Monthly Archive for March, 2006

I haven’t updated in quite a while, have I?

Published on March 17, 2006 in Computers, Gaming and General. 1 Comment

But here’s a basic update on what I have been doing.

  1. Upgrading my site by finishing all conversions, perfecting the CSS, making the template engine better, etc.
  2. Converting the pages I forgot to convert earlier.
  3. Rewriting the legal page (it’s still very basic, but it gives the idea).
  4. Gaming (will be discussed later).
  5. Working on all the stuff that I have to do outside of my website.

So now to expand on each of those things.

1. Upgrading Site

I’ve been converting all of my pages to a new layout for quite some time now (and I have been thinking about doing it for a while longer than that). First, I planned to use a powerful template engine that I wrote from scratch, but there were too many problems with it and the code got really messy. So I redesigned it in PHP. There is a base file with all of the functions and then each of the pages call up that file. So for example, to create a section (i.e. a rounded DIV), I call up the engine and then use the function ds(title,content), ds standing for draw section. At the beginning, I have printheader(), which prints out all of the header information, and at the end, I have printfooter(). For things that go inside of the header, like the title of the page, I use a variable. The variable is carried over to the engine and then it is used. The engine is extremely flexible. And furthermore, it will allow me to create several styles and implement them with great ease. The next new feature is the new menu. I was tired of the old javascript menu because it was fairly bloated. Also, it would only load after all images had finished loading. Although it was a very nice menu, I wanted something simple, because I am emphasizing simplicity in this new design. Thus, I created the GlassBar. The background is supposed to look like black glass (I’ll work on it some more to make it look better eventually). Then, there is the main link category and by rolling the mouse over them, sub-links are shown. I had never really learned advanced javascript, so I kept this pretty simple too. The rollover works simply by filling a DIV with content. It’s cross-compatible with all JavaScript browsers. And even though the rollover obviously doesn’t work with Lynx or Links, users can still access all of the pages through main pages (for example, instead of going to the Windows Software link in the sub-category of software, they would go to the software page and then to the Windows software page. On some of the pages, there is a LinkBar, often containing the “download the latest version now” link for software. This is simply designed with two divs, the bar div and the content div. By clicking the green minimize button, the content div hides. I have no clue why anyone would want this, but I thought it was cute. Now, the infamous news system. I left this until the end because I didn’t really want to look at all that really messy source code. Some of it was really bad. But I had to do it eventually. I wanted to use a new system. Before, the news was written to an HTML file, so it needed to have a header and footer. This complicated the code quite a bit, especially when moving the old news over to the old news page. But I redesigned it so there would be a file. This file wouldn’t have any header or footer or whatever. The PHP page would then include it and its contents would be added to the page. This made things much easier. However, extracting what was needed from the old code was quite a task. The other big difference was the new RSS file. The old RSS generator kept adding HTML tags to the RSS, which can cause problems. By using some REGEX, I was able to fix the generator to automatically remove all HTML tags. The program Kodos (http://kodos.sf.net) is a great helper with REGEX stuff (in the library, there was a suggested method of removing HTML; I modified that slighly and added it to the generator). The new news system should be almost bug-free. I’m sure there are a few more things that I would like to say here, but I have forgotten them, so when I remember, I’ll make another post.

2. Converting Pages I Forgot to Convert

Not much to say here… I think there were only one or two of these pages.

3. Rewriting the Legal Page

The old legal page was really strange, so I tried to simplify it down quite a bit in this one. I didn’t spend a lot of time on it, so I might update it in the future. Basically, it says “please don’t abuse this website or steal any of my content. I worked hard on it.” Although not like anyone would want to…

4. Gaming

Well, of course I game.  But I’ve been doing it a little more than I should be as of late.  Poor Silver Knights has not seen a new version recently and my interest in it is not as high anymore (although I do play it once in a while just to keep my skills up).  Maple Story has gotten really boring because I press all of 3 keys.  However, I’ve found two new games that are lots of fun, Gunz, and Space Cowboy.  Actually, I found Gunz a while ago, but it wasn’t working with my computer that much until recently.

Gunz

Gunz kept crashing my computer because something was wrong with my graphics card driver.  I’ve got an nVidia GeForce 4 MX Integrated graphics chip.  Apparently the fact that it was integrated started messing the game up because it would overheat and crash the game or restart my computer.  This happened to other games too.  And it also made me extremely angry.  But luckily, I had an nVidia GeForce 2 MX AGP card on another computer, so I stuck that in and tried playing it.  I have to lower the quality down quite a bit, but at least it works.  I’ll give my whole eMachines spiel another time.  Anyways, Gunz is a MMOFPS game.  Well, it’s not really FPS because you are looking behind the character in the style of Max Payne, but close enough.  It’s based a lot on skill, although weapon and armor upgrades are available depending on your level.  There are several types of gameplay including deathmatch, team deathmatch, gladiator (melee only), team gladiator, and assassin.  There are a lot of combo moves that were programmed by accident (and now have become famous) that the advanced players use.  I’m not that great at the game; I’m sort of mediocre.  I probably have more to say but I can’t remember right now.

