Projects 6,016 comments

CeS Rocks Site

By Chuck on February 22nd, 2010

A couple of days ago I helped a friend put together a website for her band, CeS (Cataclysmic Eleutherian Sonance). It’s still a long way from done, and I’m a long way from being a web developer, but it’s coming along. I’m currently hosting the site here on Moth to the Flame for as long as they like, but I’m sure at some point they’ll want to get a better web server, probably based in Japan (since that’s where the band is located). Get hyped, those guys have some great ideas for promoting themselves and their work, and they have the support of a number of extremely talented individuals, so it will be exciting to see how quickly things take off once they get some momentum. Anyways, check out the site.

Cheers,

Chuck

Nerdy Stuff, Projects 3 comments

Anagram Buddeh

By Chuck on February 21st, 2010

I put together a small program for Kim last night. Basically, she wanted a tool to help her make anagrams. Before last night, I didn’t even know what an anagram was, however, I read up on it and figured it wouldn’t be too hard to make a small program to help people make their own anagrams. I’m aware there are lots of anagram generators online already, but she didn’t want that. Anyways, it’s really simple, you type in a word or phrase in one box, and the program keeps track of how many letters you have left that you can use in your anagram. It can also hide letters that have already been used, etc. Here’s a screen shot showing a half filled anagram:

Eleven Plus Two => Twelve Plus One

It’s crazy basic, I didn’t do much error checking or anything. I actually spent a little under an hour working on it so you won’t find anything flashy here, however feel free to use it if you want to.

Download it here.

Enjoy,

Chuck

Nerdy Stuff, Projects 59 comments

It Begins Again…

By Chuck on February 16th, 2010

Well, I’ve had an idea for a website brewing for a long time, and I’ve finally taken the first few steps to get it up and running. I’m still in the early stages of laying out the pages, but I’ve picked a decent enough template to work with at least for the time being. I’ve put together a bit of PHP and made a database for it, and the log in functionality is already in place. This project shouldn’t take too long to complete actually, since all I really have to do is lay out the framework and the users will be filling in the rest.

Anyways, I’m not going to divulge too much yet. Generally I don’t finish projects, so I don’t bother explaining them until I get pretty far along. Also, I believe this to be a fairly unique idea, and I don’t particularly want someone to steal it from me before I even get it started (as if someone actually reads this site). Well, just figured I’d update you guys on what I’m up to. Get excited, I’m working on something, and for once it’s NOT a game! What I mean by that is there is actually a chance I might finish this project, whether it is successful or not.

Sweet dreams friends,

Chuck

Nerdy Stuff, Recommendations 5 comments

Vandal Hearts – Flames of Judgment

By Chuck on February 15th, 2010

I bought this game off the Playstation Network a week or so ago on a whim. I hadn’t heard anything about it prior to its release, however, I am a huge strategy RPG fan and the second I read that this was a strategy RPG game I couldn’t get it fast enough. I’ll be honest and admit that I’ve never played any other games from the Vandal Hearts series, so I really had no expectations going in.

That’s really the attitude you need to approach this game with. Most games I download on Live or PSN I go into with low expectations anyways, so that always helps me enjoy them a bit more. So, anyways, Vandal Hearts was $14.99 (or 1200 points for 360 people), and a relatively small download. It spends a few minutes early on teaching you the basics of the controls, and if you’ve ever played a strategy RPG you’ll feel comfortable and right at home with them.

I’m not reviewing the game here, so I won’t go into details about the experience. Suffice it to say that it was about 15-20 hours of very enjoyable strategy RPG gameplay. The story isn’t fantastic, but it was enough to hold my interest until the end. The game hardly presents a challenge at any part, and by the end the bosses are almost laughably easy to overcome. There’s still a lot of fun to be had in leveling and equipping characters, as well as teaching them new skills and spells.

Ultimately, this is an easy game to recommend to any strategy RPG fan. As I said, it holds probably 15-2o hours of gameplay per playthrough, and features 2 different endings depending on choices made in the game. For $15, it should at least curve your strategy RPG appetite for a few days. Strategy RPG games are few and far between, and it’s important that fans of the genre show support when games like this are released, so developers will at least realize that there is market for them. It wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but I had an overall very enjoyable experience with the game.

Me 4 comments

Cleaning, For Once.

