Fix BBCode so it doesn't break W3Validator with Strict dtd kay? Thx.

So my laptop overheated last week and I believe it fried its video card, forcing me to switch onto my much less powerful desktop. I ordered a new video card for my laptop off EBay a few days ago, and I'm expecting it to arrive this Monday, hopefully it will fix the problems I was having but if it doesn't I don't see myself replacing the laptop for at least a month. My desktop really can't handle WoW so I have had a lot of time to waste doing other things, and I ended up spending most of that time working on the website. I added a search tool to the Admin section, it was my first time playing with the MySQL full-text search tools which really simplified things compared to how I made the search tool by hand in PHP on the old site. User management is in for the admins now so no more messing with the DB, and the new rank system has been deployed which is pretty much the biggest feature addition so far over the old site. The new ranks allow us to give users permission to make front page post while not making them fully powered admins. We have already started being targeted by spam bots again so I put in a quick anti-spam math question in for guest comments, and we are able to ban specific IPs again. All the random site settings, like the page titles and posts per page, are controlled by the admin page now. I also setup the RSS feed for the new site which is available Here. BBcode is back, although I haven't setup quite as many tags as we used to support I stuck with things I deemed important.
Here's the list of supported tags
[ b]text[ /b] - Bold Text
[ i]text[ /i] - Italic Text
[ u]text[ /u] - Underlined Text
[ img]URL[ /img] -
[ url]URL[ /url] - http://malandaven.com
[ url=URL]text[ /url] - MalAndAven.com

Code:

[ code]text[ /code]

Quote:

“[ quote]text[ /quote]”

NickMass posted:

“[ quote=name]text[ /quote]”
With all the above complete there really isn't much more for me to do on the site, besides add new features, so I'm considering the rewrite of the old site pretty much complete which is a nice thing to have done.

So, we have been running on the new CodeIgniter based site backend for about a month now but I haven't bothered to make a post about it until now, mainly because there hasn't been anything interesting enough to post about, but now I have done something that may affect one person sometime in the future perhaps many years from now when they accidently visit this site. Because of some changes I made to the users table of the database all old user accounts have to be remade, benefits of this are passwords being stored in an ever so slightly more secure manor, and users now having registration dates associated with their accounts.

That's not all that has changed around the site though, there is a new design which you can clearly see, and I think it is the first time one of the site designs completely craps out in IE6, but I think by now everyone has had enough time to upgrade to IE7 if not, screw you. The site now actually has valid XHTML instead of spouting out a few hundred errors if you ever tried to validate it. Posts can now been sorted into categories when we create them and then can be linked to separately like you can see with most of the links in the side box. Each category can be given its own theme (example here: http://malandaven.com/index.php/blog/category/9). The archive is no longer gay as hell, and I don't need to worry about it crapping out on its self if I forget to post one month. Changing the layout of the site can now be done in separate files instead of digging through thousands of lines of PHP. Avatars are gone, they were annoying as hell to deal with and no one used them. Admin page is super sexirific but you will never see it. And many MANY other smaller optimizations, the site is 100% new code, nothing from the old crappy backend was reused.

Unfortunately there is still quite a bit left for me to get done, though I have all the vital things finished I believe. For the moment BBCode is no longer working, I'll set it up sometime but it is pretty low on my list of priorities. To manage user accounts I have to go in and mess with the DB by hand because I haven't finished that section of the Admin pages. I would also like to completely restructure the ranks system, I have a pretty good idea of how I'm going to do it but I need to finish the boring manage user crap before I get started. Simple site settings (like the title of the page and how many posts show up on each page) need to be changed within the code, no way to do it from the Admin pages yet. And I'm sure I will find many other things that need to be done as I'm messing with the site, but I will get it all finished, eventually.

Lately I've been playing around with managed Direct X in C#. Now, I'm still fairly new to programming, but the .NET framework really makes it easy. Over the course of a week I had managed to create a small window that rendered some 3D terrain from a bitmap. That was pretty neat and all, but my code was getting very messy and unorganized. I decided to scrap the project and start over using the XNA framework, which turns out is much much easier and convienient. It has speciallized methods specifically for DirectX and has a much easier learning curve. Right now I'm working on making a birds-eye-view online racing game with it. I've only got very basic controls and graphics rendered, but its coming along.

End of a month so I need to make a post to keep archive from gaying up. I have now begun working on the new version of the sites backend, I chose to use CodeIgniter this time to help out a bit. CodeIgniter is a PHP framework that pretty much kicks ass, it really helps keep your HTML and your code separate allowing for design changes to be made easily and site themes can differ completely from each other. It also has a sweet database abstraction layer which can really help out development. I'm probably going to switch the live system over to the new one in a week or 2, it defiantly won't have all the features implemented yet. NAIT semester 2 is over I failed half my classes, it sucks. Buy Audiosurf on Steam its like 10 bucks and fun as hell, here is a picture of it to make this post seem longer.

IT IS MARCH.

Even though I have nothing to write about I MUST make at least one post this month to keep the stupid archives thing from looking gay. I haven't worked on the new CMS at all, I have been far too busy doing nothing. I'm in the middle of midterms at NAIT right now which is mighty exciting. And in semi important internet news Stage6 announced yesterday that they will be closing down their site on the 28th of Feb.

The plane flew.

There is a plane, and it is on a giant treadmill, the treadmill is setup to exactly match the speed of the plane, but the plane is going one way, and the treadmill is going another. Will the plane be able to take off?

Now, to me it seems crazy obvious that the plane would take off without a problem, but some dumber people out there have been telling me it won't. Fortunately Mythbusters with be covering this in an episode on Jan 30th and I will be able to point a laugh at said stupid people.

Yaay its 2008, gonna redo site soon, shall be fun, woot toot.