JAGUARWOMAN FAQ & TERMS OF SERVICE

Do you have a banner so I can link to your site?

I do not require a link from my customers, but it never hurts my feelings, so thank you very much. Here are a couple of banners you can use if you like:

Link to http://www.jaguarwoman.com and many thanks!

Can you paint/render some (fill in the blank) for me? I really need/want/would love to have (fill in the blank) as soon as possible.

People often send me great ideas for custom work they would like done. In fact I get dozens of suggestions every month and it's often delightful. Some of them are great ideas and I even stick some of them on my backburner and let the ideas bubble away and implement them later. Unfortunately, these great ideas (and needs) are competing with 10,000 great ideas and needs of my own. I don't actually have a shortage of ideas, I have a whole lot of ideas. Waaaaaay more ideas than I could ever carry out in many lifetimes. My own ideas frankly just elbow everybody else's out of the way and push to the head of the line.

I officially swear on the lives of my four precious Chihuahuas and my one giant Shepweiler that I am truly, honestly, not physically capable of undertaking custom work or accepting requests. Furthermore, I'm not actually in the custom graphics business. I'm in the retail image resource business. Hence, I have to say "no" to people who ask me to do custom work. In my scientific survey, about 95% of the people who inquire about custom work totally understand my position and are completely gracious about my inability to help them. But a steady 5% seem to think I'm withholding something I actually owe them.

The facts are these: it takes 7 days a week for me to cultivate my own imagination and stay inspired and carry out the dictates of that inspiration, develop new skillsets, stay on top of advancing technical knowledge, manage a one woman studio, take care of my home and dogs, and furnish my brain, garden, do housework, fight injustice and keep my dead ass from getting any deader. Also, doing custom work is boring to me as well as not being as profitable as custom work. Finally, I just don't like it as much as I like manifesting my own vision. At the age of 60 I think it's fair for me to have my own way as much as possible in my own business. This makes perfect sense to me.

So . . . I don't take requests and I don't do custom work. I just create whatever comes into my own head and what seems attractive to me, and put it on my store shelf and hope it sells. That's the business I have here.There are a lot of pretty and useful things in my store and I try to put new products there several times a week and that's the best I can do as I limp happily into old age. Hence, although I hate to disappoint, the answer is no.

After I order, how do I get my products?

Your download information should arrive very quickly, sent automatically by the shopping cart system. It should come in the form of an order acknowledgment with a link back to your store account page, where you should find a download link for the merchandise. Normally, there is a PayPal redirect immediately after payment which goes directly to your account page. You can also simply go directly to the store, log in, click on the "My Account" button (in the far right of the navigation bar) and go to your account page to check for download links that way.

But . . .if the notification doesn't arrive quickly or the download links do not appear on your account page, it would mean something is awry or the email or my server or with the shopping cart system. In that case, contact me right away and I'll expedite the delivery personally.

Please note: on rare occasions (like 1% of the time) customers do not receive their email notifications because they have transferred funds from a checking account into PayPal to cover the purchase but the check has not yet cleared their bank. PayPal considers these transactions "pending" until the check clears and the download link will not appear in the account until the PayPal removes the "pending" hold. Also, occasionally, customers have a very active spam filter which rejects the notices containing the download links. These are situations beyond my control, but I'm happy to look into the reasons why the download links did not arrive in a timely manner.

What are the Terms of Use for your products?

Jaguarwoman's general statement of Terms of Use can be found on my Terms of Use page and also in the readme.txt which is included in the zipfile for each product. Here is a copy of my current license, which reads . . .

Dana Sitarzewski aka Jaguarwoman is the author and copyright holder of the images in this product package and retains copyright and ownership of the images included in this zipfile, and your license gives you the right to use the images under specific circumstances. You may use this images to create your own projects for personal or commercial projects, with no restirctions other than these: (1) you may not resell the original files, as is. (2) you may not include them in collections for resale or redistribution. (3) you may not resave them as PSP tubes and redistribute them for sale or for free in filesharing groups. (4) this license is non-transferrable. (4) this license covers "reasonable use" by a single user; if you are intending to use the images for mass reproduction (as in stamped patterns for thousands of products for print reproduction in multiple outlets or chain stores or use by more than one person in an educational or business organization, for example), please contact Jaguarwoman to discuss multi-person license or appropriate additional royalty arrangements. If you have any questions, contact Dana Sitarzewski at jaguarwoman@jaguarwoman.com

Additional background explanation for my stance on redistribution of my work can be found here.

