Phyrax

Moving to Blogspot

Jay — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:07:25 +0000

For awhile I’ve been posting to blogger, otherwise known as Blogspot. I’ve been researching the absolute best way to attract customers, clients, or even better utilize my site as a portfolio and I’ve came to the conclusion that it’s best if I actually utilize Phyrax.com as a solo portfolio, similar to the previous setup yet somewhat more SEO friendly. The fact is that it’s easier to attract a niche market rather than trying to cater to a larger crowd. I don’t know when this will happen, I don’t know how fast I can get ti done, but I’m definitely going back to the old portfolio style.

Back on track!

Jay — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:50:40 +0000

For a while I have attempted to create a website for Second Life and cannot, for the life of me, ever complete any project. I had started using Open-Realty, which is a free real estate based CMS for people or agents to post their content for public viewing. However, as always, I figured I could bend this monstrosity of a web application to my will, which, to a few months ago, went well. The thing is, my windows based machine was dual-booting with Fedora 10 so I could test my changes locally. While this was great for me to test on the road, it was a pain, and windows kept getting sick of it and puking blue screens on a weekly and sometimes daily basis.

Windows and Dual-Booting

After a series of hard reboots, windows finally gave up and died, forcing me to re-install, Vista by the way. For those of you that have never dual-booted a machine before, this created a sort of software nightmare. By dual-booting a system, you have to install a boot loader, sometimes GRUB, and there may be others. By default, GRUB is installed during the Linux OS installation process. By re-installing windows, I removed the boot loader. A few days back, I re-installed Fedora 10 seeing as I had a few hours on my hands, accidentally removing my linux partition that was still sitting there, therefore deleting all previous work on VirtualLand.org, approximately two weeks.

Make Backups

Thankfully I had a backup on the website, which I didn’t find out until today. I have since downloaded the last version I began with, a few weeks prior to the final alterations prior to the windows crash, and began work on VirtualLand again. I am also re-thinking the actual money scheme from another perspective.

How to pay for listings?

Previously I was thinking of integrating a system whereas the user would pay a box and have an account balance and available credits displayed. By providing a user with other means to pay on a per-listing basis, such as buy one box per listing, this allows me to focus on less strenuous coding and not require me to create an extensive plugin.

Why re-post?

Jay — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:24:42 +0000

This is yet another rant and something entirely random that has been provided to you courtesy of my menial mind and usual 3AM boredom. Before I begin, I already assumed the chick flipping you the bird has gotten your attention, so ha, sex and violence does sell.

Why is it that everywhere we look there’s re-postings of standard material. Not to state that most material isn’t unique, but is it ever? Let’s take YouTube as an example. You search for one little video, say Eminem’s new video Beautiful, which is a very true song I might add. You immediately bring up multiple results and most with just music, some with lyrics, but 75% with the same freggin’ video. Granted that most of these individuals post the same crap, even though it’s already plentiful over the website anyhow, they are probably doing so due to the need of feeling wanted. To illustrate this fact, here is a few links to the same damn video, along with their re-posters:

TUNESWORLD [link] (Even offering downloads, what the hell…)
EminemTM [link] (Possibly the real Eminem, or maybe not)
universalmusicgroup [link] (Duh!)
MrLyricsMaster [link] (Just the text, no video, but plays the music)
krazieboyj [link] (What the hell… just text, but it says (HD) hehe, that’s funny)

Now that is just five out of hundreds of videos that are copied, at least the audio anyhow. So what drives these people to do this, is it lack of research to see if it’s already provided, is it the need to have watchers, followers, or simply people to look up to you, how about the need to be on the top of the listings? Some companies, mainly new and inexperienced, utilize this sort of viral media to spread a message, sometimes ineffectively. While some industries such as Universal Music (see above) succeed in this, only to be undermined by users such as TUNESWORLD. Offering up tunes/music for a price, while they probably do have to pay royalties, though I am speculating, they still profit off of simply copying other videos.

Another random occasion I have ran upon, though possibly unintentional, was when searching for Photoshop tutorials. As an example, do a search on Google for “Photoshop: Orb Tutorial” and see how many results you get, kind of astonishing isn’t it? The fact is, around 50% of those tutorials are copied directly from another, around 25% of those are copied and slightly modified, and the final 25% is entirely unique to each other.

