http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:hope-n-forever&section=today deviantART RSS for by:hope-n-forever en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Mon, 30 Nov 2009 04:16:00 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/13716125/ http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/13716125/ Fri, 13 Jul 2007 04:00:33 PDT
I bring in some news about things happening with me lately, but I can’t say if you would care to not like it, or don’t care at all. Looks like I’ve been having doubts about friendly loyalty lately, but that’s another matter.

Anyhow, a lot of you may be wondering why I haven’t uploaded any piece of art in a really long while. Well, I do have some good and a relevant number of art pieces which are kinda ready at my disposal… or should I say WERE ready!

Okay, for those of you who haven’t learnt about it yet, I was (and still am) passing through times of really sudden and unexpected events, and they’re not even good. On a national scale, we’ve been having a war-like conflict in places very near my University. In fact, sometimes on occasion, even dangerously near! It forced us to change a lot in my timing and schedules, and I was later busy trying to work this mess off with the rest of my classmates! This happened due to new security reasons which forced the admins of the school to cancel a lot of things, and shorten class times to avoid being responsible of keeping students in the evening when it’s most dangerous! If you like to know more about the current events, click here.

On a personal scale, I already mentioned the mess I’m having with school work, especially now I’m in my final years of my BFA, and my courses had to be taken a lot more strictly! Unfortunately, due to another sudden event, it limited me even further! Two months ago, the Acer laptop of mine, which was at my service for its fourth year of its busy life with yours truly, had “died!” MOST OF MY STINKING PERSONAL DATA IS ON MY LAPTOP!! You may be wondering if I had ever made backups? I never really bothered to, as it’s such a waste of time and money with how much my info is continuously updated! If someone had bought be an external hard-drive, I would’ve been a lot more attentive to backing up anyhow, but as usual nobody listens to me! I guess you know what this means? Yep… even if I could manage to get hands-on a temporary alternative, I wouldn’t have the solid means of finalising my stuff quickly enough. To return solidity, I’ll have to wait until I actually get my old laptop fixed, or, MORE LIKELY, get a new one, which in this case I have to wait FOREVER to get one, as my parents trying to decrease their financial support in favour of only necessities due to their own problems, but that’s yet another story! (Man! I’m stuck in so many story branches!)
I’ll as much as I can to actually do with whatever I got for now.

This is pretty much the horror of a bad news until maybe something bigger happens? Oh well… what could my fate be now?

So… next thing I wanna say. Even if I’m still as active as I usually am, there was a surprising, but not unique, problem occurred with the last Kiriban offer. Apparently, looks like due to deviantART’s technical glitches on milestone pageviews, especially ever 10,000 pageviews beginning from view one per account, two people managed to acquire the 10,000th view on my page! They both had proofs too! They are ~MythTrainerInfinity and ~JordanRinehart.
The problem with this is that there could be only one winner, as per my policies (which is ironic, because the prize for getting the Kiriban is a free request made with my best effort, and ALL POLICIES get cancelled so requesting is totally open). At least, I’m thinking of trying to give a Grand Prize to the winner, and the other can have a consolation or something, since I’m a fairly nice guy. So… to resolve this problem I thought of giving the first one who commented his Kiriban claim the Grand Prize, however, this is a bad idea, because logically, and who knows, the first commenter is not necessarily the first person who acquired the Kiriban, especially with the timing differences between each comment. No… like that it cannot be done.
So… I thought, why not accept both equally? Oh, no worries, only one will get the Grand Prize, but I won’t be the one responsible for the decision. Therefore, I decided to open a new poll, and let the majority of the voters decide who gets the Grand Prize. If you know one of them, vote for him. If you know both of them, vote for the one you like better! (Votes will be anonymous) If you know neither of them, I say check their galleries, judge their art and compare, and then vote for the guy who you believe deserves the Grand Prize more! If you’re one of those two guys, then vote for yourself! Heh…

So, now that I explained it, you can post your vote http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/12931019/ Sat, 12 May 2007 15:14:55 PDT
I think I have something in mind for this next occasion...

