ChEeTaH's - Spore

Where have you been?

ChEeTaH — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:57:35 +0000

It's been a long time again, very long. A lot has changed too, so here goes...

First of all: I got a job in February. It's not the greatest thing, but getting something really nice is hard right now. At least it relieves us a bit from the huge financial burden we'd otherwise have. Another small job at my university, where I worked for only 4 hours each week, is ending this month. I'll have my last paycheck from there soon, unfortunately.

I've also prepared the tContact Drupal module for release. The code has been slightly improved, which is always good. There's also another mini-module for Drupal which allows you to add CSS classes to menu links. This makes it easier for a theme to turn a menu into a series of buttons, similar to the menu at the top of this site (Home/About/Contact). Right now this site uses the menu item's ID number, which is somewhat random. With this module such menus are just a little harder to break :) I hope both modules will land on Drupal.org soon.

What else? KidDraw of course. A few months ago already, I've cleaned up a lot of code, made it a little bit themeable (which resulted in removing a whole lot of code). I've also changed the file loading/saving structures around so that the files KidDraw produces are nice straightforward XML files. They're compressed to save some disk space, but it means that compatibility with future and past versions is much easier. Still, a release is not in sight right now, and I'll stop predicting/hoping anything right now. First I've got some other stuff to finish and wrap up, before I can focus on KidDraw a little more again.

I'm also working on some supersecret projects with Rosana, which has taken some time off of other projects. It has inspired me to write the menu CSS classes module mentioned above though.

Another technical bit I worked on this past weekend is merging all the (5) Drupal installations on this webserver to a single centralized installation. Before, a new version of Drupal would mean updating each site separately: putting the site in maintenance mode, uploading files, updating the database and turning the site back online. Times 5. Right now: Put all sites in maintenance mode, upload files, update all databases, put them all back online. I've set up bookmark folders in Firefox so I can put all sites into maintenance mode with just a few clicks. Same goes for updating and bringing them back online. A similar amount of effort is saved for updates of common modules among various sites. All in all: maintaining the sites is less painful - especially as the amount of Drupal sites we're running will soon grow.

That does mean that if you spot any errors (missing/broken images, links, etc): please contact me! I think I've most of them covered though.

And then there's University of course. It's taking a lot of my time right now, with this year's last set of exams just around the corner. Together with some more deadlines, it's a busy time right now.

The Sims 3 is also out, I've been playing it for a bit. Not much yet - too little time. The (Collector's Edition) box is shiny though.

Spore Galactic Adventures, the first real expansion for Spore, is due next week, and Thursday (18th) me and Rosana will be checking it out at EA Netherlands. A bit late for a preview, but it may just be early enough to get me excited about the game once again. I don't know all too much about it right now, so Wednesday evening I'll have to do some reading to catch up on it.

Finally: I'll be getting a new laptop this summer. After saving up for a long time, the €1000 offer from university (for a HP Elitebook 8530w) is in. I've filled in the form saying I want it, I'll have to pay up soon. I should be getting it around August. My current laptop (6 years old) just doesn't cut it anymore...

That's it for this rough summary of the past couple of months (project/work wise anyway). Until next time!

UPS Delivery [Update 3]

ChEeTaH — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:20:20 +0000

So we ordered two copies of Spore's Creature Creator, mostly just to get the box and physical disc of it. Downside: it had to come from the US, GameStop to be precise, as it only popped up on British gameshops earlier this week. Today I received tracking information, with some good news: the package arrived early this morning in Eindhoven, not too far from here. Assuming it may have been slightly delayed at the airport or so (it was awaiting clearance), I hoped the truck would arrive later today with the package. Not true.

Apparantly, the small package has now moved again. While it was in Eindhoven at 4:23AM local time, it arrived in Cologne 6:55PM local time today. It took about 14.5 hours to travel from Eindhoven, 65 kilometers (40 miles) west from here, to Cologne, to about 90 kilometers (50 miles) south-east from here.

So we'll probably get our discs tomorrow, I won't be surprised if it will come from a German truck driver too. Ah well, we can already play the full version thanks to EA, so there's no rush.

Update: The package is in the truck now. Turned out I was slightly off with my analysis above. Eindhoven only showed up in the tracking as its data was being processed there - the package never got there. However, the discs went straight from Louisville, KY, to Cologne, Germany. There it was processed yesterday, and last night it traveled from Cologne to Eindhoven. Still quite silly if you ask me, but I reckon they find it the most efficient solution. Delivery can happen any moment now.

For all the curious I now also have a screenshot of the tracking information (as it currently is):

Update 2: After waiting a day long, it seems like the package actually never made it to any truck. It was just scanned a couple of times, again at 5:51PM today (local time). It's still in Eindhoven, new delivery date is tomorrow (20 June). I want those discs!

Update 3: I may be a little late with this, but the package finally arrived... last Monday. Apparantly they tried delivery on Friday but they claim we weren't home - I never heard the door bell ring, but I may have been in another part of the apartment or so. They promised they'd bring it before noon on Monday, it came about 10 minutes late, tracking said it was in time by 12 minutes... Plus Rosana had to sign, they spelt her last name wrong (with an "i" instead of "y", despite explicitly spelling it correctly). Ah well, we have the discs (they turn out to be CDs, not DVDs by the way)! Woot!

Big Release Week [Update]

ChEeTaH — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:30:45 +0000

This morning, while waking up and surfing the web a bit, it came to me. There are many software releases this week.

First of all, tomorrow is download day for Firefox 3. Get it tomorrow! I already blogged about this one, and I once again urge you to help Mozilla to that world record. Download Firefox 3 tomorrow!

Then, also tomorrow, Spore's Creature Creator is officially released. Now EA already gave fansites (including me) a copy, so you can already get a bunch of my creatures, including a full alphabet, from Sporepedia. Look at my shiny badge:

Visitk Spore.com

Finally there's another release this Thursday. Although I'm quite a big fan of Gentoo, I've also used openSUSE (previously SuSE) a lot in the past. I'm thinking of putting that on my laptop again, saving myself the hassle of continuous compilations, and what better opportunity than the release of openSUSE 11.0 to do so?

Update (17 June): Just found out that Wine also just released version 1.0 today. That's three major software releases on one day! Congratulations!

Also, Firefox 3 Download Day is on! You have until tomorrow (18 June) 17:00 UTC to help Mozilla set that world record! Go and download!