well it's been quite awhile since i've updated my journal...and by quite awhile i'm talking a solid 6 months or so. heh sorry everyone. i'm a lot more free as of a couple weeks ago so hopefully i'll resume to all my usual dA activities.

well it's 2008 as of a little over a month ago...in the last six months that i've disappeared a lot has happened with me, personally and on dA (even though i've seemed invisible). in august i started school back up here...now a senior psychology major. but over thanksgiving break i FINALLY decided to switch over to be a graphic design major. i'm much more passionate about that than i am about psychology now anyway, plus i've had a lot of opportunities open up for me with design recently. as you can see, i'm rocking a new + symbol. i can't give any details out about what all work i'm doing for dA right now...but lemme just say that project sleek is going to blow your mind. just keep an eye out for when all this new stuff gets launched.

on top of being hired with dA, i also passed up 1,000,000 views on deviantART a few months ago. thanks so much to all those who have downloaded my wallpapers, icon packages, skins, etc...you guys are my inspiration to continue designing and without this community i'd still be stuck trying to decide a career i'd actually enjoy in life.

in my personal life...i dated a girl for about a month. her name was also jordan.



unfortunately one nite when i logged into facebook my news feed said she was single. quite a way to get broken up with eh? she's one of the most gorgeous girls i've ever met...i had no clue why she started dating me of all people. haha but then again i also have no clue why she stopped dating me like that. who knows. i'm kinda talking to a new girl now...so we'll see how that works out.

in other news...pretty much all i do now in my free time is kick it with my crew, we got about 15 of us that hangout every nite of the week. right now we're planning a SICK spring break trip to a million dollar condo i got for free. don't ask me how, let's just say i know people that know people. anyone have any good spring break plans out there? and for those of you that i used to talk to alot...leave a comment and fill me in on what you're up to now.

-- pho


p.s. be sure to check out the latest edition of the electric disco that we just released!!

UPDATE : I received responses from $lolly, $Moonbeam13, and $chix0r on this issue. The ripped deviation has been removed, and I'm hoping the CEA branch of this site will be reviewed as promised so that blatant rips on this site will no longer go unlooked. Kudos to administration for their responses to this journal via comments and notes. I'm very impressed by their handling of this.

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Just a few thoughts that came to mind that I was reminded again by the news article CEA Update for August 8, 2007.

This article has several great reminders that everyone should (hopefully) already follow...however an update on the backlog that is currently a HUGE problem is greatly needed. In FAQ 155 it states the following about "What Happens After I Report Something?":

If the submission remains after the passing of 48 hours then you have either failed to provide sufficient evidence for us to make an accurate judgment or the deviation was judged not to be a violation of official deviantART policy.

I have previously submitted a VERY obvious rip from my gallery that is sitting in another user's gallery. This copyright violation was reported numerous times, beginning exactly one month ago from today. Unfortunately the FAQ is not correct in saying that copyright violations will be handled within 48 hours. I assumed my tickets were simply overlooked or there was an error, however I found out weeks ago that there was a 3 week backlog in copyright violations for the site. Three weeks! And seeing how this rip from my gallery still hasn't been addressed, I will assume that this backlog is well over a month old.

Since reporting the rip directly to CEA didn't help, I reported it over dAmn to a $ admin. Was anything done? Nope...they just told me that it wasn't an obvious enough rip.

Since nothing is being done in the artist's favor on these issues...I'm presenting it to you in my journal to see what you think. Is this an obvious enough rip? It's blatantly stolen from my gallery. Maybe this journal will help speed up to process of taking care of this rip.

Here's my ORIGINAL deviation:







Now...is simply resizing an image and changing some text up enough to remove all copyrights on artwork? Really? You be the judge.

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And in case you're worried, let me clarify that $realitysquared said in this journal that's it's fine in journals to call out deviants who have ripped you. And I quote, "If someone has stolen your Art you should be able to say, "HEY This SOB stole my Art! WTF?!"."

Although we currently have a 'deviantMOBILE' for the site, that interface is simply used to compress deviations to wallpapers in cell phone compatible sizes. Unfortunately, deviantART still doesn't have a WAP friendly version of the site. There is a huge market for this though...so I've decided to work on some mockups of what this dAmobile site could look like on your cell.

Currently I just have a News page mockup, however I will have all other major pages done for a dAmobile preview. I know there are a lot of currently developments going on, especially with August 7th coming in just a couple days. However, this is a project that eventually does need to come to reality, as this site currently loads very slow for cell users, and there is no WAP version.

The last several days have been quite different than usual around my page here. Hopefully some of that will be clarified in this journal for those of you curious.

A few days ago, late May 30th, I posted a thread in the Senior Members Forum. It was a very poorly worded thread, with some semi-personal, semi-attacks included in it. Basically I was questioning administration and some of the recently promoted seniors. I did not name any names though, to avoid breaking any policies. Unfortunately, when I logged in the next day to read the replies, there were nearly 100, and nearly all 100 were posts tearing me in half. I felt like someone in one of those Southwest Airlines Commercials (wanna get away?).

The intent of my thread had gone the entirely wrong direction. I was quite out of line to even refer to the "new wave of seniors", as this was very rude to those deviants, even though I had not named any names. My original thoughts behind the thread were more of a question to administration, as to why it was acceptable to designate rude types of deviants to seniorship, a position of increased leadership and expectations. It was also a question to the senior community concerning their thoughts on seniorship on a whole, if it was relevant today. However through this post I appeared to be one of those rude deviants. I could've have just called myself out too, as I was digging myself into a hole I couldn't get out of. So to all of those deviants I "called out" in a somewhat vague manner, my apologies to you, I do regret those derogatory remarks.

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Within 24 hours of posting the forum thread, my seniorship was revoked. Even though I didn't break any site policies, it was made quite clear to me that the senior community did not want to be associated with me. Was this action going over the line? I'm honestly not sure. However I am fine with my subscriber status, and if administration sees me fit outside the senior community, that's their call. I'm fine either way.

After my senior status was revoked, I replied to a couple more posts in my thread (via my message centre). Apparently you can still post in the senior forum via message centre replies. Due to the heat of the past many posts there, I was banned for a few hours until they fixed the bug, no longer allowing me to reply to posts in the Senior Members Forum. Was banning me for a simple bug glitch crossing the line? That's your call. I did not break any policies, nor was I "hacking" a forum.

Fortunately my account was unbanned within a few hours, and I was back to the regular =subscriber status after about two and a half months as a senior. I also had some extensive notes back and forth with $lolly, and we resolved all the issues there.

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So...that's it. Long story eh? Sorry about that, I just felt I owed some people an explanation, as well as an apology. Hopefully my e-reputation isn't completely destroyed with some of you. However if it is, I'm fine with that; need I remind you this is merely the internet?

And for the sake of this journal, I want to remind everyone that I'm very calm now, apologetic, and simply relaying the events from the past week. I'm done with causing any trouble, so I hope you all will interpret this journal in the kind tone I'm trying to convey it in.

If you have any questions or comments regarding all this, please feel free to post those here. However please do not encourage any negative discussion here, keep those in notes if you must.

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In HAPPY news, I turned 20 on July 2nd. Thanks to those for the birthday wishes, and thanks to myself and my devious behavior for no dA birthday presents (other than this shiny = symbol).