I have a poor internet connection and it takes a long time for me to download your files. Could you just break down your zipfiles into individual images and send them as single attachments to emails to make it easier for me to receive them?

No.

What kind of graphics program do I need to use your graphics?

You need a graphics program which will recognize psd, png, and jpg file formats, preserve background transparency, and which has "layers" capabilities. That would be Paint Shop Pro 5.5+, PhotoShop, and Corel Painter.

I'd love to use one of your templates, but I don't have confidence that I would be able to put something that complicated together.

The idea of licensing a "readymade" interface or template is that it is already put together for you. When someone orders one of my interfaces, they receive code for the page in the zipfile, along with all the graphics. This html document is always entitled "index.html" and it always corresponds to the website as it is shown on my own server. If something is "missing", that is immediately apparent and you should then write to me for a corrected zipfile.

The table cells and graphics are already "assembled" and there is a content area where you will see my words. What you need to know how to do yourself is: (1) download and unzip the zipfile into a folder on your own hard drive, (2) open your own webpage editor on your own computer and (2) open the index.html file, which already has the graphics assembled, (3) locate the content area where my own content/words are located, and (4) delete my words and add your own content.

It helps a lot if you know something about html. Yes, you do need some kind of webpage editor. Yes, you do need to have knowledge of how to operate that bpage editor. No, you don't have to "put the interface" together like a new bike on Christmas Eve. And . . . you would of course have the original zipfile to fall back on if you accidentally screw something up (like accidentally deleting a table ending).

Would you tell me how do you do . . . everything?

Now I ask you . . . is this a reasonable question? It's so vast and vague, it puts a burden on me to try to imagine what you really wants to know. It's just not humanly possible to convey everything in an email . . . or even in a site with a ton of resource links and tips and hints. I understand that many graphics users are new to the Internet and new to graphics, but the honest answer is that what I do represents about 8 years of brain sweat, and tears negotiating thousands of learning curves, creating hundreds of pages, mastering thousands of tiny skills that cannot be communicated in an email. The only answer to the people who innocently blurt out this question is to send them to my Resources Page.

I just started out in webdesign. Would you be willing to give me some guidance and tips so I can do all the stuff you do? I'd be happy to give you a link on my site.

I really can't do that. It's' not humanly possible.

Can't you just tell me how to make interfaces like you do?

Could you read the above?

What graphics programs do you use?

Ah, a question I can actually answer within the rest of the years alotted me! I have Paint Shop Pro (7, 8 and 9), Photoshop 6 and PhotoShop CS, Corel, Bryce, Kai's Power Tools, Blade Pro, Poser, FrontPage 2000, Flash, and Painte IX, and PhotoImpact, to mention a few. On a daily basis, I prefer Paint Shop Pro9, PhotoShopCX, and Dreamsuite's Liquid Metal. For digital painting, I use both PhotoShop and Painter9. These are the programs with which I render virtually all my graphics and webpages.

What kind of webpage editor do you use?

For years, I hand coded everything using Web Page Creator. Then I became a Microsoft FrontPage convert. Now I'm enthusiastic for Dreamweaver. But in webdesign, there is no substitute for knowing html. Once you know enough to troubleshoot html, it is very convenient to use a good WYSIWYG editor like FrontPage or DreamWeaver.

Where do you get all that great royalty free clipart you use?

The sources are vast. But the first place to find that out would be my Resources Page. There are links there and a drop down menu leading to pages and pages and pages of links for clipart and software resources.

I have to teach a class in beginning webdesign next week, so can you give me some quick tips on how to make wonderful webgraphics like you have on your site?

