I found an awesome animated collapse/expand script by Harry Maugans which I've started implementing everywhere possible (including Notes).

My script differs a bit from the original one in the tutorial, though. First of all, it uses a toggle link instead of separate collapse/expand links, which also change between i.e. Add/Cancel, depending on the display state (block or none).

Another modification is dynamic heights (thanks to a comment in the article by user haxan). The original script requires you to define the height of of the stuff you want hidden, making it impossible to have any kind of dynamic content in the divs.

But the most interesting modification is the animation. The original animation is linear, essentially meaning that it adds the same amount of pixels to the height every second.

Now to be honest, this is kinda dull. I found a comment by the user JoeX where he's modified the animation function to use a simple exponential equation (pic. to the right).

Still, this doesn't look very nice either, since the div starts by expanding slowly and accelerates until it's reached its destined height. A much nicer method would be a negative quadratic equation or in my case 1.1x/(x+0.1) as seen in the picture to the left. This gives a relatively quick "punchy" start which gradually slows down.

You can see the new script in action when expanding most of the hidden divs on the website and also on Notes.

I've added support for BBCode on both the article and comment section and also stripped all HTML support in the comments. Hopefully this will make both writing articles and comments, and sharing codes and scripts much easier.

The current supported BBCode tags are as follows:
italic
bold
underline
http://www.aresdb.com
Designer Chateau
code();

Exclusive for articles
[img]

I'll probably add some more tags later.

Update: Added commenting with. Basically making content invisible.

I found some great songs to test out my speaker system's bass! Check out Techmaster P.E.B.'s song Bassgasm. AMAZING. I've never heard so much bass in my life.

BTW, the song is also called "THX - Ultimate Subwoofer Test"

We started getting spam in the comment sections (at least one per day). I almost feel proud that a bot actually found our blog, considering no one actually visits this website. Now, even though it might be flattering and pretty funny to actually get spam on your comment system, it still has to be solved.

I went down to business and searched the web for a while until I found a pretty decent CAPTCHA image generation script. However, it was a bit simple so I had to do some modifying.

While trying to implement the new CAPTCHA script, I stumbled upon a few problems. Luckily, Bandit was online so I asked him for help (I had to study so I couldn't waste any more time on it.)

Now the CAPTCHA system is up and working correctly, and we can finally get some sleep without having to worry about any more spam. =D

I've been thinking lately about what the future is going to hold for me. I've been doing some research on colleges that have the "Networking and Systems Administration" option as a major. So far, I've only found two possible colleges. The first one I found is R.I.T. (Rochester Institute of Technology) and the second one I found is M.T.U. (Michigan Tech).

The good thing, however, is that I can definitely picture myself as a System Admin. Something about it just seems like the dream job for me. Well, time to start on my homework. More to come.

So I've had the iPod touch for a full day and some change now. I've already jailbroke it using blackra1n and it's great. That being said, jailbreaking is not for everybody. Most of the jailbreak apps are for the terminal. For example, they have programs like top, bzip, gzip, bash, ssh, make, gcc, etc. Normal people would probably have no need to jailbreak unless they just wanted to change the theme or wanted a couple games. Personally, I love the terminal because it let's me ssh into this server. I'll add more to this post later.

I just got an iPod touch for Christmas and it is absolutely amazing. I'm currently writing this post from my iPod touch. I am seriously considering jailbreaking my iPod touch because I'm a big fan of aftermarket firmware. After all, I put dd-wrt on my wrt54gl and still love it just as much as the day I flashed it with the new firmware.

Why do I want to jailbreak my iPod touch, you ask? Well, all the apps in the AppStore cost money and are not open-source. I much prefer to use free, open-source software if I have a choice. Anyways, I'm getting tired of typing so I'm just going to end the post here. I'll keep you guys updated.

I wasn't completely satisfied with the final outcome of the website design. After various design tweaks and additions, I felt it had become too cluttered and messy. Reverting back to an older version would do any good either, as it would still look a bit crappy (not sure what I was thinking when I first made it).

So, I chose to redesign the website in Photoshop, focusing on a cleaner and less cluttered design.

I hope you find this new layout more attractive and it does look, at least in my eyes, a tad bit more professional. If you don't remember (or haven't seen) the old design, here's a screenshot:

Today I decided to finish off something that I've been wanting for a long time (been to lazy to do it) - article categorization with title icons.

There are currently only 4 categories: regular, programming, designing and tech. Eventually, I'll be adding more and more categories as the blog matures. The 4 icons were made in Photoshop using only a mouse (as opposed to using a tablet), though I had a few reference photos/sketches to look at. The only thing I kinda of stole borrowed was the document sheet with sketched lines (from a OS X Developer Tools icon.)

Unfortunately, the tiny resolution makes it impossible to see all the details. So therefor, I included the full size versions, as you can see below.


Click the images for full size.

Expect more icons as more categories are added.

I recently rewrote the login system for the website because I made a couple of stupid assumptions and the system had a few flaws. That being said, it should now be 100% better than its predecessor. The system is now more secure and works exactly how it should.

I added some Christmas decoration to the website, automatically turned when the calendar hits the 12th mouth of the year (through a simple date checker.)

Expect some more tweaks and decorative Christmas stuff soon.

P.S. Oh and Merry Christmas!

Update: I've added some more eye candy to the website design.

I hate Windows Explorer.

So, I had to copy files from my girlfriend's sister's laptop hard drive because she had screwed up a Windows Vista update by turning off the computer in the middle of the update. There were no recovery DVDs or recovery partition either.

