Couple of days ago I check my Google Analytic on this blog’s statistic, I just wondering what people using for browsing this day, so I check the browser client, and surprisingly, most of them are IE user, and some of them still using IE6!

Is quite predicted that IE user will be the majority of the user out there, one thing bug me though, this is a technical blog, people who viewing this should be a technical user, why would a technical user use IE6? The pages that those IE6 browser viewed are about technical posts (there were few posts that aren’t technical), weird huh…

Upgrading browser is easy and free, why people that browsing often don’t switch to other better browser than IE, or at least not IE6, this often made our life as web programmer/designer hard, considering we want to use the new HTMl5 and CSS3 goodness, but we kept getting pull back as we need to consider a fallback for IE user, it can cater for all browser, but think of the amount of works and checking to put in.

I’m not sure if this works after I posted, this button is styled using CSS3 border radius and box shadow, 2 new feature I love most, IE9 user, congratulation, other IE user, upgrade you browser to enjoy the goodness, feel the speed, feel the art of web design, and make yourself a happy web user!

Started to dig into Joomla and VirtueMart for past 2 weeks, it has been a great experience as in the extendibility and fast deployment, but there were some situation that GUI configuration isn’t enough, we’ll have to dig into the codes, and Google result isn’t much. I’ve came across a problem where I can use Joomla’s mass mail to blast out email, but not a single mail from the VirtueMart, be it in activation mail, order confirmation mail, or order update mail.

I’ve been using Gmail SMTP in my Ubuntu for testing, and this is the end result that works. Helpful reference: VirtueMart forum

Mail Settings

Mailer: SMTP Server   
Mail from: <name@gmail.com>  
From Name: name  
Sendmail Path: /usr/sbin/sendmail  
SMTP Authentication: Yes  
SMTP Security: None  
SMTP Port : 25  
SMTP Username: <name@gmail.com>  
SMTP Password:   
SMTP Host: ssl://smtp.gmail.com:465

Kind of weird when I set the SMTP Host to smtp.gmail.com with the SMTP Security to SSL, port 465, it just won’t work, after came across that forum, I change the host, security and port, and it works magically.

Recently been assigned a task to create a simple game for web site, without using Flash, Java, HTML5 Canvas or Unity plugin, and I have to use server side script as I need to do some backend process. I’ve combined with jquery for the front end UI update for much more smoother game play experience. I’ve got a nice polished web design from designer, so I decided to make the timer to more animated, I not yet familiar with the jquery and yet want to try build this on my own.

So I got myself a very dirty codes, but it served my purposed, and still got improvement, such as extending the jquery (I guess there already got such thing out there), automatically create the 6 tag, cleaning unnecessary codes.

It’s been a while since I last struggling to manually install PHP into my Windows XP machine, and when I moved to Windows Vista, I’m no longer using PHP. Microsoft have released a Web Platform Installer (Web PI) for a while already, it’s a great installer, bundled with lots of tools that we can download and install within the installer itself, and have IIS configure it for us!

After downloaded the Web Platform Installer, this is how it looks like

I’m browsing through some standard guide for C++ project, and I came across a site, and I found this (is a joke though) :

6 Phases of a Project

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. A Search for the Guilty
5. The Punishment of the Innocent
6. Praise and Honor for the Non-Participants

Flow Chart for Project Decision Making

                       +---------+
                       |  START  | 
                       +---------+
                            |
                            V            
            YES       +------------+      NO
      +---------------|  DOES THE  |---------------+               
      |               | DAMN THING |               |
      V               |    WORK?   |               V    
+------------+        +------------+        +--------------+  NO
| DON'T FUCK |                              | DID YOU FUCK |-----+
| WITH IT    |                              |   WITH IT?   |     |
+------------+                              +--------------+     |
      |                                            |             |
      |                                            | YES         |
      |                                            V             |
      |  +------+     +-------------+       +---------------+    |
      |  | HIDE |  NO | DOES ANYONE |<------| YOU DUMBSHIT! |    |                 
      |  |  IT  |<----|    KNOW?    |       +---------------+    |
      |  +------+     +-------------+                            |
      |      |               |                                   |
      |      |               V                                   |
      |      |        +-------------+       +-------------+      |
      |      |        |   YOU POOR  |  YES  |  WILL YOU   |      |     
      |      |        |   BASTARD   |<------| CATCH HELL? |<-----+
      |      |        +-------------+       +-------------+
      |      |               |                     |
      |      |               |                     | NO
      |      |               V                     V
      |      V        +-------------+       +------------+ 
      +-------------->|    STOP     |<------| SHITCAN IT |
                      +-------------+       +------------+

