Jasper's blog

A Word About a Tribe

2012-02-04T01:48:00.002+01:00

I have written about tv series on here before. However, I don't think I ever wrote about The Tribe. That's mostly because I watched it before I got this blog. I'd probably still list it as one of my favorite series.

Today I was watching - of all shows - Degrassi The Next Generation. Well, I was also zapping to other things so I missed large part and as such I didn't really understand the plot. Or know many of the characters. I don't know what they were doing, but it seemed they were doing something special with their episode. Well, that's besides the point anyway. What is not besides the point is that as I was watching it, for a moment, the show felt like The Tribe.

I have some ideas about how that came to be, but before I get in to that, let me first give you something of an idea what the scene was about. A group of kids had been making a road trip with a school bus (or so it seemed, I don't know exactly) and now they were stuck in the middle of nowhere. People were angry with the one responsible for it getting stolen, but though there was this conflict, they couldn't head it. Even though not all of them was able to get along quite as well as I one would hope, they were completely dependent on one another.

And that's what I believe set the scene for making it feel like it was like The Tribe. The Tribe had this same thing. We were seeing a seemingly randomly grabbed group of kids, united by the fact that they were refusing to join one of the gangs - or "tribes" - and thus they formed a Tribe. They ended up in a relatively isolated situation in which they are fully dependent on one another, even if they do not like each other.

I could go into discussing why I might like a series with a premise like that, but let's not. I don't want this to be about me too much. Instead, I am going to talk about me in a different way. I am going to talk about why I think this reminded me of the Tribe in specific. It may well be that the abandoned grass field which was the setting for a scene that could well have taken place on The Tribe. I do remember a similar scene when The Tribe was about to fall apart, though that was only two people (I believe) rather than an entire group. I think there is more to it.

The Tribe wasn't exactly the sole series with a premise like that. One of my other favorite examples of a series like that would be "Transformers: Beast Wars". This was about a group of robot (that could turn into animals) that lived on a planet with nobody to keep them company but the opposing group. Though this was more based around the conflict (where the Tribe was more about problem solving and internal conflict, with the threat of external conflict lying around the corner) it has the same principles of a group working together not by choice but by necessity. Interestingly enough, it also shared a lot of other things with the Tribe like the way the main group was composed (my favorite comparison has to be Dinobot/Lex).

Then why didn't the scene feel like Beast Wars instead? Well, we have had the scenery already, which could have been plucked straight out of a The Tribe episode and there is also the very obvious fact that Beast Wars is an animated series, while the Tribe, like Degrassi, is acted. However, while it may have played a big role, I don't think that's the crux of it.

I think the crux of it is that The Tribe is the series I identify the "genre" (the genre of the group of people working together not by choice) with. And that is only possible because I have seen extremely little else in the genre lately. Perhaps it's just not a liked genre in Hollywood?

(I should add that, the series I mentioned and others I can think of right now aren't Hollywood series. Nevertheless, I don't know everything, so I may just be off on that. Also, the premise of Lost suggests that it may be in this genre as well, but the "ensemble cast" idea that I have heard so much about in connection to the show would allow it to break out of the genre as well. However, I haven't watched the show, so I can't say much about it.)

One Crazy Theory Coming Up

2012-01-29T23:35:00.004+01:00

I haven't been posting in a while. As a way to make up for that, I offer you one really crazy post.

We are at the doorstep of a new era. For a while, we have been living in what I would call the technological era. This era is called such because the one thing that was ahead of others was technology, the one thing we have been making more progress at than anything else was technology.

No more. Technological progress is slowing down. One interesting thing to look at is the the home computer market. For a long time it has been that almost everything that is in your pc gets better every month. However, currently, there are already components that are barely making any progress, like hard discs. That said, there is some more progress this market is making, but there is one interesting thing to note about this: it's all high end progress. In quite a while there has been very little progress that's useful in personal day to day usage of an average person (think: your mom) or most office use.

At the same time, there is a social part of the internet that is changing radically. Of course, this has been going on for a couple of years with websites like wikipedia, but I think there is a lot more in store. I think that the SOPA protest in which a large part of the internet pulled together to tell that an American bill couldn't be passed will be remembered as a turning point.

I don't fully believe it yet, but it is what I feel like. I guess history will teach if I was right or not.

The Mimeoplasm: Buried Alive

2011-12-24T17:28:00.005+01:00

I am currently playing The Mimeoplasm in Commander, in the very form it came in in the package.I really like the deck and I actually think the deck is pretty strong. There are some pretty interesting choices for me to make on the deck - some cards need to go into another deck, there are many cards the deck really wants and there are a number of cards that are in the deck that I simply disagree with. However, I am keeping it as is for now (though now may be coming to a close). However, I really like the deck, so I am sure I'll write about it again later.

Today, I want to focus on a single card: Burried Alive.

We all know it's a good card. It most definitely usually causes card disadvantage, but it is so good at what it does, that it just still kicks ass. However, that is a description befit of a card like this, which is known most for the degenerate plays it enables.

That's not what I wanted to talk about, though. I want to talk about the skill intensiveness of the card. You're used to seeing the card in normal decks, where it isn't so hard to choose what you'll bury with it. (I was, anyway.) In Commander the card is a completely different beast. In some decks it's still going to be that straightforward card. This deck isn't one of those.

The thing with the card in this deck is that it often forces you to make choices that you have little to base off right now, but that are possibly going to matter much later in the game. Oh, and it's very possible that the difference between taking one card and another is going to be the difference between controlling an opponent completely or getting controlled by that opponent.

I have two examples of this. So far, I have played the card four times and the first time I just didn't know the deck well enough to make a good choice and the second time it was just plain and simple an answer to the Prototype Portal imprinting a Spine of Ish Sah. Both other times, though, it presented me with very interesting choices.

The first time, the cards I picked included a Brawn/Wonder. That is to say, I had picked two cards and my third card was going to be either Brawn or Wonder. I wanted something to make any attack I made something to be reckoned with. The question was in deciding which one to choose.
I opted for Wonder in the end. The idea was that I was most afraid of facing off against the equipment player that used lots of big dragons to attack with. I chose for the card that not only aided me in my attacking, but something that also helped me block his annoying guys.

As it was, I ended up facing the dragon player after the other two players had been eliminated. And Wonder actually mattered. It meant that he wasn't able to many of my guys down with Scourge of Kher Ridge.
I still lost to the fact that he activated the anti-flying ability of the Scourge twice in one turn (leaving him with an two guys I was unable to beat through and me with two big enough guys) and attacking with a pumped Akroma next turn (which has protection from Blue....)

The other game was a one on one game. I had lost the previous game due to trying to be the beatdown with a Sol Ring, a lot of gas and a good curve (5,6,7... and then some more 6/7 mana cards).
Now, I was looking at the board state. I opted for Triskelavus and Artisan of Kozilek (for the power), as those two put a very good Flying clock on the opponent through Commander damage, while also giving you something if it is hit by removal - they are just awesome targets for The Mimeoplasm.
The had card was the third one. I had Brawn in hand, so that wasn't an option. However, it being in my hand didn't mean I could just skip over Wonder, as having trample was reasonable at best against my opponent, while he was low on flying creatures, so Wonder was really good.
On the other hand, my Triskelavus already gave me flying on the first assault, so it was all about what happened after he got rid of that threat. Neither of us had anything interesting in the bin, so it would be a good thing to just make sure I had something else for The Mimeoplasm to become. And that's what I ended up choosing: Avatar of Woe.

I won that game, as my opponent scooped to The Mimeoplasm pretending to be an Avatar, with two counters from my opponent's Saffi. I had played a Gravepact, and used Trisk tokens to kill his guys, but Saffi and Acidic Slime conspired to also take down my Triskelavus, and with no more mana open than he had guys, that left both of us without creatures.
Had I not chosen the Avatar, I would still have been in a very good position, as I had a hand full of gas, while my opponent was playing off the top of his deck. However, he had still over twenty life and no single card in my hand was as destructive as the Avatar could be without even attacking for Commander damage, so it wasn't a won game in that case.

As someone always looking to make the best play, I love a card like this, which really tests my skill like this. I really like the card in the deck.

The Reviewer's Eye

2011-12-08T17:41:00.004+01:00

I haven't written for a while now, so I am going to give you an extra long post in return for that. Brace yourselves!

About a week ago I was watching a movie. Now, that in itself isn't worth a story, but something happened that is worth that story. Something changed inside of me. Suddenly something clicked and I was watching from a completely diffferent perspective. One that I found really interesting.

Have you ever read a review of a movie - or an episode of a series, or whatever - in which the writer seems to be ignoring the merit of the story itself, and very mechanically talking about the quality of the special effects and other minutiae?
I have. And it annoyed me. A lot. At least, it used to annoy me. It might still annoy me, I haven't read another one of those since this event. Nevertheless, I think I understand it now.

Basically, I was watching the movie and suddenly I was thinking about the origin of the movie. I realized that though this was all very much about rural england, but it was still a very hollywood show.
That meant that I knew that the main character was going to be the hero. There wasn't a doubt about it that he was going to end up on top. At the time it seemed like he was going insane, but that was no longer an option in my mind. The suspense was gone.
All of a sudden, I wasn't so much watching an interesting movie with interesting characters, I was watching a sequence of plot twists, action sequences and the inevitable thrust towards the good conclusion.

It was then that they had a plot twist that was sooner than I had expected. That was interesting for a second or two. After that, it was annoying how contrived that plot twist was. Small details that were unlikely started bothering me and I was not wondering whether the second most important character was going to join the main character, but when and how it was going to happen - in a very mechanical way.

I could ramble on about how it makes little sense that with barely any evidence, a whole group of people just takes up arms against people they have known all their lives (and follow someone they have known less than a year), but that's not what this is about.
I am not here to write such a review as I was talking about before (or write any review at all). I am here to tell the story how I now understand how such reviews come into existence.

I think I used to think that it was all about rationalizing. And I don't doubt that there are cases in which that is what happens in a review. However, I have experiences a new thing - actually being annoyed by things like that during the movie. I don't know whether it was a change in how I look at movies (I haven't watched any since) or that it was just the moment or that it was this particular movie, but I wasn't enjoying the movie for the movie itself, I was actually paying attention to the details and as such, I was annoyed by them.

Glad to see you stayed here to read my entire ramble! (And yeah, I realize it didn't get as long as I though it would when I started typing. Still, I don't feel like removing that message at the top.)

I made it / I didn't make it

2011-12-01T01:25:00.002+01:00

So, I promised a post that would wrap my results from my NaNoWriMo after the last day. However, the title basically says it all.

What? You don't understand the title? Well, the point is that you can say that I made if you like, but you can also say that I didn't.

I did make it to 50,000.
NaNoWriMo.org validated that and also says I won.
However, that was through cheating by abusing the time zone setting.
Basically, I needed 1,500 more words by the moment time was technically over.
However, the time was over here and not all over the world.
And besides, one can still call today today if it's one hour past midnight and you're still up even though it is not technically seen.

So yes, I needed one extra hour. I suppose that in the end, I didn't make it in time. I did make it, though. I wrote 50,000. And I wrote 13,000 words today. And I also kept writing on my blog every once in a while. And in the mean time, I have also been writing on 750words.com (today is one of the only days I missed this month) and that was besides what I wrote for my novel. All in all, I'm somewhat happy with what I accomplished, even though I had put the bar much higher for myself originally.

And that's my story.

The Last Day

2011-11-29T23:43:00.001+01:00

It's the last day of NaNoWriMo. You see, I have a slight bit over 24 hours left to write my book. Unfortunately, despite the fact that I intended to write 150,000 words originally, I fell behind on my schedule to write even the normal 50,000 words in time.

That's why I am keeping this post short and just mentioning that quickly. Now, I will be able to go and write. I'll just have to make the fifty thousand by the end of the day. It's that simple.

I do promise that I'll post something on my results near the end of tomorrow. It's quite likely that it'll be after midnight, though.

Chuck: Going Strong

2011-11-28T23:44:00.004+01:00

Big news: here in the Netherlands we are way behind when it comes to series being broadcasted on tv. Well, not too much new, but anyway. It's a changing thing, as the executives hands' are being forced by the fact that downloading series and watching them long before the come out here is becoming more main stream. Personally, I think Comedy Central NL is also playing a big movement setting some of the new frontiers, but it is working on a rather limited budget so it's also doing some pretty old shows.

Anyway, I don't watch all my series on my computer. I do that when I really like a series and it's somewhat older, but in general, I do that to series that have finished already and that I really want to watch. I usually do not do that to series that are on tv here.
Well, most importantly I don't do it with things like sitcoms or other series which have episodes that can easily be viewed in a vacuum like South Park. This way, I can still turn on the tc and watch an episode without the chance that I have seen it already being too big (it's still pretty big as I do watch a lot of tv and because the broadcasters that have some of the series I like more are on a limited budget so doing the same (very good) series every once in a while.

However, I do also do the same thing for other series. For example, a while back Comedy Central started broadcasting Buffy episodes. Pretty Awesome. I don't see where the comedy is in that, but never mind that, it's just a good series and that's always welcome. I suppose they ran out of the episodes they had or something and then some executive decided they wouldn't buy more because it wasn't comedy, though, as it is no longer on.
Another of those series is Chuck. So, I'm quite a bit behind and I don't even know where the series it right now or if it is even still running. And either way, I don't care all that much. I don't need to know. I am enjoying the series right now and that's enough for me.

