Jason Welch | TheDigitalPenguin

Thinking of creating a comic...

2009-05-29T09:37:00.004-04:00

Jhonen Vasquez is definitely one of those people whom stand out from the crowd which I totally respect and admire. He's also a kind of person whom does exactly what he wants to do and doesn't give a shit if others like what he's doing or not. His creations, Johny the Homicidal Maniac and Invader Zim are legendary in my book which is why I have really been considering taking a stab at the meat pie that is the comic world.

Check out this video of Jhonen answering a few questions..although I feel bad for him because you can tell he totally does not want to be there at all!

My desk as well as my 'short stories' folder on my pc are both littered with the begginings of short stories I started and realized sucked. Everyone else says their awesome, but you really gotta ditch things that your not digging after a while and move onto something else until you find your Death Star and destroy it.

I personally have a rather strange fascination with death, paranormal, zombies, etc. I think maybe it's a mixture of playing a lot of Dungeons and Dragons and because it's cool. I had an idea about a comic that was based on the thought: What do emo kids do in the underworld once they have slit their wrists? What if the underworld sucks worse then the living world...what then? I mean, they can't off them selves again, so what do they do? A part of me really wants to make this one because it'll be funny to see how the emo kids react to it. Could be a: bad or b: they all off them selves because somehow I managed to make the underworld an appealing place for them to be..if so, then b is 'good' scenario...

Being a co-dungeon master

2009-05-20T01:51:00.004-04:00

Our D&D group is a pretty good size. The average is about 4-5 players, we have 7. Because of this, I felt that helping the dungeon master (@sdwrage) out would be better than playing and plus, I always wanted to be a dm someday.

Well, things worked out for about 5 sessions but we finally decided it was just more trouble having two dm's than it was for a single dm to handle such a large group. The trouble was not so much that we fought or disagreed, because that was far from the truth. In fact, together, we created a story that all of the players have really gotten into. The problem instead was caused by a lack of communication and a lack of a 'system'.

Basically what I did was helped create the encounters and story line before the game started and during the game, I would be the 'list keeper'. I kept track of initiatives, creature hp and ongoing effects, etc and helped with looking up creature stats and rules that we were unclear about. This all sounds fun and pretty easy, however it really isn't. There are several issues which prevent it from flowing correctly which I will address here.

1. Keeping a 1:1 communcation between the dungeon masters. I would often be in the middle of updating creature stats only to find out that it wasn't zombie 1 whom just took damage, it was zombie 2 and now zombie 1 just took 13 damage, zombie 3 was knocked prone and zombie 2 has ongoing fire but zombie 1 saved... so now I have to go back, revert back to the previous values, redo the math (not difficult but your dealing with a lot of numbers) and then make sure everything was correct which sometimes was impossible without knowing what was going on while I was in the middle of updating the information. However, the primary dungeon master is busy dealing with 7 players so you can't complain really.

2. Players. While it was cool to be able to deal with several of the players my self, while the other dm dealt with the others, it also sometimes created complications. The players all figured that since there were two dm's, they were free to talk and ask questions during someone else's turn. This often leads to everyone being on a different page which of course is not good for the party.

3. Rules. I can't lie. There were times when we would definitely argue about rules. I more often stuck to the official rules where as he often would deviate. While it is fine for a dm to deviate at times, I sometimes disagreed about said times.

4. Style. I say try to kill the players. Don't fudge rolls because the party is almost dead. They should have tried harder or made better decisions. If I'm a level 4 player and I run into a cave which I've been told is the home of an epic level dragon and I die...yeah, I deserved it completely. I'm not saying he would prevent them from dying in a case like that, and actually a character died just this past Sunday for insulting a level 18 mind flare (he was a level 6). However, I say use all of the creatures abilities, make it seem real, like the creature is fighting for it's survival, for it's honor...for it's dinner. Don't back off just because the cleric has no heals left and the rest of the party is down. (Although I do believe in the one time reset button in the event of a TPK).

