TONI ZOVA

I’m going to take you on a journey, a ride through time to see what CSSDrive once was, how it evolved and what it has now become. You will experience a great deal while reading this article, everything from nausea, thanks to the 2005 March redesign, to joy when George decided to bless us with a somewhat minimalistic redesign around February of 2006. Lots of highs and lows, and highs and lows, and some more lows thanks to this latest redesign, but all that aside this just shows you how much CSSDrive has done for us a readers, as a community.

Let’s start off with the 2004 CSSDrive design…early September (is the earliest I could get a hold of), while George the owner of CSSDrive was constantly attempting to find new members, sometimes offering ‘free gMail accounts - those were the good ol’days’ - this popped into existence;

Yes, I screamed out in horror the first time i saw it too, but it really does bring a smile to my face. George is a great guy, and to think he came from that, to having a site that now ranks among the top 12,000 sites in the world on alexa is great, just inspiring. But, with every high note there’s a low one and when you thought that CSSDrive could only get better, ouch. It somehow managed to shake that year or so of online evolution and sink back down to an all time low…with this monstrosity;

I know, so it wasn’t as bad as made it out to be, at least he had a proper navigation now, and…this just meant that CSSDrive could only do better here on in! And they did, it only took George around 8 months or so to realize the crime he had committed against humanity was unacceptable, and after having bricks thrown though his window, his mothers pet cat lit on fire and their homes chimney stuffed with 4week old diapers, he got rid of the hideous design, and came out with this soon after;

Things were starting to look, as much as they could, and it looked like CSSDrive was slowly but surely picking up pace, growing, evolving into what would come next;

and then shortly after;

Which might honestly be one of my personal favorites. CSSDrive should have stopped evolving right there, and instead, gone on to adapt to the changes, it didnt in my opinion need another overhaul, I mean look at it. Simplicity at its finest. Sure it might have needed a new logo or at least a cleaner one, nip and tuck here and there but it looked solid. And I can’t say it got much worse, but in late 2007, yes, CSSDrive went ahead and transformed, again;

At this point, you have got to stop and think, bloody hell, it’ll looking alright but it’s had far too many face lifts, or has it? 7 or 8 in all its years of being online can’t be too much, right? Well, Jocelyn Wildenstein wouldn’t think so either. Today, this is what CSSDrive looks like;

That screen cap does it justice. Anyway, I’m not even going to get into what I personally thing of the redesign, as you can see, I doubt it will be the last, I just hope George gets it redesigned before his chimney starts filling up with 4week old diapers eh?

Oh and I found this along the way, I have no idea what year this is from but I don’t think it was up for long;

Ive been a loyal reader of CSSDrive for years, a loyal contributor for a few years too, and I will remain a friend to George, and a loyal member to CSSDrive for years to come. Ride is over, get gone now, that’s it.

This MyBB Theme has been a long time coming, I know. I started working on this back in 2008, Nov 14th actually, so yeah (been busy, life, work, Asian girl called Luanne…long story there), I know a LOT of you want to download and use this baby. With over 19,000 views to the original thread and over 150 comments it’s finally done!

A few things before you download it and run around woooping for joy, it’s got a couple bugs I just don’t have the time right now to fix, tiny bugs, nothing that will actually effect your use of the theme or make it unusable. I’ll try to get to these next week but can’t put off publishing the theme for people to use any longer, so consider this Jero V1.0

There will be a Jero V1.1 very soon with sexier effects to navigation, no bugs and some other nifty stuff here and there, I’m also preparing to work on a ‘light’ version of JERO, so stay tuned for that. It will be delicious as a white macbook pro, lame but yeah it’ll be hot.

So without further mombojumbo, download away!
JERO MyBB Theme Download
Here’s a Demo of the JERO Mybb Theme (offline atm for an hour due to update)

SIDE NOTE: A huge thank you to labrocca of MyBB Central and all the great members there who provided me with valuable feedback and constant support! Without you guys I honestly would not have bothered to complete this theme…so thank you.

Update: Buttons etc will be customized in the next update too, thanks for pointing that out. Also the rounded corner bug will be fixed

Hey guys, how’s everyone doing?

