Journals
Hey guys, remember the good ol' web designs from the 2000's? Yeah me neither or at least not in the way I would like to anyway.
Flashy gifs and horrible color matching aside what I like about the old way of doing things is that everything was small, font, buttons etc... I don't know if that was a result of low resolution 4:3 CRT's that everyone had those days or what, but it somehow leaves me something to desire in today's web designs where everything is blown out of proportion. I understand that mobile exists today and that sort of requires that everything is big.
TWHL is probably the only website I know and visit that still rocks the old design style, but that will change with v4. It's all fine and dandy I'm not here to cry over that
times change and you need to as well.
Sooo whats this all about then?! I have a little personal/work project I'm working on that could benefit from the "old style" web design, specifically an admin page where you could fit a lot of information w/o having the need to scroll down as much for more. I've seen people using CRM software that looked like it was made in the 90's, tree menus, 12px font everywhere etc.. And it struck me that you can fit a lot of data on a 1080p resolution screen. And you can probably see where I am going with this, if not here's a little hint:
I'm having a hard time finding inspiration for it and hoping some of you could help me? (pretty please )
This also serves as a discussion on web design. Now vs then, likes and dislikes.
Flashy gifs and horrible color matching aside what I like about the old way of doing things is that everything was small, font, buttons etc... I don't know if that was a result of low resolution 4:3 CRT's that everyone had those days or what, but it somehow leaves me something to desire in today's web designs where everything is blown out of proportion. I understand that mobile exists today and that sort of requires that everything is big.
TWHL is probably the only website I know and visit that still rocks the old design style, but that will change with v4. It's all fine and dandy I'm not here to cry over that
times change and you need to as well.Sooo whats this all about then?! I have a little personal/work project I'm working on that could benefit from the "old style" web design, specifically an admin page where you could fit a lot of information w/o having the need to scroll down as much for more. I've seen people using CRM software that looked like it was made in the 90's, tree menus, 12px font everywhere etc.. And it struck me that you can fit a lot of data on a 1080p resolution screen. And you can probably see where I am going with this, if not here's a little hint:
)This also serves as a discussion on web design. Now vs then, likes and dislikes.
I don't know about you, but i'm 22
In other news there might be a TWHL Tourney around the corner.
In other news there might be a TWHL Tourney around the corner.
Valve's Gamebreaking Syndrome
This was supposed to be a PM to Jessie, but screw it lets make a journal
Anyway, what my problem with Valve is that they are/have become a monopoly and are slowly turning to EA, maybe not that bad, but the tendencies are there. Monopolies aside what really frustrated me was Valve's spontaneous new ideas for their old games. I don't remember when and with which game it started, but i have been putting together what looks like a tendency Valve follows with every game they make and later break.
Call me old fashioned, but i don't see why you need to try and revive old games that are in a state of "community management". The gsrc engine falls into that category, ever since they for some reason decided to upgrade the engine which broke camera movement, added unnecessary features like Anti-Aliasing and some other things. Granted this was done to offer cross-platform compatibility, but this could have been done a different way without touching the look and feel of a game. Not to mention they broke half of the servers.
TF2 comes in next. The game has gone downhill since the trading system was introduced. I know everyone wants money and all, but why break the game for the people who like the game for what it was? I mean you didn't add hats, weapons and other ** to CS 1.6 or CSS and everything worked fine for a very very very long time. In a matter of 2-3 years Valve basically killed what was a very little pro-scene to begin with, even the community got a stab in the back with "matchmaking" and official servers, on top of many other things i won't name. Instead of fixing the annoying game crash which plagued me since i first started playing, i have switched between 3-4 machines since then and the game still crashes (Stojke can relate), they pumped out more hats.
L4D, they game has a good concept everything was going ok and then L4D2, which would have been alright if not for the merge of the two few years later. Also the debut of Valve's "matchmaking" system.
Dota2, i have been with this game since the very beginning. The "hats" in this game don't bother me so much since impact to gameplay is very minimal. What really bothers me about it is that we can see Valve's focus is oriented towards milking the series for as much money as possible and then leave it rotting on the side of the road. The joke on youtube about the servers got me thinking, maybe its not that far fetched as it seemed. In the beginning the pings for me were about 40ms that jumped to 100ms in the same region. Ok there are more players which has an influence on this, but why not scale with the growing community and upgrade your damn network infrastructure?
CS:GO, il let the skins slide. What infuriates me is paying for maps ? really ? As i only play competitive i am displeased with this. I can't really comment on this much since its not that broken yet, we will see.
