Cajen Tutorials

Paintings and a Tablet

Posted by User Image Cajen | Filed under Personal, site matters

Today is a beautiful day! Finally, I have bought my own graphics tablet. I decided to go with Genius G-Pen 560. It is cheap, and it gets the job done. Although of course, I hope to have my own Wacom Intuos3 tablet along with their 6d Art Pen.

Using graphics tablet when doing artwork is immensely useful compared to working with a mouse. I’ve pretty much gotten used to it within 15mins of doodling in Corel Painter X - which by the way is an excellent, excellent software every artist should have.

After I’ve had my fill of doodling, I decided to search for my paintings - and was happy to find some of them!

This is a painting I did after we went to Batanes, my hometown, in the summer of 1998. I was trying to do a painting influenced by one of our local painters (whose name escapes me at the moment).

This one I also made in 1998, it is signed Ramir, as it is my real name. Now, you know. Tee-hee!

Cajen Paintings

This one is an attempt at watercolors AND portrait painting. Didn’t turn out the way I wanted it though. It’s supposed to be a portrait of my sister - who has black hair and dark brown eyes.

Cajen Paintings

This one is done in acrylic. If I’m not mistaken, it is a photograph that I might have seen in a magazine. I was experimenting with textures here and i used a palette knife for most of the painting, except the underpainting.

Cajen Paintings

I hope to see my other paintings too. I will try and recreate some of these paintings either in Photshop or Painter. By the way, the direction of this blog will now focus on digital paintings, of course you will still see posts on blogging and monetization every now and then. Till then!

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XAMPP: Local Testing Server

Posted by User Image Cajen | Filed under softwares

I have been using XAMPP since I started managing a couple of websites for our clients. I was lucky enough to bump into this wonderful, excellent tool. In a nutshell, it lets you view your webpages on your browser without having to upload it to your webhost, and it supports PHP and MySql. This tool makes it very easy to make changes to your site (or blog) before you upload them.

XAMPP

Go grab a package at their website. Installation is really easy, because you don’t need to! Instead, just unzip/unrar your package to your computer and that’s it! You just need to save your files or website inside htdocs folder found inside xampp folder. You might wanna create folders inside the htdocs folder to define different websites.
If you want to check if it works, just go to your favorite browser and put ‘http://localhost’ (without the single quotes)in the address bar. You should be able to view XAMPP’s control panel and will tell you if you have successfully installed XAMPP to your system.

Now to create a testing environment for your blog, just create a new folder inside htdocs. Download Wordpress and extract the contents inside the folder you’ve just created. Then go to http://localhost/folder-name, this should prompt you to the installation page. Also don’t forget to define your database location, username, password. Read this if you need to freshen up your WP installation.

Now you can easily check plugins, new templates, design, etc. before they go live on your website. Go give it a try, and if you dont like it, then go ahead and delete the xampp folder. By doing so, you are uninstalling XAMPP. Till then!

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Tags: blog testing, testing server, xampp

Read more | Comments (1) | July 10th, 2008

Entrecard: Be Seen and Get Traffic

Posted by User Image Cajen | Filed under increase traffic, make money

Another great way to boost your traffic is joining the booming community of Entrecard. I’ve been an Entrecarder for more than a month now and I’ve seen a couple of Entrecarders visit my site to drop their cards at my EC widget. Basically how it works is that you get credits for visiting other entrecarders and dropping at their entrecard widget. With enough credits, you can buy advertisement from another entrecarder and you get to promote your blog at their page. The more credits you get, the more advertisements you can buy, which translates to more traffic. And today is the best day to join the community as Entrecard is holding another contest. Win tons of prizes (see list below). I’m looking to win the ad spot at ImpNerd OR the 10,000 credits from Fantasy Baseball (drools). I hope I win.

Here are the sponsors and prizes (EC credits) that are at stake:

Fantasy Baseball - 10,000ec — You can trade in 10,000ec for, like, Graham’s car or something.

Q3-n - 5000ec — Q3-n is selling their 1950s dinette furniture to finance this contest. They say, “You’re welcome.”

Øblog - 4000ec — Wow! 4000ec is going for like $30 on the Entrecard market. Thanks, Weird Oh.

Evil Woobie - 3000ec — Hey, maybe she’s not so evil after all! Or is she? You make the call!

Turnip of Power - 1001ec — He was going to go with 1000 then he found an extra credit in his couch. Thanks, Turnip! Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: blog promotion, contest, entrecard, increase traffic

Read more | Comments (0) | July 6th, 2008

Independence day and a Birthday Greeting

Posted by User Image Cajen | Filed under Personal

232 years ago, America claimed its independence from Britain, on July 2, 1776. 2 days after, the declaration of Independence happened. Happy Independence Day to all Americans out there!

29 years ago, the world saw one of the most intelligent persons I know. 12 years after, we met and my life has seen the best this world to offer. I love you my friend. Happy birthday Phil!

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Related Posts:
Entrecard: Be Seen and Get Traffic

Tags: birthday, fourth of july, independence day, phil

Read more | Comments (0) | July 4th, 2008

I signed up for PPP

Posted by User Image Cajen | Filed under make money

I have been finally approved for PayPerPost! The first time I applied, I was declined though because my blog hasn’t seen 90 days yet. However, much to my surprise, PayPerPost has decided to change the terms of approval – instead of 90 days, your blog only needs to be 30 days old with at least 10 post within those 30 days! I wasted no time and re-submitted my blog. Within 12 hours (yes, they are fast), I’ve got an email saying that I got approved!
Before I get ahead of myself, what exactly is PayPerPost? PayPerPost offers opportunities to blog publishers of earning extra income by posting topics from advertisers. For example, with this post, I am being paid $20.00! Don’t worry though, each sponsored post will have a disclosure at the end to let you know that it’s a paid post. What’s more, you get to choose which stuff to blog about. It’s easy to sign up and as long as your blog is 30days old with at least 10posts, approval is a breeze.

A lot of advertisers are turning to bloggers for blog advertising these days. And PPP serves as the contact point for these advertisers and you, the bloggers. Go ahead, give it a try and sign up today. If you are a regular blogger, and writing is your passion – then might as well get paid to do it.