Alright, not your ordinary blog post but my cousin wants to clear out her childrens toy closet, they’re moving back to the UK and just can’t be bothered with taking a lot of what she refers to as “excess blah blah”. So apart from her 2 little spoiled brats hating my guts now, I told her to give them all to me, and she did.

Now, I’m giving a bunch away to a fw foster care homes around the Manhattan/Brooklyn here in new york, but I still have so many on my hands to give away. I’ll list the ones left below and if you want one, just drop me a comment and make sure to enter your real email address so I can contact you for your mailing address!

The board games are for the most part in really good condition. Don’t worry about shipping costs etc, I’ll mail them your way for free. This will be first come first serve, so all you do is list the board games you want (no more than 2 per address to be fair and so as many people as possible get them!) - i’ll cross off the board games that are sent out.

List of the free board games(sorry i cant take individual pix or provide more information, you’ll have to google the games or link me and ask me if that’s it and ill check for you, some of these board games are so bloody weird!!! haha):

Cranium
Arthur Cartoon Board Game
Mastermind
Digimon
Mad Gab
Monopoly (classic)
Chinese Checkers
Dames
Backgammon
Risk
Rummy-o
Caves & Claws
Battleship (classic)
Marvel heroes Board Game
Heroscape
Concentration
Bionicle
Life
Stock Ticker
Clue Jr
Pictionary
Connect Four
Scrabble (classic)
Scrabble (for juniors)
Ancient Rome
Snakes and Ladders
Spider Man Board Game
Max
Boggle
Christmas game
Chess Set
Checkers
Clue
Pepper
Stone Age
Jambo!
You’re Bluffing
Mouse Trap
Pirate’s Cove
Fiasco

To those that have asked, yep, will ship to Canada/UK. No problem

Update: Those crossed out have been sent, i’ll be sending more out Monday (tomorrow) so please, if you still wants something not crossed out let me know, I have yet to check them off my list or get back all the emails I sent out confirming mailing addresses that those particular games are supposed to be sent out to!

Update: All board games are no longer available. For those I have contacted, it might be 5-7days before I can shoot off the second wave of board games your way, please be patient. God Bless.

So I’ve been a member of LogoPond for a few years, and I do enjoy it there. It’s a source for logo inspiration, it’s also full of drama queens (guilty as charged) but in all honesty there are some talented folks over there, and some really good people. What I want to touch base on here is LogoPond as a community, what it is doing to help/hurt the general design community and how we, as Logo Designers contribute to both.

First off I just want to say that the owner, David, while he’s someone I respect and enjoy bitching back and forth with, the guy really does try, he’s providing us all with a resource to not only get inspiration from but to also showcase our work and that helps designers get much needed exposure. For starters, he hasn’t banned me from LP yet, although we’ve exchanged emails and all, he really should have booted me off years ago, i’m an asshole, but, he chose to keep me around, deep down he must love me! But seriously, over the past few months, almost year, I’ve watched LP drop a little on that cool scale. The traffic might be the same if not more, users are submitting more stuff perhaps, but a couple things just scream to be addressed. Some of the crap being featured, and then brandstack. Those are the 2 main issues I have with LP and in all honesty seem to be the 2 factors that sort of hurt the logo design industry in general. Let me elaborate…

We all know I don’t get along with BS (brandStack), and i’m not going to yodel too long on that subject, Wes might have another cow and feel obligated to send me one of those “I hate you so much and wish a death by way of flaming-cow-shoved-up-ass upon you a thousand times over” emails, but come on. I get they’re paying to grab an ad slot on LP, or are they? But what the fuck David? You’ve explained your stance, noted that you would not favor BS for sale logos over regular truly inspiring logos when it comes to featuring them, but I just see that as a way out. I’d respect you a whole lot more if you just came out and said, well yeah BS pays me, so I’ll do what I want, it’s my site. But to pretend like you’re not favoring their shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit?