Anyway, so I just saw the bit with the transformation to the intersect 2.0. Well, not just, it's been a while and I have seen a few episodes since. But anyway, that change made me wonder where the series was headed, considering they had done so far. Though I spent quite some time doign this introduction, that is really what I wanted to write a bit about, where the series is now headed.

And the thing is that I am quite surprised about that. In a positive way. At the time, I had felt that the writers had done a pretty constricting job of writing themselves into an impossible corner.
However, it turns out that is not the case at all. Instead, they are taking a lot of risks and doing some and most of them are paying off pretty well. They are doing some pretty good stuff. The issue of Chuck and Sarah is also neatly handled as they actually made everything a lot more awkward than it had been before. And you know what, this time their relationship is actually more relatable. At least, that's my opinion.

However, I do feel there are some problems with the series. They mostly lie in the way that only seeing parts of the series has become a lot more troublesome and missing an episode is more of a problem than ever now. Most of it is to be expected when taking so many risks, but I do think I there are some things they didn't do exactly right. The thing is, though, that these things are inspiring me as well. They are part of my inspiration to be working on tv series theory as I did in yesterday's article. I want to be able to quantify what I feel they did wrong and find out how I think they could have done nearly the same thing, but do it a lot better by making some small changes here and there.

I'm looking forward to more of this series. It's been really good lately.

Tv Series: The Gamechanger

2011-11-27T22:28:00.004+01:00

I have been thinking about tv series theory a lot lately and I am sort of setting up my own theories doing so. Things are still shaping up and they just need time. However, I decided that I would start of with sharing some of the terminology I have been coming that has already shaped up.

One of the most important things that has been wandering in my mind is the gamechanger. It is about something that changes the premise, goal or the means to the goal the series is taking. Perhaps I will be able to make this into something more quantifiable later on, but for now it's a rather abstract and it requires a lot of feeling. However, let me get into some examples.

Star Trek: Enterprise has a Gamechanger at the end of season 2, when a ship of exploration goes to war. The actual game changer is the event in which the Xindi attack.

Chuck has a Gamechanger when the events leading to the Intersect 2.0 (I find this one hard to pin down, though. I think there's more going on than just a game changer as well).

Battlestar Gallactica had a gamechanger just about every midseason finale and every season finale.

Other series, don't have a gamechanger.

The Gamechanger is the event that leads to changes in the series. However, the event itself is not what makes it a gamechanger. The fact that after that things do change, is what makes it a gamechangers. It can also be hard to say whether something will be a gamechanger until the events following it are shown.
A good example would be the death of a character. For one show, this might mean that the whole dynamic of the show changes, while in another little might change at all. In the latter case, it isn't a gamechanger while in the first case it is.

Also, while a gamechanger is usually planned, it can also just happen. The loss of a cast member (for any reason) can be an unplanned gamechanger (think 8 Simple Rules). It is hard to think of a different way a gamechanger can be unplanned, but I am pretty sure that there is one out there.

There are multiple reasons that the gamechanger focuses on the event causing the change rather than the changes themselves. One reason is that this is not at all about a gradual change. Instead, it's about a sudden change in the series, which is caused by something. Another is that gamechanger itself is usually a big event in the series and already drops its hints even before you can be sure it is going to be a gamechanger. Of course the way in which I started thinking about it also plays its role.

So, this was tv series theory installment one. I hope you liked it. For me, thinking about certain events as gamechangers really changed the way I looked at some finales.

Series Premiere, Season Premiere

2011-11-26T23:10:00.004+01:00

One of the pages I still get a lot of trafic on this site from is the one with the caveman debugging post. It turns out that people come across the term and wonder what it is, and googling it actually leads right to my blog at the top of the results. Wow.

Well, today is going to be a post in a similar vain. This time about the name for the first episode of a tv series or just the first of a season.
I have used several terms for this, but most just don't sound too well. "Beginner" and "Opener" just don't do the trick for me. We have finale on the one hand and together with the first episode of a season it makes one of the aspects of tv series that particularly interest me.

I knew I had heard a good term for it once, but I couldn't remember. So yesterday, I did some googling. Well, I ended up not finding it through googling, but through navigating my way through wikipedia. And there it was, in an article marked as bad because it didn't cite source: Premiere.

This word has one very important quality. Even if people have never heard of the term before, they will quickly enough understand what you mean with it. That is, in my opinion it's strongest quality. Of course, it's also important that it just sounds good and that it fills what in my opinion was a niche.

What I would like to do is propose the terms "Series Premiere" and "Season Premiere" when talking about tv series. And what I am going to do about it, is just use them. And I urge you to do the same. And to spread the word, of course.

So: Premiere it is!

Just a single System

2011-11-25T22:58:00.002+01:00

Today I am writing about a thing that - as a programmer - I feel I should keep reminding myself of. Basically, that is that this is just a single system.

Writing this was inspired by a comment on a flash game I saw earlier today. The commenter was saying how the game didn't work for him, and then said that as a programmer, he knew that something serious was up and he continued to say how there was something wrong with the memory management.

Now, don't get me wrong, I program myself as well and I know how the line of thought goes all too well. However, I do feel there was something wrong with it. Namely, the commenter was sitting behind a single system (or computer, I just like the word system more in this context) and from there making comments about the entire thing. However, every system (computer) is different and the programmer could not ever have tested every single system out there.

I'm not saying there was or wasn't anything wrong with that game, but I do want to remind myself that "This is just a single system" and thus remind me that even if it doesn't work here, it might work elsewhere.

This should also be applied the other way around. When you make something, don't just run it on one computer and assume it is going to do the exact same thing everywhere. Every system is different and this is only a single system. Try it on a few more systems (try to get other people to try it as well, they often have systems that differ from yours than your desktop and laptop differ) and never be surprised if it still does something else on another system entirely.

Alright, that's all I wanted to say.

Conley Woods shows us how to play Magic

2011-11-20T23:40:00.002+01:00

I'm watching the Magic World Championship at this very moment. If Wizards has its way - which they might have, considering they are the ones making this game - it will be the last of its kind (the plan for next year is no more than a joke), but I am not here to talk about that. Maybe I'll talk about it some other time, but maybe I won't.

What I am here to talk about is how Conley was playing in the Quarter finals, as that was just truly amazing. Really, I think that was one of the most amazing moments in the game ever, and I have watched some of the most awesome games (even if not live).

So how did things go? Well, it was best out of five, and the first two were down without a chance for Wescoe who was his opponent. Then, Wescoe took the next two without leaving Woods a chance. And then it all came down to the last game. Which was the amazing game.

Basically, Wescoe was just taking the game. It may not have been as smoothly as in the first two, but there was a point where I doubt there was more than a handful people all over the world who hadn't written off Conley. However, he made some awesome plays and two turns and a little luck (in the lack of relevance in his opponent's cards) he was actually the one who had won. I suppose you should have seen the thing. I'll update with a link once they have it up, so you can. And you should!

NaNoWriMo troubles

2011-11-19T22:48:00.003+01:00

This month I am doing NaNoWriMo. The idea is that lots of people all over the world are each writing a novel in a month time. There is nothing shared except the the hardship we are putting ourselves through. It's a nice thing and I am participating for the fourth time. I think I also wrote about it once or twice in the past.

However, there is a twist to this story. As there should be a twist to every story, of course. The twist is that I am not aiming for the goal that NaNoWriMo sets. After doing 100,000 words instead of 50,000 last year, I decided to draw the trend line and go for 150,000 this time around. I suppose I wanted to keep in the challenge.

The thing is, I'm not on schedule. I'm far behind. I'm not on schedule... for 50,000. I have a lot of words to catch up. And I don't know how I can possibly do that just yet, but I am not giving up hope just yet. It's like something I was talking about last night: "The only time there are no options is when you have given in to one of them."

Considering that I haven't written a single word yet today, it makes little sense that I am here writing on my blog instead of on my novel. Why then am I doing this? I suppose it has something to do with the fact that I might be doing better on writing on my blog regularly (every day in this case) than I have ever been and that's worth something to me too. I'll go write on my novel right away. I promise.

Once again: Request

2011-11-18T21:27:00.003+01:00

Yesterday, I found that people are actually using my ages old XMLHttpRequest script. At least, that's how some people end up on this blog - after googling for "Jasper's HttpRequest script".

Well, it's quite old and uses techniques for compatibility with older browser which basically have been given up on today (IE 6). Still, I think the thing should still work. But it wasn't hosted anywhere, so now is my chance to fix that. Here's an all-new link to the script: link.

I do want to revisit the script some time and update it and all and perhaps it will even some day be integrated into GoodLooking. Until that time, feel free to use the script from the link above. There is one thing I do ask you for, though. I would like it if you let me know what you are using the script for. Just out of curiosity, really.

Honorable Mention: ComboFix

2011-11-17T18:02:00.004+01:00

Yesterday, I had a run-in with a virus. The very first popup which said something was wrong already had the looks of not being legitimate to me, but then everything became very obvious as the virus started to get in my way whenever it could and tried to keep me from doing just about anything on my pc.

I'm good with computers and good with Windows (well, XP anyway, and that's what I'm running), so I managed to find the one way they had left open and knew how to get just about anything done from that little window I had.
I found that my files where being hidden and that it set my settings not to display any hidden files every few minutes for as long as the virus was running. I had to jump through quite a few hooks, but finally I managed to tell my updated firewall/antivirus (I used the combined term, as I was actually using a third tool: the active defense) software to terminate the virus's process and ban it from starting up again.

I fixed a few things that I the virus had left in a bad state, ran a full virus scan over my entire computer and used sfc /scannow to have Windows recover any damage to core files done by the virus. (I am pretty sure it did stuff with ping.exe somewhere along the road...)

I was still leaved with an incomplete system: my all programs menu in the start menu was wrecked and it had also been messing around with the shortcuts on my desktop and in quick start. Additionally, my virus scanner appeared not to have found the virus, so it was still there even though it was being blocked from running.

I looked for something to fix the missing shortcuts. I found a note somewhere that ComboFix did things like that.
ComboFix far surpassed my expectations. Seriously, it mentioned a few things it was going to have to remove, but moreover I found in the logs that it had removed both executables I had identified as malicious myself. Additionally, it removed shortcuts to its "cover-up" the System Fix program the virus was saying I had to purchase the full version of.
However, it did also fix Quick Start, All Programs and my desktop. I don't know how it did that - is the information which enough to rebuild those stored in the registry or something? That would explain why some applications didn't return properly (I was already assuming that they were the ones not doing things properly rather than ComboFix). It would be a bit redundant, but right now, I'm not second-guessing the situation. Everything is fixed. All because of ComboFix!

Thanks, ComboFix!

The Secrets The Internet Has Not Discovered Yet

2011-11-16T12:35:00.003+01:00

It's pretty awesome when you find out about something, and then google it and find that there are only two websites that have written about. That just happened to me.

It was all about the song "How Could I Be So Wrong" by Sylver that was playing. I suddenly heard for the first time that the singer was actually singing the line "I wish we had some lyrics for this song".
Wut?

Well, I googled it and even though the song has been out for two years now, that sentence was only to be found on two sites, one in English and one in Dutch. It might be that google is set up not to search websites in other languages, so I'll just stick to the fact that I'm the second English website documenting that secret. Awesome.
And I'm proud of it.

Caveman Debugging

2011-03-26T00:23:00.002+01:00

I recently heard about this new term: caveman debugging. It's basically where you make a program that you think might have a problem diagnose itself while it is running. Here and there you make it output useful information that might lead you to understand what is wrong - and what you can do about that.

It's a rather common thing and I do use it from time to time. I mean, it's nice and all to have a debugger, but sometimes it just works better to do it the old-fashioned way. Or maybe you just happen to be working in an environment with no debugger. Or just not a good one. Well, no matter what your reason is this time, you might well be wanting to use this technique.

And as a matter of fact, I had been looking for a name for it for a while now. How else can I refer to it clearly. Some call it printf-debugging, after one of the traditional functions used for this purpose (the printf function from C formats text and outputs it to the command line), but it's a little unimaginative. And it just doesn't fit all languages.

This term I read about, caveman debugging, has none of these problems. It really does capture the technique, but at the same time it doesn't really look down on it either. At least, not in my eyes. I mean, the word caveman sounds like strong and powerful, yet crude. Well, that's exactly what it is, so no complaining here. It also sounds like it's old, and that's what it is - it is the first type of debugging that was around - however, it does not sound like "superseded" and it is not. It's still a useful technique and should not be shunned. Well, that's why I like the name. However, the term has its own problem: people don't know it and may not guess what you mean.

So I propose a solution to that. Just use it. All of you. Write about it. (I did... uhm, am doing?) Tell each person who wonders what it is what it is. Just use it. From this moment on, it's a term in my book. And that means it's now my responsibility to spread the word.

Like Nietzsche Said

2011-02-22T14:52:00.004+01:00

There are times when I am a lot more expressive than I am now. Not always, but there sure are times. Today is not one of those times - obviously. However, I did want to share a bit of my state of mind all the same. I decided to do so, by quoting one of Nietzsche's best known lines.

"That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger."

