Thomas Kobelsky's Blog

December 6, 2010

The following takes place between the days of December 4th and December 6th.

Part I - December 4, 2010

Forgive me father, for I have sinned.
It has been two months and a week since my last entry. I accuse myself of the following sins:


I've been working a lot recently. And I mean a LOT. Sometimes it'd be upwards of 65 hours a week at one job, then 30 hours at another job. Now, before you begin thinking "Omigawdz, he must be so exhausted, how does he do it?" Let me reassure you that I eat a lot of pasta. Another reassurance I must make is that my second job doesn't actually ever feel like work, since it's mostly thinking and figuring things out, while my first job is more manual labour without any kind of real thinking involved.

Why do I do this to myself? Maybe it's because my primary employer promised me an amazing paying job (compared to what I was used to) and then decided to cut my wage by a full 17.5%, spread me across three different departments, and cut my hours to barely sustainable. But wait, how am I getting so many hours then? Oh, right, my manager broke his hand in a freak car-trunk accident and is out of commission for the next six to eight weeks, so I get to pick up his slack (aside from the paperwork side of things). Also, management decided to ask me to sign a Straight-Pay form (which basically means they can make me work as many hours as they want without paying me Over Time), and they failed to notice that I refused to sign it. Kind of a low-blow on their part, as they asked me to sign it when I had to pull an open-to-close shift on a Stat Holiday, and had already agreed to a 17 hour day the following Sunday.

But enough of that job. It's monotonous and is only there to get me through the rent cheques. What I've been trying to focus the vast majority of my attention on these last few months has been working in New Westminster at Tensioncore Administration Services on a number of different projects dealing with technology and web development.

Nick Dodd and I have been developing a URL shortening service called "Shorten This!" since mid-June, then kind of put it on the back-burner as more clients came around asking for websites to be made by us. We had some small success with that, a couple good websites were made in that time. One major one that I'd like to bring to attention is the L2SC.net website. Basically, it's the tournament community for StarCraft II in Western Canada. The design was already done for us, so we just had to pull apart the terribly constructed PhotoShop file and build the website with those assets.

Part II - December 5, 2010

One day during that time, Nick decided to tell me about an idea he had a while back about creating his own WiFi HotSpot under his company's name to get more advertising and possible clients seeing what he can do. I thought it was kind of cool, then really thought about it the next day at my mundane day job and got this crazy idea of building it in a massive form. Not just one HotSpot, but multiple, everywhere. Basically blanket all of the Metro Vancouver Area with free WiFi. We began talking a bit more and found that there was one major flaw with that idea: where's the revenue coming from? A solution was reached and we realized that we could provide advertising for local businesses at an incredibly cheap price and make crazy revenue from it (in theory).

Since then we've been going hardcore trying to get this going. We went out and bought a custom-built quad-core computer from EXPC for I/O traffic, bought a custom-modded WRT54G-TM from someone off eBay, and a +15dBi Omni-Directional Antenna made by Danets from Hong Kong. We've also managed to gain interest from many different companies in our project, one of which is almost demanding us to get our hardware setup with them.

We're on the verge of breaking "new" grounds with this idea. I put that in quotes, because it's not a new idea per-se, but rather how we're doing it that is (hopefully) going to usher in a new era of how people use the internet. The City of New Westminster has been working on a similar project, but we feel like they're moving at a turtle's pace and looking at it from the wrong angles.

But enough about that later. It's still in very early development, with a preliminary test HotSpot setup in Uptown New Westminster around 6th and 8th pointing towards 6th and 6th. Feel free to check it out, but it is currently password protected for development purposes.

Something else that Nick recently got me hooked on is computer servers. Before even knowing a whole lot about them, I went out and bought a Tyan Tempest i5400PW (S5397) motherboard from a sketchy guy in East Vancouver. I later found out that it's going to cost me more than an arm and a leg to furnish this thing with the hardware I'm wanting for it: 16x8gb DDR2-800/PC2-6400 FB-DIMM RAM sticks (each at roughly $400 USD), 2xIntel X5492 3.4GHz CPU (each at roughly $850 USD to $1400 USD on eBay.com). And that's just for the RAM and CPU to be thrown into it, nevermind populating the expansion slots or adding the PSUs for it, or even the case.

