Still As Life

Rearranged

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:38:00 +0000

Today, along with plotting to take over the world with Rhi, I rearranged me desk setup, and for that matter, most of that side of the room.

I've chucked one of my bookcases up on the back of one of my desks. I've run out of room on the ground level, so logically, start building up. Tetris style.

It turned out that the bottom shelf of the bookcase is the perfect size to fit my pair of 19" widescreens with about 3mm to spare above them and about 2cm in total to spare horizontally. Sweet.

I've migrated the main work stream applications over to Quadzilla. As a result of this, I've noticed about a 50% performance decrease in the performance of Adobe Photoshop CS3 when working with large files compared to the old XP box that is around a quarter of the power of Quadzilla. That doesn't make any sense to me and I sure hope it's just a temporary problem.

I have left the old box up and running next to the new one. I need it for access to the RAID 0 array in it. At the moment, I have it plugged in to the second input in my secondary monitor, however I am accessing it predominately via the Windows Remote Desktop Connection software as this saves the trouble of switching the inputs and the keyboard and mouse.

Since moving the bookcase, I all of a sudden seem to have so much extra space. I need it since I'm planning on getting a filing cabinet soon, all the same though, it's remarkable the amounf ot space it seems to have made. I'm also thinking about getting a fourth desk from somewhere to get myself some more desk space since I seem to keep running out.

Great Food and Great Company

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 11:38:00 +0000

Thanks to Tim and his wife Judith of Spy Journal and Jethro Consultants for inviting Rhi and I over for dinner last night. We had a great time and the food was awesome.

Tim and Jude keep Stimsons Pythons, bearded dragons, lizards, heaps of fish, and even more pets. I got to hold a snake and a dragon for the first time! Probably something I should get used to since Rhi is hoping to get her spotted python on Thursday (she didn't get her license in time to get it this weekend).

It still amazes me how placid they were, and how content they were to be held.

Tim also has a very, very awesome computer setup. 4 screens in a curve following the curve of the desk, 80" of screen, nice.

They also showed us some interesting games I have never heard of before, Tim, you are going to have to show me the computer version of Carcassone (is that how it's spelt?) sometime.

Thanks again Tim and Jude.

The New Still As Life - Where Is It?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:44:00 +0000

I've been talking about it, so where is it?

The new Still As Life blog?

Well, the design is virtually completed, and setup for Wordpress, I just have a few more small things to sort out in it along with setting up the basis for the second half of the website.

That's right, there's a second half!

Don't all pass out at once, I have been working!

The new Still As Life design is, I am proud to say, in my opinion Web 2.0, though as Web 2.0 is as flexible as any other definition of a design style, that is open to interpretation.

So, I can safely say, it will be alive soon.

Since I'm changing over to Wordpress instead of Blogger, and the file paths will be changing, that does mean a different RSS URL along with other changes, but in the long run, I think it will be very beneficial.

That's all for now, catch ya.

Quadzilla Begins - The Case

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:32:00 +0000

Why did I pick this case? Why the Cooler Master Elite 330?

Well, I've always liked the Cooler Master cases, especially the various models of the CM Stacker. Anyway, when I decided to buy a new case rather than just replace the contents in my old case, it had to be something reasonably cheap, particularly because I was already spending $150 on a new Antec Neo 650w power supply.

Normally I'm not fussed on most cases because under the paint and external cover, they are all a very similar chassis. However, this time I decided I wanted to get something with a more "user-friendly" chassis.

The vast majority of these better cases, Antec, Lian Li, Silverstone, Cooler Master and so on, are generally more expensive, some even ranging up to the $400 mark with no power supply.

This case caught my eye though because it was only $55 without a power supply and is the same as the one I chose for one of the new computers at work. As I've been inside the case at various times with the work one, I knew that it had a decent chassis and included some very simple, but also very effective devices that make it much easier to work on.

It is far from an ugly case as well, and like all Cooler Master cases, it is designed for maximum airflow. It comes with a 120mm fan pre-installed in the back of the case as well as an air intake duct leading from the side of the case directly to the CPU fan.

In addition to this there is a large vent in the side of the case that runs just short of the length of the video card, thus helping vent it.

Now, this is far from the least of the cooling idea's in this case. There is space for another 120mm fan in the front of the case, or if you prefer, an 80mm or 92mm fan.

