Slackmaster2K
Gone
An update.
Thanks everyone for being so understanding. The CD is now resting primarily on me. While this project is a top priority in my life, it's not THE priority...non-profit dull work tends to...well...suck. It is being worked on. It is near completion...which means nothing coming from me at this point.
I've decided to do a "real" update this time, to let you know what's actually going on in a non-sugar-coated sort of fashion.
1) The CD labels are done. A test print was successful at KAOS Recording in Portland Oregon. Ed verified the disc and said it looked great. Apparently the guy has a nice new inkjet that's working in top form (as well as inkjet can.
2) The jewel cases to my knowledge were ordered by KAOS. They are 2CD slim cases.
3) I recently cashed in about 200 dollars worth of money orders (after scanning them) and wrote a money order to Ed so that he can pay half the replication costs....since we've dragged on this and the guy already bought jewel cases. I will be sending the money order to Ed today or tomorrow.
4) I still have a couple hundred dollars worth of uncashed money orders. I'm not certain that we have the funds yet. We've got the money to duplicate but not for me to print the jackets. Many of the contributors have yet to pay but I've decided to just fucking forget about it. We will raise the money if I make another plea, and those that don't pay up just won't get the disc...seems fair enough to me.
5) The enhanced data is currently being worked on. As of now this is the status:
- Most of the graphics and animations are done. I might have to add a few more but we'll see. All graphics and animations are 100% handmade by myself.
- The basic layout is done.
- The contributors section is done except for a few images I'm waiting on from some people. I still need to convert audio samples to MP3 with the proper copyright and artist information. Using Wavelab's encoder at medium quality, this will be an all night sort of deal. (can't do batch processing unfortunately)
- The main section is "done", but I still have to do writeups because dragon never got back to me and there's really nobody else to ask. I wrote a partial introduction that I don't like. I also wrote a partial introduction to the contributors section and I only like part of it. Bummer. This is on the back burner.
- The "famous threads" section is in its infancy because of some problems between netscape and internet explorer and style sheet links. Netscape might be ugly, and I might just leave it this way to punish stupid netscape users.
- The FAQ is pretty much done. The credits are done and I've added thankyou's including everyone who prepaid so far.
- One hidden feature was added and two or so more should be added before long. (backburner)
- I ran into a snag with navigator. As you may know, I had to use netscape layers for netscape, and frames for internet explorer. I originally wanted to use frames for both, but netscape wouldn't allow me to scroll frames unless the scrollbar was visible, making my scroll buttons silly...and also just looking ugly in general.
Anyways, netscape will not load a layer if another layer is loading. So at times when I have to load 2 or more layers at once, it would only load the first one. I designed a simple but effective load queue class that holds all the information to load a number of layers. Then I added a function to catch layer load events for all the layers, such that when a layer was finished loading, the queue would be informed and in turn load the next layer. This seems to be working now but took a couple days total.
Just for your amusement, a few more hitches that I ran into with Netscape's *pathetic* browser: constants don't work in javascript, only variables...the switch expression was either not implemented or is buggy....mailto links don't work (not as easily as IE)...images are rendered over the top of text in some cases, especially within nested tables...javascript errors are not reported (thank god for a free debugger I found)...and many more that I can't think of off hand.
- As mentioned above, mailto links won't work in netscape unless you use the emailer with communicator, or your email software automatically sets itself up. I've decided to let this one go. Netscape users can eat their own poop.
- The code for playing music might be working. Brad tested some of this at one point. I'm using a hidden frame (in both IE and netscape) that loads a page that I'm creating on the fly to include the appropriate HTML to play a background sound. I've created about 4 loops from the material on the CD that will play in the background (it can be turned off too). For netscape I'm using liveaudio and in IE I'm using an activemovie object.
I think it's going to work. Netscape users again can eat their own poop, because liveaudio doesn't loop smoothly....I made the loops somewhat long to compensate, but that's all I can do for you.
- Any fancy introduction I might have had planned is now scrapped. I'm going to do a very simple one. It features quality teeth grinding music from s8-n and should suffice.
- I suddenly realized at one point that if this disc was going to play on both Mac & PC, then the Joilet filesystem is inappropriate. We'll have to use ISO 9660. The interesting thing about ISO 9660 is that it's an 8.3 filesystem...8 characters and three extention characters. About 3 weeks ago I had to go through and manually change every filename...hundreds total including images and whatnot. Then I had to go through and manually update all my links (most of which are proprietary javascript and aren't automatically updated by frontpage). That was a fun couple nights.
- I just blew a bugger out my nose on accident and I can't find it...which means that it's probably on my shirt someplace...don't you hate that? Maybe I'll find a netscape user to lick it off.
6) Beta testing still needs to happen. I'll probably send beta's out after the threads and music are both done. That should be enough to ensure cross-platform compatibility.
7) The jacket artwork needs to be rearranged and basically redone. This will be happening while the CD is being duped. Shouldn't take too long...only took a few days the first time, and I was starting from scratch then.
8) I have to buy some photo ink and neato templates to do the jackets. The funds for this are less important than the duping...hopefully we'll have the money (I figure 100 to 150 for the printing total).
9) Still no word from dmcsilva...I have to call him...I hope the number I have is current. Somebody remind me to call that guy.
There's your update. Fun stuff eh?
