Darkscribes Blog for Tom

Restarting Space 2315

July 25, 2010 | No Comments Posted

Space 2315 is going to be restarted but most likely won't be posted here at Darkscribes until the story is finished.  Why?  Well, it comes down to the fact that we've not had any input on the story.  I'd love to have our story hosted here but unless people give us feedback it doesn't make sense to post it here.

Chapter 7 as we know it today is going to be effectively scrapped.  We wrote ourselves into a corner and we've been beating our collective heads against the wall for the last year and a half and getting nowhere.  That has been the reason why we've not been posting any new chapters, we don't have any.  We're going to continue on with Chapter 8 and move it down the line so that it becomes the new chapter 7 and weave some (less than 10%) of the elements of the old Chapter 7 into it.

Space 2315... On permanent hold

July 22, 2010 | No Comments Posted

Space 2315, the story my brother and I were writing is now on permanent hold.  The files have been archived (ZIPed up) and the original files have been deleted.  Honestly, with the way things are going in my life (and my brother's life), I don't think we'll ever finish the story and it will probably die off eventually.  We just don't have the time to be able to devote to the story.

Plus, not only that but my brother has all but made the final decision to go into the United States Air Force.  That alone will put the story on hold.  As for myself, I need to start reconsidering my academic life and start looking at getting a degree.  Again, that will put our story on hold.

We will still have the files to write the story if we decide to resurrect it but I just don't see how we're going to be able to do it considering that I want to really start going to school and get my degree and my brother will most likely be in Basic Training within the next couple of months.

Spammers! ARG!

February 10, 2010 | No Comments Posted

Well, it seems that even the best protection methods seem to be able to be bypassed by spammers.  Yeah, Darkscribes got some comment spam posted.

In the past, we never has a problem with spam since we are using WordPress's Akismet to screen out comment spam but it seems that they found a new way to get around it.  Thus, I have added a new option to the system to not only allow admins to be able to delete comments but also to report those comments as spam so that Akismet can learn about new spam.

Jailbroke my iPhone

December 31, 2009 | 1 Comment

So I decided to bite the bullet and jailbroke my iPhone.  I downloaded blackrain and jailbroke it.

I instantly installed Backgrounder on it and seriously, why doesn't Apple officially allow multitasking on the iPhone 3GS?  I mean come on, I had three apps running in the background (Trillian, SimplifyMedia, and Facebook) running at the same time.  Now a slowdown in sight.  The iPhone was responsive as ever.

Would you please, kindly... shut the hell up!

August 6, 2009 | No Comments Posted

First and foremost, I voted for Obama as President.  I can tell you he has been a lot better than I could ever think that the other guy would have been.

But, the one thing that I can't agree with Obama on is his health care plan.  It smacks of socialism.  There is no way that we, as a country will be able to support the whole country-worth of people with health care on our tax system.  Not even the wealthy can support all of those people.

I propose a compromise.  Give every person at the very least, basic health care.  As in the kind that will at least allow you to see a doctor to have them put a cast on your arm if you broke it.  That's about it.  If you need surgery, you're going to have to pay for it.

What I think that Obama should be trying to do is talk with the medical insurance companies.  The problem we have with so many people having no insurance is that it is too expensive or they can't get it because of a precondition.  Let's face it, everyone has a precondition.  So you are going to tell me that 47 million Americans can't get health care because they have a precondition?  How is that fair when just about everyone has a precondition?  What do I have to do?  Lie on my application just to get health care?  Should I be penalized for telling the truth?  Something is seriously wrong here.

And to those politicians that keep raising their voices to Obama's health care plan I ask, where were you several years ago when the problem started?  Oh yeah, sitting on your hands doing nothing.  That's right, you were doing nothing.  So unless you have a solution to the issue that we have, would you please kindly shut the hell up?  Unless you have something constructive to contribute to the issue at hand simply keep your mouth shut.

Welcome to Wall Street, how can you fuck America over again?

May 17, 2009 | 2 Comments

Quite simply the reason why we are in the economic reason is greed and Wall Street.

