It's a new beginning for this blog (again). This time with an all different purpose (again) ! And I have the will to change and improve things (no, really). Well, I might not keep my promises but at least I know now where I'm heading to with this blog. All previous messages have been removed and the pages will from now on be dedicated to just one boring thing: my sites !

Yup, I need to talk about them, promote them, talk about my plans, etc. Actually, I have no intention to talk about my deep-secret projects, no, no, no, I'll talk about my incoming plans most of the time, the ones I release next day or so, haha. I'm in a new situation now, something all different, life has changed, at present it's fine but then it might be worse than ever, so I really want to focus on my sites and achieve something with them, no matter which part of them can help me to stand out as a job seeker (programming, design, management or more likely the writing, in my native language at least).

Although I'm currently working, I'm looking for new opportunities, anywhere in the world, but preferably in Europe or Japan (working in Japan is my impossible-to-achieve dream, we all need one, don't we ?), America or Oceania would be fine also. Right now though, I'm busy with several projects of site, I can't really talk about any of them. I can just say they are very different, both in size, quality and prospect, some are experimentals, some are small, others are more ambitious, but they are all interesting in a way, or at least I hope that's how they'll be perceived. It's altogether different, but I consider this blog too as a site, a kind of notebook site.

Anyway, I add a new site among my links, a friend's blog, well, he calls himself Robert Neville, but it's not his real name for sure (the name comes from Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, which I just read thanks to him :) ). His blog is about serious stuff, nothing I would write >_<. It's called Rotten Kind (I think that's a little creepy).

1UP_review: Adventures of Lolo
Samurai N: Pitfall - The Lost Expedition

I just lost the Tabulas entry I was writing. I've been distracted while I was typing and closed the tab accidentally, that's so brilliant of me, and so recurrent as well, last time thanks to Notepad I lost two-thirds of an article. Anyway, this entry was about how difficult it is to update HTML pages, such as Samurai Nintendo.

I was told so very often to move to PHP because it would make my life much easier than updating pages manually. It's true, it's quite much easier but it doesn't solve all the problems, you still make mistakes and need to correct them by going through different processes. That's what annoys me the most with HTML, the little mistakes: a broken link, a wrong date, that kind of thing, not so easy to avoid with HTML, much more with PHP of course because it's automatized and you don't have to take care of it.

Not directly at least, the CMS does it for you. But if, like in my case, you don't want to use somebody else's CMS, you have to build one yourself, which is a painstaking task, so I enjoy HTML in that aspect. It's more direct and when you update your pages, you're in contact with the source, not only with the text, which is pleasant if it's a compact and well organized source. If you feel like trying something different in your layout, inserting something new in one of your pages, you can do it easily. You don't need to write some additional script for something which might be used only once. This is when simple HTML is superior to PHP, in my opinion, when you want to give a personal flavor to the layout of one page of your site.

This doesn't happen very often, unless your site is baroque like mine, reluctant to follow a single pattern. I think it's more colorful although it certainly gives an unprofessional look. What is also particularly annoying with HTML is the uploading process, connecting to a FTP or SFTP everytime, especially, once again, when you need to correct one of those little mistakes you failed to see at the first upload. However, given the constraints, I think I did a pretty good job with my two sites, Samurai Nintendo and 1UP, which are 99% plain HTML, without a server-side script for the most part. It's a lot of work, but I think the result is interesting, it gives a different feel from a PHP site, less intricate, less rich also, definitely more amateur, but most of all original. That's what I'm looking for and hopefully I'm not the one to notice (and perhaps appreciate) that singularity. Working only in HTML with a site having at least a small amount of ambition is an interesting challenge and a good teacher for more complex things to come.

1UP_review: Zombies
Samurai N: Zoids Full Metal Crash

I posted today my attempt at Nintendo Japan's Asobi-Project. This project is actually a contest in which participants submit ideas for a game they invent and use the original features of the Nintendo DS. A jury of four/five persons, among which famed Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, will select the best entries and give money prizes. The winning project might become an actual game.

It's the kind of opportunity I've been waiting all my life and yet, procrastination took over and I only finished sketching my last idea today in a rush. I sent three ideas that I will keep secrets for the time being. What was particularly difficult is to express your ideas in the best possible way knowing that:

1/ you should keep it as brief as possible because the jury is probably going to browse what you've done very quickly, after all there's going to be many contestants.

2/ in these conditions, clarity is a must, and I suspect drawings, sketches are too, because...

