There are two things, though, that I can’t help but be baffled by.

The name change

There must be something in the name “Colorfilter” that provokes people to change or add on to it, because a large amount of people crediting me have this tendency to change it. I often get:

• Color Filter with that space in the word
• Color Filters with the space and the s
• Colour Filter with the space and the u in color
• Colour Filters with the space, the u, and the s
• Color Filtering with the space again and the ing

Color Filter, by far, takes the winning spot as to how often I see it. I’m beginning to think there’s more out there who’s linking to me with that rather than Colorfilter. The big question: Why? Perhaps it’s a natural reaction that makes people want to split the name up? I’m aware that very little people are reading these random musings of mine, but if you see this and you’re one of the people who do refer to me in something other than Colorfilter, please enlighten me with your reasons. I really am curious. And yes, I’d prefer it if it was changed to just Colorfilter without any spelling alterations or spaces added. :p

The houshold name syndrome

Aside from the name changes, it seems my textures are also going through an identity crisis of sorts. That’s right… they’re no longer being called textures. I’m seeing people refer to my textures as “Color Filters” a lot, which I always find to be odd. So instead of seeing a tutorial say “Add these textures by Colorfilter”, I get “Add these color filters by Color Filter”. I always have this urge to jump in say “No no no! They’re not color filters! They’re textures and I’m Colorfilter not Color Filter!” but then I feel bad saying anything so I keep quiet while I see this happening more and more.

It does make me wonder if most people think Colorfilter is a name that is directly related to what my site is about. But hey, if I look at it another way… it’s almost like people calling photocopying machines as a Xerox machine when “Xerox” is actually just the brand and not the actual product? Ah, Colorfilter is becoming a household name. (laughs) Feel free to smack me upside the head now, dears.

Anyhow, if anyone’s looking to have their websites reviewed or if you want to review other people’s sites, you should check it out. There are all kinds of sites and all levels of quality there too. Looks like I’ve found my new addiction site. ;p There are, unfortunately, some sour apples there as well… but that’s to be expected at any kind of review site. I’ve got my site’s submission up and received two reviews so far, which made me wonder about a few things in regards to my layout. I’m also offering reviews for any takers in case anyone’s interested.

Do any of you guys have your sites up over there? By the way, on a totally irrelevant note, I kept forgetting that the LJ syndicate journal of my blog articles allows for commenting at LJ too. Because of that, I’ve been missing a couple of your comments on my blog entries. I wish I could be notified of them, but the feature doesn’t exist. I wonder if there’s a way to get the comments to appear here too…

I finally caved in at Captious Pedants the other day, but I have doubts as to whether it’ll be picked up for a review or not. I was a bit bummed that new submissions at Honest Truth Reviews and Review You are both closed, because those two are the only ones I’m more interested in.

At this point, I feel like submitting everywhere just so I can finally stop this ridiculous cycle of me lurking at review sites every so often. So what’s my problem with WPR sites? I’d say a little bit of that sour taste, some eye-rolling, and just general disappointment in a lot of the reviews I’ve read. Let’s see…

Get to the Point

I get that reviewers want to sound interesting in their reviews, but I wish they’d stop trying so hard to be witty. Some end up inserting so many smart-ass comments that if you take those out, you end up with almost nothing helpful.

That goes hand in hand with reviews that are coated with just general nastiness. They warn you that they don’t sugar coat (which is great), but it’s as if they’re so eager to prove it that all they do is bash your site up the wazoo and bring their dog’s urine into the picture every chance they get.

Leave the Cookie Cutter Out

You’d think WPRs would be aware that different types of sites serve different purposes, hence the need to adjust their reviews accordingly. It’s ridiculous to use tests like these to call on a graphics site or a photo blog for having too many pictures.

I also tend to think that how a person organizes their “about me” page is up to their own individual preferences, especially in terms of what they want to reveal about themselves (or not). Yes, I realize there are those who would strongly argue about the importance of what goes into the “about me” page but I digress.

Ignorance and Irrelevance

I’ve seen some reviewers say something like, “Did you know you can add color to your scrollbars? It’ll make your site look nicer!” Can you blame me for being extremely dubious about their ability to give sound advice after reading something like that?

Then there are others who just focus on some of the oddest things like, “You coded this link with an absolute path, but you coded that link with a relative path. Is there a reason for this?” Uh...and that’s important, how?

Helpful or Not?

