Thursday, June 28, 2007

Yay, comments!

Well, I guess since you guys finally commented I ought to do another post today :P

Where to start... I guess I have to talk about my philosophical stuffsies or something like that. I'll get to it in a second maybe.

Anyway, I haven't done work on ProudOf in a little while because I am working on a custom mod. I'm not going to use its code for any lessons, because you have to pay for a license and what would be the point for me to release the code for free?

So, at Trialga we have a new thing coming up that will be interesting. Jeremy planned it and is executing it, so you'll see it ready soon :) It's a pretty cool idea and it should work out well. Go Jeremy!

Also, we've passed 50 members and are almost at 2,500 posts! (I have more than 600 posts lol) Yay for the new Trialga! Keep up the good work members :) We also have two new staff members that will help us out with the moderating stuff so we have more time to do our adminy things, as well as more people to thwart spammers and such. Good luck to the new staff!

I've been taking a lot more time to help out people at Invisionize. Part of this is because I now have a better understanding of IPB after working with it for a while, and part of it is because I submitted an application for Community Team over there. I think it would be really awesome if they accepted me, as I'd like to help out more and be a bigger part of the community. I've somehow managed to get 300 posts over there, so I guess I have been spending more time there than I thought. Wish me luck!

With all that said, let's get down to business. I'm going to tell you quite a bit about me, so here goes.

Obviously, I am 16. I am in the Computer Science magnet at my school and enjoy programming a lot. I also like to play video games, hang out with my friends, and I like to bike. Biking is good exercise and lets me relax. Usually, if you give me some sort of task to do, I will try and figure it out and finish it, provided that it challenges me in ways where I will enjoy trying to figure it out.

For example, in my computer class last year, we had at least one instance where we were required to write an algorithm for a program and then go write it. Being me, I went ahead and programmed it on my own, left with only the commented code to turn in. What I did was went through the code and took out the comments. This was quite a tedious effort, and I asked if I could just turn in the code itself. Our teacher wanted the algorithm (comments in my case), and suggested that I make a program to get the comments from the code.

Which, after a bit of work with file functions and string tokenizer (which I don't think anyone else did in my class), I completed. The source code can be found here: http://trialga.net/Commenter.java and can be used if you have the Keyboard class bundle ( http://trialga.net/Keyboard.zip ). So yeah, I'm determined if I feel like it.

In my free time I like to program, chat (send me a message, as long as it's not annoying and you don't send me eight thousand within ten seconds), and generally hang out. I pwn at SWAT in Halo 2, but only with my friends. I'd probably get creamed on XBOX Live, but I wouldn't know for sure.

Anyway, I guess I have to delve into more philosophical topics or something like that. Here goes that too.

Actually, that's too vague of a category. (That sentence almost had me cursing) So yeah.

I like good food. That's simple. Hispanic cuisine is good and spicy. I like Chinese food, pork fried rice and wonton soup. What would hibachi steak fall under? Chinese I guess? I don't know, sorry lol. Umm... yeah. I like Ramen noodles and the Cheerios vanilla yogurt blast cereal. You'll probably find me eating Ramen everyday in college, what with them being so damn good and cheap. It's like 17 cents for a package at Publix so yeah. You can get like 6 for a buck.

Anyway, I think I'll wrap up for today's post. Be specific in your comments lol.

Peace everyone.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

A little more about me?

Well since so many people comment on the blog... (Really guys, do leave a comment, it makes me feel good) I went ahead and picked what this will be about.

Music!

In this nice little entry I'm going to go a bit into my music tastes and their background.

Ok, to start, I like country music. Mostly newer country, because I haven't been exposed to much of the older (and I mean older) country. I still like the classics (Johnny Cash, etc.) however.

I like country music because it tells a story, and because of the rhythm and melody. I listen to the radio a lot and have a lot of songs memorized.

Some favorite songs of mine are Moments by Emerson Drive, Mountains by Emerson Drive :P, Lost in this Moment by Big and Rich, and a handful of others, but those are just the ones that are off the top of my head.

Oh, another good one is Stand by Rascal Flatts.

