This is my story. (Delayed post from Friday August 27th)
Last night around 12:30am I sat down at my PC to google search something, my homepage opened as normal (tdev.ca- the development website for my company). I continued to search whatever it was I searched and then I decided to work on Shorten This! When I opened up tncr.ws the page stopped with a "The remote server is not responding" message.
Right away I went over to my server to investigate what the problem was and it was completely frozen. Natural instincts told me to hard restart the server (as much as I hate doing that because of how hard it is on hardware), because nothing else was making it respond.
As it rebooted I continued back to my PC to carry on with other things and when I came back the server was frozen again, only this time it was during the boot sequence.
My troubleshooting instincts kicked right in, and I opened up the server, dusted it out and checked for any scent of burning.
Nothing.
Still freezing. Try one more time; I get to safe mode...frozen again. Okay now there's a real problem, so I try booting the system with a single drive to try and cancel out hardware failure...freezes again.
Now I pull out my POST card (Power On Self Test). It didn't reveal much since the system was in fact booting only it froze part-way through.
My next try at safe mode revealed that there was an event log entry in System showing an error with the perc2 driver (the SCSI redundancy controller), but I thought to try the motherboard battery first. So after a trip to London Drugs for a new 2032 battery, replacing it and then 3 restarts later (including some BIOS tweaking along with and update to the PERC2 controller firmware)....it finally worked.
Here's where it gets interesting, it worked for another day or so until BSOD-ing saying there was a Hardware failure, and again begins the freeze/retry process. I'm not sure why it worked at all in the first place if there was still an underlying issue, but needless to say I continued at it and eventually got a more insightful BSOD telling me "a secondary process did not respond in a timely fashion".
I had success after this when I pulled proc #2 put of the system (Dead Processor, great).
Problem solved, and during this ordeal I had managed to set up a temporary backup server provided by my website designer Tom.
So having a backup server in place and my main web server functional again, I decided to start over with the server while I had the opportunity.
This means setting up Windows Deployment services on a dedicated server, re installing Server 2008, and then reconfiguring a clean system. So far so good on that front.
I've also put an order with Dell for a new 2U PowerEdge 2970... to be continued.
Tensioncore Administration Services started just as a web hosting/game design company, and the legal business name was made as it is to allow for future possible business ventures/services.
As this year has un-folded, I've seen and had my business grow hundreds of percent over last year (2009 was my first full fiscal year), and I'm starting to mold what will be a company that lives up to it's legal name!
Project Bird Feed has been officially launched. It is still in "Beta" and it has been given a new brand: Tensioncore Web Services, a brand that will see a website develop into the ultimate URL services provider. tncr.ws
A prospective business partner has come to me regarding a new organization he wants assistance in developing (of which we've already named and branded), marking the way for Tensioncore Administration Services first official "Administration Service" and business partnership.
I've downsized them from their original sizes to hopefully speed up the gallery, however it may still be a little slow (because of huge pictures, or a slow connection to my server).
So I've had a recurring problem with Roundcube, in that certain email accounts will not delete emails, instead just show an error "Could not move the message", and return to the previous folder with the message still there.
This problem occurred as well when those certain email accounts tried to move a message from the main inbox to another folder such as Saved, Spam or a self-made folder (which sometimes making custom folders didn't even work).
So the solution is in config/main.inc.php:
Change THIS:
So, after a really intense month of work and the start of the summer in Vancouver finally, we are getting really involved in evaluating various Gsame Engines to be used by our Video game development.
Currently Blender 3D version 2.5 is being developed via re-developing the entire software, so it's given us time to look at the big picture and review our options.
The main pro's for Blender are that we have extensive experience developing/3D animation/3D modeling using it.
Cons, well our first con to date has come up following a meeting I had with a rep from NaturalMotion regarding using their product: Morpheme.
After a great hour and a half meeting with their rep, I feel this is the best possible solution to many issues we face at the current stage of development.
Firstly, we can slipstream development of numerous tracks into 1 track, secondly, they have extremely personal/professional support for their product, whereas Blender does NOT. Third, we have more options to comb through, as NaturalMotion prefers we use a game engine for which they've already created integration for their product.
The last fact being said, I WOULD in fact be happy to front a team to develop a new integration for Python and Blender 3D, it could be a goal/intention of our development project.
What I haven't been mentioning is my evaluating of XNA/XBOX's game kits. That is a whole other story; lets just say it's not out of the question, and will create another area for the team to expertise in.