The main reason I want to submit my sites to these WPRs is because it’d be helpful to have another pair of eyes scrutinizing my site, and a new perspective is always a great thing to have. And yet I wonder if it’s a waste of time or if it’s worth the long wait it takes to get a review.

Have you ever had your site submitted to a WPR site before? If so, what did you think of it and how helpful did you find it to be?

Well, I know because I’m majoring in graphic design right now and…

This is then often followed by proclamations on why a particular icon or banner is good or bad, based upon their so-called expertise that’s been gained from the mere fact that they’re currently enrolled in some design classes. And every time I see yet another person using this as way of validation, I try to suppress the urge to cringe.

To me, going to a design school just tells me that you’re learning. It doesn’t make your opinion of a 100x100 graphic any more substantial than the next person’s. It certainly doesn’t make your way the “absolute” way, regardless whether the topic at hand is on a specific technique to create an effect or if it’s just a discussion on which colors would go best with which.

People don’t need design school to tell them what colors work well together. For that, all you need is a keen eye. And if you’re going to design school, then you should’ve already known that there’s no such thing as a supreme method of achieving the final result of a design.

The truth is, at the end of the day, it’s only just a school. You’ll learn plenty, but the knowledge you pick up isn’t the be all and end all of design. Don’t disregard or demean another person’s opinion just because you’ve aced a couple of classes. Express your viewpoint with your own reasons and I’ll respect you for it. You don’t need “design school” to authenticate your creativity.

And for the record, yes, I did go to a design school. It taught me a few things as schools generally do, but expertise and the right to a high horse was never one of them.

What do you think school has taught you?

Not for me, you don’t. I personally would rather be given the choice to open a new tab or window if I see the need to do so. But that’s possibly a different debate altogether, and I also won’t bother getting into the fact that the target attribute doesn’t validate for XHTML 1.0 Strict or 1.1. Nevermind all that.

My annoyance right now simply stems from my inability to understand why some webmasters feel the need to force a new browser window for something like a “site moved” link. It’s pointless, annoying, and contains no benefits for anyone- not even the webmasters who are looking to keep their visitors on their site. After all, why in the world would I want to have an extra browser window open just to accomodate a page that has nothing on it but a message that tells me your site has moved to a new address?

I’d think it makes more sense to want visitors to leave an old and dead URL completely rather than keep them there. Yet this senseless practice of forcing a new and useless browser window to open is something I come across 9 out of 10 times whenever I’ve visited a site that has moved. Just today alone, it’s happened twice. Why? Does it have some sort of a redeeming quality that I’m just missing completely?

I’m inclined to think that unless the site moved message on the old URL has the ability to magically transform itself into a message that tells me the hidden secrets of the universe, webmasters should just leave the target="_blank” out of said links.

I want to blog about this…

And then I realized that it was a thought that flashed by my head fairly often. I’d think of something and then fleetingly wish that I still had a blog so that I could babble on it. But I had abandoned my old blog over a year ago, and it wasn’t a blog I was eager to resurrect because it was haunted by some lovely, crazy stalkers that I’ve been trying to escape from for years.

Yes, I realize that I do have a livejournal (or two) but Colorfilter @ LJ was always just a place where I posted my icons and resource downloads for others to grab. To date, almost 4,000 people have friended the journal to be updated with my graphics and such; I’m thinking they’d rather not have to wade through my miscellaneous musings just to get to the downloads and goodies. And even if someone assured me otherwise, I know my own paranoid self. My voice would end up being stunted because I would, without a doubt, end up worrying about the frienders.

And yes, there’s that other not-so-well-concealed “secret” personal LJ where most of my posts are friends-locked, but that’s where all my RL personal posts goes to and where I try (and often fail) to keep in touch with my close friends. Hardly the place for me to suddenly start spouting about whatever piece of coding I had discovered or some view on graphics I had read about but disagreed. I’d bore my friends to death, and it’d cause that whole stunted voice deal again.

So that took me here. A new weblog altogether, stashed away in this corner so that those who aren’t interested don’t have to come and those who are can choose to read if they so wish. Worry-free for me.

One thing I’m quite happy with at the moment is the fact that I’ve come back to host my own blog on my own domain. I really miss that. It’s not that I dislike Livejournal (even though I do admit to being very stubborn about not creating an LJ account a few years back...). I see the appeal of the whole community feel of being on Livejournal, but for some reason or another, I was never fully comfortable there. Plus, I much prefer to be able to customize my blog and have more control over it as opposed to being locked down by LJ’s user limitations.

And that’s that! Long live this blog, I hope.