The first tip I have is to use my Resources Collection. Not enough? Next tip: go back to the top of the FAQ and read it over again.

What kind of formal training did you get to design graphics and webpages like this?

Training!? I don' got no steenkin' training! I am a 60 year-old-woman who has already exhausted several other careers (among them teaching history and 10 years of private practice as a psychotherapist) and wanted to find a new way to make a living. After washing out of AOL's digital bootcamp in tears, I picked up a book entitled "Learn How to Write HTML in a Week". I followed the instructions and did a lesson every day for a week and produced my first horrifyingly bad webpage at the end of the week. I created a website called "The Authoritative Matchmaker" and became an Internet Dating Expert for several years and even appeared on the front page of U.S.A. Today. But then . . . counseling singles turned out to be as exhausting as counseling the chronically mentally ill and I lost interest in matchmaking as my interest in digital design grew.

I never had any artistic training, I never took a class of any kind in computer skills. I just had burning desire to play with this stuff, and through endless trial and error I developed a bit of how-to knowledge. I've recently turned most of my effort to digital

I am, however, blessed with the best formal education I could ever have hoped for as a child of the gritty working class. I have a B.A. in History (U.C., Davis, class of 1969), an M.A. in History, and an M.Ed. in Counseling and Guidance. Add to that 30+ years of daily, relentless autodidactic study. I am deeply grateful for my Liberal Arts education and consider it an major achievement of Western Civilization that women like myself are enabled to study whatever fascinates them.

How can I get my image cut up in pieces so it fits together and doesn't have any gaps and holes?

There are many programs for accomplishing this. I use PSP9 for this purpose.

And note that when people complain about "holes" in their table array, it is usually because they have dropped off a "td" ending or have inadvertently introduced an extra space or hard break into their code.

How can I learn to make those backgrounds that look like frames all the way around the page?

I learned from two sources which explain this technique about five times better than I could and you'll have to just put in the mental effort to understand these tutorials: Artistic Designers Mix and Match Border Tutorial/Utility and Ann-S-Thesia's Full Border Background Tutorial. These are much better tutorials than I could possibly do myself. You may "get it" immediately, but I had to do Ann-S-Thesia's tutorial several times before I understood, then I have struggled with many examples to get them to come out the way I want. Accept the struggle and by the 3rd or 5th practice, you'll have a breakthrough and just cut and paste like a regular assembly line.

Who are you really?

One good way to learn about me on a personal level is to read my Blog, in which I constantly blab every thought and feeling I've got. This FAQ sums up my sarcastic, smart aleck personality pretty well. But in lieu of that ordeal, here are a few relevant facts about who I am:

A color freak and major headtripper without benefit of psychedelic inducements.

A 3rd decanate Scorpio with the Sun, Jupiter, and Venus conjunct, Pisces rising, the Moon in Libra, and Mars and Mercury conjunct in Sagitarrius. Oh my Gawd! This woman is too mouthy to bear! This is the primary explanation for why I have been chased out of town by angry villagers so many times.

An individual of such seething personal ambition that Caesar, Napoleon, and Elizabeth I would give me a respectful nod.

A happy, orderly, Manic Depressive with excellent self management skills and a low stress, well regulated lifestyle. I have found that getting my way in all things has an amazingly therapeutic effect on my mood disorder.

The oldest of 6 (well, the oldest of 8, counting my parents), from the most working-class family in the world. My mother worked in the same factory for roughly 45 years, much of the time at night, on the swing shift, and 35 years or so in the same building, standing on concrete at the same huge, clanging machines, raising her hand when she had to go to the bathroom. My parents had a 6th and 8th grade educations. I grew up in a treeless, pastel stucco ghetto in Southern California, in a house that always had a baby in it, where the stuffing was often coming out of the couch cushions, and shitty diapers were frequently soaking in the toilet. (Yes, there was once a time when there were no Pampers and people actually washed cloth diapers by hand in the toilet before putting them into the washing machine, but few people will remember these dark days.) As a child, my idea of glorious wilderness was Jungleland and Frontierland at Disneyland. After escaping the endless, thankless domestic servitude of my childhood and first two marriages . . . beauty and learning and SOLITUDE became my primary goals in life.