IF YOU MANAGE TO GET MY 10,000TH PAGEVIEW, YOU'LL RECIEVE A FREE OPEN ART REQUEST IN A QUALITY OF AN EXPENSIVE ART COMMISSION!!

When I say "OPEN", I mean I'll omit ALL my policies on accepting requests from people, and the winner will receive ANYTHING he/she desires!!

However, I still will need proof that you managed to capture my 10,000th pageview.
You need to capture a screenshot of the page before you move on.

If you don't know how to capture a screenshot, simply tap the PrintScrn key once (that key is usually located just directly right of the F12 key, but some keyboards may have it somewhere else closeby. Sorry, I don't know if you could even take a screenshot with none-Windows computers, let alone how.) then open any image editing program (say Microsoft Paint) and click on Edit, then Paste from the drop-down menu, and you'll get the screenshot!
Unfortunately, this instruction is for Windows users only. I dunno about the other OSs out there.

I'll be working on a pic to commemorate this occasion as well...

On the side note, the winner of the last Kiriban - ~DaXXe - still has yet to receive his prize! I’m such a lazy bum! However, keep in mind that hardly forget who do I owe pics, and whichever ideas in question as well! ALL pics by me are guaranteed to be eventually finished.

]]> ~hope-n-forever http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/10138646/ http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/10138646/ Thu, 21 Sep 2006 01:38:35 PDT (Entry originally written on September 8th, 2006)

Woof! I was gone for a little while, then I’ve come back now and notice that a lot of you were pretty concerned about yours truly. I guess you can breath now…
So, what was the reason for my absence? Primarily, I was ultimately disconnected from the internet for quite a long while, and you may very likely know the reason why. However, if there is anyone out there who is so simple enough not to know what it is that happened, I’d like to tell you, on the 12th of July, my country had entered into a surprise war! Neighbouring country called Israel had somewhat declared war on my country, Lebanon, because an armed political militia party from our side called Hezbollah – an Islamic Shiite group – went and defied a border line, which the United Nations drawn in 2000 to keep all owned forces on either side. Hezbollah kinda went without any notice from our government, ambushed an Israeli patrols unit on the other side, killed three of them, and captured two. In a rescue attempt to save the two captured units, a further five Israeli soldiers were killed on our side of the border.
In response, the Israeli government decided to retaliate by invading our country with both air and naval blockades!! This was decided because it was NOT the first time Hezbollah attempted such terrorist operations.
Israel originally claimed that they declared war on Hezbollah alone, but in time as their attacks continued, it seems they really declared war on ALL of Lebanon instead!

Before the United Nations finally issued Resolution 1701 for an unconditional cease-fire (and some other stuff), in a mere 33 days Israel managed to ruin Lebanon relatively much more than the former Lebanese civil war ever did! When it all started, we thought Israel wouldn’t really go and attack targets further north than the province of the South, where Hezbollah is mostly based at. However, it turns out that, with the stupid strategy Israel came up with, nowhere turned out to be safe, not even the North, where the former civil war hardly even touched it! (The North was where we thought is the safest haven for my family, especially since we had a place to stay in when we resided there for the time!)

In 33 days, Israel managed to do damages costing up to $15 billion dollars (USD); as if our already poor economy could afford it, and with so much debt no less!! Israel managed to destroy or damage homes, businesses, ALL airports, miles of road and highway, civilian bridges, dams, major ports, water & sewage treatment plants, electrical facilities, fuel stations, fuel reserves, schools, TV & radio stations, warehouses, a civil defence centre, and even a UN base, as well as a couple of hospitals and many rescue ambulances!! They invaded so many cities, towns, and villages in all provinces, not just the South, including Tyre, Bint Jbeil, Nabatiyeh, Marjaayoun, Baalbeck, Hasbaiya, Saida, Tripoli, Beirut, and worst of all Qana!! Not mention that, by the time the cease-fire was issued, more than a million people were displaced, 1,187 civilians were martyred (us Arabs declare innocent casualties of war as “martyrs” as a sign of respect, where they be Islamic or not), in which around ⅓ of them were children who haven’t even reached thirteen years of age!!
Israel’s retaliation was supposedly for, first, disarming Hezbollah (as per Resolution 1559), and second, returning their captured soldiers – they achieved NEITHER goal from the retaliation! What sort of scum is this army!?

