history

Started in the end of 2000, Ricepaper was once called Paperdice. By right Ricepaper has only been around since end of 2002, but Ricepaper and Paperdice are essentially the same, just with a few tweaks and a name change. In fact, sometimes I would use the names interchangeably, just because I forgot.

paperdice version 1:
The very first Paperdice, ala version 1.0 and 1.1, were my pride and joy back then. (Unfortunately I didn't keep them around, so I don't have a screenshot to show) It was at first, a purple layout. Very purple. To this day I will still see links to paperdice which are commented as "lili's purple site". Version 1.1 was essentially the same thing, with a few tweaks to the menus and the purple was changed to blue. The name paperdice was... strange. I had a collection of names to use for site names, and paperdice wasn't part of the list (neither were the five other sites I had with f2s.com). It was conjured up by the idea of having something related with paper... and paperdice just came to mind... *shrug* Trying my luck? *haha* The first version of paperdice (I lump 1.0 and 1.1 together) had poetry, prose, guestbook, about. A very writing site. Didn't even have my blog on it. But the good thing was that I had comments for every piece of work.
go to top.

version 2:
(pop-up)
Paperdice version 2 was one of the more successful redesigns of paperdice. By successful I mean it was actually complete before I redesigned. I colour-coordinated the sections, so "main" was purple, "about" was pink, and I think poetry and prose were different pastel colours. I call this version the sweet candy version, because that was basically what it looked liked. I brought over my blog from Xanga.com (pop-up) to the main page of paperdice, and added a links page as well as a winamp skins page. The reason why I've retained the winamp skins section till now even though I only have 3 skins was because people actually downloaded the skins during this version and emailed me about them. I actually liked this layout quite a bit, it grew on you instead of getting more and more boring. I only changed the design because I changed hosts.

Anyway, to explain slightly about f2s.com, which was my very first host, and hosted paperdice versions 1 and 2, as well as my other sites pixiedust, matsuri, zenweb, aishiteiru, kagetai. F2s.com (pop-up) used to offer free hosting, and when they shut that down I had to go around looking for a host. That was when I first set out to find a host, but it was unsuccessful. In the end I found Digitalrice (pop-up), which offered free accounts too. So I moved paperdice over to Digitalrice, and paperdice version 3 was borne.
go to top.

version 3:
(pop-up)
My most "zen" layout yet. It was wholly inspired by The Japanese House, a coffee table book which showcases japanese architecture, and particularly, the ideas of zen designing. I actually wanted to make it in the colours of bricks, tatami and wood, but it didn't work out well. So in the end it became greys. This version had included "kimono" and "gallery", which were new sections. They were never completed though. I stayed on this design only long enough to finish prose. But I was very thorough for the prose section. This layout was actually not a very good idea, because if you look carefully it's awfully squashed up. If you think 400 pixel wide text boxes were narrow, this was much worse. I think I had a 300 or 200 pixel wide text box, because when I was designing it, it looked cool... *sweatdrop* I also used size 1 font all over for it. Frankly, looking back, it must have been hell to read. Also, compared to version 2, this layout was far too plain. Colourless was the word to describe it. After a while I decided to drop the idea of calling what I do "zenwebdesigning" and just label it as my own strange and misguided "minimalist webdesigning". Using the word "zen" felt too pretentious. And I got tired of the whole drab look of this layout, so I redesigned...
go to top.

version 4:
(pop-up)
An attempt to move away from my fixed ideas of zen webdesigning. This layout was the first and only one to ever utilise images in the main design. I had compromised a bit by using very small gifs for headings in the navigation bar. A small compromise. But this version was significantly more colourful than the previous version. It's not that I don't like colours, I just like grey in a site. Anyway this site had potential to be something better. I had added "cosplay" as well as kept the previously undone section "kimono" onto it. I also removed the blog. *shrug* I don't really know why, I just did. Felt I was depending too much on blogging to "update" my site. But of course, neither section ever got done. Unfortunately this layout was short-lived. I didn't like it about a week after I designed it. So I started work on the ill-fated version 5, which was never put up. Unfortunately for version 5, I hated it even before I had the chance to put it up, so I went back to this design and started uploading complete sections from previous layouts, i.e. prose from version 3, poetry from version 2, etc. so that the site could be complete. By the time I did this, I no longer had any intention of using version 4 and 5, and was already designing version 6, my favourite paperdice layout ever...
go to top.

