April 19, 2008, 1:01 am by annihilate in Web Design
For those who are interested, the site has had a redesign with a new stylesheet. Unregistered users viewing the site will see the new design. Existing users can select the new design from their profile page by changing the stylesheet to 'default' in the dropdown box.
The site is also now making use of Apache mod rewrite for the enigma, albums and tv section, so that the url's look cleaner and are more search engine friendly.
December 31, 2007, 6:16 pm by annihilate in Life
It's been quite a long time since the last post, so thought I would add one more just before the year is out.
Recommended movies of 2007
Recommended albums of 2007
Thanks to those who continue to provide their responses to the enigma questions. For those wondering why their wasn't a question posted last week, New Scientist has a break over the new year period, so there was no issue of the magazine last week. I'm not sure if there will be an issue this week either, but normally it's only a week that is missed out.
August 24, 2007, 6:05 pm by annihilate in Programming
You can now preview your enigma response before submitting it. This should help with testing out any special text formatting, especially when using the [code] tags.
Unlike many preview buttons, this does not rely on Javascript, so is usable by everyone. Of course this means it will cause more strain on the server, but I'm sure the server can cope. However, if the site were to have hundreds of users posting at the same time, then it may become a problem, but I think for now we are safe.
July 5, 2007, 5:56 pm by annihilate in Programming
Recently it seems that the addition of an enigma response is having a bit of a problem. The result of this is that users are hitting the Submit button again and again. And this is actually producing multiple responses all with the same text by that user.
So today, I have added in a bit of code to check the most recent response. If you then try and add another response when you are the most recent responder, it will let you know and not add the response. For those who genuinely need to add another response, I will soon add the ability for a user to edit their last response, so any updates can be added to that rather than posting a new one.
May 29, 2007, 9:16 pm by annihilate in Programming
Just a quick update for everyone who follows the Enigma section of the site.
You can now select to be notified by email every time a new question is added. This is in addition to the email notification of a reply being posted to a question that you have posted on. That email notification cannot currently be turned off. Anyway, the new checkbox should now be on your profile page which you can view here (if you are logged in).
May 7, 2007, 4:30 pm by annihilate in Life
My car is now for sale.
EDIT: This is now sold
April 29, 2007, 1:36 pm by annihilate in Life
Have just put a deposit down on this car. Probably collecting in a couple of weeks time. Can't wait!
February 5, 2007, 4:36 pm by annihilate in Music
A couple of days ago, Windows Media Player started running with 100% CPU usage, practically bringing the PC to a standstill. This was constantly at 100%, even when not playing anything.
The fix? Very simply, the problem lied with very large video libraries. My videos folder is 106 GB and my torrents folder is 48 GB. Both of these folders were monitored by Windows Media Player, as well as my music folder of 24 GB. So I deleted all the videos from the library and stopped the monitoring of those folders. Straight away, CPU usage went down to a normal level and the PC was functional again.
I don't know what the cut off is for a library size. However, it was fine until I started three new torrents, each of 8 GB. So I would say that a 100 GB library is fine, but going over that, you may find problems starting the larger you go.
January 4, 2007, 6:25 pm by annihilate in Web Design
There will be a new stylesheet coming in the future as I fancy a change. I have added in an option on your account where you can select which stylesheet to use. At the moment there are 2 but the second one is just a testing stylesheet and is basically a copy of the default one.
If anybody fancies doing their own stylesheet for the site, feel free to do so and I will then add it to the site so that it will be available to select.
December 12, 2006, 7:27 pm by annihilate in Music
If you have a Last.fm account, post a reply on here with a link to your user page. The more people the better!
Here is my page. You can also see my recent tracks played here. That page automatically pulls data into my own database without a page reload, so if I'm playing music whilst you are on that page, it will automatically update the tracks. Awesome!
And here's another plan I have. Yes that's 2 in a week now! The plan is to add another field to users profile which can store their Last.fm username. Then on your profile page your recent tracks will be shown. I am sure there is more stuff that can be done with the data from Last.fm, I just can't think what else at the moment. Any ideas? Please leave a comment.