Happily married after many abysmal failures in relationships. Unfortunately, being the maniac that I am, I racked up more relationship demerits in the first 45 years of my life than any other woman in the known universe. I barely deserve to live, let alone be the blissfully happy woman that I am. And let that be a lesson to you (shaking a my Wacom pen in your face) . . . happiness has little to do with what we deserve, and a lot to do with what we choose.

A sarcastic smart aleck who survived a defiant childhood only by the skin of her teeth. An alternate view of the same character traits would see me as a brilliant, but misunderstood, comedienne . . . a female Jerry Seinfeld. In my next life I'm coming back as a stand up comic. At least I'm very amusing to myself.

These are a few of my Sources of Sheer Delight:

-My husband, Robert . . . every day, every hour, every moment I am blessed with his presence.

-my wolfdog, Roman (now deceased) and my Shepweiler Xena (now a 100 lb dog who has broken my leg accidentally), my sweet little Chihuahua, Jolie, and my little pirannha Chihuahua rescue, Charlie (who is slowly coming around and becoming a lovely friend). I'm very keen on dog rescue and highly recommend taking in abandoned dogs.

-watching Animal Planet, particularly Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter . . . a Real Man, who's not afraid to crawl in the mud and gush over the beauty of a little snake.

-reading day and night: history, hard science fiction, evolutionary biology, natural history, cyberculture, futurism, literary fiction, more history, and more history, especially American history.

-iceskating . . . every moment I am on the ice is the deepest form of pleasure I know. That's right, it's better than sex . . . but not quite as exciting as . . . reading or walking my dogs. (amended to note that I don't figureskate since I broke my leg).

-language, language, language. I am fluent in French, German, Spanish and paltry Russian. When wandering down the street like a homeless refugee, I talk to myself and gesticulate in all these languages to my wolfdog, Roman, thereby frightening away potential muggers.

-always more coming . . . I'm a true hedonist and devote a lot of time to pleasure.

Favorite Male Actors (or Models of Machismo)?

My husband. Sean Connery, Mel Gibson, Sean Connery, Sean Connery, Sean Connery, Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter, Sean Connery and back to Mel Gibson. I like men of the Braveheart variety, physically strong, utterly capable with a hammer and saw, sexy family men, natural leaders who are not domineering, with a strong sense of moral courage, willing to rescue kittens from burning buildings, capable of undying, slavish devotion to me, boyishly sweet, and unfailingly tender toward all the creatures and plants of the world. I like big macho men who wouldn't hesitate to kiss a rat. I like real heroes, not pretty boys or effete intellectuals. I insist on being the pretty, intellectual one.

Who are your favorite writers?

Tom Wolfe, John Irving, Joyce Carol Oates, Ken Wilbur, Edward O. Wilson, Isabel Allende, Carlos Fuentes, Alexandre Dumas, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Richard Dawkins, Neal Stephenson, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Susan Isaacs . . . and the staff of the "National Enquirer".

What are your pet peeves? (Okay, nobody ever asks me this, but I thought I'd throw it in here anyway)

#1 . . . people who endanger my life by driving their cars and talking on their cell phones at the same time. I'm sure you know that statistics show the accident rate for drunk drivers and cellphone talkers is . . . exactly the same.

#2 . . . lazy thinkers who try to avoid life's inevitable learning curves by getting me to think for them. The world is an open book. Read it, for crying out loud.

#3 . . . unnecessary ignorance, in myself or anybody else.

#4 . . . cottage cheese, fatty meat, and people who try to make you eat whatever is on your plate.

#5 . . . chronic whiners and complainers and NITPICKERS.

#6 . . . people who come to my lavish banquet and complain about a few crumbs of typos they find littered here and there. I find the reporting of typos on a website like mine to be a small minded form of passive aggressive one-upsmanship from people who are blind to what is being so generously provided and who apparently have nothing better to do than catch other people's tiny errors. They rarely introduce themselves and they NEVER have an online address I can go to return the favor of critiquing their efforts. They basically do nothing and provide nothing online but to report typos. My deepest contempt is reserved for people who, without even introducing themselves, and without any other comment about my website, report a typo . . . as though they were rushing up with some vital piece of information I really need. You might say I have a quirky response here that goes beyond the normal response to do-good typo reporters.