Not only this though, but as you can see in the photo's, the majority of the front of the case is filtered vents. Even the 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" drive bay covers are filtered mesh. So even with just the CPU/video card fans, single 120mm out take fan in the back and the 80mm power supply fan, the case has heaps of airflow!

There is of course more to it than this. I needed a case that would fit at least most of my hard drives. I was looking at getting a 4U rackmount case purely because they support full ATX motherboards and expansion cards along with fitting 10 hard drives. However, this was out of my price range.

The Cooler Master Elite 330 has room for 7 3 1/2" drives, I have 8 hard drives, I am going to do a little rearranging though and drop it back to 6 or 7, at least temporarily.

As I have this many hard drives and they are constantly being changed around as necessary, the easy to use, tool-free locks make it very easy to add and remove drives as necessary. They are definitely not the best ones on the market, but for the price of the case they are very decent.

I have been wary of tool-free expansion slots as I had one in a previous case that used a single screw to control every slot and this was extremely painful to use. However, the Cooler Master Elite 330 implements a very easy to use tool-free design. I imagine that once there are additional expansion cards in place it will start to have similar problems to the other ones I have used since it locks and unlocks every slot at once, however, as the design is significantly better than others I have used, I am hoping it won't be as bad. Then there is also the fact that with the amount of features on newer motherboards, I am using less and less expansion cards, so it may not become an issue at all.

Yes, I do have a beige drive in a black case, but that's okay. It will be getting replaced sooner or later anyway as it is starting to play up, for now though, it is perfectly fine.

Since taking these photo's, the first hard drive is in place and I have been working on getting the operating system running on it properly. As that seems to now have been successful, expect to see a blog about that soon.

Snake Coming Soon

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 13:47:00 +0000

Rhi has decided that she is going to get a pet snake. At the moment she is hoping to get a Spotted Python by next weekend. However she has to wait for her reptile license before they will let her get one.

We went and had a look at snakes at Pet City, the people that we talked to there about snakes really knew what they were talking about. There was one reptile sales person there who keeps and breeds his own snakes as well.

We worked out it will be about $700 all up for a neonatal Spotted Python as well as a reasonable size terrarium, heat mat, thermostat and all of the other accessories she needs.

It's all very interesting for me as I don't know anyone who has had a pet snake before, so I get to learn lots of new things.

So, assuming Rhi gets a reptile license by next weekend, expect to see photo's then. If not, then soon after.

Quadzilla Begins - Piecing Together The Core Components

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 14:22:00 +0000

Putting the new computer together was really no more complicated than any of the computer's I have put together in the past, except, the video card is gigantic.

Normally, I build in this order:

Power supply
Motherboard
CPU
Front panel cables
Video card
RAM
Data devices, any expansion cards
Power and data cables

As you can see in the first picture though, the video card is not in yet, it is just sitting there because I realised if I put it in completely, I cannot get the RAM in because it is in the way of the clips opening enough.

Thus my order had to be changed so that the video card came after the RAM. No big deal really.

As you can see in the second photo, my 2 sticks of Geil CAS 6 RAM are very shiny, 4gb of awesome.

Thank goodness, it all fits. The video card is almost as long as the motherboard is wide though, so while I know it has been designed this way, I wonder if it may need a little extra support. It is not very obvious in the photo, but the end closest to the hard drive bays starts to bend down under the weight of the video card, which is almost as heavy as the motherboard.

I'm hoping that the motherboard southbridge isn't going to have a heat problem as well, as the video card covers part of it. Luckily it doesn't cover and of the SATA ports, as I am going to need them all, but it does come very close indeed.

I'm thinking that the video card fan should help with air circulation over the southbridge heatsink so that it doesn't get too hot, but you never know.

This case looks like it should give enough room to put hard drives in the couple of bays that overlap the rear end of the video card, but I am a little bit nervous that with the video card power cable and hard drive SATA data and power cables that it may become a bit of a problem. It shouldn't, but just one of those things since I am going to need all of the hard drive bays I can get.

Jedi Academy Problem Solved

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 13:40:00 +0000

As I mentioned the other day, I have been stuck at the same place in Jedi Academy that I was stuck at last time, and was quite frustrated. I just solved it, and realised how stupidly simple it was. I have no idea how I managed to get stuck there twice. Ah wells. Crisis over.

Quadzilla Begins - The Motherboard

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:45:00 +0000

First up, the new motherboard, a Gigabyte P35-DS3P.

