http://centraldown.com/index.php?category=home The Republic of Central Down Official Blog and Graphic Bin en-us http://centraldown.com/index.php?id=22
Those of you who have been around forever and are trusted -- congrats, you get to keep your hosting. Everyone else is going to have their hosting terminated.

Sorry it's come to this, but lately it's just become more trouble than it's worth to deal with all of this constantly. So if you go to your site at some point and you see the following message, contact me for your files.

"This account is suspended pending investigation. If you are the account owner, please contact alpha [at] centraldown [dot] com for information." ]]> http://centraldown.com/index.php?id=21 Colorlust wallpaper into something extremely different. Those of you out there who are A) horribly political, B) insanely right and/or left wing will appreciate it. For those who are literarily inclined, you may recognize the text from Animal Farm, the allegorical masterpiece on the flaws and dangers of Socialism.

That all being said, I'm completely apolitical. Obama, McCain... they can both go play in traffic as far as I'm concerned. It's not that I don't care about the future, or that I'm lazy... it's just that I don't believe that in the end either one would really do anything all that different than the other. Sure, on some issues they'd differ, but on the big, world changing issues, there's generally only one course of action a president can take.

Of course this is all in my opinion which doesn't matter much, as I'm apolitical. A plague on both their houses.

In other news, as you can probably tell by looking at the wallpaper, I've recently become enamored with applying color separation and dot patterns to non-print-related things. I'm not the first person to feel such love for the print process, but that doesn't make it any less wonderful a feeling. <3 ]]> http://centraldown.com/index.php?id=20 work, I'm given the task of making pretty vector graphics. I've said it before, and I'll say it again; If I had a job where all I ever had to do was to vectorize pictures, I'd be a happy, happy man.

Now, my boss actually owns a huge number of fantastic url's which he's been squatting on for several years, one of which was Colorlust.com. I've been giving him crap about not putting such an excellent url to use for a long time now, so finally he said, "Fine, make something pretty to put up there. Whatever!" And so I did.

You can download a wallpaper of it from here or there. Comes in many sizes. Enjoy.

In other news, I'm in the process of redesigning my portfolio again. I was asked for my opinion from a few friends as to how their own portfolios looked and functioned, and I found myself saying, "Your portfolio is for showing off your work. It should make your work look good, not distract from it." While I don't think that my current portfolio is distracting, it doesn't really do anything to make my work look amazing. So.

Also, Central Down itself will be getting a redesign at some point in the future. But as I haven't even come close to even contemplating a new concept, I'm sure it'll be awhile. ]]> http://centraldown.com/index.php?id=18 Songs for Tibet - The Art of Peace on iTunes. If you'd prefer to get a CD, you can preorder them at Amazon, and they'll ship on the 12th. More info, and links to both, on the Art of Peace site.

There was a release party on Thursday which, sadly I was unable to attend as I was closing on a condo today (Friday). Underworld, who you may have heard of if you haven't been living under a cultural rock for the past ten years (Born Slippy Nuxx ring a bell?), was kind enough to let the Art of Peace piggyback on their artjam in New York. Word was there were to be some of the other artists there, but I don't know because I wasn't. My boss was, however, so hopefully he was handing out business cards and such and we'll be able to do some more cool work like this in the future.

Anyhow, go buy the CD or some of the songs from iTunes. It's fairly chill music (mostly acoustic), so it's nice stuff to listen to if you're hanging out or whatnot. And it is, of course, a good cause. ]]> http://centraldown.com/index.php?id=17 offpixel.com, a domain name which I've been sitting on for a long time. Registered it with Gordon from Linuxinit a long while ago when we were more serious about our whole hosting dealio... needless to say nothing ever happened with it.

I'll be changing the navigation on Central Down to point to the new URL (perhaps with a spiffy little mouse over that lets you know you're leaving the site) when I get the chance. ]]> http://centraldown.com/index.php?id=16 ripe in Washington DC. We recently put the finishing touches on a site that's launching today: The Art of Peace Foundation.

I'm going to rip a little bit of content directly from the news posts that have been circling the web to give ya'll a rundown on what it's all about.

"The Art of Peace Foundation announced today that over a dozen of the world's top musical artists, including Sting, Dave Mathews, John Mayer, Suzanne Vega, Rush and Duncan Sheik are coming together for an album entitled, "Songs for Tibet - The Art of Peace." The project is the artists' expression of peace and support for Tibet and the Dalai Lama.