I am kind of old fashioned in the sense of modding, what i really liked about Valve is that everything was in the communities hands. Maps, models, servers everything. Now it just feels like they are ripping the soul of modding out from their games with Steam Workshop, to me modding has and always will be a community oriented thing, not a reddit on steam with an "Add to game" button. Yes it has become easy to add stuff to your game with this, but the hard way of doing it was the whole experience for me, taught me way more than push a few buttons to get what i want ever will.
I can't really come up with an example to compare to, Id software did it well, but then again it was early in the days of the online gaming we know today.
Well here was my little rant about Valve, they in my mind aren't what they used to be and never will be.
This was supposed to be a PM to Jessie, but screw it lets make a journal
Anyway, what my problem with Valve is that they are/have become a monopoly and are slowly turning to EA, maybe not that bad, but the tendencies are there. Monopolies aside what really frustrated me was Valve's spontaneous new ideas for their old games. I don't remember when and with which game it started, but i have been putting together what looks like a tendency Valve follows with every game they make and later break.
Call me old fashioned, but i don't see why you need to try and revive old games that are in a state of "community management". The gsrc engine falls into that category, ever since they for some reason decided to upgrade the engine which broke camera movement, added unnecessary features like Anti-Aliasing and some other things. Granted this was done to offer cross-platform compatibility, but this could have been done a different way without touching the look and feel of a game. Not to mention they broke half of the servers.
TF2 comes in next. The game has gone downhill since the trading system was introduced. I know everyone wants money and all, but why break the game for the people who like the game for what it was? I mean you didn't add hats, weapons and other ** to CS 1.6 or CSS and everything worked fine for a very very very long time. In a matter of 2-3 years Valve basically killed what was a very little pro-scene to begin with, even the community got a stab in the back with "matchmaking" and official servers, on top of many other things i won't name. Instead of fixing the annoying game crash which plagued me since i first started playing, i have switched between 3-4 machines since then and the game still crashes (Stojke can relate), they pumped out more hats.
L4D, they game has a good concept everything was going ok and then L4D2, which would have been alright if not for the merge of the two few years later. Also the debut of Valve's "matchmaking" system.
Dota2, i have been with this game since the very beginning. The "hats" in this game don't bother me so much since impact to gameplay is very minimal. What really bothers me about it is that we can see Valve's focus is oriented towards milking the series for as much money as possible and then leave it rotting on the side of the road. The joke on youtube about the servers got me thinking, maybe its not that far fetched as it seemed. In the beginning the pings for me were about 40ms that jumped to 100ms in the same region. Ok there are more players which has an influence on this, but why not scale with the growing community and upgrade your damn network infrastructure?
CS:GO, il let the skins slide. What infuriates me is paying for maps ? really ? As i only play competitive i am displeased with this. I can't really comment on this much since its not that broken yet, we will see.
I am kind of old fashioned in the sense of modding, what i really liked about Valve is that everything was in the communities hands. Maps, models, servers everything. Now it just feels like they are ripping the soul of modding out from their games with Steam Workshop, to me modding has and always will be a community oriented thing, not a reddit on steam with an "Add to game" button. Yes it has become easy to add stuff to your game with this, but the hard way of doing it was the whole experience for me, taught me way more than push a few buttons to get what i want ever will.
I can't really come up with an example to compare to, Id software did it well, but then again it was early in the days of the online gaming we know today.
Well here was my little rant about Valve, they in my mind aren't what they used to be and never will be.
Time has come for me to take a step and upgrade to Win8 SP1 (Yes that's what i call 8.1 get over it).
Trying to customize it as much as i can to suit my needs, that is i need it to be as close to 7 as possible, already got the classic start going, removed annoying folders in the Computer window, renamed "This PC" etc...
The only thing that bothers me is the non transparent borders. And the colors they have are really eye popping and none of them seem to work for me. Anyone has any solution to this, maybe make them like 7 ?
Trying to customize it as much as i can to suit my needs, that is i need it to be as close to 7 as possible, already got the classic start going, removed annoying folders in the Computer window, renamed "This PC" etc...
The only thing that bothers me is the non transparent borders. And the colors they have are really eye popping and none of them seem to work for me. Anyone has any solution to this, maybe make them like 7 ?
Time to expand.
My usual way of getting machines was either through people i know or ebay which is a rare and quite expensive occasion. So i decided to look in the local ad's (something like craigslist ?) what i usually avoided doing for some reasons.