Isn't it pretty?

Anyway, I was originally looking at a couple of different Asus boards when I came across this one and a couple of other Gigabyte ones.

My old motherboard is an Asus A8N-E, and apart from having to replace the southbridge heatsink a week after buying it because the fan failed, I haven't had any problems with it. Yes, I could have gotten it fixed under warranty, but then I would have had to wait to get it back and it needed to be working then and there.

Prior to the Asus though, I have almost always used Gigabyte boards, in my opinion, they are some of the most reliable motherboards in the desktop market. I used 2 of them in my own computers prior to the Asus, one of which was sold to a friend, the other is in my parents media PC, both of which have been going for 5 years plus now with no issues at all. In addition to those, we used Gigabyte's in both my brother and sisters computers. There have never been problems with these either except when there was a power surge that took out one of them.

So, when I realised the Gigabyte's were around $50-$100 cheaper than the Asus boards, and had roughly the same features, it was naturally very appealing. The deciding factor on this motherboard was the fact that it has 8 SATA ports, all supporting RAID 0 and 1, 6 of which support RAID 5 and 10, 2 support JBOD. Now, really, I only need RAID 0 and RAID 1 since they are what I have been using anyway, but RAID 5 would be far more useful than RAID 1. All of the Asus boards supported RAID 5, some of the other Gigabyte ones did.

The two Asus boards I was looking at, the P5KE Wifi and the P5N32-E both had decent sound, the P5N32-E included a Supreme FX/DTS sound card. The P5KE Wifi logically, came with wireless. Either of these things would be useful, but in the end, I already have a PCI wireless card, and the Gigabyte uses Realtek ALC889A audio with high definition support and is able to run surround sound up to 7.1 which is really more than enough for me. As much as I love my high quality sound, the Realtek audio on all of my previous motherboards has been good enough for me, so as long as it supports up to 5.1 surround sound, seeing as how thats what my speakers are, I am happy.

Finally, external I/O played a big part in the choice. The Asus boards had 4 USB connectors via the backplate as well as Firewire and e-SATA. The P5N32-E lost the mouse PS/2 port though.

This was a bit of an issue for me, I wanted Firewire, I don't care about e-SATA, and if I am going to lose a PS/2 port, there should be a reasonable amount of USB devices available without the need for a hub, especially since I have 5 to 7 devices regularly connected to my current computer, not including keyboard and mouse.

The Gigabyte had a much better solution to this problem. It has e-SATA, it has Firewire, and it has 8 rear USB connectors as well as support for another 4 via front case connectors. Excellent.

So it has the Firewire and USB bases covered, and if I ever need e-SATA, well, it has that too.

So not only was it a cheaper motherboard, but it is a brand I prefer, and it has a better feature set for my needs.

The reason I chose this model over other Gigabyte's comes down to very small differences. The other models I was looking at either did not have Firewire, or the only had 4 or 6 SATA interfaces, which is definitely not enough, especially with only one IDE connector.

I do not care about Crossfire or SLI, I mean, I got a Crossfire motherboard and an Nvidia video card, so this was not something I was worried about, as long as it meets my main requirements of being made of awesome.

That is all for tonight, more on the developments of the beastly Quadzilla tomorrow.

Quadzilla Begins - Graphics Unveiled

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:36:00 +0000

As you would have seen earlier, the box for my brand new Gainward Nvidia 8800 GT Golden Sample is bigger than my new motherboard box. Now, the unveiling of the contents.

As you can see in the photo on the left, there is a smaller box within the big box. In the other sections around it are the manuals, disc's and other accessories.

Basically, a TV out cable with HDTV support, molex to PCI-E power adapter, DVI to VGA adaptor and a DVI to HDMI adapter.

It came with the usual Cyberlink PowerDVD bundle along with the standard software. Additionally, it came with a full copy of Tomb Raider Anniversary.

Now, as you can see on the left, once I opened the smaller box, it was literally ALL video card!

Sweet.

This is easily the beefiest video card I have ever owned, and is also the first Nvidia graphics card that I have bought in a good many years, I have previously used predominately ATI cards.

So what is so special about this video card? Why did I buy it over any of the other brands of 8800 GT's, or for that matter, why did I buy it over the other Gainward 8800 GT's?

