Soo... it's been awhile.

Been busy with a lot of things.

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First up I finished a website. It is for my guild in World of Warcraft.

http://www.shockwavegaming.net/

Everything was designed and coded by myself. Instead of just doing my thing, I thought it'd be good practice and worked with the members of the guild in making a site they all thought looked good and liked. I also skinned eqDKP and got some experience skinning VBulletin for the first time. I thought the vBulletin skin came out exceptionally well.

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JQuery.

Probably just a tad late to the scene but I've finally gotten around to poking around with it and learning some JavaScript. Was never a big fan but you can really do some cool things. I also need to do some more experimenting and make the plunge with AJAX.

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I consider myself very stupid for not having done this sooner. I finally got around to setting myself up a local test server. Had some fun installing Apache, PHP, and MySQL.

Man the time I've wasted developing the way I used to. Every save: drag, drop, upload. Man I hated it so much but didn't want to edit straight on the server either so I always just stuck with it.

Being able to test everything locally is just simply amazing. (Damn my procrastination.)

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I have a lot of projects on the drawing board so-to-speak, but the one I'm currently working on is a sort of ItemStats replacement. It is no longer managed and every time I set up a new website or do some poking around it causes a mass amount of headaches trying to get it to work.

One major feature that I want to make sure to include that isn't in ItemStats is an easy to use skin / theme system.

A little preview:

Should be fun.

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Lastly, finally got around to watching Lost. It never really peaked my interest enough to go and watch it, but one day I decided to check it out.

So far I'm a few episodes into season 4 having watched seasons 1 through 3. Seasons 1 and 2, I must say, were amazing. One thing I really liked was the way the story was told. The flopping back and forth between flaskbacks and what was going on currently, I really enjoyed.

As I started watching season 3, and the beginning of season 4 the show seems to completely die. The story just went in some terrible directions, a lot of the characters I enjoyed got killed off, and the changes in how the story were told all just made it bordeline unwatchable for me.

You'd think there wouldn't be much difference between flashbacks and flaskforwards, but man did it just seem so much worse. I MUCH preferred seeing bits of the past and how they affected the present, rather than seeing the future and watching the present unravel.

The only major thing that has been consistent throughout the whole series so far that was a major annoyance to me, was the roller coaster the characters were on. They constantly change from me wanting to slap the hell out of them and really being entertained and liking them. One episode a character will just be perfect in a sense and the next they're just obnoxious and annoying. I wish there was more consistency in the characters attitudes and actions. I suppose this could just be a major annoyance because I'm sitting down and watching several episodes at a time, rather than just one a week as if it was airing.

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I hope to do a little face lift to the site soon and overhaul a good portion of the code, but for now that's it.

I'll try and not let this blog collect dust for 6 months again D: Can't believe it's been that long already.

Comments (0) - Tags: News, Programming, TV, Web Design

So it looks like Google released their new web browser today.

Google Chrome.

I downloaded it today and have been messing around with it a bit. It has some neat features but I don't think I'm quite ready to leave FF for it yet.

The Good:

• For the most part it has most of the niceties from FF that I've come to love.
  • The keywords for access to quick bookmarks and quick searches.
  • The 'smart' address bar.
  • etc. (e.g. that's all that comes to mind atm D:)
• It has this new task manager feature. Pretty much the windows equivalent but just for Chrome. (if a tab locks up or is acting funny instead of having to reload the browser can just ctrl-alt-delete the one tab)
• It has this seamless feature of being able to move around tabs and pull a tab out into a new window and back in and is done very smoothly.
• The 'view source' implementation makes me drool. One thing I really wish FF had. FF has it but Chrome's looks so much nicer. Lines are numbered and it has syntax highlighting. It's really nice for looking for problems and such on the fly.
• For downloads instead of having a pop-up window it just adds a small bar at the bottom of the page and displays it there. Way smoother than FF.
• The find feature (ctrl + f) is really nicely integrated. Given it's just a little thing, I notice most of the time it's the large amounts of little touches that really make something nice.

Those are the few major things I've run across that come to mind from what I've seen so far.

The not so Good:

• One major thing I'm missing from FF is how they've implemented search engines. They've merged everything into one bar, the address bar. Given it may be simpler I much prefer the separate search engine bar. (this also inadvertently gives you 2 'default' search engines in FF as you can have google on the main address bar and which ever other you prefer to the right)
• Instead of having a bookmarks context menu Chrome just adds a button on the bookmark bar, 'Other Bookmarks', which I'm not a fan of. It crowds the bookmark bar and it's at an odd spot of the screen to access that's kind of a 'reach' to get to.
• From the looks no plugin / addon support. Given it's still in beta and they'll probably add it, it doesn't look like you can get plugins / addons for Chrome right now. That's pretty much a deal breaker for me. I really like No-Script for FF and not having that really sucks.
• No theme / skin support. I really like how FF integrates its self with your os and os / them. Right now Chrome doesn't look terrible but I'm really not a fan of the current style. I wouldn't even mind just a simple option for the time being of having it adapt to your current OS's theme.