In the past I have read articles that discussed ways and reasons for re-posting content to the net. And I would encourage anyone thinking of re-posting something to at least have a look at Google. The point is, if re-posting is done in an efficient and expected manner, then people may not take notice. There’s just nothing more frustrating than searching for something and coming up with hundreds of freggin’ results of the SAME CRAP… FREGGIN STOP IT ALREADY….

Going to MSU

Jay — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 04:46:48 +0000

I started into college back in 2008, February to be exact. At that point in time, I had no knowledge of business and had the aspirations of being a manager. Hehe, well boy was I wrong. During my stay at Wal-Mart Inc. I can honestly state that I have zero interest in management what-so-ever. However, I do want own a business. For over two years now I’ve owned a small virtual online business, using it as a proving ground for marketing strategies, and experimental research. This has proven me to be a formidal opponent in this virtual world. Though this ‘game’ as some people call it is not to be used as a cheat sheet for real life, it does give one an idea on how to handle certain issues that arise in day to day businesses.

So anyhow, I’ve just went to MSU today to transfer my credits and get enrolled in the college. Currently I’m only $28,000 in debt and getting ready to jump into another $20k+ in debt again, not counting grants of course. Except this time, I’m a little bit smarter. I’m heading to MSU this Fall, August 24th to be exact, to study Information Technology and Website Design for an Associates degree. Thankfully since I’ve already taken classes via CTU Online, I have gotten credit for those within MSU’s campus. Thus saving me graduation time, and valuable money.

So anyhow, that’s all for now Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter or Facebook

How-to Download Streaming Videos

Jay — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:38:30 +0000

From time to time I run across a quite useful gaget on the net. Well lately I’ve been trying to learn Blender again, especially with the new release of 2.49a. So I figured, hey why not find some tutorials related to a small project of mine. For awhile now I have wanted to change the header that is included by default with this wordpress theme, WP-Pixels, with a logo a friend made for me during a contest I ran on Deviantart. You can view the logo here, or the full contestants here.

So anyhow, ~onelover had gave me the logo in Illustrator format (.ai) so I can use it for vector outputs, since these are the easiest to scale and enlarge. Well I wanted to do a more realisitc 3D scene in Blender with the logo. Thankfully Blender allows path imports from .ai files, which was amazingly helpful. So anyhow, I imported it into Blender and seeing as I haven’t used Blender in awhile I forgot the procedure of making procedural grass on a landscape. Well I ran upon a video by Andrew Price on Vimeo.com titled “The Secret to Creating Realistic Grass in Blender.” Needless to say if you click that link, the opening image is going to blow your mind.

Well the problem was, I didn’t have time to view the video like I wanted to, nor the time to follow along. I had to be at work in 30 minutes, which didn’t give me nearly enough time to do what I wanted. So I searched, and I searched for a way to download this video. The problem with this is that the market is saturated with hundereds, if not more, programs designed to do just that, most require you to login and download an application to do so, and very few offer you the ability to direct download, some even charge a fee. However, I ran upon a nice site called ClipNabber. This site doesn’t require a fee, registration, or even a waiting time to download. It’s just that simple.

Just have a look below at what ClipNabber’s interface looks like once you submit the file. Or go there and view it yourself by clicking here.

ClipNabber.com

Moving to DC

Jay — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:12:39 +0000

For awhile now, I’ve always dreamed of moving out of this dreadful West Virginia. There is absolutely nothing here other than coal or military jobs. Forget trying to be a tech geek here in this mom-and-pop saturated hell of a state. Maybe it’s just my town, maybe it’s just the people around here, hell I don’t know!

One thing is for sure, I have lived in West Virginia my whole life, and I think it’s about time I leave this boring place. For about a year now I’ve been looking and wondering what is the best place to live, what city would I reap the most benifits from? Well a post by Inside Tech on the Top 25 Tech Cities, just confirmed my decisions on moving, if not to DC, at least somewhere.

The fact is, according to the post, that Washington D.C. boasts an average of $50,000+ yearly income. On top of that, it’s one of the top 5 most wired cities in the United States and the job growth rate is climbing. Here, you’re lucky if you even sink a job with Wal-Mart.

