Me

My photo
www.natashapage.com for me, art and photography.

Wednesday 28 January 2009

Almost finished my website!

RIGHT! well, finally it looks like I'm on the verge of having this website up and running! I just need to make a few minor tweaks and buy myself a domain name, and get uploading to a server! Marvellous!

I've been painting like a woman posessed all week, just finished a painting of times square a couple of days ago which, all things going well *knocks on wood* you shall be able to see on my brand spanking new website in a few days!

Quite excited. I think I'm more excited about the fact that I'll have made something using technology that actually works, than I am about having the website itself! haha little things eh?

I've decided to try and start building up a collection of paintings and start approaching galleries for an exhibition. It's not going to be easy, I know that full well, but hopefully SOMEONE will like my stuff enough to sell it/buy it. In the meantime, you can check out some of my stuff on deviantART - I've mainly got photos up there - I actually really need to do some serious pruning on there, I have a ridiculous amount of photos up. here's the link http://tashlentine.deviantart.com/

Who knows. The truth will finally out too - I'll finally know for certain if my paintings are actually any good, or if people are just being nice to me when they say they like them!

I'll put a note up on here when everything is up and working and you can come and tell me for yourself what, if anything you think of it :D

Wish me luck! I aim to have this place on t'internet within the next few days! I've also been told that I should 'ping' my blog. It sounds a bit suspect to me - like 'pimp my profile' but I'll give it a go - I don't really know what it's for, but the person who told me knows their internet stuff, so.. I'll just take their word for it.

Feed Shark

Saturday 17 January 2009

Losing patience

This is ridiculous! if it's not one thing, it's something else. So I get Dreamweaver (on trial, obviously - I'm not forking out for something like that!) and think 'right. this is a big posh programme - if people are prepared to pay £300 for this, it's gonna work.'
so a few hours later - I have a reasonably presentable homepage to do a test-upload on....

ftp connects to server... all good

but then it doesn't upload the pictures.

so I email the place I was using as my host, asking what's going on - www.freewebsites.com <- incidentally. Don't use it.

I do get a reply fairly speedily

but the reply is a failed delivery notice, that the help centre thing does not exist.

Fantastic.

I feel like I'm being pushed into buying a domain name and a host space which I really don't want to have to do - I'm not wanting to make any money off this - it's not a business - why the hell should I pay for something like that? I'm quite happy having ad supported things - all I want.. ALL I want is some space with ftp that I can upload a gallery to - I'm not asking for blood. Why is this so impossible?

Thursday 15 January 2009

Making a website gives me a headache

Oh.
My.
GOD!

I never realised how HARD it is to build a website from scratch! my main website is hosted at free.... well it USED to be freewebs.com, but that's now been changed to webs.com ... same sort of thing.

Anyway. I was absolutely SICK of the gallery on there - it was rubbish - it'd distort anything you put on there, so I made my own fabulous shiny new one in photoshop's web gallery creator thing, and tried to learn what ftp was so I could upload it.

A word to the wise:

freewebs/webs does not support ftp.

which I had to dig around on google answers for for a good half hour, because I thought I was just being stupid and doing something wrong. Basically unless you're a premium member you can't use ftp (which for you fellow non technobabble people, means 'file transfer protocol' which apparently means it can upload stuff faster... or something... i'm not quite sure - I just know I need it in order to get this gallery up)

anyway, so I register myself with freewebsites.com and am having to build the whole rodding thing from scratch and it is giving me an absolute headache. I'm one of the lesser technologically advanced members of the species, but I'll be damned if I can't do something a 12 year old kid can. I'm like a dog with a kong at the moment - I am absolutely determined to be able to do this!

ok, so I may be spitting fire at the computer, and anyone walking past my room might think a sailor has broken in, but I WILL do this *said through gritted teeth*
I get the basics... but it would help if the basics worked.
I can't afford to/don't want to shell out for dreamweaver, which is apparently the best thing to use, so I was using NVU which, fair enough, it got the homepage onto the internet... but none of the pictures - ie the header and thumbnails which were to be hotlinked to the corresponding galleries... and seeing as the whole premise of that site is that it's to be a gallery OF pictures... it kind of defeated the old object there somewhat.

It just kept on coming up with broken links to it for no reason, and apparently loads of other people have had that exact same problem, and to cut a short story even shorter, I can't be bothered to sit down for 3 hours and read through 150 lines of HTML which I don't really understand, to nitpick a tiny piece of code that might have been automatically written incorrectly because of some form of bug in the programme.

So. That's NVU out of the proverbial window.

Next, I'm going with Yahoo site builder - again, a free thingamy. We'll see how that works out. Wish me luck eh? because at this rate, I'm going to need all the help and luck I can get!!!

Free Smileys & Emoticons at Clip Art Of.com

EDIT: ARGH! after all that on the yahoo one - i probably didn't read the thing properly but they want me (of course) to publish to a paid for yahoo site. no thank you. still - if you're wanting to use it and are happy to pay for your site - yahoo site builder is really easy to use and i really like it. Just a pain in the arse that I didn't read through the thingy properly.

Dreamweaver trial it is then.

Monday 12 January 2009

Short Muisc Rant (yes, for me, this is short).

What in God's name is going on with music these days? I really don't get it.

I love indie/rock/folk, right? but I'm beginning to lose faith in the record companies' wisdom, in a really big way.

Why why WHY do all these guys feel the need to sing like they have their nuts trapped in a vice??!!? hearing guys singing higher than me in nasal little voices is really REALLY unnerving. I mean... I know skinny jeans must be uncomfortable for people with dangly bits, but they don't have to wear skinny jeans in the recording studio.

Rooks by Shearwater is a bad example because I do actually like that song- I can't actually think of the song I originally had in mind when I started to write this now.. but.. it's just not RIGHT for guys to sing THAT HIGH!!!

Secondly - I'm amazed by the sheer volume of people getting record deals who honestly can't sing. Prime example - 'The Indelicates'. Ok, so the song is tolerable, but the girl has got absolutely no control over her voice - she bleats like a sheep during lambing season - if you can't sing that high and sustain it at any form of volume, how about you get some rodding singing lessons and learn to use your diaphragm til you CAN support it! I don't want to turn on my radio and have to listen to some girl who sounds like she's swallowed her vibrator.

The music industry must really be desperate for new talent - they seem to pick just anyone and hand them a record label, regardless of their singing ability. Talent is one thing - as in creativity to write and perform interesting music, but there's gotta be at least some BASIC level of skill involved.... right?


EDIT: I've remembered the name of the song I had in mind before 'I'm a donkey for your love' by Boat. He sounds like Miss Piggy!! It's just so so SO WRONG on so many levels!!! it doesn't show up so much on the video in youtube coz it's live and i think they must do some serious self harming in the studio to get that high vocally which wouldn't be suitable for live audiences to watch.



*shakes head slowly*

skinny jeans. I'm telling ya.