Photoshopping is awesome

2011-02-06T02:17:00.003+01:00

Look what I made:

Ain't it awesome? Don't mind what it now says, just take a look at the changes from the original. (Which I do suppose you know, if not, and you're above the age of let's say fifteen, shame on you!)

I sure had a blast making this thing. Sure, I didn't change all that much, but it was just a lot of fun to work on it in Photoshop. I mean, before today I had pretty bas memories about using Photoshop, but these days are over now.

For me, photoshopping used to a frustatin search for ways to do what I wanted to do. I used to know what I wanted to do (say create a border of a few pixels along the curves of a letter), but I didn't know how to do so in Photoshop.

Now, however, I know the basic tools so well, that I can get along with the program. On top of that I understand the power of both the program's selection system and the use of layers. Really, I understand the two so well enough now, that I can actually use them to my advantage instead of them just being in the way of what I am trying to do. Lastly, I also have a lot of background information on computer terms and the names of many transformations, which means that when I am looking for a way to turn a border yellow without decreasing the number of shades involved, I do have an idea where to look. Sure, I'll still often be trying a dozen or so things before I end up with something I actually like, but that doesn't matter. Not once did I just not know what to do, I just wasn't done exhausting the available options.

Battlestar Actors on Other Shows

2011-02-05T00:22:00.006+01:00

While I took a bit of a hiatus from writing here, I watched Battlestar Gallactica. And man, is that a series. Truly, it's brilliant. Great writing and great acting, they take a lot of risks and manage to pull each and every one of them off favorably. I am getting sidetracked, though. I will write about how awesome this series is and how you should watch it some other time.

Now though, I want to focus on a story that played the past week for me. It all started when I saw my first episode of Hawaii Five Oh. Or rather, a tiny bit of it, it was just on as I was in the kitchen, and I actually was just about to leave. In the very first scene in which she appeared, I recognized Sharon from Battlestar! At first she was in the background and I wasn't sure about it, but it soon turned out that it was indeed her and that she actually played a main character of the series.

Zap forward to tonight. This time I watched my first ever episode of Law & Order UK. It's an interesting series, but that's not really what this is about. They have Lee Adama!

I think it's really interesting how being on this show means so much for your career. I mean, both shows were started recently and are quite big. And two Battlestar Gallactica actors actually got major parts in them, very possibly because of their achievements on Battlestar. If anything, I really say it says something about the (acting) quality on Battlestar. (Go watch it!)

PS. For this show I tried to translate a word that just doesn't translate very well. I didn't know this, so I typed a sentence in google translate to see what English phrase it would use (I ended up just rewriting it, but just have a look at this):

Now, the important part is in Dutch, but it's translating to English, so you can see what it is about. Now take a look at that suggestion. It is suggesting I change "zij" into "hij". Or in English, it's suggesting that I change "she" into "he"...
What's up with that Google? Some problems with emancipation?

The Problem of Time Travel

2011-02-03T14:46:00.003+01:00

Well, I have't been posted in a while - a bit over a month, as I didn't post anything this year and it's Februari already - but here's something I wrote a while back.

Say you travel to the past. You blend into the crowd and you do whatever you were traveling through time for. However, someone turns his head to look at you. For some reason you get stuck in on this guy's mind. Perhaps he sensed that something was wrong about you being then and there. However, he carries on with his life normally.
Later the same day, the guy is in some boring and his mind wanders back to the moment the two of you met. Nothing too interesting, one would say. However, had he not been thinking of you, he would have been flirting with the beautiful woman from the company they were doing this project with: his future wife. Now, they don't marry six years later, they don't get a son together and now their son's son doesn't get to be the first girlfriend of another girl. Because of this girl's experience with relationships is entirely different, she breaks up with her boyfriend after three months instead of getting him a son. And she just so happened to be the mother of a major player in the third world war in the future you are from. Now this war plays out quite differently and the whole world has changed.

You did nothing, yet you changed the entire world.

Perhaps, you make sure you don't get noticed by anyone. Perhaps, you even avoid any and all contact with humans. Perhaps you are just a bit more lucky and only change less influential things. But still, you will have made a change by just being there. And as it happens, the chance that that change disappears is minute. It if doesn't disappear, it will propagate. Given enough time, nothing will be the same.

Requiescat In Pace

2010-12-13T16:10:00.004+01:00

Today my bike died. Living in The Netherlands where bikes are everywhere (there are more bicycles here than there are people) and not being able to stand the public transportation (mostly it's unreliable and limited here, I don't like being dependent on a system like that), I really can't live without a bike...

I'll just have to see how this story will continue and I will update this post when I know.

Update: so here's what we're at right now: some plans have formulated. One housemate of mine suggested that her father might have a new (secondhand) bike for me, so she's looking into that. Also, I borrowed the bike of another housemate of mine yesterday night, and because he has broken his leg, he decided that the bike could temporarily become a "house bike". At the very least that will alleviate some of the trouble.
Basically, I just can't stand the immobility of not having a bike.

The pen is on the paper

2010-12-12T23:38:00.003+01:00

I wrote today.
I wrote some 1900 words today. Sure, that's not the 3333 words I was doing every day for half of November (or the 4000 words I did the last few days, or the 10000 words I did in the very first day), but still it's a milestone for me. That's because these 1900 words mark the very first time I worked on a NaNoWriMo piece of mine after the month was done.

In 2008, I didn't make the 50,000 and I didn't finish my book. Nevertheless, after November 2008 I have never touched the text again. It's still not done. It's gathering virtual dust.
By the way, this is the one story I wrote that I don't like. In rewriting, it would need drastic changes. The dialogue has become way too repetitive - basically all that's in the present sucks. In the mean time, the real story - which is what they are talking about in the now, but happened in the past - is decent at best.

In 2009, I fared better. I was ahead a day or so when I fell prey to the Mexican flue. Luckily, I didn't get too ill and I was on my feet after only two days, even though I was still not feeling too great and just so happened to be off for a weekend together with my parents. So basically, I had two days in which I didn't write a single word and then two more days in which I only wrote a couple hundred each. Afterwards I calculated my new daily targets and even finished a few days early. On top of that, just about as I reached the 50,000, my story was all done.
I am quite satisfied about what I have written in 2009, but that of course doesn't mean that there is no need for editing. So, it hasn't been as long as it has been for my 2008 novel, but nevertheless, this complete draft has been gathering virtual dust, even though it just needs the editing.

This year, things went a lot better. As I felt too confident about making the 50,000 words-goal set out by NaNoWriMo, I stepped up the pace and set myself a number of other goals. As I mentioned them earlier, I am not going to repeat them (if you're interested, use the tag feature of this blog to take a look at past NaNoWriMo posts), but it ended in me writing the double the amount of words and still finishing with a day to spare. However, this time my story wasn't done yet. On the contrary, after some 95,000 words, my main character finally told the reader his real name.
However, I just broke that curse that said I cannot work on my novels once November is through. I may not be at the editing phase just yet, but right now I am working on finishing my story. It's only the first 1900 words, but it's a virtual boundary that's been broken.

A thousand words

2010-12-11T17:41:00.005+01:00

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Then, how much words is a graph worth?
I don't know, but I bet there's still a couple hundred in there.

I am not claiming you will be able to find out much about these words, but they are in there. My soul is in there.

*disclaimer*: The graph is all about estimations and how well I remember things. I by no means claim it to be precise. The general ideas are all factual though. Oh, and note, the last dot isn't in there yet, simply because I didn't know how to score it.

A few questions

2010-12-10T18:25:00.004+01:00

Even though, a long time ago, I started this blog after realising that a blog was in fact the next generation of diaries, I am not really one to write openly about my feelings. Whenever I do write about my feelings, I always obfuscate so that it won't be all that easy to see what is going on.
Right now, there's a lot going on. However, I don't think I can obfuscate it properly - where properly means it's not just gibberish to anyone who reads it, while at the same time, it shouldn't be to clear to some who might read it. Nevertheless, I wanted to write something, so here goes.

What is happiness?
When is life good?
What do you consider important?
What do you want to do?

I haven't written much, but I think I have put more feeling into it than I wanted already. Well, what's written is written, but I am not going to write more. We'll just see where this boat is going to strand (for the second - and hopefully final - time that is, the first time we just fixed the boat and got back in the water...)

NaNoWriMo is over!

2010-12-04T23:26:00.005+01:00

Last month was amazing. It was tough and left me with little time to boot. I participated in the annual event called NaNoWriMo - or (Inter)National Novel Writing Month. The idea is that you- and over 150,000 other with you- write a book in a month. The goal is set at churning out some 50,000 words of your first draft.

Something got into my head, though, and I wrote 100,000 words instead. It was a ride, but what a ride...

Finally, it's over now. November has passed. Finally, I'll have time again. Finally, I can return to all those projects I abandoned in favor of writing a book.

My story isn't done yet. I'm 100,000 words into the story and it's far from done. It only happened somewhere in the last couple thousand words that my lead character revealed his name to the reader. He has some more traveling to do.
Both previous times I participated in the event I didn't touch my book after November had ended. Will this time be any different?
This time, there's at least one thing that's different. This time, I'm not sick of writing after hitting my target. I'm glad I don't have to write every day anymore, but I'm not through with writing.

On the contrary, I can't stop writing. It all started yesterday (red. this post was written a few days before it was published - on December 1). Yesterday, it was still November, but I had made my target a day before that and as such I was done. However, in class, I took my pen and paper and wrote a real personal (yet fictional) story. Originally, the idea was to put it up here, but it got too long and too personal for that. Maybe I will still publish it some day, but not right now.
Today, I'm in class again and again I was feeling the urge to write. So here I am. Don't get me wrong, though, I'm still paying just enough attention to my class (today, that is, it's not true for yesterday).

Does this perhaps mean that my blog is finally really going to live?

Who knows... who knows...

Becker S6E13

2010-11-16T10:23:00.005+01:00

Recently I watched the very last episode of the tv series Becker. It was fabulous.

(Spoilers ahead - spoilers of the finale as well as of the general continuity. However, if you don't know this yet, you should really just go watch more Becker!)

It wasn't planned or anything, it was just on tv. On thing that meant was that before the show started, I didn't know it was going to be the series finale. However, I had the feeling it was going to be the series finale in the first few minutes.

Quite often series finales are quite recognizable. Often they have the "bigger than life" plots, the plots that are supposed to feel epic and awesome, the plots that break the status quo that had been held for very long - if not the entire series. Usually they try to tie up all the loose ends. An episode being a two-parter (or more-parter) is also a good sign that it might be a series (or season) finale, because tying up all the loose ends and being epic are two things that are a lot easier when you have more time to do so.
There are good reasons for a finale to do those things. First off, the finale is the last thing people are going to see of the show - thus an important thing to remember the show by, so they need to be awesome. Also, as you no longer need to maintain the status quo for the next episode, so this is a good chance for you to break it. Secondly, people don't want to be left with questions, so tying up the loose ends makes a lot of sense as well.

Becker did none of those things. Alright, the status quo was broken, but it was done subtly. Usually breaking the status quo means real changes - like in Becker, Reggie being replaced with Chris or the moment when Becker and Chris started dating. There was no such thing here - there was no status quo change in such a sense of the word.
The episode didn't have something awesome or bigger than normal happening to the cast. No, this was an episode that just had the normal parallel plot lines. Nothing bigger or more awesome than normal.
The episode tied up some loose ends, but not all that much. The most obvious loose end was one that had been introduced a few episodes earlier - which was a great use of continuity, by the way - which actually ended tying up another end as well, but this end had so far been under the table cloth, so it was actually a surprise that it ended up being tied up.

The thing that made this episode a real finale was something entirely different. In the first few minutes Becker actually asked Chris out.

*dramatic silence*

Even Chris replied with "You're actually asking me out without me asking you to ask me out?". It wasn't normal. From that moment on, it became clear that this just wasn't the normal bitter Becker, something about him was different. The story then went on about how Chris thought this was the moment Becker was going to dump her. A pretty simple storyline and very similar to other things they have done. And even though nobody told me, I just felt that Becker was sincere and was actually not going to dump Chris - there was just something about his attitude that made me feel that way. Finally, Becker was making some progress. Finally, he was getting over his midlife crisis.
The deal was of course sealed when Margaret convinced Jake to go study with the money his nana had left him. The Bob-replacement guy had his own storyline here, where he tried to find a job by padding his cv, and turned down a job because the person who matched the cv would actually be underpaid for the job. That too is tied up nicely as he gets to take over Jake's news stand.
The last thing was that Becker and Chris have their confrontation and Becker actually tells that he doesn't want to break up with her and that his strange behavior might be related to him actually thinking he might happy. Chris plays a very strong role as she is clearly glad with this fact, but is also here to support Becker through the emotional changes - even if for the better, emotional changes may well be hard. The episode then ends on a very strong note, as Becker shouts at a guy pissing on his doorstep. There may be a huge change in Becker, but it isn't going to be instant.

Anyway, a great episode *thanks to the entire staff of Becker* which provided me with some very satisfying comedy tv, but which also taught me a lot about series finales. Don't try to overachieve, but pick the right things. It was truly fabulous.

Holidays

2010-07-20T19:05:00.003+02:00

Holidays.

The time to work your ass off on your projects - so you can finally make some decent progress on them. At least that's what it is for me right now. Oh, mind you, I am in the mean time getting more than enough relation, so don't worry.

