Hello! I finally added some things to my Crafts page! They're just simple blinkies I made which basically things that I like or that describe me lol. I actually finished making those a few days ago, but I've been wanting to update after I record some music, too, but unfortunately that's taking me a lot longer than expected since I've been pretty busy with work. Hence I thought I'd put out the Blinkies I made first haha. Those are free to use as long as you follow the simple instructions which are on the page itself. :) I know it's not that fancy haha I'm not really good at drawing, I just enjoy making things lol.......
Another thing I added is the Links page which can be found on the left sidebar! I made a button for my site just in case anyone's willing to link back lmao and I also posted my favorite Neocities websites so far! Go check them out!
I haven't socialized online as much as I've been wishing to, because all my energy is getting drained by my work which requires a lot of interaction lol. So hard to be a teacher u.u ... an introvert one at that lol.
Hopefully, I'll be able to update and go website hopping more in the coming weeks!
I have updated my theme to version 1.1! Haha I know it's only been a few days since I launched my website but I decided to change it up because I figured with static websites, it would be hard to make updates on certain parts like my sidebar because I would have to edit every document to apply the changes everytime lol. So I thought I'd opt to using iframes. It's the same theme but the layout is a bit different. I adjusted and created 2 sidebars instead to match the iframe style. It's still mobile-friendly and responsive......
I decided to do it as early as now because as my website is still a work-in-progress, I'll be slowly adding more stuff and I'm foreseeing it would be difficult to continue with my previous layout. Like for example, I just added a single blinkie on my sidebar the other day and it was such a hassle to edit every single page haha. I think with iframes, it would help me lessen the work. We'll see!
I also changed my photo on the About page! Just because :D
So I just added a blinkie on my sidebar! It's been AGES since I last made one; I remember I used to "sell" them on Gaia online as a kid lol. I miss that community so bad but I just can't make myself come back because I feel so overwhelmed having been inactive for literally more than a decade. T_T Not to mention, I can't remember my log-in details and cannot recover my old account. I feel really sad about it because I have so much memories there. I've made many online friends, some I'm still friends with today. My feels :c
Anyway, I used to make them on Photoshop but since I don't have it installed, I used the online Photopea instead. It's very similar to Photoshop and ever since I lost my Photoshop (lol), I've been editing all sorts of pictures and graphics on that site and it really works almost the same. I was actually surprised that it also features animations! I'm happy because it enabled me to make blinkies and it made me feel like the old times again.
Hello and welcome to my humble space on the net, k-chan's korner!
I am VERY excited to finally publish a website again after many years! Web and graphics designing have been a big part of my childhood as I basically lived online ever since I was 9 years old lmao. I started to learn the basics of coding when I was in 4th grade. I transferred schools a year after and unfortunately they didn't offer the same subject so since then, because I got so hooked with coding, I continued to study on my own, exploring the WWW (and Photoshop lmao). That was during the early 2000s, when the culture of the WWW was very diverse and different from today. As we all know, social networking sites have been dominating the web for more than a decade now and it's just been really different, especially from where I am because suddenly almost everybody has access to the internet and the creative culture of the web has almost been lost. Or so I thought......
Until I found out about Neocities this month!
Upon entering university more than 10 years ago, I slowly drifted away from all my hobbies from my childhood. Coding was one of them, although I did try every once in a while to "practice" the skill through creating themes on different sites like tumblr, Blogspot, and Wordpress. But it didn't last long because I had no content lol. I just loved creating something -- graphics and layouts -- but I didn't really have anything to put out (aka blog) as I wasn't able to be as active as I was when I was young. But even then, I knew the WWW was changing. I even remember one year when I tried coding again, some of the stuff I knew were deprecated or obsolete lol. I was so outdated with everything I love (not only coding), it was just sad.
After graduating (which took me a loooong time), I've been wanting to relive my childhood memories. I did for a few months by rewatching my favorite anime and Japanese dramas, listening to my favorite J-pop groups, and playing my favorite games (oh how university took a lot from me). It's been a few years since I graduated, but I only had the time and energy now to commit to web designing. So I reviewed most of the stuff I know and also learned new things. It was my first time to create a responsive layout lol I mean of course, how the times have really changed with mobiles and smartphones being so accessible. Anyway, I originally transformed my first responsive layout to a Wordpress theme as I was planning on buying a hosting service and a domain name. It was a simple, mostly CSS-based layout, as opposed to the themes I used to do as a child which relied heavily on graphics -- cute ones at that! I tried to match today's "standards" of simplicity so you could say it was kind of "boring". As I was looking for a host, I stumbled upon Neocities (like the good ol' Geocities), which is a community of creatives and hobbyists, and boy was my heart feeling all sorts of emotions! It's an unexplainable mix of feelings -- but what I really felt the most was nostalgia, looking at these kinds of websites which I thought were long gone. Because to be honest, a lot of my favorite websites from before are now gone...everybody grew up to be an adult haha and really, it's just been different. So stumbling upon this community of actual creators made me really excited!
I remember as a child how I discovered online forums, communities dedicated to web and graphics designing tutorials, (anime) fansites, webrings, websites offering free layouts and other sorts of graphics, sites dedicated to J-pop and J-drama, flash games, free subdomain hosting with listings of their hostees, and many many personal spaces -- basically everything that was so 2000! Those were honestly the best years of my childhood -- rather the best years of my life. I still yearn to relive those moments! Now, although it's never going to be the same, I'm happy I found a small space on the web where fragments of those memories could be relived.
So that led me to the decision to scrap out doing Wordpress and settle on a static website instead! I know there were many of those cute websites that used Wordpress even then and I myself managed to achieve that just before I stopped designing but as a child this was where I came from, where I started: static websites! And I don't really think I can regularly blog about things (hence why it was hard for me to maintain sites before lol), but I just wanted a small space where I can write every now and then and showcase my collections, creations, or whatever. Rather than the output itself, I enjoy the process of creating more, so I think this works for now!
After seeing all the cute websites, I immediately made another theme apart from my first responsive layout. This is the second theme I made (after relearning), which is I think a combination of my old style and a simple modern standard. It still looks far from how I did as a kid (I think I lost my creative touch lol), but I'm still happy with the colors I personally picked! For the pallete, I tried looking for pictures of Japan and just randomly picking the colors from them. I really loved how it turned out.
I might add more details soon, but for now, I think this is fine! I'm leaving room for future updates so I can be as active here!
Oh and by the way, K-chan used to be my nickname online because as a child, I was so hooked on the Japanese culture, I made up my own Japanese name lol, which is Katsuko. And friends from an online forum gave me the nickname K-chan, and I even had my own thread which I called K-chan's Korner. Before deciding to use this, I had another site title in mind, but I suddenly thought of using this one instead (as I was going down the memory lane) because it seemed very fitting for my website's theme which is to "relive my childhood memories"!