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Link Explanations

October 3rd, 2007 :: 02:17 PM


One of the bad things about this design is that there's no room to explain why I link to the sites I link to in the right-hand sidebar. The main reason I have these links listed is because they are links I visit often. I think you can learn something about another person based on what websites they visit regularly.

Sijun.com - If you're an artist, visit the forums located here. It is where a lot of skilled digital artists go to show off and talk about art. I get a lot of my desktop backgrounds from here

loirak.com - Listed mainly for sentimental reasons. This is a site my friend Ben Rhoades created. I used to be involved with it back in the late 90s (wrote some programming articles, did the logo work, etc). I believe it is no longer updated.

t-nation.com - The place where I go to get information about fitness. Critics claim that this site produces articles with an agenda to sell biotest supplements. I've noticed a slight bias in some articles (some even read like an advertisement), but generally I consider this to be authoritative on the fitness industry. Spend enough time here, and you'll understand why.

digg.com - I find this news site best suited to my taste because it has gaming and web programming mixed in with tech and other geek news. There's definitely some bad things with digg.com, but for me it is a happy median between uber-tech slashdot, and general-news fark. Since I work at such a small company, the only way I can better my skills and keep up on the industry is by visiting sites like these.

davemccombs.com, petermccombs.com, bradgill.com - friends and family websites I visit regularly, despite the lack of updates. :)

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Post By Joakim 02/18/08 :: 9:12am
Hey Joe,

Been absent from the whole adventuremaking community (well, still am) for awhile now and decided to check up on things and found you. So, what's up? Still doing adventure games or games at all?

take care / Joakim, Yokay or whatever I used to call myself, cant remember
Post By Phattie 02/22/08 :: 11:23am
Hey Joakim!

Yeh, I still pretend to make adventure games as usual; but I don't have anything to show for it yet. The current project I am doing is the blackbird project revival. It should be a pretty fun game when it comes out. I haven't been able to work on it in weeks tho. :( I got engaged, and between that and work deadlines, I've been too busy.

What about you? Are you still making games? Hows rarewolf doing? :)
Post By Joakim 02/25/08 :: 2:32pm
Ooh, congratulations on the engagement!

Haven't been making games for awhile, until just recently. We decided it should be kept secret until we have something to show for it though. Rarewolf is out of business, I'm affraid ;) Making things to ambitious kinda takes the fun out of things... that's what I've learned about pretending making games at least!

Do you still use MSN or whatever? Would be fun to talk, reminiscing about the horrible old days, etc. Don't worry, I wont force you to make some logo or whatever, haha!
Post By phats 02/27/08 :: 10:22am
Thanks :)

Ah, that's too bad about rarewolf... I have the logo for it still I think. But what is this new game you're making? is it an arcade style game? The initial part of making the game is fun for me, but then it starts turning into a chore.

I don't do chat much anymore because of work, etc.. but if you have ICQ, I'm usually online for a few hours (26261589)
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Site Updated!

September 23rd, 2007 :: 10:11 PM


Welcome to my new website! I decided to write my own blog 'cause they're easy to make and I wanted a better layout. So I stuck with the G.I Joe theme; but in the future, I might make other 'generic Joe' themes like:
Go ahead, view the source. It's beautiful. (edit: at least it was until I added all the AJAX code and imported the old blog messages)

Still to do:

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Post By Brad 10/03/07 :: 10:38am
:O This new design is awesome - What's the back end like?
I viewed the HTML and it was vclean. Did you write the captcha script? (is it the same every time?)
Post By Peter 10/03/07 :: 12:16pm
Joe, I'm pretty impressed with your work. I wish I had the skill to make my Infigo project look this. ;) You'll have to give me some tips sometime.
Post By Joe 10/03/07 :: 1:21pm
Thanks :)

The backend is PHP 5... I use the PDO lib's for database connectivity (allows binding, etc). Otherwise it's a simple read from the database and displaying in the div tags.

I got lazy on the captcha. I was going to use the GD libs to generate a 3-digit code, but then I decided no hackers are going to target my little blog :) so it's the same all the time. Captcha's are really easy to make tho, so I might do this in the future.

