Will you crazy people leave me alone?

3 03 2009

So as you all know I built www.lcarsdeveloper.com back in 2002, when I used to be a bit of a Star Trek fan (something I lost interest in very quickly).

At the time I was teaching myself Flash, and I wanted to take on a big project to test my Flash skills and improve on them, so I started messing around with the computer interface from Star Trek, which is known as “LCARS”.

In 2005 my site merged with another site called STEngineer.com, a site that was trying to build an operating system called “LOSS” (LCARS Operating System Shell). I gave control over to the STEngineer owners, but after writing their name all over the site and redirecting their domain name to mine (as well as breaking half the pages) they left and never returned.

Eventually I closed down the forum on the site because it was being overrun by spammers and I couldn’t be bothered moderating it. I had offers from people who wanted to take over the forum, I was even prepared to give them all the posts that were made, but nobody had any serious offers (just amateurs who would have given up 2 weeks later).

In the end I just stopped touching the site, uploaded all the source code (Flash FLA files) and said “do what you want with them”.

A lot of people took me up on that offer, the best example is www.lcars.org.uk, which has essentially expanded on my work and built another site out of it. I’m glad to see there’s a decent credit in the footer of the site, although to just say “thanks for designing the menu” is a little bit of an understatement when he’s kept the original logo and all the animations too. I’m embarrassed to see he’s even posted my hideously inaccurate animation here, the one I only made as a placeholder and never got around to finish.  And these:
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_m.htm
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_o.htm
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_p.htm
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_r.htm
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_x.htm (this one he finished)
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_n.htm
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_s.htm (I hated this one)
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_aas.htm (not sure if this is based on mine)
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_u.htm
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_zh.htm (From my LOSS8 demo…I think?)
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_w.htm (Never finished this one)
http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_t.htm
http://www.lcars.org.uk/Enterprise.htm (The big animation half way down with the scrolling text, although he finished it)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that this guy has gotten so much out of my work, and it’s obvious from the hundreds of animations he’s made on his own that he has his own talent, he’s just used my work as a shortcut for his own. I think that’s fantastic, it’s exactly what I posted the files online for!

But I’m getting very tired of getting emails from…lets face it…morons who think I somehow stole his website.

Like this gem:

Why do you own ADGE’S lcars web site if you are not going to do anything with it.
Some of my friends wanted a new screen save of save trek. but so far there are no new changes. if you are not going to comtrubute to the star Trek then sale the web site to someone who will do something with it.

I mean come on, I don’t OWN his website! I have nothing to do with, aside from the fact that his menu system is 90% my work.
And since when did I make screensavers? I’ve NEVER made a screensaver, and I never even tried to!
If I’m not going to contribute to star trek I should sell my website to someone who will? Well I’ve already given the whole thing away for free, who would possibly want to pay for it when they can do what Adge did and click “DOWNLOAD”?

Anyway that’s my rant for the day. Stop emailing me.





Drunk Programming

26 02 2009

Programming is more fun when you’re drunk. I’m actually enjoying it again for the first time in months! And all it took was 2 glasses of bourbon and 2 glasses of Irish Whiskey! :)

This function I just wrote is so awesome, seriously.

Now I have to fix someone else’s website before I can go back to working on my own. Stupid hosting company has messed up something. Now when you get a UNIX_TIMESTAMP() from the MySQL database it gives you the wrong timezone, so when I convert it back into a date it comes out as 1 day before I wanted!

So it goes into the database table as 2008-10-13, it comes out as 2008-10-14!

They probably changed the timezone on the servers or something stupid, so now I have to rewrite all the functions.

This is why I host my own sites in Texas instead of Australia…

 

Man…Firefly was one hell of a great show. I make sure to watch the whole series and movie at least once a year, half way through it again right now. There should be more sci-fi.





How to ‘Google’ Your Life!

9 02 2009

This is something I’ve been thinking about for quite a while, how you can use Google and their associated products to get more out of your life online!

http://www.bluesbrotherscentral.com/forum/computers-video-games-technology/7452-how-google-your-life.html





Friendface.co.uk Text Deciphered!

23 12 2008

If anyone was watching The IT Crowd last week, you would remember the whole plot revolved around a Facebook style website called “Friendface”.

Well there is a real official website at www.friendface.co.uk!

Except when you load the site you get a Reynholm Industries error message (I had nothing to do with this, I assure you!)

Well I’ve had nothing better to do tonight, so I  deciphered the blurry text on the page for everyone who was curious what it says. This is genuine, I did this by matching the symbols to where they appeared in the rest of the paragraph. The little upside down V with a dot above it is an ‘A’, and so on.

Here you go:

The text from www.friendface.co.uk, deciphered!

The text from www.friendface.co.uk, deciphered!

Update: I just found out that someone else beat me by 4 hours, it’s on Graham Linehan’s blog

Still, we’re both happy that someone else could confirm we got it right :)





IT Crowd Office Supplies

14 12 2008

Just in case anyone’s wondering where the IT Crowd items on Zazzle are from, here are the originals from Series 3 episode 3:

Original:

reynholm1

Zazzle:

Original:

reynholm2

Zazzle:

Original:

reynholm3

Zazzle:

Buy them from here: http://www.zazzle.com/reynholm/





Reynholm Industries Update!

6 12 2008

Reynholm (New)I’ve just done a major update of www.reynholm.co.uk

There’s now a new “secret” page and an Office Supplies store (near-exact replicas of props on the TV show, all artwork recreated by hand).

And I’ve updated the color scheme too, to fit more with the show’s look.

Feedback welcome!

(I may be updating some of the intranet wallpapers soon too, stay tuned)

Also very happy to see that the staff ID Cards in the intranet are nearly identical to the ones featured in the latest episode of the show.





A Wall-climbing R/C Car?

5 12 2008

ThinkGeek has one now!

For sale here: http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/rc/aeec/

Product Features

  • R/C car can race on walls using internal vacuum system
  • Full control including forward/backward and right or left turns
  • Charges from remote: 15 minute charge time, 8 minute drive time




My first Twitter Fail Whale!

5 12 2008

Trying to update my Twitter picture, just got the infamous “Fail Whale” error.

You’ll have to excuse my excitement, it’s my first time and he’s something of a celebrity :)

He has his own fan club: http://failwhale.com





My new GMail Theme!

5 12 2008

It matches my desktop wallpaper and doesn’t hurt the eyes so much at night:

Gmail Theme

It’s called "Planets"





WordPress Turbo

5 12 2008

Just tried enabling it:

wordpressturbo
Took 2 minutes to cache all the files but it worked fine. Not really noticing a huge boost in performance, but I’m sure it’s saving bandwidth, and it does seem very slightly faster. I think I’ll keep it turned on.

Only 25 mins until the new WordPress 2.7 arrives anyway, it may have to re-cache all the files again!