For more great information, visit the site here. (And I so glad to see Windows Live Writer work so well with copy and paste from web pages)

I’ve been working with the A.I logic since my first Pong is build , I failed several times, and each time I’d thought I got it, most of the time is because I left out some calculation to be done, such as 2 bounces and 3 bounces will get the ball to the different location. I played with the game after each “successful”(I thought) A.I build, and I exploit the bug myself.

Being a dumb fixing certain number of bounce into the A.I calculation give me hell lots of bugs. So I put the calculation into a loop, will keep on calculating for new location until it calculation reached the end of the screen, where the A.I paddles located. I didn’t do research or refer to any sort of source for the A.I script, so I end up with some stupid but working pretty O.K logic.

Whenever player hit the ball, the direction and position of the ball is taking into account, based on the initial direction, the A.I will calculate the first location on the top/bottom screen where the ball will making the first bounce, after that A.I will continue to calculate the second bounce on the opposite based on the calculated position and direction, and do the calculation until it get to the A.I position.

After get the final position of the ball, by taking calculating the CPU’s paddle position and length, will move accordingly to the ball calculated position.

Of course, my version of Pong doesn’t have the ball bouncing math that depends on the place where the ball is hit on the paddle, so I don’t have the super weird angle of bouncing to put into the calculation of A.I move.

First time scripting the A.I move made me rethink how’s polish is the commercial game’s A.I, even a simple chess game also featuring a great A.I. Appreciate the great A.I in those game I’ve play and enjoy, the game wouldn’t be fun if there aren’t any A.I there, not to say stupid A.I or smart A.I

First time really start to learn C++ with SDL, I decided to start a very simple game to practice, I choose Pong.

Of course I can just let the A.I follow the ball, going up and going down, but the challenge lies when the ball getting faster and faster while the bat did not get speed boost. As a player, we don’t follow the ball exactly, before we even move the bat, we made a quick estimation where the ball will probably landed on, based on the estimation, we move the bat to the location accordingly.

This kind of simple decision making is giving me hard time for first time coding the A.I logic, it’s a good start for A.I thinking, hopefully I can manage it myself without much reference. :p

I’ve tried to search for Spotlight counterpart for Windows, but end up the result wasn’t meet what I want, and I’ve came across with Everything , they are kind enough to provide free search tools as well as SDK.

I’ve play with it for a while and find it performs quite well, the speed and decent accuracy compared with those I tested last time. But unfortunately, the SDK required the application itself to works, but they claimed that they going to release a SDK that works without installing the application.

A Spotlight skin with Everything’s SDK, it could be nice.

Due to working needs, I’ve to explore the Facebook Developer page, in order to learn building my Facebook apps, due to whatever reason, I search for some keywords regarding to developing Facebook application on Google, and without surprise, the result came out with Facebook link on the top, and judging by the content itself, I feel it’s what I want, after clicking it, I noticed the URL is different,

besides URL, and favicon, everything seems like a legit Facebook page, I wonder why the Google Search result put these in top5 on first page of the results.

Exploding Rabbit just release version 1.1 of Super Mario Bros. Crossover at http://supermariobroscrossover.com/ , with a new playable character, Ryu from Ninja Gaiden, it was so awesome, and other character get a little updates as well, except Bill from Contra, he is strong enough. And, Simon still the worst character in the game, he always bring me game over.

Despite of Simon, the game is great!