So instead, I had to do the brutal method - copying all her files in the user folder and reinstall Windows Vista. I copied them by connecting her hard drive with a SATA to USB cable to my girlfriend's laptop. In total the files were appr. 50 GB.

First, I tried copying the whole user folder in one sweep; not a good idea. In the middle of the copying, I got an error saying that one of the files couldn't be copied. I pressed OK and the copying stopped! Instead of ignoring the file and letting me continuing the copying, it cancelled it, leaving everything half finished.

Now I just can't seem to understand why anyone would want a file handler to behave like this. I don't know anyone who wouldn't find this extremely annoying.

This meant that I had to go through a bunch of subdirectories, comparing the file sizes of the original and copied versions, just to find what stuff had been copied.

Some of the directories had been left half finished, meaning that I had to select all the files in the original directory and copy them over to the half finished one. This of course meant that I also had to press No in all the "Replace file?" dialogs because Explorer doesn't have a "No to all" button, only a "Yes to all" one. That's another quirk that annoys the hell out of me.

*End of rant without ending because I just can't care to make one at the moment*

My latest project is the AresDB website. AresDB is a open source World of Warcraft private server database project now lead by my dear friend Bandit and some other guy called Jenkins, I believe.

Bandit asked me to make a so-called (according to him) "splash page."

I made my first template out of a bunch of grunge brushes. Unfortunately it didn't turn out very well in the end so I started over again from scratch, this time using using vector brushes.

I'm pretty satisfied with the result, being the first splash page I've done (actually the second). I'd actually like to make more in the future.

The final result can be found at the AresDB website.

Images coming soon

I've decided that I'll be using this website as a blog for my design projects. Mostly they'll be web designs, problems, workarounds - but probably also some music projects. Everything on this website has been designed by me (unless stated otherwise).

I'll most likely never get any readers, but I don't really care. :P

Expect a new post very soon.

Update: I've imported some of the updated article code. It's a little glitchy but I've commented out most of it, since it isn't necessary for me at the moment anyway.

Update: Everything should be work now. :) I found out what was causing all the problems.

Me and Bandit are working on creating a World of Warcraft private server on the old PowerMac that I talked about in an earlier article.

The private server will have support for both The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions. We'll be using the popular Arcemu with the NCDB database and extract map files from one of our WoW installations.

We're hoping that the server will be up and working and fully function within the next few weeks or so.

Stay tuned!

Side note: We're not sure if it's gonna be a fun server or Blizz-like, or we might just make one of each.

Update: Unfortunately we can't run the World of Warcraft server on the Bluebox machine (PowerMac) since Arcemu won't compile under PowerPC. So we're doing it on the main server (Chateau) instead.

I found a 10 year old PowerMac G3 that nobody's been using for ages (obviously). I've crammed it with a bunch of RAM which totals to 640 MB RAM (overkill 10 years ago.)

I'm having a few problems installing Ubuntu SE (9.04) on it but I've asked my good ol' friend Bandit to help me solve them.

I'm also still not sure what to put on it, but I'll come up with something.

Update: I finally decided to try installing Ubuntu 8 (which is what this server is running) and everything worked! It was probably a stupid Ubuntu 9 bug....

Update: So I had unplugged the computer to move it to a better place. But when I had plugged it back in, it didn't boot. I finally came to the conclusion that it was the main power button that was kind of broken. Good thing I found a tiny backup power button on the motherboard!

I was bored so I thought I'd start yet another website. This one of course with a new layout.

I won't be abandoning this one (it's the best website I've ever made), so don't worry. The new website will be called Programmer Chateau. However I'm still not finished with the the design yet (need to add more colors and do some final polishing to make everything look perfect) and after that I still have all the markup coding to do.

Most of the website interactivity will probably be ported from this website, luckily (since that's the most difficult part).

P.S. I'm also exploring RSS and eventually implement it to the website (for the articles and blogs).

Update: I deleted the old lorum ipsum articles, since we don't need them anymore (because we have so many real articles now).

I've refreshed the website a bit, adding things to the look of the website (hopefully for the good). I also added icons for the titles in the side bar, just a nice touch.

Update: BTW Bandit if you feel like doing anything to the website, go ahead!

Update: Also, there a few different versions of the logo in images/ now. You might wanna check em out.

Hey Bandit, just wanted to tell you that I've ported the File Manager from Groundwork to this website. It's only available if you log in, with the help of a nice, really simple login session checker function added to the auth_handler include. You can add it to any page using the function auth_verify();.

I should also tell you that I've added a To-do list table in the database, printed in the side bar. I'll probably also add a create and delete functions soon or later.

Update: Added a str_replace for the <pre> tag that replaces it with a class instead, since the <pre> tag makes a bunch of line breaks (and there's no workaround).

Hey man, It's Aug. 16 and I'm here to tell you that I've overhauled your site's code while you slept...login.php no longer exists (renamed to index.php)I've managed to complete a prototype (fully functional) login / logout system. You can make your own user / pass in the DB.Btw, I redid the Server Uptime and Server Time stats. I also added a script to tell you the Average load of the server.I still got around 2 hours before I go to sleep, so I'm sure I'll probably finish quite a bit more. Hope to see you tomorrow.

Me, the infamous Bandito, has decided to help my amigo, Renegade, with the website. Of course, I also have to finish my report due next week for school... Summer has died and school regains control, yet again.

Finally I/we got a really good looking website layout up and running. I worked a few hours to make this website look just perfect with no virtual glitches (I won't even try to render it in IE). But the website looks nice and it's running and blah blah blah...