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Well, since I just happen to have been getting one of these up every 7 days, I’m about due for another now lol.

I guess the big thing this week is Track officially starting up. Up until now we’ve been doing some conditioning as a team to help keep us in shape between seasons, but now the real deal has begun! It’s both exciting and depressing at the same time because I love my team, but that makes it harder that this is my senior year and last season with them… So, guess I’ll just have to make the most of it then!

In other news, I just got a new car Ok, not exactly “new”, but the point is I actually have a way of getting around now. It’s an ‘03 Toyota Corolla in mostly good condition, save a few small things broken inside. I’m going to miss power windows/locks and having a lock/unlock button on my keys, but I’ll make due.

And thats about it for this week! Tune in next time.

At long last, I’ve finally completed the Big Boards Credit 2.0 code. I guess finally isn’t really the word here since I never actually began writing it until Saturday (and finished it Monday), but it’s more in reference to how long it’s been that I’ve wanted to remake it.

The original code was created back in April of 2008. For those of you who havn’t heard of it, it’s basically a code I designed for Invisionfree that gives you money credits when you post, which can then be spent or donated. WhenI first finished it, I was really impressed with myself, because to my knowledge not many if any other codes like this existed. Many sites prior had used JS only codes and stored the data in various hidden fields on the board, but the problem with this is that there is virtually no security whatsoever. All it takes is disabling javascript and you can give yourself all the money in the world. But I couldn’t be satisfied with something like that, especially for a board as large as BB.

So I decided to create a PHP/JS hybrid code and store all the data on my server.  It worked by retrieving the user’s post count and multiplying it by 5 (each post was worth 5 points), and add it to the number kept on the server (which was essentially an offset of whatever the post count times 5 is. So if you gave away 50 credits, it would be that number -50). Then, it would come back and write a script to the page that would update that users information.

There were several flaws in my original design however. Firstly, I chose to use flatfiles (text files) instead of a database. Not only was this limiting in the amount of data I could store, but it was also very slow.  Another problem was that it would write a new code for every post on the page, which was very inefficient if a user posted 10 times in the topic, to have to reload the same data over again. Add all this to a slow free server, and it really loses some of it’s greatness…

So, back to the new code. This one stores all the data in a database, and is actually set up to gather other information besides the credit offset now, such as member name, post count, member group (for use in some future upgrades hopefully). It also loads scripts once per user on the page, greatly increasing efficiency. Add in my own paid server, credit preloading, and other new/upgraded features (some still to come like transaction logging), and you’ve got one crazy awesome product. As with many of my codes though, this is going to be a BB exclusive, so sorry guys.

Haven’t updated in a week, I think it’s about time. Plenty to say anyways

Well, it’s that time of year again. Holiday break is over, and its time to get back to school. I’m sure most of you probably started last week, but today was my first day back to college, and I’m still not sure if I’m excited or bummed about it.

For the pros, school can be fun. Gives you something else to do during the day, the obvious learning involved, and the environment for seeing old friends you wouldn’t normally see elsewhere. I’ve also been wanting to learn some computer programming languages (C++ to start off), so I signed up for “Intro To Programming Concepts” this semester, which is a required prerequisite before you can take the more specific languages. Funny thing is, I already understand all the concepts because of my background in web programming, so first day in and my teacher is already recommending I CLEP past it and take a more advanced class in it’s place. Still considering this though, as the only class I’ve ever taken in computer languages was a 4 day html intro course about 8 or so years back, and everything else since has just been self taught. So it may be nice to go over some of the basics and things I may not have covered in my experiences. Another pro to the start of school is that track season is starting up as well! I’ve missed my team over the break, so it’ll be great seeing them all again (sadly, being a senior also means it will be my last time to run with them ).

And now of course, the cons. More busy means less free time, homework can be a pain, and less opportunities to see my friends and girlfriend (though I suppose this falls under free time, it’ a big enough con to get it’s own mention). This is especially a bummer with my girlfriend, since as is we only see each other 1-2 times a week, and school combined with running pretty makes takes away all my weekday opportunities… Oh, and all this while simultaneously trying to work on planning my Eagle scout project (only 6 months left to get that done). Thankfully I don’t have a job yet, or I would literally have no time in the day.

So, that just about sums it up. I’m sure many of you probably have much the same schedule plus jobs though, so in your eyes I have nothing to complain about lol. But I think God designed us to have some times for rest, so I don’t plan on losing it all just yet.

Perhaps I ought to add a section for my C++ scripts as I write them for class. That would be fun to keep track of

Well I’ve only been with them 3 days, and already I’ve had the server go down each and every one of them. Today’s was the worst, beginning early this morning and ending just about an hour ago. It really is hard to complain though. After all, accidents happen, and in this case many of them did with the server hardware. On top of that, and insanely good price I got it all, that can be expected. But they’ve moved us to completely new hardware, so hopefully it will be smooth sailing from now on.

Also, I managed to fill out most of the current pages here now. I have tons more codes to put in the IF category, but it would take quite some time to round them all up.

I’ve been planning on getting a paid host for quite some time now, and thanks to an insane deal at Dreamhost, I finally decided the time was right. So I now welcome you to my new home at mwr247.com!

So what all can be found here? I really don’t know yet… Problem is I’m really not much of a journalizer/blogger, but perhaps that could change. Most likely I’ll use this to discuss progress on my various programming projects, with some occasional personal notes added in.

In the mean time, I suppose I’ll have to learn to use wordpress again, not to mention figure out everything on my server. But until then, thanks for visiting.

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