November 1, 2005: Site updates
A week or two ago, I wrote a guide to split windows in Irssi. If you're an irssi user, it is definitely worth checking out. If you have been confused before by split windows, this guide should clear up some things for you.
Today I added the portable page, a central location of links to the programs I need when at a computer lab. Opera conveniently supports custom setups to be downloaded and installed automatically if a certain header is fed, which helps in quickly restoring a comfortable setup on a fresh install. Read more about this in the portable section.
September 12, 2005: Miscellaneous update
I haven't done much in the way of project development. School started not too long ago, so I've been busy with that, and later this week I apply to another college for transfer in the spring.
A few weeks ago I wrote a very simple perl script called logfilter.pl to filter and color Apache access logs for easier viewing. See FDC Labs for the script and a screenshot. More recently, I volunteered to help my college's Math Club with its website, currently available at mc.limitsummation.org (you math geeks should be amused by that one).
I'm currently experimenting with BitlBee and irssi. With some of the irssi scripts loaded, and the AIM/Jabber patches, BitlBee is rather tolerable. It is by far the best way to communicate over IM protocols using a text-only client, for me.
And finally, I decided that since quadpoint.org has become more of an outlet for my projects and articles rather than a catch-all page for whatever I want to post, it might be wise to install some weblogging software for other purposes. Thus, log.quadpoint.org was created. I do not intend to use this as a typical LiveJournal-type log, but rather as an archive of interesting stories or problems I encounter, as well as for little announcements that would not warrant a full website post. Very few people voluntarily read my website anyway. Log was kicked off today with an interesting question that was introduced in my physics class today on thermal expansion.
July 22, 2005: Major website updates and some Perl propaganda
The site was recoded from OO PHP and is now powered by Object Oriented Perl. When compared side by side, the compile times printed by the two cores that the newer Perl version is 10-20% faster than the version written in PHP.
I later wrote prime number generators in four different languages (C, Java, Perl, PHP), and compared their runtimes. The perl program ran about three times faster than the PHP counterpart. C also appeared to be marginally slower than Java.. how is this possible?
June 16, 2005: Perl and Irssi
Perl is awesome. So incredibly powerful, yet simple at the same time. I've been a PHP programmer for a long time, but I've been missing out on some serious power and flexibility. I took some time today to write my first real perl script, as a script for my favorite client IRC client, irssi. Afterward, I released two more. :)
The first script is a clone of irssi's /names, but with the away nicks grayed. The alternate command defined in the script is /anames, which can be used as a replacement for /names, without the extra -ops, -voices, etc commands that /names has.
Download: anames.pl
Second: a script that will simply run a command on hilight. Good for running a script to make your computer play a sound when you're hilighted.
Download: hilightcmd.pl
Last, at the request of Spirilis, a script to pull gaim's away messages for use on irssi. Gaim stores away messages with <message> associated with a <name>. See ~/.gaim/status.xml. The script adds a /gaway name command that will grab the given name's full away message and sets all IRC connections away with that message.
Download: gaway.pl
June 12, 2005: MIA 1.2 Released
I spent some time today improving my linux-powered shell script alarm clock. Version 1.2 features a slightly improved display and day-specific alarm times. The program can now be set to activate the alarm at a different time for every day of the week or a single time for the entire week.
MIA 1.2 is available from FDC Laboratories. Pictures of MIA in action can be found here.
June 2, 2005: More code
I have, surprisingly, been doing some writing lately. I finally put up a bio page, something about me, and shortly thereafter wrote the site page, which explains some of the forces at work behind the scenes of quadpoint.org.
Moments ago, I completed my second official article, which briefs the Apache module mod_rewrite. The article is entitled: mod_rewrite Demystified: A Brief Guide With Resources.
Update: Another article: Dynamism: Creating Dynamic Content with PHP explains two methods commonly used to create dynamic and uniform pages for a website.
The internal formatting engine for the site has been improved (it now allows for embedded tags and automatic recognition of block-level elements) and is available from FDC Labs. You will also notice that a custom source code viewer is now in place for some of the files.
May 29, 2005: Introducing FDC Laboratories
As an outlet for some small-purpose scripts and projects, the /code directory has existed for quite some time. Rather than to have a plain directory indexed by Apache, a new division of my website has been created to replace /code with a more branded approach (with a cool-sounding name). Said division has been dubbed FDC Laboratories and is located at labs.quadpoint.org.
May 16, 2005: mpsync: Internet Mplayer Synchronization
A new project has surfaced after I finally started coding something I've been thinking about for quite a while. Straight from the lab comes mpsync, a client/server application to sync multiple mplayer-driven clients to a master instance automatically.
Detailed information is available on the mpsync project page.
April 29, 2005: SimpleRip: The Mencoder Command Generator
After much experimenting with mencoder and direct encoding of DVDs to XviD, I have finally learned the anatomy of a decent rip. To simplify the process, I created a javascript application called SimpleRip to do bitrate calculation and command generation for direct encoding from a DVD title to XviD using mencoder.