There is still one small problem however, I have no idea where to go in DC. Yes like others, I have done my research and found some nice places to live, but haven’t actually calculated how much it would cost to move. If I had my way about it, I would probably just bring my computers, my futon, and minimal items both I and my family would need. I’d leave all this other crap here. So I guess I’ll have to call around and figure something out soon. I need to get out of WV somehow, I need a better job and a more fulfilling life, rather than simply sitting here wondering what today’s gonna be like…

Motion Graphics vs. Web Design – A delima

Jay — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 09:08:46 +0000

I currently go to Colorado Technical University, however, I attend the online portion of the college. We’ve all had our days and well, it’s 5AM, i’m bored, and gotta take my wife to work at nine, so yay for four hours of sleep. Anyhow, for the past few days I’ve been thinking of what to do after college. I’ll have a two year degree in business managment but nothing to really do. I currently hold a position at Wal-Mart which seems to only offer upper positions to those of whom they like. I’ve tried multiple times to get into managment, even assistant training since I got hired, to no avail of course! Hell I even passed the “Supervisory Assesment Test” prior to even getting hired, brought a resume to the interview, only to have them shrug it off, and have even made extra efforts out of my way to fix computer equipment. What has it got me, nothing, go figure!

Well I’ve noticed that my two year degree will do nothing for me and have realised my mistake by taking an online college. So here’s the delima, I know I want to go back to college but the question is for what! I’m already about $16,000 in debt due to loans and I’m wanting to go back, why, well, I’m bored. Though boredom isn’t the main reason for me returning to college, it’s the thrill of actually learning something new. I just wanted this two year degree to have it under my belt, it’s that simple. Okay I’m digressing again, anyhow, I want to go back to college next year, but I want an actual college, no more online crap.

I’ve always been intrigued with motion graphics and 3D design. I love doing 3D models and scenes, though I can’t seem to find the time to do so since I got a child and two jobs. I love playing with Adobe After Effects, especially the new CS4. However, on the flip side, I love coding too. I love the fact of being able to write in text and tell the computer what I want it to do. So is there a profession that has both of these, I mean, I know web designers are starting to incorporate motion graphis with their websites via Flash, but what about the flip side, is there a place for us designers?

Hell idk, well my disc is done burning, I guess it’s time for bed. - Jay

Update server with ANS

Jay — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:25:15 +0000

As you guys know, I play Second Life. Well there’s a website called XStreet, which used to be privately owned, but the Lindens purchased it commercially. XStreet is a haven for merchants in world to list their items off-world so users may find one central location to look at products available, rather than using the unreliable, an sometimes cumbersom search engine built into Second Life itself.

A while back, XStreet made a product, or API rather, that is called ANS. ANS stands for Automatic Notification System, and is used to throw out variables to either the object you specify or an off-site script. Now i’m not going to go into the complete details, so if you’re curious you can view it HERE if you have an XStreet account.

Anyhow, if you’ve played Second Life and actually are a merchant or have bought products before, you have either received an update or given them out once or twice. Well these updates come from Update Servers, duh! But the limitations of update servers is that they usually rely on a notecard configuration setup to store user names and avatar keys. Some servers, however, such as the HippoUpdate servers, utilize off-world databases, though they STILL require you to send out updates manually or via the website, and you can forget integration with XStreet.

The thing is, as merchants, at least 60-98% of our profits come from XStreet. So why not have an update server that works with XStreet? I mean, they gave us the tools, we scripters have the knowledge, so why not use it? Well that’s where I come in, I have a general idea on an update server that WILL integrate with the XStreet ANS system. Though this won’t have a fancy website such as Hippo’s right out of the box, at least we’ll have the tools to do so. The system will have an off-world database and will communicate with just two prims as to reduce inworld lag from listens and such. I will have no choice but to use two prims seeing as a prim CANNOT listen to itself. This will also reduce lag by registering multiple listens, and instead, it will use linked messages which also deals with the default llSay character restriction of 255 bytes.

So anyhow, this is yet another…. sigh… project in the works, hell, I haven’t even finished VirtualLand.org yet…

Second Life and PHP

Jay — Sat, 30 May 2009 13:02:38 +0000

It feels like yesterday that I started to play Second Life. We were all noobs once! Now I have a habbit of referring to Second Life as a ‘game’, but can it really be referred to as that? I mean really, Second Life is more of a real Second Life. I know people inside of this virtual world that really get married, date, etc… the possibilites are endless, and sometimes odd. The thing is, Second Life for me is a business, not a mere game. I have two virtual stores where individuals can come and buy items, textures, and scripts. With these two stores Second Life is actually supplimenting my income and paying my web hosting fees, go figure!

