Member of the EVE Tweet Fleet
Apr 13

x3tech CMS theme redesign

By Xeross Developing, Graphics & Design, Misc No Comments

As I’m using my CMS in an ever increasing amount of projects it became more and more apparent that the current html structure isn’t that flexible for the various types of designs the projects have.

With this came the decision to redo the entire design both html and graphics wise. This decision was made a while ago but until a few days ago I hadn’t touched the idea.

So currently I’m rebuilding the html and css with compatibility and ease-of-use in mind, so without further ado see here the old and new design (Click them to enlarge).

The Old

The Old Design

The New (Click for live example)

The New Design

Now let me know what you think about the new design and perhaps you have some suggestions, I’ll consider them ;) .

I might also publish the html once it’s finished, dunno yet.

Tagged with: CMSdesignHTMLx3tech
Dec 30

Daily Log: 30th of December 2009

By Xeross Diary/Log, Graphics & Design, Misc No Comments

The 30th of december, slowly coming out of my post movie depression tomorrow I’ll be celebrating the new year at a friend’s place so I probably wont have time to write a log tomorrow.

Today, lemme see. I have overclocked my CPU by 270mhz so that gives me a speed increase of about 540mhz (Dual Core), I’ve also slightly overclocked my GFX Card by about 100mhz on every slider.

Other then this I’ve been working on a website of a client, It took a bit of effort to make it work in IE7 and IE8 but it’s now working in both and in Firefox (Haven’t tested other browsers), you can see it here.

Other then that I played some Tap Tap Revenge 3 (About 3 rounds) online and well that’s about it. I’ll be watching a movie now, probably Gamer, and after that I’ll be going to bed.

Tagged with: designDiary/LogOverclocking
Dec 29

Daily Log: 29th of December 2009

By Xeross Diary/Log, Gaming, Graphics & Design, Misc No Comments

So it’s the 29th today, still hanging in my post movie depression, meals today consisted out of a cup of coffee for lunch and a normal dinner with a slightly reduced portion. So what have I been doing today.

I’ve been modifying some of the old code in my CMS to newer code and that part is now completely done. I’ve also updated my linux server and fixed some security problems on it.

Also optimized my server by disabling some unneeded services and uninstalling unneeded packages. I also fixed some problems that it had with resolving domain names and updated some config files that contained old data.

Other then this I also changed the blog theme to an Avatar one and the theme will change every once in a while to reflect the current interests, I’m also thinking about adding per-post backgrounds in the future (The stuff at the bottom of every post).

In reply to: Aggro Rules ‘Working as Intended’…

I indeed agree with the fact that the normal “aggro radius for all mobs thing” is old and just doesn’t fit.

And advancing on this topic the whole race/faction system in a lot of MMOs is just wrong. For example: in World of Warcraft you are KoS to all players and NPCs of the opposing faction, why is that, what if I want to befriend these races, learn there language and all that.

Other then this you also say

As a new player, one of your eventual goals (get strong enough to slay the dragon) is put directly in front of you, connecting you more directly with the game, all while giving you some nice eye candy as you bash goblins.

However I think a dragon by definition shouldn’t best would be if there is also a way to learn “The ways of the dragon” however this is more on game design then really on your statement (As you stated it’s an aggresive dragon).

Interesting Links/Other Stuff for today

Quick Avatar Time Lapse Painting

Avatar Photoshop Tutorial

Avatar Neytiri Speed Painting

Wrapping Up

So after this post I’ll be playing some Call of Duty 2, and maybe check my WoW/EVE characters.

~Xeross

Final log, 1:02am

Ok, I’ve just connected my xBox360 with my PC using a crossover cable (The wireless network couldn’t handle video) and setup a mediaserver and Connection sharing. So now my xBox has internet and I can watch movies on it that come from my PC.

Tonight I’ve watched zombieland, and even though it isn’t a huge ass budget film (I think) it’s still cool and shifted my mind away from Avatar. Well that’s it I’m going to bed, goodnight my readers.

Tagged with: AvatarDiary/LogGame Design
Nov 21

New Signature

By Xeross Graphics & Design Comments (4)

After having this as my signature for a while I wanted something more glassy and spacey (To fit with my blog being mostly EvE related). So after spending a while in my Design Studio (or in other words Photoshop) I came up with the following:

New Signature

I’m satisfied with the overall result but I want to somehow make it look more glassy and maybe add some animation to it. Now to finish this post I’d love to hear your comments, criticism and suggestions on this so leave a comment.

