In Valid Logic

Today, we are pleased to release the final build of v1.1 for Community Server.  Please check it out!

As a side note, new releases of the NNTP Server and FTP Server are coming soon.  And, I am working on updating the information on doing single blogs/galleries, and with v1.1, it will be far easier.  Hoping to finish it tonight/tomorrow morning.

Two weekends ago, I made the fatal mistake of going out and getting Star Wars Galaxies.  I’d heard good things about it, and I liked some of the past Star Wars games (though I mainly played the first-person shooters), and it was relatively cheap ($30 for the game and 2 expansions, while most other games are like $50-55).  Plus, my main motivation was that almost all TV shows are re-runs now, so nothing else to do at night.

Now, I can safely say I am addicted.  I’ve never been into RPGs much (I think of the old telnet based textual RPGs), but the online multimedia ones are quite impressive.  The combat is a little weak IMHO, since I prefer more first person shooters, where you click and fire where you want.  In these, it more like click a target, click attack, and sit there and wait (simplified, but the basic jist of it).  But then I went into the space missions… and that, I love.  I’ve always like flight sims and such, plus in space, it is more of a first person shooter.  Even more interesting if the abilities fully customize your ship with all different components with different properties.  Amazing.

In short, I then went and created a new character, specializing in crafting (since I want to make the ships) and piloting.  The game can take a long time to progress, but it is very interesting.  As a developer, when I use different software, I often think about how I would design it or how I think it would work.  A game like this just blows my mind at the complexity.  You build stuff with resources.  Resources have all different properties.  The different properties determines the quality or extra boosts in what you build.  Then that stuff performs better when being used.  Or, that better stuff can make even better stuff that performs even better when used.

I’ve had to tone down some of my in-game time.  As a crafter, it takes a lot of time to build up just gathering stuff and what not.  So, I was leaving my computer on overnight to gather resources, and would have it in the background sometimes during the day.  Well, yesterday, my video card had it.  Switched over to the game yesterday and my computer locks up/reboots.  Ok… go back into it, and all the 3D objects have gaps missing in them.  Ok, computer is too hot maybe (it needed to be de-dusted), but it reboots again after a minute.  After some trial/error on the game/drivers, find out the card has been permanently damaged.  Luckily, my media center PC has the same video card, so I swapped them.  The damaged one worked fine in 2D, and the media PC never does anything 3D, so I’m good.  I am not going to be leaving my computer on in gam elike that again though.  Going to have to find another way to build up.

One thing I always hate on a personal website is doing the about page.  It is always that forgotten section that you never know what to put on it, and it eventually falls out of date.

Specifically, I hate putting my age on there.  I don’t care about telling people my age (I am 24, by the way), but I never update it.  My birthday was 2 months ago, and yet I got to updating it rather early this time.  Normally, it’ll be as long as 6 months behind.

So, I took a better step at ensuring it is more accurrate.  Changed the page to use this to show my age:

<%=new DateTime(DateTime.Today.Subtract( new DateTime(1981, 4, 10) ).Ticks).Year-1 %>

It will work ok, but it is kind of ugly.  For one, TimeSpan doesn’t have a Year parameter (and I can see why, as months have a different number of days, and years have different numbers of days [leap year]).  This will work ok, but it can have a margin of error… mainly just updating to the next value a few days early or a few days late.

Today, Community Server v1.1 RC2 was released.

And I forgot to post it here, but on Monday, the Community Server NNTP Server and FTP Server v1.1 RC1 was released.

All definitely worth checking out!

Some are calling it an anniversary, others are calling it a birthday, but on June 1st, 2004, Telligent Systems, Inc. began, and it is now one year from that date.  And quite a year it has been.  I started on with Telligent in July of last year as a contractor, and have been loving it ever since.  Cheers to an excellent first year and for many more to come!