From my brief look and just poking around with it, that seems to sum up what I think of it so far. It definitely looks promising and I'm really looking forward to see how it matures.

Comments (0) - Tags: Google, Technology, Web

Totally forgot about this project and stumbled on it again looking to change up my system.

http://www.desktopography.net/

If you've heard of the project before check it out there 2008 Exhibition is up.

If you haven't, from their site:

Designers and developers spend about 90% of their waking life in front of a computer so the most appealing genre for a wallpaper would be one that has beautiful design mixed with the all important aspect of being outdoors.

What we see everyday can affect our mood and state of mind, enhance your desktop with a wallpaper creation from desktopography and feel the essence of nature and the outdoor existence on your computer. Bring tranquility to your desktop, feel the wilderness and give your background a breath of fresh air..

I HIGHLY recommend checking out all of their exhibitions. Some truly amazing wallpapers / pieces of art up there.

Enjoy D:

Comments (0) - Tags: Art

Sooo it's been a while D:

Did a bit of messing around with mod_rewrite to make 'clean' urls. Should help the site get indexed better on search engines.

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Was channel chucking last night and landed on Comedy Central. An old stand-up of Christopher Titus was on. Reminded me of his old show Titus that used to be on fox till they canceled it. Which was funny as hell just as his stand-up.

Another show that was incredible that got canceled was Firefly. Which is hands down one of the best Sci-Fi TV shows I've ever watched. The movie with the same cast and left off at the last episode of the TV show was incredible as well, Serenity.

Why is it they always cancel the awesome TV shows yet leave on all the terrible crap that is reality TV shows and stupid repetitive sitcoms copying their predecessors that did all the same things just years before. Not saying there aren't any good TV shows still on, just always sucks they end up canceling the few TV shows you enjoy watching. Such as Murphy's Law I guess.

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Speaking of good TV shows still airing. Monk just started up again. Which I love. When they first started advertising the premier for Burn Notice, it didn't seem all that great. With the new season starting and they had marathon on of the first season I watched it a bit and it's actually pretty good. Sure there's a few more I enjoy watching from time to time but can't think of them at the moment.

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Any who hopefully I'll have the Portfolio part of the site done soon so I can actually start making and hosting some stuff.

Comments (0) - Tags: News, Programming, TV

First thing done, I've got markdown implemented now. Works with comments as well so feel free to use it.

Also I now have an RSS feed running. Feel free to use that aswell. With that I've got the archives module done. Got to mess around with moo.fx to make the years collapse (click the greater than sign if you couldn't figure it out :p). Took a bit of fiddling around with but I think it's cool and will be more useful the older this blog gets.

Well next comes getting the portfolio section working. The main reason I wanted to make this site heh. Figures it gets shoved to last.

Guess that's it for now.

Comments (0) - Tags: News, Programming

So I completely redid the entire tagging system. Had quite a poor schema and the way I was retrieving tags was quite archaic. While digging around on the net found this pretty good read about different schemas to use for a tagging system.

I think this site is sexy as hell and for once I'm really happy with it :D

Discussing things to come I've got a few more modules I'm planning to add over on the right there. Some sort of archives / pagination is probably going to go over there. Need to work out some way of formatting, probably going to try Markdown. At some point I'll probably get an RSS feed working for the blog. After that I'll get the portfolio part of the site done. That's going to be a pretty big chunk. Guess the last thing will be tidying up the admin panel and just making things nice there.

Guess that's about all for now.

Oh... and if you want a link back on the friends module over there, get in Contact with me.

Yarrr.

Comments (0) - Tags: News

So I finally finished re-skinning the site. The sidebar is broken for the mean time. I'll get it working soon. After that I'll get the portfolio part of the site done and then probably just messing around with the admin panel.

I like the new look much MUCH better. If anyone has any comments or criticisms feel free to post a comment, I'd be glad to here them.

Comments (0) - Tags: News

Aww man where to start... good 'ol saturday morning cartoons. Well sort of. Some were, but a bunch of my favorites I remember from being a kid weren't exclusively 'Saturday Morning Cartoons'.

The one that sticks out the most was Beast Wars. Man that show brings back memories. Loved sitting down and watching that show before school while eating cereal. My brother had all of his old transformers toys I used to mess with so guess that's sort of how I caught on to the show at that age. Looking back now the graphics make you chuckle but man was that show the shit back in the day.