However, I am currently working on YuGiOh Rebirth, but I have a lot of other projects going through my mind as well, projects that want to get out, that want to get worked on. The Website Project I mentioned last post is one of them and so is Prism. The website project really wants to get its first version online, even though a lot of work needs to be done before that is a possibility. Prism knows it won't be done any time soon, but it is begging for some attention, seeing that hasn't been worked on. In the mean time, a very crude idea for a story I have had for a while suddenly evolved itself into a really good and original series outline. My ideas for a Star Trek series (oh, I didn't mention, I had one? Well, I do.) have been laying low for the last few days, but all the same, they have been going from a series outline to an actual series draft in my head, and I haven't written any of it down yet. At the same time, the one world that I made up through (as always, involuntary, it just happens in my head) world building instead of just seeing the adventures of the world needs a some restoration, since I realized that the name I spontaneously came up with was probably unconsciously stolen from a tv series (which I started really watching since I made up that name) and the name was actually worked deeply into the ideas from there, so it's not just a simple matter of renaming it. All the work lying around, spooking through my head. So much to do...

Holidays, oh boy, do I love these times

First Content Made

2010-07-14T05:55:00.003+02:00

Hi All!
How are you guys doing?

I just wanted to let you know I have just started making some content for one of my next big projects. I won't tell much about it, so I will just dub it the "website project" for now. I can't even tell you the name of the project yet as I don't have a domain name yet. I have an eye on one, but that one has an owner, so I hope I can get it without paying too much (it is kind of for sale).

I haven't really been working on the system yet, but I have been working on the Good Suit, which I intend to build the website on top of. However, what I am currently been making is something different entirely: it is the content for the website. The stuff that anyone should be able to provide, not just me. However, for now, it just resides in text files on my hard drive, ready to be submitted when I create the website. Once I get around to it, I bet that it's going to be a hit!

Lost the finals, lost my faith

2010-07-12T00:36:00.007+02:00

For any readers who don't know - I am Dutch. For the readers who read this at a time that does not match the one at which I wrote this The Netherlands just lost the finals of the FIFA Worldcup 2010 to Spain. Let me recap: nothing interesting (but a ton of yellow cards) in the first 90 minutes and then in the second extra period, a second yellow card given to a Dutch player as a Spanish players falls after not having been touched by the Dutch player. Alright, referees can make mistakes. It's ten vs eleven now, but if we con keep the score level for a few more minutes we will be on equal footing again in the penalty shootout. The penalty shootout never came - within those few more minutes the Spanish scored from an offside position. Alright, the final pass wasn't from an offside position, but the intercepted pass that lead to that pass was to a player that was offside by meters.

So alright, I am ticked off by the fact that we lost. But more so, I have lost my faith in the FIFA. Yeah, I am not objective, nobody is. However, many of the English have probably lost their faith the 28th of June, and so have many Mexicans. Actually, that day had the events that do make the objective spectators lose their faith in the FIFA. That day held the two blunders of the referees, but that wasn't the worst of it.

The worst of it came next: the FIFA almost denying the mistakes. The FIFA removed the English goal from the official summary of the game, the FIFA stopped showing offside lines when they were afraid that the referee made a wrong call, the FIFA continued giving press conferences with but a few changes - they lead into those press conference by saying they weren't going to answer questions about anything but their chosen subject and the majority of the question just ignored this subject and were about mistakes made by the referees anyway. But the worst came just now, after I had already decided to write this rant (well, I intend to actually go somewhere, so if you want you can classify this a little more positively). I was taking a look at what team was the one in the one at the short end of the offside-goal by Argentina my results included a youtube video and a few pages that included youtube videos, however, instead of getting shown the videos I was shown a message that the FIFA had taken down the video on copyright claims (Google deserves credit for telling us why these videos were removed). Nothing else was removed, just the wrong referee calls. Really, I can't understand it.

I am starting to believe the stories that call the FIFA the maFIFA, the FIFA that truly is a mafia. That's possibly just the patriot in me speaking that has just lost the finals. However, these guys dare to demand the presence of a 92 year old living legend that has had a grand child die less than two weeks ago (with the friend of another daughter being to blame for the lethal car accident). Let's just assume they are clean; there's still quite a few things that just aren't acceptable. Things need to change.

There is but one way to bring about these changes: another worldwide football organization. They would organize their own world cup - the details still elude me, but it would probably need to be at a time that does not conflict with any major football event right now in order to be successful. A possibility would be to take the free years between a world cup and a European cup, but it's easy to make a case for running in the same year as well - we would need to find a proper moment, though.

Now there is a lot of changes that this organization would incorporate, which coincide with the reasons for this new organizations:

A clean image
Being focused on the future, instead of on conservatism
Able to make their decisions on their own
A better structure that makes the employees care about fair games rather than getting higher up in the hierarchy
No embezzling evidence of mistakes - admitting them instead
Giving up any copyright claims to the video material (after all, this organization will have no need to manipulate it)
Willingness to make change
No claiming of judicial powers in hosting countries

Now it may seem like I want to run the FIFA out of business, but I don't. Competition is all that's needed. Competition is healthy and the current situation is brought on by the monopoly the FIFA currently has. If they run the risk of getting competed out of business, than they will change, and if it isn't for the better they will still run out of business. I want an organization that is able to start running equipment that makes it easier to be a good referee, and thus convince the world that that is the correct path to take, and eventually force the FIFA to follow suit. Revolutionize the market and counter stagnation by introducing a competing player - it's worked before. Simply look at the improvements Microsoft made to Internet Explorer in the past few years - from the terrible IE6 we went to decent IE8 in way less years than IE6 was the newest version of the browser. And all of that was instigated by them losing a large part of their market share.

It's probable that I am not only missing the funds for this plan but some other essential ingredients as well, but this is my idea:

Get an organization competing with the FIFA into big bussiness. An alternative organization that does things right instead of wrong. I call for the NAF (New Age Footall).

Edit: just after I wrote this I realized I had forgotten to mention something. Spain earned their victory. They were the better playing team. And a single attacker against only a the goalkeeper should never result in anything but a goal, yet it did (in an attack of Robben), showing that Orange (that's what we call out national team) wasn't all that tough here. However, the referee giving unjustly awarding a goal to Spain just isn't the way things should be. And even if we have a bad history on penalty shootouts (though our most recent and thus team most like that one was positive) that is the way a game without (legitimate) goals is decided according to the rules, so don't have them decided in some other strange way! And yes, I am willing to beat a better playing team through a penalty shootout - that's nothing but the rules.

When the chapter finally closes

2010-06-19T02:09:00.002+02:00

Sometimes dreams do come true.

However, your dreams may turn out to be something quite different from what you thought it to be.

As Mark Rosewatter once wrote: "infatuation is an important rite of adolescence". Now, by no means do I claim I am an adolescent as I write this - nor do I claim that how things happened to me is in any way similar to how they happen to most people, but this is a story about an infatuation.

It's been quite a while since I got to the stage where I was "over" the girl in question. That is, the point where I could honestly say I wasn't in love with her any longer. But that was not where it ended, that was not where this chapter closed.
Oh, believe me, I am not talking about a period in which I was lovesick or even thought about her. No that had indeed passed. However, I still saw the girl from time to time and also from time to time there was some tension - or at least there was tension from my point of view, this really doesn't mean it was also there from hers. I knew I was on thin ice. Saying that I carried a torch for her pretty much covered it.

One day, when I was thinking about how this chapter just had not closed yet for me, I realized when it would be closed. It would be closed when the time came that she asked me how I felt about her and I could tell her that some things best remain a mystery (or something less cheesy and obvious in the same vain). It was a stupid thing to think that such a conversation would come to pass - after all, that's just not how conversations work.

Sometimes dreams do come true.

And indeed no such conversation was ever held. Nevertheless, I recently had an encounter with the girl which makes me believe this chapter has finally closed. I saw her as an attractive girl - an attractive girl and no more than that. And we may not have had an explicit conversation about this, but I acted like that as well. And I knew this was no lie.

However, your dreams may turn out to be something quite different from what you thought it to be.

I knew this because inside of me there was absolutely no difference between her and another attractive girl that was there at the moment. It took a while before I realized, but this was the "conversation" I had dreamed about. The chapter had finally closed.
When you are a straight boy and someone else is an attractive girl there is a chance that something happens. I would consider this extremely unlikely to be the way things turn out. But I can have the peace of mind that if the universe pulls a joke on me and that is the way all of this turns out, it will be in a new chapter, not in the closing act of this one; that closing act has passed already.

YuGiOh Rebirth

2010-04-21T19:20:00.004+02:00

Have you ever played that YuGiOh game by Edo? (link)
If you have, you are in luck. While Edo stopped development of the game in 2007 and left us with a program that was far from done, I have decided to remake the game. Please visit www.yugiohrebirth.uni.cc and have a look!
If you have not, this is your chance to play the game... I can't be sure you like it, but if you like yugioh or cheesy storylines, there is a good chance that you will. This is not about competitive playing of the game, this is just for enjoying yourself and having some fun. And the cheesy storylines do really match the style of Yu-Gi-Oh!

Anyway, that's all I had to share with you at this very instant, so see you all later!

My hat goes off to javascript

2009-10-25T22:29:00.002+01:00

I just started loading my streaming TNG episode, intending to watch it immediately, but then I thought I could better let it load for a while, while I gave private static some more thought. (Yes, last time I wrote about star trek I was at the first episode of DS9 and now I am halfway TNG. I tend to go through series at a reasonable pace - there was some time of not watching any Start Trek between watching DS9 and TNG.) Well... let's just say Javascript is powerful, really believe me! Now!
Oh man, the solution is so simple yet so good. All I did was declare an anonymous function that encapsulates both our class definition and our static functions and call that function right away. This requires a little change in syntax to make the class available outside that function, but that truly is a piece of cake. Once that is done, our private static variables can live in this new class.

It truly is amazing how powerful javascript is.

Jasoop Redesign

2009-10-25T21:00:00.002+01:00

I have been typing for the documentation of Jasoop - which is what I called my style of javascript oop I talked about two days ago (technically yesterday, but not in reality).

And now I have already decided that I am going to change it all already. Here's the story.

I had thought of a way to create static functions, however, I had not realized that it would fail if the function was later redefined. Of course, this does not really matter for functions, but it did mean that I could not use the same technique for static variables. So I was once again posed the same question: how to design static in Jasoop.
I did come up with an answer: if each static property would be an object with one property (say static) I could write some code to make sure these variables were static, while keeping the syntax rather clean. Alright you would now have to type "varName.static", but that's hardly a loss. Then it hit me, if I reversed the syntax there, the code to make the variable static would be (ironically) static, rather than depend on the static variables - and I would get a nicer syntax to boot. Say it yourself: "static.varName". Isn't that much better?
My next issue was deciding whether to use the same syntax for functions or not (I mauled this all over in my head while cooking my dinner). My first impulse was not to do so, because I thought not having to write that static there would just feel much more natural. In the end, the uniformity for variables and functions did win - partly due to an argument that is really nonsense, but I only realize that while writing this. Oh, and don't worry, currently I have more than enough reason to keep it the way it is. The door was now ajar.
Next I thought of a way to create protected variables. I did think of a way (giving the class a return value if it was not called with the new operator), but that did leave me with two challenges: how to differentiate them from private variables and how to pass them through a single return value. Both questions had a single answer, I could simply use the syntax I just made up for static variables. "protected.varName" makes sense, right? Suddenly the door was swinging wide open.
And then opportunity presented itself. I could get rid of all those differences between the variables with different access levels, while getting rid of that ugly _this variable I had to introduce. Man, it cleaned up the syntax, it sure did. I was standing in front of an open door and the other side was much more beautiful than this one - needless to say I went through.

So now, inside the class we have "public.publicVar", "protected.protectedVar", "private.privateVar" and "static.staticVar". One little thing to note is that all static variables are public, but as of yet I do not see any way I can change that (unless static functions are defined outside the "class definition" they can only be accessed once the first object of the class has been created, and outside the class definition you cannot reach protected or private variables).

From the outside you can reach "object.static.varName" and public variables in some way, but I am not sure yet whether that will be "object.varName" or "object.public.varName". Perhaps it will make itself clear once I have found a way to make static variables with different access levels.

Anyway, Jasoop is coming to life and I am pretty sure the result will be nice and it will probably even include features not yet seen in javascript (protected variables, to name one thing).

Javascript OOP

2009-10-24T00:50:00.004+02:00

Go ahead, try googling "javascript oop". Or you you can just take it from me: you'll get a thousand ways to do object oriented programming in javascript.

Don't get me wrong, javascript a very powerful language. And I really mean very powerful. Most people working with it, though do not know its full power. For example, javascript lets you write curried functions - the syntax will be strange, but you will have curried functions, meaning you can actually go and use javascript as a functional programming language (oh, it will look horrible, but the point is that you can).
As I said, there are a lot of ways to do object oriented programming in javascript, and it appears there are few people who use the exact same way. There is a way that s default in javascript, but it has its limitations, which - as powerful as javascript is - you can work around. I picked up a style in this that turns out not too be all that common, used some more common elements in it and even added a little that is completely my own.

