Posted on May 19, 2007

• Well, it looks like “Siteadvisor” is in the process of retesting my site. According to them it will take six weeks for the test to complete. During that time my rating has been changed from “Red” to “Yellow”, hopefully it will be green ASAP. Thanks again to everyone who spoke up on my behalf. I’m quite sure it was your voices which got their attention.

• I’ve been reading the comments on “Hidden Falls” with great interest. I knew the waterfall would be an issue. Some of you wanted to see it with some motion blur and I can understand that. Unfortunately, I created the waterdrops as a static object and not as a particle animation (Vue doesn’t have a particle system). I did try animating the waterfall object but for some reason I was never able to produce a pleasing motion blur effect.

  Long story short, the waterfall (this version at least) is as good as it is going to look. Perhaps in the future Vue will have a particle system and I won’t need to use a workaround. Thanks for all the suggestions though!

  Speaking of suggestions, I thought you all might be interested in the images with the most recent comments. This is how I’ve been keeping track of which images (out of the hundreds in my gallery) have recent comments and I thought you might like to read them too. Thanks again everyone!

Posted on May 15, 2007

• A few items to mention this morning. I’ve just posted a new wallpaper, “Hidden Falls”, in the gallery this morning. I can’t count the number of times people have written me asking me to do a waterfall, but I’ve always been a little be afraid to try one. Waterfalls are rather tricky to create in 3D as a still image. I decided to give it a go however and I hope you like the result.

  Second, I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has written me expressing support in regards to my “Siteadvisor” troubles (see post from 5/8). There have been so many emails that I couldn’t possibly respond properly to them all. I especially appreciate the folks who took the time to create a “reviewer” account with Siteadvisor and put in a good word for DB. Apparently they have heard us and have said they will “re-test” my site ASAP. Hopefully they will get it right this time.

  Lastly, a few of you recommended that I have a place where Members could share their thoughts about the Members Gallery with non-Members. I think this is a pretty cool idea so I have set up a comment form (similar to the one I use for the images in the gallery) so you can do just that. If you enjoy being a Member and would like to give a “testimonial” then you can do so here. If you would like to read what other Members have written you can do so here. Once there are a few up there I will post them on a page in the Free Gallery. It’s completely optional, but would really help offset the “bad press” this Siteadvisor thing has caused. Thanks!

Posted on May 8, 2007

• I need to clear the air about something. Back in March I was alerted to the fact that a website called “Siteadvisor”, run by McAfee, had “redlisted” my site. Specifically they claimed to have received spam emails after “signing up”. What really happened is that their robot entered an email address in my guestbook. At the time I allowed people to enter their email address along with their guestbook post (it wasn’t mandatory). The email address was then displayed next to the post.

  Shortly thereafter their email address was harvested by a program which surfs the web and collects email addresses from web pages. The spam they received was not sent by me.

  When I found out about this I immediately contacted the Siteadvisor people. I removed the email field from the guestbook and asked them to recheck my site. They came back to me shortly thereafter saying that my site would be given the “green” rating, but that the change would take 4 weeks to propagate through the database.

  I don’t know what sort of slow database they are running, but the change still hasn’t been made. Repeated emails from me requesting the change be made have been ignored. Now folks using this plugin are afraid to visit my site.

  At this point I’m not sure what else to do. I am still working to get the rating changed, but I wanted you all to know what was going on. DB has never, and will never send spams. I have prided myself on treating my site visitors, both members and non-members, as I would like to be treated and will continue to do so.

Posted on May 5, 2007

• I’m glad to see that most of you enjoyed “Cosmos”. I’ve added dual and triple-screen versions to the gallery this morning.

Posted on April 30, 2007

• It doesn’t seem to matter how fast my machine is: I always find a way to max it out an create scenes which take days to render. My latest wallpaper, “Cosmos”, is now up on the new images page for your review. I was attempting to recreate some of the same “dust and light” play that can be found in the coolest Hubble shots. I guess the consolation is that such an image would have taken weeks to render on my old machine. Enjoy!