Think about it for a moment, we have tons of people who are called "Day Traders".  They trade stock just about every hour of the day, even when they are sleeping.  Sites like ScottTrade have a system in which you can create "trigger events" in which any number of events could fire off either a sell or a buy.  For instance, if a company achieves a gain in their stock price of say... 35% that stock can be sold automatically thus making the person that much richer.

Ok, that's great.  The person made money.  But what about the company?  Does that person really care about the financial history and wellbeing of that company?  More often than not, they don't.  All they really care about is making more money and to hell with the company.  Why should they?  They don't have a personal stake in the company.

So the company goes bankrupt because several hundred thousand people do the same thing.  Do they care?  Nope.  Oh well, onto the next company to rape... I mean invest in.

The whole Wall Street style of investing in a company is a fundamentally broken system.  It always will be as long as you mix in the human variable, in this case... greed.

How do we fix it?  That is a question I can't answer.  Obviously the good idea would be that the workers would have a stake in the company so that people who are ultimately making the decisions would be directly impacted by those decisions thus the future health of the company would be thought of more.

ARG!

April 12, 2009 | 1 Comment

Ever wrote something and then looked back at it a year later and said that it was complete trash and that there was no way you were the one who wrote it?  Well, I'm in that predicament right now.

I'm looking back at my older Space 2315 chapters and realizing that even now after the massive edits we did about six or eight months ago, we still need massive edits.  Oh God in Heaven!

The Gateway P-7811FX Notebook, BIG FAIL!

October 9, 2008 | No Comments Posted

I thought that the Gateway P-7811FX notebook at the price of $1,249 was a bargain; at least at first I did.  But let me first tell you about what's good.

• 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 4 GBs of DDR3
• nVidia 9800GTS with 512 MB of GDDR3 memory dedicated to the video card
• 200 GB 7200 RPM hard drive
• Absolutely beautiful LCD screen

But that's about where all the good things about this beast ended. Now onto my tail of woe.

The first notebook had a bad AC Adapter. It would get very hot and it would make a very high-pitched whine, almost like a buzzing sound. Strike One!

I was able to exchange this out at my local Best Buy to get a new AC Adapter, but much to my dismay it too had this issue. A week later I get a stuck pixel, which you all know that if you get one you're bound to get another one... or three. Strike Two!

So I get another one, this time the screen has this white, ghost-like shadow to the screen and to add insult to injury... when I put my HDD into it the machine BSODed. So I was thinking that maybe it just shut down wrong. Swap the HDD back into the old one and see if it boots. It didn't, it BSODed again. So, this time... the thing corrupted my operating system. STRIKE THREE! YOU'RE OUT!

I walked into this deal knowing that Gateway had quality control issues but I thought that since this was their FX series, their so-called "gaming series", they'd put some effort into making a good, quality notebook.

I mean, think about it... you're trying to break into a new market, a market full of people who are very hard on their machines. The kind of people who push their machines to the edge of the proverbial cliff and one step further. The kind of people who demand a lot from their machines.

And now, you do this kind of screw-up. What was Gateway thinking!?!?

As far as I'm concerned... they have forever tarnished their name when it comes to my opinion. I will not ever buy another Gateway again and I will not recommend them to my friends and family.

As for those gamers who are thinking about buying a Gateway FX-series, notebook or desktop, stay clear... unless you want to be burned like me.

I've converted to the religion of Intel.

September 24, 2008 | No Comments Posted

I used to support AMD awhile back and they used to make the only chip that I'd suggest to people to buy, but that has changed; I will only suggest an Intel.

For one, AMD has had their collective asses kicked all over the place with the introduction of the Intel Core 2 Duo.  Take the Penryn family of Core 2 Duo chips, the performance is astounding.

Plus, it's pretty damn bad when an AMD Quad Core gets its head handed to it by an Intel Core 2 Duo.

I took the plunge and went 64-bit, Part 2

June 3, 2008 | No Comments Posted

As you probably read here, I upgraded my notebook to Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit.  As of right now, I'm still with 64-bit and won't switch back!  It's like a breath of fresh air; it's stable, fast, and very reliable.  I mainly think that it's far more stable because the system isn't dragging behind a semi-truck full of legacy 16-bit shit from the stoneage of computing.