For starter's, the Golden Sample cost only $359 compared to the $308 for the standard version from Gainward. Now what is the Golden Sample? Basically, it's faster. It comes factory clocked at higher speeds. The core clock speed is 650mhz and the memory clock speed is 950mhz. The standard model is 600mhz by 900mhz. In addition, the Golden Sample comes with a bigger cooling solution to cope with the higher speeds.

In my opinion, the extra $50 is well worth it considering that to overclock the standard model to the same speeds and then add a better cooler to cope with the higher speeds would add up to $50+ anyway. Plus, it would no longer be under warranty where the Golden Sample is.

The reason for this brand over any other's was initially the price, it is on par with the prices of all the other brands and is actually cheaper than some others. In my previous experiences, Gainward are an excellent video card manufacturer, so to find that their prices are now equal to other brands, but with higher clock speeds, I jumped at it.

Next up, putting things together.

Amazing Shrinking

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:58:00 +0000

This is officially important news.

I have gone down a belt hole. My belt is now one hole tighter. That's about 2cm shorter than the previous hole.

As of when I put my belt on before going to work this afternoon, my belt is now 2cm shorter than it was yesterday.

Amazing?

It's funny, I've been walking every day or 2 for the past couple of weeks before breakfast, which sometimes means breakfast isn't until 12 or later, but all the same, I have been walking before breakfast. I have been going for an average of 45 mins to an hour and 15 mins each time, aiming for an hour of course.

It looks like it's started to pay off. No big surprise though, but despite my belt size going down, I weigh more. My legs don't look any musclier than they did before though.

In addition to the walking, the past few days I have been doing a shorter walk, 15-20 minutes or so, as a warm up and then jogging. Yep, me, jogging. I bet you didn't see that coming.

Not a long jog mind you, only 200m or so, then my lovely weak ankles decide that they aren't going to jog any further and if I decide to keep going, they will stay behind. Thus I walk again for another 15-20 mins to warm down and yeah.

It's funny though, I find an hour walk doesn't tire me out anymore, my ankles start to ache, but that's about it. That's why I decided to start doing a bit of jogging. Even the jogging I feel like I could go further if it wasn't for my ankles giving out.

Ah well.

Have a good one, only an hour and a half until I get to go home and play with my new computer parts.

Jedi Academy Frustrations

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:21:00 +0000

As I mentioned the other day, I have been playing Jedi Academy again, because it is awesome.

However, it is extremely frustrating to find I have gotten stuck at exactly the same spot I got stuck at the first time I played it and I do not recall how I got past it then.

That is all for now, expect happiness when I figure it out.

Now I will go and wreak havoc on unsuspecting city folk in my SimCity 4 Nation!

Developments and Widgitization

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 04:09:00 +0000

No, I have not been procrastinating about any of my personal design projects as mentioned earlier. Okay, I have a little bit. Anyway, the point is, I have been doing things.

You probably wouldn't have noticed this yet, but the copy on TerraMedia, particularly on the Home and Learn More pages has been updated. As the description meta tag is also what shows up in Google when TerraMedia comes up, this has also been updated to better reflect the primary target.

The new copy and tags don't yet show up in Google as it has not yet been crawled again, but this will hopefully be there in the next week or so.

Now, that's not that much is it?

No, but I have been doing other things too.

I was working on the new template for Still As Life, then it was looking awesome and was almost finished when a thought popped into my head. "Hey, I think I might change this blog over to WordPress rather than keep it on Blogger."

So I have spent most of the past couple of hours converting the template to a widgetized theme for WordPress. Despite having made widgetized themes before, as well as worked on ones that have already been widgetized, I always seem to forget something. A very useful thing to have on hand if you plan on widgetizing a WordPress theme is the article on Automattic about it. Very easy to follow and makes lots of sense. However, the section where it explains how to add multiple widgetized menus is a little confusing. So for the unsuspecting widgetizer, it may not work as simply as it would first appear it should. For that reason, here is what it should look like if you have 2 widgetized menus:

<?php
if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
register_sidebar(2,array(
'before_widget' => '',
'after_widget' => '',
'before_title' => '<div class="title">',
'after_title' => '</div>',
));
?>

Note that when it is mentioned on Automattic:

"I have a theme with more than one sidebar. How do I make them all dynamic?

Oh, that’s easy. Instead of register_sidebar() you should use register_sidebars(n) where n is the number of sidebars. Then place the appropriate number in the dynamic_sidebar() function, starting with 1."

It is referring to the second register_sidebar, not the first.