However, to tide me over until I do build that puppy up, I managed to get a hold of an old school PIII (993mhz, 128mb ram) computer for $10 to play with, as well a PowerEdge 4400 with 6x16gb SCSI HDDs + 2x9gb SCSI HDDs in it that I plan on turning into a webserver very soon, using IBM's OS/2 Warp 3 that Nick bought for me off eBay. Sure, I don't have a static IP as of now, but there's ways around it that I found. I just need to really sit down and work on it, but I've been lacking that precious time as of late. I also picked up a 4U case for the Tyan mobo, but realised that it's not going to fit in it with the way the drive bays are located... unless I make a custom heatsink for one of the CPUs. There's also a really old school SGI Challenger S sitting in the corner that I want to someday muck around with, but can't seem to find the right peripherals for it.

Another excting thing in my life is the fact that I recently upgraded my cell phone from a Sony Ericsson W810i to a BlackBerry Torch 9800. I never realized how amazing these things are, since I always thought of them as just glorified cell phones that have web-browsers and better messaging services. Now that I've been playing with one, I realised they are so much more. For example: I recently downloaded a FTP app for it, found a Portable Server app, and am tryin to get a uTorrentMobile app working. Something else I'm really excited about is the Barcode Reader apps, which leads into a nice segway to my next topic...

Last night, at 10:53pm, I got a BBM from Nick saying that "Shorten This!" Beta 4 went live. We spent a large part of Friday reviewing Tensioncore's development plans and started brainstorming ways to improve what we have. We had an idea of implementing Barcodes since the beginning of "Shorten This!" when it was still just ideas on a paper. However, we never really looked into it too much until that day. I stumbled across information on QR Code generating software, and passed it off to Nick, who then jumped right into adding it into the core functionality of "Shorten This!" within a matter of hours. I believe we worked it out to being about five hours from finding the information to having full integration of the generating software. Pretty exciting, if you think about it.

Part III - December 5, 2010

Another big idea that we just recently began to develop (strictly as an idea only so far) is creating profiles for "Shorten This!" so that users can log in and access their hashes if their IPs change (from using WiFi HotSpots, dynamic IPs, different computers, etc). Of course it'll be free to join, but that probably won't be coming about until "Shorten This!" has an API created.

Yes, an API. We plan on making smartphone apps for the BlackBerry, Droid and iPhone OS's. We're also thinking about making Firefox and Opera Add-ons in the near future as well.

Sorry about the hiatus as of late, but as you can see, I've been a little busy. Hopefully I'll be able to have more time in the future to keep you updated with more blog posts more often.

-tk

Also, it seems I'll be celebrating Christmas twice this year... once on the 22nd and again on the 25th.

September 28, 2010

Memory Express is amazing.
Sunday night, Nick and I were researching some different places to buy RAM for our servers.

I decided to check out Memory Express's website website to see what kind of prices they'd have, if they even stocked our RAM sticks (I'm looking for some specialty 1x8gb DDR2-800 PC2-6400 ECC FB-DIMM modules, while he was looking for 8x2gb DDR-400 REG/ECC). I found out that they were having a Grand Opening of a new store in Richmond and that their "soft opening" was that Monday. We decided to head out there and check it out.

Next day rolls around and the end of the work day comes to a close. Nick was meeting with some potential clients at 4:00 PM, so we decided to meet up around 6:30. I get a text saying to meet him at the Burrard Skytrain Station downtown and then we walked to the Canada Line to head outward to Richmond.

As we enter the new Memory Express store, Nick turns to me and says "This reminds me of an american-style computer store, like the Buy More from Chuck." Immediately, a man comes up to us, welcoming us with open arms. What followed seemed like a whirlwind as we tried to put their team to the test. The first questions out of our mouths were about our specialty RAM. As soon as I handed a slip of paper with my RAM specs on it to a sales representative, he ran off to the back saying "I'll check to see what I can do for you!"

Nick got the next guy and started looking at things on the computer terminal right there. I decided to check out some other things they had on display while I waited for my RAM's results. Looking further into the store, I noticed a really interesting looking Gaming Case with a 3D-gaming setup on demonstration. I jumped in a played a bit, really impressed by what I saw. After I died, I sauntered over to the Processors on display to see if they had one I was looking for (Intel E5410). I couldn't find one, and when the guys behind the counter saw me scratching my head, they ran over to see what the problem was. I asked if it was possible to get one ordered in, and the guy ran to the back as well saying "I'll check to see what I can do for you!" I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's their signature saying when they have to really dig into finding something.

