Personal Website Online!

After six months of work, I have finally completed my new personal site.

Features:
- Fairly comprehensive About Me and My Interests sections.
- A much expanded, much improved My Creations section (compared to my old personal site).
- A fairly active forum.
- Even a blog! Heh.

Enjoy! =)

Community Service for the Donkey

I was just informed that a previous post of mine was used to save the Little Fighter 2 community forum. That's pretty cool =).

Reflections

[00:24] Alex: don't tell me you're up at this hour?
[00:24] Bob: go to sleep

Well, my parents are at a wedding (my second cousin, who, for some reason, forgot to invite me), and I assume that it's common courtesy to stay up until they get back (am I right? :P). So, seeing how it's the new year, let me take this time to reflect on the year 2006.

Uh-oh. I just realized I can't remember back that far. Curse my complete lack of any long-term memory!

Well, let me try something a bit easier: can I look back on winter break? After all, school starts again this Monday.

Let's see, this winter break I managed to:

• - Find a long-lost (as in, never before heard of) relative (most likely).
  
• - Do most of my homework before the last day. (Guys, I'm serious!)
  
• - Wade through A Tale of Two Cities and work on finishing up my Strugatsky collection.
  
• - See Everything is Illuminated, My Cousin Vinny, Glengarry Glen Ross, and A Prairie Home Companion, and enjoy all of them except the last one (no matter how charming the subject matter, the lack of any coherent plotline is never a good sign)
  
• - Discover some new music, none of it any good. Well, maybe that's a bit harsh, some of it was OK, maybe even a few gems. OK, lemme rephrase that: "Discover some new music." Better =)
  
• - (Re)discover Chip's Challenge and Cosmic Encounter Online, and proceed to get addicted to both of them, primarily the second (though the first has its merits too, in a retro sort of war).
  
• - Try to do a bit of math studying, and fail miserably (but I'm not giving up! ... yet)
  
• - Get all the guitar accessories I needed, and begin learning guitar in my free time.
  
• - Promise to write a blog post every day, and then proceed to write 3 or 4 total.
  
• - Fail to even start working on the personal website that I hoped to finish by the end of winter break.
  
• - Eat a lot of muffins (and not sprain my elbow doing so, if anyone's wondering *cough*bob*cough*)
  

Well, that's about it, the long and short of it. Worth using up most of my winter break on the above items? Dunno.

Where have I been?

I realize that I haven't posted for two weeks, but I have an excuse - I have had a ton of homework and stuff for all my classes, especially Euro. Man, when they said 90 minutes every day for Euro, they weren't kidding. So, I suppose I should enlighten my blog readers to just what I've been up to lately.

I haven't tried any more translations, though I have read some more Strugatsky works. Monday Starts on Saturday is particulary recommended ... if you can find it. For some reason or another, English Strugatsky translations are rare and expensive, usually costing somewhere in the twenties range (USD), if they're available at all.

I am doing rather well in school, though I may not be doing so well in Euro. Nevertheless, Euro is undoubtedly my favorite class. I just took the PSAT today, and think that I did very well. Also, I'm the Vice President of my school's Chess Club, with meetings at lunch twice a week. I'm in charge of maintaining our school ranking system, for which I use the ELO Calculator that I conveniently made with Mgccl this summer. I'm currently ranked number one, but I swear, no data tampering involved ^_^

For some strange reason, I suddenly have this fascination with old stuff, from antique books to vinyl records. Since my family rarely eBays [yes, it's a verb!], I guess I'll have to take my chances at local garage sales - if I have time that is.

I still haven't gotten a guitar, but in the meantime I got a new hobby - digital photography - to help fill the void. Photography is fun =)

Realizing how old and pointless my old personal site is, I've started developing a new one, using a mixture of PHP and HTML. Since, as I mentioned before, I don't really have a lot of free time right now, I can expect this project to take me a month or so, if I don't give up halfway that is. You can view a very early test here.