Ok, BS rant over, onto quality of some of the featured work and how either comments are being overlooked when complaints are made or intentionally ignored. I for one think they’re ignored because the second I tell someone to piss off on there, I get emailed or a forum thread goes up announcing how I’m the devil in tights being mean and picking on poor designers (it’s always indirect, you’d think these guys have balls to speak their minds). Give me a break, judge for yourself, tell me how these logos are feature worthy…how they are worthy of inspiring people, representing the best at LP, read the comments too, on some, people LINK to sources showing the logos in some instances as not even original, right down copies…

Some Featured logos on LP:

Eh, check this out…his excuse for using this and claiming it as his own was:

Thanks for feedback guys.
Ok, I necessarily that having whole different, I have a licence for this, and this VECTOR designed by my friend.

Now, this vector sold to INDIAN YOGA CLUB.

FAQ Center

I have no fucking idea what he’s on about either…nima is a nice kid, don’t get me wrong I’m sure he’s talented, but little back handed BS like this only does one thing, hurts our industry. I did something similar to prove a point a while back, while I couldn’t get my message across because people are so think sometimes, I honestly like to think that we could have a bit more pride and dignity when it comes to what we do for a living, no?

Here’s another,

Here’s where he got it from

So yeah, obviously over inspired? Yet it got featured, I’m betting that font is not even custom. His response? silence….and this says what to the rest of those kiddies out there running around popping out $15-$25 logos to clients? You not only get pocket change for this shit but you might also get rewarded, some recognition and hey hey, a feature spot on LP and other showcases!

I could go on, and on, really, but instead of making this a rant, it already is isn’t it? yeah, well I want to hear what you guys think about LogoPond in general, drama queens like me (have to say that so none of those fuckers think im personally attacking them) and the quality of work on there and what it represents.

CSS Galleries keep popping up all over the place, I mean, I probably run into a couple new ones every few days, it’s ridiculous. What’s worse is the number of decent, moderated, up to date CSS Galleries out there, there aren’t many. So instead of pulling one of those top 20 lists out of my ass and just shoving links for you all to follow, I’m going to share some of my personal favorites, a few I have bookmarked and i’ll comment on them and then throw in a couple that in my opinion, did you read that? IN MY OPINION…are way overrated, seriously overrated, you know what, a better term would be ‘crap’.

So to start things off, one of my personal favorite CSS Galleries has got to be, CSSDRIVE. Why? Well I don’t even have to be biased here, it’s frequently updated, has a mixture of featured CSS sites while also showcasing some nifty, unique menu designs and boasts a cool news section that I love to spam with controversial Bull when I can, just to get people interacting and venting a little. It’s run by a really nice down to earth bloke who truly cares about the design community, and also pays me for these kinds of posts, that’s a joke, come on, i’m not trying to say George paid me anything to mention CSSDrive as my favorite CSS Gallery, that would be wrong, and unethical, and just, dirty, and we all know I’m a saint eh?

Next up I’d say has to be CSSBeauty, just because it’s honestly a great site, full of great CSS related news, announcements, a Gallery and more. It’s something I have fed into my own RSS Feed Aggregator but I do have a couple things to bitch about. The bloody adsense slots. I can’t count how many times I’ve accidentally clicked on those bloody ads, while that’s great ad placement on their behalf, it’s as annoying as fuck. So annoying I stick to the feeds and don’t visit the site itself as often, and the color, kind of annoying too. But other than that, content is well worth keeping an eye out for.

Ok, CSSCreme, creme de la creme, I’m sure I butchered that attempt at being smart but yeah, CSSCreme is a must bookmark or must have fed through your Aggregator. If you’re a nooblet, or not, CSS Creme has a pretty nice collection of tutorials, Inspirational articles, news posts and a relatively updated gallery. I also have to mention the new free to download font gallery they have, very cool stuff.

The Design Inspiration is inspiring, buuuuuut it’s rather boring. I mean, they have some nifty sections, like inspirational articles, logo showcase, CSS Designs, Art, Fonts, and they even feature Photography and slip in a pattern download showcase, wait, ok i take the boring part back. Just typing all that got me excited, DOWN BOY, yeah, TDI is worth bookmarking too, damn it, another good site!