So i searched about and found this for cheap:
(Sorry for low quality pics, took these with my crappy phone at work)
Anyway, its a Dell PowerEdge 2950 in a great condition. I wasn't such a big Dell fan, giving prior experience with their custom connectors and weird issues, but this thing is insane.
You can literally take this apart with just your hands, everything is held in place by tabs (blue color for removable, orange for hot-swap).
Its got an Intel Xeon quad core (socket 771, can't remember the model though), 4gb of pointless fully buffered memory 
This thing is subject for another cpu and more ram. Also it sounds like a jet plane when it starts up, so fans will have to be replaced when this goes to the basement 
Both PSU's are still there and working, 750w each and its said they are power hungry so im planning on running just one since anyway the power at the basement is crap anyway who needs 2 psu's ? 
It also came with 2x73gb and 2x300gb 15k rpm SAS drives.
The next buy for the "datacenter" is a UPS and i spy some cheap APC ones as well (grin)
My usual way of getting machines was either through people i know or ebay which is a rare and quite expensive occasion. So i decided to look in the local ad's (something like craigslist ?) what i usually avoided doing for some reasons.
So i searched about and found this for cheap:
Anyway, its a Dell PowerEdge 2950 in a great condition. I wasn't such a big Dell fan, giving prior experience with their custom connectors and weird issues, but this thing is insane.
This thing is subject for another cpu and more ram. Also it sounds like a jet plane when it starts up, so fans will have to be replaced when this goes to the basement It also came with 2x73gb and 2x300gb 15k rpm SAS drives.
The next buy for the "datacenter" is a UPS and i spy some cheap APC ones as well (grin)
Update to my datacenter, so with space running out in the first basement with the help of my father i moved all of the machines to the other room further in the basement.
Here are some pics:
Finally redid all my networking, its now all vlan based and ready for a second ISP when i get the funds for it. First time punching down a patch panel, this one has strange wiring schemes so had to use ports 1 and 3 since i couldn't figure out how the 2nd is wired (just didn't work, weird).
The red box is a Mikrotik RouterBOARD, it has all the features of highend Cisco gear except way way cheaper, run a bunch of them at work too. In short such reliable, much recommend. Also grew fond of D-Link switches got a similar one with less ports in the apartment upstairs, this one is quite cheap, but still packs quite a lot of features, at some point i also want to try running fiber optic so with the 4 sfp ports and 1 sfp in the router i have some options.
Yeah, i know what ur thinking - nasty. Well it works, but i really want to get an APC unit to replace this crap which keeps overcharging the battery and killing it.
Scored the rack and patch panel from an uncle who once ran an ISP.
So much space now
And now some eyecandy for those who love some older server gear
Always dreamed of getting a dual/quad socket motherboard and there you go.
Custom case and cooling too
Got 4 dual core Opteron cpu's and 32gigs of ECC ram. I can get quad or even six core cpu's if i wish later.
The whole thing is destined for another purpose and will probably not be in the basement datacenter any time soon, though some other new machines will
Here are some pics:
And now some eyecandy for those who love some older server gear
Custom case and cooling too
Entered the second decade, in other words turned 20
Hey peeps, ive been away some time and nobody missed me, just how it should be
Anyway Stojke wanted to see how my "datacenter" is holding up so here it is.
The new and improved shelf to house more old (and i mean really old) calculators:
The famous car battery UPS with some overcharge on the battery 
Top of the line security:
And the newest edition:
(a dell GX270 or 280) custom mounted.
All running on the most reliable router ive ever had:
Anyway Stojke wanted to see how my "datacenter" is holding up so here it is.
The new and improved shelf to house more old (and i mean really old) calculators:
All running on the most reliable router ive ever had:
Well since we are all about datacenters now:
The balcony datacenter was moved to the basement
Pics:
http://i.imgur.com/8tC4nyP.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/TBFb6Ip.jpg
So i changed the shit TP-Link to a more business oriented Mikrotik RB2011 router, which works like a charm. Added an older 1.3 Ghz Duron (I hate AMD, but il take what i can get) to act as my web server. Modified the UPS to work with a car battery in case the power goes and you never know when it will in a basement .
Both servers have 2 HDD's and they back them selves up by copying the necessary files to another drive (makeshift RAID 1).
