. Hang in there!

Downtime Early Saturday

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, Dec. 4, the site experienced downtime of about one hour. Reported by all three of my site monitoring tools.

Downtime Yesterday

For a couple of hours in the morning the server my site is hosted on was down. My host notified me by e-mail and I received notices from three monitoring services around the world. No worries.

I've worked on a new snowflake set but haven't released it yet. It's a little different from the ones I already offer. But I'm not too happy with it, so it needs to be re-worked. Look for it next month.

I don't know about you, but I'm already looking forward to spring. lol

Gloomy winter weather just isn't for me.

Short Downtime

On Thursday the 17th, there was a short downtime of less than one hour. I know that my web host was doing maintenance on a server -- not the one my site is on -- but they may have been testing all servers. Not a big deal.

7000th Visitor!

In just over a month I've recorded my 7000th visitor to the site from 6500 last month.

He or she actually stopped by on the 11th, Veterans Day here in the U.S., in the afternoon. They did not stay long or else they had some software blocking Sitemeter's cookie from tracking their activity. They did view at least one page, the top edge backgrounds.

Like many of my visitors, this person uses a PC with Windows, XP in this case, and surfs with Internet Explorer 6.0 on this occasion.

That's all the details I'm giving out. Thank you, whoever you are, for visiting.

Passwords Required Now

In recent months I've noticed evidence of some of my pages and graphics being loaded from the hard drives of people's computers. While I don't mind people copying the pages of the backgrounds and sets to duplicate the layouts, you really need to remove my stuff such as my Sitemeter coding. I don't know what else you're copying, so I can only assume you're direct-linking to my graphics as well.

For that reason, I've enabled password-protected directories for both the backgrounds and sets. You will now have to enter the username and password I've provided in order to view those pages and graphics.

This is a problem almost all of the graphics designers I know on the 'Net have encountered. It is very discouraging to provide graphics for free and to have people steal bandwidth by hotlinking to them. Many of us do not use free web hosting providers. Even if we did, bandwidth is severely limited and we get into trouble by them shutting down our sites temporarily, even permanently, if we exceed the bandwidth provided to us. If you use free hosts, you know what the situation is like. It isn't that different with paid shared hosting either.

In addition to password-protecting directories, I am blocking IP addresses of visitors suspected of hotlinking. Unfortunately, that means that anyone else using that shared IP address, if it is shared, will also be blocked from my site.

These actions are necessary to protect my interests as outlined in my Terms of Use, section 7. If you have any questions or comments regarding any of the above, please go to my Contact page and fill out the e-mailer form. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

New Side Border Background

Made more jack o' lantern backgrounds for you, this time with side border graphics.

Hope you enjoy these, ghouls and gals. :-)

Link to side border backgrounds page.

Another Sunday Downtime

Looks like very early Sunday morning PDT there was just over an hour of downtime, one hour and seven minutes to be exact.

C'est la vie.

Visitor Number 6,500

The 6500th visitor to Arride Graphics comes from the San Francisco Bay Area and was using Google to find myspace graphics. Didn't stay long, though. This visitor actually stopped by on October 4th, so I'm really late in reporting this.

Speaking of myspace graphics or "my space graphics," as most of you are using, it's nice that you're looking through search engines to find graphics for your site at myspace.com. But remember that A LOT of graphics are copyrighted and unless it specifically states that the graphics you see on a web page is up for grabs, such as on a free graphics site or even a member graphics site, do not take any to use on your webpage. If you do and are caught, you can lose your myspace account and worse. I'm very sure their terms of service (TOS) or terms of use (TOU) policy states that any graphics or photos you put on your page is guaranteed by you to be your property or that you are legally allowed, in writing, to use them. Otherwise, use your own photos or scan some drawings you've done and use them. Of course, that means that someone can come by and grab your stuff from your page. :- /

New Side Border Background!

Boy, can I feel the crispness of fall right now. I've had to turn on the heater in the house today. Good-bye summer...

Hello autumn! I whipped up a background with autumn leaves gracing the left side border on a white background. All of the details are on the page.

Autumn Leaves side border background.

Side border backgrounds page
Top border backgrounds page

Downtime

There was less than one hour of downtime to Arride Graphics on Sunday beginning around 1:20 p.m. PDT. But this is the second time in a week.

