Finally, I managed to track it down to an external source (everything in the plugin checked out fine and was returning the correct value(s).  So, I started looking through the other plugins’ sourecode, specifically ones that may modify the way the post is displayed.  Was looking through the sourcecode to the feed aggregator and found a reference to a couple of functions that saved the feed content before it is run through all the other wordpress/plugin formatting filters and restored it afterwards.  It also had a comment by it saying something along the lines “It is assumed all aggregated feeds will already be in an output-ready format so to make sure it isn’t mangled by wordpress, save the content temporarily before any filters are applied and restore after.”

Was just about to make some manual edits and thought “Hmmm, hold on a second…” went into the plugin’s settings in the wordpress administration page and there it was in a drop down box “Protect feeds from wordpress filters/Do not protect feeds from wordpress filters” *facepalm*  Well, at least it works now .

Also, while I was messing around with the blog I noticed I had a couple comments from mates but I hadn’t been notified by email.  Turns out Google Mail was identifying it as spam (sorry guys!), so I created a Google Mail filter to protect email I get from my blog… shouldn’t have that issue anymore.

Just a word of warning to CWolf (who is hosted on same server), you may want to create a filter for your blog in Google Mail .

However, I had lost contact with neon, immure and warmfusion (well not so much warmfusion but I hadn’t spoken to him for ages, and hadn’t seen him since uni – have seen him once recently though, was great catching up!).  There are quite a few others but I don’t even know how to get back in contact with them… yet.

Anyway, to stop this trend and to revitalise old friendships I started to systematically restore Comscare to it’s former glory.  The first step I took was setting up a forum at http://forum.comscare.org/.  Even though we didn’t have a forum before, I figured it was the first logical step since a lot of Comscarians may be restricted from IM in work and it’s rather tricky to block the web .  The next step was to set up the old blog aggregator, which is almost done now and lives at http://blog.comscare.org/.  I did a little web-surfing, trying to find old blogs and hook up their feeds but not many of us have blogs anymore (hopefully the aggregator will compel some old Comscarians to start blogging again).  I also hooked up some Twitter feeds to the blog site.

I may even set up an IRC server for us to chat on but I’m not sure how many Comscarians would idle there as they may be restricted the same way they are for IM.

Anyway, if you’re a Comscarian that I haven’t mentioned, make yourself known and contact me and I’ll hook you up with a forum account so you can join in on the discussions   Who knows what may come… Comscare Tournament 2009/10?

In hindsight I should have stayed at home.  With all the snow that has fallen over the last couple days I was so tempted to use it as an excuse not to go into work (which I know a lot of people (would) have done).  The motorways were fairly uncongested and moving freely which was ok, but getting into the town where I work was fairly dangerous.  All the roads were white or icy, everyone moving 10mph… and then I got to the road that leads up the hill to where I work.  One look at that and I thought “Fuck it, I’ll go around and enter through the exit of the estate, at least that’s level.”, but alas, the gates were closed.  So I found the other end of the first road which goes up the hill a little less steeper and went up there.  Wasn’t really a surprise that my Polo GTi started wheel spinning halfway up… too much low-end power.  I managed to break the wheelspin and stop myself on the hill while I figured out how to proceed (am not used to driving in such conditions), I turned on my hazard lights to let the 4×4 behind me know I was having difficulties and let him past incase I slipped backwards into him.  After that I was faced with a hill-start on ice/snow but it wasn’t that bad, just had to be really sensitive on the accelerator.  Anyway, got into work thinking “I should have stayed at home.” and if it wasn’t for the fact I’d probably slide down the hill trying to leave I would have.

So here I am at work and an unrelenting tiredness has overcome me.  There’s only decaffeinated tea left, but I’ve had 2 pro plus but it doesn’t seem to be doing anything.  Having extreme difficulty focusing on work and feeling like my eyes want to roll into the back of my head, I needed to somehow keep my mind active through lunch.  So have started playing Singularity and now blogging to keep the myself from slipping into neutral or stalling, heh.

Maybe the reason I’m so freaking tired is because I’m fighting off an illness of somekind, had a pretty bad sore throat yesterday, but has eased up today.  I think I’m gonna take an early night tonight or I’m going to be crippled for badminton tomorrow.

