Following is a long journal on my plans for my site and the social networking tools that I plan to implement. If that does not interest you a lot, you probably should leave this post. If you are interested in my site, in which case I probably know you, please gimme some feedback. This is more than a fun spare time project to me now.
It's development time. With the recent completion of third year examinations and the collection of more steam achievements than was strictly necessary, it's time to continue coding the new web page. I've been a bit dumbstruck with what to do with it recently, as essentially I was summoning another social networking site without much meat besides what was already on clux.org. In an effort to ignore this, I've been on a lookout for new cool things almost ready for mainstream websites, like the upgrade of HTML.
HTML5: The video and audio tags are a godsend. Why we have had to deal with stuff like Flash and Silverlight - that drag your browser to a screeching halt with their accompanying spam heaven and taste for RAM - is a mystery. This should have been done a long time ago. Thankfully, with the ongoing revolution in browser effectiveness and stability lead by Google (Chrome with its ridiculously fast JavaScript engine and tab isolation) and Mozilla (one of the first implementing CSS3 and the new HTML5 features); development is less of a thing to dread. It has also finally been accepted to throw IE support out of the window (and MS is desperately trying to keep its grip), and the ongoing revolution in JavaScript productivity mostly led by the Scriptaculous/Prototype and jQuery frameworks has made the web a much more interactive place.
Unfortunately, it's not the flashy things that will make my site good. Hosting video/audio content is not a thing I'm prepared for nor have the bandwidth capacity to perform. clux.org have been hosted and kept running smoothly for five years solely under the flawless supervision of my old friend ivc, whom thus far have not received a penny for his dedication. He even wrote the whole site initially. Thousands of lines of code. Very fast. I did pay him some for that, but only a pathetic amount for what clearly took him lots more mental effort than I ever expected someone to put in for me. Sigh. My site's attraction will, at any rate, rely on the highly function rich insanity that has slowly amassed to sort out content, and not these shiny features. I will go through some of the ideas that will make it across. It's my hope that having helped forge a semi-decent developer will at least soothe ivc's long lasting unpaid labor.
My site is a social networking site. It is focused on gaming, but recently I have figured out a way to sort posts in such a way that even that restriction is dulled. Normalized database structure and CodeIgniter's MVC approach to coding have made this work like a dream. A list of key features includes:
Multiple users: user roles, strong encryption, password recovery system, individual profiles, message box, personalized styles, latest activity and participations tracking. Obvious and necessary stuff, but this is still a challenge to get right.
Posts: Each user can contribute posts, with a major and a minor part of news, with a voting based system for digging and burying. There's also the optional comment section for each post with ajaxified insertion/deletion and threading (hopefully). It won't be as amazing as Google Wave obviously, but it'll beat a lot.
Doubly categorical sorting: Having just one set of categories for your sorting runs the risk of splitting up the content in a too broad or too narrow way. For instance, having gaming as the main divider will reveal more than necessary for people just interested in one or two games. However, having one category for each game will render single user browsing for gaming based content a hassle as you have to go through them individually only to perhaps find a few posts in each. Thus my system plans to have a broad sorting list (categories), and a specific topic list of topics belonging to one of the major categories. Thus when joining a set of topics to a post, the post will automatically belong to the set of parent categories.
Combined user/category based sorting: It will really feel like having your own area on there. This was one of the main requirements for me now diluting my (admittedly grand set of random) posts with stuff that I might personally object to. To see how this is implemented it's necessary to talk the URI handlers: CodeIgniter disables the global GET array and uses automatic mod rewriting to give this brilliant structure preserving URI system. For instance, my current system for categories are:
http://domain/entries/categories/username/category1:category2:category3/offset
Where the colon implies union based sorting among categories (whereas period intersects), username is an optional parameter that is only included if you are already in user based browsing (otherwise it is set to All), and offset is effectively the page number, counting posts rather than page number. A similar system is being implemented for specific topics. CodeIgniter reads these without rewrite rules using the URI handler class available simply via $categories = $this->uri->segment(4); say. My gaming posts, for instance, will be found under http://domain/entries/categories/clux/gaming
Events: This is really what should be one of the main features, but is currently only being brainstormed. The plan is to have a calendar type sign up based event registration system for gaming nights or movie goings, as my site will only have the capacity to be invite-only, so I can make it as specific as required to be useful.
Integration of media: I am not going to reinvent the wheel on this one, but rather allow for simple embedding of certain material from vimeo, youtube, self-hosted videos complying with HTML5's video, and picasa and flickr for photos. These are the people who have the bandwidth and the benevolent APIs to allow for effective content stealing.
