It's been a full year now since I've last updated the main page here, so I suppose it's about time, right?

I've had something of a wild ride in the past year, hence me falling off the fanlistings social planet. I've remained active with my listings and with trouble-checking, but I haven't been posting on the board, submitting applications, or anything else like that until very recently. It's a quite long, complicated, and personal story, but I suppose I'll tell it (or parts of it) once I feel ready. All I ask is that you not hold the inactivity against me – really, if only you knew... – and also know that I very much appreciate the kind wishes!

At this time last year, I was debating applying for the Acoustic Music FL adoption. As luck would have it, I am indeed now the owner of it! Subtle Strength, as I'm calling it, is my first new listing in a long time, and I'm happy with it. :) I need to fix the layout so that it's better in other resolutions, however; I forget sometimes that not everyone is viewing things in as wide a resolution as I am.

I am planning to take a college web design class this upcoming semester in order to get better with my skills. We'll see how that goes. :) If nothing else, I will hopefully start writing cleaner code – I always have extraneous tags floating around, wonky work-arounds, etc., and I'd like to stop it with that. So fingers crossed for me getting something out of it!

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been approved for two of my biggest wishes: Ray LaMontagne (Albums, due August 31) and Washington, D.C. (Places, due August 22). I haven't started on the Ray listing yet, but I know that I'm going to make my first attempt to use random quotation generation code (utilizing the excellent and very simple Fan to Fan tutorial :)) so that I can put his beautiful lyrics all around the site. I'm currently picking some of my favorites and just basking in the squee of that; any excuse to go through his words is a good one. :)

For the Washington, D.C. layout, I seem to be struggling a bit with PSP to get it to do exactly what I want, but it's getting there! I'm using my own photographs for it, so it feels very personal – I get to create a fanlisting for a place that I love using pictures of the individual sites that mean so much to me. I'm thinking that one will be finished first, assuming I can get PSP to work with me a little better.

I am debating whether to apply for the Acoustic Music fanlisting, which the amazing Raine has put up for adoption. I would really love to, but I also know I pretty much stand no chance due to my having completely insufficient skills compared to everyone else, so I'm not sure if it's worth the time to write up something when I could instead use that time to work on some other things. Still...the temptation is there. Very much so. :x

I did go ahead and submit an application for a fanlisting that I have been toying with for at least 16 months or so, but have always put off for some reason or another. It's not something that anyone else would probably apply for, so I haven't had that sense of urgency, but that's still no good excuse. I'm hoping that I will be approved, of course :), but beyond that, I'm also hoping that any approval would come before the semester starts again so that I can really give it the time it deserves. It's one of those "big" things, like The Bahamas or Existentialism or Etymology, where my love for the subject is so great that I would really want to put some thought into it and make it outstanding, at least by my standards. But we shall see! :)

I have pretty much decided that I'm not going to completely rehaul this place as a joined fanlisting collective, and instead will make it a simple personal site. I will then probably put my joined listings over at The Other Place, which is still a work in progress. It seems a lot simpler that way...but we all know I'll probably change my mind on this yet again, so who knows. :)