Archive

Archive for the ‘Dev Diary’ Category

Theme: Eos

August 2nd, 2009 No comments
SRS Solutions EOS

SRS Solutions EOS

So while I am still working on my Windows 7 WordPress theme, I wanted to go ahead and update off Microblue.

I scoured the internet looking for a theme that I thought looked good and went well with my style.. as well as being well written and designed such that it would be easy to upgrade and edit.

I settled on SRS Solutions EOS.  A very well written theme that has everything I wanted.   Firstly its not a CSS or design nightmare that many themes tend to be.  The colors are well planned out and everything fits together quite nicely.

I have already started to make modifications and I hope to one day get the PSD file for the LayoutBgs.jpg so that I can make minor graphical tweaks..  In a day or two I hope to send them an email asking for the PSD file so I can proceed with my ideas but I’m pretty sure they wont just give it to me.. its their business after all.. 

I just hope they understand they aren’t losing money by giving me to it, as I have no intention of paying for their help (I can do it myself) and that if I have to recreated the PSD file myself I will..   If anything it would only serve to endear me to them even more by giving it to me..   We shall see..

Either way, the folks over at SRS did a good job and I’m more than happy to give them credit where credit is due.

Read more…

Categories: Theme Tags:

Theme Update & IE8 aint so bad…

June 25th, 2009 No comments
WPOS7 Screenshot

WPOS7 Screenshot

So I have been plugging away at creating my OS7 theme.. I previously stated that IE8 sucked completely and I have to take that back.   It doesn’t suck completely.. infact, it sucks a lot less than I realized..

I found that I was using IE8 in “quirks mode” and of course it behaved quirky.  My main question is;  What the hell is the point of quirks mode?!  “Here have our browser in a mode that is completely broken.” I just don’t get it.. I guess quirks mode is basically IE6 as they seem to render similarly.. (I have IE6 on my laptop still for testing purposes..) If that’s the case it couldn’t be better named..

Apparently since I had a misspelling (or something) in my doctype it defaulted to quirksmode.. Once I found that I was in the wrong mode, found out why and fixed it, I started to test my new UI in IE7 and IE8.. It actually works!!  Ever so minor bug in IE7, but its hardly worth mentioning..   IE8 works fine, but a little slow. er.. in fact, a lot slow.. IE8 ain’t zippy at all.. Read more…

Categories: jQuery, Theme Tags: ,

WPOS7 WordPress Theme

June 18th, 2009 No comments
Wordpress OS7 Theme

Wordpress OS7 Theme

So I have been using Windows 7 for a while now and I really do like it.  It’s no Snow Lepoard but it’s what I have.. heh  Honestly, its not bad at all..  I also have been using wordpress for a goodly while with the same theme “Microblue” a theme I created a year ago.

I’m getting bored with Microblue so its time for a change and I thought it would be fun to combine Windows 7′s look and feel into a wordpress theme.    This lead me down the road that I had started with my jQuery Windows post and posed an important question;

Do I implement a windows manager within a webpage?    God what a pain in the ass..

Read more…

Categories: jQuery, RSoW.com, Theme Tags: , ,

40k Leman Russ

May 19th, 2009 2 comments
Leman Russ 08

Latest Render

While my Tau Hammerhead is coming along nicely, I needed a bit of a break from it.  I decided to model something from either the Imperial Guard or Space Marines codex.  I don’t have either army, but I do have a Leman Russ that I was planning on turning into an Ork battlewagon..  So it seemed like the natural choice for modeling..

The model is still in pieces which as actually a boon because I can hold and model each part individually and then assemble them.. or at least I hope its that easy..

As with the hammerhead I plan to show a render of the model for every 4 hours (or so) of work.

Note: This post will be updated a lot as I work on this model.

Read more…

Categories: 3D Graphics Tags: , ,

Wacom Bamboo Graphics Tablet

May 11th, 2009 2 comments
Wacom Bamboo

Wacom Bamboo

I have been getting back into 3D modeling lately and ran into my old nemesis — texturing!  For whatever reason, I had never really been very good at texturing.  I think a lot of that was due to the way Lightwave did textures.  It used to be extremely painful to texture a model because there wasn’t really a good workflow..

Previously you’d have to export your UV’s and do some texturing work in photoshop or some such, then import them back to the model, then render it… just to test your outcome.   It would take a long time to get something looking even half good.  It just wasn’t easy workflow wise causing me not to want to do it.. thus, I sucked at it..

Read more…

Categories: 3D Graphics Tags: , , ,

jQuery and Browser based games

March 20th, 2009 No comments
t-and-c-surf-designs

Surfs Up!

I have been playing with the jQuery animate functionality a bit today and it occurred to me that jQuery would likely be the perfect library to build a browser based game on top of..

I did a little browsing about the web, and sure enough.. someone thought of it before me.

The games I would want to create would be less animated than this one.. but I could totally see a Masters of Orion remake as a browser based game using the jQuery library..   Or any number of other turn based games..  You could even make them multiplayer fairly easily..

As computers get faster, and as browser trend towards threaded javascript engines.. Why the hell not?! At this point I think it would be just as easy/difficult to create a game via a webbrowser as it would via any other medium..

Read more…

Categories: Games, jQuery Tags: , ,