Warren Shea - World of Warren

Archive for the ‘Development’ Category

Life is good again…sorta

Saturday, November 5th, 2011 at 3:09 pm

This week was a busy week. I was working super hard since last Friday…all the way until about Wednesday night (including the weekend). Overtime any moment I had available. But I was still trying to sleep a decent amount, so as not to get sick again. This was all in preparation for a launch that was supposed to take place yesterday night, from 6pm and take me all the way until 11am.

Fortunately, late Wednesday, they delayed the project. Good news for me. I was able to relax a bit…I’m still working hard, still doing lots of overtime…but not killing myself with stress. I have another week..maybe two.

In the last week, I’ve done more real development than I’ve probably done all year. I learned a lot, because I was forced to. I’m really proud of what I’ve learnt and accomplished this week. And my love for web development was renewed once again. I can’t wait for this project to be over so that I can start my other development projects.

I’m going to Niagara Falls tomorrow with Z for some wine tasting. Staying there overnight…and coming back Monday. Pretty excited…I still have to pack for it though..and I dunno when I can, cuz I’m about to go to Richmond Hill’s Go for Tea and then dinner and maybe karaoke?

I’m happy though, I worked so hard this week and pretty much every moment I was awake…I even worked last night from about 10pm until 4:30am. And this is my reward :) Hanging out with friends…being social and going out…I feel like I haven’t seen anyone in weeks. Anyways, I’ll try to catch up more blog wise, I know I’m royally lagging behind but yeah, my life has been all work, no play, so there isn’t really much to blog about anyways.

Wait, to say I was using all my free time doing overtime was a lie. Every day I’d spend one hour between the long work day, and the long overtime nights playing Kirby: Return to Dreamland with Z. We actually beat the game in about a week…we got all the 120 gears you’re supposed to collect…though we’re still only at 94% completion as of yesterday. Have to figure out where the last 6% comes from…but I’m determined to get it, and be 100% complete :D

I’m also playing Kirby Mass Attack occasionally, but it’s at the really hard levels and I’m not really enjoying it as much. I’ve never REALLY enjoyed this game despite that it’s a side scrolling game, with a stylus twist. One thing I pride myself in side scrolling games is that I’m generally able to move the way I want to move. The coordination I feel between my head, fingers, and characters on the screen is generally pretty fluid. This is not true for FPS games, some driving games, etc. But side scrollers…I’m generally pro at. In this case though there are always 10 Kirbys moving around, that you have to keep track of. You can’t move the way you want because they move in a group…and some Kirbys always lag behind. Also, when you get 10 (the max) – which you need to unlock stuff – they take up so much of the screen.

Anyways, must work for the next 25 minutes, then get ready to go out…and then go out for the rest of the night :D even now, I’m still so damn busy! But I love it! <3 Oh wait, one more thing to write about. My cough seemed to mostly go awake this week! I don’t know why, I was so stressed…not eating right…HOWEVER, we were sleeping with the windows open, rather than the A/C on. I’m going to assume that was the key….the fresh air at night. Really happy it’s pretty much gone cuz we got mini-karaoke tonight…and in 2 weeks :P

Posted in All Posts, Daily Randomness, Development, Games, Games, My Life, Reviews | No Comments »

Hiatus….OVER!

Friday, October 21st, 2011 at 6:35 pm

What can I say, my hiatus lasted a little over 24 hours. :/

I sent my request to my hosting company to move to new, upgraded hosting at around 11PM.
By 1AM, my new hosting had already been created/completed: Free of charge.

By 3AM, I moved the content of
horderockcafe.com
warrenshea.com
seasaltfishandchips.com
to my new hosting.

By 3AM, I was trying to restore my 21MB WordPress SQL backup file, when the Import of the new DB was at a 2MB max. WTF.
I found a PHP script that took the SQL file, and pending correct database information, would run the SQL commands though the PHP. Effectively, rather than myPHPAdmin or whatever importing the contents of the .SQL file, it was basically a PHP script running the .SQL commands, effectively restoring the database. I ran into some minor but easily remedied trouble…but I’ve only been working on the site for like, 30m-1hour, and as you can see, by 7PM I have my backups restored.

I’m currently just archiving my content, SQL databases, etc…

My goal tonight is to install WordPress onto my new PHP5 server, for my new domain. Also, to make sure everything is running okay. If this blog works…my hopes are high.

All together, the migration seems pretty damn painless.
Now seems to be a good time to promote my hosting: IX Web Hosting. I’ve been with them since March 2007…so almost 5 years. They’ve been fantastic….no problems on my end. This was another example of a simply fantastic job.

So I’m back. Already.

Off to continue working on stuff….see you soon! :D

Posted in All Posts, Development, warrenshea.com, worldofwarren.com | 1 Comment »

Random Update

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 at 11:14 pm

Despite wanting to give up on the Kirby game, I’ve taken another approach: Finish 1, 2 or 3 levels in a sitting, rather than try to force myself to continue to play (cuz that makes me really sleepy). Better to play this game in moderation. I’ll eventually hit 100%…I’m at world 3 now, 46% complete…with all Gold Coins for each level. So far, I’m on my way to 100% completion rate :)

Almost everywhere I go now, I keep thinking about Zombie Apocalypse Survival. For example, I went to Table 17 for dinner today, using a Groupon that expired today. While there, Z and I had a window seat…and I was thinking how…unsafe that place would be in the zombie apocalypse. Honestly, almost everywhere I go, I’m thinking about zombie apocalypse survival. I had no idea The Walking Dead would have this kind of lasting effect on me. It’s quite entertaining.