In addition to raids from air and sea, Israel sent ground troops to occupy territories. They had no respect for property, and ransacked the local homes, mosques, and churches! They ruined crops for the local farmers, and destroyed municipality property as well!
Israel also managed to drop so many cluster bombs and non-detonated heads very near civilian areas!! In fact, they managed to drop as many as a million of them during the war, and especially in the last three days before the cease-fire was finally issued!! These bombs are a great threat to the people nearby, and removal of those “duds” is a very risky and dangerous job!! (The removal process started as soon as the cease-fire was issued, and by now fourteen people already got killed from them either coincidentally or during a removal process…)
All that I just mentioned are things that are greatly disallowed by international standards of warfare, and they pretty much constitute as “war crime”! Israel even used bombs that are banned by international basis!!
If Hezbollah haven’t resisted the ground troops, and kept them as far back south of the Great Litani River until the cease-fire, this little country would’ve been so screwed by then!

If you cannot imagine the... ]]> ~hope-n-forever http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/10138622/ http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/10138622/ Thu, 21 Sep 2006 01:33:31 PDT Fox and Krystal managed to get to its one-thousandth pageview! Then, because of that, deviantART made me an offer by giving me a discount on opening a deviantPrints account, but for a limited time only. I, of course, couldn’t take this offer since I cannot really afford anything on the internet that is pricier than… “free”.
Sigh…

Despite that, I later realised I got other milestones I’ve achieved recently. Of course, there was the 5000th front page pageview which I got a while ago, but a thousand pageviews later, it seems I also managed to make over 10,000 deviation comments, as you can see in my stats!! Dang, do I comment a lot of deviations or what!? I simply cannot believe I’ve looked at more than 10,000 pieces of artwork, and still doing! Part of this number does belong to you guys, of course. I wonder if anyone minds that I tend to comment on every deviation that ever appears on my +devWatchlist.
Heh…
Sorry if this habit o’ mine bothers anyone…

Ah, and I should not forget the fact that I finally have now more than 100 people +devwatching me! I’d like to point out that it was ~ghazayel who made it to be my 100th +watcher! Congrats, man!
I originally intended to make a Kiriban for that who would be my 100th +watcher, but I kinda forgot about it that while for some reason. I guess I’d probably make another Kiriban if anyone gets to be my 500th watcher perhaps?
Oh, and by the way, I have been thinking about this for sometime: I never thought I’d ever grow this popular on deviantART when I first started posting art here waaaay back in early 2004, so I kinda made it policy to +watch anyone who gets to +watch me, no matter what. However, my own +watchlist is currently killing me as it is, especially when I get summer absences from the internet for a long period of time, say like three or four months and so…
So, I’ve decided, after getting my first 100 +watchers, to cancel this policy for good! Does this mean I’ll stop stalking people all together? Not necessarily, as I’ll still acknowledge anyone who puts me on his/her +watchlist, and furthermore if I find your art interesting, you’ll get a greater chance to get +watched by yours truly. Oh, just you don’t worry, I won’t remove anyone from my list whom I’ve +watched in the past. You’ll stay +watched by me as you ever were…

One last milestone, my ever-growing-in-popularity piece, Luigi and Yoshi - CG Edition, has managed to get over 50 favorites [sic] now! I cannot believe how popular that piece is growing albeit it has grown quite old! I mean, seriously, I’m starting to think it sucks now, and yet more people loving it! That’s really weird.
Ah well, I cannot blame any form of mania people might have…

I guess this is all now for the milestone scoop, as I’m still waiting for my first 10,000th pageview. I wonder who’s gonna catch it then…

]]> ~hope-n-forever http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/8619375/ http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/8619375/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 08:51:08 PDT
However, the way I'm now organising myself, I seem to be lost in a sea of chaos, and I can't seem to get my inventories down. In fact, there is much I wish to explain now, but can't seem to do it. I guess I'm lazy?

