Archive for the ‘Updates’ Category

Quakecon 2009 – The event

Updates, tech | Posted by [[Neo]] August 19th, 2009
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Quakecon 2009 :: Gaylord Texan, Grapevine, TX :: Aug 13-16, 2009

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Frankli of the-spot.net

Well, this was easily one of the best Quakecons I’ve been to since I started going in 2004.

~day_dreamer~ of the-spot.net
~day_dreamer~ of the-spot.net

The Pre-registration line went smooth without any hitches as far as my small group was concerned…and they let us in early to put our things down. I got the spot I wanted, and was able to set out placeholders to get my friends around me. I think that’s what made it better this year – sitting with the people from the-spot.net.

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Galiga, I think

When we came back the next day, there were a couple interesting case mods out in the open, but nothing that as impressive as the Optimus Prime of 2007.

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The Quad

Someone did build an idea that [wizard] and I had a while back, just didn’t have have money to fund it…a multi-PC computer mod, called The Quad. I think it should have won 1st place in the Custom Case category of the Case Mod Contest.

Mortar Shell Case

Mortar Shell Case

Instead, 1st place was taken by a guy who snagged a mortar shell box from an antique store, and turned it into a computer case – which was also a cool concept and design. I liked them both.

Hat of Douchebaggery

Hat of Douchebaggery

Friday, I played in a Street Fighter IV tournament against [wizard], = SIR JAD= and Bad-Mojo. It was the last one of the day, and we were the only ones to sign up for that round, so it was all against friends. Mojo beat JAD, I beat [wizard]…then Mojo beat me. Later on, Doug (one of wizard’s co-workers) caught a yellow hat for him at that booth’s raffle. [Wizard] turned it into the Hat of Douchebaggery.

Jenna

Jenna

Another good thing on Friday was that Jenna stopped by, and again on Saturday when she found out the school is closed and she couldn’t register for classes. So she hung out and I learned a little bit about the Mac – but more importantly found out that there is a terminal window that accepts linux commands. I was looking like a hardcore n00b when I couldn’t do the simplest things in a Mac like make a new folder…until I was able to do it all from the command line. It’s so nice to have a girl that gets the gaming culture – she is a WoW player, herself. But we couldn’t get the 3.1.3 client installed to connect to the local server there. So I finally was able to set her up on ShakesPeer (dc++ client for Mac) and in IRC. Then she started having a little more fun downloading music and stuff.

PC Perspectives

PC Perspectives

Saturday we hit up the PC Perspectives workshop and caught all kinds of free stuff. I managed a shirt and mousepad. [Wizard] caught a 1200 W power supply, and Sarge caught a heatsync – and he doesn’t even own a PC. There was one douche right in front of me, standing on his chair that caught all kinds of stuff that would have come right to me. Next year, I think they’re going to make everyone stay on the floor – several people almost fell on the computer used for the demonstrations – which was right where I was sitting.

There were only two glitches during the whole Quakecon event that were public – Thursday night they took the network down for about 1.5 hours…and Saturday night there was a power outage because a car hit a pole in Grapevine somewhere. But all in all, it was a pretty fun experience, and I’m glad for that – because they had gotten progressively worse for me, and this was the last one I was going to if the trend continued.

Well done Quakecon people!

Pick me!

Pick me! Pick me!

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TweetSuite, TweetBacks, and Ping.fm Wordpress plugin (Update)

Programming, Projects, TweetSuite, Updates, tech | Posted by [[Neo]] April 1st, 2009

Well, I sent off my plugin code to Dan Zarrella, and got the Ping.fm developers API Key approved, and got Wordpress.org to approve the plugin, and have been running it on my blog since its original announcement – but have run into a possible issue…

My webhost says it is creating a lot of “sleeper” processes on the database server, and using up a lot of the processor resources. My account was even suspended until I fixed it.

SO – I am going to be rewriting the whole thing, pretty much from scratch now, and it will only be loosely based on Dan’s version… Read the rest of this entry »

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Integrating Google Connect

Concepts, Programming, Updates, tech, thepizzy.net | Posted by [[Neo]] January 25th, 2009

I’ve been part of the Google Connect beta since shortly after it came out – but it wasn’t until recently that I actually implemented it on my blog and the parent site, www.thepizzy.net. So, if you read this (and I know there has to be at least 4 other people in the world that do), go ahead and hit the Join button on it, and let me know y’all are out there. (it helps to know one is writing to an audience instead of providing technical articles to the etherworld.)

You don’t have to worry about spam or anything – I don’t like it either.

In other news, I’m also working on a tutorial entry that describes how to get data from a Google Docs Spreadsheet. Normally, I wouldn’t worry about trying to release this code, but since it was such a pain for me to figure out (like the UT3 Server setup), I’m sure it’s a pain for others to figure out as well.

The code creates a secure-authenticated session to Google Accounts, and then requests the data from a particular cell on a spreadsheet. My code goes one step further though, and posts that data to Twitter – which means it also creates an authenticated POST request via the Twitter API.

“Why do that?’ you ask…Well, if you want to be able to update a spreadsheet from, say an iPhone or other Mobile Browser, Google Docs will not let you. But I’ll explain more in the coming entry. Be looking for that sometime this week (I hope).

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JavaScript, XHTML, & AJAX…again

Concepts, Programming, Projects, The-Spot.Network, Updates, tech, the-spot.net | Posted by [[Neo]] September 22nd, 2008

Well, I haven’t done much that was technically inclined, except for some various coding forays into the world of JavaScript, and XHTML– consequently it led me back to AJAX and XML-Http-Requests. But I didn’t bother to post anything about that, since it was work-related, and not website-related…kind of. Read the rest of this entry »

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tsn.7 Style in progress

Concepts, Programming, Projects, Updates, tech, the-spot.net | Posted by [[Neo]] April 30th, 2008

I’ve started work on the tsn.7 style and theme for the new forums, and I must say, it’s lookin’ pretty sweet. Once I get a working set going, I’ll redo the splash page to give a bit of a preview and then load it up to the forum index.

Let’s just say it’s very…shiny.

I’m still using the same blues, and there is no new logo this time (although there were attempts at creating a new one). But it combines the look and feel of tsnV with the 2 years of design experience I’ve gained since then.

No screen shots yet; I don’t have it set up with any forum information yet to show what it would look like. But if you would like to join the testers that will be using the tsn.7 theme while it gets built, then you can change it in your User Control Panel, under Board Preferences.

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