John's Random Review

After a hardware disaster, corrupted backups, professional data restoration, a hardware upgrade complete with more hardware failure (somehow a new power supply i bought at FRY’s was DOA!), everything is mostly back to normal. Everything is running on newer builds of php and mysql, with 4x the processing power and 4x the RAM. I’ve seen mysql crash a few times already, though, so we’ll see how that goes.

If you see somethinng missing or broken, let me know!

Back when i wrote the post about building a pantry, i said that i thought i had used every tool i owned for that project…well… for this project, i used every major tool i own except one: my miter saw. I would have used the miter saw if it had a sharper/newer blade. And if i had a better place to use it than on the floor. And if I had a better one. For the closet doors project, I even bought some new tools that i didn’t have before!

Before:	After:

For more details and more pictures, follow the jump! Read more…

A follow-up on the previous post, where Dad, Jimbo and I built a new deck. After a couple days of rain and some crap falling out of the trees, we realized that the spacing of the deck boards was a little too close. In some places the gap had basicly closed and the boards were touching. But the bigger problem is the crap that falls out of our cedar trees and firs. it was already getting stuck in the cracks, and basicly becomes impossible to get out. So this weeend, Laura and i redid all the decking. well, not all, because the first board stayed where it was, and one board about 2/3 way we didn’t move at all.

Before	After

You can’t really tell much from those, but its much better!

Recently, Laura took a couple weeks of the summer to travel to Australia with her mom, because her dad had to be there for work. While she was in Australia, my dad and brother came out to WA to help me build a deck. Or, more precisely, my brother came out, and we helped my dad build a deck for me.

Before	After!

For more pics and stories, follow the link!
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I built my first thing over the last couple weekends. I use the term “built” very loosely, as in this case, “building” meant routing one edge of a piece of oak, painting it, and screwing some brackets into the wall.

I was originally going to make the brackets, in fact i used the jig saw to make one, but then couldn’t find any keyhole anchor things that were the right size, and while looking for those at home depot, i found metal brackets that match the brushed aluminum style of other stuff in the office.

Having the table saw was nice though, as it gave me a large stable work area to clamp the piece down to route it! So now i have a nice shelf on which to put my growing collection of bobbleheads. 4 Favre’s, 3 Ichiro’s, 1 Cecil Cooper (another on the way!), 1 Yount, 1 Uecker, 1 Sexson, and 1 Dwight Shrute.

Click the pic to go to the flicker page for my bobblehead panorama shot. Here’s a link to the whole set with a couple other pics.

Since the FIOS guy was going to have to, in all likelihood, drill a hole in the wall to install our super high speed innerweb, we were going to have to move everything in my office. Since we were going to have to move everything in my office, we decided to paint my office, too. Once the office was mostly empty, we saw how horrible the carpet was, so we looked into redoing the floor with new carpet, or maybe some laminate floors. We settled on some blue colors to match the world map on the back wall, and some “hemse” laminate “click” flooring from IKEA. To see how it all went, follow the link!

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With Xbox Live, you can get yourself a snazzy little “gamercard” for your website/whatnot by inserting a little html. XFire has the same kindof thing with their “miniprofiles”, but i like the look of the live version better, so i did a little hackery.

Specifics after the jump! bonus points if you know what “famous person” HiroProtagonist is. :p
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Our paper mache Bobblehead halloween costumes were the best halloween costumes EVER! About 40 hours of work, several weeks worth of newspapers, 2 giant balloons, 20 little bottles of paint, 5 lbs of flour and some hot glue make a pretty good costume! More details and pics inside!

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Asheron’s Call is a MMORPG by Turbine Games. Originally released in 1999 and published by microsoft, in 2003, the franchise was bought entirely back by Turbine. A 3-rd party utility application, Decal, was created by players with some programming savvy, which allowed other programming end users to create plug-ins that integrate with the AC client. This allowed for the automation of tedious in game tasks, tracking of statistics, drawing of extra things on the screen, and any other number of things which Turbine would not, or could not add themselves. (for a list of the large number of plug-ins, see sites like Third Party Paradise or AC Heaven)

I have written 3 plug-ins for Asheron’s Call using decal; one which tracks monsters you kill and “trophy” items you recieve, and submits it to a website (Trophy Hunter), another which acts as a shopping cart when interacting with players who are running special “Trade Bot” plug-ins to act as vendors (Bargain Hunter), and one which tracks Player vs Player kills (PK Hunter). This article covers some design and implementation details that third plug-in, PKHunter.
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