What we did do right I think:

1. Used a laptop.

2. I created a spreadsheet template which we used for initiative, xp, encounters, etc.

3. Planned out enough of the adventure to last several sessions at a time.

If you have ever played in a group with more than 1 dm or have co dm'd, please tell me how it went for you and what you did that made it work or why it didn't work.

Chicken Parmesian in under 5 Minutes

2009-05-19T17:39:00.004-04:00

I was inspired to write this after doing it my self this afternoon. I hadn't ate since breakfast and wanted something fast but still tasting good and definitely not McDonalds. I looked through the fridge and the cabinets and found I had some frozen chicken strips, mozzarella cheese and some spaghetti sauce...

Ingredients

Precooked, grilled or breaded chicken strips (depending on how healthy you want to be). I personally had some of the frozen redi-serve breaded strips which are cheap but taste pretty good and are low fat. Another good choice would be Tyson's.
Cheese. You can pretty much use whatever kind you'd like. Mozzerella is personally my favorite, however standard pre sliced american white cheese taste pretty good as well.
Spaghetti Sauce. The Prego 'Smart Onion and Garlic' is one of my favorites.

Directions (for a single serving)

Depending on the size of the chicken strips you use, place 2-5 on a Microwave safe plate.
Heat these on standard for about 2.5-3 minutes or until they are about 75% of the way cooked.
Next, cover each chicken strip with about 1-2 table spoons of spaghetti sauce or until fully covered.
Now, take 1-2 standard slices of cheese or slice enough to cover about 50% of each chicken strip. I normally use 1 piece of the pre sliced, so I'll usually cut it in 2.
Now finish heating the strips for about 1-2 minutes or until the cheese is fully melted.
Let sit for about a minute, then dig in!!

If you enjoy this, leave a comment!!

Love Anime?

2009-04-22T01:56:00.009-04:00

So I've been a fan of anime since I was about 11. My love for it began with every ones favorite, Dragon Ball Z. I soon began renting every anime blockbuster had starting with Battle Angel Alita which is still by far one of my favorites..

As I grew older, various people began questioning why I still watched 'Cartoons'. The simple answer is that, while 'Anime' is short for Animation, Anime != Cartoon. At least not in the typical American sense of the word. Yes, they have some common ground: their both fantasy and they are both animated, but that is it. While it is true that a good amount of anime has been designed for children and preteens, the vast majority is aimed at teens 17+ and adults from 20-35 and up.

In fact, if you are a skeptic, watch the series 'DeathNote', then if you can still honestly tell me that you feel it's at a child's level, I will admit defeat...but it won't stop me from still loving it!

In my opinion, anime series are often based on much deeper ideas and concepts, have better story boards, better dialogue in most cases, etc than most of the live action tv shows I've ever seen. The beauty is, voice actors, artists and production all cost far less than the average live action tv show...but yet, often will profit in the hundreds of millions.

If you are totally clueless as to what anime even is, read the wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anime

Anyway, here is a list of every anime series I've watched, all of which I definitely recommend!

Full metal Alchemist
Trigun
Cobwboy Bebop
FLCL
Battle Angel
Bleach
Naruto
Naruto Shippuden
Soul Eater
DeathNote
Inuyasha
Gurren Lagan
Great Teacher Onizuka
Yu Yu Hakisho
Outlaw Star
Witch Hunter Robin
Hellsing
.Hack//Legend of the Twilight
.Hack//Liminality
.Hack//Roots
.Hack//Sign
Samurai X
Gundam Wing
Tenchy Muyo
Eureka Seven
Afro Samurai
XenoSaga
Wolfs Rain
Berserk
Elfen Lied
Dragon Ball
Dragon Ball Z
Dragon Ball GT
Valkyrie Chronicles
Ergo Proxy

I'm sure there are a few I've seen that I'm missing here. If you have any suggestions, please add them to the comments! Thanks -^_^-

Youtube favorites...