In any case. The Dog Food Project moves forward and the Video Game is taking steps closer to real life!
This is a URL Shortening service which requires no sign-up, and offers great simplicity. Currently it shows you all of the URLs you've made shortened links for, based on IP.
The back-end functionality is in fact better than bit.ly, ow.ly as well as tinyurl. I can make sure the URL is real very accurately, it protects against anything other than HTTP, HTTPS or FTP addresses, it takes into account common url typos, and it also avoids duplication, by checking against already made Hashes as well as URLs that have already been processed.
My intended functionality which is in the works behind the scenes is to have a search engine to search for a specific URL's previously created Hash, and when found it will immediately show you the information on that link including total clicks and date created.
An API is in the design phase to allow developers to create and account in order to get API code to have their own applications and websites access the Hash making functionality of the website.
I have planned on buying the domain tds.ca for this website, and its hash lengths to start (for the first 40 thousand or so hashes) will be 4, therefor making all links made by the service shorter than any of the competition.
To add some punch to this I have a planned aggressive marketing strategy in place to promote it as inexpensively as possible.
5:27 pm - Post Category: Nickness Posted from my BlackBerry Storm
Alright so to start off my mid 2010 round of updates, I've added a few really handy scripts to my site (which I'll explain below), I've made the site navigation significantly better and I have a whole lot of ToDo's to get a better feel going on.
So the handy scripts I mentioned are 3 in total (to start); an AJAX web based Image Map generator, a Javascript shrinking tool (removes js comments and whitespace in js code) as well as a CSS shrinking tool (which accomplishes the same goal ad the JS counterpart).
As for my layout, I've widened the website to 1000px, because how many people actually use monitors with a resolution less than that anymore? Even the new netbooks output wider res!
I've finally had some inspiration for a nice looking navigation too! I felt there is no need for the links to Tensioncore and Tensioncore.org as they were redundant anyways since they are on my sidebar already.
Finally the dreaded list of things todo is getting more realistic and my blog is starting to fall into my vision for creating a freeware blog project.
I intend to add some core functionality as: multiple picture uploading, possible fckeditor/tinymce post composing, directory listing with file edit capabilities, a php code shrinking page, and lastly on the major projects is to make a Blackberry App allowing you to post right from your berry without the use of a web browser!
I've already added some good code such as Image editing, post editing as well as some nice social bookmaking links on individual post pages.
Yesterday marked our first (and very successful) formal business trip. The trip consisted of Tom (my business partner in Tensioncore Design Studios), Janice (girlfriend/contributor) and myself.
We did a day trip to Victoria, traveling via Pacific Coach lines from Downtown Vancouver to Downtown Victoria. The trip started at about 2am when we had to take a nightbus from New Westminster to Downtown Vancouver in order to be there for a 5:30am boarding.
The traveling portion of the trip consisted of the bus going to Tsawassen for the first ferry at 7am, then from Swartz Bay to Victoria by 9:30am.
The ferry was smooth sailing and we actually arrived in Victoria at 9:15am. After a detour to the mall for coffee we had officially started our day in Victoria!
The intention of the trip was to take photos for design reference, as well as to develop the main storyline/plot of the game.
Over lunch at the mall we essentially flushed out the entire storyline of the game including the 2 main characters (yes I said 2), including all of the major details of the game which will set ours apart from the competition.
By the end of our day the trip was hugely successful including me taking almost 600 photos, a tour of Parliament, all of our main characters main locations were idealized, and a few major points of the game had been established.
We took a personal detour around 4pm to Beacon Hill and the beautiful shoreline and some nice pictures.
By 5 we were very happy with our accomplishments and we decided to call the day 2 hours early and opt to take the 5:45pm Bus back to Vancouver instead of the 7:45pm.
Its time the unnamed proof of concept game I've been working on for years be developed.
The project has a new team (for now), and with this team I will make the game finally happen.
The project is being brought back from the dead as business with our Web Hosting is starting to speak for itself. Unlike previously stated, we will continue to use the Blender 3D game engine complimented with Python coding run on Windows.
It all officially starts today with what will be my master development plan and timeline.
Hi, this post is going to cover my last month or so and the new fish tank I have.
This post has definitely not gone without some drama. Firstly, I've been meaning to get around to the blog for about 2 or 3 weeks now (and it constantly bogs my mind down when I think about it). Secondly, it's taken time to actually get to where I am now that I can comfortably write a meaningful post on a single subject, and well I could go on but I'm sure you get the picture.