What is it that I really wish to explain?
Well, about the future of what i'm gonna do with my deviantART, the stuff I'll be uploading soon enough, the current requests, art trades, and even gifts I'm working with (as well as *DaXXe's prize pic), some journal modding with a standard signature of sorts, et cetra...

I mean, for example, how many of you are anticipated to see the full story behind the currently unfinished The Ten Year Journey? I cannot seem to get into focus on finishing that, as there is still much "history" to talk about and type down!

There is also this mind of mine who wants to take his +watch list apart into subs so not to mix up with friends and such. I can't seem to get around doing it either.

Why am I so blaming myself? 'Cause I've been for sometime planning some of my own dA clubs, and how would I do them if I cannot be responsible enough for them?
Oh, and I am planning on getting another account too...

NO! I won't abandon my current ~hope-n-forever account. I just wanna have an extra account, that is all. The reasons for this? At the moment, I cannot really disclose that info, but if I did, I bet some of you would really be excited for it.

I could send in previews of future uploads, but then again I made a personal policy against that, and so you have to wait for the final stuff instead.

Sigh. If only there was a way to organise my life in a very short time. Afterall, I still have thousands of older Deviantions I see did not "read" yet in my Message Box, and most of them are from the summer of 2005! I hate my current online life - it's pressurising me!!

In case any of you are intrested in my real life, I do have a Live Journal which I keep updating very frequently - almost daily to be precise!

Okay. For now you're all informed about my current situation, but I guess it'll take some time before I actually do give you some really "tasty" info about the things that are going on and about.

Unless someone suggests how to organise myself, I guess I be pretty much slacking off here and there...

P.S.: I hope you all had a wonderful Easter, although being an Orthodox, I celebrated Easter Sunday on the 23rd rather than the 16th... ]]> ~hope-n-forever http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/7684258/ http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/7684258/ Mon, 23 Jan 2006 10:58:55 PST
I really did! Thanks a lot you guys! You're all the best!!

I did upload a pic to commemorate this occasion: Past 5000 Pageviews

Check it out! It was quite an experience for me to do!

Ah, and about the Kiriban, I guess the winner is no other than *DaXXe - congrats dude!

Send me a Note anytime you feel like a request, and remember, I omitted ALL policies!

Alright, let's hope once I get to my 10,000th pageview that it's gonna be one heck of party!
Let's hope it comes very soon though... ]]> ~hope-n-forever http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/7507050/ http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/7507050/ Wed, 04 Jan 2006 10:22:03 PST
I think I have something in mind for this occasion...

IF YOU MANAGE TO GET MY 5000TH PAGEVIEW, YOU'LL RECIEVE A FREE OPEN ART REQUEST IN A QUALITY OF AN EXPENSIVE ART COMMISSION!!

When I say "OPEN", I mean I'll omit ALL my policies on accepting requests from people, and the winner will recieve ANYTHING he/she desires!!

However, I still will need proof that you managed to capture my 5000th pageview.
You need to capture a screenshot of the page before you move on.

If you don't know how to capture a screenshot, simply tap the PrintScrn key once (that key is usually located just directly right of the F12 key, but some keyboards may have it somewhere else closeby. Sorry, I don't know if you could even take a screenshot with none-Windows computers, let alone how.) then open any image editing program (say Microsoft Paint) and click on Edit, then Paste from the drop-down menu, and you'll get the screenshot!

I'll be working on a pic to commemorate this occasion as well... ]]> ~hope-n-forever http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/7410209/ http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/7410209/ Sat, 31 Dec 2005 12:42:53 PST
VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!



