The wonders of photoshop

Actually I use GIMP.. but our designer type person here uses Photoshop. In fact.. he used it to create these pictures of Steger! (With the help of my trusty Nikon Coolpix camera).

We really do work here.. honestly!




BFN

Stolen Sandwich.. the perils of a shared fridge

We went up to the break room earlier today, and found this note stuck to the fridge. Sorry for the quality, my mate took a picture of it on his camera phone.




Click for a larger view.

Mantis, my new pest control

I've been umm'ing and arr'ing about getting some bug tracking software setup. I never seem to find the time, until today. I considered installing bugzilla, but i'm not all that hot at server admin type stuff, so was worried to read things like "backup backup backup".
I set my browser to go to google, and typed in "bug tracker php". The very first (non paid) result was Mantis. Sounds good to me! I read a little about it, searched on whether it had a ton of bad reviews or not, and was thoroughly impressed with what I saw.

After downloading it to me desktop, I decided (in my infinite wisdom) to try installing it locally first. I have Xampp running locally, so I thought it would be a breeze. Not so. I can't remember the errors I was getting specifically, but it was enough for me to give up and go straight onto the server install. That sounds dangerous doesn't it!! "Oh dear it won't run on my safe little local environment.. lets break the server!" But really, I don't expect a whole lot to run locally, Xampp can only do so much for this windows machine.

Turns out on the server I had a bunch more success. I had to patch the version I downloaded (small mysql typo/bug) but aside from that it went off without much of a hitch. With all the messing around I did, I'd say it took me about an hour from searching for it to having it running.

In the past I've avoided bug trackers because they've seemed over cumbersome, like a whole extra step I have to perform, along with the hundreds of other tasks I have to do every day. I am reformed. I'm tired of hunting through my notebook searching for a note I made 6 weeks ago on the bottom of a page which I think had a diagram of a server on it.. maybe not.. darn where is it?!

I've been using Mantis now for a grand total of 3 hours. If anything comes up, I'll be sure to post again about it. Since most management attempts fail because no one participates, I've decided that this is 99% for me, and 1% for everyone else. Even if people send me an email, an IM, a phone call, I'll put them all in Mantis myself, so I won't forget!

I'm really looking forward for the satisfaction of marking a bug as done.. I can't wait!!

Mantis is at http://www.mantisbt.org/

BFN

It's fixed!! (amazon etc)

I am very happy to say.. it wasn't my fault for once! Woot! I have no idea what/how it was fixed.. but it was. I got a response from our host saying they think they found it, and try it. First time.. no, not fixed, second time, no, third time, no (This is where I started to panic.. this is day two by the way), fourth time, no, fifth time.. YES.

The error is completely gone. SOAP works perfectly (I think I will reimplement it) REST works perfectly.. everything is perfect. I wonder what was broke?

BFN

Temporary failure in name resolution

Yep.. what the heck is that?! Temporary failure in name resolution...

I think this is why the Amazon links stopped working, it also explains what happened to a couple of the feeds.
This code:

$request = 'http://ecs.amazonaws.com/onca/xml?
Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId=xxx&
Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex=DVD&Actor=Brad%20Pitt';
$response = file_get_contents($request);
echo htmlspecialchars($response, ENT_QUOTES);

Gets this error:

Warning: file_get_contents(): php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /var/www/html/includes/amazon_cart_small.php on line 16

Here is the most annoying part.. NOT all the time. I google'd it, tried a few things, emailed support at our host.. still nothing. Any clues?

BFN

REST did not solve anything..

Seems there is seriously something wrong between us and Amazon.. we're not speaking.. sometimes.

My favourite kind of error, the intermittent kind! I'm ignoring it for now, sadly we will lose revenue while buy links are down, but I can't see a way around it yet. I'm having similar, although not as fatal errors with REST as I had with SOAP.

On a completely different note, I found a link to a member of my Clan from Tabula Rasa (video game) who actually makes a podcast.. huh: http://rumheroes.mypodcast.com/
The funniest part is this post: http://rumheroes.mypodcast.com/2007/11/Photonic_Cramps-57445.html

Whoa nelly.. People really like this stuff.

BFN

SOAP problems making me go REST

The Amazon buy links have been live on the main site for almost a month. Yesterday they all stopped working. Strange.. I took them all off the site, so it's now like they were never there.

On further investigation (googling the error) it turns out _lots_ of websites are experiencing the same problem. The question is where to go from here. I read some more about ways to communicate with Amazon, and it turns out that REST is supposedly faster than using SOAP.

Luckily I'm familiar with some of the steps involved in setting this up, so perhaps later today we will be live again with buy links for the main site, and they won't take 15 minutes to load!

BFN

Stargate updates are live!

Finally.

Woot!

Tired.. sleepy.. so glad it's Friday! OMG.. it's not *cries*

I guess tomorrow will be the "whoops it broke" day. Give me strength!