Site Downtime

On Sunday, October 2nd, there was approximately one hour of downtime with the site around quarter after 7 in the evening PDT.

New Top Border Background for Halloween!

Hey! Just uploaded a new top border background graphic for you.

This time, instead of the smiling skeletons from last year, you can decorate your pages with this sinister, grinning jack o' lantern created with picture tubes from Jasc/ Corel. The graphic is 3000 pixels long, so you have plenty of room to put content. Ideally, though, don't put so much stuff on one page because it's tedious to scroll down really long pages.

Anyway, have fun with this!

Here's the link: http://www.arride.com/downloads/backgrounds/jol.html

Other top border backgrounds

Some Comments

1) I've had to block an IP address at the server level because I thought the person was hotlinking to some of my graphics. Now that I think about it, the person may have just been copying the sample page's HTML and didn't delete my counter/stat provider code on his or her page. That would explain why pages from their computer were setting off my counter and showing up on my logs.

Please, when you copy HTML from my sample pages, delete or replace everything that is my content including the SiteMeter JavaScript and any irrelevant META tag descriptions and keywords.

2) A lot of my visitors are looking for "my space graphics" and I'm curious. I'm not sure if these visitors are newbies at web page building and using search engines, thus are using unclear search terms, or are looking for graphics for use at their myspace.com site. If the former, then using "web page graphics" or "web site graphics" is more closer to what they're looking for. If the latter, then those search terms make more sense, although using the terms I mentioned earlier would be better.

In any case, welcome to Arride Graphics! I hope you can find what you're looking for.

3) As for new things, I've been pretty busy this past summer with stuff outside of making graphics for you - going to ball games, buying a house with the hubby, my parents' birthdays, etc. So although I have a few sets started, I haven't finished a lot of them. They will be coming, since a lot of the activity is over with as of yesterday. October will begin anew.

But, no, my new site graphics is not one of those. I think I'll just go with the graphics I used previous to this one - recycle, you know. The graphics I was going to use will have to wait until next spring.

Can you believe three-fourths of the year is over, almost?

New Background!

Just uploaded a new background!

It's a side border decorated with school lunch boxes, just like what we used to bring to school if Mom didn't use a brown paper bag or any paper bag (somehow I remember my mom using a grocery bag a few times -- kind of made lunch look huge!)

Anyway, school's started for almost all kids now, so here's a background to use on their (or your) personal web pages. Have fun with it!

Click this: http://www.arride.com/downloads/backgrounds/btslb.html

Disabled Comment Field

Ya know, it's always one bugger that causes difficulty for everyone else.

I got my first annoying spammer in the comments the other day. Since it was my first occurrence, I had to figure out how to delete the spam. That proved to be such a hassle because I had to deal with my browsers and firewalls in order to do that. So rather than go through the gyrations again, I disabled the comment field. Oh well. It always takes just one little bugger to spoil the whole crate.

Outage

Phooey! Just over a month without an outage and here we go again. This time it lasted just over an hour around noon PDT. Overall, though, uptime is around 99-98%.

Mea Culpa!

Whoops! I just found out that I made all the mini-tiles inaccessible to everyone due to some mouse disabling script I had on the page. I hadn't realized the error until I tried to right-click to save a tile and I couldn't. No one let me know....you can tell me about my mistakes without feeling bad or thinking you'd make me feel bad - I will, but that's okay. I'd rather fix my mistakes sooner rather than later. I found a slight design error last night on one of the side backgrounds that I really like and fixed it also.

If you have any questions, remarks, or anything else, please do not hesitate to write them down on the form on the Contact page.

As always, thank you for visiting Arride Graphics and thanks for reading this blog.

6000th Visitor

On September 3rd Arride Graphics received its 6000th visitor! It was only June 19th that we saw visitor number 5000. We are gradually getting more and more visitors to the web site.

Factoids about visitor #6000:

• Uses a computer with Win2K and IE 6
• Is on the west coast of the U.S.
• Used Yahoo's search directory
• Was looking for unique linkware and apparently found this wedding graphics set
• Has good taste :-)

Check out the web page graphics sets for yourself. Not in the market for graphics for a web site? Then look at the selection of desktop wallpapers for your computer. There are three pages right now and more to be added in the future. See to the right on the above page for the links to the other two pages of desktop wallpapers.