Precisely, my new tank is an All-Glass 150 Gallon (Long) tank, with dimensions (in inches): 72W x 29T x 18D. This thing is made of half inch glass!
My room needed to be in dismay to accommodate the new tank:
The big guy takes up the whole corner of my room!
The tank sat there nicely with it's matching All-Glass lids for a week or so until I was able to finish my custom stand.
I built a custom stand do distribute the weight more evenly onto the floor since the total filled weight of the tank including the tank itself is nearly 1800lbs! Almost a Tonne of water and glass... now if I had a flimsy fish store stand, it would only cover 9 square feet on my floor, or about 200lbs per square foot!
I designed my custom stand to be at least 14 square feet (just a random number) and it ended up a completed size of just over 18 square feet, effectively doubling the square footage of just the tank, and easily halving the pounds per square foot (PSF) of weight to just under 100 PSF!
The stand:
The tank on the stand (empty):
Setting this tank up has been a lengthy process, and expensive process. Totally worth it.
A short break down of costs (not incl. taxes):
• Tank $600
• Matching lids $70
• Rena XP3 Filter about $150
• EHIEM Heater $60
• Wood for stand and a case of beer for my old Boss to use his shop for the weekend: $95 for wood, $25-12/cs btl Heineken
• 3 Bags of GEOSystem Substrate $75
• Flourescent lighting (2 x 36in GLO T5 double light fixtures) $350
• Discomfort during all of this priceless
So, all in all, when its all said and done, just under $1500 before taxes....about $1600 after.
Here's a neat picture (we were enjoying the first filling of the tank during the Canucks game 6 of their first round against LA):
And finally it's permanent resting place (sans-dirt/fish):
I've entirely ignored my blog over the last two months, unintentionally of course, but there's a reason; I've been busy with my business.
Being an entrepreneur is certainly everything proverbs make it out to be. Its a 25 hour a day job. It would benefit from 8 day weeks. It's tiring, but if you're dedicated and true it's 100% worth every late night, every drop of coffee and every penny you put into it.
Personally, I wouldn't trade my decision to start my own business for anything. This year is the start of something big for me. It has come fast, however I was prepared for it.
Tireless nights kept me way from blogging, but now I'm seeing trends in my work habits so I'm going to start working on a schedule. No exceptions. Doing things this way is the only way I will stick to self imposed deadlines as well as deadlines of clients.
And now I find myself amidst my first planned advertising/marketing campaign which will be a month or more of full work days and late nights.
Again, I wouldn't trade it for anything. So as a message to anyone with a good idea, if you are thinking of starting your own business: stop thinking and start it!
Expect consistent postings from me from now on too.
Vancouver is seriously starting to show the level of things with having the Olympics in town this Friday.
We saw a lot of various sources complaining and wasting their energy protesting and overall just whining about the Olympics, but nobody can escape the truth that they are starting on Friday.
Today in The Province news paper reads a headline that all of the normal people already knew about the nay-sayers: cynic has tears come to eyes at opening ceremony rehearsal.
Even the most negative towards these games can see the good in them if they just open their eyes and quit annoying people because they've got nothing better to do.
This is the single most impressive event I've witnessed in my life....and I'm damn proud its happening in the city I was born in!
Look at the pride people have in Canada, and how much people have embraced these games, and they haven't even began. I'm not the only proud Vancouverite.
I may not drive but if I did, I completely understand the road closures and I [i]do feel[/i] for the drivers, but this is NEVER going to happen again, so deal with it, plan a different way to work, take transit, and enjoy it instead of wasting everyone's time and your energy, maybe put that energy towards something useful.
So since I had planned to re-purpose this site and start adding structure to my blog posts, I'm going to start now.
There will be a few changes, ones that are still being worked out, but some of these changes will include Tensioncore.org having it's existence linked directly to NickDodd.com, CDN Senate News will now have their own news posted to NickDodd.com (Categorized), and more inclusion of photography to name a few.
In just under a month I've taken well over 1300 pictures using my new 50D. I will start posting up my favorites, and some that I want criticism on, all in the name of learning.
Learning takes a lot of time, and my posts will document this learning with "micro-Galleries" as a part of the posts.
So I've decided to dive deeper into the codebase/library structure that I've already put dozens, if not hundreds of hours of time into.
I want to add Tags, Search, dynamic categorizing (to do with searching and pairing tags with specific categories within search results), and I suppose that I will end up merging the mostly-unused Tensioncore.ORG with NickDodd.com, having Tensioncore.ORG the software-sharing, informational hub of NickDodd.com.
First on the list will in fact be finally adding support for Editing Posts, tied in with adding/editing photos while composing new Blog Posts (This is a big one on my todo list).
It's truly amazing how clear it is in the Winter on a day much like today.
Visibility is dozens of miles, infinite in some places. There is NO smog at all, which is where a day like today is vastly different than a similarly sunny/clear day in the Summer.
Summer comes with a lot of smog, and the visibility is poor at best when it is clear for miles.
PS. Today turned out alright. I had a very rough night on my mentality last night. I felt as though I didn't even need to be alive and I had to fight against a lot of real/honest thoughts in my head and go against what I actually wanted to be the outcome. I "fought my demons".
I was ready to leave Vancouver at 3am and go to Seattle or even just on a Greyhound as far as I could go. I was actually going to leave and "run away" essentially from everything and everyone I know and not come back.
It took a lot of support from 2 very important people to get me to stay.
Once I got to work my mindset hadn't changed much, but my negatives were quickly shot down by people who care, and the only thing that mattered was that they cared.
Now I feel better about myself than I have in a long time. Chapter Four is here and in full effect. This story is going to turn out alright.
6:06 am - Post Category: Nickness Posted from my BlackBerry Storm
I've looked at my life very seriously recently and in the past on occasion, and I've come to see things a certain way.
Partly being influenced by great movies, games and even some really great people I've known, life is a story.
You tell your story to people, its ups and its downs. Some of us keep the personal details close to our heart, others indulge.
My life to this point has had 3 chapters. Three distinct periods of time in my life that will affect me and the person I am today and forever.
Chapter One: Beginning Life (0 to 11 years old), Chapter Two: Establishing Existence (11 to 17 years old) and Chapter Three: Love vs Life (17 to my current age of 21).
I can definitely go into a lot of detail about the 3 chapters as they have happened, but that is for another day.
Today, I feel Chapter Three is ending. In reality the subject of chapter three is something that will effect you your entire live, however life must go on and it does go on just the same as life changes, and that's where I feel I am right now; in the middle of a significant change.
I don't know what to expect, what I do know is Chapter Four is coming.
This website seems like it needs work... one-thirty in the morning on Sunday night before I have to go to work Monday morning seems like a good time to get crackin'.
First things first, even though I like my top links bar (and it's so new too), I'm going to shorten it up and move the outbound links to the sidebar, and I'm going to officially add a Gallery to the website!
I'm happy, excited, confused, life is very interesting and throwing me curve-balls. Time to get my head up in the air and get ready for a nice windy ride.
I'm going to be actively working on the website in order for it to appeal more and work effectively when it comes to traffic.
I may or may not completely remove our current MySpace account, I sort of feel like I want to reduce the number of websites just to make things easier on the social networking side of things, just keep it to Facebook/NF.com etc.
So I've had my storm for a week now. So far so good. A few hiccups, a nuke and a new BlackBerry OS and things are looking good.
I tried everything out stock until Friday when I really started getting annoyed by the stupid "Activation Required" thing on the main screen. I got a couple blue screens while attempting to read some binary data from the device.
This problem is so common on Google that it took me until last night to solve.
The problem being that the version of the Storm I have is Telus and the phone half expects to connect to Telus to activate itself on their network, I however am using it unlocked on Rogers.
So I quickly learned it needed to be manually activated by dialing an "MSL" code which in the US on T-Mo and Vodafone is simply 000000, in Canada however on Bell and Telus this code is different on every individual phone. This means ts hard-coded into the ROM and must be discovered manually.
Here's where it gets tricky. You must install uniCDMA preferably to a 32bit XP machine. You'll need your BlackBerry Desktop software installed first too.
A very important factor must be true for the following to work, Your BlackBerry OS must be 4.7.0.76 (if Your OS is newer it very likely wont work once you get to reading the memory)
Once we're this far get your Berry plugged into the computer and ensure its showing up in the Device manager COM ports on COM4 at least.
Next fire up uniCDMA and in change Mode to QUALCOMM then under setup change the port to reflect COM4. Now this is where it gets important, go to the Memory tab and enter in the starting address 0x17C455BE and length of 524288. Before you go reading Your phones memory BE CERTAIN your Berry's OS is 4.7.0.76! This is the only way to read the memory with success.
Firstly before getting dirty click the Read all button at the top mostly to be sure your Berry is connected properly. Now when all the random fields are filled in with Your Berry's info go back to the memory tab and click Read and Save to file...
If all is well at this point a box should appear telling you its reading the memory...a few minutes will pass and it will end and you'll now have a binary file to read with your favorite he editor/reader (I used HexWorkshop).
What you need to do is look for 6 numbers all together in a continuous string (easiest way is to search different single numbers in the "String search). The found number is your MSL code, disconnect your Berry and dial ##msl (msl being your 6 digit code from the bin file), Hit call, a menu will appear change the Mobile Directory Number that your phone thinks is your phone number to your actual 10 digit phone number, and finally hit your BB menu and Save.
Congratulations your phone will now bear the lovely word Rogers instead of Activation Required!
I knew smart phones were smart and BlackBerry's smarter, but this phone is simply amazing. The step up from a regular phone(a Sony W810i in my case) to a smartphone (Sony G900) was pretty significant with super fast internet,automatic email downloading and location based map services
The G900 is a great phone with a decently large touch screen, and a pretty wide variety of apps being a Java smartphone. The only issue I had with it was a less than superior signal.
Now let's talk BlackBerry. And I don't want to talk about a pearl, I'm talking storm. So far I've seen a lot of random bashing, but I love it! Funny story though I'm on the rogers network, and they do not have this phone yet, nor have support on the actual network for the phone, but surprise, I'm writing this post from my Storm. The phone is pretty amazing for almost everything, with the only exception being the web-textfield editing. Its so incredibly terrible that if you notice a spelling mistake or want to go back and change something after...you may as well backspace all the way through the post and re-type from that spot and you'll get done faster than trying to touch-navigate your way through editing it.
The reception is outstanding and its speed on the network I'd incredible. As for the touch key board, at first I didn't like it but now I'm pretty fast, and usually I get ahead of the animation following my clicking. I'm going to assume with the release of the Storm 2 that web-text navigation is one of the fixes.
I do disagree with all of the people who have criticized the movement of the actual screen (it moves laterally and horizontally within the frame of the phone). I think it is necessary to the experience of the click screen.
I world like to see a better and more featured email, on my G900 had 3 emails set up using default software. Its very important for me to have all 3 emails set up on my phone since one is my personal email, one my website admin account and the other my support address. This is the only built in feature I will be changing to 3rd party.
So I just wrote a new script to work with my website, its actually compatible and modular to be able to be used in other php-based websites, and its extremely light-weight.
The code, called The Human-Verification Code, is one of those things you see on certain website where you are asked to type in the letters that you see in image in order to complete the form.
The difference is my code is super-light weight, and simple.
It doesn't require you to have a script that uses other scripts from another website such as some of the "free" (and too common) codes out there require you to do.
There is no need for a database either, it is completely self-contained, and also doesn't produce any image on the server, only a temporary image, which is deleted after being displayed.
The random letters produced are also customizable (in length, Strength, and in choices of letters/numbers etc.)
This script is the first one I've finished on the first try and with outstanding efficiency too! My start-to-finish development time was about 45 minutes.
I am going to add some functionality to id later though (which is only going to make is better not change it)...I'm going to add the ability for it to produce multiple strings at once (for a longer and more complex code to have to re-type).
If you want to see it in action, please leave a comment on this post! It is in use on my comment page!
So I've almost finished my room's transformation to a home studio, it's super awesome.
The idea/vision is for a comfortable, easy-to-work in space that has potential for inspiration, and a great place to just hang out and enjoy music, movies etc.
I've always said that my room is a "Studio apartment suite-in-a-bedroom", now it's going to be a recording studio/studio apartment-in-a-bedroom!
The only real work left is to get the accoustics working (which will also mean buying a new microphone/mic setup).
When I do whats commonly called "one-shot" recording-when you record everything at once, rather than piece by piece (vocal track, guitar track, bass track etc, editing them together, etc- I get some guitar noise in the background of the vocals, and noise echoing from the wall directly behind my point of singing.
As for a list goes, I'm looking at a new stand for my Shure SM58 that has a sound echo cancellation screen (don't know the proper name), and a new Processor for my computer (so it can handle more audio processing). As well, maybe some "StudioFoam", if the microphone screen doesn't work the way I need it to.
OH OH, and my favorite, most exciting addition I'm looking forward to is getting new 12" mains for my old speakers (which actually have a mid-range speaker, not just a Main and a Tweeter).
I just got home from the best job I've ever worked! I worked for 8 hours at the SOLD OUT AC/DC concert at BC Place.
What I did: Worked essentially as a janitor.
What I really did: worked my ass off in 20 minute intervals, and proceeded to catch a whole song at a vantage point of my choice... for about 6 or 7 full songs.
MAN THEY WERE AWESOME! holy crap so much energy in those guys it's off the wall. I could tell they had an amazing time at this particular show because If I'm not mistaken it was their last show in Canada for the Black Ice Tour.
The work...I would have done that for free had I known how amazing the show was going to be...but nonetheless I will get some money next week for doing it!
As I develop the code back end to this blog, I delve further and further into social websites and social media.
I have found though, that I am not doing this purely as a part of a trend or anything of the sort, but more as an everyday thing just like using MSN used to be (when it was in it's heyday).
I'm developing my blog with the idea in mind that these are all things we're going to be accustomed to before too long.
I've just added a "latest tweet" to the top of the page, and now I'm starting to write the code to be more of an actual "software" rather my own blog.
Look out, my blogging software is on it's way to being full reality. Please comment on what you think of it.
I'm slowly building my database of content for my Tensioncore.org, which is basically nothing as of this post (Please note, Tensioncore.org has been online for abour 6 months if I recall correctly).
One thing I'm is I'm doing is developing scripts, programs, and simple utilities to make everyone's life easier when using Windows.
Another, well my Themes for WM6, UIQ3 etc, along with simple programs.
Also, my video game development with Zed and ZedBeta.
You know the gallery you are linked to in this blog sometimes? well that's one of my freeware projects, as well as this blog code, and even some simple hit-tracking and PageRank tools...it's endless the things we come up with...
Anything you'd like to see on Tensioncore.org...Something I could do for free for everyone to see and use? I'm open to suggestions, I've got a few people to help develop, so I'm not going in solo. I'm serious about "Tensioncore.ORG" (the way it's refered to within the business.
Just to put it out there for those interested; My friends and I were a very explorative group of people, and in the time Woodlands was still around (before development of the land), we explored every single square foot of all of the buildings and hallways and tunnels that existed on the land.
For me alone, I have about 250 pictures from within it's now-gone walls, from day trips, fun nights, over-nighters, etc.
I will when I get a chance, add a photo gallery of all my pictures, as I know this is a very important historical site, which is now gone, and while me and my friends did our exploring of it for many years, we ourselves even knew it's importance.
If you are interested in seeing these pictures or knowing about what I saw/did and know about Woodlands, please don't hesitate to contact me and I can show you pictures (if not in the gallery yet) and I can answer any questions regarding the matter.
I've been on the new MKIII Skytrain (the newest trains to run on the current Expo and Millennium lines). These things are beautiful, and thinking about blogging about them was a great idea, but suddenly I have 2 broken Knuckles from a lovely accident of which we're not going to talk about, because those involved know the story and that's all that's important.
So I was thinking: "I don't have any way to upload pictures while I create posts, and add them all at the same time without having to re-load the page." To me this is a bit of a bummer, because that's quite a nice convenience, and it's something I don't know how to accomplish with PHP, So I'm going to learn.
In the meantime, I'm going to just save the pictures to the Images folder of my website, and just link to them from my post (As I've done in the past).
Some nice pictures for you of the new Skytrains in my new Gallery-on-the-fly:
Okay So the Micro Gallery needs some work, but I had a huge revelation while I made the code to do that: I can use an embedded page to upload files and get the code for the Blog Post (since the embedded page will load separately and run it's own scripts without refreshing the main window)...
For all of those with problems gaining access to the internet on your old Laptops with PCI to CardBus slots (where the Ethernet card just so happens to be parked), and were lucky enough to not know that MicroXP DOESN'T come with the PCMCIA driver for old PCI/CardBUs adaptors...I have Great news.
It's extremely hard to find these old drivers, but I found 1 place for the TE drivers (texas Instruments), and I had to figure it out myself for the Toshiba toPCI100 PCI to CardBus adaptor which I just so happen to have as well....
If you have the Texas Instruments CardBus, please Go here.
For those in my situation (with an old Toshiba Satellite) you will need a Copy of the XP SP3 CD, or a copy of the XP SP2 CD. These both contain the precious PCMCIA driver for your CardBus (Please Note: the Vista driver doen't support this old hardware, and thus the reason you need XP's Version of the driver).