Tagged with: designEVEgraphicssignature
Oct 31

Design Changes & Twitter Lists

By Xeross Graphics & Design, Misc, Uncategorized Comments (2)

Design Changes

I had already in my mind that my current sidebar was way too big, a widget for pages, one for recent posts. I however never spent any time on it. Until I thought I need a new header.

So I started designing the new header with the idea of getting a new modern looking title, and implementing a recent posts list into it and my “Useful EVE Links” page. So I spent a while designing it and after a while I was satisfied with the result and started implementing it. And well you can see the result, the only things I didn’t manage to implement are a scrolling recent posts listing and also making that same listing have a fade-in and fade-out effect on the top and bottom of it.

Well I did manage to implement a scrolling recent posts listing but it used a lot of CPU power to move everything around (On my CPU it hit 50%) and that’s just not what I want (and probably als something you, my readers don’t want.). I’ll try to create it using flash in the future, but for now this is sufficient.

I’ve also added a new background containing what I think is a ship, and I’ve added the Minmatar logo and some starry background to the bottom of posts (The starry background is faded out a lot so it might be a little hard to see), I’ve also added a sort of logo to all blockquotes which you can see on for example my 13th Blog Banter post (the grey boxes).

With the Recent Posts and EVE Links pages implemented into the header I could remove the recent posts and pages widget from the sidebar, making it less tall and making room for future additions. One of these additions will be an about page because that’s one of the things most bloggers have but what my blog is lacking.

I hope some of you can take the time to comment on these new changes and tell me what you think about them, your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Twitter Lists

Recently (29 October 2009) Twitter implemented a new feature called “Twitter Lists”, this feature allows to create lists containing people that for example play the same game. Once created one could click on such a list and see the tweets of only the people in that group, so it’s ideal if you want to track groups of people separately.

After this change I already saw a few EVE Online lists pop-up, but these lists only had the people the creators had in their following list. So I decided I’d also create one of these groups and add every EVE Twitter user I could find (Well maybe not every but a  lot of  ‘em).

At the moment the list contains 146 people and I will add any EVE related folks I can find to it. if you want to be added just post a comment on this post or contact me on twitter. And ofcourse the last thing in this post, the list: @Xeross/eveonline

Tagged with: designtwittertwitter lists
Aug 26

Blog Design Changes

By Xeross Graphics & Design, Uncategorized No Comments

In my opinion the blog theme was a little too plain, Everything looked pretty much flat and just plain boring. So I’ve decided to make some changes to make it look better and less flat, These are the things I’ve changed.

  • Added better looking and better readable comments (Example)
  • Made blockquote borders rounded (Except in IE) (Example)
  • Added shadows to bottom of blog posts and bottom of sidebar widgets
  • Changed title bar look, Not much but it’s a slightly better looking style
  • Added 3d look to navigation bar links and sidebar widget titles.
  • Added submenus/dropdown menu’s to the navigation.

I still have more work to do to improve the blog, I think I’ll change the look of the post listings and single post view. I’ll update this posts when I’ve done that, For now leave some feedback on the changes.

Regards, Xeross

Tagged with: blogchangesdesign
Aug 17

NoiseRadar Records Logo

By Xeross Graphics & Design No Comments

A friend of mine wants to start a record label/music hosting website for artists, Primarily of the genre’s Hardstyle, Hardcore and House. He decided on the name Noiseradar Records.

He asked me to create a logo for the record label and also create a website, So we started thinking a little and came up with this:

I’d love some ratings and comments folks.

Regards, Xeross

Tagged with: designflashgraphicslogonoiseradarrecords
Aug 16

Photoshop Logo Design Mockup

By Xeross Graphics & Design Comments (1)

So I decided that my blog needs a proper logo, After browsing through some tutorials for an idea I found one that seemed cool to try out.

However after I finished the tutorial and added some twists for it to be unique it turned out it’s a bit too large to use as a logo So I decided to just post it on here as an image. So here it is (Click to enlarge):

Logo Design Mockup 1

Hope you’ll rate and comment on it.

Regards, Xeross

P.S: I just realized I could use it as the background for my twitter account, So I’m going to change it into a background.

Tagged with: designgraphicslogophotoshopps

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