Well Here We Are Again

Lots has happened for OKS since I last wrote. The things that have happened have been good and bad, but where we are at now is a place I am content with.

Comcast began blocking port 25 TCP, and that was very greedy of them. They want my family to, during this economic downturn, pay more for that, and that just ain’t happening.  However, those nice people at Google gave me a good deal, and now I am using Google Apps for mail at no charge. Aren’t they nice?

On brighter news, the OKS Minecraft server has become a beautiful place. It isn’t exactly stock, but people like it. The latest and coolest addition is the Dynamic Map. The Dynamic Map lets you see what is on the server right now. As the world updates, the Dynamic Map does as well. Hence the name, Dynamic. Right now, an Amazon EC2 instance is hard at work preparing a new static map render, and when it completes, the link will be shown here on this page.

UPDATE: The render that was taking place is long since done, and it is available at http://ec2.theoks.tk/mczoomable_new/.

Thanks, and have fun!

A post? They have those on blogs?

I load the front page of my blog nearly every day. I just can’t seem to create a post that has enough value that it’s worth posting at all. However, now I will.

That aside, I have been looking at CloudFlare, and I’ve implemented it in some areas. WordPress is locked to a domain, so this blog isn’t behind CloudFlare. Most sections of theoks.net can be viewed behind CloudFlare by replacing theoks.net with theoks.tk.

What CloudFlare does for you is that it caches static resources like CSS, Javascript, and images, closer to you, resulting in faster load of images and styles. Especially on the image board, and the zoomable Minecraft map render this can be advantageous.

I have also added Google’s +1 button to post pages, as well as the home page, and moved the Tweet button with it to below the post content.

In related news I got into Google+, which is pretty exciting. You may ask me for an invite, but I cannot guarantee that you will be allowed to join.

Blog Optimizations

So I took some time to check things up, and I looked up some stuff. I took a look at Mashable’s 11 Ways to Speed Up WordPress. I picked up W3 Total Cache and set it up. I set everything to store in memcached, and in two memcached instances, one on my server that runs my blog, and one that runs on a virtual machine on a server in my basement.

It seems to have sped some loading time up, but I don’t know. If you think it did, by all means, comment.

Thanks to those behind W3 Total Cache, and Cyrus Patten, author of the post on Mashable.

Google Authenticator and a finished robot

Last Tuesday, we got our robot shipped, or rather, put in a big clear plastic bag with big red zip tie on it. Although we shipped overweight, and missing a few components, this is better than last year on completeness at ship. I have a few pictures in my “Robots” Facebook album, showing off Ursa Major (our robot).

Last night, I upgraded my Debian VM to Squeeze, and set up Google Authenticator on it. The Makefile is kinda terrible, but it works as of now. I just scanned the barcode that loaded the secret key into the authenticator app on my phone, and now I can authenticate with time-based one-time passwords. I got it to compile on Mac OS X (some things are hacked up), but I don’t think it exactly works. I’ll have to dig in further to figure it out though.

Google Authenticator works rather well, although one thing I want is a timeout indicator so I know when my password is going to expire, so I don’t get half-way through typing it and it times out.

That is all.

Half-Life 2 for days…

So, my gamerscore on Xbox LIVE got reset, as it was indeed modded. So, I started to collect my achievements again. I started off by playing Half-Life 2 over again. It was fun. I paused in the middle to play Portal, which took 70 minutes, including me pausing to talk to some friends. That was especially fun, especially when pulling the cameras off.

So, when I turned off my Xbox 360, then turned it back off, it said that I had none of the Orange Box achievements I had collected. Such BS.

However, I had fun playing Half-Life 2 again, as well as Portal. I started Half-Life 2: Episode One, and got out of the Citadel, but stopped to play some Halo: Reach with my friend Brant, and later, Lane joined us, while we were attempting to complete a weekly challenge.

So this weekend was turbo fun, and now people can be less mad about me not writing a blog post. Great job.

So have fun, and stay alive until Mid-Winter Break.. 😉

Robots and their construction

As you probably know, I’m in my high school’s robotics club. We participate in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), a competition sponsored by FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, which also holds lower level competitions.

The “Build Season,” when we construct the actual robot, has started. Four teams have been assigned components to complete, with one team integrating the components together, as well as building the basic chassis. Many teams are already jumping onto completing their tasks, and are making good progress to completing our robot.

Something this will accomplish that is very critical is being able to build two robots, and have LOTS of driver practice. Driver practice is critical for success, and the last year, we got next to ZERO driver practice in.

Of course, I can’t reveal details, as it’s top secret, and if other teams were to get in on it, I’d be in real bad trouble, but I can tell you that this reorganization of the club will certainly make our robot a serious contender in the competition.

This isn’t going to be the last time I post about our club, but it’s the first this year.

As We Approach A Season Finale

Of course, we’re talking about the season finale of life itself. Although shows are hitting their mid-season finales, namely Stargate Universe being the most notable of series in my posse at the moment.

This season, has been a great one, and since this is an awesome show, after the finale, the premiere is right there!!

Stay tuned for the final 23 episodes. However there’s not really a way to not be tuned…

Peace be in the galaxy.

Snow Fun Time!!

Here in the Puget Sound, we’re having a stormy winter. We’ve gotten about 6 inches of snow, and we’re remaining below freezing all day.

My school district has cancelled school for today, and many students believe that we will not have school tomorrow either, as many of the roads are covered in thick ice, and since the temperatures are remaining low, standing water from melted ice is just gonna freeze back up.

On a slightly related note, I have finished watching all of Stargate SG-1. This puts me at having watched over 81% of all Stargate (if movies are counted as two episodes)

I will be completely caught up by the time Stargate Universe Season 2.5 comes around, so then I will just wait like everyone else for new episodes.