Once you install, disable the use of the CardBus adaptor in the Device Manager, then restart your computer...once restarted, insert your Disk, so the Automatic Hardware discovery sees the disk.
You will likely need to Browse manually to the i386 folder and select it, since it for some reason might not on it's own. Do this for both existences of the PCMCIA CardBus, and restart Again. Shazam, you've got a working CardBus, make sure to install the appropriate drivers for your Ethernet card before hand as well. Just like that, internet is born.
We finally have a root, trusted certificate for our web server, provided by StartSSL.
With this certificate, I'm going to get the highest level of verification for Tensioncore's main site, and add regular ones to other Tensioncore Sites.
Something that is very interesting to me as well is the CA's WoT program, which sees Notary's to the Online presence of StartSSl, meaning People can issue Certificates, as well as verify users/site owners in person rather than online.
First on the list was to take the Start SSL Test, verifying that I know the rules of the program...Passed 10 out of 10.
The next step is to provide "Class 2 Identification", meaning I will need to provide 2 pieces of Photo Identification to StartSSL over Fax, email etc, or to meet with a Notary.
After this, I will need to meet with 2 notary's to prove my existence, and then become a notary myself.
This is the newest development model I've developed for Tensioncore as a whole. I use C#, VB.net, PHP and MySQL to rapidly deploy new applications.
Using these languages and coding models together with MySQL connectors, intranet websites (secured) and Visual Studio, I've been able to produce single, ready-to-use applications in less than a work day (full production-use applications).
I might develop this story more later, I only just finished the minor tweaks over the last few days, just thought I'd share...
-Added Note:
I just realized that I've accomplished one of my goals in life; create a computer-related acronym! I always loved how Microsoft could repeatedly come up with new acronyms all the time and for years I've wanted to make my own, and now I have!! RCLAD
As an MSDN Plus subscriber, I really enjoy getting the fresh out-of-the-box Operating systems when they are posted, Windows 7 was no exception.
So far, my experience is far better than the first time around with the new OS. For starters it installed in like 20 minutes flat...compared to Vista which took nearly 3 hours the first time I installed it.
Secondly, an important thing for me since I test using Virtual Server 2005, is that the Virtual Machine Additions work like a charm from the moment I turned the virtual machine on. With Windows 7's Beta release the VPC (virtual PC) crashed whenever I attempted to load the VMAdditions, and not to mention BARELY WORKED. The performance is still an issue with RC1, but overall about 25 times better, faster and responsive.
The first thing to go to my black list is the UAC still being very intrusive with its entire screen overlay. Second...well I haven't got to a second yet.
Out of the box, it handles the enterprise-level networking like a walk to the grocery store (which for me is literally right around the corner). I have my virtual machines set up on a Virtual Network interface which is connected physically into my LAN so it has optimal performance. Oddly I usually have to do some network settings tweaks when I start a new VPC, but with Windows 7 I simply connected it to the network with Automatic Configuration, and everything was ready to go.
You can skip reading this parenthesis section if you only care about Windows 7 and not my network.
(You might be thinking: "well duh? what else would you do?", right? Well, with my network I've tailored most of it to require the manual configuration sort of as a security safe-gaurd, also mostly because I had no way to accomplish automatic governing before on my Windows Network other than the basic DHCP-Which I don't use for security reasons as well, rather I have a Domain Controller which has Group and Network Policy rules for joining computers)
...Back to the topic; I'm writing this post from Windows 7 on Firefox which seems faster than normal (on WS2008), a good plus. More importantly I DID NOT need to go into and configure my hosts file in order to view this website! (read it "DID NOT") (since the website is on the local intranet, 99 times out of 100 you need to add the website into your hosts file in order to view it in a browser at its domain name address).
Many applications I use have had 0 problem on Windows 7, although there are 2 apps originally designed for XP which don't work oddly enough, which sends me to my next plus point; Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode.
A new feature is available as a download for Windows 7 that essentially adds a Windows XP Pro Virtual Machine into your system. What this does is allows you to install programs to your Windows 7 machine that are meant for Windows XP, and run them IN Windows 7, while the program is being rendered and in fact run out of the "Windows XP Mode" virtual machine (seamless, fast, 100% virtual-made-compatibility with Windows 7).