How do you feel about copyright violations?

The following statement of tolerance must excluse unethical SnaggerTubers who redistribute my work in SnaggingTubing Groups and have taken freebie-itis to new depths. Other than that . . . let's pretend that overzealous copyright police are another of my pet peeves, okay?
Naturally, I don't think it is okay to steal my designs or anybody else's. And . . . I'm suspicious of the motives of anybody who makes a major life commitment to bitching about copyright violations instead of focusing on the vast benefits and glorious experiences open to them through the Information Revolution and the Internet.

I very much don't like the self appointed Internet vigilante committees who roam around inspecting websites for copyright violations. Invariably, when I look at their own pixel work, I wonder why they don't spend more time studying graphics tutorials than chasing rustled webgraphics. I can't help giggling at professional creativity victims who play that broken record: "they stole my idea!". Like there's a shortage? Not. (If two men on opposite sides of the world can come up with a telephone or an atom bomb at the same time, it makes the ownership of ideas very questionable). I avoid electronic communities dedicated to the denunciation and shaming exposure of accused copyright violators. Originally ignorant about Internet copyright issues, I was gently educated so that I'm as careful as I can be not to violate someone else's copyright, while trying not to make a Supreme Court Case out of a few pixels.

Take reasonable precautions with your work and if people use it inappropriately, just send them a straightforward letter and then forget it. I've sent and received that kind of notice and observe that it is sometimes followed by swift corrections. But it is more likely to be followed by defensive nastiness and escalating flamewars. My own "stern letters" could chill the entire Amazon Basin. But don't turn the experience into an entire online personality, or organize vast online communities around the principle of copyright victimization. It encourages a sense of chronic victimization, which is not an attractive lifestyle to me (but is particularly appealing to many women for reasons that have little do do with artistic honesty). If you have an organization to ban clitoridectomies in Africa or rescue abused animals or save the women in Afghanistan from slavery . . . or some such thing . . . I'm for it. But I'm not up for chasing evil copyright violators from the earth. Under the prevailing conditions, the correction for this kind of theft actually steals too much joy, resulting in an even greater sense of loss than one would normally feel by the theft of a button or background. The primary exception to this generous stance is, of course FILESHARING GROUPS, which exist for the precise purpose of redistributing images and which foster a climate in which anonymous graphics are inevitably shared with many, many people.

Chronic indignation is not the friend of creativity, but some people really feed off of it, and for reasons that have little to do with pixel theft. I am no friend of indignation vibes. I find it to be a form of process addiction. So I try to avoid vibrating on stuff like that like an alcoholic avoids the first sip of scotch. Violations happen. Copyright violations are among the least of our worries in terms of the havoc they wreak in our world. As for stealing ideas? The ideas are in the air, for Gawd's sake.

We are the luckiest people who ever lived, just because we have these computers and the time to play with color and texture, and even make a living at it. There's plenty of education on the Internet about copyright, but even so, the vast numbers of people flooding online don't have a clue and don't give a damn about the fences we want to build around our precious little pixels. Soon enough, vast multitudes of people will all have amazing graphics programs and they will be hot on our heels artistically and professionally. Better to spend the balance of my computer time improving my skills than chasing my tail.

And then . . . the technological revolution we are living through now is far vaster in meaning than whether someone stole some pixels. I do not like to see the enormity of the Internet experience cheapened and reduced in dimension by . . . the whining, juvenile sound of but it's not fair! or look what they did to me now!"

Good luck to anybody who wants to copy me, anyway, 'cause I'm already heading down another path, he he, ha ha, ho ho, tra la la!, doing something bigger and better and more gratifying than the last thing I did. The most I can generate from any copyright violation of my work . . . is that stern letter I mentioned.

Clear enough?