I like Emerson Drive, they're a Canadian band and have a lot of good songs, Rascal Flatts, Big and Rich, Brooks and Dunn, etc.

I like almost all of the songs that I hear. I'm not very picky when it comes to country, so I can probably find a CD that I'll like all the songs on, even though I may not have heard them before.

A bit about how I came to like country music, because it's certainly not from my parents...

My friends Dillon and Dan pretty much introduced me to country. Dillon and I would always sing Beer for My Horses and Dan had the radio on the country station at all times. So it stuck, and now I'm really into it.

That's basically all for today.

COMMENT ON THE BLOG AND TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT ME TO WRITE ABOUT.

Thanks :P

Monday, June 25, 2007

$h!7 Happens

Well it certainly was a fun week. Much happened, much to blog about.

Anyway, in the beginning of the week we found out that my grandmother was in the hospital and wasn't doing so well. So, the plans were made for my parents to head up to Atlanta and for me to go to my other grandparents' house about an hour away. The night when I got to my grandparents, my parents called us and said that my grandmother had passed away, the day before they were heading up there.

So, they flew up and attended a nice memorial service for her. It's pretty sad, but at least she went peacefully, and I had a chance to spend time with my grandparents.

In other news, some of you may have heard about what happened to the forums. That really made me mad because so much stuff was being screwed up. Anyway, that has been fixed and is all good now.

On a lighter note, now that I'm programming more in-depth, I don't really feel like playing some games as much as I have been. I played Runescape for a little bit again and it wasn't much fun. I will go on occasionally, but usually just to do stuff to level my skills.

So it's a short post today, but I'll have more coding and stuff soon. Also, I do want to hear what you guys want to see me write about, so leave some comments if you have a desire to hear my opinion on something or whatever.

Peace.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Another Post, more coding!

Hello everyone! I'm here again with another post, one that'll hopefully turn out to be longer than the last one :)

Anyway, this one will go a bit into the programming of the system for ProudOf.net. I'll talk a little about what I've done so far as well as describe some of it, but nothing about what's to come right now (muahaha).

I'm proud to say that I believe I just finished up the registration and login/logout systems on the site. I have tested them quite a bit and messed around with them, and they're finally done. I'll talk first about the registration, then login, and finally the logout, which is pretty short (and not done yet at the time I'm writing this paragraph, but will be done by the time I finish this post).

(Oh, by the way, I just finished the logout stuff)

Ok, the registration. First it checks if you are logged in via cookies. If you are, it returns an error. The way I've set up these classes is something I will leave for the next or another post. Anyway, if you're not logged in then it spits out the form, including a CAPTCHA image :) for added security. Once you fill out all of the fields and hit the button, it sends the data.

It then checks to make sure you filled out everything, and then it checks that your passwords match, the CAPTCHA code entered was right, and that your name and e-mail are unique. Finally, it stores your information into the database and sends the validation e-mail (yes, I made e-mail validation).

In the e-mail, you are given a link to click on that will validate your account. On the validation page, it checks to make sure that your validation code is correct and also that the account you are trying to validate needs to be validated. After checking all that, it updates a bit of information about your account and flings you to the login page.

With that, we're at the login area! First it checks if you're logged in, just like the registration page, and then prints out the form. Once you submit the information it makes sure you filled out everything and then checks to make sure the information you submitted is right. Finally it sets your cookies and sends you to the main page.

Now there's really a lot more to those two classes but most of it has to do with security stuff that I don't want to give out :)

Finally, the logout class. There's really not much to this one. Basically, it makes sure you are logged in and then kills your cookies. Finally, it sends you to the main page.

So far, I've been making progress on the system. With those classes done, I can expand to more advanced things.

(Ok, so I lied, I'm going to tell you a bit about what is up next)

Next on my list is probably the administration system, so that I can be in control of the content without having to edit source files. After that I'll start on the user system. I've got quite a bit of work ahead of me, and I'll be sure to keep you all posted :)

Until next time.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Just a few words

Hello there!

Today I'm going to talk to you about my next projects.