"The album features acoustic songs recorded by the artists that are proactive celebrations of our shared humanity and common search for happiness. The songs themselves reflect the sublime beauty and vulnerabilities experienced in pursuit of happiness, peace and freedom.

"The album will release August 5th, three days before the opening of the Summer Olympics.

"The album will be distributed by bodywisdom media and available for download through most music download sites, including iTunes and The Art of Peace Foundation's website, www.ArtofPeaceFoundation.org. The CD will be also sell through major retailers, including Amazon. " (Source: Sting.com)

Needless to say we're pretty excited about the project. Credit goes to the ripe team for design, DigiTig for help with coding and of course the Art of Peace Foundation itself.

I'll be sure to let everyone know when the CD is available for purchase. ]]> http://centraldown.com/index.php?id=15 centraldown.com/portfolio, or you can just click the "Portfolio" link at the top of this page.

I'm pretty happy with it. I still have a few things to add to it, but it is, for the most part, done. Let me know what you think.

In other news, only three weeks until I'm finished with school for good. I can't even begin to tell you how great that feels. It's about time, too. Any longer in academia and I'd probably turn into a foaming-at-the-mouth-and- raving-about-politics-art- and-like-omg-coffee idiot. ]]> http://centraldown.com/index.php?id=13 World of Warcraft and various other MMORPG's, I'd always run into a million beggars. They exist in pretty much all online games... players who are too lazy to go and play the game to make money and would rather make fools of themselves by screaming "HAY, ANY1 GIVE ME MONYE?" in town. My tactic for this was to say, "Sure, I'll give you money." So we'd open trade, I'd drop some huge amount of cash (to a newbie) in the trade window (for example, say 300 gold in WoW), fail to hit the "Accept Trade" button, and then simply walk away from the computer for a half hour. About nine times out of ten, they'd still be there, waiting for me to accept, when I got back.

This has proven to work in real life as well. My phone (not my cellphone) has been targeted by a lot of telemarketers lately. Now, I never give my apartment phone number to anyone. I don't even know the number. I use my cellphone for everything, and since it's on the do not call list, I hardly ever get any unwanted communication. Somehow, however, my super-secret apartment phone number has gotten out... which makes me wonder if Comcast sells phone numbers.

Anyhow, here's a fun tactic for dealing with telemarketers. They call. They offer you some OMG AMAZING deal on something you really don't need (for example, cheaper long distance... which is retarded since mine is free). You say, "Wow, that sounds like an amazing offer! Can you hold on while I find my wallet?" They will, of course, be overjoyed. So set down the phone, and head out for an hour or so to get a burger. Come back and see if they're still on the line.

Now here's an interesting fact, most places telemarketers are not allowed to hang up on you. So you've got maybe a 50% chance that the person is still there. If they are, you say, "Oh, wow, sorry. Couldn't find my wallet. I have it now. What was the deal again?" They'll probably repeat it, whereupon your response should be, "Oh, that's not as good as I thought it was. I'm not interested, thanks."

Works (nearly) every time. ]]> http://centraldown.com/index.php?id=12 I recently made two new wallpapers for the hell of it.

The first, "Red & Panda" is based off of some work I did at Ripe. Client decided halfway through that she no longer required our services, and thus, the project was never completed. However, I produced some pretty spiffy vector art in the process. The panda is just that. A panda.

The second, "Paper Mountains" was thrown together last night. It's some mountains... made out of paper.

They can both be found on the media page. Also, I've decided that anyone who doesn't use a widescreen resolution is undeserving of wallpapers. So if you're not using 1440x900 or 1680x1050, well then you dun get notin. ]]> http://centraldown.com/index.php?id=11 completely new hostee, it's a current hostee's new site.

ConAnime.com.do is a non-profit organization based out of the Dominican Republic promoting the great art known to us Westerners as anime. It's run, in part, by Fernando Bordas of DZDesigns, along with a massive group of others who I don't really know (sorry guys!) There's not much up at ConAnime at the moment, and the entire site is in Spanish (so a good 3/4 of you may be screwed), but it's worth a look-see. Especially if you're from the DR.

Here's wishing them the best of luck!

In other news, I'm in the process of reworking my portfolio. The one that's up right now is about as beautiful as a motorcycle accident. Of course, the new portfolio probably won't be up for another year or so, so don't wear out your clicking-finger refreshing the current version. ]]>