Link storage: Like on clux.org, the collection of low profile links each user has archived. Now features a quick and easy ajaxified search by title, and no longer the useless month sorting system that becomes horrible after six months (about when you realize time passes quickly and you have created a monster). So far I have found no easy way to highlight this as content. You can sort by user and search wide and low of course, but the title of the page you are linking to is in general not a very inviting link when there are hundreds of them right there. One possibility is simply highlighting the last ones each time the user creates a post, appending them at the end like a side note on what you have discovered. Another is using an analysis of link similarity that hopefully with some work will imply similar tastes between certain users, to help highlight links that are right for you. The extreme option of course exists, the full digg solution with major links being chosen purely on the basis of popularity, and each link having an appended text description for each link. The question is if it is wise or necessary to implement something like this. If people wanted this feature they probably would be locked in with delicious, digg or some friendfeed hybrid for their archiving needs already. Perhaps keeping this as a low profile extra is the way to go.
Front pages: Due to the described post model, taking good content to display in the front page mash is now simple. These will contain your events, recent messages, achievements, comments, major posts by everyone in one main category etc. Filtering and content is key. Facebook, for instance, has an extraordinary amount of features in privacy to protect content, but its users in general have no real content and no real way to filter away the most attention-whory spam some friends generate (besides removing them from the feed completely). Besides, privacy is only needed when you reveal your real name, and this is the internet: only your acquaintances now what your nickname correspond to if you are cautious, and only they should know! Errors in judgment on what to disclose online will always occur, of course, and once the cat's out of the internet bag, it's out - and unfortunately there's not much we can do about stupidity. Splitting some of the community action into smaller pieces and using pseudonyms never hurt though.
Domain: Still undecided. Of course, I'll keep clux.org and perhaps force a redirect to my content, but I want a name that epitomizes gaming or geekery immediately. Preferably to more than gamers. I thought perhaps of some pun on the horadric cube, that could sound cool, but that's probably too obscure. Help on this, and of course anything else here appreciated.
Halo is just another arguably good game from 2003, whereas Crysis was widely considered as the best looking game of 2007. Given that most people hated Vista, they did not even play Crysis in the only fucking operating system that supports this marginally improved system.
Rage.
Exchange competence with lies and you have a good idea of why their business model actually works.
As achievement hunting is more fun than revising for statistics exams, Fralland and I decided to tackle Sap Auteur, the least acquired TF2 achievement at this date. And yeah, it's much more fun to beat the system in such a way than to play hours upon hours of griefer style spy gameplay.
sapauteur.rar contains all the files necessary to replicate what's done in the video. Fralland wrote, in more detail, some instructions to do this.
The funny thing is that while I've gotten almost all of them now, I will never get the one that requires seven friends. Who has that many friends?
Anyway back to revising..
In an effort to celebrate by geek heritage, my phone now contains the most haunting sound from Diablo (1): The Butcher's door opening greeting - prepared in the depths of his catastrophically descended larynx - saying aaaaaaaaahhhh. Fresh Meat. Idiotically, my phone does not support MP3s for message sounds, so I had to put it on something else that was used equally often. Essentially, my spirit is now summoned into this world every morning via this psychotic shout: it's my morning alarm sound.
This used to be an enjoyable way for me to start morning as it scared the crap out of The Hol, however, a great problem of ambience have arisen. Because - and I can only assume this is done in an effort to soothe my waking process - my sound levels on my alarm scales. It starts out silent, then towards the end of the aaaaaaaaahhhh it reaches normal levels. After a month of waking up to this sound my sensitivity to it is, to put it mildly; hyper, and if my mood is as often dictated by the need to snooze, then my ears always react to this introductory sound by extending my arm in the desired direction to hit the phone. Now combine that with the radioactive pigeons residing in the enclosed city terrain behind our flat. Their morning scream - ok, so pigeons don't scream, but nothing natural could make this sound unless it was pink and made predominantly out of plastic - matches exactly the middle and end part of the aaaaaaaaahhhh. In effect, these creatures' insidious mating calls that would not register to most, now induce my morning snooze reflex and effectively keep me awake.
At least some good things come of it. I now remember parts of an extraordinary dream, visionary some might even call it. In an effort to preserve their feel, I surgically stole the boobs of The Hol. That's right, I carried the titillating pair like a pair of diffeomorphically bouncing 2-spheres. However, they were clearly not entirely spherical, and it was still obscene to display the bits that weren't. So to imitate the stealth beer can approach, I hollowed out an aubergine, and stuffed the boobs in there. Unfortunately, that is the end of the visionary part. The game changer; the revelation that it was not in fact her boobs, but rather Tony Almeida's, made my glorious boob container seem more like a meat hammer.
Also some people do not like my use of meat hammer as a euphemism for penis, but it pounds and nails ok? Makes fucking sense.
Revealed later in a gameshow; Tony's second favourite talent is explosions.
It's that time of year: ding - level up. I would put some points on DEX and INT, but all this sims like character system ever seems to give me is ART, for arthritis. Oh and I suppose CON in form of the inevitable rolls around my abdomen from the annual sacrificial feast The Hol prepares for me. Fillet steak + raspberry brownies. Suck it internet. I get foodz.
