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!