BogusRed's SketchblogRandom musings from the PaperDemon admin. This is my personal blog. The views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not those of my employer. This site is not associated with Google, Inc. Platform developingJun 17, 2009 7:15 pm by BogusRedSo I've been working on rewriting my code into almost like a turnkey website sort of thing where i can easily install it on other websites. But I'm not quite sure of the best way to do it. But one thing that's really made a lot of decisions easier is Smarty. Man I can keep the display component completely separate. Totally awesome. Unfortunately, you can't define multiple template directories. I was hoping to keep all art gallery stuff in one folder, all profile stuff in another folder, etc. But then again, keeping all the templates in one folder may make sense if you want to make it so the designer can only access the template files. jQuery has been really helpful as well. It's been really quick to turn an app into an ajax one. Damnit I love Ajax. And I've been playing around with jQuery UI which has some nifty features too. I hope to convert all my ajax stuff from Sarissa to jQuery. It's really hard to organize everything though. It may make sense to keep everything related to a compent (such as art gallery, photo gallery, web page cms, profile) in its own folder. In that folder would be the php class, php pages, template files, JS, CSS. But it's hard to do that. Sure you could put all the JS together in one folder, all the PHP in another, etc. But then when you need to install a component in another site you gotta copy paste stuff into like 5 different folders rather than just copying one folder. Still trying to figure it out. Maybe it shouldn't be componentized. Maybe everytime I install my software on a site they get all the components. I dunno. I need help with this one.
ZMT is coming backJun 11, 2009 9:03 pm by BogusRedI'm pretty excited to say that I'm getting back into working on my animation projects again. My friends are excited too. This past weekend we recorded the finale for Zarbon's Masterpiece Theater. This episode is pretty epic. So epic that it will require me to storyboard it. Something I've never done for ZMT. And we are getting back into working on the other new Anime Spoof show which we still don't have a name for. Anyway, I'm fucking excited. Yeah. BogusRed Out! Oh and I just watched Snakes on a Plane. I hate that movie.
Starting up a new Texture blogMay 5, 2009 7:28 am by BogusRedIn general, I'm a fan of texture. Isn't it obvious by the subtle textures on PaperDemon and BogusRed.net? Anyway, I wanted to express this passion in a new blog. On my new blog, Rough It Up, I'll connect people to great photoshop brushes, patterns, textures, and stock images to help you in your web design and digital art endeavors. I'll also be posting links to inspirational artwork that uses great textures. In addition, I'll be posting some of my own brushes and textures under Creative Commons license for you to use in your works. Who knows, maybe your artwork will be featured! Check it out at:
Tried out Smarty TemplatesMar 30, 2009 3:50 pm by BogusRedJust about every PHP programmer has heard of or used Smarty Templates. I had heard of it a long time ago, but only just recently started using it. For the longest time, I have been using good old phpLib's Template.inc. It is simple and suits most of my needs. But it's quite old. I've been using it for like 7 years. A colleague of mine convinced me to try out Smarty. I used it to create a new RSS feature for PaperDemon.com's blogs (and also added an RSS feed for my blog on BogusRed.net as well, subscribe to me!). I did it using Smarty because it seamed like a good thing to templatize and also because Smarty has a really good caching system. So if people's RSS readers are constantly pinging the RSS feed pages, the PHP won't have to pull from the database every time. +1 for performance!
Wedding Venue Visit #1Mar 29, 2009 5:17 pm by BogusRedToday I visited my first two possible venues for my wedding. They both have their pros and cons. One has really good food and works well as a party space. But it doesn't have quite the right feel I'm looking for and I don't like the ceremony space. I'd want to do the ceremony in one place and the reception in another.
The other has a beautiful wooded outdoor space and would work for both the ceremony and the reception. The dining would be outdoors and from the photos it looks especially pretty at night. However, the indoor space layout feels rather awkward. Though we may not spend much time indoors except for going to the bar and for dancing.
So far I'm not in love with either of them. I've still got plenty of time so I'll continue to line up visits to other venues over the next few weekends. I want to make a decision by May.
10K? No way!Mar 28, 2009 12:27 pm by BogusRedIn my last post I mentioned I had found some places that did packaged wedding deals for about 7K so I had kept my budget at that 10K. It turns out that there were other expenses that I hadn't considered. For one thing, there is an additional 27.25% cost on top of the listed price for gratuity, service, and sales tax. One in particular that I liked also charged an extra $700 for the ceremony. All these costs pushed the packaged deal over 10K and I wouldn't have anything left for invites, flowers, attire, photographer, decorations, etc. After talking to several brides and wives that have been through this, 10K is completely unrealistic. My new budget is 20K and even that is with sacrifices.
Those of you that are thinking I'm splurging and wasting money on "only one day" need to get a reality check. YOU try and plan a wedding and see how far it gets you. In the bay area, California, EVERYTHING is more expensive. The cost of living is so sky high here, that the cost of everything from flowers, to food, to service is higher than other places.
The major items that seem to be sticky price points are the venue and the food. One fellow bride explained to me that because we are in an area that is so fully developed, there are not many gardens or natural looking areas that would be suitable for a wedding. Because there are less options, less competition, and therefore higher costs. Food is also more expensive because of service costs.
Another huge cost that has been difficult to wrap my head around is a Photographer. Originally I was thinking of having a friend or perhaps someone just starting out in wedding photography do it at low to nothing cost and just give me the high res/raw files (no prints). But after talking to a Photographer friend who explained to me that photographers HATE doing weddings, I am realizing that its best to go with someone who does weddings professionally.
