My Top News

Christmas

Didn't get to post on Christmas so I figured the day after would be good enough. I had a good one too - didn't do much, just spent time with family and watched a lot of TV. Gift wise I mainly got cash - $200 from family members and then from my mom got earbuds, microfleece and a nice new pillow. (the memory foam type)

Anyways I'm not really sure what to do with the cash - might look around online a bit, but going to save it for the moment. Was thinking of a blu-ray, but decided against it.

As for web news - still lots of work to do on AdaptCMS, but it is up at the AdaptCMS 2 Developer Website. Before the ACP is setup as templates, I'd like to get all the modules done - stats is up next. After than, work will be slowly start on the frontend and some of the "Share" features.

That's all for now.

Mini Update - September 9th

Ah well updates have still been slow lately - no excuse except that I'm just enjoying my PC and still enjoying my HDTV, along with working.

I bought a new mouse on Tuesday - my wireless one is good, but every so often (randomly) it will start moving very laggy - something that will become more of a nuisance the more I game. I picked up the Logitech G5 after a lot of deliberating along with a cheap mouse pad. I paid an extra 10 bucks getting it at Best Buy, but considering the shipping costs for that and the mouse pad - I probably came out even.

With my computer pretty much all setup (in fact I recently installed apache/php/mysql), I'm starting to experiment with some software changes and additions. Winamp as my media player and trying out fraps for games. With that program I can easily capture screen shots and videos, I will start posting those soon. (a great companion to some of my upcoming video game reviews)

Anyways it seems Fall is trying to start. From the milder weather (though still summerish) to the leaves falling from the trees, I cannot wait until Fall weather itself begins and with it the new TV season. Already it's begun with one of the best shows on television - Sons of Anarchy. A must watch show back for it's season 2. Then football season starts on Thursday - a great week for TV!

Science Fiction making a comeback?

With the Star Trek series being brought back from death and a recent article (with a lot of interesting comments to read) at i09 it could be a possibility. In the i09 article as well as the comments, there is a lot of possible reasons listed for the low success of Sci Fi TV shows.

After watching all of Battlestar Galactica, there seems like there are a few key ways for the genre as a whole to return to it's former glory. The major one problem is the quality of acting and writing. Unfortunately a lot of the mediocre science fiction shows are plagued with decent actors and un-original writing. New shows such as Stargate Universe are smart by getting a few big-named actors, that's what hurt Atlantis, but in the end quality actors all around matter more.

The way the stories are told also need overhauling. What BSG, LOST and other newer shows are doing is focusing on the characters and minimizing the sci-fi aspect. LOST is an incredibly popular show with a wide variety of fans and this season, we've been delving into time travel. Yet both shows are absolute sci-fi shows but they have fantastic acting, great writing and focus on characters, making the sci-fi aspects not as important.

It seems odd to say that, about a show like Battlestar Galactica when it took place on, essentially, an aircraft carrier in space with robots, angels and the like - yet it was the characters (+amazing acting) and stories that got it's big following. Yeah it had some of the best space shooting scenes, but it wasn't the focus and that's a big problem with todays shows. Related to that and the writing is realism and predictability.

People expect a certain bending of reality or exaggeration, with sci-fi shows, but there's also a limit. I always thought part of Stargate SG-1's success was some of that realism. Taking place in modern time with real places made you wonder if it could happen in real life. Now a sci-fi show doesn't have to be like that, but decently realistic sci-fi shows seem to be part of the future. At the same time, shows like Stargate Atlantis had annoying exaggerations. It seemed like the Atlantis team was invincible, they got out of tight spots every time - avoiding death so many times. There's only so many times someone or a group of people can have unlikely escapes from death, before it makes it predictable.

One of the themes in sci-fi shows also seems to be "darker". This has to partially do with realism and predictable plots, as a happier up-beat show where the "good guys" beat the odds a lot of times versus a darker sci-fi show where they have losses - it feels real. Comic book movies have already taken this turn (see - Batman: Dark Night) and with BSG and SGU, darker shows. (that's what's claimed for SGU, we'll find out later this year)

That about wraps it up. I just hope the upcoming Star Trek movie can get the genre it's "mojo" back, as the genre at it's peak can be so great to see.

Post-AdaptCMS Release Thoughts

If you didn't already hear, AdaptCMS 1.4 was released. Despite being released 6 months after 1.3, I expect the new version to do well and I'm already looking forward to AdaptCMS 1.5.

However after having a change of hear, AdaptCMS 1.5 will NOT be a major version. In all likelyhood it will be another minor version with AdaptCMS 2.0 being the big one. At this moment the plan is to try and release 1.5 around April-May with the release of 2.0 sometime in Summer, like Julyish. While this may sound like only a 3 month development period for both versions, the idea is to slowly work on AdaptCMS 1.5 - this means a good 6 months (give or take 1-2) for the big version and smaller time for the minor release.

