There are a lot of instances where a program or script will need to work with multiple users. Most of the time, users will need to have certain permissions (for example, a normal user and an administrator).
Lot’s of developers feel the need to make a huge database table with all these “can_*” fields as the permissions. But there’s an easier (and cleaner) way of doing this. All it takes is one integer field in your table. (more…)
I’ve got some more, read inside for links. First come first serve.
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That’s right ladies and gents, IPB from the great (sarcasm) folks at IPS, have moved their once promised “always to be free” bulletin board to a fully paid licensing system (read here).
You know, I used to be a really big fan of IPB. Once I got vBulletin, I lost touch of IPB for a while (because vB is truly superior, IMO) but I still visited their forums to see if the possibility of IPB being better would ever come to pass. I can tell you now, even if IPB ever became better then vB, I still wouldn’t switch.
IPS’s business plan is just totally pathetic. The first time I really started to think that is when they broke their promise (yes, promise!) to keep IPB free. Companies grow, but it still bugged me. And then they try and sugar coat it or something by saying an “Unlimited Free Trial”, which was in really small font, I might add. So since version 1.3.1, IPB has technically been non-free software (your trial ended as soon as you got a serious community and wanted to use IPB).
Then you get into things like IPB vs. vB vs. phpBB discussions or some complaint about something they don’t like. The mod team see’s peoples opinions invalid when they go against the company, so they often get deleted. And now, the main product feedback and suggestions forum is members only so no non-members can even comment on the new “focus”. Try posting about it in General, go ahead, your topic won’t last five minutes.
Ahh… So all that rambling about how much I really don’t like IPS. I never thought I could hate a company so much to write an entire blog post on it. I’ll just end it by saying IPS is on my “never to purchase anything” list.
If you use IPB, good for you, no need to stick up for them by replying to this blog. I might be evil enough to pull an IPS and delete your post (kidding, I believe in free speech. I simply mean your post will not mean anything, so you needn’t waste your time replying.)
I rented Fable for X-Box this weekend and have been playing it quite literally non-stop. It’s actually a fun game (and easy!). The quests you have to do don’t get repetitive at all, unlike some games. I’ve been kicked off my main TV because I’ve been playing it too much and some people want to watch a move <_<.
It’s a great game overall. I wish it was as big an open as Morrowind and had a more complex story like Final Fantasy. But it’s good, and that’s all that I care about.
Decided to register Chroder.net today. I think I’ll set up some sort of portfolio type thing there when I’ve got some time. Maybe get a few side jobs and bring in some cash 
Well, I’ve hacked the Wordpress script a little bit. If you accept cookies, then whenever you come back to Chroder.com you’ll see all new posts in bold in the “Post Overview”, and a little star in the little brownish box of each post. So if you’re reading this, hopefully you’ll see those stars 
Okay, I started today with fooling around with RSS feeds and now I’m totally obsessed with them. These simple little feeds are great, I’m a feed-a-holic. I’m literally going around to sites and looking for that farmiliar “RSS” icon in the bottom of my Firefox screen.
I’ve got SitePoint’s PHP blog there on the side, Kevin’s Flipsource, and Jordan’s blog (because he’s always complaining about nobody reading it — so go look at it!). Once I get unbanned from /. I’ll go there too
Well, I decided to add some news. Getting 5 latest articles from Slashdot. I think it adds some spice to the page, though if anyone is like me, I check Slashdot like every 10 minutes so I doubt it’ll be useful But hey, it looks sexy. Kind of a separater of the newest post and the older ones. Not sure if I like it though.
So how do you act against DDoS’s? You can’t, as far as I understand things. The best you can do is try and limit users as much as possible, right?
Just curious. I did a project last year on some basic computer security stuff and from what I gathered, DDoS attacks are so hard to protect against because you need to sift through legit requests from attacker requests.
Well, it’s been quite an eventful night. Remember my rule about boring weekends and crappy week days? Well, today proved it. I don’t really want to say anything else.