Finally, I'd like to mention a very interesting online game that I found: Cosmic Encounter. Oddly enough, this game is based on a boardgame that one of my friends has. Who'd've guessed that a board game designer would also happen to be a web programmer? Anyways, be sure to try it out - it's incredibly fun and addictive in its own way.

Whew. That was one long and rambling post, two weeks in a nutshell. I must have used just about every one of my labels for this. ^_^

Fun With Javascript

Here's a fun little script my dad found:

javascript:X=[R=(s=(m=Math).sin)(0),.1,.25,1.6,300,300];c=m.cos;Y=[0,.05
,.24,.24,200,200];D=document.images;setInterval(function(){for(i=0;i<D.leng
th;i++){S=D[i].style;S.position=\'absolute\';S.left=s(R*X[1]+i*X[2]+X[3])*X[4]
+X[5];S.top=c(R*Y[1]+i*Y[2]+Y[3])*Y[4]+Y[5]}R++},5);void(0)

Simply paste the code into your browser's address bar while you are viewing any web page that has images, and Voila! All the images start flying around the screen. Neat.

All that from a four-line script. Says something about the power of Java, doesn't it?

Note: The above script was found on the OT-Windows newsgroup and made blog-friendly using Quick Escape. Gotta give credit where credit is due...

A return of the Donkey? Who knows?

Now that school has started and the summer is finally over, I have begun thinking about what to do with my newest website, www.PodDonkey.com, which, as you may already know, was effectively shut down over the course of the summer.

Here's what I know:

- I recieve two types of traffic: iPod traffic and Forum traffic.
- The iPod traffic is that that actually goes to the iPod pages of the site. There's not a lot of iPod traffic.
- The Forum traffic goes to the Poddonkey Forum, rather than the rest of the site. This is primarily made up of my friends and aquaintances.
- Over the summer, the iPod traffic stayed about the same, but the much larger Forum traffic disappeared entirely. This shows that I have no control over iPod traffic, but much control over Forum traffic.
- Everyone's favorite parts of the forum are (or, were), in order, 1) the game of Mafia, 2) the General Discussion and Music Discussion boards, and 3) the points and shops. I'm guessing a bit on this one.

So, to get my friends, and other people from my school, to go back on, some things I can do are:

1. Promise to start a new game of Mafia within a week. I have a really fun game planned.
2. Reward new members, with, perhaps, points, or point drawings, or both.
3. Reward longtime members as well.
4. Start a string of interesting discussions in all forums.
5. Try to get most of my Moderator team back.

These are OK options, but can PodDonkey manage to bounce back? I asked some PodDonkey members:

"Do you think i should try to get PodDonkey back up?"

I got five responses (names are confidential):

- "I don't have much time to go on."
- "Maybe, but people are kinda busy right now. Wait till October."
- "Hell yeah!"
- "Dunno how it'll work, but you should try."
- "Maybe, why not?"

So I guess it could go both ways. If I have time this weekend, I'll see what I can do. =)

Click Click! - version 0.2

Click Here to play Click Click!

My focus for this version was smoother movement, which I achieved using a bit of math, as shown in the diagram below:




I also decided to play around with it, and made a few cheats (Ctrl, Shift, Z, Num Pad + and -). ^_^

Next on my agenda: a title screen!

Unveiling ... the 8^8 ELO Calculator!

>>> 8^8 ELO Calculator <<<

This is the first result of a collaboration between Mgccl and myself, to make an LF2 ladder system. What is it? It is an extension of the ELO ranking system (used primarily in chess) to allow for up to eight teams, of up to eight players each. Simply type in each player's ranking, and the team's result (see Scoring, below), and click SUBMIT. Each player's new ELO will be revealed.

