Fergus

Fergus

[	website	\|	My Website	]
[	userinfo	\|	livejournal userinfo	]
[	archive	\|	journal archive	]

New Wallpaper	[Nov. 19th, 2006\|04:44 pm]
I've been going through some crazy crap and I needed an outlet. This is what I made: Click for a larger version.
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(no subject)	[Nov. 15th, 2006\|08:45 pm]
I've continued work on my latest script and updated it a bit. Here's version 2.0 of my sleep visualizer. Source code is here. In addition to the changes in the code, I've now got a full week's worth of sleep data. Seems like I've gotten closer to a normal schedule :)
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(no subject)	[Nov. 13th, 2006\|06:06 am]
Whether it has to do with serotonin weirdness or just environmental factors, my sleep schedule has always been KUH-RAZY. University is no exception (look at this post's timestamp). I don't feel like I'm being terribly unhealthy, my sleep averages out to the normal amount. I just feel like while everyone operates on the Earth 24-hour cycle, I've got something closer to a 26- or 28-hour cycle. Time is an awkward thing to get my head around. It's very abstract and you can't sit down and say "I'm looking at time" or "I'm feeling time." Those statements are absurd. So in order to visualize what my sleep is actually like, I wrote a little PHP script that makes an infographic timeline of sleep cycles: Ferg's Sleep Visualizer What you're seeing there are my sleep patterns for the last 5 or so days. Sleep is the darker shade, consciousness is represented by the lighter shade. Midnight of each day is denoted by the blue line. Right now all the sleep data is hard coded (the source code is here by the way), but I'm working on a frontend that will allow you to put in your own data. This is a fun little project because it is so lightweight and trivial, a bit like my colour theory toy. Eventually I want to add some cooler stuff, like the ability to put in a month's worth of data and have it average out so you can see a smooth shaded average of your cycles. Anyway, enjoy.
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(no subject)	[Oct. 30th, 2006\|04:23 pm]
I've been feeling especially crappy at university since I noticed that my creative output has all but dried up. I've been doing some pretty awesome architecture in the Sims 2 (Don't laugh, have you tried creating anything worthwhile in the game?), but nothing as far as visual arts, or game design, or anything else goes. I popped open Photoshop last night to try to do something or anything at all, but mostly failed. The only thing I could get done looked like a hotel screen printing: On a positive note, I got the new Basement Jaxx and Beck albums and they are both absolutely freaking amazing. I recommend an immediate usage of the copyright infringer 3000.
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Codename Mimsy	[Jul. 30th, 2006\|07:33 am]
I've been frustrated programing the backend of my online card game lately, so I decided to shift gears and work of some of the graphics, I figured I'd show them off for the time being because I like how they turned out: First up is the card play area. This functions a 4x4 grid that the cards fit into. I tried to keep the gridding subtle but still visible enough so people can see where the cards go. These next two images are the backgrounds where the cards that haven't yet been placed on the board sit, one for each player. Notice the little decorative pixel art on the corners. Blue Red As always, questions/comments/suggestions welcome.
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Javascript Animation Library	[Jul. 1st, 2006\|08:06 am]
As part of the development of my online game, I've worked hard trying to figure out to add (fun) dynamic elements to the largely static medium of HTML. So, I've been messing around with making a JavaScript library for the animation of HTML elements, specifically images. Here's what I have so far: http://arcolz.net/anim/demo.html Click the various images for demos of some of the effects. Reload to do them again. Right now, it works on Mozilla Firefox but not Internet Explorer. Previous attempts of mine at this sort of HTML animation have ended up mediocre. Things would move, I even got the flip effect working, but there was no consistent system or way to sync the different animations up. With this latest iteration, I set up an instruction queue. A set of functions insert the commands for the effects, but they aren't actually executed until the start() function is called. Similarly, the stop() function stops the processing of the queue, at any time. It's not ground breaking stuff, but I think its a pretty cool implementation. Have fun with the demo, and leave any questions, comments, or problems ^__^
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Web-Based Programming	[Jun. 27th, 2006\|04:15 am]
I've been continuing work on a project that has been stealing alot of my time. It's a PHP-based online card game, set in a victorian steam-punk world. It hasn't been very frustrating, but it is time consuming and tedious, the main reasons why I'm not planning on going into programming as a career. Over the last few hours, I've encountered the type of headache that makes programming seem more like a punishment than a hobby. The issue revolves around the PHP mail() function. I'm using it to send out those standard "You have ben registered at BLAH. Click here to confirm" type mails. It's pretty simple to use: it takes an email address, subject, and message, then sends an email. Not that difficult, but when something goes wrong, it's hell to figure out what's the problem. Let's take a approximate look at the process of sending an email from a PHP script: PHP Code ( My part of the process ) PHP Mail() Function PHP Interpreter Apache Server Sendmail Software The Internet Receiver's Server Receiver's Mail Server Receiver's Mail Client Receiver's Mail Spam Filter Receiver's Inbox Thousands of things can go wrong on each of those steps, and only the first one is in my control. Tons of variables could be awry, more than a human can comprehend, and no information to point where the issue lays. Even PHP says the mail was sent successfully. Very frustrating, especially when a logic-based process (programming) is turned into a guess-and-check wild goose chase. The only real solution is to move to a different aspect of the problem, so I guess I'm just going to do that. Ignore the confirmation emails and do something else. Sadly, the nasty taste of a broken chunk of code just doesn't leave the mouth that easily.
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New Version of LJI coming down the pipeline.	[Jun. 30th, 2005\|02:28 pm]
Maybe you've seen my LiveJournal Image Feed? It displays the last 25 images posted to LJ (Even those posted to private entries, hehe), linked the to entries that they appear in. There's alot of quiz results and banal prom pictures and such, but every couple reloads you see something really awesome. It's a good timewaster. Communities have formed around sharing cool photos they've found on the feeds, usually using forum software. This seemed so inefficient. Why have to use two sites and two different piece of software to do something that could be done with one? I took inspiration from Japanese Image BBSes such as 2Chan, and combined the LJI feed with an image BBS. So what I have now is the normal LJI feed, except now each image has "recommend this image" button. By clicking on that button, you can add a comment and the image appears on a "favorite image" page. Other people can add comments to that image, or recommend new images. You don't have to register or login or anything, although it supports tripcodes for identity proofing. Unfortunately, although my software generates thumbnails for the images, the images are still hosted on a remote server. Whoever owns that server could delete or change the image, breaking the link. There's not really a way around this, besides copying the image to my server, and I'm not willing to do that for the time being because of bandwidth constraints. The entire thing is still real simple, and you don't have to do anything if you want to keep using the feed as normal. It's about 80% done as I'm writing this. The whole BBS thing is done, but I've still got to add some support for moderation and pagination. I think it's pretty cool ^_^ In the time being, check out the current version of my LiveJournal Image Feed and have fun.
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LiveJournal Image Feed UPDATE

[Jan. 17th, 2005|12:48 am]

http://nillahood.net/lji/

I guess you can call it version 2.0

Prettier, easier to use, new intructions, and more useful. I've done a major overhaul of the LJI feed software. If you need some more convicing, here's the overview to help you figure LJI out:

The Live Journal Image feed displays the last 25 images posted to all of LiveJournal.
Below the image is some data about the image: (From left to right)
- The type of journal it was posted to,
- The user who posted it,
- The filename of the image.
Click on the image to see the entry it was posted in.
Click "Fetch Again" to reload the page, fetching the newest images.
This software is open source, and can be downloaded from the LJI Code Bank

It's cool, It's a time-waster, It's ever-changing, It's Super Awesome: Tell your friends!

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