2009-04-22T01:50:00.003-04:00

So did you know that you could 'favorite' videos on youtube? Of course you did. Strangely enough I always knew you could but I never bothered until just recently. So in honor of this, here is my youtube profile:

http://www.youtube.com/digitalp3nguin

Hope you enjoy my totally random collection ;)

Rand0m

2009-04-04T07:54:00.003-04:00

Came accross this site a few minutes ago, thought it was kinda entertaining.
http://twistori.com/

I created a new playlist earlier, dedicated to my favorite Ska and Punk bands:
http://www.playlist.com/playlist/15587836171

Finally caught up with the rest of the world yesterday when I found out about #followfriday on twitter. Speaking of twitter, No they are not being taken over by google. Didn't your mother ever tell you not to trust everything the media tells you?!

Just in case you haven't already heard of it (which if you are a digg fan you probably definitely have) Digg released a new app called the 'diggbar' basically, it's just a bookmarlet which automatically popsup over the top any website your on if you click on it. It then allows you to easily digg and share the site with twitter and other social networks. Twitter links are auto shortened by Digg's new url shortening service fyi. Anyway, add the following to your bookmarks:
DiggBar

Well then, until next time!

Good Music...

2009-03-26T16:20:00.002-04:00

Although there are numerous websites dedicated to promoting new bands and new music, I have found twitter surprisingly enough, to be the best. For example, I found the amazing band "A Fine Frenzy" a few weeks back. Although my typical taste for music has always been Ska, Punk rock and Industrial...they have quickly grown to be one of my favorite artist.

http://www.afinefrenzy.com/
http://twitter.com/AFineFrenzy

Definitely worth checking out!

The new innovation model

2009-03-19T15:49:00.005-04:00

For decades the business world was built upon the innovation model, however in today's global community driven environment, the standard internal R&D teams of yesteryear are now having to rethink how things are done. We all know the famous phrase "two heads are better than one" however, what we all need to realize is that the phrase is certainly scalable; it should be adjusted to reflect the modern world: "1 million heads are better than 1 thousand".

Companies such as IBM for example, whom once based their business on proprietary software and internal innovation, are now embracing open source. As a result, they have regained the respect of the public and have made a pretty nice profit while doing so. They still have an internal R&D department, but now days, a good percentage of their work deals with collaborating with the open source community.

Startups are popping up everywhere, everyday. Each share the same basic idea: "Create a product or service in which people want to use. Provide something fun and cool, or helpful to the community. Profit is later gained by the value of said community". The even more clever side of this is that, you typically do not even need to provide content. You let the community do that for you! Think about google for a moment...where would they be if no one was willing to share their ideas, knowledge, information, etc?

"Internal innovation" is far from being dead, however it now has a much different face. The new innovation model stems from the community in an indirect way. Those whom embrace the modern world of communication, openness and collaboration, each have the potential of becoming 'the next google'. The modern web is proving to be a fertile breeding ground for new ideas and innovations that the larger corporations may not ever catch on to or do not consider to be within their companies areas of focus. So, who exactly can gain the most from embracing collaboration and social trends? You !

Every new social network spawns thousands of new possibilities for innovation and 'invention'. For example, consider Twitter. Twitter is close to becoming a house hold name, just as Google did and shortly after, MySpace. Twitter is an extremely valuable tool for creative thinking and innovation. Look at the hundreds, maybe even thousands of startups whom are emerging simply by creating new ways for users to use twitter!

This sort of innovation is happening all of the time. However, once and a while a simple idea for an innovation can turn into a full fledged 'invention' idea, something that hasn't been done before or maybe has, but didn't quite smack the nail on the head. It can be said that all invention and innovation are a direct result of some problem or question. For example, Tom, the creator of MySpace may have been surfing the net one day and thought to him self "I wish there was a cool site in which I can share with the world who I am. A place where I can meet new people and communicate with my existing friends...".

In summary, when I use the words 'internal innovation' I am referring to the ideas that can be sparked in each and every persons mind. It should not be thought of any more as a relic of the past but as a reformed, reinvented concept. It's R&D department, your own imagination. It's funding - your time and passion.

A pool of thought...

2009-03-12T15:24:00.002-04:00

Every once and a while, I like to simply write about random things without any sense of direction or without making any certain points. This is one of those days..