version 5:
(pop-up)
Remember I mentioned version 6 was my favourite layout for paperdice? This is the layout before that, the one that never showed up. The one I hated the day after I designed it. Which is quite sad, because when I look at it now, it's not all that bad. But it didn't pass the "next-day" test, so it had to go. I usually do my coding in the evening and end up finishing the site near midnight. So if, the next morning, I open it up, and I hate it on sight, it wouldn't work. But I persevered a long time to get the design just right, so I stuck with it for a while before totally hating it and leaving it alone. I actually finished the poetry section for this layout before dumping it. On the whole, this layout came from the idea that I should forget greys and just go onto high contrast design. Unfortunately, I think I like gentler colours. Anyway, I streamlined my site by having three main sections, writing, gallery and site, in this version, thus dropping both cosplay and kimono. Didn't have enough information on them, apparently.
go to top.

version 6:
(pop-up)
The famous "favourite paperdice layout". Doesn't look that great at this view. But anyway, I liked it a lot, and a lot of people also liked it. The only reason why I dropped it was because I had to change hosts. More on that later. Anyway, this idea for this design is based on the then popular and still popular "blog" kind of layout, which is to drop a picture on top of the whole page and then have your blog in a long table below it. It was aesthetic in a way, yet thoroughly wasted space in an another way. I don't use images in my design (as a principle) so I constructed a black table on top (with a small grey square in the corner) which looked a lot like an image. The whole design worked really well, actually. I had main content in the boxed up area, and then in the small column at the side I put navigation as well as a subsection, i.e. in the main page the main section was blog and the subsection was updates, in the main prose page the main section was prose links and the subsection was updates to prose, and in the specific prose pages the main section was the prose itself, and the subsection was comments. It actually worked really well. In this version I put back the blog, and used Blogger instead of Greymatter because I just couldn't get Greymatter to work on digitalrice.

Why did I move from digitalrice then, and why did I change names and my favourite layout? One big fuddle. At that point I was using an email account from Iheka (pop-up), and before that I was using an account at Graffiti.net (pop-up), which I stopped using because of too much spam. Graffiti was the account I used to sign up with digitalrice though. I didn't switch on auto-forwarding from Graffiti to Iheka because I didn't want the spam. A few months after I moved into digitalrice they stopped offering free accounts, but we existing members were allowed to keep our free accounts. The thing was, at that point of time, Iheka was having problems. Emails would not be sent, and would not be received. It was disrupting my work, and at that time I needed to get an email sent and received, because I was working an internship. So, as an act of desperation, I switched back to my Graffiti account for a while to send and receive mails. I also moved to an account at Jmail.co.jp (pop-up), as a permanent measure. To my alarm, whilst clearing the junk mail in my Graffiti account, I found a letter from digitalrice to me, stating that if I didn't reply to the email within 14 days my account would be considered inactive and would be deleted. And the email was dated 16 days ago. *sweatdrop* I was so busy I didn't realise my website was gone. That was how I lost my free account in digitalrice and was suddenly thrust into finding a host.
go to top.