So that is why I decided that I am going to document this stye of object oriented programming and all its powers. For example, the model supports private data and functions, has its own (but really solid) way to define inheritance. I will document not only how to do something, but also why it is done in this way and not in some other way.
First and foremost, this will be a reference for me, so I can write consistent OOP code in javascript and so I can use powerful features - such as static functions - without first having to dig through old work to see how I did that again. However, I will make it available for others to use, as it can be a useful guide how to achieve some standard OOP features in javascript - and one might even consider using the style as a whole in order to be consistent in one's own work while having a number of powerful features at your disposal.
I do not know how I will exactly provide this documentation, right now I am just typing out the text that documents it. However, I will get back to you on that point.

Gimmick or Driving Force

2009-08-21T23:28:00.006+02:00

I have been away for "Fantasieland" (which, you guessed it, would translate to fantasy land), which is the smaller brother of "Kinderdorp" the past three days, but I'll talk about that later. Right now I wanted to talk about something even more recent. I just watched the first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
I intend to watch all Star Trek episodes some time. As a kid I watched a number of stray episodes, but never watched it all. I started by watching Voyager, as I had seen the most episodes of it. Next I decided for DS9 because it plays in the same time.

The first thing that my eye fell on in the series opener is how the anomaly in the episode is a gimmick rather than the main drive of the episode. Here, the wormhole is an important plot point for the series, but the episode is not about it. The timeless alien (which is not executed flawlessly* by the way) is used as little more than a gimmick. In Voyager if such a strange thing showed up it would always be the focus of the episode. I like this way better (or at least, it not always being the focal point of the episode). I have yet to watch the rest of the show, so I'll have to see if this continues to be this way. Anyway, that makes one point for DS9 (of shich I have only seen the series opener) against only a handful for Voyager (all of which I have seen).

* There are two problems with the alien. First, it fears to be destroyed. Second, it agrees to let ships through from now on. Neither of these fit the model of an alien who has trouble understanding beings living in linear time. I don't know if these problems could have been avoided, though.

Kinderdorp 2009

2009-08-16T13:12:00.003+02:00

For the past week, I have been working (on voluntary basis) at Kinderdorp (translated: Children's Village). The main activity of building huts. A good amount of space and wood is reserved for this. However, there's a lot more to it. The tents also take a good amount of the space. There's a podium, a 'crea' tent, the KD bar, a dancing tent, a face paint tent, and a lot more. I was in the crea tent, where the childeren could play with clay, saw nice shapes in thin wooden plancks, paint or make just about anything with all the materials lying around.
We had a reasonable year with over 1600 kids most of the days. And believe me, with no more than 143 volunteers (and quite a few of them only part-timers) that meant some hard working. And man, you're glad when, at 4 o'clock, the children leave. Anyway, some 1700 people had a good five days and I was one of them.

GoodLooking Demo

2009-07-27T15:02:00.003+02:00

Two days ago (technically yesterday early morning, but the two sort of blended together as I didn't sleep in a (successful) attempt to get my sleeping pattern back to something a bit more normal) I wrote about GoodLooking INT02. Today I decided to take a minute and write a demo.

Previously I provided links to the template and the live example. Now, instead, I provide a link to the demo. From there you can have a look at the running example, force it to do a reload and from there you can see the source of the template, of the sample application, of the code connecting the two and of the compiled template.
All of these are actually viewable without looking at the source thanks to two pre-tags around them and an htmlentities that was executed on them. It is important to note that even thought the compiled template is viewable this was, it was not made to be good to the eye - it is very ugly, generated php. Here's the link.

GoodLooking INT02

2009-07-26T04:29:00.006+02:00

I did some work on GoodLooking, my templating engine, again. And I finished a number of goals I had set for myself, and as such I finished the next version, INT02. Note that INT02 is not a release yet, not even an alpha release - INT stands for internal, which is the term I coined for the versions before the releases come along.

GoodLooking is a templating engine, which means it helps you to keep your php code seperated from your html. You'll have one file where you do your php programming and one which is the template. Then you need a couple of lines to tell GoodLooking which file to use, and what variables it should use, which can be in a third file, but can also reside in the same file as the programming logic.

Say you have a script that gets the user's first name, last name and birthday out of the database and put them into the variables $firstName, $lastName and $dateOfBirth. Now we write the following code to use LookingGood:

<?php
$lookingGood = new LookingGood('template.tmpl');

$lookingGood->registerVar('firstName', $firstName);
$lookingGood->registerVar('lastName', $lastName);
$lookingGood->registerVar('birthday', $dateOfBirth);
?>

Note that instead of calling registerVar three times, we could also have called registerMultipleVars once:

$lookingGood->registerMultipleVars(array('firstName' => $firstName, 'lastName' => $lastName, 'birthday' => $dateOfBirth));

In either case we could have the following Template (in the file template.tmpl):

<html>
<:- this page is a sample page, and this text is a comment (disappears from result) -:>
<head><title>Hello <: firstName :></title></head>
<body>
<h1>Hello!</h1>
<p>Hello <: firstName; ' '; $lastName :>, my database tells me your birthday is at <: birthday :>.</p>
<: if (firstName == 'Jasper') :>
<p>Have a nice day, Jasper.</p>
<:end if:>
</body>
</html>

This could lead to a page named "Hello Jasper!", with the following:

Hello!
Hello Jasper Horn, my database tells me your birthday is at 11/04.
Have a good day, Jasper.

Or if you're your not me, but John Doe, you would get a page named "Hello John!", that looks like this:

Hello!
Hello John Doe, my database tells me your birthday is at 31/03.

Well, those are simple examples, but it does really show what the engine is about. So.. INT02, what's new?

Compiling.
All of it worked, but it was slow. A few hundredths of a second does not appear to be too much, but in reality it is, if you are getting a number of views on your website per second and it's running on a host that's doing other things as well. A more complicated site than the ones I tested may really bog down a server if the work has to be done each and every time.
So, now it only does once, until you change the template, and then it does it once again. That one time it saves a file, which is basically a very messy php representation of your website, which means it is fast to go from there to your full website. And the messiness doesn't matter, because you are not going to see this code at all. For that matter, you are not going to notice the fact it is being compiled this way at all, as all you do is as I wrote above in the example, the engine fixes the rest for you silently.

A working sample is seen on my site. This is the template (view source to see it decently), and I simply put some constants into the engine, and here you see the result in real time.
INT02 does not have much functionality asides the mentioned yet and it has a funny perk, if you had a compile, it will show how long that took in the source, and it will always show how long the interpreting (from the compiled template to the result take) in the the source in html comments.
I won't make GoodLooking available just yet, simply because it is really advisable not to use it in its current state. However, if you really are interested despite that, let me know (for example, you could write a comment here). The next planned version is INT03, which will have one extra feature, after that there's INT04 in which I make a lot of changes and tie quite a few loose ends together. Then, when I feel I am satisfied with that, I will make an alpha version, which will be available.
Alright, thanks for your time (I can imagine, that was quite a read) and see you again some other time!

Tag Cleansing

2009-07-26T04:25:00.003+02:00

Not so long ago, I had posts with tons of tags each, and no two of them shared a tag (alright, that's exaggerated, but still, it's partly true and that's bad enough).
No more!
I just cleaned up my tags. I am now using tags as they should be used, so readers can find related posts.

Anyway, I have an important post that is going to bury this one again, so I am not going to spend too much time on this one. Just be sure to read my important (=next) post!

T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM

2009-07-25T19:54:00.006+02:00

I just received a brilliant error from php:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM in /home/a5400048/public_html/Compiler.php on line 551.

I truly wasn't expecting a paamayim nekudotayim either. Further inspection showed it actually just meant "COLON". Php....

What I had done was typed "$class::const", while I actually just meant "class::const". It's that they told me where to look, because that error message is as descriptive as "Error: don't feel like continueing on some statement."

Land of Manuals: Factories

2009-07-01T19:21:00.005+02:00

Alrighty, I just thought I would pop in and do another installment of the Land of Manuals. Let's start off with a quick recap of what we talked about.
This series takes place in a strange world known as "The Land of Manuals". In his land there are four types of people:

Workers: they do whatever a manual tells them, no more no less
The Rich: they are rich and they are stupid; autonymous, but stupid. They have their own factories
The Rebels: they are rich, but they are smart. They intend to do wrong without breaking the laws, which are enforced strictly but very literally
The Writers: they write manuals

I said the series would focus on the Writers, but before we can, we need to get a picture of what this land is like, so I will start with one of the main concepts in the Land of Manuals: Factories. Factories are the de facto standard places to find workers, whereas most other places where you can find Workers are at least somewhat comparable to a Factory.

A good place to start writing about Factories is the service door. Now, in this world one would expect a rather boring door used only by employees. However, in the Land of manuals, it is much more than that. It is where wandering souls (oh, I didn't tell you about those, did I... well just don't worry they aren't really important anyway) are picked up from the street and become Workers. When there's work to be done and the factory has not yet reached its Worker limit, they pick up more wandering souls from the streets and get them to be Workers, when there's more workers than work, they will thrown out the same way they came.

But who does that you ask? Well the management. Let's see who we could use for a management. Writers? No. Rich? No. Rebels? No way. Workers? Check!
So it's workers again, 'ey? Well, yes the Land of Manuals isn't all that complicated, you just don't have many choices beyond the Workers here.

How your management works is decided by two major factors. How it works exactly is a topic for a later time, right now I will just list these factors. First off there is the structure of your factory. In general lines most factories are the same, but take a look at for example the inside of the management's office, and you will find way more changes. Nowadays only a few types of factories are widely used, but in the past many more have been used. This was actually the reason for creating uniform management manuals. The uniform part basically means that you will need a different version of management manual Y if you are using a different factory, but once you are running UMM Y, it appears everything works just the same as all other factories that use UMM Y. There are only a few widely used UMMs.
The main reason for using management manuals, and a management that is, is that it makes things a lot easier for Writers. If every time a Writer wanted to write a manual he or she would have to spend a considerable amount of time writing about getting Wandering Souls from the streets and making them workers, there would be very few manuals, so instead we leave such things to the management.

Once a worker is inside, he or she gets a shirt on which signifies what language he or she will be speaking. Say you need a manual written in English to be done which needs ten guys working on it, (they actually have different languages, but for now ours will do for examples) your management will make sure that they get you ten workers that speak English. However, two of them may also speak German, while three speak French and six of them speak Dutch as well as English; the shirts are just to make things a little easier, they will now know in what language they ought to communicate.

Workers work in teams. The composition a manual needs (one they need at least and one they would like to have, usually) is written on the manual and is there for the management to read. They will find the workers to form such a team and assign them to one of the many, many rooms that are in the factory, where they are left to do their job.
There is often a lot communication between teams or between a team and the management. For example, if a team needs access to a certain book that's in the factory's (yeah, factories have their own libraries, its a strange world), they will tell so to the management and the management will put a library team on it. Note that this all goes according to the manuals, though. The manual those that need the book are using will need to say "ask the management for that book" rather than "pick up that book". And the management's manual will say that if one asks for a book correctly they should put a library team on it - and it also tells them the composition of such a library team.

That's basically all I wanted to tell you about factories for now. There's a few more general concepts to discuss, but from there we will be able to take the perspective of the writers, which is what this series is all about.

Say "Eye" for Prism

2009-05-17T19:58:00.005+02:00

Haven't heard of Prism yet?

Alright, so I have my first render for Prism. It's not much, but it looks pretty good if you ask me. It's an eye!
This time this blog is a few hours behind newgrounds and deviantArt, where I also publish stuff related to Prism, but I promise that won't always be the case.
As for that, I am not even promising that everything will always be published on all three of the media - though when it comes to renders they probably will (for now at least...).

Without further ado:

The upper image is the final render of the eye (at 4 NURMS iteration for those who want to know), the lower-left image is a wireframe of the same setup (alright, alright, only 2 NURMS iterations, but that's because it would get too cluttered otherwise) and the lower-right image is the wireframe of the model as I modeled it (without NURMS, that is).

I hope you liked the brief preview!

Prism

2009-05-16T21:04:00.002+02:00

Man, I really thought I had the answer - what I am talking about in the last post, that is (The Land of Manuals). But just see how much time has past between this post and that one - and it appears it was a failed attempt.
Well, maybe it was. But that does not mean I am going to stop using this blog, nor that I will discontinue the "Land of Manuals."
I'll see if I can find some time today or tomorrow in order to write the first installment of the series (episode isn't quite the word, installment is a natural fit though ;). However, currently I am busy working on a new project: Prism.
I am not quite telling you much about it just yet - but I can tell you it will supposedly become a flash movie series. Those who know me in real life might know, I cannot draw. If I have a ruler and can look at what I am drawing every two seconds AND the shapes are easy, I might produce something that is recognizable (NB: that is, I have (and take) a lot of time to work on it as well). That means I won't be able to produce a nice flash movie (let alone a series), right?
Wrong. I can't draw, but I am not going to draw. I am going to model it in 3D. I am going to make models of everything I want in the movies and animate it with the models - and when I rendered a movie out of that I will convert it to flash.
It does take forever, though (I have spent a great number of hours on a single eye socket now...).

Something To Write About

2009-03-17T22:19:00.003+01:00

Wow, I think I have just set my record for not posting here. I have a remedy, though: something to write about. Mostly this blog has been about... well... nothing at all really. However, I have a series of posts planned, as I came up with an idea a while back. It's called "The Land of Manuals".