BFN

No new Stargate.. yet

We had planned to launch today, but for some unforeseen circumstances, the launch has been put off for a few days.

It was finished though!

I was a little excited at some of the new things we got to do, but I guess only a few more days and you can all see it yourselves!

Loui and I had free tickets to a pre-screening of Beowulf today, but traffic worked against us, and by the time we got there it was going to be a long wait in a queue. We quit while we were ahead, and ate some sushi for dinner.

Unfortunately no interesting code to report today, all bug fixes and what not.. boo hoo!

I met some of the people working on Stargate Worlds, and they have promised to let us have a peek at the closed beta, so I'm hoping they remember me (I snagged a business card from someone who seemed important!) when the time comes for me to play!

BFN

Amazon unbox episode links

Ah ha!! I think I have it.. well sort of. Not as wonderfully automatic as on mgm.com, but passable. I've added an extra field for each episode, which unfortunately will have to be manually entered when the episode is added (and ones already up will have to be retroactively done) for the ASIN. This is the ID Amazon gives for each and every product in it's catalog.

Using the ASIN, I can do an ASIN Search using the AWS API, to get the buy link for each episode. It won't be ready for launch, but as soon as our Content Queen gets a chance, she'll have the arduous task of adding all the ASIN's to our DB, then the buy episodes will work!

In the meantime, I am hoping that Amazon does something to it's IndexSearch in the AWS API to allow me to search for "Stargate Atlantis Missing" and find the right eps. Oh well!

BFN

Stargate site updates go live tomorrow

All the work our designer, and front end developer has put in (with a tiny help from me) will go live tomorrow! That's the plan anyhow. It feels like whenever we get mostly done with something, TPTB push us in an entirely new direction. It's hard to make a kick ass site when you don't know what the goals of the site are. Is the site supposed to sell more DVD's? To sell more digital downloads (iTunes/unBox)? To get more people to watch SciFi? To get more people interested in general?
Who are we trying to get to watch Stargate? Is it people in their 20's? 30's? It's hard to go in a solid direction, and then be able to gauge our success without any particular goals.

Anyhow, we're at a point where a new version will be out of the site. It looks good, not a whole lot has changed, there is no new content, only some new looking bits.
The part I'm most excited about is the amazon unbox buylinks on the episodes. I ran into a snafu however. It seems that Amazon UnBox doesn't let you link to a particular episode, only to the entire series! Not even just to a season!

This afternoon I'll be messing around more with SOAP to see if I can get it down to episode by episode purchases, otherwise the whole thing will be rather simple (one link for Atlantis, one link for SG1!)

Anyone linked directly to episodes on Amazon Unbox before?

BFN

LOL cats.. crack me up!

Although the stargate lolcats translation isn't as fun (mostly because parts of it are nonsensical) it's still funny!

http://lolinator.com/lol/stargate.mgm.com/

and mgm.com .. which is better imo:

http://lolinator.com/lol/mgm.com/


BFN

People's Choice Awards

SGA is nominated!! Go vote!

http://www.pcavote.com/pca/

BFN

Error Handling.. Mail server bashing

As my last post suggested, I've been working on error handling.

To finally put things in order, and stop error messages from showing up anywhere at all (although I think I've decided to put them back into pages for the dev servers at least), I put together a super simple function that captures the errors, and sends me an email.

error_reporting(0);
function myErrorHandler($errno, $errmsg, $filename, $linenum, $vars)
{
$dt = date("Y-m-d H:i:s (T)");
$errortype = array (
E_ERROR => 'Error',
E_WARNING => 'Warning',
E_PARSE => 'Parsing Error',
E_NOTICE => 'Notice',
E_CORE_ERROR => 'Core Error',
E_CORE_WARNING => 'Core Warning',
E_COMPILE_ERROR => 'Compile Error',
E_COMPILE_WARNING => 'Compile Warning',
E_USER_ERROR => 'User Error',
E_USER_WARNING => 'User Warning',
E_USER_NOTICE => 'User Notice',
E_STRICT => 'Runtime Notice',
E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR => 'Catchable Fatal Error'
);
$user_errors = array(E_USER_ERROR, E_USER_WARNING, E_USER_NOTICE);
$err = "Error.\n";
$err .= "\tDate: " . $dt . "\n";
$err .= "\tError Num: " . $errno . "\n";
$err .= "\tError Type: " . $errortype[$errno] . "\n";
$err .= "\tError msg: " . $errmsg . "\n";
$err .= "\tScript name: " . $filename . "\n";
$err .= "\tScript line num: " . $linenum . "\n";
$err .= "\n\n";

// if ($errno == E_WARNING) {
mail("something@gmail.com", "Critical Site Error", $err);
// }
}
$old_error_handler = set_error_handler("myErrorHandler");

I realise it sends me a bazillion emails when I'm not limiting it warnings or errors, but it's alright now, I setup a gmail account to handle it all.
I actually got a stern email, followed by a stern phone call from IS.. they said I was "causing emails to bounce" because of the volume I was getting from the server. So incredibly pathetic imo.. even iMail over at Impress could handle it.. c'mon.. like 120 emails an hour.. that's NOTHING!!!