Instructions

• Fill in team 1 before team 2, etc. If team 1 is blank, team 2 is assumed to be blank as well, and so on.
• Fill in player 1 before player 2, etc. If player 1 is blank, player 2 is assumed to be blank as well, and so on.
• For players, 0 and blank are different. 0 means a 0 ELO player, blank means no player.
• Negative players will cause errors.
• Players should be between 0 and 10,000. Otherwise, errors may occur.

Scoring

Win: 1
Tie: 1/n (with n teams)
Loss: 0

So for a match with 4 teams, if a team scores one win, 3 ties, and 2 losses, its score is 1.75 .

Yay for Google Ads!

I don't know what was happening, but for the past hour I've been unable to see any Google ads, at all. As a result, all websites took forever to load, and some didn't even load at all. Fortunately, looks like the Google ad server is back up! And I still don't know what happened...

LF2, Ladders, and Logarithms

(Don't worry about LF2.5 - I'm still working on it ... and I'll release it in three days!!)

I've decided to help Mgccl, a fellow LF2 modder, build an online ladder system for LF2.

The ladder should have the following features:

• Track and store the results of all ranked games. (No idea how we'll do this - for now we'll do it on an honor system, where players submit their game results.)
• Keep track of each players' wins, ties, and draws.
• Calculate each player's rating, using a variant of the ELO system.
• Support clans and countries, and rank them as well as ranking individual users.
• Support all possible team combinations, from 1-vs-1 to 2-vs-5 to 4-vs-4.
• Track which character each player uses, and rank them on each player (i.e. best Davis players, best Julian players, etc.)

Today, the first thing we did was come up with a database. Here's what we have right now (courtesy of myself and Mgccl):

country:
country_id , country_name , country_flag , country_wins , country_total_elo, country_total_exp

clan:
clan_id , clan_name , clan_leader , clan_wins , clan_losses , clan_draws , clan_ranking, clan_total_elo, clan_total_exp, clan_members

user_stat:
stat_id, stat_elo, stat_exp, stat_rank, stat_win, stat_lose, stat_draw

user_prof:
user_id, clan_id, country_id

team_user_link:
team_id, user_id

vs_games:
game_id , team1_id , team1_winrounds, team2_winrounds

Mgccl also singlehandedly coded the ELO script (this guy's amazing at PHP!) Now we are missing one crucial feature - ranking for team games. Since I'm good at math, it falls to me to solve the following problems:

1. I must find a way to average the team members' ratings to create a team rating. A simple arithmetic mean won't work - a team with one member rated 1500 and one member rated 1000 does not have a 1250 rating!
   


2. Figuring out 1) will let us play 2-vs-2, 3-vs-3, and 4-vs-4 games, but what if we want to play a game with unequal teams? I must calculate how to adjust the temporary team ratings, to account for the fact that teams with more players have a much better chance of winning.


3. Once I find 1) and 2), I am able to use Mgccl's ELO algorithm to find how to adjust each team's rating, but wait! Teams aren't rated - only players are! I must figure out how to apply the rating adjustment to the team members. As far as I see, the answer to this is to simply take the team adjustment and adjust each team member's rating by it, but I'll have to do some more research on this.

Some data to help me: The ELO system is designed so that if two players (or teams) have a rating difference of 200, then the stronger team should have a 75% chance of winning. I think that if I take a few logarithms, I should be able to figure out the answer to 1) and maybe 2) from that statement.

Whew. Long, very long, incredibly long, post.

www.PrestoSoft.com Goes Online!!

Tough day today - we uploaded the new PrestoSoft site. Check it out!!



All those FTP errors... ahhhh!! Transferring 18MB of files to a remote server is never easy...

Changes

I showed the PrestoSoft team my website design, and they liked it for the most part. However, they forced me to make some changes: use less blue, make the default font bigger, and other things. In my opinion, the site now looks a lot worse, but you can judge for yourself.