By Chuck on February 15th, 2010

Cleaning is incredibly therapeutic. It’s funny how I always let things get messy, then finally break down during some random bout of extreme boredom and just start cleaning and arranging everything. What surprises me is how I seem to get entranced by it, and move from one thing to the next without even thinking. I started with a shelf, and ended up cleaning two other desks and a wardrobe. Now, even though I’ve cleaned more than I set out to, I’m still looking around for something else to straighten up or dust off.

I really need to make some sort of stand for my consoles which sit behind my monitors on my desk. I just know one of those things is going to Peter Pan right off the back and explode into a thousand pieces one day. There’s really no excuse for me to not have made something to house them better, but I keep putting it off, hoping to come across the right spare parts so I can make something to fit back there perfectly. Until then, I just gamble with the lives of those costly consoles every day.

Alright, enough ranting for me today. Take care friends.

Nerdy Stuff, Recommendations 8 comments

Farscape Sale on Amazon!

By Chuck on February 13th, 2010

I really wish someone read this blog so they could be aware of this deal on Amazon right now. I’m not sure how long it’s been available or how much longer it will be, but the entire fantastic space opera series Farscape is on sale at Amazon for $59.99 (it’s list price is $149.95, and prior to the release of this new box set it cost a few hundred dollars at the very least to get the complete collection). This is obviously a steal of a deal, since it’s all 4 seasons plus tons of bonus features, commentary, etc.
Here’s the link.

If you guys haven’t seen the show and are science fiction or space opera fans, I can definitely recommend it. It does take a little bit of time to warm to some of the characters, but all in all it’s a show that really grows on you. If you’re looking for a new series to spend some time with, get this now while it’s at such a great price.

Enjoy,

Chuck

Nerdy Stuff 8 comments

Firefox Fix – Check For New Content On Each Visit

By Chuck on February 11th, 2010

As I’ve said, I’m a project dabbler, and I do my fair share of web design. My browser of choice is Firefox, but I had a recurring issue with it, especially when I was working on websites. The problem was, when websites didn’t tell the browser how to specifically handle caching the content of the site, it would often use the cache data the next time I went to the website, not letting me see any new changes to the site. This was a big issue when I made changes to CSS files or HTML files that weren’t originally created with proper meta headings.

Generally, this didn’t effect dynamic data, however some static content required that I press Control+F5 in order to refresh the page without loading the cache data too. Unfortunately, the cached data was still there, so every time I went to the page I had to press Control+F5 to see the new page again, or see the layout changes properly.

Very, very frustrating. What’s worse is Firefox doesn’t include an easy to locate option to change this. Even Internet Explorer, as much as I dislike it, includes a very easy to find option for checking for new content each time a web page is visited. Anyways, the good news is you can enable this option in Firefox too, and after a little searching I figured out how.

In the address bar of Firefox, type in
about:config
and press Enter. This brings up a warning page, letting you know that you’re about to make some changes which could potentially destroy the world. Agree anyways, and you’ll see a whole bunch of editable options for your Firefox browser. Locate
browser.cache.check_doc_frequency
double click on it, and change the value to 1.
Also, make sure that both
browser.cache.disk.enable and browser.cache.memory.enable
are set to True. Now Firefox should check for new versions of content each time you revisit a web page, whether they were made by a crappy programmer like me or not.

Other values you can use are:
0 – Checks for a new version whenever Firefox is closed and reopened.
1 – Checks for a new version whenever the page is loaded.
2 – Never checks for a new version, just uses cache.
3 – Checks for a new version when the page is out of date.
More info here.

Hope this helps,

Chuck

Me 5 comments

I’m Back!

By Chuck on February 11th, 2010

Alright, I’ve finally made the move from my old wordpress blog to my new server. I was going to import all of my old wordpress entries, then I realized that there was nothing on that old blog that was really worth keeping. Don’t expect anything better from this one. It was kind of fun installing wordpress manually onto my new server though. The last wordpress was a simple one click install, this time I had to actually copy files over and set up the databases. It’s nothing a five year old couldn’t figure out, but I was proud nonetheless.

So, expectations? No idea. I’m considering what I should do with this blog right now. If this one is as popular as my last, then there’s really no need for me to worry, since I was pretty much the only subscriber to my last blog. I suppose I’ll post news updates for my website on here and progress on the many projects I undertake and never finish. I’m considering posting some game, book, and movie reviews too, but I’m still not sure I want to do that just yet. I may review a couple things and see how well it goes. After my last paid reviewer job, I discovered I really don’t enjoy writing reviews as much as I thought I would.

Anyways, hope you guys enjoy. If anyone adds me as a friend or links to me, let me know, and I’ll do likewise. Cheers,

Chuck