Well, bad to Singularity… laters,
Jargon

I just finished writing a php script that read all my old blog posts from the old database in the old format (my own custom blogging system), converted it all into the WordPress format and then inserted it into this blog’s database.

I had to do it before when I updated my own blog system (before I totalled my site).  I’ve decided to take the easy way out at last, but getting all my old posts back definitely wasn’t easy.  However, it worked with amazing success and to top it off, it was all coded via SSH and nano

The only thing that hasn’t been converted, and I couldn’t really see any easy way, was the custom bbCode-style image and link tags I handled on my old blog but screw it… I don’t care , at least I have the option to go back through them and edit the old posts if I really want.

Now, where is that git, I wanna play some Tiberian Sun!

Welcome to my new blog.  I’m currently in the process of converting all my old posts across from my old blogging system, so this site will be bare for a while till I get around to it.  So you may as well come back later.

Ciao!

Finally posted that damn form to register myself as self-employed and registered myself under the name Jargonia Studios I will be making ammends to the copyright stuff at bottom of site to match. Also going to work on putting more stuff I’ve done into my portfolio section and also put up a projects section with all my programming projects I have been working on.

That brings me to Programmer’s Day, which was yesterday. Was informed by my good UO friend Thistle , but alas it was already late in the day and I couldn’t celebrate it to it fullest. I did, however, read that programmers usually make minigames on this fine day. So, I set to work at full speed on a Breakout clone I called Jargball (should have called it Jarganoid after the other classic). I conked out around 5am but it played ok’ish and had a winning condition and a losing condition. Got a screenie below for those interested. If I had more time it would have been better. Anyways, there’s always next year heh.

Just finished up my CV as well, with the final pieces of information that I was missing (references contact details, etc.) so I will be sending that out to every place imaginable now. Banked my cheques from the last couple jobs I did so that should keep me afloat for a while, plus I need to invoice one of the companies for £600 that means designing cool Jargonia Studios invoice

Ugh, what else… I should complete the crossed-warrant form so that I can move the contents of one of my saving accounts into the other, but I need information on both and I have no idea where it all is… somewhere at my parent’s house I think.

Righty, off I go and try do some useful things. Toodles.

But last week my laptop died completely, just wouldn’t turn on one morning. I am assuming this was a completely different problem. Anyways, it sat there few a few days until I could be bothered to go to the Dell website and try get it picked up and repaired (still under warranty). However, like they do, they get you to troubleshoot it cause they are lazy, but in all fairness, people are stupid so most of the time it probably isn’t broken. Anyways, I think, might as well give it a fair chance and I go into the troubleshoot guide that describes my problem the best (no power). I have to admit the Dell interactive troubleshooting guides are pretty good. I followed the procedure (even though most of the time I knew it would fail) to test the laptop on AC and battery totally independant from one another while removing some of the different modules (since everything is pretty much unpluggable on Dell laptops). Eventually I have everything unplugged except the keyboard and have tested battery and AC, and I am at the end of the troubleshooting guide. So content that the tech support guy won’t be able to catch me out when they contact me, I start putting things back in… first goes in the battery.

Ok, I’d like to remind everyone that I had already tested the battery numerous times with different modules plugged in/unplugged and there was no signs of activity at all, and this includes when all modules were removed at the same time. So why the hell did my motherboard burst into FLAMES when I plugged the battery in this time!? At the time, the laptop was upside down with all the covers and modules off/out and underneath where the RAM should have been, right next to the battery connector… phwoomph! A chip goes supernova on me. Now my room smells of sizzling silicon.

In the tech support descriptions I put in the original problem and there’s a part that asks you what troubleshooting you have tried, so I mentioned I followed the appropriate troubleshooting guide and it made things worse :/

I’m not too bothered really, it really needed to get returned at some point and now I’m in new house, settled in for a long time, I can without worry of where my laptop will be returned too. Only bugger is that I have data on it that I will need to retrieve, I guess I will ask Ben if I can hijack his laptop to do it.

…fun evening, guess I’m going to bed now.

