Randomness Redefined

I have purchased some new toys for myself yay! First off was a new battery for my 14 inch iBook that only lasts about half an hour instead of the 4 or more hours that I did a year ago. Talk about a short lifespan!

I also purchased a brand new 20 gig iPod G4! I mainly did this because the battery in it only lasts about an hour and the hard drive has a huge seek time and freezes randomly and forces the iPod to reboot without warning. I am pondering giving this to my roomie Bryan or Ebaying it.

I also got a new case for my new iPod. Its the ActionJacket from DLO and it covers up everything other that the click wheel which is a HUGE improvement over my last case. It also has a belt clip as well as an arm band for when I am exercising.

I’m happy to announce that the other site that I mentioned is pretty much ready to go live sometime today if the fates are with me. This site will hopefully will be used by my World of Warcraft guild which is called Shadow of the Black Dawn. We had a forum at one point but it was hacked and the Guildmaster got fend up with it and deleted everything and would not let me try and fix it for him. So I said I would create a better and more secure site for him and he said fine and pretty much forgot about everything. I don’t honestly think he actually expected that I would actually do anything. I think I surprised him when I messaged him in the game with the URL though. The hardest aspect of this entire project was to get an online photo gallery to share the same user login information with a forum and have them both integrate seamlessly and transparently for the user with a content management system (CMS).

What this basically entails is that 3 separate systems all of when are supposed to run 3 separate databases all had to be combined to use only 1 so that when someone logs in on the main page they get logged into everything else. Needless to say this was a real bitch to get working and Rob and I have had some sleepless nights squashing all of the bugs that came up. I have enjoyed it and to be honest about the only aspect of web design and creation that I have a real talent for is organizing and getting everything that works behind the scenes to function, or as they call it in “the industry”, the backend. If you want graphics made or need help designing an interface for visitors to your site to view I am not your man, though if you need help figuring out how to setup a website, keep it running, and keep it secure then I am your man.

I’m a very patient and meticulous person when I need to be and I like challenges such as this so its been interesting and pretty fulfilling over the last week or so. Also, I did this with entirely open source software! Yes, I know that there are several commercial software packages that I could have installed and they would have just worked but that is not what I like using. When you use open source software you get the security that comes with thousands, if not millions of different eyes all looking through the code to fine code that can be exploited or that is inefficient, also if any security holes happen to come out for the software that I used I have the comfort of kn owning that I have entire communities to draw support from until the developers release patches (usually the same day). So hopefully we will have better luck now with resisting hackers.

All that I have left is to let the Guildmaster and officers (I was just made a guild officer for making all of this happen and for some of my organizational talents that I have shown from time to time) play around with it and then open it up to the existing members and the public. After that I need to find a way to make it look more like a WoW site. This is the hardest part for me because somehow completely original graphics and theme(s) will need to be created and I am completely clueless with things like this other than some frilly basic knowledge of CSS that I picked up in the last year that I dated my ex and the worthless ramblings of my web design instructor, Dr. Johnson (note the complete use of Frontpage for creating that site). So now I am going through all of the people that I know and feel like conversing with that have any experience with things like this and I am starting to call in favors to try and get some of these things created.

If anyone out their who reads this would like to give me a hand or has any comments or suggestions please drop me a line (don’t forget to edit that address ;)) I would be in your debt. Till next time, I’m out!

I’m just sitting here chilling and listening to my favoriate podcast brought to you by Adam Curry on the best RSS reader out there, period NewsFire. This is after finishing a paper for my Advanced Systems Analysis and Design class and not doing the latest bullshit assignment for Johnson’s Advanced Web Application Development class and an extremly hectic day at work (there is nothing like listening to the phone ringing off the hook for over five hours :P). So I really love how free form podcasting and the humor that it allows and it find it really relaxing just to listen to people talk about whatever they want without commercials orr all the politics that exist on the radio and the talk circuits. I have also changed the way that I am showing my ads from Google’s AdSense vecause they now offer Ad Links in addition to the banner ads that are now everywhere online. I chose this new style so that they can flow better with the layout of the site and are a little more unobtrusive so keep clicking to help me pay for all of this stuff.

Also, I have been working on a site for the guild that I run around with in WoW since I am a web design minor and the forum that we were using got hacked and totally destroyed (I hope to post some more info on that later on as I am quite proud of it so far and I think they will get alot of use out of it) as well as getting my character to level 40! I know probably no one cares or ever reads my ramuling nonsense but its a landmark level in the game as you can acuire a mount (ie a horse, dire wolf, ram, etc) that you can ride and move 60% faster than you can just by running around on your own 2 feet. Also, I have been doing some testing for Kapsules which is a really great free program for windows taht lets you have all sorts of yummy widgets all over your desktop so even if you have no clue what I am talking about go check it out and provide feedback to the creator Andrew Powell over at Carbon 6 Software!

On tap for the week besides work and classes is to get my Tux fit so Andy and Krystal don’t kill me or the 15th. sneaks up on me and to install a DSL line for one of my regular sonsulting gigs and I don’t think I will have any difficulties with that and I’m hoping that the rest of the week goes pretty smoothly and I hope you guys all have a great week so until next time.

I just noticed that this month will mark the one year anniversary of this blog. So, umm congrats or something to me, now if I could only get more people to read it. Oh and happy birthday to my friend April!