The worst day of the week is over I’m addicted (again) to Morrowind… I stopped playing it for a while but I was bored on Saturday so I reinstalled it. I don’t know why but I love it I like stealing things, it’s fun sneaking up on people and picking their pockets 
I wish I had the cash for Final Fantasy XI (the online one), but I don’t so that blows. One day, one day. Halo2 is coming out soon too, I can’t wait for that. Halo is just plain 1337
I’ve got to go and pick up some poker chips some time this week, some friends and I are getting together to play some games. Real poker, too (w00t @ underage gambling :-P). We’re all poor so we’ve decided to play with like $15 each. But we’re playing like the way they play in the poker tournies, so the last person standing wins all. That’s a good $90 in the pocket. Guess I better start practicing on Yahoo! Games
So that’s it for today, gotta study now. Physics quiz tomorrow.
Yet another uneventful weekend. Weekends are like some sort of sacred time, and if you waste it, the coming week will be hell. That’s just my luck, anyway. At least I’m goin’ out tonight, going to see the new Resident Evil: Apocalypse. I heard it’s bad, and I probably heard right, but I still want to see it. Everyone hated the first one too but I liked it. You people just need to look past the bad acting and corny lines unto the real story!
I got a ceiling fan yesterday, though. My room is over our garage. I think it’s a curse for all over-the-garage-rooms, where in the summer it’s extremely hot and in the winter it’s extremely cold. So now with the ceiling fan, hopefully that’ll get some more air circulation movin’ around.
Anyway, I asked Tim yesterday if he wanted to separate the snippet section of DevBox into a different site. He’s been scarce lately, so I guess I’ll have to wait until Monday to hear an answer. As to a reason, not much… It would be another site to add to his empire! DB3 should be done soon, sooner if snippets are going to be a non-DevBox site. I got a lot done yesterday, on my uneventful Saturday.
I’ve been working on a few things for pB on the side of DB3, mostly the template system (Dave knows). I think I’ve created about 3 different versions of my template class (I think only Dave has ever seen it), and the latest is pretty sexy. It’s gone from simple {Replacements} to just eval’d $variables, to now, real PHP scripts that are just included to be parsed. The templates are simply parsed once and written to a “compiled” template file. Me and Dave thought that the most tedious part of skinning any script is the tons of different “bit” templates (example: Each row on a thread listing is a separate “bit” template that is just reused for each row). So there are looping features built in to the latest class (foreach). Though I’m going to add an alias of some sort, so n00bs aren’t intimidated when they see this crazy “<foreach>” tag in their templates. With the template system, I think that pB will be one of the easiest boards to skin with the least separate “bit” templates.
I’ve got a problem. My money is running out! I worked for a week at my Dad’s place before this one idiot got all ruffled up because I was underage and I had to leave. Funny thing, that same guy was recently fired for stealing scrap material and selling it! Hahaha, what an idiot… Anyway, I got about $300 for that, then I sold DB, some more for that (none of your business! :-P) and various other things. Anyway, I’m down to about $200! And that’s CAD, so that buys like 60% of an iPod… I’m accepting donations to cmn[at]cogeco[dot]ca, incase you have an extra two grand sitting around LoL
Anyway, that’s it for yet another blog. You see, I’m starting to actually blog about useless ramblings now instead of useful technological insights. A step in the right direction, I think! Maybe I’ll make another category “personal” and take them off the main page LoL.
Well, haven’t blogged about non-dev related stuff for a while… So maybe I’ll complain about random stuff, because all my complains are perfectly valid and entertaining, all at the same time.
I went back to school on the 7th, a Tuesday. I guess they didn’t want that “crappy Monday” feeling on the first day so they moved it to Tuesday (either that or they didn’t want to work on Labor day, though I seriously think the former ;-)). Grade 11. Wow, how the hell did I get there? I remember when I used to hate school. Even if I don’t enjoy it, I don’t hate it anymore. Grade 9, crappy, grade 10, less crappy, and now grade 11, slightly less crappy. I’ve got all classes this semester I don’t mind, so perhaps thats the reason I don’t particularly loath it. Computer engineering, physics, chemistry and computer programming. Not bad eh? Though I’m not sure if I did right by choosing physics, if I wanted a no-brainer semester then I should have kept that one out.