It's nothing like having a great set of lecture notes in mathematics. If the written notes for a course are good, things make sense, if there are no notes, you usually only take the course if the lecturer writes really good notes on the board. There is no point learning mathematics if the notes themselves make no sense, we might as well just memorize formulae if we are not supposed to understand why it works. Granted, this is obvious, but for some reason it is not to some of the very people teaching us at Warwick.
The Fourier Analysis lecturer lulled us into a false state of appreciation by handing out great notes, and telling us that he was roughly going to follow them. It would have been good to know that when he said follow, he meant butcher. It was covered in such a way that we were actually reading the notes instead of listening to that douche while we were there because of his checkbox approach to proofs that he presumably patented. Seriously, no mathematician puts a question mark down for then later to replace it with a check after thinking a sketch proof out loud.
The result is that the bits he covered himself (in the same style) we have no real proof or any justification for anything except wikipedian glory. The last three weeks were roughly all him, and therein lie a dense paper that he covered - as one might use that word – and now he expects us to possibly write an essay on in the exam instead of one of the other questions. Ha.
If you had had the fucking decency to follow the canonical definition-theorem style presentation of your course, the bits we actually had to learn primarily from you would not eat up more time than it took for me to write this post and we would be cool. But you had to infringe on my zombie killing time online, by making me frustrated enough to write this, and making me further develop my zombie killing inclination to cover the realm of the non-undead. Fuck your essay and your last three weeks.
The worst thing? It is actually a good idea, and I really like the general content of the course. Unfortunately, this guy saw convolution on the syllabus and made it a goddamned mission.
two more weeks will go by fast. two more will go by fast. two more weeks will go by fast.
MA3F10 Introduction to Topology 3hrs 21 Apr 09:30 Westwood Games Hall
MA3G70 Functional Analysis I 3hrs 21 Apr 14:00 Westwood Games Hall
MA3590 Measure Theory 3hrs 22 Apr 14:00 Westwood Games Hall
Holly made this for me before Valentines. I'll say it is way too good to be just stashed away, but some of you might fervently try and close the browser shouting impure! impure!
Honey, there are more things about this drawing that you've got right.
Your mind directs your choices. It would be easier if this director had admin rights.
I contend that we don't control the thoughts that come into our minds; they are a complex consequence of your current emotional state and quantum physics. You can't control your next thought without using your current one. It's impossible to predict with perfect accuracy your next thought.
Your objectives and habits are hardcoded consequences of experience and circumstance. To alter or reverse these would take systematic effort telling yourself that your goals are wrong. For instance; quitting smoking, abstaining from internet pornography, starting and sticking to an exercise routine, starting dieting, or to start going to church to save your soul. You laugh, but for the right reason - in my case; the irrefutable evidence of the afterlife and some religion - you would do it, or at least try. My inherently hedonistic lifestyle would make it very hard for me however.
At any rate, my point is this. We repeatedly make unsound choices based on settings in our brain that are really hard to override. And while - if we talk large scale repercussions for a minute - having the ability to change them yourself might be convenient at times, having everyone do it would be a disastrous idea; imagine the stability of society fading as people play with their master switches - maybe a certain setting makes you object to touching the switches again, eventually ensuring the smooth convergence of mankind into one bland personality type. No. To overcome ubiquitous challenges for mankind, we need to really work together, and feel each other. Governments can at best be held accountable and represent the interest of the constituency, and at worst allow individuals to exploit fallibilities of the system for their own good and at the cost of others. A global infallible government would be unthinkable as it represents such radically different expectations in terms of lifestyle changes as true equality gets the spotlight.
So for a prosperous future and a high stability of mankind, someone, or something, I propose a computerised hive mind, to control our goals for us - based on a perfect blend of scientific evidence for what behaviour patterns make us happy, and what common sacrifices are needed to survive our raiding of the earth. I.e. we need to effectively strip ourselves of what makes us human. We would work together to solve our problems, we would remain in love, never cheat, as the stability of mankind would necessitate keeping the switches set on love - if you have paedophilic urges or if there are no mates in your nearby area, you would be implored to exercise abstinence - but successfully. Bureaucratic systems would be rendered obsolete in the face of universal human morality.
Until we can create such a system, I believe we are but a global pathogen, a large scale disease, awaiting planetary extinction quite possibly caused by our own inability to work together. Until then, we will spend our lives mostly preoccupied with being better - in your personal metric - than our neighbours. Until then, we will live under the eye of God, whose outdated morality only continues to drive humanity into a wall, whose existence is unverifiable at best and illogical at worst. Until we realize that our existence is meaningless and purely incidental, we are not going to be able to effectively do the one thing that we ultimately all strive for on this earth; to make ourselves and/or others happy. If we can optimistically embrace this existential nihilism, we can work towards changing mankind for the better - and as you can see I do not put any limits on the type of change here. Failing that - obviously - get a mad scientist with a runaway budget to invent a God of a supercomputer to enable the singularity.
Until then, xkcd has my philosophy:
wow. other than about what specifically prompted this, feel free to ask/discuss.
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