I read somewhere that when women enter a room, they look at faces…and [other things women notice]. When men look into a room, the immediately, unconsciously, begin to study escape routes, safety issues, etc. Like survival is so innately important to them.

I have a new website project. Domain purchased. It’s related to my interests…but also something I might not be able to share with everyone. That is, I might build it, but not tell people that I run it. While a Japanese otaku might understand it’s awesomeness, I fear the close-minded co-workers of mine may not be so forgiving. Anyways, will write more.

My plan is to finish warrenshea.com before Oct 31…but I might not hit that date due to work. I don’t know why I set that date out…I was just motivated to work on projects and be productive but I find that with deadlines, and productivity, come stress. And with stress, come sickness. I’m avoiding sickness like the plague right now. Everyone around me is sick… :/ It’s a hard battle to win. Like surviving the zombie apocalypse. Anyways….I want to start the new website project. I’m not sure whether to use WordPress on it temporarily, while I build an ASP.NET site….or to just start building an ASP.NET site now, and…not have a website for a while. The problem is that the website topic is peaking in interest as we speak….well, it may continue to peak….but I don’t want to complete the site during the fall of interest.

Also, I want to develop this ASP.NET site:
1. Correctly – code in the proper places…no inline code hacks like I’ve done in the past. Correct layers…Presentation, Business, Code….[insert other words that are releveant]
2. Locally

I’m always about trying to do something different….with code (not irl lol). The more approaches you take, and continue with, the more you learn. Rather than do the same thing, or method over and over again.

It’s difficult: Lots of work, lots of personal projects, and avoiding stress and sickness. But this is currently what I’m trying to balance.

Posted in All Posts, ASP.NET, Daily Randomness, My Life | No Comments »

A local dev environment

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011 at 1:59 pm

I hate deving locally….and I know I’m in the minority of developers who feel this way.

As I write my list of pros and cons….I figure I’ll just make a pro/con chart. ~~Like in Gilmore Girls.~~ (ahh, I didn’t just write that…).

PRO/CON list of developing on the server directly

PRO

I just like the idea of making a change and having it directly affect production. Once you make the change, and you’re happy – you’re done.
I guess this should go with the point above, but I don’t like “releasing” or “promotion” of files. There’s always the strange chance something might work in dev, but not production because of different server settings, or someone forgot to document that something should be promoted (like a DB table, or certain files).
Hard Drives fail….and it would suck to lose all your work. When your information is stored on a server, the chance of failure is not only less likely, but you’re technically paying them for their services you don’t see (like backups)

CON

As I experienced recently, network issues (your ISP or their environment) can prevent you from doing work
Obviously the “make the change directly in production” idea doesn’t work for large or high traffic sites.
When I want to run old .asp files from my past, I’d have to upload them to the server, rather that just try files locally….such a pain!

Now, I GET that DEVing on the server directly isn’t used in any professional environment. But for sites like worldofwarren.com or warrenshea.com, that get so little traffic, and the users/readers are people I know IRL (generally), I don’t really care if stuff is down or broken or whatever.

Anyways…………all that said. I still like deving on a server directly.

But with my extra storage space on c:\ , I’ll throw all those local deving things I need. IIS7.0, XAMP thing…maybe create some Linux VM or something….just to do it. I was running at 89GB/100GB used. 11G is still a lot but I had to delete certain games and stuff to make room…and delete certain programs (Adobe Premiere Q_Q)….but with my new setup, my c:\ is now 89/200GB used. Plenty of room for stuff :D

I’ll give local development a try…it’s especially more important for an ASP.NET application.

Don’t get me wrong, I do local development all the time at work….I know how it works. Just for personal stuff, I find it more of a nuisance than a benefit.

Posted in All Posts, Development | 2 Comments »

Tutorials: Photography – Fine Tuning the photo manipulation process

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011 at 12:11 am

Sorry for the looong post! I know I said I was going to work on warrenshea.com but instead, I spent tonight learning about photo manipulation. To be honest, I thought my Adobe Photoshop skillz were good. Not great, but pretty good. But no, there’s so much to learn and do with this program, it’s pretty ridiculous. Anyways, I spent some time Googling photo manipulation.
“How to get the background white”
“How to remove darkened corners”
“How to sharpen an image”

They all led me to some Photoshop skills. You can see the difference in each shot as the quality of the photo is increased. The order of changes for WHY I did them:

1. Adjusting the tone/color. I find that sometimes the tone can be off….doing either of these will make it a nicer one. A blue instead of a yellow, stuff like that.
2. Adjusting the levels to increase the lightness around a figure.
3. Lens Correction to increase the lightness around the corners of the shot.
4. Vibrance to increase some color contrast
5. High Pass filter, to increase sharpness. I LOVE this step, it looks fantastic after.

Click the image for a larger image

Anyways, I learned that the 8 hours of photography last weekend were wasted. The lightsources I chose to lighten some things caused a dark shadow behind my figure. No amount of Lens Correction can fix it….sigh. The shots I took when I first got my light box are better to manipulate. Really though, I need more light for one. And two, a better camera. Doubt I’ll be able to get the latter any time soon. Maybe I can do something about the former…need to hit up a Henry’s.

Posted in All Posts, Photography, Tutorials | 1 Comment »