Anyway, hope that helps someone. There is also a possibility I won't use WordPress, but I'm having fun with my beautiful code all the same.

Explorer Using Excessive CPU Time

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:18:00 +0000

I have been having some interesting computer problems the past few days. I have noticed that upon a fresh boot the past two times I have booted, Explorer.exe has been using 100% of the CPU time and rarely drops below 90%, thus everything else has trouble running. Of course if you change the priority to low and increase the priority of everything else, they run fine, but that's hardly suitable.

AVG has not picked up any virus or other malware problems.

As soon as I end the Explorer.exe process and restart it manually, it's fine. Everything is back to normal.

There is a process that has had to be force quit when I have rebooted because of this problem that has a very obscure name. I don't remember it and I didn't think to write it down because it consists of numbers and letters and is very long.

I can't find anything resembling this process in the Task Manager, not that that means a great deal.

While I wouldn't mind knowing the cause, I'm not overly worried about it as I am hoping to upgrade within the next week or two which means a fresh install of Windows anyway.

Though this does pose a problem, Vista or XP 64. Okay, it's not much of a problem, XP 64 is the clear winner out of the two, however I already own Vista Business (I just don't like it and thus don't use it), whereas I only own XP 32 bit versions which to my understanding do not support the amount of RAM I will be upgrading to.

Anyway, will work all that out when I get to it.

Tooble - YouTube Video Downloading

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:22:00 +0000

Earlier this month I posted some information about downloading video's from YouTube and other video sharing websites that use Flash Video's.

Now I have just come across tooble which is a program for Mac's that will download YouTube and other Flash Video's to your computer and converts them mp4 format for use with an iPod. Of course it will also play on an iPhone, Apple TV, or your computer.

There is a Windows version in the works, but at the moment it is Mac only.

Enjoy.

Macbook Paper

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:48:00 +0000

For some reason, this really doesn't surprise me. A very good idea though for those of us who can only dream, ladies and gentlemen, the Macbook Paper.

Australia Day '08

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:14:00 +0000

As promised earlier, here are some photos and a run down of my Australia Day.

My family had come up the coast for the long weekend, so I went down to visit them there and we went up to O'Reillys in Lamington National Park for the day.

It's been quite a while since I was last up there and it has changed a lot, but it's still a very nice place. In the photo on the left, there's my sister and brother with a king parrot and crimson rosella, with myself in the background.

I really enjoyed the day, as you can see the view was absolutely amazing and there are quite a few houses hiding away up there. To be honest, I would love to live up in an area like that, aside from the lack of a decent internet connection.

I expect, aside from getting a satellite connection, the fastest available would be dialup speeds.

There is phone reception in some places, so mobile internet is a possibility, but I expect speeds would still be limited to GSM which is no better than dialup anyway.

On the way back down, we stopped at this place, a tunnel that had been carved through solid sandstone back in 1901 by the Lahey brothers for a private tramway to haul logs instead of bullock trains. Due to the steep inclines the trams often had to climb, specially geared trams had to be imported for use on it. Apparently $60,000 was spent on it at the time which would be quite a lot really. The line ran from Canungra, a really nice little town that sprung up around the Laheys sawmill. Have a look at the Canungra website for some more info on it.

And this, the last photo, is an Australian mouse. We came across it while we were out in the rainforest, it wasn't worried about people at all and we were able to get to within about a metre of it.

Okay, so it's not really a mouse, I don't remember what the actual name for them is though and it looks like a big mouse, so there you go.

I hope everyone else had a great Australia Day long weekend!

P.O.D. When Angels and Serpants Dance

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 03:11:00 +0000

The Payable on Death website has recently been updated to reflect the album art of their new CD, "When Angels and Serpants Dance", which is due out on the 8th of April 2008. There is a sample clip from one of their new songs, by the same title as the album, playing in the background of the website once you enter it. However, there is also a download available from inside the website that is of the full song. So if you want a preview of what the new album is sounding like, get in there and have a listen. It's sounding awesome in my opinion.

There is also a special offer at the moment that ends March 16th to pre-order the album for $9.97 US which comes with a special edition booklet and your name gets printed on the Warrior Wall.

Nice.

The Force Unleashed

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 02:49:00 +0000

I have been playing Jedi Academy again recently as this is one of my favourite Star Wars games, and I have been in a bit of a Star Wars kind of mood. Now, I just saw this trailer/documentary about the making and technologies used in the latest Star Wars game, due out mid 2008, "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed".