Immediately after that, a man who I'm assuming was the manager of the store came over and started talking to me about what I was asking about. I told him my story about how I'm trying to build a server: I've only got the motherboard (an i5400PW), and now I just need to fill it with stuff. He led me over to Nick and began saying "While my boys are helping you two out, I'll give you the grand tour of the place" and he did just that.

He took us around showing us the computer line-ups they have on display, then walked us past the bulk/random section and told us that everything we can find on the website can be found in stock in store, or they'll order it for next day delivery. Following that, he showed us the three fully soundproof home theatre rooms, complete with 65inch 3D TVs, but told us that they were just missing the 3D hardware (glasses) and they should be in within the week. Each room was for a different brand of TV, so there was a Samsung, Sony and LG room. Nick and I were kind of joking about how we might want to rent out one of the soundproof rooms for future business meetings, and were wondering how much Memory Express would charge to rent out the room. The manager kind of laughed and said "Tell you what, if you come in during regular store hours, talk to me and you can have the room for as long as you want, totally free." We were blown away by that.

Exiting the soundproof rooms, he led us past the displays of regular TVs and said they have all the standard models, the top 4 brands, all sizes and all resolutions, in stock. If there's a TV that's not being demonstrated that we want to look at, they'll pull it out and show us on the spot.

Right next to the TVs were the digital cameras. Nick was just on cloud 9 when he saw that section. The manager was explained to us us that they have the major brand names, like Nikon and Canon, and if they didn't have something that we were looking for, they'd order it in for us. Immediately after the Camera section, he showed us the laptop area and said that they have all the major Asus laptops in stock, and that they'll be getting a 50 foot long countertop to display their other non-Asus brand laptops and netbooks within the week.

Once the store tour was complete, he noticed how amazed we were with the store and pulled us over to an entrance into the back. "Ok, here's our Service Department. It's actually bigger than an NCIX store!" and took us back behind the counter and display cases to the Service Department where they do all the computer repairs and IT tech. We saw the three guys that were helping us earlier sitting around a computer talking and I guess they were trying to find some kind of results to give us. He saw how impressed we were with that and basically said that if we ever had any questions, that we were to find him personally.

Nick and I sort of went off exploring on our own and found some really interesting things there. For example, we found a box of 1000ft cat6 cable for basically $85. We couldn't find any standard harddrives though, so Nick went over and asked where we could find them, and the manager said "Oh, they're back here" and walked behind the counter. I turned to Nick and asked "...Do we follow him? Or what's going on?" and sure enough, the manager turned around and beckoned us to come back with him. What we saw amazed us.

Piles upon stacks of harddrives, boxes and bags of them. An entire wall plastered with stacks of harddrives ranging in size from 500gb to 1.5tb. Directly behind us was their stock of SSD harddrives. It was the first day I have ever seen, let alone held a SSD harddrive, and it happened to be a 64gb SSD. It was my turn to float on cloud 9. I looked over to the right and saw a wall filled with Power Supplies. I noticed a tx750w PSU and basically ran over to it saying "This is exactly what I have been looking for." I then proceded to pull it off the shelf and hug it, while the manager just laughed.

We exited that little haven and asked a question "What's the largest and cheapest harddrive you have?" Immediately we had someone jumping on a computer and finding it for us. They said they have a 2tb 5.9k Barracuda harddrive for $105. Amazing.

It was right around then that the three boys in the Service Department came out and told us that they found modules for my build, and at roughly $300 cheaper for 2 sticks than I found online. The only downside was that it was DDR2-667 instead of DDR2-800. Nick's RAM on the other hand couldn't be found, but they were going to try talking to their contacts at Kingston to see if they could get something. That's about when one of the guys, the only one wearing a white shirt, said that was essentially the Head Product Manager of Memory Express. Not just of that location, but of the entire Memory Express chain. He then gave me his card and told me to email him about my motherboard and he'll look into what he can get for me. One of the other guys with him, Kenneth (the manager of the Service Department), also gave me his card and basically said if I ever have any questions about hard-to-find hardware, that I should give him a shout instead of talking to one of his lackeys. Nick also got the exact same service, with a massive stack of business cards to hand out.

