As I wrote a couple of days ago, the blog was in the throws of some rather major hosting disasters, partially due to DreamHost's service. Imagine my surprise when these problems continued AFTER the data center was back up, and the Slashdotting was over. So I sent them an email, and here's what I got:

"Sorry for the problems. Your site should be working now. It would appear someone had throttled your website, likely because it was getting so much traffic to kill the server. They should have written you about it though, arg. The load on the server is staying the same after turning the throttle off, so you should be ok. Should you be throttled again, you can ask to be moved to another server which will keep you from getting throttled. Gage is a machine with fewer people on it, but only 2GB of memory. Let me know if you have further problems or questions.

Justin"

So, the reason the blog's been completely patchy for days and days now is because Dreamhost was throttling it's bandwidth, without even, you know, telling the customer. Well, at least it's back up now as I transition into a new dedicated host, and thanks to Justin for a suitably apologetic and courteous email. That was appreciated. (Oh, and PS, thanks to all the readers who suggested hosting solutions in the previous post. That was very helpful for me, and will be helpful to others.)

Screensavers have become, in a way, a relic. Today, their original use of "saving screens" from burn-in and ghosting is no longer needed with modern monitors, and screensavers have become used solely for entertainment or security purposes (lock out strangers). That having been said, they're still enormously popular, even built-in to Mac OS X, and since there are literally hundreds of them out there I decided to share my personal list of my ten favorite ones. All Intel compatible, all top notch in coolness, quirkiness, or the relaxation factor, and ultimately gathered through what probably amounts to many hours of screensaver crawling. Enjoy! Continue reading...

Nearly a year ago, Iconfactory artist David Lanham shared some icon sketches with me based on Bjork's "All is Full of Love" music video which features some really cool white plastic/black rubber sheathed robots. I told him he just had to do a full theme based on these icons, and after a loooong and rather painful (think over 17 totally different attempts at getting the Finder buttons right painful) development, the theme, titled Amora, is now finally nearing release having met David's high standards for his work. Presenting Amora:

All right, so as you guys may've noticed, my blog was down for a good 24 hour period through most of yesterday. A real pity considering the amount of traffic that was coming over trying to pull up the site. (And REALLY frustrating. I think fellow webmasters will know what I'm talking about, and for the rest of you, imagine having sent out a party invitation to your house to tens of thousands of people then having to leave the entire day with the house dark and locked up.) So what happened? Continue reading...

The Fake Leopard Screenshot Contest quite honestly launched with some ridiculous publicity... apparently something about the idea of a contest with users trying to imagine a better OS X struck something within a lot of people, resulting in over 100,000 visitors and more than 40 entries. Well, that and the equally ridiculous prize package valued at over $1000 per winner, graciously donated by 28 Macintosh software companies and services. For a fake screenshot.

I won't delay any further, with an earlier slipup due to forum downtime having caused a lot of feet tapping and general discontent. But hopefully these will get your imaginations flowing, some Apple engineers nodding their heads, and make your day just a bit more interesting. Without further ado... presenting... Continue reading...

Just wanted to drop a note, the winners (plus three runners up) of the Fake Leopard Screenshot Contest will be announced this afternoon. The deliberation was intense, but the results are finally all in, and everything is being put together now. This'll be a fun post.

Something's brewing at the Iconfactory, and for now, they've posted a very amusing clue at what's coming up. The Iconfactory, of course, is probably the most established icon design group out there, with such projects as the Windows XP system icons under their belt. Gedeon promises a new pixelart movie each day until the big unveil (five days left according to the splash), so this'll be quite a fun ride. (Seriously, it's cool stuff. ) Enjoy!

Could it be coincidence that Iconfactory artist David Lanham has just released a teaser to an upcoming theme and iconset to be released in 7 days? Or is there more?!

I've been itching to get my hands on Shiira 2 since I read the preview posted on Delusions of Grandeur a few days ago, and I'm sure you guys have too. Which is why I was psyched when a MacThemesForums member found a link to a build uploaded the 19th. Admittedly it's still pretty buggy, and the preferences are all in Japanese, but hey, whatever, I'm digging the overall slickness and cool features like the tab bar and page info inspector panel.

Enjoy this one while it lasts! (Oh, and before anyone asks, to enable these tabs, you need to turn on the status bar first, then press the little icon on the bottom right (second from the right) to show the tab bar. It was a bit buggy here, so you might have to manually expand it once you toggle it on. (Mouseover to just above the status bar until you get the drag cursor, and pull up.)

Update: New build, uploaded August 1st, can be found here!