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A little general round up
Well its been a long long while, and I thought I’d update you guys that do still visit this site regularly on what’s happening, why this site isn’t being updated so much and what is actually going to be coming up in the near future. (Prepare for a very long entry)
Twod/Twodded has had the ladybug since it was introduced by Dan in Twod v2, and because of that - the bug has almost been the “Jamie Huskisson watermark” on all sites I do too. Every now and again it’s also necessary to bring things update and on the right, you can see a very small preview of what is to come from the new update of the bug mascot. The new version has been whipped up by Richard Shilling, a very talented flash vector artist whose DeviantArt page you can view here. Now, will you see me continue my work learning action script/flash through creating games involving this mascot? We’ll see…
*Start rant* A second thing I have to address is the amount of rips going around, and the serious lack of creativity I’m seeing from a lot of people lately. This isn’t aimed at the tutorial community, but the tutorial listing community or almost even the “rippers community”. We at Pixel2life are seeing a new tutorial listing almost everyday since the launch of our v2 site, and every one of them are exactly the same. 98% of these tutorial listings are started for money purposes, to get the user some money, and the rest are started purely for traffic reasons. Honestly guys, your just ruining it for the learners, if they have to go to a listing that basically accepts anything that’s submitted (because you have to whore out the love). Then clearly you should just shut down your listings and let people who have a passion about the subject guide users in the right direction. Just a short note for the people claiming to accept “nothing but quality tutorials”, try reading a few that you’ve accepted. *End rant*
On the slowness of updates side of things: I have 2-3 client jobs, a big Pixel2life related site/feature (coming soon), Pixel2life and Twodded CSS’ing and finally, 4 big assignments (that I’m actually pretty excited about working on) for college. This is also along with negotiating several layouts for Twodded projects and preparing the absolutely massive list of features for future versions of both Twodded and Pixel2life. So please do try to excuse me if I’m too busy to post on here, but I do love you guys, and the feedback from you is absolutely everything - so if you don’t like something, let me know why and I’ll look at it!
On the Twodded side of things, we recently changed the way we are dealing with our Twodded trialers. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the old Twodded trialing process I’ll go through it:
- User submits application
- User waits around 1-2 weeks for a reply from me
- User gets accepted/rejected
- User gets 2 weeks to post up a tutorial to support their application
- People bully the user into bettering their tutorial (Nicely of course)
- User gets a secret staff discussion about them and a herd of sheep decide their fate
- User gets accepted/rejected
Now, with this new trailing process it’s much more focused on the tutorials and your creativity. In the past I would literally have to suggest tens of tutorials to some people applying because they couldn’t come up with anything! The new trialing system is as follows:
- User posts up tutorial in the Twodded trial tutorials forum
- People bully the user into bettering their tutorial (Yes - still nicely)
- User gets a public vote for the public to decide whether they want the person to write for Twodded or not
- A very small staff discussion on the user’s tutorial (No sheep…)
- User gets accepted/rejected
This new process takes roughly a week, at most two, and so far we have accepted two people onto the team, and have had roughly 6-7 applicants for Twodded that have actually posted up tutorials. Before we took over 100 applications and probably saw 5 tutorials from these applicants in the 2-3 months we had the previous method implemented.
On another note in relation to Twodded, I’ve been receiving a lot of e-mails thanking me for starting a site that really does deliver when promoting quality tutorials. A lot of people that e-mail and contact me are fed up of the massive amount of sites that simply write those “1-20 liner” tutorials and want it to learn something properly, and I’d like to think Twodded delivers with this. I’d like to thank everyone who sends me these e-mails, as it really does make it worth while to create a site such as Twodded and have people say “it’s about time someone created something this good”. We are listening to your suggestions for Twodded and we’ve re-organised the menu on the site and have a few changes in the next Twodded version that’ll help you get your tutorial easier and the tutorial layout will hopefully be a lot clearer and sexier to look at - this is just the first stage of our re-building of Twodded to fit the needs of the users :)
On a pretty great note, you should be seeing the funnypicgenerator come back online within the next 6 months.. I’m saying 6 months as well, you’ll see. But this is guaranteed to be the best funny pic site you’ll ever see, as its not focused purely on “oh, here are my pics”, it says to you “here are my pics, why not share them?” and offers you various ways of doing so. I’m happy with my list of ideas for it and hopefully you will be too.
On a small note also, PEGZ won the team templating competition it was entered for. I’d like to think because of the comedy.. as we where a pretty funny team, but I’m pretty sure it was by default as no-one else did all the very small things such as Invoice template etc. to go with the created template. So to leave you with some words of wisdom…
“Default! Default! The two best words in the English language!”
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- Homer Simpson -
Twodded XP Theme Released!
This theme comes with XP Visual Style, 2 wallpapers (each available in four resolutions) AND a windows media player skin…
The visual style should be compatible with any decent windows customiser such as Style XP :)
Heres a preview of the theme for you:
This theme is of course thanks to NGPixel of the Twodded team. So please visit his Twodded blog here and give him lots of love.
