Just a silly poem

O listen to me young men
fear your woman's skillet
above all other weapons
for it is the one that can
bring pleasure to you belly
and pain to you head...

Masks

Masks

I see before me a child of Egypt
Her face hidden behind a mask of gold
Her eyes though her eyes
Haunted by visions so very cold

In the night they came
Reavers!
Faces covered by masks of Ebony
To take from this child all
She held so very dear

Slaughter, Massacre, Chaos
A house asunder
Years to build
Destroyed in but a day

Faces uncovered by the slip of a
Mask
Behind the masks of ebony
they hid their shame
Friends they had claimed

Uncovered now the truth of their
False claims no friends were these
A cold blade found this innocents heart
Forever she swore to wear this mask

A mask of gold to hide her pain
To hide the stain of her tears
One final oath she swore
To return upon these decievers
All they had done tenfold

Smoke and Fire, A pictorial

I have always wondered how hard it would be to take pictures
of smoke and fire...

These fifteen images are what came out of forty-two shots.


The first were the easiest ones to capture. A stick of incense
makes for a very willing photographic subject...

















Well, those were easy enough even with my limited experience.

So I decided to move on to something common and everyday
in the way of smoke. A cigar and cigarette. But they decided
to make monkey's uncle out of me...




Ok, fine. Since the smokes didn't want to smoke without
me puffing on them I decided to move on to fire...













~Fin~

The general basic costs of owning your own site

As a general rule you can expect to pay around $50 to $100 a year
for the average website. This is counting only basic hosting and
domain name registration and a brief look at software.

This will give you a general idea of your costs…

Hosting: Prices tend to vary from host to host depending on
what kind of hosting package you get. on average the lowest
price is around $3 to $4 USD for a month but many hosts offer
lower prices for paying by the year and some even give deeper
discounts if you buy several years worth of hosting in advance.

Domain name registration: On average you will pay around $10
to $15 per year for a .com. One service most registrars offer is
a private domain name. This means that you own the name
but you pay a modest fee (usually around $9 a year) for a
company like Domains by Proxy to protect your private
information by listing their address and contact information
instead of your’s. Some people argue that using a service like
this is not a good idea but I disagree with them. Anyone that
knows where to look can perform a WHOIS on your domain name
and get your private information without you being any the
wiser. However if they have to come to your site you do at
least have a log showing that someone was looking for how
to contact you.

Software: With the wide variety of open source software
available it is doubtful that most people would need to buy
their software unless they are looking for specific features
that are only available in some paid softwares. This blog
and the other software used on this site are all open source
and free for anyone to use. Now if you want to buy your
software the prices can vary greatly. A Flashchat by tufat.com
costs $5 whereas some more sophisticated “scripts” can run
well into the hundreds.

Adding free games to your site

Free games are one good way to keep people on your site for a
while longer than they might have normally stayed. They can
range in size from only a few Kb up to several Mb. They cover a
wide range of gaming interests from simple card and board games
all the way to deeply involved immersive role playing games.

Most games a webmaster would be interested in would be
flash, java, or shockwave based games. There are other kinds
but I will focus on those in this article. The number and type
of games for a web site are more a matter of personal taste
depending on the webmaster. Some sites might only want a
small number of games, around three or four for most or a large
library of several hundred if you are creating a gaming site or
general “mega site”.

There are a good number of sites that offer free games for
websites. Some offer you just the games so you may upload
them to your own site and there are others that host the games
and provide you with an HTML embedding code so you don’t have
to use your own site’s bandwidth to offer your visitors free games.

A short list of sites offering free games:
www.crazymonkeygames.com
www.freegamesforyourwebsite.com
www.dailyfreegames.com

For more free games just do a search for “free games for websites”
and you will get a long list of sites.

Usually adding the games is just a matter uploading the game
files to you site into a “games” folder, like this…

http://shadowsbastion.com/gameroom/3dreversi/3dreversi.html

Sometimes though you may find games that have only the
game file itself, usually ending in the extension .swf if it is a
flash game. Then you will need to make an HTML page with an
embed code so the game can be played.

The easiest way to do this would be to take the HTML page from
another game that does have one and substitute the file name
and upload it to the one that didn’t come with it’s own HTML file.

A small collection of tools for Webmasters

These are links to various sites I have either found or been
introduced over the last few years that have been of help
with my various web sites.

DNS Stuff

DNS Stuff

A good collection of both free and paid DNS tools for webmasters.

Interpulse

Internet Health Report

A handy tool to determine if a connection problem is with just your
ISP or if several of the major internet backbone servers* are
having trouble.

*backbone servers are the servers on the internet that tell
other computers where on the internet your web site is.

Conduit toolbars

Conduit

A great way to offer your visitors a neat toolbar that is completely
free and a wide range of features available.