In this land the people can be divided in four groups. First there are the workers. Workers do not do anything unless they have a manual on how to do it. If the manual instructs them to do the wrong things, they will do the wrong things. Workers often reside in factories, but factories are not like factories we know.
Second there is The Rich. The Rich are rich, most of them even have their own factories. Granted, their factories usually aren't as big as the ones owned by corporations, but factories are factories. Another trait all the rich share is that they are stupid, incredibly stupid. They can handle autonomously and they don't expect manuals that they have to follow letter by letter as the workers do, but that's not a good thing; it means that they will probably do something wrong if it is at all possible.
The third group is the rebels. Most of the rebels are also quite rich and have their own factories, but they will do what they can to make things go wrong. Luckily there is some strict law enforcement going on, so they have to find the ways to break the system without breaking the law. This is all possible because the law enforcement is done by workers, meaning something just is or is not allowed - there is no common sense involved.

The last group is the one I am going to take the perspective of, they are called the writers and what they do is writing manuals for workers. You will know more about these guys soon enough...

Like the idea? Got an idea where I might be going? Comment!!

Themes!

2008-11-21T15:09:00.005+01:00

I logged in to one of my gmail accounts yesterday - as a matter of fact it was not even my main email account and I wan't checking email - when I made a pleasant discovery. Gmail now has themes!
The way it happened was actually quite funny asm I already had checked my email earlier, but then he chane had not yet been made. However, I wanted to know which database it was that I made two-hourly backups of. This really is not needed, but can be nice if I want to start using one of the web applications I made. So, I logged in to the gmail account to which all the backups are sent and it looked different...
Also there was this big note on top of the page saying: "We got themes now, goto the themes tab of the settings page and have a look", for convenience it also had a link to that tab.

There are quite a few themes to choose from and ven thogh I do still have to find which one I really like, I really, really like this new feature. So... I did a blog poston it :P

Long time no see

2008-11-21T00:48:00.003+01:00

Hi again.
Would anybody care to tell me when I last wrote an article in which I did not say "I have not used this blog too often in the past period, but I plan on doing so in the coming period"? Consider this one of the posts in which I did say it (even though I am not going to write it out again). Man, my whole world has changed since I last posted here, there's most definately enough to tell about.

I was dropping as I was looking for someone to listen to me ranting about the minor change I have made to my very own chat. The chat is still very crappy, but now a log of all that is posted is kept in my database. Nope, for a user there is no change, but this means that in that very one cornercase in which my chat would actually be a good solution to a problem in communications, I can actualy use it without losing the conversation. As of yet, there is no script yet that exports the chat log from the sabase to a text file, but hey, I have got full database access, so for me it does not matter.

A quick mention

2008-08-01T21:37:00.006+02:00

Hi all,

I am currently doing all kinds of stuff with my notebook, to get it set up as I want it to be. As always, this brings its own set of adventures, but I'll probably tell you all about it later (when I am finished for instance).
What I do want to touch on, though, is a website I came across, which was just what I was looking for. I am talking about WobZip, at www.WobZip.org. The website will let you upload a compressed file (7z, zip, tar, rar, iso, deb, cab and a bunch more), and will then decompress the file for you, leaving with a screen where you can download the individual files. On top of that (which is why I like the service so much) you can download the complete contents recompressed as a zip file.
So that was just the ting I wanted mention. If you are interested in the adventures I had (and am having) with my notebook, just hang on a little longer and I will start telling about all of it. I guess there are some stories where people will say "that's not possible!", but all of it is - I have actually been able to recover without losing a single file from a position that sounded truly hopeless and many people would have given up on immedietly. The credit goes to my good software, though, not to me.

Some of these days...

2008-07-28T11:32:00.004+02:00

You all know them, you all have them: some of these days you just do not get anywhere. You do what you can all day, but you simply do not succeed at ending anywhere but where you started. This morning was taken from such a day.
There was one slight twist to the story, though, me not getting anywhere was a literal thing. I overslept and arrived at work one hour late. They don't make a fuss out of this at all, though they would like to know you are having some problem so they want you to call them. This was not the problem, as did call five times, but the phone was not answered each of those times.
The problem was that the whole system was down and no calling could be done. This was the reason that they were giving a training to everybody, but I had already missed half of it, so there was no point in joining them. This just meant there was nothing for me to do, so I went home again - having spent an hour and twenty minutes taking bus rides and ending up right where I started.

However, I will not let this complete day turn into one of those days - a single morning is more than enough.

Laptop

2008-07-28T00:07:00.004+02:00

I have bought a laptop yesterday. I had received some money for it from my parents, some from both of my grandmothers, and I had some money left to spend from my birthday. Still I had to pay some myself, but in the end I ended up buying a laptop for 600 euros.

I bought a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Pi 2550 (I am too lazy to add a link right now, so google it yourself if you want to know). It has a core 2 duo at 2 times 1,66 GHz, 3 GB RAM, a ATI HD 2400 graphics card and a hard disk capacity of 250 GB. All in all, not too bad for that price. (more details: batterylife of 2.5 hours, weighs 3 kg, built-in 1.3 Megapixel webcam).
What I was aiming for was a laptop that I can use next year as I am starting my study at university, but I would want to be able to run some games on it. That said, gaming is most definately my highest priority.
Still, you can have no computer that has reasonable specs without having tried out Crysis on it (shame I haven't even tried it on this one yet... then again, the only reasonable spec on this computer is the graphics card), so I downloaded the crysis demo today and tried it out. It ran just fine at low settings, at higher settings it became quite jaggy. Still, that's a result I can be quite satisfied with. The thing that grabbed my attention most was the very nice physics engine that is featured in the game (unlike the GTA4 engine it does not focus on things that only bother you and are still not too realistic (falling through the front window of your car), but on things that are cool and that may matter, such as trees that break realistically right at the point you are shooting at - possibly breaking a second, third or even fourth time if you keep shooting in different places). What annoyed me was the touch pad - don't get me wrong, though, I like this one more than most other touch pads I have ever used, it's just that touch pads and gaming don't mix very well. I should buy a mouse sometime, but I was planning to do so anyway.

Anyway, I have a nice notebook computer, and I like it - that's basically all that I am telling.

Wanna have some cheap energy?

2008-07-10T21:54:00.003+02:00

Hi all (I still wonder if that is many more than half a hand of people :P, but even that is so, it does not matter, actually).

As of this evening I have a job. I know, that is a strange thing to say - but if you keep in mind that I am only nineteen and still being provided money by the state and my parents, I do not necessarily have to just yet. Instead this job is mainly in order to buy some luxury goods such as a new computer screen (I am currently using an ancient fat one, which can't handle over 1024x768 if 75 Hz is a prerequisite (and it is, as I can actually see anything lower flicker)).
Anyway, a few weeks ago I received my vwo diploma (which would translate to something like "preparative scientific education" and opens up the possibility of going to a university) and since I have had very little to do. Or more honestly, I have had very little I had to do - there are stills tons things for me to do, there's no worrying about that. Anyway, I decided I wanted to earn some money for such kinds of things. I do not have to work for a laptop though (unless I want a really expensive one), as I got money for that from my parents. Together with some money from my grandma and some money I got from various persons at my birthday (which was in april) I have a reasonable amount of money to spend.
What I'm gonna do? I am working in an outbound callcenter (where outbound is calling people and inbound is being called) and the first project I am on is concerning an energy company called RWE (German company). My job is to convince people they should buy a three-year contract in which the price for gas and electricity is defined for the three years. It appears an easy project to start off with (and probably is), but that does not make it easy. I'll just see how it goes...

Aw men.. I have so much catching up to do... I have stories to tell about INT01 of my TemplatingEngine, I have something to say something about mega-foto.org, I have to do some write up on a game called Cosmos, I guess I'll have to write something about INT02 and I am bound to have missed a dozen other things in that list. Maybe I'll write another post today... who knows.

Will isn't always enough

2008-07-07T22:48:00.003+02:00

But this time it is. (I hope...)

Yes, for those who have noticed, I am actually referring to the title of the post two down from here. I saw a trend in my declining posts, and told I would put effort into changing that. It appears I failed, as my posting rate only went down, to hit zero for quite a while.

I'll explain how this all came to be:

I have been very busy with my school exams and the work preceding them.
I have been without internet for a while.
I have moved twice (the period without internet started before the first time, and lasted slightly past the second time).
I have been doing different things in the few weeks I have had since, mostly just forgetting about this little corner of the web.

As of today I am legally using an internet connection again (been using an unprotected wireless network until now) and this time I have the very same message as that other post, I am going to post more.

Anyway, I have some spicy stories to be told (finished very, very first version of templatingSystem and have had a website shut down on the account of spreading a virus amongst many other things) and I do not intend to keep them from you.

/me signs off

Our Law

2008-04-01T23:31:00.005+02:00

What is the top result from google suggest when you type in "Our law"?

That's right, "our lawyer made us change the name of this song so we couldn't get sued lyrics". Please note here that I am assuming you're an avid Fall Out Boy listener. For those who could not even guess such a trivial fact - it's actually the name of a song. The name of a song I was listening, to be precise. I wondered what the exact lyrics were and started typing it in my FireFox Google search bar.
This made me type in more of their songs names. Never did it take more 9 letters for the top suggestion to be the song - save "XO". And yes, I tried all titles in the album I was listening. I must say this is a strange but truly amazing achievement. With their interesting titles and their hard to understand lead singer (who does not need to be understood to be singing good) they have really tickled the average googler.
Just a quick moment of amazement I thought I would share. I would take my time and write some more, but I have an ICT assignment to finish.

Take care!

I'm seeing a trend - but I am willing to break it

2008-03-21T23:27:00.007+01:00

Just go and have a look at when I posted my last few posts, you'll probably get to see the same trend as I am seeing. I am willing to change the trend, but I am not 100% sure that will mean I will. We'll just see and will try to improve upon my posting, making it either irregular again (not ever longer between two posts, but truly irregular again) or by making it truly regular again (not declining, but stable).
So, now, onto everything I have to tell... please bear in mind that it is a total random grab bag with all kinds of completely unrelated matters.

First off the bat I will continue on the issue I started about last post. My nose has had a successful cut-and-paste operation. I had very little pain, in the hospital they even let me skip some of the pain killers - if ain't broken, don't fix it, but not being able to do much at all was a pain all by itself. In the three days I was in the hospital and the week after that in which I was at my parents' I did not a single book from the big pile I had assembled - I just didn't feel like reading too much. I did play through a large part of my brother's Pokemon Crystal (what a brilliance had pokemon as a game - sad it had to become such a merchandise centered brand at the hands of nintendo).
When I got back home my room was still the same mess it had been when I had left it. I decided I wouldn't put my computer (I had taken it with me to my parents) on my desk till I had cleaned up my desk, but as you might be able to guess, I can't do without my computer, so I had to set it up again anyway... on the ground.

Next thing up was me working on my computer's setup. I want to reinstall everything, after having had all hard-disks empty and having reorganized my partitions. In order to do all of this, I wanted to make both my hard-disks bootable, so I wouldn't have to worry about being able to boot into old OSes after installing something aggressive as windows XP (finally no more x64 :D). This led to my system being unbootable for quite some time. However I had/knew (getting my hands on a newer version of the Paragon Bootdisk did go a long way - the cd is one of the best I have) led to me being able to solve everything again, eventually giving me what I wanted, a system that was completely bootable from both disks. I guess I became an authority on the windows bootloader (ntldr, ntdetec.com and boot.ini) purely by experimenting - that's what you can do when your other hard disk can always serve as a "backup booter" for your system. I installed windows xp on, but that is not the OS I am typing this from (nor is it linux or any other altertive) - I am still working from (a copy of) my old windows install, because of my following point...

I dropped most of my other activities, because of the insane amount of work I had to do for school. I had missed a couple of lessons, but most of the work did not stem from that. The problem was that the year is drawing near its end, the exams are coming in sight, and all subjects want to focus on the exams / the last test period before that and thus everything that still had to be done, had to be finished by that week (or a bit later), including a number of things of which you ought to spread the work of over the year. There is still a large number of things I need to finish, but luckily I currently have a long weekend (friday till monday) and I have enough time to do all I should do, relax some and clean up the mess in my room (that only increased during the period I had time for nothing but my school work). At least, I hope I can get all of it done.

My next comment is about the comment I made in my last post. It is by no means final yet - but I do have a new name for the tyemplating system - and it's so obvious... lookingGood will now be called goodLooking instead. With the good in front you have a lot more options for the other word, which is what my aim was.

I think I do have some other stories for you, but I don't feel like typing more here right noe, so they will be for another day.

Cut and paste

2008-02-22T20:37:00.006+01:00

It's been ages since I last posted anything (a month, really). So, anybody is reading this, you'd better get used to my irregular posting or stop reading here.

Monday I'll be cut up in pieces and the pieces will be put together again. By a qualified person, mind you.
Seriously, my nose is going to be set straight so I can get more air. And no more post-nasal drip. I'll not explain that last term, in order to prevent any potential readers, if you wanna know what it means, google it.