You can also see the original post from NGPixel on his blog here
One last time:
Download Twodded XP ThemeOfficial Twodded Microsoft XP theme.
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Twodded - a more detailed look
Nearly a week after Twodded was released to the public, everything seems to be going well :) Not only have we expanded our staff team with raenef (CSS/XHTML guru) and Masak0 (Photoshop guru), but our existing staff are already pumping out the quality tutorials for you guys to read.
We currently have over 20 people on-trial to be staff for Twodded, but of course only the guys YOU select to be worthy from the trialers get onto the team..
Heres a big list of tutorials we have added to the site (from launch to now):
After Effects
10 QuickTips in After Effects to cut down production time
Basics of the Vegaseffect: Create fireflies for your video!
Cardiogram - create a realistic cardiogram for your video!
Falling Snow: Create snow that actually SETTLES for your videos!
Ghost type: Learn the basics of expressions
Learn how to use Paths: Make your movie travel through a map!
Planet Earth: Create a VERY realistic planet Earth for your video
Ripple Effect: Make a water drop like ripple effect in your video!
Television Noise: Create very realistic broken television noiseAdobe Photoshop
Advanced Cutout Techniques: Learn THE professional method for cutting out pictures
Rusted Metal Interface: Learn a very cool rusted metal effectApplication Skinning
The Ultimate Windows Media Player Skinning Guide - AN AMAZING 16 chapter guide on skinning windows media player, definatly recommended.CSS/XHTML
Basic CSS LayoutJavaScript
AJAX: Asynchronous Javascript and XML (Using PHP to send data)Macromedia Fireworks
Making a complete website header and exporting it in fireworks
Using Masks in Fireworks MX 2004Macromedia Flash
Create a Full Streaming Flash MP3 player using XML!
Custom Cursor: Replace the default mouse cursor in Flash with your own!
Movieclip Control basics: Learn to move objects around using the keyboard
Progressive Flash Video Player: Part 1PHP
Building a Web Page Using Object Oriented Programming
PEAR::DB - Database abstraction layer for multiple database platforms
Pear Module: HTML_BBCodeParser
Pear Module: HTML_CSS
Pear Module: HTML_Page
Pear Module: HTML_Template_SigmaSwishMax
Pong against Computer GameTerragen
Importing Photoshop Maps into Terragen (Also a Photoshop tutorial)That caps off the Twodded update this time round :) You might also be pleased that we have begun to look at converting the Twodded layout (leading possibly onto the Pixel2life layout also) into a CSS based layout with XHTML strict standards. raenef of course will be helping with this and we are looking at the practicality of it.
Oh, and on a final note, you should see all of Fakens tutorials moved over to Twodded in the near future (his Corel tutorials that is, not Slicing Guide..)
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Twodded released!
*Goes off to celebrate*
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Twodded - with a big fat COMING SOON
Yup its true, Twodded will be launched soon and i’m going through the coding now making sure everything is perfect and working for the tutorial writing staff using it etc. - Did I ever tell you coding Content Management Systems is a big pile of steaming… well lets just say its boring, but its always great to see the end result come through onto the website at the end of it :)
I can tell we have several very highly qualified staff working on the site, and just on launch you’ll see plenty of tutorials for After Effects, PHP Pear based tutorials.. and some Fireworks, Photoshop, Flash, Terragen, Dreamweaver and Perl tutorials :) Not to mention the tutorial perfection that is Fakens Corel Photopaint/Dreamweaver tutorials moving onto Twodded from the Pixel2Life forums on launch :)
We have some great staff on board, and i’m looking forward to seeing some more exciting applications come through once we’ve launched (they’ve died off at the moment). Applications are a funny thing, we’ve had it all from actual university teachers applying with 5 years experience on the web (but only knowing HTML/CSS to the level of a beginner/intermediate) to people putting down 10’s for every piece of software they have managed to get their hands on, to later admit they have no knowledge of the programs what so ever.. So, please don’t lie on your applications, it makes it easy for us guys in the end..
For those of you with free time that are good writers with knowledge in a certain program or coding language, the form is here. For those of you who wanting to learn software from people knowing the programs fully, your solution and heaven is near :)
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Busy busy busy busy busy!
Well its been pretty hectic lately with over 50 applications for Twodded (about 35+ rejected btw, then further people rejected at trial stage cause they couldn’t back up their applications) and with development of Pixel2Llife new features (yes, v2 doesn’t have it all!) :o
Stickman has had a revamp and there might even be a new game to be included in my college project if i get time.. Also i’ve finished about 40% of a company website on my list, so that should be out the way soon. I’ve also had to film about an hour of footage (yes i don’t want to go out twice, and we didn’t ACTUALLY stop the recording for the entire hour…) for a video project for college, so that should be fun editing..
