Shouzer

It seems like I’m always studying this semester, and it’s really not that fun. I know I’m busier than I’ve been in the past, and the career stuff is a big part of that. I’m fairly certain that I’ve just been doing a lot more studying in addition.

My interviews all seemed to go pretty well last week. For the most part, they were pretty similar. They all had basic questions about some of my past projects, some questions about what I’m good at, and then a coding question or two.

The interview that actually went the best was on Thursday with a company called Business Logic. That interview went about as good as I could have exptected. Hopefully the others went as well as I thought, too.

So after recent discussions with my sister and Scott, I decided that a shout-less Shouzer had gone on long enough.  After about 4 hours of work tonight, I finished a beta of a Shouts plugin for WordPress.  Once I tidy this thing up and add a few new features, I’m going to put in on the web for anybody who wants it.

There’s some new features since last time.  Now it’s all AJAX.  Most of the things I do lately are AJAX, cuz it’s spiffy.  So here’s how it works..  You type in your info, hit “Shout!” and your browser goes to work.  It posts the shout and shows it on your page without reloading the page.  The really fancy feature, though, is that other people’s shouts will show up in real time automagically on your page.  That’s right.  If you’re viewing Shouzer, and I leave a shout, it’ll update on your page.  Now that’s just sweet.

We’re starting to get a lot of comment spam here at Shouzer.   You guys wouldn’t notice it, because WordPress automatically filters it out.  It’s starting to piss me off, though, because it clutters up my admin interface.  At least it means a little more traffic, haha. 

Shouzer now has a new host. The switch from one to the other was actually rather painful, as everything on the site seemed to keep working. The biggest pain was moving the DB, but I got it done without too much problem.

In other site news, there’s a new version (version 3.0, actually) of myPad. I decided to go straight from 2.0 to 3.0, because I rewrote the entire thing. It should be quicker now and there’s a fancy little “loading” image you’ll see when it’s pulling data from the server. We’re fancy now.

The new version of WordPress just came out a couple days ago, so I figured I’d update. Everything went surprisingly smoothly. It’s not so much that I expected problems as that I just didn’t think it would really be as easy as it was.

I haven’t been doing anything overly exciting lately–mainly just going to work and then lazing around at home. I really don’t have any complaints about that. To me, it’s a good time. We played some Halo last night, which was pretty fun. Scott and Nick were both there and that was the first time I’d seen them over break, which was nice.

Damn, I really don’t have much to say..

Well, I’ve been working on taking some of the archived sites I have on my computer and taking screenshots of them. It’s a slow, laborious process, but it’s kind of cool. I’m putting all the shots online so people can check out the progression that Shouzer (and my web stuff in general) has gone through.

You can check it out here. I’ve separated the different pages into their relevant folders. I’m planning to put up an actual page with descriptions and such for everything there. Right now, though, here’s a quick summary.

Back in 1999, Kyle and I had the idea to create a website. It was going to be what was then called an E/N site, or everything/nothing site. This is more or less the precursor to weblogs, now known more commonly as blogs. In that regard, we were pretty far ahead of the curve.

We’d both had a couple of other sites on the internet back then, which were more or less your typical homepages. I doubt most people even have what you would have considered a homepage nowadays. This was our first venture working together though.

One day in class, Kyle thought of the name ‘Shouzer’. I have no idea how or why, but it was original and it stuck. We were so confident that we would one day own shouzer.com, that the original sites were names shouzer.com, even though they were actually hosted at shouzer.virtualave.net. There was no ‘.com’ about it. In the shouzer.com folder, they’re layouts 1 & 2. Looking back, I’m still extremely impressed by layout 1. Like I said, this was over 5 years ago. That would have made me about 14-15. That was skill.

After the second layout, we split up for some reason and created separate sites. I don’t know why, really, but we did. The result was two sites called Blatantly (mine, short for blatantly arrogant and biased) and Plugworthy (Kyle’s, as it was worth a plug). The progression of Blatantly can be seen in the folder. It was about this time that I also created the Shouzer Network, or Shouzernet for short. The screenshot of that page can be seen in the ‘other’ folder.

After a year or so, we decided to get back together and create The DKS Weblog. While I kept posting on Blatantly for a little while after that, it was more or less the end of that site for me. Like when we split, I can’t really remember why we decided to start blogging together again, but we did. That site lasted a good while. I believe it was somewhere in the range of September 2000 to January 2003, and I had a lot of fun with it during that time. I remember there being a couple months when the site was down while I redesigned it, but I can’t remember either why it was down or for how long exactly. Maybe Kyle could remember that a little better.