Just Checkin' In

I've been back from vacation awhile now and busy catching up to things. Fortunately, there wasn't any downtime during the past two weeks or so. That's good.

I'm working on new graphics for my web site, but I'm having a heck of a time coming up with something I really like. Seems I do a better job on making graphics for you and my other sites. Anyway, I've got an idea for a new background so I'll work on that instead. Look for it next month, which is coming pretty soon, eh?

Site Downtime

It's been awhile, but the site was down last night for about an hour. Only one of the services reported this outage.

New Space-Themed Desktop Wallpapers!

Before I take off on vacation I wanted to finish and upload these two new desktop wallpapers for you. Both wallpapers feature the Earth, one is in natural color of two views of the planet and the other shows the entire planet at night with all the city lights aglow.

"The Blue Marble" shows our beautiful planet as maybe a visitor from afar or an astronaut would see it. Seeing our planet this way makes our lives seem so small in comparison. You can't see all the living things populating Earth. There are no apparent political boundaries. There are just the blues of the oceans and the seas, the browns and greens of the land, and the whites of the polar regions. How can you not love this planet and want to preserve it? That is the feeling that most astronauts and cosmonauts experience while "up there" in space looking back on Earth.

"Night Lights" shows by inference the inhabitants of this planet. All of the cities around the world that light up the night sky appear in this image. The lights are beacons to industrialized areas of this planet. What does it say about us?

Both new wallpapers in three sizes are on the third page. Click the link of the size you want and a new window opens. Depending on your connection speed and the wallpaper you select, please wait a minute or more for the image to load, then follow the instructions on the page.

Images are from visibleearth.nasa.gov and put together by me using Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7 and the fonts Nasalization by Ray Larabie and Trebuchet MS.

New Border Backgrounds!

Okay, so I didn't upload these yesterday as I thought I would, but they're here now.

We've got four new border backgrounds - two side borders and two top borders - all with the beach as their main theme. The side borders have beach balls or colorful, sunny-colored starfish on sandy backgrounds. The top borders have beach balls or pink starfish and seaweed on sandy backgrounds. I've included two bonus transparent .gifs to use for spacing in the table cells that do not contain text or graphic content.

You can set up your pages as I did with tables or you can use CSS for the layout. Check out the Resources page (page bottom) for help on using CSS.

Woo-hoo! Time to hit the beaches and get sun-burnt. Not really. But have a wonderful time this summer and come back with photos and great stories to tell on your web site using one of these backgrounds on your pages. And don't forget to credit me and put a link back to Arride Graphics.

Vacation Time

My husband and I are taking some time off this month to veg in the tropics and maybe get a little tanned. So despite my optimistic prognostication to the contrary, I may not be updating the web site this month. When I go on vacation it's not a working one -- I try very hard not to access my e-mail either. When you're an internet junkie, staying away from a net-connected computer is very hard to do, but you have to do it somehow.

I've got a couple of vacation-related side border backgrounds to upload as soon as I get the pages made, so look for those this week, maybe even tomorrow!

New Stuff!

Phew! Finally made my deadline for uploading new graphics.

First, I've got a new header web page set for you. Created using a fantastic closeup photo of an orangy flower (I don't know my flowers well) by Ariadna at MorgueFile.com. Comes with the header graphic, a blank one and a pre-printed one with "Welcome" on it, three different background tiles and my matching link button. Pretty minimal, graphics-wise, but that's how the header sets are. And there are two slightly similar desktop wallpapers to match the web set! I've got the brighter one on my desktop right now -- made it before I even thought about creating the web set or the wallpapers for you. But I liked the photo so much I just had to make something from it for you.

Plus three space-themed desktop wallpapers in three sizes: 800x600, 1024x768 and 1152x864 that are not like any of the others I've made for you.

Check these all out!

The whole site change will have to come a little later this year; hopefully before the middle of next month, otherwise we'll be into autumn already. Can you believe it?

Finally, I accidentally uploaded a new-old page that had links going nowhere. I've fixed it so that it works now. Oops! I'll be able to upload that new page again after I've completed the other pages that page links to.