First off, my two originally planned mods, Gauntlet and EZ Contests, have been put on hold for quite some time. I don't really feel like making Gauntlet, and EZC may come later.

Anyway, my next mod is in the planning stages and I am asking for suggestions on Trialga. It is going to be a video system, kind of similar to Youtube, but will be for IPB. I have a topic on the forums where you can suggest stuff for it, so please do so!

My next project outside of IPB is a site that I purchased and that I am developing along with Jeremy. It is called ProudOf.net, and will be a site where you can come and share your accomplishments with others, comment on accomplishments, etc. I really like the idea and think it has some potential. I think it will be a nice community.

I am developing the system for the site and Jeremy is making the site look nice. I will be posting some excerpts possibly from the code for the site to teach everyone about some stuff, so be on the lookout!

That's all for today, I believe.

Until next time,
Bryan

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Ah... stuff.

Hello everyone! I'm here again with some coding updates and stuff.

Well, My Videos version 1.2 just finished up. With this version I finally added more than just Youtube to the sites you could use videos from. I got a lot of suggestions for sites but couldn't figure out how they embedded it, meaning they didn't provide it easily, and I didn't care enough to go snoop around to figure it out. I figured if they didn't have a box to let me copy it, then it wasn't worth it.

Anyway, the two that I did add were Dailymotion and Veoh. So now when you submit a video you can choose which site your video is from. Another thing I added was instructions on how to get the code for each site. The code is crucial for the video to work, so I felt that my previous instructions weren't very clear, so I wrote up some and packaged them with the new version. Another thing I did was an excessively unnecessary way to write the version. I'll show you this code now (I hope this thing indents properly):


$version = $_GET['version'];

$i = 0;

$arr = array();

while ($i < strlen($version))
{
$arr[] = $version{$i};
$i++;
}

$ver_string = '';

$i = 0;

foreach ($arr as $v)
{
if ($i != 0)
{
$ver_string .= '.';
}

$ver_string .= $v;

$i++;
}

echo $ver_string;

?>

Now, when you go to this page, the URL looks like http://yourboard.com/forum/my_vids/index.php?version=120 (120 is for version 1.2.0). Instead of having to edit this file for each new version, I put this link in the lang_my_vids files right next to the version so I edit those two now. I'll now go over what this code does.

First off it gets the version value from the URL and sets it into the version variable. Next it makes a counter variable which will be used quite a bit. It then defines an array. What the while statement checks for is that counter variable versus the length of the version string. What happens next is the next open slot in the array is given the value of the version string at position i. So in the first pass, $arr[0] = 1 is basically what is happening. Then i is incremented to keep it going.

Now I make a new variable and set i back to 0. We're almost done! Now then, I love foreach because it is the best way to traverse an array (I think so at least). In this instance I have no need for the key so I just use $arr as $v. What happens in a foreach is for this type you do foreach (array as value), where value is the value of the array at that position. foreach allows you to go through associative arrays easily. So first off it checks if i isn't 0. If it's not (meaning that you're no longer in the first position), then it'll add a period before the number. Then the value is added onto ver_string and i is incremented. Finally, the version string is printed out.

Logic Process:

$version = 120;
$i = 0;
$arr = array();

WHILE
-$arr[0] = 1;
-$i = 1;
-$arr[1] = 2;
-$i = 2;
-$arr[2] = 0;
-$i = 3;
-3 is not less than 3

$ver_string = '';
$i = 0;

FOREACH
-IF
--0 equals 0 (body not executed)
-$ver_string = '1';
-$i = 1;
-IF (1 does not equal 0)
--$ver_string = '1.';
-$ver_string = '1.2';
-$i = 2;
-IF
--$ver_string = '1.2.';
-$ver_string = '1.2.0';
-$i = 3;
No more values in array

Prints out 1.2.0

That's it for that code! Yeah, pretty unnecessary, but whatever :)

Anyway, I plan on working on Signature of the Week version 2 soon. I'm going to completely re-write it so it'll look nicer, have comments, and should be more efficient. This will probably take a while, so be patient. Although really it doesn't seem as though people are crazy about it... It bothers me that in the competition for May on IZE that a mod that someone just updated and didn't even write themselves is doing better than mine, which I did all myself and was my first mod, and it's in the large mods category. Rawr.