If you watch it you'll find out anyway, but the new game uses Havok physics, Euphoria dynamic motion synthesis and Digital Molecular Matter.

So what this means is, you have physics, so everything moves based on physics rather than pre-determined movements, Euphoria gives the computer controlled characters the ability to think for themselves and react to what you do.

An example given in the video clip is that if you throw a crate at someone, they could either duck under it, jump out of the way, or even grab onto it. Such as if you throw a person, or pick one up, they will try and grab onto things. It is described as a sense of self preservation.

Then there is also the Digital Molecular Matter which combines with the physics to give everything different characteristics. It means would will break like wood, metal will bend like metal, a crate thrown into another crate will have a much different result to a crate thrown into something much lighter, like a person.

Anyway, have a look at the video and be amazed. I want this game now. Actually, I want to upgrade first so I can play it when it comes out, but you get the idea.

Also, the game story sounds absolutely awesome, after all, who hasn't always wanted to be Darth Vader's secret apprentice?

Fondue, Healthy Dessert? Not quite

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 13:51:00 +0000

I spent my Australia Day down at the Gold Coast and out at Lamington National Park and up at O'Reillys with my family today, I have photo's, but they are for another post.

Having been out all day, I had already had dinner before coming home tonight, and Rhi had already eaten. However, when I got home, she made Fondue! We were going to have it last night, so we had bought berries and things to use, but it didn't quite happen. Tonight though, it did. After all, the berries needed to be eaten.

I have never had fondue before, but it was absolutely awesome! If you are someone such as myself who has not known about this marvelous idea, it can be done with all sorts of things, I believe it is most commonly done with cheeses. We however had a dessert one.

Melted dark chocolate with coffee and cream mixed in with it into a delicious paste. Then we had our selection of berries, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries.

Basically, the chocolate or whatever you have is kept soft and melted and then you use these funny, skewer style forks to dip things in it, in our case, berries, though I think Rhi ended up using her fingers as much as her fondue fork. Thus we had delicious, caffeinated, dark chocolate coated berries! Yum! Almost makes the chocolate seem healthy, what with the antioxidants already in it and all of the berries. Okay, I'm probably kidding myself a bit there, but it's healthier than just the chocolate.

Australia Day recap and photos will be coming soon.

The Golden Compass Vs Star Wars

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 13:32:00 +0000

You may recall my post about when I saw The Golden Compass last month. If not, to recap, I didn't think it was very well put together, and was not a good movie.

Rhi loved it, my sister loved it etc, I did not like it.

I just came across a post by Paul Jenkins over at Pauls Blog that pretty much echoes my opinion of The Golden Compass. However, he added another perspective to it that I hadn't even thought of.

He noticed that the story has vast similarities to the original Star Wars story. I find this quite funny really, but it is very true. The story is remarkably similar, except of course, Star Wars was actually good.

For example, as Paul pointed out, in reference to Star Wars, The Magisterium from The Golden Compass is trying to control the world, similarly to The Empire of Star Wars. At the same time, the Gyptians defy them and rescue Lyra. This can of course be referenced to the Rebels of Star Wars rescuing Luke and Leia Skywalker. Luke can use The Force, Lyra can operate the Golden Compass. The most obvious thing though, that I really can't believe I didn't see, near the end of The Golden Compass, Mrs Coulter, the main antagonist reveals to Lyra that she is actually her mother! Oh my! Darth Vader, the main antagonist of Star Wars reveals near the end that he is indeed, Luke's father!

The book was published in 1995, clearly after Star Wars was released in 1977 kind of makes one wonder about it. Ah wells, perhaps I should stop being so cynical.

My apologies to anyone that liked it, but I really don't see what the great appeal of it was/is.

New Powerhouse Music and Technology Website Design

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 04:32:00 +0000

Powerhouse Music and Technology is a music store that sell musical and computer gear. They specialise in guitar parts, especially pickups, knobs, scratch plates, effects peddles and other guitar modifications.

I have been working on their site since the beginning, including the transition to a Zen-Cart based website.

Zen-Cart provides a vast amount of functionality and automation of things, thus it can almost be used entirely in the place of MYOB Retail Manager style inventory and sales management, it prints invoices, keeps the website up to date with current stock and so on.

Everything is customisable.