Space Cowboy

Maple Story may be a really strange name for a game, but Space Cowboy has to be even stranger.  It’s a flying shooter that also has level abilities and skills and weapons and armor and engines and lots of other stuff.  But, like Gunz, levelling up is not the point of the game.  It is to develop skill in turning and shooting.  Right now, I’m only doing the missions but I suppose I will start PVPing (a one on one battle) pretty soon.  This is a pretty fun game.

I have installed a separate operating system on my computer just for gaming.  It only takes up a couple of gigs and is very fast because I have stripped it down as much as I could.  When Gunz didn’t work, I was able to use this to test it out and after installing the Korean language pack, the problem was fixed.

5.  Working on Other Stuff

I have been really busy with other things too and unfortunately, I won’t have time to work on my website for quite a while.  I may do some small stuff here and there when I get the chance.

Whew, that was a lot of typing.  Now my hands are tired…

Updates

Published on March 9, 2006 in Gaming and General. 0 Comments

    Well, I’ve finished converting nearly everything for my site.  The pages have all been converted, the contact and report broken link pages have been updated, and much more.  I have designed a slightly new system that will allow people to report broken links much more easily.  404 pages will offer an option to report the link.  Then, by saying yes, it will forward information off to the broken link reporting page.  Then, just hit submit and I’ll get the email.  Secondly, I noted how I changed the contact page.  I have now designed it to include a function called “sbj.”  Say, for example, you want to request help on PyNews.  Clicking on that link would redirect you to /contact.php?sbj=pynews.  Then, the subject title would automatically be filled in for you.  Pretty neat.
    I still have to finish the news system.  I’m trying to make sense of all the code that I wrote a year ago and that’s not the easiest thing in the world.  I’m wondering whether it would be easier just to write it over again.  I need to start documenting stuff…  However, I’m nearly finished with it, just a few more lines to kludge (:o I’m kludging my own code).
    And the final piece of news, I fixed the Loading Mesh error in Gunz.  It’s so simple really.  I’m surprised I hadn’t thought of it before.  All you have to do is install the Microsoft Korean Language Pack.  The reason why the XML file failed to load was because some of the comments were written in Korean.  These comments, when parsed, probably messed up the parser because of the false encoding.  I released my solution to the GunZFactor.com forums and most people had their problems solved.  There are still a few who have the problem, so I intend on trying to help them out.
    So that’s an update.  I have about a billion other things that I am doing (or should be doing), so I should get back to those too.

Website Version 5.0

Published on March 1, 2006 in General. 0 Comments

I have never really discussed what the newest version of my website is like. On the outside, it appears simple, but on the inside, well it’s actually pretty simple too. Anyways, here is an image of the general design:

Version 5.0 Preview Image (Click to See)
As you can see, it’s a huge change from what it originally was. I’m using PHP now. This enables me to design a powerful template very quickly and implement it even faster. The basic process I went through was something like this.

First, I sketched out a bunch of possible designs for the website, noting colors, gradients, and other factors. When I found something I liked, I started to design the images with the GIMP. Upon completion of the design, I used the GIMP to design a test box to see what the whole image would look like. You may or may not notice that I have split everything into unique parts. For example, the two ends of the glassbar are separate from the middle part. Each section box is made up of 9 parts. Then, I went on to design it in HTML and CSS. I tried to make the HTML as simple as possible so I relied on the CSS heavily. After several hundred tweaks and previews, I cleaned up the CSS quite a bit, documented it in case I wanted to edit it in the future. Next, I moved on to PHP. I designed a function called ds(title, content), standing for Draw Section. It generates the sections that you see above. This was saved to a special PHP file that would be used by all the others. So now, when I design a page for my website, I set it to require the function file (which also contains functions for various other things like the LinkBox) and add sections by using ds(). It’s incredibly simple to make pages now and is also very flexible. In fact, I can change the style extremely easily without having to touch any of my pages. All I would need to do is change the CSS and the function file.

This new method is much easier than my old one. I’m quite happy that it is working out so well. Simplicity is the best way to do things. I’m almost done with converting all of my pages over. However, I have yet to write a better contact form. I’ll probably make use of arguments so that I can have a link to request help on some of my software. Then, it would just pass an argument like sbjct=pynews. Then, the form would automatically fill in “PyNews Help” under the subject field. Not very hard to do. The other thing to work on is a new news script. Maybe I’ll rewrite PyNews in PHP. I also need to work on fixing my RSS feed. That’ll come later too.

So there’s an update so far.