Slackmaster 2000
Thanks everyone for being so understanding. The CD is now resting primarily on me. While this project is a top priority in my life, it's not THE priority...non-profit dull work tends to...well...suck. It is being worked on. It is near completion...which means nothing coming from me at this point.
I've decided to do a "real" update this time, to let you know what's actually going on in a non-sugar-coated sort of fashion.
1) The CD labels are done. A test print was successful at KAOS Recording in Portland Oregon. Ed verified the disc and said it looked great. Apparently the guy has a nice new inkjet that's working in top form (as well as inkjet can.
2) The jewel cases to my knowledge were ordered by KAOS. They are 2CD slim cases.
3) I recently cashed in about 200 dollars worth of money orders (after scanning them) and wrote a money order to Ed so that he can pay half the replication costs....since we've dragged on this and the guy already bought jewel cases. I will be sending the money order to Ed today or tomorrow.
4) I still have a couple hundred dollars worth of uncashed money orders. I'm not certain that we have the funds yet. We've got the money to duplicate but not for me to print the jackets. Many of the contributors have yet to pay but I've decided to just fucking forget about it. We will raise the money if I make another plea, and those that don't pay up just won't get the disc...seems fair enough to me.
5) The enhanced data is currently being worked on. As of now this is the status:
- Most of the graphics and animations are done. I might have to add a few more but we'll see. All graphics and animations are 100% handmade by myself.
- The basic layout is done.
- The contributors section is done except for a few images I'm waiting on from some people. I still need to convert audio samples to MP3 with the proper copyright and artist information. Using Wavelab's encoder at medium quality, this will be an all night sort of deal. (can't do batch processing unfortunately)
- The main section is "done", but I still have to do writeups because dragon never got back to me and there's really nobody else to ask. I wrote a partial introduction that I don't like. I also wrote a partial introduction to the contributors section and I only like part of it. Bummer. This is on the back burner.
- The "famous threads" section is in its infancy because of some problems between netscape and internet explorer and style sheet links. Netscape might be ugly, and I might just leave it this way to punish stupid netscape users.
- The FAQ is pretty much done. The credits are done and I've added thankyou's including everyone who prepaid so far.
- One hidden feature was added and two or so more should be added before long. (backburner)
- I ran into a snag with navigator. As you may know, I had to use netscape layers for netscape, and frames for internet explorer. I originally wanted to use frames for both, but netscape wouldn't allow me to scroll frames unless the scrollbar was visible, making my scroll buttons silly...and also just looking ugly in general.
Anyways, netscape will not load a layer if another layer is loading. So at times when I have to load 2 or more layers at once, it would only load the first one. I designed a simple but effective load queue class that holds all the information to load a number of layers. Then I added a function to catch layer load events for all the layers, such that when a layer was finished loading, the queue would be informed and in turn load the next layer. This seems to be working now but took a couple days total.
Just for your amusement, a few more hitches that I ran into with Netscape's *pathetic* browser: constants don't work in javascript, only variables...the switch expression was either not implemented or is buggy....mailto links don't work (not as easily as IE)...images are rendered over the top of text in some cases, especially within nested tables...javascript errors are not reported (thank god for a free debugger I found)...and many more that I can't think of off hand.
- As mentioned above, mailto links won't work in netscape unless you use the emailer with communicator, or your email software automatically sets itself up. I've decided to let this one go. Netscape users can eat their own poop.
- The code for playing music might be working. Brad tested some of this at one point. I'm using a hidden frame (in both IE and netscape) that loads a page that I'm creating on the fly to include the appropriate HTML to play a background sound. I've created about 4 loops from the material on the CD that will play in the background (it can be turned off too). For netscape I'm using liveaudio and in IE I'm using an activemovie object.
I think it's going to work. Netscape users again can eat their own poop, because liveaudio doesn't loop smoothly....I made the loops somewhat long to compensate, but that's all I can do for you.
- Any fancy introduction I might have had planned is now scrapped. I'm going to do a very simple one. It features quality teeth grinding music from s8-n and should suffice.
- I suddenly realized at one point that if this disc was going to play on both Mac & PC, then the Joilet filesystem is inappropriate. We'll have to use ISO 9660. The interesting thing about ISO 9660 is that it's an 8.3 filesystem...8 characters and three extention characters. About 3 weeks ago I had to go through and manually change every filename...hundreds total including images and whatnot. Then I had to go through and manually update all my links (most of which are proprietary javascript and aren't automatically updated by frontpage). That was a fun couple nights.
- I just blew a bugger out my nose on accident and I can't find it...which means that it's probably on my shirt someplace...don't you hate that? Maybe I'll find a netscape user to lick it off.
6) Beta testing still needs to happen. I'll probably send beta's out after the threads and music are both done. That should be enough to ensure cross-platform compatibility.
7) The jacket artwork needs to be rearranged and basically redone. This will be happening while the CD is being duped. Shouldn't take too long...only took a few days the first time, and I was starting from scratch then.
8) I have to buy some photo ink and neato templates to do the jackets. The funds for this are less important than the duping...hopefully we'll have the money (I figure 100 to 150 for the printing total).
9) Still no word from dmcsilva...I have to call him...I hope the number I have is current. Somebody remind me to call that guy.
There's your update. Fun stuff eh?
Slackmaster 2000