Changing LINKS

Changing LINKS

A great website that shows users random web pages. Just add
their short bit of HTML code to your pages and submit them to
Changing LINKS.

HTML Tags

HTML Tags

Something that can help you to no small degree when manually
editing HTML code.

You Want A Basic Color Code, Huh?

Basic color codes

This site offers a good selection of color codes that will work with
HTML and CSS and they even show you what the color should look
like.

Simple favicon maker

FavIcon from Pics

With this site you take almost any image and turn it into a simple
custom favicon for your web site.

StatCounter

StatCounter

StatCounter offers both a free and paid traffic tracking service.
Just open an account with them and add their code to your sites
pages.

Installing SMF

There are two ways it can generally be installed. The easiest
way being to use a “one click” installer such as Fanastico. You
may however need to manually install it if your host doesn’t
offer an installer or if it is down for maintenance.

The SMF forum on this site was installed manually.

Located here:SMF Forum
And one with TinyPortal here:SMF Forum with TinyPortal

The installation process is relatively easy and mostly straight
forward.

1) Make a folder on you computer named SMF so it will be
easier to find.

2) Go to the SMF site and download either the current version
of SMF or their Webinstall. An important note: The SMF Webinstall may not work on all shared servers.

3) if you downloaded the current version of SMF unzip the
files in you SMF folder, it will open all of the needed files and
folders inside that folder.

3a) If you decided to try their Webinstall, simply follow their
instructions here: Webinstall instructions

4) On you site create a folder for your SMF forum.
Typically this will be named either www.yoursite.com/sfm/
or www.yoursite.com/forum/.

5) Create a MySQL database. You can use whatever name
for it you want but the easiest would simply be smf.

5a) Depending on your host you may have to create a password
for the MySQL database. Many host use a default password
though, usually the same one you were given when you bought
your hosting package.

6) Upload the files you unzipped in the SMF folder on your
computer to the folder you made on your site. It will take
a while because SMF has a lot of image files in it’s themes
folders.

7) After you have uploaded the files use you browser to
go to: www.yoursite.com/sfm/install.php this will start the
installation process.

8.) Enter the needed information in the required fields and just
follow the on screen instruction. Some of the information won’t
need to be changed but most of it is fill in the blanks…

Basic Settings
Forum name: Just enter the desired name of your forum
Forum URL: This will probably be filled in by the installer
Gzip Output: This will be checked already so there is no need
to change it.
Database Sessions: This will also be checked so there so there is
no need to change it.
UTF-8 Character Set: This is unchecked. If you are planning to use
international language packs it might be a good idea to check it.
Allow Stat Collection: This is unchecked also, If you want to help
SMF to visit your site to get ideas on how to improve the software
you can check it but you are not required to.

MySQL Server Settings
MySQL server name
MySQL username
MySQL password
MySQL database name
MySQL table prefix

This is all pretty much straightforward fill in the blanks stuff.
If you are in doubt about some it always remember to ask
someone before you get in over your head.

Create Your Account
Your username: Your preferred screen name
Password; Your password
Password: Verify your password
Email Address: Your email addy (must be a valid one)

This creates the forum’s root Admin account (your’s). It will require
your MySQL Database Password so the software can be sure you are
authorized to create the Root Admin.

And now you have reached the final page of the installer.
Congratulations, the installation process is complete!

Check the one box to remove the install.php and click the provided link
to get into you new forum.

And that’s it.

The WP e-Commerce plugin by Instinct Entertainment

This is a good little plugin for someone that wants to sell
online but doesn’t have an absolutely huge stock of goods
for sale.

The plugin and installation instructions are here:
WP e-Commerce plugin

However according to Instinct Entertainment’s
page on it:

WP e-Commerce powers over 50,000 websites!

The WP e-Commerce shopping cart plugin for WordPress is an industrial strength elegant easy to use fully featured shopping cart application suitable for selling your products, services, and or fees online.

WP e-Commerce is a Web 2.0 application designed with usability, aesthetics, and presentation in mind. Perfect for:

» Digital Downloads!
» Bands & Record Labels
» Clothing Companies
» Crafters & Artists
» Books, DVDs & MP3 files
» Members Only / Subscription sites
» Stores with over 10,000 + products

I don’t plan on trying 10,000 + items though. lol

It was a fairly easy little thing to get installed using their
instructions which are fairly straightforward in nature.

Setting it up is about as easy too; though there were a few
little stumbling blocks here and there…

Two come to mind…

1) The plugin is particularly picky about your image file
extensions. When helping a friend install his we discovered
that none of our JPG’s were working and after a bit of digging
on their support forums we found the key to the problem.
The extensions have to be lower case.
Example: Image.JPG won’t work however Image.jpg will.
Why? I honestly don’t know.

2) Setting up the Paypal payment gateway doesn’t seem
to require the exact instructions they offer.