ricepaper edition 1:
(pop-up)
The first layout for the newly named ricepaper. Why did I change names? I was happy with paperdice, and would have used it. I didn't want to look for a host, so I signed up with Portland for an account. What happened was that I never received a confirmation letter for paperdice.port5.com, but it was already taken up (by me... silly me). In desperation, I decided to register another url. I hit on ricepaper. Ricepaper was used as I wanted a japanese-related url, like green-tea.nu (nice site), but I didn't want to use japanese words, for that would alienate those who have no interest in japanese culture. So I used ricepaper. Ricepaper is japanese paper, so the japanese link is there, but it's also a term everyone understands, and is even related to writing and drawing to boot. So I registered ricepaper.port5.com. Unfortunately at that time I seemed to have screwed up port5 by trying to install blogger on it, so I couldn't FTP into the account at all. Even more desperate now, I put ricepaper temporarily at my Graffiti free account, which had an impossible url... I removed Blogger, blogging by hand for about two months. Soon, I realised that my port5 account could work, but the FTP was so slow it was painful to watch. I started updating both sites at the same time, literally mirroring ricepaper. It became a perverse snail race between the indomitable slow FTP to port5 and the most tedious file by file online uploading at Graffiti. *sweatdrop* But I persevered, because I wanted to finish up ricepaper and then look around for a host. And I did finish ricepaper. I did find a host (pop-up). Nice Melcena. That was the long tale of how paperdice became ricepaper, and why a lot of people still don't know I've moved, because the switch from digitalrice was totally unexpected.

Design-wise, I wanted the first version of Ricepaper to be pleasing and simple. But I didn't know how to go about it at first. I was kind of lost for about two weeks before I finally picked up this really cute San-X Ginshari-san letterpad, which had the green and blue colours on it. The letter pad looked so good I couldn't help but use them in the design. Thus, a very simple one table design emerged. Also, when I changed the name to ricepaper, I wanted to change the content too. I've been sticking to the same content for the last six versions, and I felt a name change should earn a content change. So I shifted the focus of the site. Instead of the old "dump everything I've written on the site it's an online portfolio or something" idea I went with a "really portfolio like only put the stuff I think is good so that people won't have to read through piles of crap" kind of idea. And I've brought that idea over to this version.
go to top.

edition 2:
(pop-up)
I've started to call versions of ricepaper "editions" to differentiate them from the versions of paperdice. This design, though, seemed to be widely agreed upon to be extremely plain and boring. Which was a sad thing for me because I liked it quite a bit. It came from a desire for a "white" website, and to use pink and peach to highlight it. In all respects anyone who ever reviewed thought it was plain and some thought it was a result of too little effort on my part... I basically went back to basics for this, basic tables, basic fonts, even the title wasn't a big size (which on hindsight may have made the site look better...). I also, on a whim, used normal <hr> tags for dividers, since everyone designs their own customised dividers nowadays I thought it'd be an ironic twist to use the most basic one (a twist that nobody caught, unfortunately...). Content wise I added a lot more sections, breaking up the long pages from the previous design into small pages that were more manageable. This was also the design I started to use CSS very intensively. There was actually quite a big change from edition 1 to 2, mostly because I wasn't pressed by time to finish the website, and also because of the various comments my first reviewer gave me.
go to top.

edition 3:

This edition was more than one and a half years in the making. I had started on the new design after most of my reviews for edition 2 had come in, and then I slowly worked on each section, which took a long time. It got a long hiatus when my major exams swung around in the end of 2003, and then didn't get worked on much after that when I started work. By mid-2004 I was feeling extremely guilty about neglecting it for so long and I started working on it again. Other things had occupied my time by then, university life, cosplay sewing, anime marathoning, photo editing, and I was constantly adding to the site as I went along, mostly to the writing and the photography sections. All these slowed down the development of this site. Design-wise I swung to the other end of the spectrum and used a lot of black for this one, and tried very much to use a lot of purple everywhere to highlight it. There's not much colour other than purple and black, but I did feel it was an improvement over the supposed stark white edition 2 had. I also took a long time planning the whole look of the site, how the title is big and sits with the small section links, how the main text is placed in the right half of the window and the table is variable-sized (a first for the ricepaper editions), and basically controlling the text in general with CSS, hopefully making the huge chunks of text more readable. This is also the design I worked out in Windows, and then later switched to a Mac to continue developing, which means I'm more than ever, sure that the site looks good in both platforms.

Say... thanks for putting up with my ranting and all. Really appreciate it. I know I type far too much. Sorry! *smile*



back to site - go to top