Twitter. I love twitter and I think that everyone in the world should create an account..and actually use it instead of letting it go to waist or paying pr people to update it. I've found that I now check my twitter way more often than my email or any other social networks I have an account with. You can meet so many cool people and get a real feel for who your friends, family, co workers and even those you may never meet in real life...who they really are by what they "tweet".

Music. I've been listening to a lot of punk and ska lately. NoFX, Real Big Fish, Catch 22, Street Dogs, etc.

Books. I finished the Harry Potter series a month ago and now I'm reading Wikinomics and "How to re imagine the world" which both have been great so far. I'm just about done with both however so I'm on the lookout for another good book to start on next. My goal was to read at least 10 non tech books this year so I'm off to a good start.

Blogging ok so I've had this blog for a while now and I often change it to reflect changes in my life style/thinking. From here on out however, I plan on using this blog to share videos, stories and other cool stuff I find online. Yeah, maybe everyone does this but the cool thing is that no one does it exactly the same as we all have our own unique personalities.

Ok well until next time!

New years resolutions

2009-01-12T04:38:00.002-05:00

Ok so I finally figured out all of my new years resolutions which are as follows:

-Be more responsible
-Create a game with xna or for the iphone.
-Start working again on GeekAssembly.
-Go to Kung Fu at least 3 times a week.
-Completely quit smoking vs light smoking.
-Try new things, events, places, foods, etc.
-Read at least 10 non tech books this year.
-Get serious about writing.
-Save money and budget.
-Get out of the house more often.
-Get on a better sleep schedule.
-Learn a few songs on my guitar.
-Keep more up to date with the latest tech.
-Learn how to use Mac and work more with Linux.
-Go on a few dates.
-Spend more time doing things with my family.
-Stop trying to do 1000 things at once. Stick to one thing at a time.
-Start learning Japanese again.

Apache, Windows and the Zend Framework.

2008-09-29T00:40:00.009-04:00

Working with the Zend Framework is a god send for most developers, however if you have never had to deal with apache's httpd configuration settings before, you maybe left scratching your head as to why the recommended directory structure for your zf based projects, isn't quite working as expected.

In this article, I will assume you already have apache and php installed and configured. If not, check out my article on installing apache, php and mysql. Ok, so lets get started shall we?

First things first however. Chances are, you have multiple directories in your web root for each of your projects, such as 'mywebsite1','mywebsite2','some-other-site-stuff', etc. The problem now lays in the fact that Zend recommends the following directory structure:

If you keep your default document root set to say C:/webdev/ for example, you can not simply go to http://localhost/my-zf-project/ and have it work as expected, without using htaccess files to redirect everything to the www (or public directory). Also, it makes it less secure to point directly at your sites root directory. Anybody interacting with your site should only ever be able to access whats in your www (public) directory.

The solution? Virtual hosts. To get this working my self, I tried several various approaches until I found one that actually worked the way I wanted it to. First off, open your apache/conf/httpd file and add the following lines: (note that I added them after the default DocumentRoot variable.

NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot "C:\webdev"
</VirtualHost>

What this does is allow localhost to be used to access the webroot. Let's save the changes, restart apache and test our changes. Simply go to http://localhost/ once apache has started back up. If you do not have an index file in your web root, you will probably get a directory tree listing.

Ok so how do I configure virtual host for my zend framework projects? After the first virtual host block, add the following for each of your zf based projects: (note that this actually works for any site in which uses a simular directory structure)

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>
ServerName my-zf-site1.local
DocumentRoot "C:\webdev\my-zf-site1\public"
</VirtualHost>

Now of course your going to need to modify the document root and servername to reflect your projects path and name. Were not done just yet though, we now have to tell our computer how to resolve the address. We do this by adding the following to our host file which is normally found in C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc. Once you have opened the host file, you should see the following line:

127.0.0.1 localhost

This is how localhost is bound to our local address by default. Underneath of this line, we'll add the name in which we set for the 'ServerName' in our virtual host settings. For example:

127.0.0.1 my-zf-site1.local

This will now bind http://my-zf-site1.local/ to our zf project's public folder. Everything else should work 'out of the box' from here on out now. Now to access your other non zf projects, you can simply do the following:

http://localhost/my-other-stuff/somefile.php

To work with additional zf based projects, simply repeat the steps above for each new project... add a new virtual host block to your httpd file, then modify the host file (example: 127.0.0.1 my-new-zf-site.local). Make sure to always restart apache for the changes to take effect.