It's not as fancy as the Infigo project... I didn't use any xsl templates :(
Post By Brad 10/04/07 :: 7:18am
PDO, you say? That is the first I've heard of that :P I just read a little bit about it on PHP.net. Looks interesting, do you regularly make use of it?
I made a captcha script a while ago, but instead of generating random codes it just pulls them from a predefined list :(

I like how the comment boxes are like speech bubbles. I might have to steal that :P
Post By Joe 10/04/07 :: 10:43am
I stole the speech bubble idea myself :)

Yah, I use PDO for everything now. I use to have my own DB class, but it sucks in comparison. Plus, PDO uses the database's own drivers for binding and execution. It's faster and more secure.

Have you ever done GD lib stuff? it's pretty easy, you just load up a background image, draw a few random lines on it, write some letter/numbers on it, rotate them randomly, and you're done. php.net has some good example on how to use the lib. Reminded me of Allegro
Post By Brad 10/04/07 :: 11:02am
yaya I think that's what i did for my captchas (also, maybe for bradicon?). (the image stuff)
I wonder if my server would let me try that fancy PDO thing
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HDD Crash (again)

June 4th, 2007 :: 11:35 AM


I was working friday afternoon on my laptop when I noticed it was making some strange noises. I started closing things out to shut it down, but to no avail; it froze up and wouldn't boot. It turned out the HDD failed and I had to get a new one.

Here's the data I lost this go-round:

You'd think I'd learn about making backups =/

If anyone knows a good (cheap) way to try and recover data from a bad drive, let me know. I've already heard freezing the HDD might work... We tried loading it up in linux too, but couldn't get it to recognize the drive.

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Post By k 06/10/07 :: 11:49pm
Drives for me always die slowly. As opposed to freezing, which seems harsh, I would rather fridge it, and then connect it to a linux box and learn how to make the comp recognize the device, and use dd with conv=noerror to copy as much data as possible off the raw device into an image, without ever actually mounting the drive. Then one can mount the image and extract files or repair things.

This works for me (with or without the fridging) because my drives flicker in and out a little rather than just *bang!* dying for good...

But if linux won't even make a /dev/hd* for it even if one is quite gentle with the thing, waits a while, tries again later after leaving it overnight in a cool spot, fridges it a bit and tries again, who knows what to do =( Does it, like, spin when you give it power?
Post By j 06/11/07 :: 8:41am
Yah, I freezer'd it. The drive spun for 10 seconds-- not enough time for the computer to recognize it. Linux didn't recognize it at all (I tried Knoppix). =( I figure it is a lost cause now. But I resolve to start over on my projects! It's just a bummer I lost everything...
Post By k 07/26/07 :: 2:07pm
By "at all" do you mean linux would not even make a device file for it, or that it could not read the partition table or something? I don't think it should have to make it spin to recognize the drive as a whole.

Did it die slowly or suddenly?

I haven't used knoppix, but with gentoo's configuration of udev you can just do something like 'ls -l /dev/?d?' to see all the drives. I feel like all drives should somehow be recoverable, but I've never had a really nastily damaged drive.

But I'm glad to hear you will be restarting DemonReign!
Post By k 07/26/07 :: 2:12pm
Also -- if it spins when chilled one thing I have done is to put very cold ice in a plastic bag and keep the drive cold while it is running, replacing the ice as needed. If the drive has a temperature sensor you can keep an eye on the temperature with smartmontools.
Post By j 08/01/07 :: 12:55pm
I think I have pretty much moved on from hoping that I can recover the drive. It'd be very cool to get my demonreign stuff back (I had TONS of research material in there), and also my blackbird work-- which turns out to be a MUCH bigger loss than I realized. I made a list of things I lost, and it was pretty substantial. But I have gotten back to where I was with everything else I lost (I think)

Anyway, I have the bad drive on a IDE-USB device-- which is plug n' play for windows, but I don't know what special stuff has to be done for linux. I tried inserting the drive back into the laptop just to be certain, but by the time I had it in the laptop, and linux booted, the drive had defrosted.

I suppose what I could do is put the drive in the freezer, and leave the usb cable sticking out of the freezer door. Then I could plug into it with my laptop without ever taking the drive out of the fridge. The problem is condensation-- if I don't keep the drive in a bag, the ice could melt and cause some real problems. Might be worth a shot tho, since it's just about ready to go in the trash

Here are the only images I uploaded to the internet before it got fried (except for the hero6 guy- I made him after; I just put it here for fun :))

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