I think that's all for today, I hope to make more of these kind of updates for those who want to learn some programming :)

Oh, and my tutorial is coming along, I just forgot about it for a little while, but I'll get it done.

Until next time,
Bye!

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Hello again!

Wow... I feel the love. Thanks guys for reading and commenting <.<

Anyway, I'm here with another post, so pull up a chair and start reading :)

I'll start with some mod stuff. Don't you love people who say there is something wrong with your mod even though it works just fine for you, and other people? Well, at least there are those who are appreciative.

There's been some oddities with My Videos, and for some reason the videos won't display for some people. I have no idea why this is so... it's quite odd. Anyway, I know it's not a problem with the mod because it works for me and others. So, there are some people who have had this error and are still appreciative of my work, and there is one person who is just being annoying. Oh well, can't please them all.

Anyway, I haven't really done much more work on the newer versions of my two mods, I've been shrugging it off to play Starcraft. Man do I love that game... it's possibly the best RTS ever.

Anyway, I've taken up a new project: my own forum system. It'll be fairly basic, and nothing near the likes of IP.Board or any other established forum software, but I'll feel proud when I've finished it. If anyone would like to help with skinning or images, etc. please let me know because I am terrible at that stuff. Thanks to Mikel who is already helping :)

Unfortunately I am not a master of PHP and don't know all of it... so I've been studying IPB and using a few things here and there (shame on me) although it's nothing big. If I ever actually finish it, I'll open it up for public use (when I get a bit more done I'll show it to people). Again, help is very much appreciated.

This is a side project, so don't fear the end of BoT mods!

Away from that, I have been sleeping so much lately what with summer being here. I went swimming today so I got some exercise at least and now I won't be a total fatty :P (That's totally not possible anyway since I weigh like 115 pounds... and I'm 5'6" =O)

So how is life for everyone else? Mine's going pretty well. I've gotten back to playing Runescape a bit more and made my first million gp, and I am now managing a crafting store under the Cosmic Company ( http://cosmic.ipbfree.com ) which is pretty cool.

I think that's pretty much all for now, if I think of something else I can always put it in another post...

Until next time, cya!

PS- Don't look at the time I posted this at...

Friday, June 15, 2007

Finally... another post!

Well then, hello again everyone! It has been a while since my last post, and I think I'm ready to start blogging again.


First off, school is now over and it went pretty well. I got my report card in the mail and my final grades for the second semester are as follows:

Physics: C (meh, I'm not taking it next year so whatever)
English: A
Computers: A (DUH)
Calculus: A
VPS: A (what a waste of time)
Chemistry: A
Spanish: B (meh, I hate subjunctive)

So, I'm pretty happy that I did well, at least in the classes I care about. Now that school's over I've been sleeping... and sleeping... and playing on the computer. I really need to get outside some more. I'll probably go on a bike ride tomorrow. I bike for about 5 miles when I go, and it's nice because it's relaxing.

Anyway, another topic my blog will now cover is me programming my mods and other stuff. I'll post about certain issues I have, progress on my mods, and more about them. Also, I'd like to start working on projects that involve PHP/MySQL but aren't related to IPB, and I would like to create systems... but can't think of what to make. So here's your opportunity to suggest something for me to make, whether it be another IPB mod or not.

Before I go, I'll write a little about my mods...

Anytime you see [BoT], that means that mod is by me. BoT stands for Bryan of Trialga, because Trialga is my site (obviously) and I'm Bryan (duh)... I came up with it very quickly.

Anyway, I have two mods out and possibly two in production. The two out are my Signature of the Week mod, which was my first mod, and the My Videos mod. I am still working on them, upgrading them to have more features, etc. You can download them, receive support for them, and suggest features for them at my site (http://trialga.net). I have another mod that I'm working on called EZ Contests, which will make it easy to setup a posting contest. I'll post a bit more about it when I get more done on it. Another mod I have in production is currently top secret :)

Until next time, peace!