Ok, I hope I have been able to help at least someone out there. Please feel free to post any questions or suggestions you have.

Installing wamp...

2008-09-25T00:11:00.005-04:00

This article is aimed at beginner php developers whom have never installed AMP (apache, mysql and php) before. I'll assume your using windows and you have a basic knowledge of what apache and mysql are. Anyway, I have found most of the other article on this same subject to have many short comings as developers often tend to assume things that can cause a beginner to go crazy if they know nothing about it.

So first of all, we need to download mysql, apache and mysql. Go to the following sites and grab the latest copies:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#downloads - for mysql, I have found the installer package usually works fine out of the box. Make sure to grab the correct package for your OS.

Now for apache go to http://httpd.apache.org/ and grab the 2.2x version for windows. Make sure to grab the MSI installer unless you have a C++ compiler setup and prefer to build everything for your self.

Last but not least, lets grab the latest version of php which can be found at: http://www.php.net/downloads.php. NOTICE: Do not download the installer for php as it will only cause you a massive headache, maybe even death. Download the zip package instead, as it comes with just about everything you'll ever need to work in php.

Ok, now lets install everything!
We'll start by installing apache. This is pretty straight forward but make sure to set the network and servername to localhost and set the email accordingly. You can also change the install path to c:\apache\ for easier navigation... I usually put apache, mysql and php all in the root.

Lets test apache!
If everything went accordingly to plan, you should now be able to hit http://localhost in your browser where you'll be greeted with a basic message "It works", if not, try restarted your computer and if this does not work, uninstall apache and start over, this is about the easiest thing to do.

Ok so next, lets install php. Since you downloaded the zip package, really all you need to do is extract everything to c:\php or whatever you would like.

Now to get php and apache talking to each other, we need to let apache know about php's existence. We do this by making a few changes in apache's httpd file which is located in the apache/conf/ directory.

First off, locate the LoadModule section and add the following line at the bottom:
LoadModule php5_module "c:/php/php5apache2_2.dll"
Make sure to edit the path accordingly to the directory in which you extracted php to.

Now, below this add these lines:

PHPIniDir "C:/php"

<Files "*.php">
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .php
</Files>

Again, make sure to set the path correctly and also be sure to check that the path you set in PHPIniDir is the path in which the php.ini file can be found.

Additional changes in the httpd file:
You will also want to change these settings as well later on, so lets just to it now that we already have the httpd file open.

First, locate the following lines:
DocumentRoot "C:/Apache2.2/htdocs"
and
<Directory "C:/Apache2.2/htdocs">

You can change the paths to whatever directory you would like to keep your php files at or leave it as is. Note that you will not be able to access any any files from the web if they are not located in this directory or a child directory such as htdocs/mysite/.

One last thing, locate the following:
<IfModule dir_module>
DirectoryIndex index.html
</IfModule>

And add index.php as well. For example:
DirectoryIndex index.html, index.php

This isn't required but makes our life a little easier. Now apache will automatically check for either index.html or index.php by default if we do no request an explicit file in the browser. For example, if we go to http://localhost/ apache will now know to check to see if we have an index.html or index.php file automatically.

Save the changes to the httpd file and lets test it!
Ok, so lets see if it's working. We'll do this by creating a very basic php page and placing it in our document root directory as described above. First however, restart apache to allow the changed you made to the httpd file to take effect.

In our document root, lets create a new php file. We'll call it index.php as I mentioned earlier. In this file, we'll add some simple code:

<?php>
echo phpinfo();
<?>

Save the file and lets test it. Open up your web browser and type the following: http://localhost/

You should now be show a page with all sorts of information regarding php and apache. If not, somethings wrong...