It does have a few downfalls, for example, only one image can be used for each product, unless you know how to use FTP and know HTML image tags. If this is the case, than you can put more images in the product description since it allows HTML to be entered in it.

It also does not have built in warranty claim management or return authorization management, so this must all be done manually by email, phone, or any other means.

Powerhouse Music and Technology has recently undergone a makeover. I did not design the original Zen-Cart website for them as they found a template much to their liking. I did do all of the custom graphics and so on, as well as all of the custom code.

Over the past week or so, we have been going through the website and making various changes to the template. For anyone that had not seen it previously, it had a dark grey/blue background and used varying shades of dark blue throughout the website. It was a fixed width and had a plain black background behind the main content area. Boring.

If you have a look at it now, you will notice a few key changes that we have been working on. The first and foremost is that the website has been lightened significantly without changing the colour scheme. It is now a much lighter grey/blue with darker rows alternating lighter product rows so they are easier to read.

The second main change to the website is that the background is no longer a boring plain black that does nothing but emphasise the empty background. It is now a tiled pattern based off the material covering of an early Vox Guitar Amplifier. The pattern does not scroll with the rest of the website so it remains the same no matter where you are or what your screen resolution is. The decision to do this was made because having the website automatically adjust to fit different resolutions, while being based on the current template would take a lot of time and work and would rewriting the majority of the CSS. Thus, something else was needed to emphasise the content.

The background does this perfectly. The colour scheme does not clash with the current colours and even the black material on it's own without the stitching provides a better background than the plain black because it contains various shades. The background as a whole however now emphasises the content and makes the website more interesting, especially on higher resolution screens.

There have been other changes made as well, though not so significant, with the switch from dark to light, the text colour has all had to be changed and in doing so, the link hover colour has been changed to a green rather than a blue, to fit in with the green used in the logo.

The menu has also been adjusted to remove gaps in it that left it seeming empty, which it is far from being.

Finally, there have been a few fixes to widths that had not previously been noticable with the darker background that became apparent with the light background.

The past couple of days we have been gradually working through the site and picking up the colour glitches here and there that have been caused by the change and were missed for whatever reason in the main styles. So if you have a look and notice anything that doesn't quite seem right, such as unreadable text, it would be great if you could let me know.

Thanks.

Designs and Developments

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:03:00 +0000

The past month, I have been brainstorming and experimenting with idea's on new and interesting (to me) things to do on the web.

So far I have a few things. Of course, high up on the list is to market TerraMedia and Ultralight more, but at the same time, there have been other things come up as a result of that.

Company and product image.

For example, I have been trying to come up with a new and interesting logo for TerraMedia. I did a subject at university first semester last year that was based entirely around product and company image, through logo's, packaging and so on. KIB101, Foundations of Communication Design 1 is the subject. Great subject, I learned a lot doing it. The problem is, I could not get past one of my early logo idea's which I realised after I finished it, that it was very similar to the old Sony Walkman logo which is a trade mark, and while it's not the same, I didn't particularly like the idea of Sony having a reason to come after me. Thus, I ended up with the current logo, which is nothing too special, I like it, but it's not what I would ideally like.

So, this is something I have been aiming to change. I still don't really have anything set in stone yet, but I have some idea's that I am working on since my mind has seemingly been freed of it's mental block at the moment. How long this will last I cannot say, but hopefully for a while yet.

In working on this new logo, I have also been considering redesigning the TerraMedia website, and reworking it to better fit my new marketing strategy (which is at the moment still in it's planning stages, so I can't give you details because it is not yet in an entirely logical structure and will most likely come across as a bunch of babble). I spent a couple of hours with Rhi on Sunday afternoon brainstorming possibilities in this regard, and along with things I have since come up with on top of our combined masses of brain power, I think we have some very interesting idea's that I plan on experimenting with. I'd show you, but that would ruin the surprise.

Rhi is also helping me out with the new logo design which is awesome as she is a fantastic artist! So a big thanks goes to her!

Portfolio.

Next on the list is a possibility I have been throwing around in my mind and have just begun experimenting with using Joomla!

Joomla! comes with a weblinks component when you install it, and that, combined with part of my new marketing strategies has thrown into the works a directory style portfolio. In a way, like a Yellow Pages of web site's by TerraMedia. Of course, there aren't that many at this stage, and it probably doesn't sound like much, but the idea's that are whizzing through my mind regarding this have me really intrigued about setting it up. I have something partially working at the moment. I'm hoping to get it up and running properly within the next couple of weeks.