Site Down Again

7/28/2005 Here we go again. At approximately 4:55 a.m. PDT my site was down due to network problems at the datacenter where my server is located. My site was back up about two-and-a-half to three hours later. I hope the problem at the datacenter is resolved to prevent re-occurrence.

Site Down Times

It looks like, after a week or so of continuous uptime, there was an unscheduled outage on Monday for anywhere from 20 minutes to one hour. Then again this morning for about an hour. Both instances happened around the same time in the a.m. PDT. I don't know what to make of it as I didn't get a notice about my server being down.

Anyway, it's up now.

New Link Buttons

Just uploaded new link buttons in two-color combinations. Now you have more to choose from to link back to my web site.

As always though, you can choose to use a text link instead.

See the new link buttons here at http://www.arride.com/linkbtns.html

Site Down

Site is down as of 8:02 a.m. PDT (GMT -8).

Back up again when checked at 8:33 a.m.

Site Down 6/27/2005

6/28/2005 Site was down for about one hour beginning at approximately 10:45 p.m. PDT yesterday. Of course I didn't notice it because I was watching a summer repeat of a "Medium" episode that I hadn't seen yet.

New Site Layout & Graphics Coming

I told an online friend the other day that I was getting tired of the green graphics on my web site. It was for spring, after all. Now that's it's summer, I want some cool blues.

Rummaging through the graphics I made for future use, I found one that I was going to use for a set for you guys. But I'm using it for my site instead. :D And I've changed the layout, including the navigation with a cool script custom-created online at Tigra. This is one resource I need to add to my page for you guys. It is so super cool!

The new pages will probably be coming next week or next month sometime. I hope you'll like the changes.

As to more graphics for you, I'm going to make a lot more solid color tiles for you folks who've been visiting my site looking for them. I'm amazed at the demand.

So far -- knock on wood -- no outages to report.

5000th Visitor!

I missed this milestone because it was Father's Day and I was out of town visiting my dear ol' dad.

On Sunday, June 19, Arride Graphics saw visitor number 5000. I can't know the full details of this visitor (see my privacy policy), but I know that he or she uses Cox.net in the Eastern time zone of the U.S. (or Canada, if Cox is there), uses a computer with Microsoft XP and surfs using Internet Explorer 6.0. This person was looking for linkware sets through Google and landed on my Fees page.

I printed out the stats page for posterity.

Anyway, I wanted to note that occasion today.

Site Down

Site reported down at 12:00 p.m. CDT and up at 12:21 p.m. CDT. However, when I tried to access my site at about 12:54 p.m. CDT/ 10:54 a.m. PDT, it still appeared to be down. Checked again at 10:58 a.m. PDT and it is up.

Site Down

At approximately 10:59 PDT this morning, the site was down or inaccessible. As of 11:16 a.m. when I checked, it's back up.

Newest Pieces for Download

Just uploaded five new solid color background tiles on page 5.

I've split the color tiles page into five pages for faster loading time. The single page was getting too large. Most of the colors are in the reddish area and one I call "Sprucey" is a little bluish-green.

If you want solid color tiles that are not in the ordinary 256 bit color range but in the millions of colors range, you'll find them here. Be aware, though, not everyone surfs the web in millions of colors, so some of the colors will be rendered pretty darned ugly on their monitors.

Site Down

An unscheduled outage occurred on Monday, June 6th for under one hour beginning at 2:39 PM CDT and again this morning at 8:35 PDT. The site is up as of 9:05 PDT when I checked.

That's Odd

I noticed something odd going on June 1-June 2. There were a lot of you coming to one particular web page on Arride Graphics: the Carina Nebula desktop wallpaper. And all of you were using MSN image search to do it. There were over 100 of you visiting the one page over that 24 hour period. Was there a scavenger hunt going on???

Thanks for all the hits, guys, but it would have been nice if you'd viewed the other parts of my site, too.

Hey, I had a great weekend watching my A's win against the Toronto Blue Jays. Yesterday the forecast was supposed to be cool but the sun was bright and I got a little sunburned on my arms. That won't stop me from making more graphics, though. This month my weekends are full with baseball games to attend and other stuff to do. But I'll try hard to get another set out and maybe a few more trinkets, too.

No outages to report.