I've put my notebook to sleep multiple times over a period of nineteen days and I haven't had to reboot the machine once!  Loading program after program, it's just stable... rock stable.

I took the plunge and went 64-bit

May 7, 2008 | No Comments Posted

I put 4 GB of RAM into my HP Pavilion DV9235NR notebook and installed Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit. At first I thought nothing would work but much to my disbelief, everything worked.

All of my favorite applications work wonderfully on 64-bit Vista. Surprisingly, it runs faster than 32-bit Vista and has far less problems than 32-bit Vista had.

Why didn't I go 64-bit earlier?!?!

26 years old and what do I have? Gray/White Hair!

March 12, 2008 | 1 Comment

My hair is naturally a dark brown.  Here I am, 26 years old and I already have gray/white hair in some spots on my head!  Seriously, WTF!

Parents and Birthdays

March 5, 2008 | No Comments Posted

Ever felt that no matter what you did was somehow wrong in the eyes of your parents?  That somehow, even though you thought you were in the right they felt that you were wrong?  Felt that you were a disappointment to your parents?  Well yeah, I feel that way.  Until now.

So, I confronted my father today and said what I had to say, asked what I had to ask.  I just came right out and said that with the way he acted around me that I felt as if I disappointed him somehow.  When he looked at me and said that I wasn't a disappointment to him it nearly knocked me on my ass.  I replied that it was news to me.

I didn't know that.  I always thought that he thought of me as a failure, someone who didn't live up to his expectations.

Well, my birthday is coming up in a few short days in fact.  I'm going to be twenty-six years old, damn I feel old. 

Dealing with arrogant people

February 19, 2008 | No Comments Posted

Alright, I have a fellow worker at work that basically thinks that he's "god".  Yeah, that kind of person.  You know the type, arrogant as all hell, says things along the lines of "I'm too damn good at my job" and things like that.

How do I knock this guy down a few notches?  Damn, I can't even stand being around him because he, at least in my opinion, acts like a complete ass.

Finally got another chapter up

January 19, 2008 | No Comments Posted

Jeez, I know... it's been about half a year since the last time I published a chapter on this site but I finally got around to publishing one.

Space 2315 Book 2, Chapter 8

Basis of this chapter is that we learn something new about Stephanie, the resident Zaltaen in this chapter.  We will learn more as the chapters go on.

Why has media gone to shit?

December 12, 2007 | 1 Comment

I mean really, why has it?  I'm talking about things like television, movies, music, etc.

Movies?  Most movies today are utter garbage.  They have actors and actresses that, though they look good, that couldn't act their way out of a wet paper bag.  Most of these new actors and actresses are utter shit, they can't act!

The only genre that seems to be close to being good is the SciFi genre, maybe that's got something to do with the fact that most of the actors that act in them are good because they want to be there and not just for the money.   This applies to both television and movies.

Television?  Again, utter shit.  If I want to watch reality, I'll go outside and see it for myself.

Music?  Again, utter shit.  Most of the singers and groups have sold their souls to the devil, ahem, the record industry.  Sure, some of the female singers look good but that's about it, take away the voice processors that they use in the industry to make them sound decent and they'd sound like nails on a chalkboard.

Not to mention that for the most part new CDs cost about $15 to $20 a piece and in reality the artist sees nowhere close to that amount.  Most are lucky, that is, if they weren't screwed in the process of writing their contracts up, maybe close to one dollar per CD sold.  Where the rest of the money going?  That's right, right into the already overflowing, over-stuffed, pockets of the record industry.  They already have enough fucking money and they have the balls to sue people for file sharing over something that they are already making a fuck load of money off of anyways.

Not to mention the fact that the only "good thing" most of the music manufactured, ahem "produced" today is "good" for is making teenagers and really anyone under the age of thirty perform simulated sex on the dance floor.  It's like for Christ almighty, everything today is about bitches, hoes, booty, and more bitches.  Oh, and booze too.

I survived...

November 27, 2007 | No Comments Posted

I'm back at home.  YAY.