So anyhow, at my stores I have a few items that need to be downloaded externally, from my website. To do this I needed to incorporate Second Life’s LSL scripting language with my PHP based website and MySql Database. I started to search on how to do this as I was new to LSL and had done PHP for sometime. So now I have this huge script (huge for LSL that is) that takes care of what I need and now I’m releasing it to the public for critique.
I am only releasing the LSL part of the script, you can play with it how you want, edit, etc… but do not resell it at all. I login to Second Life daily and if I see this script floating around, you can bet I’ll file a DMCA against you. SO… without further ado, here’s the code:

// The right amount to be paid.

string hover_text = "Touch Me";


string objName = "TGA Tanned Asian Kit";
string SECRET_STRING="xxx";
list l;
key botKey = "xxx";
// The URL of your website.
string http_host = "xxx";
// The PHP that handles the $_POST variables.
string http_path_sender = "xxx";
// We're sending only, not receiving.
//string http_path_reciever = "/SL/SendToReciever.php";
 
 
 
vector red = <1.0,0.0,0.0>;
vector green = <0.0,1.0,0.0>;
vector yellow = <1.0,1.0,0.0>;
vector blue = <0.0,0.0,1.0>;
 
string http_url_sender;
key http_request_id; // internal id for every http sender request/response.
list http_parms = [HTTP_METHOD,"POST",HTTP_MIMETYPE,"application/x-www-form-urlencoded"]; // details of request.
//string http_body;   // URLescaped variables. ie. name=Maria%20Torvalds&sex=F
 
integer x;
integer total_number;
key usrNow;
default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        // get permission from the owner to pay out money using the llGiveMoney function.
        if(llGetScriptState("group") == TRUE){
            llSetScriptState("group", FALSE);
        }
        if(llGetScriptState("group1") == TRUE){
            llSetScriptState("group1", FALSE);
        }
        //llSetScriptState("group", FALSE);
        //llSetScriptState("group1", FALSE);
        http_url_sender = "http://" + http_host + http_path_sender;
        for (x = 0; x < total_number; x++)
        {   // x is the student touch number
            // usrNow is the key of the student
            usrNow = llDetectedKey(0);
            //llGiveInventory(usrNow, llGetInventoryName(INVENTORY_NOTECARD, 0));
        }
        if(llGetObjectName() != objName){
            llSetText("Please place all items back in the box. \n Without the scripts inside the original box \n Nothing will work correctly.", red, 1.0);
            state default;
        }
        state startscript;
    }
}
state startscript
{
    state_entry()
    {
        llSetText(hover_text, yellow, 1);
    }
    touch_start(integer total_number)
    { // Event waiting for a student touch
        integer x;
 
        for (x = 0; x < total_number; x++)
        {   // x is the student touch number
            // usrNow is the key of the student
            usrNow = llDetectedKey(x);
            //llSay(0, "Avatar Key: " + (string)usrNow);
        }
        if(usrNow != llGetOwner()){
            llSay(0,"Only the owner of this object can use it, killing script.");
            state default;
        }
        llGiveInventory(usrNow, "Instructions");
        llGiveInventory(usrNow,llGetInventoryName(INVENTORY_LANDMARK,0));
        llDialog(usrNow, "Please read the \"Instructions\" notecard first. \n \n Have you read the notecard and are you ready to redeem your purchase?",["Yes", "No"], -33);
        integer ListenID = llListen(-33, "", usrNow, "");
    }
    listen(integer chan, string name, key id, string mes)
    {
        if(id == llGetOwnerKey(id)){//won't listen to objects unless they aren't in the region.
            if(mes == "Yes")
            {
                state start_send;
            }
            else if(mes == "No")
            {
                state default;
            }
        }
 
    }
}
state start_send
{
    state_entry()
    {
        llSetText("Sending data to web server.", yellow, 1.0);
        llInstantMessage(usrNow,"Beginning the data process.");
        //llSay(0, "Avatar Key: " + (string)usrNow);
 