So, that's basically all I want to say - no wait, there's another thing. It's about lookingGood, the templating system I am building. I am not satisfied with it's name. I like the looking part, but I want a second part which I really put different verbs in front of, thus creating names for my other web products, ultimately leading to the the "Good suite" (if I would decide to stick with good anyway), I just think Good is to restrictive. So... I am thinking about a new name.

Giving it a name

2008-01-30T10:21:00.001+01:00

I was doing some work on my Templating Engine again, and I wanted a name for a variable that nobody else would ever use. What's the usual way to do that? Right, include the name of your application. Easy enough, right?

The only problem I came across was the fact that I had no real name for the engine. So that's why I had to think of one. I came up with... LookingGood. It may or may not be the final name, it may or may not mean that I use similar names for my similar scripts (though I must say you can do a lot of things with the Good postfix).
Just thought I would drop that by - as I really want to be posting more I can just keep you informed (not caring whether you are interested or not :P) about such things. So, LookingGood is what I am working on right now. And maybe, just maybe all of you will be using LookingGood some day. (Probably not, though - this is just my project for my work, which others may use, but are not advised to.)

Reinventing The Wheel? (To Run Myself Over)

2008-01-28T22:41:00.001+01:00

I have been working on a templating system for quite some time now. It's one of the reasons I have not been posting. Shame on me for that, by the way. Anyway, there are probably people who are reading this and now wonder what a templating system is. Well, it's definition can differ slightly, but in this case it's a system that separates the layout from the programming logic completely.

Take for example the syntax of my templating system... anything normally typed is html and is not touched by the engine at all (okey, it's touched, but left in tact completely). Anything between <: and :> is handled by the templating system, however. Any value between the two script-delimiters (that's what they are called) will be printed to the output. So if the programming logic of a page gives the page access to a 'username' I can write "Hello <:username:>" to have it say hello Jasper to me and fill it with another name.
Besides printing values the scripts can be used to call functions, I planned two functions so far, include("page.html") and nameForCounter(varName), which can execute certain tasks. Include will insert a certain file in that location, and nameForCounter will assign a variable name to the counter of the topmost for or foreach loop (which I will explain more on later), giving you a handle to refer to it in the rest of your template.
The third thing a script can do is define a control structure. Planned of these are if, else, (possibly elseif as well), for, foreach and end ... . These work on script and plain text alike, if (statement) only considers the following content if statement is true, otherwise it will simply ignore it. An if anything that occurs before the next end if or else. Likewise else only considers the content if the last if evaluated to false - and it also ends at end if. for (value1 ++>/--> value2) will repeat the content enclosed by it and end for - starting at value1, increasing (++>) or decreasing (-->) it until value2 is reached. foreach (variableName in array). Array should be one of these variables supplied by the programming logic, but it has to be an array (surprise, surprise) then we will repeat the content (ended by end foreach, you guessed it) for each element the array has, the element always being accessible through variableName.
Multiple actions can be done in one script, in such a case they must be seperated by semicolons (;).
There is another kind of delimiter the engine recognises, <:- and -:>. Anything between those two is regarded as a comment and will be removed from the document. Comments can be inside and outside script tags.

So that's what my engine is supposed to do - what does it have to do with reinventing the wheel?
(warning: technical terms - unexplained - ahead)

Now, while my syntax is different, there are other templating systems around already. None of them what I wanted though, simply take your template at real time and turn it in the website you want the users to see. I discovered this is for a reason, when making my own system. Because this costs way too much time and thus is very processor intensive. So what's the alternative? I looked into the source of the most notable templating engines, Smarty (it's open source as well, really). It simply compiles the userfriendly template to a (normally) unseen php script, which runs a lot faster, the first time a page is requested since it has been modified. I decided I would have to use a similar system to come closest to my wishes. Also I learned the trick of looking at the last time modified attribute of a file to see if it needs to be recompiled. However, when looking through Smarty's source code, it made me wonder what this new choices leave as reasons to actually make my own templating system.

It took me a while to figure out if I wanted to continue development of my engine, but I decided I would. Firstly, this script is mine, so other people may use it, but I can tweak it to my needs and make it the way I want to behave. Secondly, the syntax of my system is "better" (read as: I like it more). Thirdly, I will provide some functionality that Smarty does not provide. For now, this functionality would be: reading templates from a database and writing compiled files to a database. So yes, I will make my own system, and yes I have my reasons for it. Just drop me a line if you would be interested in using my system as well.

Now, for anyone wondering about the title, try googling that phrase. Say you would not find anything (which I cannot believe, but anyway) try finding the unrelated label for this post and look in that area.

XmlHttpRequest script 2.0

2007-12-15T12:58:00.001+01:00

Quite a while ago, I told you about this script that I had written, which would make xmlHttpRequests for me. Now I have made a version 2.0, I ramp up all the way to the next major version umber. Why? Because there are considerable changes, including ones in syntax.
I changed the name of my function, added an argument (called args for irony's sake). Besides that the script now supports POST calls besides the regular GET calls. Also, it no longer ought to make any kind of complain when new requests are made before the first one is finished.
The script is available from here, but there are some things I really want to say. For my bandwidth (even though it won't matter much) and your security, do not include the script right from my website. Instead, download it, and put it with your website on a host and then include it using a script tag. And to make sure I won't mistake you for a "includer" do not link directly to the file, link to this post instead.
If you stick to these few rules you can use my script. A guide is to be found within the file (all commented out of course) - using the script shouldn't be too hard. Good luck with your web designing.

Changelog

changed the name of main function from send to request
added an argument to request in preparation for POST support
changed GET cases to work with new args argument
added POST support
made XMLHttpRequest variable local - solving problems with multiple calls after eachother
renamed the XMLHttpRequest variable from submitting to XHRequest
removed time-out as changes should have taken away any reason for it
deleted highPrioritySend function, as it would do nothing now
removed global variables busy and time_out that were related to time outs
made receive an inline, unnamed function inside request - allowing easier variable names
removed global variable next_function, as this allowed todo to be used directly (woot, no global variables anymore)

POST in xmlHttpRquests

2007-12-12T12:43:00.003+01:00

Just a quick hello and dropping by a link. It's what helped me getting POST working in xmlHttpRequest.
The point is that yo uactually need to set some headers, to go along with that request. No long story about it for now, just a link: http://www.openjs.com/articles/ajax_xmlhttp_using_post.php

Hope it helps some of you out.

The dilemma of a blog

2007-12-12T00:24:00.002+01:00

Once again I have not posted in a while. And that's while so much happened.

That's exactly my problem. When I have much to do, I have much to tell, but very little time to tell it. When I don't have much to do, I have enough time, but not so much to tell.

I just stopped by to share that revelation, and to so hi to you all of course.

Hi!

UGtech.net

2007-11-24T12:18:00.002+01:00

Ages ago I was looking for a host. There were two criteria the host needed to meet. I wanted a free host, that allowed me to hotlink. Hotlinking is linking to non-viewable files. This means you can take images from this host and put on some other site of your's. Or you can put your downloads on this host that allowed hotlinking and link to them from another site.
That last thing was what I wanted to do. I had put my website on a really - and I really mean really - crappy host and wanted to have a place to put my downloads. I couldn't put them on the crappy host, because it didn't allow .exe files, or any archives. It took me a while, but I found something in the end, ugtech.net.
It had PHP and mySQL support and gave me a reasonable amount of space and bandwidth (100mB - 1000mB/month). Allowing hotlinking basically also meant there were no ads on your website. This is because any host that forces ads on your websites, doesn't get any hits if you are only hotlinking, thus only hosts without ads on your site (and only very few of those) allowed hotlinking. Besides all that UGtech provided cPanel. All of this couldn't even compare to any other free host.
I became active on the ultrageek-tech forum. And when they needed a moderator I applied. Being a very active member, I was the one chosen for the job. At that moment I was the only non-owner with rights on the site :D. Because the service was so amazing they attracted an amazing amount of "customers". And the 'ebay-offer' the owners intended to use to raise money, didn't work as good as they had hoped. Due to these two things they discontinued providing free hosting. They provided $1/month hosting instead. Moderators and administrators on the forum got to keep their hosting.

Later I moved my site to this host. And also started using it for about anything. A game I made for school was put on there, as they simply provided the best hosting I could get for free. Over the years, though, the forum died out and it started to get really hard to get support, even for those who paid. And they once even did not have a domain name for a couple of days. The same thing that happened now, happened back then, they didn't renew their domain and some dummy page was put up by the provider.
This time it happened just when I and I admin on the forum where discussing whether we could put some new life into the service, possibly even offering free hosting again. And this time it wasn't fixed within a few days. I checked the domain every day for a couple of days, but it didn't help. So I went looking for a new host, and when I had put my website up on the new site and I was browsing to it, my browser showed me my ugtech.net website URL, so I decided to have a look what happened if I entered it. Without expecting anything from it, I entered the URL and ended up on my own website. Then I also tried the ugtech.net front page, which also turned out to work.
The cPanel is currently broken, so the service isn't back to where it was before they lost their domain. And even back then the forum was dead and it was hard to contact about anybody. The start is there, though, and you should not be surprised when I post that ugtech.net is providing free hosting again.

Friday - the day of inspiration

2007-11-24T01:18:00.002+01:00

It's friday night. The moment of the week I drink the most alcohol, and also the moment of the week I am pretty creative. Just like I wrote the post two before this one on a Friday night.
Anyway, that's also the moment I think of my blog. Don't know why I think of my blog on Fridays, but I do.
I do have quite a lot of stories to tell: ugtech.net is back after having been gone for a while, I signed up with a new host, Marek is releasing his DVD, I am busy with a PHP project, I found some new music to listen to and there was a student strike today. I really should write more on my blog - as I just said, I have way more than enough material to write about. So I will try to tell you about it in the near future, even though I don't feel like telling all about it right now.
For now, just consider the following surge of creativity:

Editor's note: Please note that I wrote this when it was very late and I had had quite a couple of beers. Even though I was quite aware of what I did, the following piece was influenced by both factors. Though the general idea of these feelings - I'll leave it up to you what the idea is - are really true, but the specific subject I wrote about is bothering me a lot less in daily life than this piece may make it seem. Alcohol and tiredness - and not having anything else on my mind - (almost) inevitably lead to me thinking about it, though.

Messed up.
It's still messed up.
Even when she's not there.
Even when she is far away from here.
I still can't stop thinking of her.
Perfect - good = still good.
So still I should try.
Having a good life.
Without her.

The best.
Make the best.
Get all of it you can.
I should not be stuck in my mind.
Move on and find some other girl, I should.
Even if you're still up there.
You're not leaving.
Won't forget.

Drowning.
Drowning in work.
I drown myself in projects.
Just so I don't have to face the reality.
A bit of PHP here, some C++ there.
All as a goal of life.
It's my way.
Survive.

Dynamic input for Marek's GameEngine

2007-11-04T21:44:00.001+01:00

I have been working on a GameEngine fro quite some time now, loosely following tutorials from marek-knows.com. I made a lot of changes making my GameEngine different from Marek's, but now I have made the first "really different" part. I had talked with Marek about his way he handles input, which was obviously not done too well (all inline code), so he said, why don't you go ahead and try to do it as you want - if nothing else it will be a good programming experience.
So I did. (okey, I was planning to do so from the beginning) And after a while he also asked if I could make a video about what I changed. And that I also did do. For now I have had enough of the GameEngine, but anyway - look marek's forum for my video (it's hosted on google video, but the forum has all comments and such are on the forum). Also you can download my current version of the GameEngine.

Words reflecting what I feel

2007-10-27T01:18:00.001+02:00

Today's post and the last post are both more of a vaguer type, that not necessarily every reader (if any) understands. When I started my blog, I was thinking of both this type and the one I have been using before. I wanted to give them different colors to separate them, but I never got about doing that. Maybe I will some time later, but until that moment you will have to do with me telling what kind it is.
(by the way I don't plan on using only this type from now on, I will be using whatever type suits the moment)

Three times in fifteen minutes,
but still there is this cloud.
This cloud that forbids,
this clouds that blocks.
This cloud, however cannot block my feelings,
which I sometimes hope it would.
It's good not to be lost,
to still have your feelings.
It's better, though, to move on
and I wish I could.

"Mono/Dia"logue

2007-10-23T21:32:00.002+02:00

Just some random thought of mine:

"I told myself to stop, but I'm not listening"
"Why do I not stop, if I tell myself to do so?"
"I don't know, ask me, I should know"
"Do I know where I am?"
"I'm here"
"So... why were you not listening to yourself when you were told to stop?"
"I guess it was just really hard to stop, the chips were way too tasty"
"Please go say sorry to myself, I really need to make this up with me"
"Okey, I will. By the way, I will stop right now as well"
"That's good of me. So did I stop?"
"Yeah, I did. Did I also tell myself to say sorry to me? I spontaneously did"
"I did, good of me that I did listen this time and that I went to say sorry at once"
"True, true, but do I know why I did not listen?"
"The chips were too tasty"

(hint: it's really three conversation between three people (B - C, C - A, C- B) that are all me. If you want to decipher it, go ahead. If you don't, just don't even try.)