From Instinct Entertainment:

WP e-Commerce lite install instruction link

PayPal Setup
These are the instructions for setting up PayPal for your WP e-Commerce store

At PayPal site

1. Browse to PayPal and sign up using your email address

2. Under Profile > Shipping Settings check the allow transaction-based shipping values to override the profile shipping settings listed above

3. Done

At your WP e-Commerce store’s Admin

Now that you have a PayPal account setup enter the email address you used into the payment gateway settings page in the WP e-commerce admin panel

1. Under e-Commerce > Gateway Options choose PayPal as your payment gateway.

2. In “PayPay Username” enter your email address that you use to login to your PayPal account.

3. In “PayPal URL” enter https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr

4. Click the button that says “Submit”

Conclusion

Now that you have setup your shop and have a working PayPal account you are ready to start selling! Upload your products and have fun.

Their directions for Paypal don’t seem to apply really. I checked
my Paypal account and could find no way to set up the shipping
per their instructions. However, when I did a test, it did take
me to Paypal and it did show that I owed $ 0.01 to myself. lol

All in all, I’d say it is am excellent solution for someone that
want sell online but doesn’t want to fool with one of the full
blown shopping carts like Zen Cart or Candy Press.

Installing Wordpress

Installing Wordpress

There are two ways it can generally be installed. The easiest
way being to use a “one click” installer such as Fanastico. You
may however need to manually install it if your host doesn’t
offer an installer or if it is down for maintenance.

This Wordpress blog was manually installed and the longest
part of it was uploading the files to the host. Their included
instructions are in a file named readme.html and they are very
straightforward in nature.

I will give you the simplest version of installing it manually.

1) Make folder on your computer named wordpress so you may
more easily find it.

2) Download the current version of Wordpress from their
site into that folder.

3) Unzip the the zip file into you wordpress folder, it will
make it’s own sub folders for it’s files.

4) Create a MySQL database. You can use whatever name
for it you want but the easiest would simply be wordpress.

4a) Depending on your host you may have to create a password
for the MySQL database. Many host use a default password
though, usually the same one you were given when you bought
your hosting package.

5) Look for a file in your wordpress folder named:
wp-config-sample.php open this file using a text editor such
as Notepad. (Don’t use Wordpad, it will mess the file up.)

After you open it you see that it has places clearly marked
for the information, all you have to do is paste your information
over their’s.

// ** MySQL settings ** //
define('DB_NAME', 'putyourdbnamehere'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'usernamehere'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'yourpasswordhere'); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
define('DB_COLLATE', '');

// You can have multiple installations in one database if you give each a unique prefix
$table_prefix = 'wp_'; // Only numbers, letters, and underscores please!

// Change this to localize WordPress. A corresponding MO file for the
// chosen language must be installed to wp-content/languages.
// For example, install de.mo to wp-content/languages and set WPLANG to 'de'
// to enable German language support.
define ('WPLANG', '');

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

define('ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__).'/');
require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-settings.php');
?>

6) Save the file as wp-config.php and upload it with the rest
of the files to what ever folder you want to put the blog into.

7) Open www.yoursite.com/yourblogfolder/wp-admin/install.php
in your browser. After this is all pretty much downhill. Wordpress
will give you the username admin and generate a password
that you can change later.

And that’s it.

Forum hosting: Free vs Paid

So you want to open a forum but have only limited
experience with such things.

Well you have two basic choices, an ad supported free
forum such as ProBoards, Invisionfree, or SMFforFree.
Or you can use you own hosting account and install the
forum script of you choice such as vBulliten, SMF, or PHPBB.

Some pros and cons of both...

Ad supported free forums:

Pros:
1) It's free! (duh!)

2)They're pretty much fire and forget. By this I mean, once you
set up the account all you have to do is decide how many categories
and forums you want and decide on a theme for it. No need to
worry about backing up the database or any other major maintenance.

Cons:
1) If the company hosting it goes out of business you're sunk.

2) You get to look at ugly ads that are placed as in-your-face
as you can get.
(Firefox with Adblock Plus usually fixes this but not everyone uses FF)

3) You have to work within the host's TOS and a lot of times they
can be awfully picky about the content you can post.

4) Some people tend to (wrongly) look down their noses
at free hosted forums

Hosting it yourself:

Pros:
1) You have full control over the forum and you're the boss.

1a) If your host offers Fantastico or other similar one click script
installers, installing the forum can take only a matter of minutes.

2) It is under your domain name, so if you have a store on
the same site it can give your customers a place to ask questions
or leave you feed back to tell you what works and what doesn't

3) You have greater control over the look and feel of the forum.

Cons:
1) You gotta pay the bills for the upkeep.

2) You're stuck with making sure you have back ups and doing
the needed maintenance. (ICK!)

3) You get to look at ugly ads you put there yourself.
(j/k Well, sorta...)