It was in February 2003 that I purchased the domain for Shouzer, but the ‘hellsing’ coming soon was up forever. The first post I have in the database from the site was in November 2003. So it obviously took a while to get the site up and running. This was likely a result of my laziness, mixed with the fact that it took a rewrite of the blogging software we used. The real Shouzer.com was my first ever experience with a database, so it took some getting used to. It was also my first time ever creating an entire layout from only CSS. It was also the end of my senior year in high school. Suffice it to say, there were a lot of things going on keeping me from finishing the site.

Since then, the site has gone through a few changes, but not much. The site went through 3 layout changes, and then I migrated the DB and software over to WordPress, which required us to use WordPress themes for the layouts. I haven’t had the time or motivation to create my own layout yet, but I’m hoping it’ll happen sometime next semester. The biggest thing I regret is that the WordPress-based site doesn’t use shouts like the old site used to. Shouts were a system that let anybody post anything to a thin column on the side of the page. It was a nice way for friends to keep us updated with their lives even if they don’t have accounts to post on the main site. I liked shouts a lot.

Wow, this turned out to be a monster post. I ended up writing a lot more than I planned to, and I only scratched the surface. I guess I care about this site, and its beginnings, quite a bit.

[Edit:] I got rid of the ‘other’ folder and just put all the files in the main folder. It seems to make sense from a hierarchical perspective.

Welp, I put out a new version of myPAD. I basically rewrote the entire thing in a day or so. Now it’s a full AJAX app, so it’s pretty cool. It does a lot of caching and such to speed things up. If you’ve got time, go check it out and let me know what you think.

BTW, yes I know it steals a lot from Gmail–I obviously could never deny that. But the code is all mine, and no one could deny that Google has some pretty good ideas.

Oh, and right now you can’t remove a label from a note. I’ll get that added over the weekend, most likely.

[Edit:] Fixed a couple small bugs. There was a problem for new users, I got it displaying line breaks properly, and there was a backend thing you wouldn’t notice. I didn’t even update the version.

I posted about PuzzleCrack the other day and now it’s gone. I think somebody else posted something today and that’s gone too. That’s messed up.

I decided to switch the site over to a new template. I still really need to design something myself, but before that happens I need to have the time and inspiration to do it. I like this template quite a bit, though.

Yo, just thought I’d give a shout out to a couple new subdomains I’m hosting now. There’s a couple people I know here who are getting into a little bit of web development.. CSS and HTML and such, so I thought I’d lend a hand and give them a little space. They are:

Jordan Timmermann
Derrick Wright

Both are obviously works in progress, but traffic never hurt.

Geez, Scott really has to hold this site together nowadays. I keep making promises to post and then I never do. It’s pretty pitiful, really.

I’ve been busy with school, and that’s not just an excuse. I’ve literally had a good 5x more work this semester than any of my previous semesters. That flat out blows. As I always say, I’ll do my best to start posting more. Next week I’ve got a two exams and a presentation that I have to give. That pretty much fucks up my weekend. w00t.

In other TV news, The Office is the shit. Tonight’s episode was one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in a while. It rivals the basketball episode for best of the series, in my opinion. The episode title of “Sexual Harassment” pretty much tells you it’s going to be a good episode. If any of you haven’t watched that show, you owe it to yourself to check it out. I love it.

Thank goodness it’s Friday!

That’s really all I have to say. It’s a shame the new version of the site can’t support the shout board anymore…oh well. I just felt like I should post something while I sit here in the coffee shop at the Busch Student Center and wait for my MCB (Molecular & Cellular Biology) course to start at 2:10 p.m. It’s so boring, I really don’t know why I still go since I could prolly do just fine without going since he gives us his own notes on what he’s going to lecture about.

But no, I’m going to be a good student and still go to class. Well, we’ll see how long that lasts…LOL!

Anybody have any big plans for the weekend? I am, of course, scheduled to work as always. They’ve had me in the Fast Track a lot recently. It’s run by a physician assistant and a nurse and then me. I don’t get to do much…except escort patients back and forth. The Fast Track is separate from the main ER…it’s in a freakin’ other building. Needless to say, when I work in FT I definitely get my cardio-workout that day with all the walking back and forth I do. I’d say on average, I walk between 3-6 miles per day back and forth when I work over there.

Ok, time to try and be productive and look over my notes before class.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Everyone seemed to like this last time, so I thought I’d do it again. Since I run the site, I take care of a lot of things behind the scenes, and one of those things includes looking over the logs to see if everything is going well. Within those logs are search strings that lead people to our site, and some of those are funny. Basically, when somebody searches for something on a search engine and their search lands them here, I know what they searched for. Here are some of the results. I’ll start of with some of the stuff that’s not as funny.

rolen roberts
jermaine dearman basketball germany
jermaine dearman in germany

I’ve always considered shouzer the premier resource for information on ex-SIU basketball players. Don’t you?

sodoku how to
sodoku webmaster
sodoku
sodoku game hard
sodoku homepage
sodoku key
sodoku spill
sodoku
sodoku calculator