As for AdaptCMS 2.0, I don't have any details as no work has been done on it, but it will be the biggest release since it's inception. File structures will be almost completely different, the admin panel will be very different from the current one, new frontend look, new features and a new direction - User Friendly. While the frontend, especially the default skin, will have more attention to it now - the focus will be on the admin area with the biggest shift trying to make AdaptCMS much more user-friendly. All in all I have a LOT of ideas and with some early work already done on the admin skin - design wise - I can't wait to get started.

But long before then, there is still a good amount of work left to do on AdaptBB. The script is shaping up nicely and a lot of things such as the file structure will help AdaptCMS 2.0 when it's worked on. There are still features left to do, but progress is steady and an official demo will likely be up soon.

In the meantime for AdaptBB as well as AdaptCMS, I just put up a "Developer Area" over at Adapt Software. This allows anybody to see the latest Adapt scripts in action, as the files are updated constantly letting anyone to see the very newest features and progress made on the scripts.

Anyways, I think that about covers it all. I'll post here once an AdaptBB demo goes online or sooner, if that get delayed. Until next time.

Merry Christmas!

Have a safe and happy Christmas! Look out for on Friday/early Saturday some big news about AdaptCMS and enjoy the holidays.

I'll also be putting up a TON of family photos this wekend.

I'm on Linux

Okay so I got on my Laptop Sunday night and I turn on my PC to encounter a scary "Operating System Not Found" error with only a black background. Long story short I was doing a heck of a lot of googling and was finding from an error in windows to my hard drive being dead. (bad, very very bad) As I was searching I remembered my friend Zach was going to be setting up Linux on this server he was working on, in a random thought I figured downloading it.

I was actually moments away from removing the HD and checking it out when I flip up the laptop and see that the Hard Drive is sticking out, I push it back in and see that two screws are missing. I turned it on to see it working fine and I couldn't find the screws, I can't imagine them just coming out somehow and I had my Laptop turned sideways that day, so I realized why I didn't notice the missing screws until now.

Alright, so anyways, even with Windows running I figured I'd give Linux a shot. I've always said that I wanted to give it a shot sometime and I had downloaded it onto my Flash Drive, so I went ahead and burned it onto a CD and installed it on my Laptop. After getting it running, I'm impressed! I'm using a type of Linux called "Ubuntu".

It took a bit of work to get all my programs (that I need) up and running, but overall I have few complaints. I love the way it's structured, the speed and pre-loaded programs. Most of my gripes have been fixed with little searching and the fact that PHP, Apache, etc. is built-in is just awesome!

So I guess the question is if I'd reccommend it to others? I'd say yes for those that know there way around windows and such. As much as Linux has advanced to be user-friendly, some things require using the terminal (but not much) and if you're looking for an OS for low-medium computer users, windows is a no brainer. But for the tech savy, Linux is at least worth a try.

Now back to coding!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope all viewers enjoy today and of course enjoy your presents and stay safe. However unlike a lot of sites on the web we practically never take vacations. We'll be posting, hopefully, the AdaptCMS Lite v1.0 Beta soon after Christmas and a tutorial or two over at Insane Visions and more on the Browns game, along with a podcast at Bengals Chatter.

Merry Christmas!

Re-Structuring the website network

As always, a lot has been going on, I like to keep myself busy. Unfortunately, overall, my websites aren't doing well, that's why I am doing kind of a "re-structuring" my network of websites. Just main website wise (adaptcms.com and adaptbb.com, not included) I would like to get down to 5, that's my goal.

That would mean Insane Visions, Charlie Page (this site), Political Yard, Dynasty Wizard and Bengals Chatter. IV is a site that I have no plan of going away and is a main focus. Of course I'm not going to get rid of my own blog, it doesn't take much and I may even see it as a "secondary" web site, since my mail goal with this blog isn't to make money and such, if I can great, but it's just a blog.

Getting ready for Christmas

Most people would agree that Christmas is their favorite time of the year and it is, without a doubt, mine too. But the fun part is of course getting ready for it.

Without going into details, this will probably be the nicest Christmas I've had in years and I'm very much looking forward to it. I just got up the tree (a 4 footer) and decorated it with ornaments along with lights on the tree and on the balcony, I'll take pics and post them here once I can find my camera USB cord.

Of course now I have to get presents...my dad (very tough), my mom, going to get something for my grandmother (a mystery book) and then a present from my mom and myself to a family friend and then one for my best friend, Andrew.

Continued...

Weather, Kroger

First off I want to say that I will be adding content to 360 Universe. I have 3 reviews I need to do (MOH: Airborne, Madden 08 & Halo 3) and one or two will be up shortly.

Next up, OneCMS is doing well. All of the work and I just finished compiling all admin files into one "admin.php" file, almost half a MB! Next up I will probably be doing the same, except with the frontend and then will move onto bugs/security issues and then features.