Anyway, computer engineering is kind of like a gamble. Either I learn something or I don’t. I pick up a few handy tips here and there, but most of it is hands on stuff which I guess builds up experience but nothing literally “taught”. The school is using our labor to fix computers while calling it “education” But the teacher is cool.
Computer programming is a waste of time for me. It’s a “gimme credit”. I literally know more then my teacher sometimes. This year we’re learning C, which is better then QBasic last year. At least I’ll be learning something useful instead of some crap the school board decided was introductory. Next year we learn Visual Basic, now what the hell is that? Maybe just because I hate Basic syntax… We’ll see how it goes though.
I made a big mistake in grade 9 by taking applied English. Not sure how things are done elsewhere, but here there are two basic levels of classes you can take: academic and applied. Academic is the “standard” one, applied is the “lower” one. If you’re bad at math, then you take applied math, if you’re bad at history, you take applied history etc. Well I did something dumb and took applied English because I hated English and wanted it to be easy. To get into universities you need academic English. So if I ever want to get into uni instead of college, then I need to upgrade my English credits to academic. But my sister, the queen of coasting, says that if I just go to student services and tell them that I should have taken academic and they look at my really really high applied English grades, they’ll probably upgrade it for me. I’m not sure about that, but it’s worth a try! But I’m trying not to worry about it too much, in fact I don’t really care. If I need to upgrade the credit I can just go to night school and make it up in a month or two.
I’m not even sure what I’m going to get into after high school. Maybe Dave and I will be rich by then Computer programming? Isn’t there an excess of them around these days? Well I don’t think I have a choice, I literally have no other talents. I’m a born geek! Using my proven psychic talents (Ian, you know it’s true!), I see myself in a new software company. Probably with Dave, where ever I go, I’m taking Dave!
It’s weird how you pick up friends on the internet. A couple years ago I would have thought such a notion to be crazy, after all, how do you really know the people you talk to? But I have a few people I talk to a lot and consider them close friends, Dave being one. I’m not really out to say a hello to everyone (hello Nick, Jordan, Ian, Trevor, Greg, Eric, Tim, Dave, Stefan :-P)… Right. I doubt half of those people would ever admit to knowing me LoL 
I don’t know why this post is becoming so long I guess I’m in a writing mood tonight. I get those writing urges sometimes, a creative “horniness” as AA would put it I wish I was a good writer, I’d love to write a story. To me, reading is great, it’s like using a pre-made script (one of my geeky similes). If it’s good writing, then it’s a good script. But I like to make my own. When I try to write it’s like I know what I want to create, but no idea how to program it. Weird, especially explaining it in a blog that no one is interested in. I’m officially labeling myself as insane. You know, I started writing a story a couple months ago and read it back to myself the other day, it was pretty good. I find my most creative side comes to life when I’m feeling crappy. I’m a very negative person, I think (a few “real life” friends can concede to that). Dark things really make me think. The weird “ugly” things that most people find repulsive are the ones that make me think and wonder. That description makes me out to fit the profile of a psychopath, but those are the best words I can choose. I’m the one with the spooky backgrounds, the depressing Radiohead music in the background (as I write right now). Happy, “light” things are boring to me, there’s no depth. When there’s a dark story, there’s a villain, a dark side, there’s some mystery and imagination. I guess you can think of it as a foreign room lit up, and a foreign room in darkness. If it’s lit up, you can see everything, as clear as day, there’s nothing to explore. If that same room is covered in shadow then there’s mystery, there’s more to what you see. And that is what I like.
Anyway, that’s enough for tonights blog I think. Blog you later
Me and Dave have finally decided on a project and are following through on it That project is PureBoard. Yes, I know, “yet another bulletin board?!”. Yes! The reason being, I’ve always wanted to create one and my work with forums in general, I think I have a good idea on what the end user wants. We’ve got some seriously cool new features planned, so hopefully that’ll set us apart from the competition.
Most of all though, I think we just need an experience, a product to add to a base so when we start our company seriously, we’ll have some things to show off. If pB actually does take off, then so much the better.