The only downside to Windows XP Mode/Windows Virtual PC, is it requires Hardware Level Virtualization, and 2 gigs of ram.
I was very surprised and happy to see the Hostable Web Core added into Windows, since I've used this a couple times as a Great base for Mobile Websites.
As for the UI of '7 it's a nice clean update to the Vista interface which seems a little bland after using it now for 3 years. The taskbar is an incredible improvement to the sublte changes in the explorer add just enough touch for this OS to be a refreshing new look for 2009 (hopefully).
I've finally finished my commenting system, so anyone can comment on my posts (well almost anyone... I do have some safe gaurds in place to prevent that thing we all hate...You know what I'm talking about haha)
Anywhoo. Some little finishing work and the website will be nearly complete, I think the only thing left to do is to fix the calendar thing on the side "Past Posts" and maybe some other minor things I can't think of at this very moment.
It seems a lot of people have one. Of MY name...but then again if you search Nick Dodd on Google, you might be searching for one of the many Professor Nick Dodd's that are out there...or maybe you just heard about me from someone or have one of my business cards randomly... (Funny becaue I've only given about 3 out since I made them last week)
Anyhoo, I have been browsing my hitlog...Yes my website has a hitlog, it doesn't collect any personal information though, just where the hit came from and the previous page visited)... and anyways, I have found a serious amount of google searches who's subject was none other than my name; Nick Dodd.
Another neat thing I have learned about my website from the hitlog, is that promoting works, also that frequent updates also work!! Google has a "Feedreader" crawler which I would presume is a crawler for sites such as this one, ones with frequent updates to content.... :)
I have to give my most sincere apologies for the recent downtime which effected all of our web sites including my own personal web site, an error occured in which the explorer file on my computer corrupted itself and so i didn't think that the web sites would be affected...
I guess I was wrong in my thinking, the whole server was down, but very silently was it so.
I was able to restore the system without any durastic measures, i simply restarted the system in safe mode and did some command line tinkering to replace the corrupted explorer with one of it's many back ups that exist on the OS.
I also found some services were functioning wrong and corrected them, and everything was very nicely back to normal, in fact better.
The irony in this was that I had worked on all of the servers a few nights before to enhance overall network and systems security... and I didn't even noticed this issue.
I apologize for the recent downtime, but in keeping with our goal, downtime was minimal as we re-organized the office-living space... afterward presented some minor internet connection problems, but all is well, and the downtime was in fact planned. **99.38%**
Well, here's for my first post about Tensioncore. I've recently finished writing my new business plan which happens to be 46 pages long.
The news being, I'm now in the process of proof reading it, and man I never realized the amount of errors I make even when I'm writing a professional Business Plan.
Every page has fixes and little changes on it, I even made a note to change my data table of the web hosting plans...since it was sooooo stupid, I had no clue.
With the new business plan, I merged Tensioncore Game Studio with Tensioncore Design... into Tensioncore Design Studios which, oddly, is going to add a few more pages into the plan.
Anyone up for being a promotions specialist? I'm getting ready to start heavy marketing and PR. If you want, just spread the word of Tensioncore, that'll be a good start //**winks.
Finally I've re-designed my blog, I took the inspiration from my former WordPress fail blog and designed the new one based on the old "theme", I am very extremely happy with the way it looks, and I will return to regular blogging now that I have a good interface for doing so, and it wont fail, I can guarantee that since I've written every line of code that runs the damn website!
Here are a couple of quotes from my very last WordPress post ever:
I hate Wordpress. OMG it sucks so much, and I say this only from a coding back-end standpoint...when I write pages and posts I'm very picky about the layout, and Wordpress just Hacks up my layout and it looks like so much shit.
Me on writing the code for my own blog:
I thought I didn't have to do, since I AM a web developer, I should be able to get away from it in my own blog, and use some software...well I guess I was just dreaming.
However for the most part, we're finished (on the visual front). I'm going to hugely add to the back end of the blog, and eventually add User Commenting, possilbe trackback stuff....
Oh and the blog doesn't display too well in Internet Explorer 7 which is what I'm posting in at the moment, but all will be fixed, and again I'll be creating a "desined for Firefox" logo! haha...onto Opera and Chrome for testing now...
So this new blog is working out pretty well, I've written it really well, and in fact I've discovered new ways to achieve security as well as new ways to include files (in php).
It's great, and with this code I'm going to write a freeware Blogging Source Code with minor templating capabilities, but full brandability.
Nickness