[[no banner...ha suck on that CSSMania]]
CSSMania, lame. While I know many of you have CSSMania tattooed across your ass, and that you have the cross out and are ready to crucify me, I gotta say, what a pointless site. A CSS Gallery should not ONLY showcase CSS Websites, but should really provide more, in my opinion, CSS Mania almost feels to me as if it leaches it’s featured content from somewhere else, not to spark controversy here, because, that would be like, the end of the world, but it really is a pointless site. Wow, I sound like a hater, I dont’ think i’m even going to link to css mania, not that they need my backlink, but the amount of respect I have for that site is far too little to get me to link to them. Yes, boycott CSS Mania. (they didn’t pay me enough to be nice, see, it sucks to be on my shit list…)

Creattica is S.E.X. Simple, Elegant and….Xylophone..? I don’t know it was either that or Xray, (and my attempt at humor fails again) but yeah, Creattica is a great source of inspiration and their CSS Gallery is unique enough to feel hand selected not randomly picked off other galleries to feature, so I give them a thumbs up! They’ve also featured some of my stuff in the past without me submitting it, so, I have to give them props for that, they obviously know their stuff, right? Because, well they could tell my work was too awesome to not feature. Yes that’s it.

Dear CSS Elite, your sites logo is crap. Please, hire a professional to redesign it, feel free to contact me, I’ll go easy on you and charge you the bare minimum. If you disregard their hideous logo, they’re just another CSS Gallery really, only difference is it’s constantly updated, so that’s 1point. Yeah, 1/10…

Last but not least, styleboost, Ive been checking them out for a while and am still on the fence about them. While some of their so called reviews are in place, for the most part, they’re just rants, much like this one, which honestly is a waste of time to read you know? SO yeah, check them out and decide for yourself.

With that, I hope you don’t hate me enough to hunt me down for wasting like 5min of your time, I just felt like sharing these CSS gallery resources/links with you guys and provide my honest, semi-biased opinion on them too. If anything, feel free to drop me a comment to let me know how much you hate my face, because really, any comment makes me feel loved

((any and all references to bribes received for noting the above galleries were jokes, I genuinely mean everything.))

One of the single most talented guys I have had the pleasure of meeting online, a friend, a designer, an artist…Jay is truly a multi-talented fleshling that deserves mentioning and showcasing. I’ll cut the intro short and get right onto interviewing him for all of you to better understand what makes this complex orgasm tick!

First off, Jay, I want you to start by introducing yourself to the lucky humanoids reading this epic interview. Who are you? What do you do? How long have you plagued the interweb? and, if possible, fill us in on what your favorite sex position is?!
My name is Jay. Some people might know me as 3ncryptabl3_lick, a name I’m still unsure why I selected. I’m a super-mega-happy-always-choking-never-toking-high-frequency-digital-soundproof-mouth and I do about as much.

I’ve been online, officially, since 1998. I say officially because I think it makes me sound smart and gives the impression of having gone through some type of prerequisite exam and passing with high marks to hit the ‘connect now’ button on the DSL login.

My favorite sexual position is sitting at the computer with one hand on the mouse with a 20mbs fiber-optic connection.

So let’s tap into the design side of your brain. Where did you learn what you know in terms of art/design etc?
That’s one of those questions I keep asking myself.

I tried Art college. I spent my first semester on acid and got bored so I quit. I’m not quite sure if I really ‘learned’ anything. I mean, I’ve always been artistic - even my mother said I never drew stick figures - I just started one day.

And how old where you then?
I don’t know. But the earliest memory of my art is reminiscent of Napoleon Dynamite’s Liger - you know, everything is in profile, even the feet. All the muscles are bulging oddly. Lot’s of puffy hair. There’s boobage. Something like that. I probably made a Liger at some point too.

Do you still draw “boobage”?
Naw. I’ve never really been very good with the female form. They’d probably be bulging oddly and in perma-profile.

And with puffy hair?
Ya. Who wants to see oddly bulging hairy boobs?

…
…

So what do you work on these days, if not oddly bulging hairy boobs?
Well, a little of this, a little of that.

I try to make money with web design and logo’s but that’s few and far between and I’ve never really been all that great at it to begin with. I mean, sure, I can monetize the skill but have you seen some of the stuff being pumped out for $5 or $10? Man, I could never compete with that so I don’t.

Lately, that is to say, in the last 5 years or so I’ve been focusing on 3d and writing/video and photography.