        //** Create http_body
        //** maybe (sure) a function for speed up this creation proccess is needed when goes more complex
        string avname = llKey2Name(usrNow);
        llSetText("Acquired avatar name.", yellow, 1.0);
        llInstantMessage(usrNow,"Acquired avatar name.");
        string item = llGetObjectName();
        llSetText("Acquired object name.", yellow, 1.0);
        llInstantMessage(usrNow,"Acquired object name.");
        // Generating fake password
        float rnd_1 = llFrand(999999999) + 100000000;
        llSetText("Password generated.", yellow, 1.0);
        llInstantMessage(usrNow,"Password generated.");
        // Now IM the avatar that paid me
        llWhisper(0,"The folling information will be an Instant Message with important information regarding your account on my site.");
        llInstantMessage(usrNow,"\n~*=*~*=*~*=*~\nUsername: "+avname +"\nPassword: "+(string)rnd_1+"\n Please DO NOT LOSE THIS INFORMATION \n~*=*~*=*~*=*~");
        llSetText("Password given to avatar.", yellow, 1.0);
        // Now do the database stuff with the PHP file.
        integer i;
        string body;
        l = ["avatar",llKey2Name(usrNow),"object",llGetObjectName(),"pass",rnd_1,"objectID",llGetObjectDesc()];
        integer len=llGetListLength(l) & 0xFFFE; // make it even
        for (i=0;i
        {
            string varname=llList2String(l,i);
            string varvalue=llList2String(l,i + 1);
            if (i>0) body+="&";
            body+=llEscapeURL(varname)+"="+llEscapeURL(varvalue);
        }
        //    string data=llEscapeURL(SECRET_STRING)+(string)SECRET_NUMBER;
        string data=llMD5String(SECRET_STRING,0);
        //llWhisper(0,"Data code is:" + data);
        //** and do the request
        http_request_id = llHTTPRequest(http_url_sender+"?hash="+data, http_parms, body);
    }
    http_response(key request_id, integer status, list metadata, string body)
    { //** This event handle the response of our previous request
        if (request_id == http_request_id) {
            llSetText("Connecting to server..", red, 1.0);
            if (body)
            {   //** Print output of http request IF connection was succed
                //llSetText(body, green, 1.0);
                llSetText("Server contacted, please wait...", yellow, 1.0);
                llWhisper(0, "Server response:\n---\n" + body + "\n---");
                llWhisper(0, "Information downloaded, removing script.");
                state remove_script;
            }
            else
            {   //** IF NOT make a fake response with error text
                llWhisper(0, "Maybe the server is off-line. Connection was impossible.");
                body = "ERROR. Remote Script (" + http_host + ") unavailable. Please try again in a few minutes.";
                llWhisper(0, "Resetting script");
                state startscript;
            }
        }
        state startscript;
    }
}
 
state remove_script
{
    state_entry()
    {
        llSetText("Touch to Join \n Phyrax Designs Group \n to be notified of product updates \n and specials along the way.", yellow, 1);
        llRequestAgentData(botKey, DATA_ONLINE);
    }
    dataserver(key queryid, string data) 
        {
            if(data =="1"){
                llSetScriptState("group", TRUE);
            }else{
                llSetScriptState("group1", TRUE);
            }
            llRemoveInventory(llGetScriptName());
        }
}

Netflix: Cheaper than cable?

Jay — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:56:54 +0000

Throughout my past as a kid, my parents always scrapped up money just to get food on the table. This has taught me to pinch pennys where I have to. We’ve never owned cable, and when we did, it was only for a limited time, the maximum I think was about one year.

Well I was sitting on my xbox last night and wondered, what about Netflix? Netfilx now has the ability to stream directly to my Xbox 360, even on “standard” quality, the movies are immaculate. Furthermore I also purchased a 32″ LCD and when streaming it to this, omg… this is awesome. I can also watch TV seasons, for instance, I just downloaded the Season 1-3 of Heroes, omg, HEROES…

I know it’s a bit much to get so excited over watching these shows, but if you came from where I came, you’d understand. I mean omg, I’m paying only $8.00 a month for INSTANT streaming (minus the speed detection process) directly to my Xbox. This is awesome and I would encourage anyone that does not want to pay for freggin’ cable to stream this shiz for cheap. Oh and btw, did I forget to mention I’ve watched, or streamed, season 1 only on a free trial, omg… this is AWESOME!