We certainly do hold the answer about the sodoku spill. And you can’t have it. Sorry, but I won’t allow the secret to get out.

aboutmidgley.com
midgley rose-hulman
midgley rose-hulman confidence
rose hulman vote of no confidence midgley
rose-hulman no confidence
rose-hulman no confidence vote
www aboutmidgley.com
www.aboutmidgley

Wow, there were a fuckton more of these, but i wanted to keep it semi-short. Scott really got us some attention with his post about this.

jared russell kyle harlow
lindsay pahl
jason monchino
monchino
juvers
kyle juvers

These make sense. These people have all been mentioned on the site at one time or another. I’m just glad to see we’re some of the top results.

spiderman jared al

No, no. Spiderman’s name is Peter Parker. People always confuse that. There’s just so many damn superheroes, and Jared Al is a pretty superheroey name, even if that’s not a very superheroey word.

And finally, here’s some of the good ones:

kanakuk sucks

Hahaha, last time it was “rose hulman pussy”. People generally seem to like to insult Scott on the internet, and it makes me laugh. You see, it’s funny because it’s not me.

retarded guy wearing a crown
nedd a list of game associated with football that could be play

I generally think any guy wearing a crown is retarded, so that shouldn’t be so hard to find. And don’t worry, I’m sure we can tell you lots of game that could be play.

bill nye sucks

No! He does not. You take it back. Bill Nye should be president. What with the zany antics and the lovable gigantic rat.
…
Wait, Beakman’s World. Ah, Beakman. You silly, silly man.

he looked good last night t-shirt

Scott, if you wanted to know if I looked good last night, you just had to ask me. Google really doesn’t hold all the answers. Just 99% of them.

shouzer for sale

In your dreams, bitches! Shouzer is a hot commodity, I guess. But not everyone can own it. It’s limited edition.

nerd flirting

Ah, nerd flirting. One of my passions, in fact. But who shares my dirty little secret? Scott? Al? Kyle? Perhaps all three… Should we start a club? I’ll be president, and you guys can be nerds and flirt for me.

bullies beat up nerds

Wow, quite the opposite. Maybe this is just what happens when nerds flirt with people’s girlfriends. Silly nerds. You don’t deserve love.

lebonese porn

Ok, I’ve heard of fetishes. But whose fetish is “lebonese” porn? I mean, I know some people have things for Asians or whatever (kyle? fairfield?). And that’s cool with me, I guess. I won’t discriminate. Yellow fever, baby, yellow fever. Gotta get me some of that yellow fever.

deformed porn
deformed pussy
deformed penius

I don’t think those ones need explanations. We all love a little (read: tons and tons and tons of) deformed porn. Especially with deformed pussies and peniuses. Wow, that gets me hot just thinking about it. And when I think about it, I touch myself, because the song tells me to.

fat and noty old women

Ok, those are usually 3 things you don’t want. Fat, check. Old, check. Knotty, check. Oh, wait, wait. He (or she? oh, kinky…i like it) must have meant naughty. Well then I do understand it. I gotta get me some of that.

www.big penes.com

I would think that, you know, rather than searching for a website…you would just go to it. But what do I know? Strangely enough, I think that is a proper spelling of penises. I’ll leave looking it up as an exercise for the reader, though. Have fun.

red spot on your penis

Oh, a red spot on your penis? No problem. Just wash it off (be careful not to be too rough), head to the doctor, and tell him you have…er, nevermind. I know nothing about it.

bizzle shizzle learn
what’s the shizzle minizzle

Haha, first of all, is this really the reason Google was created? So people could search for “bizzle shizzle learn”? I’ve just got to laugh at that shit. But yeah, I’m glad you came here. We’ve been known to dabble in…hm…I’m not even sure what you call that. I don’t think it’s true ebonics. Maybe it’s actually called “bizzle shizzle”. That’s be awesome. I mean, that’d be the shizzle. Bizzle. Now wait one minizzle.

Welp, I decided to just stick a WordPress template on here for now. The layouts I had wouldn’t have worked 100% with WordPress, so I’ll just do this until I make a new one. Actually, what I’ll do is make a WordPress theme. Hopefully it won’t suck. Haha. I’ve got some ideas already.

Oh, and this theme is called Orange Sky, and the author of the theme says it was inspired by the song. I know of at least one person who will like that.

Edit: Unfortunately, this also means no more shouts for the time being. Sorry, but it can’t be helped.

Well, I’m really just trying out this new wordpress stuff to see if it works. I’ll hopefully be writing again very soon.

I went home last weekend for my dad’s birthday. He’s 50 now, over the hill.

I’m pretty much finished with all the work I’m supposed to do for the summer. I don’t know what they are going to do with me when I do finish it, which should be this afternoon. Hopefully, they’ll come up with something for me. I don’t think I’ll get fired though.