From the Del.icio.us blog post:

Is Delicious being shut down? And should I be worried about my data?

- No, we are not shutting down Delicious. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive.

Log in to delicious, and go to” Settings”.

Then go to “Export/Backup Bookmarks”.

Check the boxes if you want to include any Comments or Tags you have given the bookmarks. Then click “Export”.

The export comes in an HTML format…

And when you open it, it’s a very basic page of links.

That’s all there is to it.

Once you have the HTML file you can pick the source code apart, or import it to your browser, or upload it to your own website for posterity. These days with Firefox Sync, and Google Chrome’s Sync, and Windows Live Mesh’s IE Favorites Sync – there really isn’t a need for Del.icio.us, but the nostalgia still remains of the days when the bookmarking service combined with its Firefox plugin was the de facto standard for bookmarks in the cloud.

Technorati Tags: bookmarking utilities, bookmarks, del.icio.us, sunset, yahoo

Quakecon 2009 :: Gaylord Texan, Grapevine, TX :: Aug 13-16, 2009

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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!

Technorati Tags: computer case mods, dc++ for Mac, free t-shirts, lan party, quake, quakecon, quakecon 2009, quakelive

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…

Currently, the code will run through the database of posts, and find those that have shortened URLs stored for them, run a twitter search, and return/parse/store/display the resulting tweetbacks. And it does this every 5 minutes.

However, that sucks up a lot of processing power to do that, especially if you have a big blog, popular blog, or both. The Answer: A Rewrite. This one is going to run a single Twitter search for every shortened url in the database, return ALL the results once, and parse them out, store them in the database, and associate them to their respective parent posts.

So, there’s the update for why this hasn’t been released yet.

I’m also working on trying to get the retro-active TweetThis buttons working on old posts – but something isn’t working right – either it’s the original code that isn’t comparing what’s in the database to the conditional statement correctly (if this.url = “”, then make new ones), or something. It’s going to take some more testing on my own test database, since my webhost is getting antsy with all the processes I’m using.

I’ll keep everyone updated as it moves along. Thanks.

Technorati Tags: api, code, database, MySQL, Ping.fm, plugin, Programming, tweetback, tweetbacks, TweetSuite, webhost, WordPress

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).

Technorati Tags: api, beta, blog, Connect, google, server, site, Technology, ThePizzy, twitter, ut3

Of course, with any new technology I try to build or incorporate into something bigger, I first test it on my own site, the-spot.net, and then implement it elsewhere as intended.

Most of the work I had learned by reading “Professional AJAX” beforehand, and doing the XML-Http-Requests manually, and creating my own classes and such. But this time around, it was much simpler.

We implemented the Lightbox image overlay script, and found that it made use of the Prototype.js framework (for handling the asynchronous JavaScript calls) and Script.aculo.us for handling the animation of the overlaid image.

So I took it one step further, and decided to read up on the various ways to make use of these frameworks, and ended up calling all the various modules on the My Spot page of the-spot.net, it does create a problem for SEO-driven development.

If you’re looking for automatically updating content on a page that doesn’t have to change for it to happen, then you cause this code (once you include the prototype.js script in your page):

new Ajax.PeriodicalUpdater(‘products’, ‘/some_url’,
{
method: ‘get’,
insertion: Insertion.Top,
frequency: 1,
decay: 2
});

But while this code does the job to get your content updated automatically, at the given frequency in seconds (multiplied by the decay per each cycle containing unchanged content), the Google crawlers aren’t going to find it – because all that is on your page is this:

<div id=”products”></div>

…and that does not have any content in it for the Google crawlers and other search engine bots to read.

I’m still grappling with how to get content into that box for the crawlers to read, but not my users – and since my site is php-driven, I should be able to include the normal template includes enclosed in <noscript> tags:

<noscript>
<!-- INCLUDE “modules/module.html” -->
</noscript>

…in order for my pages to show content for the crawlers, but not my visitors – unless they have JavaScript turned off, of course. I’ll give it a shot though, and post more information later. I have to go back and re-edit my pages and templates to make sure they are still compliant with the original template architecture.