[thumb=games/portal.jpg]Another game that is getting shipped with Episode Two is Valve’s Portal. Originally this was thought to be a new weapon in your arsenal for Episode Two but has been clarified to be a completely seperate game/mod. From the trailer it appears as a puzzle game where your only weapon is this gun that can tear a hole in 2 surfaces and link them together. You will use these portals to get from room to room, bypassing obstacles and eliminating sentries. The cool thing about the Portal trailer is that it looks as if you can make more than 1 portal at a time, I’m not quite sure how it would work but I think each time u create an extra portal the old of the 3 will dissappear leaving a new portal link. This is demonstrated in the trailer where the player makes a portal on the roof and then on the floor and falls through them repeatedly picking up speed, then makes a portal halfway up a wall, the fall momentum is carried through into the new portal and the player is fired like a bullet from the portal on the wall. Very cool. I think, this game will go down extremely well, bringing a new genre to the same engine. Plus I always loved playing with portal effects, especially in the UT engine

Anyway, can’t wait for either of these games to come out… gonna be awesome

Finally after all this time I actually found some english versions of the “Hot Shots” films. Would appear they are quite rare on the internet, especially in english (found some in spanish a while back but didn’t realise till download was complete). I love these films, always made me laugh everytime. But my favourite scene out of both films is the beginning of Hot Shots 2, where Topper and some other random guy are fighting in a barn with loads of people betting on them. They just cause so much damage to everything else except each other until the end, walls being smashed down, spectators getting punched in the face and even decapitated, but the best bit; the guy taking the bets repeatedly gets knocked around until he deleriously gets up and gets his head mushed from both sides

[thumb=funny/hotshots.png]

Anyways still at home being completely bored and a bit gutted that I’m missing mike and grif’s 21sts, but am making some much needed money, so not all bad. Finished watching Prison Break season 1, getting better and better every episode and they leave it in such a nasty cliffhanger… the bastards.

Internet is ridiculously laggy here as well so online gaming is like swimming through treacle. I just have SkyTV to keep me sane… ACK! Just as I say that mum switches over to “Just Jade” the dumb bitch that looks like a pig from one of the previous Big Brother seasons *cries* SHE CAN’T EVEN SPEAK ENGLISH FOR FUCKS SAKE!!! *sigh* Only reason shes got any credibility is that she has mahoosive knockers :/

*sighs again*

Luckily, I won’t be home for long, couple weeks and I will try trying to get back into Cardiff for birthdays. Only took some clothes and my laptop home with me (and all my films and games). Also got WoW and Tiberian Sun working on my linux laptop so at least I can play a decent MMORPG (and it runs really well too).

I love linux. I don’t understand why games developers don’t release binaries for the linux platform for their games. Okay, I understand that the amount of extra support that will be needed may not be worth it (due to all the different distributions of linux), but the average linux user is a lot smarter when it comes to computers and a large majority can get most things working themslves (I guess thats where wine came from), would be nicer to have a headstart though.

Saying all this, I still use Windows primarily because of games. Most of my favourite games run on linux nowadays, Wine has got that good. However, say there’s this supposed potential freelancer replacement coming out soon, suppose 14th of August and suppose I have played the demo, suppose that it is infact REALLY good and suppose I know for a fact it has no chance in hell that wine could support it; would I convert 100% to linux and miss out on this supposedly god-like game? NO! But, I am also weighing the scales, also thinking about moving over to linux… I could leave a small Windows partition, but that doesn’t count. If I am going to convert to linux, it will be all the way :S

Anyway enough ranting about Windows and Linux, let’s get back on topic. I went through the whole graduation ceremony yesterday, it was pretty awesome (although some of my friends hated it). I am now officially Mr Jargon BSc. (Hons). WOOT! And now I’m home, back in my shitty little village (heh, not that bad but it feels like an OAP retirement home here, as there is NOTHING to do) to do some work I had lined up after I graduated. A couple of jobs, the big one being sorting out my old boss’ website that I developed a while back and the welcomed offer of working for an international transport company to sort out their website also (I should be able to charge them quite a bit )

Anyways, I’m probably gonna go play a game now… or try get another game working (heh).

Toodles