Tell those of us that know you pretty well, something we don’t know about ‘Jay’ the dude in real life.
My penis was bigger 10 years ago, I swear it. Does it shrink?!

So, there’s no doubting your talent or abilities, fill us in on your 3d work, self taught?
Ya, 3d is where I’ve been at lately. Although I’d like to add that I do enjoy mixing both 3d and 2d. So 2d is not lost on me. It’s a huge part of what I’ve been working on.

I started my foray into 3d with some 10 years ago. Only in the last few years have I started coming into my own with modeling, UVmapping and animating.

3d has a huge learning curve no matter how and where you start. How deep that rabbit hole goes is a measure of how much you want to learn. Some people are happy with the likes of Poser or Bryce or Vue, while others look for more.

I was one of the ones looking for more. Once you cross that threshold and persevere, there’s always going to be that one little tid-bit of knowledge that opens up a whole area of exploration. That kept happening with me. Every time I kicked up 3dsMax, I learned something new and over the course of a few years, that adds up.

I’ve seen a couple pieces and I’ve been blown away, seriously, that Bonsai design you did for the Nvidia ION mod contest, man oh man, you got mentioned in the CPU mag for that didn’t you?
Ya, that was pretty exciting. I entered the Bonsai ION Mod and it made it into the top 5. So it’s going to be built by a pro modder. I think I spent, easily, a week modeling and specking out my idea - whether that’s exactly what they build or not, I don’t know. But it sure was fun doing it.

(check out the Bonsai Design in all it’s glory here at modders-inc)

Where does the motivation come for all that creative mojo man?
My motivation is wanting to make shit that I could stand to look at and keep my name attached to, 10 years later. While at the same time, learning what I need to learn to make the big dirty. The culmination of all my skills. The thing that defines me, as an artist, and carries me happily for the rest of my life.

Man, if I don’t do it, someone else will. You know, ideas are out there, in the universe. The instant one hits you, 14 other people got hit with it elsewhere in the world. So if it’s going to get done, it might as well be by you.

Wow, sounds big.
Make it big, make a point. That’s my motto.

How are your 3 wives doing?
Dude I haven’t been laid in like, three years. I think you actually have to meet women for that. Or, well, you know, for me - women.

Tell us a bit about some projects you’re working on, no doubt you’ve got some hot stuff up your sleeve right?
While I can’t get into any specific details about the project’s I’m involved in I can say that I’m really excited about them. They should be making their marks soon and I’ll be sure to hit you up when things go live.

So if people want to stalk you online, much like I do, where can they find you?
Twitter, Facebook, V7N - Googling 3ncryptabl3_lick should net any prospective stalker some decent places to start.

Any final words before I pull the plug and publish this interview which will probably ruin your career by doing so?
I am an ashtray-carp.

There you have it, this guy is honestly a genius, if you’ve not had the pleasure of meeting him, working with him, or sleeping with him, then you’ve missed out on the better half of your worthless fucking life. I mean that. What an epic interview, if I do say so myself.

Now go stalk him you lousy good for nothing sons of rabid corn dogs.

His Twitter
His FaceBook
His V7N Profile
His Nude Pix
His Live JTV Feed

It’s always nice to hear from friends, specially when you don’t expect to. Karen and Rick are two of my oldest friends and have been on a crazy sort of vacation spanning over a 4month period. From Paris to Venice to Malta to here to there to Fira Santorini etc. etc. etc.

Malta

They send me pix and we get on cam and talk a lot but I hadn’t heard from them for like 2weeks, figured they got lost in china or something (j/k Rick has a human gps thing built up his arse, guy never gets lost), today I got a nice surprise in the mail. Pix and a little tiny glass bottle with some sand in it from malta, a little mini Eiffel Tower key ring from France…Italian Pizza flavored gum? from Italy? Obviously smart arse Rick was responsible for that one, and a bunch of other little bits and bobs.

Venice

So yeah, I don’t usually share things like this but figured, this is sort of my personal blog, so what the hell.

Paris

Can’t wait to go with them next year (prob be going myself on a month long trip around Europe end of this year). So yeah, Karen, Rick, if you’re reading this, i’m jealous, and will be hacking away at the voodoo dolls tonight Keep it real guys and look after each other

Greece