Needless to say, Memory Express has become the official hardware supplier of Tensioncore Administration Services. Unless we can find better deals on eBay, that is.


-tk

July 29, 2010

Last week was sure packed. It seems like I never have time for myself anymore, but more on that later. Now I want to focus on a great new thing for my website.

Not only are all my extracurricular activities slowly eating away my measly existance on this planet, but I now have a new "toy" to play with.

Before I jump into the awesome, I want to say this: I just can't seem to find time for me, what with the job (oh yea, I got a new job, by the way), travels (oh yea, I was in Alberta this last weekend), festivities (oh yea, the HSBC Celebration of Lights is going on), my contract work with Tensioncore Design Studios (oh yea, I design websites and stuff on the side), and all the people trying to steal my attention away.

Back on track. New Toy.
Ok, so it's not exactly a toy, but I did manage to get a "dot com" domain (http://www.thomaskobelsky.com) and some web-space provided by Tensioncore Web Hosting.
This means I now have access to a SQL database (whereas my VFS web-space did not), and well over 100mbs of web-space (yea, VFS limited me to 100MB). I will still leave my VFS site up until I completely change over all my links, then I'll make my VFS site a simple one-page redirector to my thomaskobelsky.com website.
I've also been working on making a custom Comments script to integrate into my blog (since my last free one seemed to randomly stop working for some reason), as well as a custom blog entry field. Since I didn't have access to a SQL database, it was proving very difficult to accomplish, but I'm sure that I should be able to whip something up fairly quickly (depending on how much time I have for myself) that should fill both those needs.

Since that's about it as of right now, I'm going to call it a day and publish this. I'm going to start changing links and hopefully republish my websites tonight.

-tk

July 5, 2010

Not a whole lot going on in this entry aside from pointing you towards a new category in the side panel: "Tutorials"

I'm actually working on quite a bit for this place, but the only thing I have to show right now is the addition of the "Tutorials" section.

-tk

June 19, 2010

My last entry mentioned something from Tensioncore Design Studios entitled "Project Bird Feed." On behalf of Nick and myself, I am happy to announce a working beta of the project.

It is a URL shortening tool similar to TinyURL or Bit.ly, and it can be found at http://tds.tensioncore.com/ for the time being.

I never got an official word of the release until I happened to open the page tonight. Rather than just the "Shorten This!" header at the top, there was also a line of text saying "Welcome to the tds.ca URL Shortening Beta!"

Since it's now officially in Beta, I would like to invite everyone to test it out and spread the word about it. Free to use and only requires cookies to be enabled in order to cache and fetch your shortened URLs. If you ever have a problem with it, please fill out this form and email it to either Nick (nickdodd@tensioncore.com), myself (thomas.k@tensioncore.com) or both of us.


-tk

PS, I would like to also say that my girlfriend and I celebrated six months together today, and I'm grateful for every day with her.

June 16, 2010

Sickness strikes the bowels today causing my absense from work. A fine time to be struck ill, I may add, as it gives me time to mull over my current tasks at hand.

Going back to my entry "A curve of sorts," I mentioned that I was working on an undisclosed project code-named "The Dog Food Project." To touch base a bit more on that, it's a project that requires quite a bit of design and thought processing, as well as many documents to be written up so we have a guideline of what to follow.

To jump-start all of that, Tensioncore Design Studios went on a day trip out to Vancouver Island to jump into a new environment that would kick off our design and documentation era. I won't divulge too much information, but suffice it to say we accomplished more in that one day that we had in the previous two and a half months. Being in the new area sparked our creativity and also fed our enthusiasm as we kept bouncing ideas off one another.

Another project that Tensioncore Design Studios is working on is "Project Bird Feed," which was cenceptualized early in the morning of June 15th, 2010. We held a team meeting that night and discussed the fundamentals of the project, including the client base; overall design and layout; the back-end technical aspects; as well as future possibilities in growth. I am currently unaware of the project going public at this moment, but I feel confident to announce that we are currently in a very early Alpha stage. More details will be released in due time, so check back here often to see what's going on.