3/ ...the jury is Japanese only and they might not want or not be able to read through long English sentences.

4/ keep focused on your core idea, something creative.

It was a really difficult exercice, but very interesting. I learnt two things from it: how bad I am at drawing and how bad I am at presenting well. Of course I knew about that for a long time, but it's been a while since I used pen, pencils and papers in such a dedicated manner. It felt very awkward because of the time I spend on computers; with them, everything is neatly sorted, letters clear and readable, shapes are geometrically perfect, when going back to the old paper and pencil and trying to do the same, a neat, redable and appealing presentation, it's much harder.

Overall though, I think I succeeded in conveying my ideas. It's another problem to know if they will catch the jury's attention of course. I'm afraid other contestants with more professional skills and tools will send much better material. But Nintendo in the end is judging, and that for me is where my chance stands, because I trust they will not judge so much on the quality of the presentation as on the quality of the idea. It's a bit like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, everyone has a chance to win, rich or poor, it's not a matter of being a rich kid to be lucky enough to find the gold ticket, likewise it's not a matter of being a rich or professional designer to come with the right ideas. It's not even a matter of being the smartest, it just comes to one thing: imagination.

After I sent the letter, I searched on the Net to see if other people discussed about the contest and what kind of ideas they sent. I found one forum (I will not reveal the name) where some people had posted ideas they had sent and I was sincerely relieved to see their ideas were... plain bad ! I think they completely missed point number 4, the most important, about originality. What they all proposed, was just a rehash of a known genre with something slightly different, with practically no creative input, something anyone could come up with. If a game like this had to be scored on the originality factor, it would get a very low grade. But of course, they think their ideas are fine because they accept games which are just equally uncreative.

Another interesting fact was that their ideas always had a brutal theme: a beat'em up, a shoot'em up or a violent RPG. It confirmed some of my beliefs, that it's easier to come up with something raw, violent, that it takes much less imagination and anyone can come up with something like this in mind. But to invent an entirely original concept such as Super Mario Bros., Zelda, Animal Crossing or Pikmin, that's where imagination really shines. Violence doesn't require much creativity obviously. Completely unique universes such as those afore mentioned, on the other hand, are all about imaginations and are truly a gift of the mind. Unlike the ugly, beauty and peace seem hard to create.

Today's retro game: Super Mario Bros

Today's recent game: Pikmin 2

Oh crap. I spent all day working and then programming, now it's half past one (do I need to say 'am' ?) and I was about to go watch TV before hitting the sack when I realized I didn't post anything here. I want to keep posting a message everyday, even if I have nothing to say, just for practise and stimulate my motivation.

I'll be lazy though, I'll just post a message I wrote today in a forum:

Wikipedia, probably one of the most indispensable and most interesting sites on the web at the moment. I remember when I first found out about it some years ago, I was far from being impressed, the articles didn't seem very accurate. But since then, I think Wikipedia has hugely improved and is now a really authoritative source of information and knowledge. Personally I use it a lot everyday, it's so great to have so much knowledge just a click away, no use to go to the library to rummage through and not necessarily find the tiny bit of crucial information you were looking for.

Anyway, even if I'm glad to write the eulogy of Wikipedia, it's not why I started this topic. They are currently doing some fundraising and I was stunned by the amount of money they need: $200.000 ! For just one quarter of the year !! That's really shocking and they expect the cost to rise up to $315.000 for what's left of the year ! (see their budget) I wonder how they're going to make it at more than one million dollars a year. They would deserve to be subsidized by the governments, I insist on the plural because I don't think it's a matter of only one government, everyone world wide enjoys Wikipedia so the richest countries could give some money to support it and ensure the lastability of such a grand project. I think the investiment, in terms of cultural and educational benefits, would be really worthwhile.

I'll never underline enough how much I love Wikipedia nowadays, it is so handy. I've always wanted to have access to so much knowledge but I could never afford it. Encylopedias are something expensive, the best I could get was the average word dictionary, useful of course but still terribly limited as there's nothing more than words definitions. If you want to learn more about other specific themes, you need to buy lots of different books or borrow from the library, which is not always so simple for many different reasons. Here, with Wikipedia, not only do you access immediately and at anytime what you need, but it covers an amazing amount of topics. And because many volunteers work on it, articles are constantly improved, sometimes simplified to be accessible by anyone. That's fantastic and that really makes want to learn more about everything !