Having my wisdom teeth taken out

November 27, 2007 | No Comments Posted

I've having my wisdom teeth taken out today.  If I don't survive this, I leave this site in LD's hands.  Though, if I do survive I'll update this blog entry.

Digging myself out of the hole

November 16, 2007 | 3 Comments

As many of you know that have read this blog, you'd probably notice that I'm bittered about life.  I look negatively on it, so much so that it reflects how I live life.  Many of you may also know that I've been dealing with a particular female at work.  No, I'm not saying the name.

I've been looking at my life so negatively that in a way I'm unable to see the good things in it.  Hell, I'm alive, breathing, I have a roof over my head, food, clothing, a place to work.  But because I've seen nothing but the negative things in my life, I don't see those things.

The one thing that I can say this girl has told me is that I shouldn't keep dwelling on all of the bad shit and try to climb out of the hole that I've dug myself into.  Now, since it was only one person saying it I really thought nothing of it.  But now that I have two women telling me that I should dig myself out of the hole, I'm wondering if maybe... just maybe they're right.

I've got to think about this. 

10,000 lines

October 15, 2007 | No Comments Posted

Just for shits and giggles I decided to count up all of the lines of code that make this site up.  I counted about 10,000 lines of code.  This doesn't include all of the Javascript and the many HTML/Smarty templates that make this site along with all of the open source modules and frameworks that power the site on the backend.

Whew!

Eureka!

October 10, 2007 | No Comments Posted

I have season 1 of the TV show called "Eureka". I've been watching the episodes all over again and geeking out for the past two days.

Disappointments

October 1, 2007 | 1 Comment

Have you ever looked back on your life and realized that all you really can see in your past are disappointments after disappointments?

Well, that's what I'm seeing in my life right now and it's down right depressing. Despite all that I've done and created in my life, it seems meaningless. I feel that despite all of that it's not enough, it just isn't enough to make up for the things that I've not done.

I feel as if I've missed out on so many of the things that people my age take for granted. A social life, a girlfriend, people I can hang out with, hell... for that matter, friends.

I have more acquaintances than anybody else. I don't really have anyone I can truly call a friend, someone whom I can talk to to get a different perspective on life, vent out frustrations, etc. I have none of that.

Here comes another thing that I'm disappointed about in my life. I've had no relationship and most likely never will. A long time ago I buried those emotions, feelings, thoughts, and wants to the deepest parts of my mind never to be heard from again.

ARG! I'm so fucking confused! I don't know what the fuck to think. I don't like questions that I can't answer and this bugs the shit out of me.

My belief is that I couldn't get a date with a woman even if it was the last damn thing I needed to do to save my own damn soul from the devil himself.

I'm feeling very damn pathetic right now.

Spammers.... ARG!

October 1, 2007 | No Comments Posted

I logged into my email today and discovered that there was a bunch of messages sent via this site's Bug Report form. Crap, that's not good. They somehow found a way around the protection measures that I placed in the script.

Then, I got to looking at my code and the data that was sent to me in the attached session data and discovered that they somehow bypassed the HTML form and posted directly to the script thus bypassing the CAPTCHA check.

I've so far made a patch for all of this crap so that hopefully they won't be able to exploit this again. I will upload the patches later on when I get out of class.

ARG! Spammers, may they burn in eternal digital hell!

Update: This security hole has been patched and the site ChangeLog has been updated appropriately.

Bug Details
One of the things that I did was made it so that if a user sends a bug report I also attach any and all session data in a text file minus the password of course with the bug report as an attachment. When I looked at the attached text file I found that there wasn't any CAPTCHA code in the data so that got me thinking. They simply submitted data to http://www.darkscribes.org/site/bugreport.php?send without going to http://www.darkscribes.org/site/bugreport.php first which generates the CAPTCHA code and inserts it into the session data.

So, during the sending routine, I check to see if $_POST['confirmcode'] == $_SESSION['gotcha_code'], but since the user didn't submit a form with $_POST['confirmcode'] included and $_SESSION['gotcha_code'] didn't exist, technically both variables equaled only because they were both null; which does technically fulfill my check.

I've since made sure that it checks for this situation.