This also is a reason behind the changes I would like to make in the design of the TerraMedia website. The current design does not incorporate any real portfolio the way I would like, thus it does not have one, which is not a good thing, in fact, it is a very bad thing.

Next up is email.

I have a Microsoft Exchange Server partially setup for TerraMedia. It's still in it's trial phases at the moment, but I am hoping to have it setup properly soon. This will make maintaining my email's, contacts and calendar (why does the spelling of calendar look wrong?) far easier from all over the world, not that I'm frequently all over the world, but you never know.

Once the Exchange server is fully setup and operational, TerraMedia will be offering it as a service instead of our current webmail/POP3 email service, if anyone is interested, pricing will be sorted out shortly. I aim to have this fully operational within the next couple of weeks as well to coincide with my plans.

Blogging.

I am planning on rearranging the news and client information blogs so that they are one and the same rather than two separate ones. I also accidentally blocked myself from allowing RSS, ATOM and OPML feed's from the news page, which is potentially problematic and another driving factor of a new design.

Blogging part 2.

Still As Life is still running off of what is essentially a standard template. Yes, I have changed it significantly. Background image, size, footer, menu etc, but it is still basically a standard template. This I do not like. In my brainstorming for TerraMedia, I stumbled across the foundations of a new design for Still As Life hiding in the dark, atramentous recesses of my mind.

So this is underway as well. I have it in progress, on the Still As Life server, but I'm not going to give you the link because that would ruin the surprise. If you can figure out the path to it though, enjoy and keep in mind that it is still in progress and the colours are far from final.

More Still As Life?

Yes, there is more. Still As Life was not originally intended to be solely the home of the personal blog of me, Matthew Brown. No, it was also meant to be a haven for my fractal gallery. Yes yes, there is my Deviant Art gallery, which does give me unlimited space and bandwidth for free. However, it is not really what I want. I have been tossing around ideas in my mind ever since I first began considering names for this blog. There is actually an installation of Coppermine Photo Gallery setup on this server and has been since I set up the domain. It's just one of those things that never quite went ahead.

Is there anymore?

As a matter of fact, yes! I just don't remember what else there was at the moment, that was actually part of the reason for this blog, so I don't forget everything. Oh well, I'll remember sooner or later. I actually have paper with stuff on it all over one of my walls for this reason as well, however this is one of the things that hadn't made it to paper yet. Though Rhi thinks the paper makes it look like I have gone mad with illegible scribble writing and drawings that look like they are part of the writing and so on. I am happy being mad.

Last but not least, in my creative and un-mentally blank mood, I have been doing some drawing (that does not look like scribble) as well. I have the outlines of a picture that I am quite proud of so far. Hopefully the rest of it will work right and I don't end up with, well, badness.

Counting to A

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 11:39:00 +0000

I was reading some interesting little facts in an email that I received today. Yay for completely useless but interesting forwards. Anyways, one of the things it said was, "what number do you have to count to before you reach the letter A?".

That's a good question and something I've never thought about before, and if I hadn't read this, I probably never would.

Anyways, when I started to think about it, I got up to about fifty seven and then realised, hey, I could be here a while, I still haven't gotten an A, so I started skipping up in ten's, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, one hundred. I gave up then realising that everything from then on is just repeating something that's already been spelled out.

So off I went and read the answer. Lo and behold, one thousand is the first number with an A in it if you spell it out. I then also felt quite stupid for not realising this when I reached one hundred.

And now I have written four paragraph's on something that could be said in one sentence, as well as state the obvious. But hey, you learn something new everyday.

24th Anniversary Mac Anyone?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:20:00 +0000

This is a pretty cool idea, though quite pointless really.

A Mac Mini inside a Macintosh 512k!

Perhaps using a colour screen would have made it a little bit more useful. However I suppose in doing so, it would have lost some of it's uniqueness.

Ah wells. Interesting all the same.

Domain Resorts Websites

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 04:50:00 +0000

There are a few other websites now live that I have been working on as well.

You may or may not have seen the first two Domain Resorts websites that I worked on, if not, they are:

Since completing these two, I have also been involved in working on five other websites for them through Webtrix™ Technologies.

The websites are as follows:

For more websites that I have worked on, have a look at my portfolio.

Enjoy.