Here are this year's Christmas pics!!

Christmas Buddies 2005
A Peachy Christmas ]]> ~hope-n-forever http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/7114764/ http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/7114764/ Tue, 22 Nov 2005 13:38:34 PST Ten Years Anniversary piece! I you hadn't, you'd better check it out now before you actually continue reading the rest of this journal entry.

Yep! This entry will now portray all that happened in the last ten years of my drawing passion, and even before that! The following is written is well-ordered fashion, and in way you'll still understand it even if you never known me in person or something of that sort.

Keep in mind though, like any other young child, I had been drawing a lot as fun. So don’t consider it to be something I really did want to do that time.

So let our journey begin waaaay back in 1992, the year when I first got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System on my seventh birthday, and the same year where my sister Therese (~princess-rose) was born!
At that time, I played Super Mario World for the very first time, where the booklet’s art pieces had fascinated me quite a lot! The game was also my very first Super Mario game I owned, even though I’ve been playing Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3 for a pretty long time back, as I’ve been watching the U.S. cartoon series as well!
Anyways, with my introduction to Archie Comics as well, I kinda liked the idea of imitating the people. So I started pretended to draw like I was a pro or something, but it was only for fun back then.

In much later times, say 1994, I started creating stuff. Keep in mind, these simply “created”, and NOT put down in physical form as “drawings”. What sort of stuff was created? Well, being an imaginative nine-year-old, or an eight-and-a-half-year-old to be more accurate, all I created was simply some ideas of animated shows, live-action shows, and some animated movies. Of course, being done by a child these creations were not significantly attractive, comprehensible, or even solid. When it came to drawing, however, I never did draw my creations, but I did draw what I felt ought to be drawn that instant came into my mind. I wanted to do a car, so I did a car. I wanted to draw a camel, so I did a camel. I wanted to draw a big monster with big cute eyes, so I did a big monster with big cute eyes. And so on. I admitted I wasn’t the best artist around, but I didn’t care as I took great pride in my work that I really wanted to show everyone around me, and even persist on showing, until they get annoyed!
I guess I was one funny kid.

The first time had I ever played a Sonic the Hedgehog game was, as I could remember, back in early 1992, and the game was the classical Sonic the Hedgehog, but I didn’t really know what it was called that time, and in fact, I didn’t even know the actual species Sonic was as well, and the make you know how much I live in place where things were totally outdated at one time, I just found out a the simple basics of Sonic TWO YEARS after I played the game the first time ever! There was also one time I even thought Knuckles was a girl!! Although, as much as I know how huge the Sonic Fandom is these days, but back then, between a fat plumber and a speedy blue hedgehog, I preferred the plumber, as much as I really like the young hedgehog anyway! And you know what? I NEVER regretted it!
In any case, back to the point of this story. When I first seen the Sonic cartoon, I went aghast! I didn’t believe it that time (this is place where I REALLY got the basic info on Sonic, as I was introduced to Tails for the first time before I actually played Sonic the Hedgehog 2)! If this wasn’t enough, I later learnt about the comics too, which were also by my favourite comicbook company – Archie Comics! At that time, however, there was no local place where I could find the comics, and that what disappointed me the most. (I used to live in the U.A.E. that time, and keep in mind that I stayed there until I entered my college years within Lebanon since late 2003.) Despite the fact I couldn’t find the comic available, somehow certain people I knew actually owned some comics! I borrowed those comics to read, but I was still dissatisfied! I wanted my own collection.! (It finally did happen though, but not until somewhere during 1999.) Back to the 1994 issue, I befriended a guy who claimed himself a Sonic enthusiast. I guess being a Super Mario enthusiast myself, I went for it!
As much as I kinda drew a lot that year, I kinda improved a lot that time. The guy I befriended (which I prefer to keep “nameless” for the whole article for sensitive/personal reasons) had a passion for drawing as well (I fear he lost it a long time ago now, as well as his fandom for Sonic – his philosophy of “growing up” is typically classical alright). Well, what does a child artist do with a fellow child arti... ]]> ~hope-n-forever http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/6925134/ http://hope-n-forever.deviantart.com/journal/6925134/ Tue, 01 Nov 2005 11:14:03 PST
Well, I guess that's the matter of how I'll start things with this entry, but YES! I had finally relaunched my website at long last!!

