40-50 hours of research
days and days of waiting for UPS shipments
10-12 hours building and placing components
30-35 hours of web design
Priceless.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
New Far Cry 2 multiplayer map – A Castle Gigantico –
10
Jun
Spanning the entire allowable area, this massive multiplayer map for Far Cry 2 features a huge castle serving as the APR’s front (It’s namesake) with a small but defendable village opposing as the UFLL. Engage the castle by Sea, or storm right through the front via the main entrance bridge. Supports all game modes, and is best suited for groups of 12 or more.
This duzy took me around 30-40 hours to create, in total. The castle has blast-mitigating firing ports, a raised walkway, numerous gun placements, and a great labyrinth for ground battles inside castle walls.
You can download this map by searching for “A Castle Gigantico” – only available on the PC multiplayer servers (no XBOX port , sorry).
A minor rant on Party Politics
08
Jun
We have, as a nation, seemingly become a two-party game, where you either take sides or get left voting for an independent with (generally) a tiny chance of winning. We have divided, and are being conquered as a seething mass of political confusion, where the candidate that gets the best press coverage wins. This is wrong, fundamentally and in respect with the constitutional framework this country was founded on.
When you stop voting for the candidates at least somewhat based on what they stand for, you get terrible candidates that mess up things for everybody, regardless of party lines. We see good, well-qualified candidates get sidelined in favor of the candidate with the best hair. We get terrible politicians who got where they got by cut-throat betrayals and schmoozing. And yet, we keep voting them in.
It’s time to stop playing the political game by what color their party is, by whether they lean left or right, or who gave the most for favorable coverage. Actually look at their records, and vote for who will lead our cities, states, and nation for better.
Anaglyph 3D Images
26
May
They’re a hallmark of horror movies, sci-fi, the 1950s, and the 1980s. 3D Glasses are a familiar site for anyone that’s ever seen a drive-in, a late-night horror movie marathon, or a b-grade sci-fi movie. The distictive red and blue (or red and teal, realistically) lenses serve to allow you to perceive the depth of an image, by separating it into two color layers that your left eye and right eye see individually.
To create a 3D Image, you simply need two images with the same basic viewpoint, spaced apart at roughly the same distance your left eye and your right eye are apart. The angle you see depends on the orientation of those two pictures. For instance, for a normal viewpoint you’ll want to keep the eye viewpoints level horizontally. Past that, it’s just tweaking the depth of the 3d image by moving the layers right and left and working with the transparency levels to get an appropriate image. I’ll leave the instructions to the pros, but those are just a couple of helpful tips.
New freelance web design portfolio launched!
25
May
In an effort to kick my freelance design work into overdrive, I’ve released a new version of my portfolio separating my business and personal life. It’s a simpler, less-cluttered portfolio site designed to showcase my past work, along with serving as a demonstration ground for new design techniques. Let me know what you think!
It’s currently up at http://www.lostinthetext.com/portfolio/
Google’s pacman fiasco
22
May
Google users were treated to an interesting twist on the now-deeply-ingrained google homepage logo yesterday, as google replaced the normal logo with a playable version of 80s video game hit PacMan featuring the google logo within the level.
Reactions were mixed, however. For most, the game was either met with brief amusement and a few games played, or a resounding ‘meh’. But for some unlucky souls browsing at work, their regularly-scheduled on-the-clock google browsing turned into a dead giveaway as the sound from the java applet alerted everyone within a 5 meter radius, but only if they had both sound and the third-party plugin ‘coolpreview’ enabled on their computer. Within minutes, a hoarde of angry office workers and soundophobes was busy at work, registering their disapproval of the pacman stunt to anyone who would listen. However, in a great display of integrity, google kept up the pacman app, and as of the time of this writing the game is still up. Note – you have to double-click the logo to start the game (another fine moment for the eolas suit.)
The game featured the traditional “waka-waka” sound scheme of the timeless classic, bringing to mind memories of a simpler time in gaming’s history (and this coming from a child of the 80s).
Optimizing your Wordpress Site – A few simple tips
22
May
In my experience working with Wordpress and content management system (CMS) sites, I’ve come across several helpful tips and techniques for optimizing and designing your wordpress site. A few simple adjustments can make a world of difference for marketing, promotion, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and the overall design.
1. For SEO, use one of the freely available plugins designed to let you customize the meta tags and titles for each page. I would personally recommend the “All-In-One SEO” Plugin, which offers an addition to the individual page settings where you can specify a number of meta tags and a unique title for the page.