Server Hard Disk Problems

September 26, 2007 | No Comments Posted

I was told that two nights ago, one of the hard disks in this server started to show errors. Luckily for us, the RAID10 array noticed this, dropped the hard disk from the array, brought in a stand-by drive, and then re-built the array. This all happened while the server was still up and running and serving requests with absolutely no data loss.

The web host has since performed diagnostics on the drive in question but nothing was wrong. Anyways, the drive was formatted and then placed into the "hot-swap" position for use in case this happens again.

RAID10, gotta' love hard disk redundancy!

Holy shit! They did it! And nobody's crying about it!

September 25, 2007 | No Comments Posted

Imagine buying music, for less than $.99. Yep, that's right... less than $.99. Oh, and they have no DRM. Yep, that's right... NO DRM!

Introducing AmazonMP3. With most songs priced at less than $.99 cents (except where noted) and at 256 Kbps!

Holy shit!

The Final Episode of Babylon 5

September 21, 2007 | No Comments Posted

About three or four months ago I bought the entire series of Babylon 5, this meant all five seasons. I've so far watched all of the episodes of that series and I've just finished the last episode, the final episode of Babylon 5.

I remember watching that final episode so many years ago when it was still being syndicated on television and it brought tears to my eyes when I watched the scene in which Sheridan and Delenn embraced for the final time. Of all of the scenes of this episode that was the one that did it for me. There's not many things that can bring tears to my eyes but that one scene was one of the few that do.

It was heart wrenching, the most heart wrenching of all the scenes in the episode. It was that scene that I knew we would be seeing the last of Sheridan before he died.

I also remember the scene in which he was touring Babylon 5 for the very last time. There was a flashback scene to when he came back triumphantly from the depths of Z'ha'dum. That was another powerful scene that will be forever burned into my mind.

Then, there was the final scene of the episode in which Delenn clutched her pillow as she sensed the parting of Sheridan. Oh my God, that's all I have to say.

Like I said before, there's not a lot of things in this world that brings tears to my eyes but this episode in one of those very few things. The drama, the acting, the pure power of those scenes; it was too much.

Not going to do it!

September 19, 2007 | No Comments Posted

I've made up my mind... I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to GPL this thing. I've worked so hard making this web site to open the possibility of someone just ripping me off.

I know that LD's not going to be happy but oh well, he'll live.

To GPL or not to GPL. That is the question.

September 19, 2007 | No Comments Posted

LD's been bugging me about opening this site up as Open Source under the GPL license. But honestly, after all of the work that I've put into this... I really can't say that I'm ready to jump to do it.

I've asked several people of whom I work with and on various forums that I belong to and the people there seem to have a consensus that I shouldn't do that. They know that I worked long and hard on this.

Plus, I had a program that I made a long time ago stolen from me. It was a simple program made in VB.NET that made sending messages to Windows NT systems easier instead of using the ugly command line-based NET SEND. Cleveland Clinic network admins are using this tool. Have I seen any donations from them? Nope. Not one red cent.

So, now you can see why I have my reservations.

Darkscribes Development

September 16, 2007 | No Comments Posted

I've been at the helm of the development of Darkscribes for nearly a year and a half now. When I first started developing this site I had no idea just how far this site would get in terms of the "wow-factor".

Honestly, I have to say that this is for the most part my "play ground" where I try new things and learn how to apply them to the real world. You know, things like AJAX, Javascript, collapsible menus, etc. This really is turning out to be a showcase of what I can do in terms of web development. I've learned so much in these past months of developing this site.

This site is better than even I hoped for. The feature-set is one of the things that I work very hard on. I constantly tweak, add new things; it's really a work in progress.

This was and still is one of my biggest projects to date.

Back to writing...

September 10, 2007 | No Comments Posted

Finally we're back to writing again. I know it's been awhile since the last time we posted a chapter but we are back to writing again.

It will be awhile until we post another chapter but at least you will know that we're back on the job.

Taking some time off...

September 7, 2007 | No Comments Posted

I know it's been awhile since we've posted a chapter. It's just that neither of us have been in the mood to write lately. It sucks when you get like this, everything you think of doesn't come out or work right.

*sigh*