Jotihunt

2007-10-20T11:58:00.003+02:00

I am currently at the scouts. It's that one weekend in the year we have internet at scouting. Okey, it's supposed to stay for the rest of the year this time, but we have got two lines right now and we have about 20 computers running at the moment. For those who have ever been with the scouts, you have probably heard of the joti. For those who haven't, it's the jamboree on the internet (and jota, jamboree on the air, is on the same day). The joti/jota is an international day on which a lot of scouts use the internet or radios to communicate, as if all together.
Here in Bennekom the joti basically means playing the jotihunt, an amazing game that is one of the best moments of the year for many (amongst which I am as well). Running about 20 computers we are doing a game where you get hints on the internet, with which you have to five different groups as many times as possible (once each hour max). In the mean time you get random assignments to do.
Anyway, it's going better than ever before and we are having spare time (I am typing this :P). We will just have to wait for the next hint, but there is none yet. We have spotted two groups and did all the extra assignments were done. If I have more time left I might keep you readers (which probably still are none) updated.

Lacking removal and rotating triangles

2007-10-10T16:10:00.002+02:00

Sorry I have not posted for a week or so... while I said I would.

I got my internet fixed, which meant I had things to do there, communities to visit again.
Last Sunday I went to the Lorwyn (Magic: The Gathering) prerelease. It's an amazingly good set. I really just do not understand how Wizards can say "We want the quality raised" and then not just produce a single good set, but keep following one good set up with another. But I am glad they are pulling it off. I had a strange pool (very little removal and a high number of bombs) and I focused on winning, not on winning before the opponent did. The results reflected that deck - I won the first two against not-so-strong opponents and utterly failed against in my other three matches, which were against some of the stronger players (number 1, 2 and three actually :P). I ended up seventh of fourteen. I hope I will do better saturday in the release tournament :D.

Besides that I have been working on my GameEngine project, using the tutorials from Marek-Knows.com. I have set up openGL now and I have it rotate a triangle on the screen. And all of this I did cross-platform (unlike Marek). I am really putting my own stamp on my version of the engine. Now I just have to make sure it can actually render something useful.

That was basically all I wanted to tell you right now. Stay tuned and I might post again soon :P.

Writing this from my (new) home

2007-10-03T20:34:00.002+02:00

New is a relative word, but I am not at my parent's house and I am writing this... (for the record, I am not at school or any other place I don't live either and I am not using the supervisors' internet connection)... I have my own internet connection.
Ah well... own isn't really true, I am using someone else's, but with my own computer all the same. So, now the only thing I have to do is make sure I do not get in the way of the network's owner (if I don't get in his way, he won't notice and he has no reason to mind me being here).

I am still in a temporary setup (my pc is on my desk, while my monitor, mouse and keyboard are on the floor), but I will just have to find out how to set it up in such a manner that it's convenient AND I do have some connectivity. Anyway, see you all later as I am now going to find a place for everything. My next post will include all the trouble I went through to get it like it is now ;)

Still no good news (but some semi-good news now)

2007-09-26T12:46:00.002+02:00

Still no good news is the title I came up with for this post. Combining that title with the absence of many posts in the past period makes all of this obvious enough. I still do not have an internet connection. The semi-good news is that I have been given the green light to set up an internet connection and that i might be able to use someone else's wireless network. I still do have to arrange (and pay) everything myself.
SO... with some luck I might have an internet connection soon. So what have I been up to these days? I have been getting to know the people in the house I live in now, I have been busy working on a GamEngine, a 3d engine in c++ using openGL. I am using tutorials from Marek-knows.com, but I am modeling the source to my own likes, using a lot of different variable names, adding a class, splitting a certain class into two (as it really was two classes in one in my opinion) and (which I haven't done too much about really) making it cross-platform. I have the uplink source code (yes, I actually have the official dev cd) to guide me through it, as that's a brilliant openGL using c++ application that is cross-platform. Even though the game is 2d it does really help me, and I needed that help.
The lack of internet increased my need for a good portable solution, so I have set up my USB drive to be a powerful platform. I had some applications on it already, but now I saw a friend had the Portable Apps menu (portableapps.com) and I liked it a lot. I installed it and made sure I had all the programs I wanted on it.
I salute to everyone, hoping that I will soon have internet again, so have a good time, and I will keep you (if there is any you, I am not so sure of that) updated if there are any major changes in my situation.

I survived!

2007-09-13T08:57:00.002+02:00

So, here I am again. I just thought I'd let you guys know that I have moved without any (too big) problems, I'm living on my own now. Okey, not completely on my own, but it comes close enough. I would wish I was writing this at my new home (not the least for the fact I would have meant I had internet), but I'm not. I am at school right now, using the time that I needed to have in reserve for the cycling to it, as I did not know how long this was going to take.
So... I'm without any internet, so currently it will be harder for me to keep posting. However, I have heard that coming Monday there will be a talk about internet in the house. I will just have to wait and see.
My time's nearly up, so I'm drawing this post to a close. I will be using the internet connection at school a lot as long as I don't have an internet connection at home, I guess. When I get home again, I will have to do quite some unpacking, and will get to know the other people that live in the house, so I'm far from out of things to do. And in the mean time live just goes on.

I'm sorry, I truly am

2007-09-11T09:51:00.001+02:00

I promised to write more, but so far I didn't.
I'm sorry, I'm truly sorry. And I can not give any promises about the future with that.

If you are interested, I will tell how this came to be. Okey, I will also tell it if you are not interested, but in that case you may just decide not to read the part ;P.
Tomorrow I will be leaving my parental house, and will move to 'roomtraining'. In the beginning you live together with other people in the house (cook together, share a living room), but in the end you will be living on your own in the same house as a number of other people. which makes this all more fun, is that I only know since last Wednesday. So all of that is why I've been busy (as well as that school started and everything).
And now why I won't quite yet promise anything about the future, because I do not know yet if I'll have an internet connection over there, or how good it will be. So.. let's just hope I'll get a good connection.

Right now i am at school, one place I am relatively sure about my time and internet connection. I have got three free hours today (had one last hour and the other two are the coming hours) and currently I am in my ICT lesson, where we are making a start with OOP, while I know OOP better than our teacher (so the only useful things I am doing is learning a bit of the java syntax for OOP (just some small details) and helping some other people, so I decided to finish my post.

Home Again (this time for real)

2007-08-31T11:04:00.002+02:00

So I am back from my holiday with my parents, I had a fun time in Freudenstad. For those who want to be picky, yes I have been home for almost two weeks now. The first of the two weeks doesn't count, for I was home in the literal sense, but practically I wasn't.

Just about every day I left home at 8.25 and went to Kinderdorp (Children's village). When it was time for dinner I made sure I was home, and about half of the days I left after dinner back to Kinderdorp. From 9 am to 4 pm I was busy doing all kinds of things in the café of Kinderdorp. When the children left at four the adults were left and a lot of talking and drinking was done.
The second week (the one we're at the end of right now) I needed to get back my strength :P. Well
I just sat behind my computer a lot and took life easy for a week. I finished my first try on the single player campaign of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (amazing game!). The game is a "first person action rpg". Basically shooter and rpg, but then in a medieval/magical setting. Swordfights were your sword and your opponent's are against each other, the game has really good gameplay. Also the game doesn't use the standard classes-system, but instead let's you spend points as you wish. That way I had a guy that used the strong bits of magic in the early game, but later in the game I turned into a more fighter-like style. When I was finished I didn't have enough yet :P and I created a pure fighter (with a healing spell xD) at the hard difficulty, but that one I have finished as well now. Next will be a wizard at insane, but that's not right now...

So... today I am getting my school books and Monday I will get my lesson table - life is starting to spin at full speed once again. I'll see if I can post a bit more often now, as I do like posting here.

Home Again

2007-08-02T16:14:00.006+02:00

So I am home again (I never told you I was gone, shame on me!). I had a wonderful ten days in Berlin with the scouts. Only a very small part of the group went (partly due to the world Jamboree), but this may even have had a positive influence on the atmosphere...
Anyway, I home now, but nor for long - I am leaving again tomorrow (I arrived two days ago so I have two full days here and two more "bits of a day".
Anyway, I am exploring the possibilities of the new video card I bought just before holiday. And for the coming holiday I armed myself with Harry Potter 7 (Deathly Hallows) and Soul of the Fire (Sword of Truth series part 5 (out of... a lot :P)).
Anyway, I am refixing my iPod, after having taken it apart before leaving to camp. Of course I also intended to take it with me to there - but I thought I had lost a button. Today I found that I just had the button so I can fix okey this time (the right channel still won't work though...). I will need a set of ear buds before I can listen, however, so I will go and fix that right now.

My two scripts

2007-07-07T18:48:00.002+02:00

So, I did not post anything anything for quite a while.
Just to let you all know I fixed the script - it turned out that IE 7 actually uses xmlHttpRequest object, like all other browsers do and I had a variable set inside the xmlHttpRequest object-specific bit, while it should have been in the general bit. Moreover this was a function variable, which made it hard to discover the mistake.
The finished script, which is just a general script to make using the xmlHttpRequest, can be found here. Instructions are found inside the document, this does dramatically increase the size of the document, but if necessary you can cut it out - just the instructions not the notices and such, under the header NOTICE you will find directions what you can and what you can not cut out.
If the need arises to update the script, (there might still be a firefox-bug and there is no support for SEND requests yet) I will update the script at that location and post here that I made the changes. Though it might seem convenient to have your script tag point to it directly, PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS. Download the file and upload it again on your website, this leaves me without bandwidth stains and leaves you with less vulnerabilities (to attacks of mine, hehe).

I made yet another script - a batch script this time. It's a really, really simple script - so if you want to be sure it is nothing malicious, open it with wordpad. If you know something about DOS-commands you will see that it's really innocent (okey, it forces a delete, but that's the whole point of the script).
Okey, I lied, you do not need the file unless you are playing on a private server, private servers change and so your cache might be in the way (if your server crew has never said anything about emptying your cache, this file might not be for you).
Put this file in your WoW folder and run it instead of WoW.exe (or Launcher.exe). This makes sure that your cache is emptied before you start WoW, every time you start WoW. (Of course you might want to change your shortcut to this file and give it back it's icon by clicking on change icon and selecting WoW.exe there).

I hope either of these two scripts can help you, and if not, too bad :P

PS. if you want to link to one (or both) of these files, please link to this post, so I do not falsely identify you as a leecher.

From an online game to a virtual machine

2007-06-16T22:09:00.001+02:00

So I decided to get my gears back into a project that had been abandoned for almost a year now. An online game that I started as a school project, but I didn't really finish it at the time. I had been thinking of taking it up again a long time, but did not do so until now.
The first thing I was going to do was rewrite the protocol, I needed to make it more foolproof. For making it I had simply made a chat, just to design the way the client communicates with the server. I pulled this chat out of the closet and started working on it again.
I wanted smooth transitions back in the day, so I opted for using the xmlHttpRequest method. Big mistake. It's a nice method and gives nice results (and I love knowing quite a bit about it now), but it has been taking up quite a bit of time. Okey, maybe it was not such a big mistake, but it was probably not the right choice for a school project you are supposed to spend 10 hours on (I was intending to spend more on it anyway - when hobbies and school meet there is something to be gained :P).
Anyway, I was refining my protocols, so I was dabbling with the xmHttpRequest again. Cross-browser compatibility is the worst thing with it. But in the process I found out that IE 7 actually uses the syntax every other browser uses, unlike other versions of internet explorer. One big step forward, as my new code (this time I made better use of functions and put some 'libraries' in external files and made the code so that if any file does not reach it's destination the worst thing that can happen is text that is typed not appearing on the screen) worked with IE 7 immediately after designing it for Firefox. I had left in a bit that was different for IE, but as it turned out that was only needed for IE 6 and below. Unfortunately many people still use IE 6 and thus I want my site to be IE 6-compatible. So I went and started to adjust it. My first problem was a simple mislocation of a statement (inside the non-IE bit rather than just done no matter the browser). But I wasn't out of problems yet, there was some other problem as well, which I haven't fixed yet. I needed IE 6 to see what the problem was, but I only ran IE 7, and you can not have both at the same time.
I tried MultipleIEs an application that does let you run multiples, but I wasn't able to clear the cache there and you can not ctrl-f5 a js-file (yes in FF you can, but not in IE). The big plus was that I had already installed some IE-javascript debugger (some other m$ product that dual-functioned? The debugger I tried to install last year when working on this project?). Anyway I decided to go for the one other option, making a virtual pc and running IE 6 on that (there are special images for this).
So I looked up Microsoft Virtual PC (I knew how to use it, I had dabbled with a earlier trial version before) and you knwo what, it was F-R-E-E. Wow, that's the second (or even third) positive thing about Microsoft in this post.
To be honest I already knew it was free, as it was told on each of the pages that told me about this workaround for running more than one version of IE... but that's where I am now, downloaded the stuff and and installed it. Now I have to get the IE dev toolbar (a friend told me about this when trying to help me with this project) to my virtual pc as well as the mysterious debugger. Let's hope it works out.

Made myself a blog

2007-05-17T14:43:00.002+02:00

Hello all,
(okey, that's currently equal to none)

I finally decided to start my blog. For now it's hosted at blogger.com, I don't whether I will keep it that way or not.
Anyway, I started thinking about starting a weblog when I found what one really is. It is the evolution of the diary. Now instead of keeping our secrets, it tells them to whoever wants to read them, but the main premise, being able to tell your story, is still there.
That's also why I don't really mind not having a public. If nobody reads this... so be it.