Reboot was sort of similar. One thing I really remember about this show was all the 'To Be Continued..'s. Those always pissed me off. Always hated having to wait till next week to see what happened to whatever character.

Was always a fan of all the old cartoons too. Good 'ol Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner, The Jetsons, The Flinstones, Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and one of my particular favorites Top Cat. Man that's when cartoons were good. Top Cat was the shit. Loved that cartoon. Almost all of these were made before my time but there used to be this awesome channel Boom that showed nothing but all of these old cartoons all the time.

I so wish all this terrible japan-i-mation crap would disappear. I am personally not a fan of anime. I just can't get into the art style and usually off the wall stories. Only anime I ever sort-of got into was Afro Ninja. Was pretty cool. I loved the art style of that show. I've been told by many that most of the anime shown is the crap and there actually is good anime but I've yet to find it and remain skeptical.

Breaking away from the nostalgia and Saturday morning bit I must mention Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. Oh man, that has to be one of the funniest fucking cartoons. Every episode has made me laugh my ass off. Aqua Teen Hunger Force has it's moments too. Family Guy is always great and used to love the old Simpsons back in the day. Sadly those are the only cartoons I can think of that are being made today or recently that I can stand to watch. Yet again I barely watch TV anymore due to the abundance of crap on it. Usually have it on for background noise though.

WTB old Saturday morning cartoons back. <3

Good times. Maybe I'll post another rambling about favorite TV shows in general later instead of just cartoons. Some good shows back in the day. Gogo MacGyver D:

Comments (0) - Tags: Cartoons, Nostalgia, TV

Saw this posted over at waffles and thought it was really cool.

http://www.drawball.com/

its basically i giant graffiti board that anyone can draw on. ...

but there's a catch. you only have limited ink, and you regain ink at 20% a day. each new IP address gets 5% to start.

However, once you start, you're set, and you're ink will automatically get saved and incremented.

Another note, some people have drawn artwork, and the mods protect it so no one can draw on that part of the ball. Basically, if you see no vandalism, its probably protected. ...

It's pretty crazy to look threw it and see all the things people have drawn. There's some really good drawings and sketches in there. Also thought it was really cool you can playback the history of it and see all the things that were there and what covered them up.

...and that reminds me I need to make a style for quotes.

Comments (0) - Tags: Art

Hola,

Update wise on the site, going to be changing it around in a bit. After messing around with it in PS adding that sidebar some things came up so I'm going to move things around a bit. Hopefully in the process I'll manage to fix the few lingering IE bugs.

Anywho now that that's said, on to another subject. I've been really into listening to and searching for new music. Mainly hip-hop. I've been wanting for awhile to make a big post on my musical tastes and the rollercoaster of changes I've gone threw over the years in music, so I'll probably get around to that soon.

Well with all this new music I got around to something I've been wanting to do for a while and that's messing around with Foobar 2000. I must say I'm in love. For ever I always just used winamp and it served me well, but man. Fb2k is so customizable it's insane. Just going threw and learning all the formating and digging threw all the 3rd party plug ins is a job in itself but I've really been impressed by what you can do with it. It really just makes listening to music that much more enjoyable :D

Here's a few ss's of a Fb2k skin I'm modding:

Still have some work to do on it but I really like how it's coming out. You can get the original made by cal45 here on DA.

I decided to make a Last.fm account as well. Here. I've been loving it so far. Found quite a few new groups that I've really been enjoying that I doubt I would have discovered otherwise. Feel free to add me if you want.

Guess that's it for now. Will update soon with the upcoming site change and that blog about my musical tastes.

Comments (0) - Tags: Music, News, Skins

Well, after quite sometime and going threw about 3 versions internally over the past year or 2, I finally got around to getting something resembling a working website done!

I am planning on making this site my personal portfolio / blog to post random blabberings and things I've made and such. I'm branching away from the whole community and web design thing as originally planned. I plan on adding a comments system which should be next. If a community of some sort spouts out of that I may throw some forums back up, but right now I just want to keep it simple.

Well what's next eh? Well the comment system is the next goal to cross off the list. Also, at some point I'm going to tweak the layout a bit to throw a side panel in there for some relevant info I want shown. Those 2 shouldn't take long at all.

After that, I am going to work towards getting the portfolio finished. It's about half done now. Then I'll get the current projects page working in proper order.

That's about all I have planned from now, but who knows.

Well glad I got something in working order.

...'bout time I'd say :D

Oh and IE and .Net can DIAF.

UPDATE: Comments system done.

Comments (0) - Tags: News