Today's retro game: Shadowgate
Today's recent game: Eternal Darkness

And another crappy day ends. Again I programmed (with PHP), and again I wasted such an amazing amount of time trying to figure what I'm doing, what's happening. This time I finally learnt about cookies and sessions, call me stupid but I had never completely grasped the principle behind sessions. Now I finally did and the concept is clear in my mind. For the most part actually, I had been confused by this erroneous statement from PHPFreaks:

"This may come to you as a suprise, but Cookies are about 30% unreliable right now and it's getting worse every day. More and more web browsers are starting to come with security and privacy settings and people browsing the net these days are starting to frown upon Cookies because they store information on their local computer that they do not want stored there. PHP has a great set of functions that can achieve the same results of Cookies and more without storing information on the user's computer. PHP Sessions store the information on the web server in a location that you chose in special files. These files are connected to the user's web browser via the server and a special ID called a "Session ID". This is nearly 99% flawless in operation and it is virtually invisible to the user."

First, I must say I rarely use tutorials, I check them mostly to get some enlightment when I can't entirely figure out a concept such as sessions. For the most part I use the PHP manual, this plus the lengthy commentaries in most case are enough to understand everything.

In the quote above, what confused me a lot was the fact they insisted so much on cookies being so unreliable and kind of useless. Because sessions, as described in the manual, are supposed to be: "either stored in a cookie on the user side or is propagated in the URL." If the cookie method was not the best one, that meant sessions were mostly used with the URL, but the thing is, when visiting sites, very rare are the ones which append the SID to the URL. So I kept wondering if there's a session method I was not aware of or a reliable way to hide the SID in the URL, perhaps there was something I didn't understand, could you choose which method to use anyway ?. etc. And I just got more and more confused and lost.

But the truth is, that this statement from PHPFreaks is inaccurate. Sessions can use either cookies or the URL as the manual mentions, it's just up to you to decide which method you want to use (actually I guess it's even possible to use both at the same time). If the cookie method is prefered over the URL one, it's for 3 reasons at least: 1/ systematically appending the URL with the SID is tiredsome 2/ it's also risky because some of your users might accidentally provide a link with their current session 3/ the cookie method works most of the time.

For the cookie method not to work, your browser must refuse cookies. This might happen if you use some public computers not indended to go on the web, but it's very unlikely someone chooses to do this purposedly. If he does, he won't have access to many sites, for instance, you cannot connect to Tabulas, Blogger, Yahoo or Gmail without the cookies unabled. Forums such as Phpbb and Invision do allow you to connect with the URL method though. What would be the use to prevent cookies from coming to your computer anyway ? There is this privacy issue, supported by several sites, but I never figured out what the fuss was all about. I don't think cookies can "follow" you and gather information about you, statistics are a much bigger threats for your privacy. With statistics I can track precisely on my sites (well, not this one actually), I can see where you go and what you do and worst of all how you came to my site (generally sensitive datas such as SID are omitted though), for instance the search you performed on Google which led you here.

Anyway, when PHPFreaks says "files are connected to the user's web browser via the server and a special ID called a "Session ID". This is nearly 99% flawless in operation and it is virtually invisible to the user.", what they are actually refering to is the cookie method ! That's the only way to make SID virtually invisible to the user. Or at least, if I understood correctly... Good night.

Today's retro game: Shining in the Darkness
Today's recent game:Chaos Field Expanded

Shock. Surprise. Someone posted a comment to my "Wikipedia, I love you" entry, it was not related to the topic (no, it was not from a woman called Wikipedia... or at least I hope so !), but it's the first time someone I don't know actually bothers to write in my tabulas blog ! Thank you Jackie247n.

So, what am I going to write about today ? it's a difficult question because for once I decided to write my daily entry in the mid afternoon rather than after midnight and I feel much less inspired. Actually, nothing happened yet. I don't want to talk about Wikipedia again and I'm sick of sessions so perhaps I should talk about my dreams ? My night dreams, huh, not the things I'd like to do.

Lately, I dream a lot, or at least I remember my dreams a lot, I don't know why. One thing all these dreams have in common is to be bad dreams. Actually, I think the last time I had a good dream was years ago... now that I think of it, I wonder if I've ever had a "good dream" because I can't think what it could be like.

Those bad dreams are not nightmares, they are just uncomfortable, stupid dreams that you'd like to awake from. It's often about some unpleasant or stressful situation that is repeating itself or that you can't get away from, I don't think I need an interpreter to guess this means I am stressed and disturbed by some things happening in my life. Which must be definitely true.