I'll be visiting two venues this weekend. One is currently at the top of the running.
Starting the Wedding planningMar 18, 2009 8:29 pm by BogusRedI'm finally starting to get serious about my wedding planning. I have a list of venues that I'm following up on for more info. I'm still sticking to my budget of 10K. There are a few places I've found that have complete wedding packages for prices under 10K and allow for some customization. One of them even has a themed meal similar to the Medieval Times meal (silverware optional!). I'm hoping I can get a wedding package that's cheap enough where I can afford to hire a nice photographer.
Tag CloudMar 1, 2009 4:18 pm by BogusRedI've been wanting to redo my keyword system on PaperDemon for a while. There were a couple things I wanted to change about it. One was to change it from storing the text of each keyword everytime it's used. The other, is I wanted to change it to a tag cloud where it makes the common words larger and less common words smaller. I love this type of visualization of data. So I decided today was going to be the day that I build my tag cloud class. And it only took me a day's work to finish it! So far I have only integrated it into the Blogs system. This is because PaperDemon's blog system did not have a keyword/tag system yet so it was easy to plop one in. You can see the start of our very own blogging tag cloud here: http://www.paperdemon.com/blogs/ I will migrate artwork and comics to it eventually. However, I'd have to first migrate any existing data into the tag cloud which is not going to be an easy feat. Especially considering artwork has +75,000 keyword entries.
Another project on the horizonFeb 18, 2009 10:36 am by BogusRedBack in January I talked about the status of my web dev projects. Basically I'm rewriting all my software to turn it into more of a platform or package that I can just plug in and reuse more easily on multiple websites. My friend Potter, whom some of you may know as Jiita and Piccolo in ZMT, came to me recently with a cool idea for a website. Now I have even more motivation to finish my software so I can use it on this new project. Here's a quick lowdown on status since the last status update: SHM REDESIGN - ~COMPLETE~ PD GALLERY UI - members area selection of galleries is ~COMPLETE~ but still need to redo the browsing menu. AJAX COMMENTS - I'm still stuck on this one due to a technical problem with jquery's form plugin file uploads. I'm working to resolve this still. ADVERTISEMENTS - I've been trying a variety of ad networks. So far I've tried BuySellAds.com, Project Wonderful, AdEngage, BlackLabelAds, in addition to Adsense. Some have been more successful than others. AdEngage was probably the most dissapointing. I tried it in the adult section of PaperDemon and didn't get any buyers for ads. Instead my ad units just showed CPC ads that got me only about $0.02 per click. I've since removed most of the AdEngage ads and replaced them with BlackLabelAds (Adbrite's adult ad network) which turns much higher profits than AdEngage does. Adengage also uses CPC but the money earned per click is much higher than AdEngage. I tried out BuySellAds but realized I don't have enough traffic on the ad unit for it to be worth $5 per month for an advertiser. This is the lowest price you can go. Plus it would be showing the same ad for the whole month and a lot of my traffic is repeat visitors. I doubt my visitors would like seeing the same ad for a whole month especially if I have to put it on every single page to give it the traffic it would need. If I could get my traffic to triple I'd have a much better chance of selling an ad unit and I could place it on the art pages which typically have more random visitors, it would be a better value for the buyer. With ProjectWonderful I have 3 ad units each getting somewhere between $0.01 and $0.10 per day. It fluctuates a lot. I plan to put the skyscraper ad unit on more pages in hopes of getting it more traffic and driving up the price of the unit. And at least 0.02 is better than a giant blank ad that says "your ad here" and not getting any money at all. It's unfortunate I can't place Adsense or Project Wonderful in my adult section because the adult section is doing very well traffic wise. But I guess BlackLabelAds will have to do for now. Strangely, my Adsense revenue has dropped significantly as of late. I'm not sure why that is as most of the adsense ads that I removed and replaced with Project Wonderful were underperformers. I did hear something about other publishers reporting a drop in their Adsense revenue and that it had to do with the fact that advertisers are spending less money on advertising. This means the cost per click is lower and my revenue goes down. Basically in the end it all comes down to needing more traffic. I need to try some more SEO strategies.
Learn the libraries or reinvent the wheel?Feb 8, 2009 12:24 am by BogusRedFor the most part of my time working with PHP, I've done things my own way. I don't use a lot of libraries or read too many articles or books about how to "correctly" develop web applications. I know that most developers stay up to date with the latest libraries that help alot with development. There are also a lot of premade free packages out there that can give you a content management system in minutes such as Word Press. And there are probably a lot of things I'm doing wrong since I'm self taught. Yet I'm still doing my own thing and dread the idea of doing it any other way. And for a long time I felt like I was an inferior web developer because I wasn't taking that approach to web development. It's like I'm reinventing the wheel, the same wheel thousands of other developers have already made. But an interesting thought occured to me today. With music, I typically don't like to read sheet music when I play the piano, despite being fairly quick at sight reading. I'd rather figure out the notes myself by ear and then rearrange the music in a different way. And when I do it this way, I understand the music far more than if I had learned it through sheets and it becomes more enjoyable to play. So maybe that's my nature; figuring it out for myself. Maybe it's because I'm a creative person. It seems more fun to me to build an app myself rather than just downloading an existing app and customizing it or plugging in this library with that library. So here's to all you reinventers of the wheel out there! But I make an exception for Javascript. It's too much of a pain in the ass to write it myself and I'm going to use jQuery to do all the heavy lifting. F*** you, you stupid DOM and your stupid nuance differences in browsers! I HATE writing Javascript!
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