So you wanna be like Linh in all ways digital? Probably not, but every now and then someone will ask me where I get the stuff I've got, so I'll share it all here.
You'll be surprised how easy it is. I'll walk you through my computer from the psudo-mac look to the masses of media on my hard-drives.
Skin It!
There's no denying it, Windows XP is ugly, and Macs look cool. So toss that taskbar to the top and get that wanna-be Mac look using
StyleXP with the oh so sexy
Milk 2.0 skin. Port some of the cooler screensavers from mac and Vista like
Flurry and
Bubbles.
Sport the Yamaguchi
Complete the Mac look with
Y'z Dock, Shadow, and Toolbar. That added shadow makes all the difference, and Y'z dock is just the coolest dock of them all. And just out of loyalty, you can grab the Y'z toolbar to pretty up your windows explorer. Dock icons I find at
Wincustomize (I'm a big fan of Jairo Boudewyn's work).
To get rid of that recycle bin icon, and added tweaking fun, get
Windows's TweakUI.
Worried about those shoddy Photoshop skills? All I can say is play and learn. Don't think you're capable of that? No worries! With some pre-made brushes, cool fonts, and some tasteful creativity,
anyone can make a decent wallpaper.
Just download and stick .abr files into Photoshop /presets/brushes/ folder and stamp away! I download most of my brushes from personal sites listed at
websoup.org. Or you can make your own using
Del's handy-dandy brush tutorial.
Fonts can be equally fun when used responsibly. Lots of my fonts are free at
dafont.com.
So what else can you do with all those cool fonts and brushes? Why, you can make a blog of course! Set yourself up with
Wordpress on
your brothers' site, and start making new layouts each month. Don't have that kind of brother? No worries! Lots of blogging sites out there. Avoid sites like xanga and myspace.
Blogger is acceptable.
Trash IE
Get yourself a good browser like
Opera or
Firefox, both of which I use quite often now.
Add Music
Share all that awesome crazy foreign music you've collected with the flash player,
XSPF Web Music Player.
Link Friends
Spend some extra time to screenshot your buddies' pages and make a cute little link button. Keep it updated with their layouts to show them you care, and hope they don't change it as often as I do. Add their name using the slick pixel font,
Silkscreen.
Create and Publish
Hand code everything hardcore style using
EditPad Lite. Don't know how to code? All I can say is, google and learn. The digital life of Linh does not tolerate the likes of Dreamweaver or Frontpage.
Get some inspiration from the most tasteful designers featured on
stylegala.com and see what new css tricks
Stu Nicholls can teach you. Skim palettes at
colourlovers.com for ideas. Flourish your page with
Squidfingers patterns.
Using the
W3C's Validator Service and
CSS Validator, make sure your code is clean and up to par. Then proudly display your validity either using the ugly yet official buttons, or make your own using this handy
button maker.
Upload all your goodies using
SmartFTP or
CuteFTP.
Don't forget your
Japanese Text Display & Input! With all those Japanese sites you'll visit, little square boxes can get pretty annoying. Not to mention the occasional time you want to blog in Japanese.
So I'm in America but all I blog about is Anime and Japanesey things. Where did I get all that Anime and Jpop on my hard-drives? From the wonderful world wide web of course.
Anime
Get yourself a nice and roomy hard-drive and fill it up with an unhealthy amount of Anime. Don't know where to start? Head to
animenewsnetwork.com and just start downloading the top 100 Anime. Or even better, consult
My Anime List for must see Anime.
Once you know which ones you want, head to sites like
boxtorrents.com for whole series,
baka-updates.com for latest single releases. For something inbetween, try
animeyume.org or
animesuki.com.
With your newly aquired torrent files, use a torrent client like
µTorrent to download them. If you're hard core, learn how to use
mIRC. Torrents & IRC aren't your thing? Maybe you can direct download it at
animea or
anime-direct. If you're REALLY lazy, just can stream it off veoh via
anijunkie.com.
Don't Forget: The all-important
klite codec pack that will allow you to play like, 99.9% of anything you download online.
Manga
Manga can be fun too. For best digital
manga reading experience, use
CDisplay. Check out
stoptazmo.com for a decent selection of manga.
Asian Dramas
There's no need to be embarassed. You know your heart just melts when the male and female protagonists finally declare undying love for eachother after a series of setbacks and denials.
Grab all the torrents you'll need at
d-addicts.com. If you're a more casual watcher, just go to
mysoju.com and watch all the most popular dramas with no fuss or waiting. My favorites are:
Full House (Korean)
Hana Yori Dango (Japanese)
Why Why Love (Taiwanese)
Foreign Music
For game music mp3 and sheet music, I go to
Galbadia Hotel at ffshrine.org. And for anime music, I head to
Gendou's Anime Music. Rather have whole albums? Head to the trackers at
jpopsuki.com and
tokyotoshokan. If you're not very good at googling music,
g2p.org will help you out.
last.fm is an awesome place to find new artists you like, especially if you have unique tastes.
Images
So you want to post anime reviews but have no images? Screenshot your own using
Blaze Media Pro or if you're lazy, borrow some from
animestocks.com.
Too screenshotty for your purposes? These sites have great collections of scans:
animepaper.net,
animepa.
But don't stop there! Use your creative juices and Photoshop CS2 to create your own wallpaper tuned to your tastes.