Even more embarrassing now that I think of it, is that I totally forgot what was happening in the bad dream I had this morning which makes me wonder why I started to talk about it in the first place. Now that's really an embarrassing entry because it's obviously going nowhere. Another curious thing is that these bad dreams if I try to describe them to someone (when I remember them - am I getting amnesic or what ?) actually sound like nightmares because terrible things happen in them.

*Snap !* Oh yeah, I remember now. I was about to give an example of a past dream, in which it was the end of the world, a "natural" one I think. That reminded me about today's dream, which too had some dramatic background. In a way, you could also say it was announcing the end of the world because in this dream, the world was split in two blocks like during the Cold War, one one side was Asia, led by China I think, and the rest of the world was the other camp. Japan was actually against its own camp. I don't exactly remember what all this meant for me in the dream, if I even had a part in it, I just remember this context.

And that'll be all for today ! Because I don't really see what I could add... I just dream of the end of the world.

Today's retro game: Wild Guns (I love one of the in-game musics in that one)

Today's recent game: Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

I did it again, I spent a considerable amount of time messing with sessions. Seemingly, I had not understood everything about them. For instance, I did not realize the SID was automatically appended, I don't know if this was the fault of PHP running on my computer as a CGI module or perhaps the version I'm using is too old (4.3.1 I think ?), anyway it was not working properly until I try it on an actual server. I also had to meddle with the .htaccess file, because the php.ini configuration was different from mine and this alone took me an hour or more to figure out and set up properly.

By then, I realized PHP was smart enough to put the sessions ID where they needed to be. Right after that, I found this one site which spoiled my day by explaining that appending the SID to URL is actually a very bad thing because search engines won't index your pages.

O_O ........................................................... ¤

Fortunately, if I'm not mistaken (I'm too tired to think of that in depth), the way my site is made, it shouldn't matter, visitors don't receive SID. Hopefully I achieved what I wanted, an efficient, professional login system. But of course, there is the question of security, I guess I'll never be good enough about that, hopefully my code is not full of holes for hackers to exploit.

I'm sick of the amount of time I spent on all these different problems, because at the scale of the site, they are meaningless; I still have so much to do and I spend hours on the login which, at the moment, is actually the thing I should care the least about ! Tomorrow, I have a lot of things to do at work so I'm not sure I'll have time to programme, it's a pity because I feel this time I would manage to focus on the right things and do them well. Problem is... that's always the way I feel and I always end up wasting tens of hours on the same not so important problems. I'm such a young fart, haha.

Today's retro game: Sonic Blastman
Today's recent game: Kururin Squash

For once I know what I will put in the mood column: currently feeling EXHAUSTED ! today was a long, tiring day of work, and tomorrow I must get up around 8... hmm, ok, 8:30 maybe. And I'm not done with this day yet, before going to bed I have to feed this screaming monster that live in my belly (I haven't been impregnated by an alien, folks, I'm talking about my stomach) and I feel, from deep inside me again, an overwhelming desire to... write some code !

I must be a little sado-masochist, I like when sessions punish naughty me very, very hard. Oh, yes, waste my time ! More ! Oh yeah, yeah, one hour, two hours, oh yeaaaaaah ! (I told you I was tired) Anyway, as you can see, I don't have much to say. Yesterday night, I did some very satisfying programming. I used my 2 hours before going to bed (at 3am *slaps forehead !*) in an efficient way for once, I was damn tired, but I managed to spend one hour trying out some of PHP FTP functions. I was amazed at how simple and fast downloading and uploading was, much faster than through my current client; you could even rename files in the process in a very transparents way.

The other hour was spent to create a quick way to browse my hard drive in a Open file menu kind of interface, so that I could circle through the folders of my sites. It worked wonderfully well, some html, some php, and a little bit of javascript did the trick. Today I'd like to improve it because it's actually a prominent part of a future project. I also thought of things I want to write about in this blog. I'll write them down here, as a reminder: to post the list of the films I saw since the year started, just for the fun of it, and to try something stupid about hot topics and SEO.

Oh, and again I had one of those strange dreams where bad things happen. This time I dreamt 500 Finns died when coming back from holidays (I think it was supposed to be summer holidays but people died mostly in car accident because of frost on the road -- and people were also wearing bonnet... do I actually remember this or am I making it up ??) and the government decided to call for international help, which they received. Now this dream was actually pretty wacky. Good night, blah.

Today's retro game: Wizards and Warriors
Today's recent game: The Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess