Category: Nerd Stuff

DanielTharp.com Nerd Stuff
December 27, 2011

Pie to Finger Ratio

I thought it would help me focus if I wrote down all the web projects I’m working on now.

Project Havana: Lot of work to go, got some pretty jQuery animations going on but very little content. Lot of data entry to go, but I feel like this project has the best odds of being monetizable. (Is that a word? It is now.) Day-to-day investment of time seems like it could be quite high for a while.

Project Xenon: Data entry’s done, and hell a lot of the code from Project FAST is reusable. jQTouch is still eluding me with regards to passing data across the POST in PHP and still getting those pretty animations. I need to buy that peepcode screencast and get it over with. If I had a week to knock this out it would be donezo. Not much oversight needed once the code is stable, especially when I’m not expecting much of an audience.

Ogre Game Labs: Pretty much from scratch. I think the stuff you learn from Project Havana will pay off here, because you’re gonna want that asynchronous data transfer. It’s a must, actually. So get Havana up and going, spread the word in the channels where you’ll get an instant audience. Then re-evaluate how much of this you can do. Day-to-day is a real wildcard, as is the eventual size of the audience. Main competitor is only about 5,000-6,000 registered users but up to 200 concurrent sessions. That’s serious stuff, but we’ve got a level of flexibility that they don’t. I think.

Ogre Lair: Operational. Needs customization and getting moved to the correct domain. I like that I’ll be able to hand the day-to-day of this one off.

Paid job for IPC: Mostly data entry and their calendar left.

Paid job for AUMC: … (More) “Pie to Finger Ratio”

Nerd Stuff
October 13, 2011

Brought to you by the letter 5

This morning I started in earnest on converting a WordPress theme for thelegendofmax.net into the nostalgic, 2003-2004 era site. So far it’s going quite well. I’m not sure exactly what I will do with a new old TLoM once it’s up and running but that’s neither here nor there. Step 1 is getting it set back up, then I can figure out what I’m gonna do with it.… (More) “Brought to you by the letter 5”

Blogging Fragrance Nerd Stuff Work
July 23, 2011

Dreamweaving Again

So the good news is I’ve gone longer without posting on here, but that’s like saying midget murder is more condonable because they’re about half a life.

I’ve started on a new web project, and with the number of features I want to build out it stands to be my most ambitious project yet, and it’s gonna require some new technologies. Understand that I really don’t like the thought of relying on JavaScript, due to long-standing grudges, but jQuery does offer features I’m really gonna need in this project, in a prepackaged solution. When I hear that there are quite a few Top 100 websites that make use of it, I’m reassured.

So, Project Havana, as I’m calling it right now, is fragrance-related and fills a niche that no other industry website has sufficiently covered. This will also serve as a website I can show as a portfolio piece for both the UI and backend. That’s still a field I’d love to do as a day job again, and I’ve also just recently found all the code for the largest project I’d worked on but was under NDA on for a year. So it’ll be good to have both projects available to point to. I’m being rather tight-lipped on the particulars to this project as I want to develop it at a slower pace, get each feature dialed in before moving onto the next one, and then when I have something worth putting out there, I can do it without regret or concern. So that’s new, as I usually throw up core functionality and build out the site as it’s live, add those features as people use the site.

I’m going to try and get back on the three-day writing schedule, we will see.… (More) “Dreamweaving Again”

Nerd Stuff
January 12, 2011

BurritoQuest: The RPG That Fits In Your Hand

This is a fairly freeform post, I’m laying some groundwork for a game I’ve had in my head for nearly a year, and am only now deciding to put the metaphorical pen to paper (bits to hard drive?) and see what comes of it. The game is intended to be funny, but partly because the inhabitants of this world aren’t aware that their actions are ridiculous to us. For them, it’s just the way things are. This post covers the overview and some details of the game world. There will be quite a bit more than what I manage tonight.

Overview:
It is the year 478 of the Fifth Era, and change hangs in the air of the continent of Adovad. The great war that marked the end of the Fourth Era has left scars on the land that persist even now. Politically, maps were redrawn and there exists peace among the kingdoms for the first time in decades. Lord Varyll Strongbad ruled the dwarven kingdom of Q’doba with a beefy fist. The twins Tel-Rojo and Tel-Verde serve as gentle shepherds for the emancipated nation of Chy’Le, populated by High Elves. Lastly, the wizard-queen Choriza Heartfire is both loved and feared by the humans of Posole. The free city of Calabacita sits on the border connecting the three nations and serves as the cultural epicenter for all civilized peoples of Adovad. There, any disputes among the kingdoms are settled by the recently revived tradition of burrito-making. [See Burritocraft for more information.]

Recently, scribes had finished translation on a recipe not seen by any mortal in two thousand years. The people rejoiced from one end of the land to the other, and myriad burritos were consumed. The rulers of the three kingdoms and the Elder Council of Calabacita sent out decrees … (More) “BurritoQuest: The RPG That Fits In Your Hand”

Blogging DanielTharp.com Fragrance Music Nerd Stuff
December 26, 2010

Time Management Fail

I should be getting ready for work right about now, but I feel like writing too. So writing wins for now. I’m getting myself psyched up for 2011 with plans and ideas for how I’m gonna keep things interesting for this Monday-Wednesday-Friday regularity of posting. My work schedule actually calls for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday off, and I have no plans to change that. So I’ll be writing a week ahead or two.

Mondays are gonna be fairly mixed with regards to music. Reviews of varying formality, top 10s, that sort of thing.

Wednesdays, my wildcard days, will likely have a lot of gaming. That’s for sure. That and whatever else I feel like writing about.

Fridays will be split between reviewing fragrances and a journal tracking Diana and I as we attempt to make custom perfumes, we’ve got about a year of off-and-on experience with it and I think we’re going to be stocking up on some new oils too. We haven’t broken out the EOs since we moved in together, so we’re both excited to get back to it.

Unrelated note, but if you haven’t been following the Steam Holiday Sale, you’re missing the true reason of the $ea$on. You can buy 55 games for $55, for crying out loud.… (More) “Time Management Fail”

General Nerd Stuff Work
December 15, 2010

PHP Lessons to my 16-year old self.

Over the past five days I’ve turned a sketch for a Basenotes March Madness site into a real, working application, and did it with efficiency, normalization and security in mind. Web design was something I started messing with when I was about 10 or 11 years old, with a little 64-page book that actually gave a good understanding of the basics. Though I don’t need to consult that book I still keep it around, maybe I’ll find some young nerd to pass it along to although quite a bit of it is deprecated code now. It wasn’t until 18 and in college that I learned C and subsequently PHP, and really got a feel for the database design that had always intrigued me. I’ve had several projects of varying scales, and picked up a significant bag of tricks. If I could go back and get my 16 year old self to do all the stuff he wanted to do, I’d have these words of wisdom for him.

  • Go pick up a copy of The C Programming Language. Forget about Perl, C will get you where you want to be.
  • MySQL is much, much easier to get started with than Oracle, and forget about ColdFusion, it’ll be dead soon.
  • JavaScript is sometimes a necessary evil. It can do things that are either way too cumbersome or flat-out impossible any other way. But don’t worry, JavaScript is becoming respectable.
  • Keep all your code from old projects. You’ll be amazed how much wheel reinvention you’ll save yourself when the time comes to implement a login system again.
  • All those ideas you’ve had in your head? You need to use $_POST[] and $_GET[] to make them work. That’s how you send data from page to page. GET is only useful if you only care
… (More) “PHP Lessons to my 16-year old self.”
Fragrance Nerd Stuff
December 10, 2010

BMM11 Behind The Scenes: Best Laid Plans

I began preliminary work for Basenotes March Madness 2011 today, a paper sketch that I always seem to need to do before designing a website or a database. I’ll be designing both in this case, but the core of the game will of course be on Basenotes. The site I’m building will host the nomination and voting process to select what fragrances make the cut, and will also manage the bracket challenge, where users attempt to predict the outcome of each game. At the end of a day’s games, I simply give the website the final results for the day and it records it, and gives me the code for the next day’s events.

What’s the website look like now? This. But believe it or not, the hard work is nearly over, the actual construction of the website is a pretty simple process having done work with databases for so long.

I’m still spotty on a lot of details, but I can tell you several major changes from prior years events:

– There will be two concurrent tournaments, men’s and women’s. I didn’t run a women’s tournament the first year because I was uncertain as to the popularity of the event, and the second year because I didn’t feel I’d have time to do both because of the amount of manual work involved. The tournaments won’t be segregated by gender, men can vote on the women’s contests and vice versa. The only difference is the brackets themselves will be quite different.

– Instead of the prediction contest’s old scoring system, where each game in round 1 was worth 1 point, then doubling in value for each round, users will be able to bet varying amounts for each game. Essentially each round’s old point values will be multiplied by 10. … (More) “BMM11 Behind The Scenes: Best Laid Plans”

General Nerd Stuff
June 28, 2010

How to suppress idle scan notifications in Norton 2010 (Permanent Silent or Quiet Mode)

How to suppress idle scan notifications in Norton 2010 (Permanent Silent or Quiet Mode)

This post is going to be formatted a bit differently than previous entries, the good chunk of people that read this are going to be from search engines and not my serial readers. Norton 2010 was about the highest rated paid antivirus on the market, but within a few hours I got irritated with the pop-up notifications that Norton is performing an idle scan in the background. I was even more irritated when I found that there was no real way to disable the pop-ups. It doesn’t do it while I’m doing something else but it is something else I have to close every time I come back to my computer after a time, and having moved from the totally silent Kaspersky AV 2008 I’m not cool with not being able to go totally silent. Silent Mode can be used, but then idle scans are disabled entirely and you have to turn it back on every day. The happy medium is Quiet Mode, which performs scans and only alerts you during actually important things. This is limited by default to a set number of instances, like disc burning. However, you can specify that Quiet Mode remain active while certain programs are running. This is the means we will use to put Norton in Quiet Mode for as long as we like.

Right click the Norton icon in your system tray and select Open Norton Anti Virus (or Open Norton Internet Security).

Under the Computer section, hit Settings.

Click the tab for Miscellaneous Settings.

Under Silent Mode Settings, click Configure next to User-Specified Programs.

Click Add.

Navigate to C:\Windows and double-click explorer.exe.

Click OK. You’re done!

Simple enough, and as far as I can tell it’s working … (More) “How to suppress idle scan notifications in Norton 2010 (Permanent Silent or Quiet Mode)”

Nerd Stuff Work
April 20, 2010

I thought I was following @BestBuyPaducah

Alright, I need to address this if I’m going to be posting on that particular Twitter account again. If you’re receiving this blog post via Facebook you’re more than welcome to ignore it. So from August last year to January this year you’ve been reading the Twitter feed from BestBuyPaducah, which has been my endeavor to get my workplace a bit more presence on the web while also being personable, relatable and generally a store you don’t mind reading about on Twitter. Several months ago I was told that Twitter was going to be made a mandatory thing for stores in my district (an area from around Cape Girardeau in the north to Nashville in the south). I’d been posting essentially because I wanted to, no pay, just for fun. With it being mandatory, it also became something that another department would handle, for hourly pay. This didn’t sit well with me for reasons I believe you can understand. After much arguing and being threatened with legal action and my job (you’re a great group of folks but a Twitter account isn’t worth my job), I caved and changed the name and let them do what they want with the BestBuyPaducah name.

So, let’s get some things straight:

I’m not a manager, I can’t do discounts via Twitter, promotions, or any of that stuff, and I won’t be involved with it if/when the time comes.

The opinions you see on the renamed account, DanielBBPaducah, are obviously mine and may not (and probably don’t) reflect on the opinions of Best Buy as a company. This is the same logic that applies to my opinions working on the floor, i.e., just because I think Canon makes the best digital camera on the market doesn’t mean corporate agrees.

I really like helping customers, … (More) “I thought I was following @BestBuyPaducah”