2. Set a custom format for your page URLs. The default URLs for wordpress posts are, well, a little lackluster. Just a day and a month. Not a whole lot of context for Search Engines, which generally rely on the content and page URL to get an idea of what’s on the page, so they can index it. While generating a sitemap takes care of a lot of the bigger details, giving your posts a better URL can drive more traffic to the site through organic searches. You can set the custom page URLs via “administration menu > settings > permalinks”. Set the “common settings” radio box to ‘day and name’ or ‘month and name’ to add the page name to the post’s URL. You can also create a custom naming structure for your URLs, which will automatically be configured on previous posts as well.
3. Use the ‘AddToAny share button’ plugin as a quick way for users to send your blog posts or pages to a friend. Not only does it make it easier for the end user to send their favorite blog post or a funny joke to a friend, you also make word of mouth advertising much easier. You can set where it will appear, and it offers automated syndication to a large number of social networking and social media services, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, Etc..
4. You can hide pages from wordpress’ navigation menu (wp_list_pages, for coders) without having to hardcode anything. The “Exclude Pages from Navigation” Plugin, and several similar plugins, offer easy ways to remove a page from the menu. In the case of the “exclude pages from navigation” plugin, it’s as simple as changing a dropdown box in the right-hand column of the article or page’s settings page.
Introducing Gangsta Lorem Ipsum
13
May
An amusing twist on the old standard for generic filler text, Gangsta lorem ipsum is almost a modern parody of the unrecognizable, almost indecypherably random latin text.Llorem ipsum text that has become a web designer’s best friend for content filling. The Phrase “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” is almost a running joke in the design industry, being used where concerns about plagiarism and wanting the text to look even modestly realistic are key.
And, just because i’d like this post to be more than one paragraph long, I introduce:
Ghetto ipsum doggy gangsta amizzle, shizzle my nizzle crocodizzle adipiscing sizzle. Nullizzle sapizzle shizznit, for sure volutpizzle, mammasay mammasa mamma oo sa quis, black vel, fo. Pellentesque shizzlin dizzle tortor. Sed erizzle. Fo shizzle at fo shizzle turpizzle tempus nizzle. Maurizzle pellentesque dawg mah nizzle turpizzle. Break yo neck, yall in the bizzle. Pellentesque dawg rhoncizzle daahng dawg. In bizzle check out this platea dictumst. Dope we gonna chung. Curabitizzle tellizzle urna, nizzle cool, mattis izzle, things pimpin’, nunc. Things suscipit. Sheezy semper go to hizzle hizzle purizzle.
You can get your own from the Gangsta lorem ippzle generator at Lorizzle.NL
AESOP – a simple cipher table`
05
May
Just for curiosity’s sake, I came up with a simple but effective grid cipher (or, basically, secret code) to test out.
It’s called AESOP, a reference to both the famous fables, and more truthfully just what the first 5 letters of Set B happened to be in the first grid. This cipher, also known as a Polybius Square is a simple encryption technique dating back to ancient greece.
- A grid of the alphabet, numbers, punctuation and characters is layed out, each represented by two characters. The characters represent each letter’s place on the grid.
- For better security, false and blank characters are spaced out between the characters on the grid
- For confusion, some commonly used characters have duplicates on the grid so different letter combos can be used for vowels, etc.
- for less translating, common words and adjectives can be included
- blank spaces are to be ignored. For confusion, you can throw these randomly in the mix once you’re done translating.
- For best results, use the space characters and don’t use spaces in the final code. However, to add confusion, you can add false punctuation throughout.
INSTRUCTIONS
For each letter you’d like to translate, find the letter/number at the top of the column (SET A), then find the letter/number to the left of the row (SET B). For instance, on this graph the letter “P” translates to “TA”.
Try This Demonstration.
If you want to sneak a peak at the answer, roll over the image below with your mouse.
YK TL YL 
8L QK TS hK TE TO TS hK hL YL TK Q5 QK Qz QP VO QZ QK T7
Download a Blank AESOP template to try your own code- AESOP Grid Template
Firefox’s new clothes
03
May
With the last-stage release of Firefox 3.5.9, many users were surprised to find the archive of “personas” that lets users customize the overall appearance of firefox. While the concept of browser themes is far from new (in fact, it’s almost archaic in web terms), firefox’s personas are streamlined, making installation as simple as clicking a “wear this” button in the personas repository. You can even preview each persona simply by rolling over it’s image in the archive. You can choose from thousands of “personas” created by firefox users across the globe, with themes ranging from “completely esoteric” to “everyone will love them”. Even the most die-hard customization fan will be happy, as it makes creating your own persona ridiculously easy. Create a new theme for a family member, or just announce to the world “Hey, I love the smurfs.” The world is yours, at least to customize.
Check out the personas by downloading Firefox 3.5.9+, then go to GetPersonas.com to customize.