Technorati Tags: ajax, asynchronous javascript, code, decay, development, div, framework, frameworks, frequency, google, image overlay, insertion, JavaScript, Lightbox, noscript, PeriodicalUpdater, prototype, SEO-driven, technology, url, XHTML, xml http requests

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.

Technorati Tags: phpbb, phpbb 3.0, style, template, the-spot.net, tsn.7

There will also be some integration to popular social sites right on the My Spot page, like twitter and flickr – community based sites with an API that doesn’t require you to visit their site in order to view content.

Last night, I worked with the twitter.com API and with the RSS reader that I’ve hacked up in PHP, and turned out the twitter stream for the-spot.net’s twitter friends. That will go on the front page of the My Spot page so that everyone on tsn can know what all the other tsn members are twittering about.

The next thing I’m going to be doing with that is working on a way to allow the users to update their twitter status directly from tsn. That’s going to take a bit more work than displaying the feed, but it will be a good challenge.

On the previous version of the site, there was a flickr flash app that showed the new photos from the tsn flickr group. That will be coming back as well.

I’m also going to try to make the User Control Panel more accessible and integrate the Buddy List into the My Spot page so you can see when your favorite posters are online (since the information box at the bottom displays the last X minutes, and not “Currently” online).

I’m still trying to gather new ideas from everyone about what they’d like to see on the page…and I hope to make it modular like that previous My Spot page was so they can just be plugged in to the template based on information in the new database determining whether or not they wish to see that.

if you have any ideas – leave comments, or message me directly.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: the-spot.net, tsn7, my spot, flickr, twitter, api, programming, hacking, rss, php, tsn, community, integration, mashup

Technorati Tags: api, buddy list, community, database backend, flash, flickr, front page, members, PHP, phpbb, RSS, rss reader, style, template, the-spot.net, tsn.7, twitter

1. Open the ports

2. Download the Dedicated Server Package.

3. Install the Dedicated Server Package.

4. Create your server’s GameSpy Account.

5. Create the configuration script.

5b. Optional: Edit the DefaultGame.ini file to allow for map voting.

6. Create the batch file to load the server.

That’s all there is to it. At least, that’s all there was to mine.
Happy Fraggin’!

Update: I don’t run my server much anymore – but when I did, it worked, and I followed these instructions. I can’t provide individual support for everyone that tries to create a server, but doesn’t figure it out by these steps. I documented everything I did, step-by-step, and put them here – I didn’t do anything extra or different from what’s here. So if you have trouble getting your server up, you’re just going to have to play around with it like everyone else did before you to get their server up.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: ut3dedicated server, ut3, dedicated, internet, server, game, unreal tournament, unreal, tournament, video game, video, game, configuration

Technorati Tags: Admin, bot, configuration, configuration script, dedicated, Firewall, game, gamespy, internet, internet server, LAN, localhost, master server, ports, server, server port, server setup, tournament, UDP, unreal, unreal tournament, user, ut3, ut3dedicated server, video, video game, Windows

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.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: tsn.7, tsn, style, template, phpbb 3.0

Technorati Tags: forum, phpbb, style template, theme, tsn, tsnV

There are a few things you should note before getting started – like, the fact that I put this up within 3 hours, and can only test the logins that I have…which worked.

When you try to log in, use your same username and password that you used on tsnX

There is no Photobook, Calendar, or My Spot page right now.

There are 2 themes available, and neither of them are like the old tsnX themes – the site right now is simply a forum, but this time, EVERYTHING works (as in features and stuff)

Now, if you find something that doesn’t work properly, let me know – post a message on the site, and if you can’t post it on the site, then send me an IM or something.

Technorati Tags: Calendar, forum, Photobook, tsn, tsnX, username, version