-tk

May 10, 2010

It's been a while since my last entry, mostly because my life's been un-eventful yet way too busy at the same time.

Since my last update, I started a new Blog called "Nerd in the Kitchen" which is basically going to me talking about crazy things to do there. But that's not what we're here to talk about.

Blender.

What a strange tool.
I was approached by Nick Dodd (Founder of Tensioncore and Tensioncore Design Studios) who asked me to join him in developing a undisclosed project. This project is called "The Dog Food Project" and is/will be done entirely in the Blender application.
This has prompted me to learn an entirely new toolset, as well as jump feet first into Python 3.1. I first started by downloading the 2.4.9 release and was playing around in it for a bit, trying to learn all the new hotkeys and methodologies of how to model in it. I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff waiting to take the plunge, but there was a fence in my way holding me back.
Then just last night Nick messages me telling me to anticipate the 2.5 release (which is currently in Alpha 2 phase) and that I would have to re-learn everything when it's fully released. So I downloaded the Alpha 2 release and now I feel like I'm standing on the same cliff, with the fence removed, but the cliff itself is still under construction.
The learning curve of Blender is unlike anything I've experienced before. There's some things which are super easy to get the hang of, but some other simple procedures that are a no-brainer in 3ds Max still seem to elude me in Blender. Then again, the majority of Blender is based on hotkeys which (until 2.5) haven't been able to be customized. This means that simple things I would use most often are scattered all over the keyboard (drag-select = "b", merge selected vertices/edges = "alt-m", select/deselect all = "a", switch between Edit Vertex/Edge/Face mode = "ctrl+Tab", etc).
However, once you do become familiar with it, you're able to create pieces really quickly. More on the history of the engine later, though.

I'm really excited to get this ball rolling. Not only am I learning two new skill sets with this project (and probably a few more as we get further into development), but it'll also challenge me in more ways than I can even think of at the moment.

-tk

December 12, 2009

After putting some thought into it, I've basically decided to never save images using the Joint Photographic Experts Group format (aka JPG/JPEG). Instead, I've decided to use the Portable Network Graphics (aka PNG) format.

Why would I do this? For pretty much the same reason I've stopped using VLC and switched entirely over to MPC + K-Lite: It's just better.

<technobable>
Since JPG format is mainly for photos and not images (which are vastly different in my world), using a lossy file format with the graphics I produce just seems like a waste. I don't mind larger file sizes, and I've found a nice image hosting website that offers up to a 5 MB image to be uploaded, found here. Also, the fact that I deal with transparencies in a lot of my images really pushes me towards the PNG format more, since it has such beautiful support for it. Oh, and best part? Transparent pixels don't take up nearly as much space as the white pixles you'd get with a JPG file if you tried saving transparencies.
I'm sure you all know about the properties and distinctions between the two formats, but I like to use really nerdy words to make myself feel "cool" on the inside. So let's go through this, shall we?


In terms of what I would be using it for, that chart pretty much sums it up.
</technobable>

-tk

December 11, 2009

I was looking for something to do today and decided to check out some other people's blogs to see what they have that I don't. The biggest thing I noticed that most other blogs have were comments at the bottom of a post.

After doing a quick Google search for "add comments to a blog" I stumbled upon this nice little script:

<script src="http://js-kit.com/comments.js"></script>

Source site here.

Throwing this into a new PHP file, I can simply add a "?php include" tag to reference that file at the bottom of each page. I'm not entirely sure how well this will play out in the end. If it ends up failing hardcore in the end, it'll be a simple edit of one file to get rid of it all (ie - delete the script from the comments.php file. The file will still have two line breaks, so it won't be referencing an empty file).

-tk

April 29, 2009

Fatigue strikes hard. It's 4 in the afternoon as I write this, yet I'm yawning as if I was about to collapse, and I'm wiping sleepy tears from my eyes.

A project! -gaspe!-
Yes, I've decided to re-create Rim Elm from the old PlayStation game Legend of Legaia as a UT3 map. So far, I have a general layout of the terrain, but nothing too special yet. I'm not sure about adding in characters yet or not, but I'm hoping to be able to have the buildings and cave able to be entered.
I'm also going to give props to Kevin Maloney for giving me the idea of creating my own custom shader for the whole thing, but that won't be coming in until I'm finished building the map to my liking. Once everything is finalized, then will come the shader and other effects.
Hopefully my next entry will have more info about where I am on this project, as well as possibly talking about another project I have in mind for after the Rim Elm map.