The old site

The new site

phpBB Problem and Solution

The PrestoSoft forum was down today, and displayed this error message:

phpBB : Critical Error

Error creating new session

DEBUG MODE

SQL Error : 1016 Can't open file: 'phpbb_sessions.MYI'. (errno: 145)

After doing a bit of googling, I found this page, which gives a simple solution: run the SQL script REPAIR TABLE phpbb_sessions. You can also try this for any other SQL table that doesn't work properly - chances are, it has a small error that can be fixed by REPAIRing it.

See H1 Run, Run H1 Run

Today my programmer friend and I had the task of replacing all the headings (which used a custom style) with customized H1s and H2s, on the PrestoSoft site. Now, HNs (as they're officially called) are tricky little beasts - they always screw up the table cell they're in. Nothing seems to fix this, neither valign nor margin nor spacing. We were trying different things for perhaps an hour, until we found a very simple solution on the macromedia.dreamweaver newsgroup: Add the following to your stylesheet:

h1
{
padding: 0 0 0 0;
}

Turns out the problem was with padding all along! Who'd've guessed?

And if you ask, "What's the point of using H1s and H2s anyway, when you can make your own styles?", it is believed that Google's algorithm (no one knows for sure - it's Google's secret), as well as those of other search engines, places a higher priority on text inside H1,H2,...,H6 tags. It's kinda weird, but that's (supposedly) how Google thinks it's get the most relevant content. Personally, I think that it's useless, and makes life harder for us web designers...

Bullets -> Lists

Exhibit A:

• The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

• multiline text multiline text multiline text multiline text multiline text multiline text multiline text multiline text multiline text multiline text


Exhibit B:

• The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.


• multiline text multiline text multiline text multiline text multiline text multiline text multiline text multiline text multiline text multiline text

What's different about these? The first uses bullets, while the second is an unordered list.

Sometimes in web design you get a site almost done when suddenly you realize that one aspect of the site is wrong (in this case, bullets, which do not offer some of the features of lists). I spent a significant amount of time today going over the PrestoSoft site, replace all instances of A with B.

Redesigning Prestosoft.com

A friend of mine is a software developer, and this summer I am helping him redesign his site.

Fortunately, all the design work has been done for me. Kudos to Blue Cherry Graphics, will, and the rest of the guys at Design Outpost for designing the new logo and site template!

What is my job, then? you may ask. Well, the site template that we were given is a simple HTML file, while the site is based on custom ASP scripts. My job is to merge the HTML template and ASP scripts into a functioning site.

This is not that easy, however, and I've had to rewrite a significant portion of both the ASP and HTML.

Today I was able to convert the main page:

The old ASP site











The HTML template










Final result



As you can see, the page looks almost identical to the original HTML file, but adds the features of the old site, most notably, ASP scripts that customly generate each page.

However, this new site is still far from perfect: Search doesn't work, some fonts aren't right, and the bottom of the News box is missing.

And of course I still need to add about 40 more pages...

Bad News for PodDonkey!

I thought that come summer PodDonkey would be getting more visitors, but just the opposite is true. See the image on the left (the red line indicates the start of summer). The reason for this is simple - contrary to what I thought, the majority of PodDonkey forum members are busy over the summer, whether with vacations, summer school, or AP summer work.

Blogging + Modding = Blog Mod!

I had a bit of free time today, so I decided to add a link to this blog to PodDonkey. Then I thought, "No, I can do better," and so decided to add a new feature for PodDonkey forum users: a link to their blog in their profile. Easy, right?

Two hours later: Nothing works. I go through every file, find a handful of errors, upload again. Still nothing.

One hour after that: Finally figured out the problem: I copied and pasted a chunk of code between four files, thinking that it will work in all four files. However, closer inspection revealed that the four files all have different names for the same function: $row[], $privmsg[], $profiledata[], and $postrow[], and simple copy-and-pasting just won't cut it. I fixed the code, uploaded, and it works like a charm!

<-- The circled button, of course, links to this blog. Although I have installed many forum mods in the past, this is the first mod that I coded from scratch. Who knows - if public response is positive, maybe I'll try to submit it to the phpBB database!