In the process I learned a bit more about the capabilities of JavaScript. It turns out to be much more powerful than I first imagined.
April 19, 2005: Opera 8.00 goes final
Opera 8, the latest version of the world's best browser, was officially released today (though copies were reportedly present on ftp.opera.com yesterday). Windows mirrors can be found on Opera.com, but Opera's site was lagged pretty badly when I tried to fetch the Linux version, so I had to look elsewhere. To help Opera spread the new version:
Opera 8.00 linux mirror 1 Opera 8.00 linux mirror 2
I've used the betas, and version 8 is a fast and organized improvement. IE is going down, Firefox is going up, but hopefully Opera's new version will put a dent in Firefox's popularity. After all, Opera is the better browser. Download it and try it for yourself.
April 16, 2005: MIA 1.1 written and released
I finally took the time to write a decent alarm clock program for my Compaq iPAQ IA-1 Internet Appliance, and by program, I mean shell script. I've had that machine for several years now, and it was immediately hacked to linux with the help of the linux-hacker.net boards and ia1hacking.com. I've been using it as an SSH terminal to screen an alternate IRC connection. As it is right next to my bed, has internet connectivity and time synchronization, it makes a perfect candidate for an alarm clock. Thus, MIA was created. When I realized what I had done, I immediately thought of this thinkgeek shirt. The code for MIA, "Matt's IA-1 Alarm", can be found from my code directory. Some pictures of the IA-1 running the simple MIA script are also available.
March 23, 2005: Gcalc ported to the command line
For a long time, myself and others have used a function on my IRC bot, diffusion, to do calculations. The function, .c or .calc, is part of the google module I wrote for IQ, and uses Google's Calculator to evaluate expressions. While this may not seem like a big deal, Google's calculator is extremely advanced. It can convert between several different units of length, volume, mass, weight, etc. and can substitute in several universal constants, as well as calculate the value of 2+2. I've been meaning to port that particular portion of my IQ module to a standalone utility, and today I finally did. My program, gcalc, runs on a command line (CLI PHP, no Windows support) and can run in interactive mode or evaluate an expression in the arguments. One of my few useful creations, indeed. Some sample output:
f0rked@godfather f0rked $ gcalc gcalc 1.2 - Google Calculator for the command line Type 'quit' to exit, 'help' for help. >> sqrt(23498221) sqrt(23 498 221) = 4 847.49636 >> sin(68) * pi^3 * speed of light cubed sin(68) * (pi^3) * (the speed of light cubed) = -7.5015859 x 10^26 m^3 / s^3 >> forty three inches plus 6 meters in feet (forty three inches) plus (6 meters) = 23.2683727 feet >> quit f0rked@godfather f0rked $ gcalc the answer to life, the universe, and everything the answer to life, the universe, and everything = 42
March 1, 2005: Final Stats for February
I finished out February with over 700,000 hits. The webalizer statistics have been saved and can be found here: February 2005 statistics for f0rked.com
February 23, 2005: quadpoint.org tops 500,000 hits for the month
I believe the site has seen the most traffic this month than all of the year 2004 combined. For the first time ever, f0rked.com has reached over half a million hits in a single month, in over 60,000 visits. The flash index is certainly the primary attraction for visitors here, and as a result of hosting the flash index, my site has been linked on several websites and forums, including entensity.net. Thanks again to all who have linked; keep it up.
Stats at this time: 61,966 visits; 531,741 hits; 298.035 GB transferred
February 16, 2005: Google Adsense and hits
This month has been hectic for my site. At the time of this writing, f0rked.com has received over 244,000 hits since the beginning of February. Several forums and a popular website have linked to the ghosts flash movie, and have brought many many new visitors to the site. The surge of traffic is rather exciting and I encourage all visitors to link to the site on forums, personal websites, AIM profiles, whatever. The appropriate URL is to link to is provided under each flash animation. It is always appropriate to link to a URL in the address bar of your browser, as long as it contains "/core/". Please do not directly link to the .swf files hosted here.
I've added Google ads to my site, but only under the flash animations. The majority of the traffic to this site is related to the flash index hosted here; already 75+ gigabytes this month. With the amount of traffic received so far this month, Google adsense seems like a worthwhile addition to the site, and will definitely help with hosting fees.
Thanks to all who have linked to the site.
February 5, 2005: New design
During the past couple of days, I have been toying with several ideas of how to improve my website. I came across Juerd's site and appreciated the MetaMarkup idea for internal formatting. This time around I wrote my site's core entirely from scratch, using only the content from my old design. The new improved core features my own implementation of the MetaMarkup syntax, automatic linking of known keywords, such as Slashdot or Freshmeat, automatic acronym linking (example: CSS) and mod_rewrite magic to improve URLs.
The colors and layout are new, but not my original work. The design I used is called "phenom," available from Open Source Web Design, by author Chez. Thanks Chez.