-tk

March 08, 2009

Good news, everyone!
Last night was Sasha's birthday, and I started talking with Alon near the end of it.

It was a great thing, because he pointed me in a very promising direction for my previous plans.
What he told me about was an amazing thing called Away3D, which is a "Realtime 3D engine for Flash."
If this works out the way I'm hoping it will, I'll be able to create the 3D Gallery I was talking about in my previous entries. I really wish I didn't have to work today, because I'd be spending all day trying to get it to work.
Guess I'll have to pull a late night or two in the next couple days. Hopoefully my next entry will be related to me launching my 3D Gallery.

-tk

January 7, 2009

I'm on a roll with this lately, just throwing out entries left, right and center here.
I felt like there was a big enough change to the site to warrant a post about it, because new people might not know what it was like before now.

What I spent the last 2 and a half days (sort of) working on has been the fixed panel on the side. It was more of a headache to get working than anything else, really... Since I don't know CSS that much, it was like feeling around in the dark for a foothold. I got some help from The Private Computer Forum on Nexopia.com, but they weren't much help, so I asked a forum admin on AnimeVector.org and he pointed me in the right direction with the use of "position: fixed;" in the CSS. This allowed me to set the panel on the right to "slide" down the page when you scroll. But really, the panel is just fixed in that position on screen at all time.
When I first put the code in, the panel jumped over to the left side of the page and was covering up my blog entries. I had a really fun time trying to debug where I went wrong with that.
In the end, I did a work-around with it. Currently, my code is set up so the div class is defined in the viewed page's code, and then I call an outside .PHP file for the panel, called "categories.php" with all the panel's content inside that. I then created a new CSS class and defined what is in that "categories.php" file to be formatted with that new class. If I wasn't calling the outside file, the code would look like this:

<div class="right">
<div class="newClass">
*content*
</div>
</div>

So I'm throwing two different classes onto it right after the other. The "right" class is setting one div to be positioned at X and Y, and then the "newClass" is telling the content to behave in this manner. It may not be the best solution to this problem, but it's fully functional and satisfactoy from where I'm sitting.


-tk
PS, I've added a review for the anime Kannagi.

January 5, 2009

Wow, two entreies right after the other.
It's 1:58 AM as I'm writing this, and I just finished converting my entire blog from HTML to PHP just so the links on the right are easier to manage.

Yes, I am just that compulsive in order to make myself lazier later on. It was a good excercise though. Before this, I thought PHP was an entirely different language altogether. I'm very glad to see that I was able to just edit some parts, Save As a .PHP file and call it good.

Now, for the juicy part of what I actually did in this upgrade to make it so much better:

First off, I'm going to assume you know a bit about HTML. If not, then this probably won't make any sense at all until the very end where I reveal something amazing.
In the beginning, my blog was a mess of HTML, CSS, DIV tags, and whatever else. It looked something like this:

http://pastebin.com/f57fbb917

After the switch to PHP, it now looks more like this:
http://pastebin.com/f3de5889

With a separate .php file containing:
http://pastebin.com/f13936d71

Doing this, I'm able to drop 44 lines of code from EVERY page, as well as let me edit only one page to change the links that appear to the right on every page. Not only is this a more efficient way in terms of file sizes, but also in time management. Now for the moment of truth... Time to upload the site and hope it all works perfectly on the first try.

-tk

December 7, 2008

It's 3:01 AM as I start writing this. I just spent the last 3 and a half hours spicing up this place a bit by adding collapsible menus on the side under "Categories." I can't believe it took me over an hour to figure out how to get rid of all the borders, change the font sizes and colors, and make them closed by default instead of open. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep playing a role in that...
The remainder of the time was spent taking all the reviews off a single page and making them all their own page. Took more than a few minutes to figure out how to make that work properly, but once I got the hang of it, I just breezed through them.

But hopefully I'll be able to keep updating this place and making it better over time. I'm really liking how it's turning out so far.

-tk

PS: quick update before sending this, and I'm too lazy to go back and edit this in... I just now found the .css file for the collapsible panels. I feel so dumb right now... /facepalm.