Anyhow.. volume on those emails has gone down as I've fixed the obvious stuff. I guess once I get it down to one or two a day, I'll switch it back to my actual work account email for real emergencies.

BFN

Beowulf and Error Handling

For starters I need to rave about the movie. Brian was able to snafu some tickets to the premiere of the movie Beowulf last night in Westwood.
We found the place to pick up our tickets rather easily, considering the throngs of people, and the security guards blocking off major portions of the block leading towards the theaters. There was no line at all, and we got our tickets with assigned seats.
As we went to cross the street, a security guard checked our tickets, and let us through, much to the envy of the large crowd straining to see people on the red carpet.

Suddenly I realised we're there, right in front of the theater, basically next to the red carpet. For the life of me I couldn't remember who was in the movie (I mean who did the voices) except for Angelina Jolie. The paparazzi were not going nuts, and it was early, at least an hour before the movie was to start, so I could only assume they weren't there yet. We were sent over the movie theater B. I guess that's where all the non actors went, which was fine by us, much less fuss! We picked up our free sodas, popcorn, and cool 3D glasses, found our seats, and settled in.

I won't write too much about the movie itself, as many of my friends actually want to see it, so here is the non spoilerish opinions. My eyes had a hard time at the start, as I kept trying to "refocus" on things that my eyes were telling me were close, even though they weren't. It was kind of annoying. Eventually (after about 20 mins) it stopped, and I was fine, no more focusing issues. I think the movie was beautifully drawn, the characters were interesting, and the fight scenes stellar! Sometimes it looked a little "2D with something behind it". Reminded me a little of a popup book, but mostly that wasn't noticeable.

We left just as the credits started to roll, and beat the bulk of the crowd outside. We crossed teh street, and stopped to watch the people leave theater A. After a short while, the paparazzi started screaming, and it was time for Angeline Jolie and Brad Pitt to leave! They came out across the red carpet, and jumped in a Toyota Prius! Yes.. seriously.. there were big huge limo's lining the street, and they got into a Prius. Besides the fact it had blacked out windows, it looked pretty stock standard.

I want to thank Brian for so kindly inviting me to go along, it was a very memorable event, and one I was glad to have been at!

Now onto the _really_ interesting stuff.. Error handling!!

Actually.. I'll post about that later ;)

BFN

The pumpkin collapse

I knew the pumpkins wouldn't last long, but I was shocked to discover yesterday as I was tidying up for Rover to do his thing (the Roomba) that Loui's pumpkin was leaking. Upon closer inspection, the entire inside was covered in mold, and it was collapsing in on itself, while excreting some kind of clear liquid.

I promptly brought over the garbage, and slid the now squishy, almost completely collapsed pumpkin in. Not until I disturbed the pumpkin did I get a whiff of the smell! EWWWW!

Even though my pumpkin had yet to start this downhill slide, I threw it out as well. We carved pumpkins on Wednesday, and by Sunday it was moldy and rotten. That was a TON faster than I expected!

Tonight is the premiere of Beowulf the movie! My friend Brian (link over there on the right) got us tickets to the premiere event in Westwood, so I'm really looking forward to that this evening.

Right now my day pretty much consists of error handling. I've been extremely lax with this in the past, sort of crossing my fingers and hoping it wouldn't happen to me. Well it happened, and a little too publicly for my tastes. Today I hope to implement my error functions, and bring the ugly errors to a standstill (at least on live servers).

JoY!

BFN

Tabula Rasa in stores today!

Everyone rush out and buy a copy, it's brilliant!

I had the privilege to play in the beta, and also the pre-order and now it's available for everyone. It's scifi meets mmo, mmo meets fps, guns over spells, fast paced skirmishes over drawn out sequences.

I've enjoyed it immensely, and look forward to you all letting me know your names in game, so we can party!

BFN

ps. I just noticed something interesting.. tonight is the Stargate Atlantis episode on SciFi of "Tabula Rasa" now that is a WEIRD coincidence!

Stargate posters from Comic-Con!

TV marketing (who very kindly took me backstage at comic-con to meet some of the cast) let us know today that they had some posters from comic-con for us.

They are HUGE! Nice big shiny ones, on a hard back. One for Stargate Atlantis, and another for Stargate SG-1.

I will post pics as soon as I take some, they are wonderful! I had to take down some of the non-Stargate posters in my cube to accommodate them, and will need to invest in some strong tape.

On a side note, they had looked at getting me an extra set of hands (freelance style) but I'd convinced them I don't need it. I know, I know.. stupid right? Well not really! The team will be getting an extra front-end developer, and an extra designer. This will mean that I will actually be getting projects sooner, so instead of having 4 hours to do something that takes a week.. I'll have 5 hours!!

BFN

BFN