Reasons for moving:
1. No more noise out of the balcony at night.
2. Free power.
3. Closer to the ISP's switches with which i like to tinker
Recently acquired a few motherboards to turn into a few working boxes
http://i.imgur.com/qojtaIj.jpg
Socket 604 mobo, sadly it just does not want to turn on, some weird AGP-pro issue
http://i.imgur.com/fMutdC3.jpg
Socket 478 with a Pentium 4, just needs some low density ram and its good to go.
The existing machines are running stable for more than 3 months since i moved them there.
The balcony datacenter was moved to the basement
Pics:
http://i.imgur.com/8tC4nyP.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/TBFb6Ip.jpg
So i changed the shit TP-Link to a more business oriented Mikrotik RB2011 router, which works like a charm. Added an older 1.3 Ghz Duron (I hate AMD, but il take what i can get) to act as my web server. Modified the UPS to work with a car battery in case the power goes and you never know when it will in a basement
.Both servers have 2 HDD's and they back them selves up by copying the necessary files to another drive (makeshift RAID 1).
Reasons for moving:
1. No more noise out of the balcony at night.
2. Free power.
3. Closer to the ISP's switches with which i like to tinker
Recently acquired a few motherboards to turn into a few working boxes
http://i.imgur.com/qojtaIj.jpg
Socket 604 mobo, sadly it just does not want to turn on, some weird AGP-pro issue
http://i.imgur.com/fMutdC3.jpg
Socket 478 with a Pentium 4, just needs some low density ram and its good to go.
The existing machines are running stable for more than 3 months since i moved them there.
Well, it seems like valve is in the process of breaking another of its games again in this case HL.
My servers have started complaining about that they need an update. So i gave it to them via hldsupdatetool and nothing got updated.
From a little poking around the interwebs i found that this should be related to this breaking of HL that is going on and i found that you should use SteamCMD for server updating.
So the question is should i use this new tool ? I really don't want to break my servers and do them all over again.
Steam Pipe my ass.
My servers have started complaining about that they need an update. So i gave it to them via hldsupdatetool and nothing got updated.
From a little poking around the interwebs i found that this should be related to this breaking of HL that is going on and i found that you should use SteamCMD for server updating.
So the question is should i use this new tool ? I really don't want to break my servers and do them all over again.
Steam Pipe my ass.
Just destroyed the partition that had all my stuff on.
The only good thing that i had some photos backed up to an external drive.
All my maps, everything gone.
Digital media huh ?
The only good thing that i had some photos backed up to an external drive.
All my maps, everything gone.
Digital media huh ?
"The balcony datacenter"
What better way to use your old hardware than to throw it in the balcony and run a HL server on it
Not long ago i aquired a crappy UPS to add some redundancy incase power decides to be a troll and not work. I will probably hook a car battery up to it so that it holds the power longer.
Oh if anyone wants to play the ip is:
62.80.247.69
What better way to use your old hardware than to throw it in the balcony and run a HL server on it
Oh if anyone wants to play the ip is:
62.80.247.69
Hello guys, im not sure whether im allowed to use journal to ask for help.
Anyway, my laptop's numpad has stopped working. Now instead of pressing 8 i get the same action as arrow UP, 2 as down, 4 left and so on. There is no numlock key on this thing.
Any help would be appreciated
Anyway, my laptop's numpad has stopped working. Now instead of pressing 8 i get the same action as arrow UP, 2 as down, 4 left and so on. There is no numlock key on this thing.
Any help would be appreciated
Bought myself a laptop.
Well had it for 3 weeks now but still
So its a Dell inspiron n7110
Cpu: Core i7-2670QM @ 2.2 Ghz
Ram: 8 gigs
Gpu: gtx 525m 2gb
Hdd: seagate 750gb 7200rpm
Display: 17" 1600x900
The price is about 1000$.
For that price ive bought the joy of mobility
Its a fine machine but only 3 things bug me:
It is faster than my desktop apart from the gpu side
Bluetooth doesnt work
No way to get a 120hz signal out of it for my display
Your thoughts ?
Well had it for 3 weeks now but still
So its a Dell inspiron n7110
Cpu: Core i7-2670QM @ 2.2 Ghz
Ram: 8 gigs
Gpu: gtx 525m 2gb
Hdd: seagate 750gb 7200rpm
Display: 17" 1600x900
For that price ive bought the joy of mobility
Its a fine machine but only 3 things bug me:
It is faster than my desktop apart from the gpu side
Bluetooth doesnt work
No way to get a 120hz signal out of it for my display
Your thoughts ?