Click here to go there, and see the awesomeness! Unless you haven't seen my website before, then there's nothing much to see. Enjoy anyways though.

What did I mean by "then there's nothing much to see" though? Well, although I've kinda been working on the layout for a very long time, it's rather embarrasing as I haven't got the other IMPORTANT pages up yet!! The actual reason is that I was quite lazy to work on my website, even though it had been like EIGHTEEN months! Besides, I learnt quite a lot along the way, which forced me to delay the full process a lot longer, say like FIVE years! I can't wait THAT long you know? I had to unleash the new layout NOW!! Ah, I guess I did, and it might motivate me to finish off the rest of the pages too! I hope you'd add to my motivation as well, by some certain words of support or something like that.
I also am planning for a couple more websites later on as well!

Okay, that aside, now for the question lots of people may had been asking:
WHY HAD I DISAPPEARED FROM DEVIANTART?

Well, the truth is, if you don't know about me from elsewhere, I've been absent from the WHOLE internet in general for four months! Starting from the end of June, until the end of September!
(Oh, by the way, in case you didn't know, I had my twentieth birthday on the 17th of September this year)

What was the cause of this absence, even one like me had loads to do online?
It's quite an embarrasing reason actually. You see, most of the year, I've been using my University's internet connection, and since summer means a vacation for me, that also meant I was forced off the University's computers for a very long time! Um... I do have internet at home, but due to this country's worst telephone services, and the fact that it's all waaaaaay too costly, I guess I couldn't really do much in that department.
I did kinda access the internet from time to time, but seldomly, and I couldn't afford to log on to ANY account I had as this might create some fuss on me, and the such!

Lots of people thought I must've died for real, as I left quickly and without warning, and not to mention the violence that's been occuring in this great country of ours, as terrorism still proceeds within our midsts...
Actually, to tell you all the truth, I almost DID die this summer!
No, it wasn't because of the violence, but imagine you having a major auto-accident on a MOUNTAIN highway, and we were close to the edge too!
My father and I would have perished that day in late August! Oh, thank God we were wearing our seatbelts!
ALWAYS WEAR YOUR SEATBELTS, KIDDIES! As you might never know when there could be an idiot driving up the wrong way of a one way road!!
I swear, it's true!!
I could've linked to the details of the day, as it was quite amusing in its own way.
However, you'll need to wait until I'm done with Live Journal.
Oh, by the way, we both survived the ordeal without injury, although our Jeep suffered a lot! The other guy was okay too, as no one wishes such harm to occur on anyone! Heh.

Right, what's left? Ah, yes, any future plans for my deviantART? Definitely!
First of all, many of you, whom I +devwatch, noticed that I'm now commenting on the pics I missed. If you are one of those who hasn't recieved a phenomena so-called by myself as a "~hope-n-forever Shower", relax! I said I to myself that I would comment on EVERYONE! You just have to wait for your turn to come, and that's all. As I will eventually comment on everyone's pieces! Well, at least, most of the pieces which everyone had uploaded, and still uploading. Heh...

Anyways, other plans include maybe going to open a few new deviantART communities! That would be splendid!
What else? There's a lot of art to upload on my own gallery of course, and... ah yes! Expect loads of new developments to come about soon enough, as I'm planning to upload a few comic series onto my gallery very soon!
I'll explain the details later about this, but right now, enjoy the things to come!

Hmm. I guess that ends my journal entry now, but I'll definitely be doing another one soon enough, where I'll be explaining lots of other stuff!

One more time, please do visit my website, and please do give me some feedback on the new layout.

As for now: see ya, people!

------------- ]]> ~hope-n-forever