Now, we can install MySQL!
This is a pretty straight forward process. Start the mysql installer program and basically just leave everything as is. Once isntalled, make sure to run the instance configuration wizard which will get mysql ready to be used. Essentially you can simply leave everything at default. Make sure to set the root password to something you can remember later on.

Now we need to make a change to our environmental variables in windows. The quickest way to get there is by right click on 'My Computer' navigate to the advanced tab, click on the environmental variables button the locate the path settings. Double click on path and add the following at the end:

;C:\mysql-install-directory\libmySQL.dll

Warning! Make sure to add the ; at the beginning if theres not already one there or else you'll run into problems with your system!!

Now just hit apply and your ready to go to the next step.

One your done with, theres just a few more things you'll need to do in order to get everything talking to one another. First of all, go the the mysql directory and copy the libmysql.dll file over to the apache/bin directory. Next, we'll need to make a few changes to our php.ini file.

Go to the php directory and create a copy of the file named php.ini-recommended
and rename it to php.ini. Now, go ahead and open it so we can tell php about mysql. Search for the line that reads: ;extension=php_mysqli.php and remove the ";" for the extenion. Also, let's go ahead and remove the ; from ;extension=php_mcrypt.dll while were at it, as we'll need this availble in just a minute.

Once your done with this, go ahead and save the file then restart apache. If apache fails to start, there is a problem somewhere in your settings. If this happens, leave a comment and I'll give you a hand.

Note: mysql.com recommends using php_mysqli over the standard php_mysql.dll for php5 and later.

Now lets install PhpMyAdmin...
If your not sure what phpmyadmin is, don't worry because you soon will. First, lets grab the latest release from http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php. Once it's finished downloading, extract the files to your DocumentRoot directory as I mentioned earlier. I usually rename the folder to phpmyadmin for ease of use.

Now navigate through the files until you find the config.sample.inc file. Create a copy and rename it to config.inc. We need to now make just a few simple changes:

Set some random value in between ''...
$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = ''; /* YOU MUST FILL IN THIS FOR COOKIE AUTH! */

example:

$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = 'as978a9s7234jk218kjl53'; /* YOU MUST FILL IN THIS FOR COOKIE AUTH! */

Next, remove the ; from the beginning of each of the following lines: (example: ;$cfg should be $cfg)

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = 'localhost';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['connect_type'] = 'tcp';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['compress'] = false;

/* Select mysqli if your server has it */
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['extension'] = 'mysqli'; //make sure to add the 'i'

/* User for advanced features */
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['controluser'] = 'root'; //MySQL root user
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['controlpass'] = 'somepassword'; //change this to whatever you had set the password to when configuring mysql.

Thats pretty much about it. Now go ahead and save the changes then navigate to http://localhost/phpmyadmin or whatever you named the phpmyadmin folder to. You should now be confronted with a login screen. Use the same info you used in the config.inc file such as: root/somepassword for example.

If all goes well, you'll be logged in and can start creating databases and tables in the databases. PhpMyAdmin is an invaluable tool that I personally would not want to live without and it's a good way to make sure all of our work is working correctly!

If you are given any errors on the loggin screen, such as 'can not load mysqli.dll' or 'mcrypt.dll', it's because php isn't seeing them. Post a comment and I'll try to help you out.

C# and MySQL.

2008-08-29T20:12:00.004-04:00

Ok I admit that I have been holding off on looking into using mysql with C# because for some strange reason, I thought it was going to ultra complicated. Well a recent project demanded that I figure it out so after a quick search I came accross MySQL Connect.net on dev.mysql.com. After a quick read through the documentation, I was able to establish a connection and get all of the database names in about 30 minutes and after about an hour or so, I had a pretty nice class starting to form. I realized quickly though that I couldn't treat data the same in C# as I would in php since php is typeless. With a bit of thinking and playing with the code, I figured out how to check the data type of each field, compare it to C#'s internal type names and store the data to an array accordingly. After I add some more to the class, I'll be putting it on source forge.