We are working on a couple of things for Pixel2Life at the moment, one key thing is the firefox search plugin idea previously mentioned that was going to happen for launch. The reason it didn’t happen for launch was the usual reason things don’t get released when i’m coding them, cause I stop and go “but what if it did this? and this… WOAH IF IT DID THIS!!” and I generally prefer to release quality over quantity when it comes to P2L in general. You’ll see what I mean on release anyway.
Theres also a very big thing to come out for people interested in RSS feeds for the tutorials, and especially for people who want to put them on their website, but might not know how and/or people who don’t have php/asp hosting. I’ll stop there cause cause I don’t want to be giving out heart attacks to people already overdosed on excitement.
I’d also like to note that we are still looking for applicants for Twodded, and would love to see good programmers apply (for things other than PHP/HTML/CSS obviously..) - unless you can code houses purely out of CSS, if so just apply :) We are also on the look out for a dedicated graphics artist (tutorials not neccessary) for certain images for the tutorials and layouts for projects we are developing internally.
On a final note, its my girlfriends birthday on Tuesday, and although I was there for her party on saturday I can’t be there on Tuesday, so everyone say happy birthday!
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Twodded now accepting new tutorial writer applicants
So what is Twodded?
Twodded will be a new section inside of Pixel2Life itself, with quality tutorials for any category you can think of. Its no longer going to be coding coding coding - its now graphics, illustrating, 3d work, animation, video editing, sound editing, and coding. Infact we have over 45 categories that people can apply to write tutorials for :)Programming languages we are looking to write for:
Actionscript, ASP, ASP.net, C++, C#, CGI, Cold Fusion, CSS, Delphi, HTML, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, SQL, VB, VB.net, XHTML, XMLPrograms we are looking to write for:
3DS Max, After Effects, AutoCAD, Blender, BodyPaint 3D, Bryce, Cinema 4D, Corel Photopaint, Director, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, FreeHand, FruityLoops, GIMP, Go Live, Illustrator, Image Ready, In Design, Lightwave, Flash, Maya, Photoshop, Poser, Premiere, SoftImage, Soundforge, Swift 3D, Swish, TerragenThe benefits of being staff include:
- Providing tutorials of quality to keen learners
- Having them read by thousands on the pixel2life site
- Premium membership to pixel2life forums
- Working on exciting team projects
- Use of projects/twodded in portfolio
- A Twodded blog, with 50mb quota for all your storage/upgrading needs
Somethings to note before applying:
- Please if you only know one or two languages, let them not be HTML and CSS, HTML and PHP. We are looking for people who are flexible to write for multiple things. But if you are talented in a single program, you need not worry :)
- Its not a paying role
- You will not work on the pixel2life/twodded system itself
Click on the following link to apply:
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http://www.twodded.com/twodded_app.php -
Couple of new twodded blogs for you
Andy from StealthDesignz and Ben (aka Blitz, a fellow Twodded staff member) have both had blogs setup on Twodded Blogs :)
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Sorry about the downtime.. But heres a list of Twodded construction
Sorry about the recent downtime on the blogs folks, we had abit of trouble with a server switch, now everything should be back up and running properly :)
It looks like we have alot of activity amongst the Twodded staff. Heres a huge list of the activity going on:
- Dan has finished the layout for the new Funny Picture Generator
- Dan is starting on the new layout for the next version of the Funny Quote Generator
- Dabu has started on a tutorial informing us about how to use PHP to work with BitTorrent, looks very interesting :)
- Ryan is writing up some XHTML/CSS tutorials for you all which should be very informative and hopefully teaching you how to learn how to do DIV tag layouts
- Cliff (aka Rk) has decided to move his Tutorial Listing modification for IPB 2.0+ over to our Twodded projects, with some VERY sexy features, including PDF output for tutorials!
- Ben is working on some ASP tutorials to get you started with learning ASP
- James has finished the Twodded Blogs Homepage!
- We have at least 3 or 4 projects underway for Twodded.. (That i’m not going to discuss..)
- It also looks like the Twodded blogs are setting off, with about 8-9 of us now with blogs
- I also have plans to make several mods for Wordpress, including a funny quote generator mod (powered by Twodded funny quote gen) and a funny picture generator mod (powered by Twodded funny picture generator)
Hope that satisfys your Twodded disires.. :) Feel free to comment
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The Blogs Launch / Twod Shutdown
Here comes the launch of Twodded blogs, multiple people will be setup with a blog to share with you their work on Twodded and other stuff along the way.
You’ll see alot of different things accross these blogs, and hopefully you’ll visit often :)
Also, Twod will be taken down until the release of Twodded, which is schuelded at May 1st. Also, you may also want to note that Twodded will be a tutorials based with projects only, no funny vids, interviews or galleries (But funny pic gen/funny quote gen will remain as projects..). Although I may want to add these galleries into the blogs for people to put their own pictures up :)
Work on Pixel2life v2 is coming along very well, and I can promise you that you will LOVE the new version.
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