Art of Scott Wilson
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Posted by Ken Feb 25 6:47am '10 |
| Recently I've had the pricledge to work on the website for esteemed artist Scott Wilson. You can follow the link below to visit his website and view his online gallery. Visit Art of Scott Wilson His website is one of the latest generations of the HyperSapphire Content Managment System. It boasts some keen improvments, such as framework to correct flaws in images with GD filters and custom filters, more use of Javascript in the control panel interface for a smoother experience, and use of some optimizers provided by the HS compression algorithms. | |
Importance of Backing-Up Files
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Posted by Ken Nov 26 9:36am '09 |
| Last week I had a horrific event everyone intimate with computers is aware of - catastrophic hard-drive failure. In most cases, I would have a backup of my content; however the drive I was using was meant only for operating systems, and therefore if it crashed, I would simply use it as a chance to upgrade my software. This is where I iterate, keep a backup of everything. As much as one drive is used for storage, and as much as that particular drive is groomed with backups - I do my primary work off the storage drive, later making copies of the files. During the development of a small-scale C++ project I noticed suddenly saving and loading was failing. I could no longer open folders or new applications. I knew if I restarted the computer, that partition would be dead. The project itself had only 2 weeks of legwork behind it, and retracing my steps should not be significant. Although over 14 images being converted to colour for this portfolio were all lost, and several web-based efforts and even the beginnings of a physics-based Gluon project. All in all, about 4-6 months of work was lost, not to mention a finely tuned Linux installation. What have I taken away from this experience? Well, I know several things I plan on doing when I restore my setup, and it's my recommendation for all computer users. Oddly enough, I set my family computers with this configuration, why I didn't use it is beyond me: Keep personal files on a separate partition. Doing this, while initially more complex than one large partition, can allow you to keep valuable data on its own patch of land. I'm lucky I did this already, because it was the difference between 6 months of work and over 2 years. Keep a backup of that partition on a dedicated hard-drive or external drive. Now, why a separate drive instead of just a partition? Even though a separate partition protects against many software-related crashes, hard-drives have moving parts and solid-state is still somewhat experimental. Should the drive itself fail, no matter how many partitions are on it, they all go. Use automated tools This was my mistake. My storage and backup is used mostly for completed works, or projects so large I take snapshots of them; it does have automated backup. When I work on the majority of my files, they remain off my storage drive, and were not backed up. I should have set my tools to also backup a selection of folders from my operating-system partitions, protecting the data I'm too lazy to move to the storage drive. Keep your backups portable. Format backups in NTFS or FAT, as most operating systems work with those formats - with a little persuasion. Don't use MacOS or Ext based filesystems. If you buy a new computer with a different operating system, you can be guaranteed to keep your data with minimal hassle. Using Time Machine is about the only exception, as it requires MacOS-based filesystems. Ideally, use an external USB-based drive kept in a safe place. While slower, your backup drive should be receiving files from automated tools while plugged in, if you can stretch it, keep your drive in a safe place, such as a locked cabinet. If you purchase a wireless drive system, this can be quite easy. This will help protect copies of your data from theft, accidental damage, or spiteful ex-lovers. Check it on occasion. Seems obvious, but check to make sure your tools are backing up everything you want. If you try to recover your family album, and instead you find your tools only saved 37 episodes of M*A*S*H, no amount of military shenanigans will alleviate your suffering. Buy new backup drives on occasion, keep your old backups. I still have files from the 90s on CDs, it's what I used for backups before I could afford hard-drives. To this day I run the odd backup on a DVD. Whenever I was finished with one backup or storage medium, I would refuse to format and give it away. Doing this is a simple way to make sure you have multiple copies of your data. It's the easiest way to keep backups of your backup. Lastly, use the internet for small stuff. The internet keeps things alive. Last week I recovered an older comic system I made off the internet. I also found several of my own pictures. You can purchase storage on the internet fairly cheaply, and there are many tools to back-up to the internet. While it will cost you over time, you can be happy knowing your house could be struck by a meteor, and your data is safe and sound 500 miles away. Recommended backup schemes; Minimum: - One extra hard-drive for backups - Automated tools. Pretty Good: - 3 hard drives: Operating Systems, Personal Data, Backup of personal data - Automated tools - Backup on Optical Media (semi-annually) Solid: - 3 hard drives: Operating Systems, Personal Data, Backup of personal data - Backup is External - Automated tools set to collect from Personal and select OS data - Keep a library of old backups - Backup on Optical Media (About every 3 months or with new data, IE Photos) Paranoid: - 3 hard drives: Operating Systems, Personal Data, Backup of personal data - Backup is External, wireless, locked. - Automated tools set to collect from Personal and select OS data - Keep a library of old backups in a plastic, waterproof filing box. - Backup on Optical Media (About every 3 months or with new data, IE Photos) - An FTP-Based (internet) backup w/ automated tools | |
Various Interests
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Posted by Ken Nov 5 5:02pm '09 |
| Over the past 9 years I've dipped my hand into a number of websites, and other interests. This is mostly a glossing over my history with the internet; mistakes I've made, achievements, companies I've worked with and how I've gotten to be where I am. The first website I ever operated was under 4t hosting, Link. Back then, it was just so cool to have a website. I was also using incredibly basic 3D aswell. Universe 1, my first large project, made it onto the Newgrounds frontpage, and into the games section. Despite having taken it down, it can be found fairly easily. Hot on the heels of Universe 1 was #2. This one made it into the top 50 of Newgrounds for a decent period of time, and attempting to keep everything 3D I used parts of art from the internet, as I didn't have any professional modelling experience yet. The main thing was using 3D images in movieclips to create the illusion of 3D control; Link. Universe 3 was the last major entry into flash I made before moving to smaller more manageable projects. Today I'm in consideration of re-starting the series with a coherent storyline, actual missions that make sense, and using a top-down view instead of some sort of "chase" view. The death of my flash streak came at the expense of my web-design career. At this time, I had learned the fundamentals of PHP, and decided that the best way to learn would be to make websites for others. I started with Altermeta, an online comic; while it no longer retains my work, was the building block at the base of experience. It used a system of reading filenames from images to determine chapters, ordering, archives and titles. News posts were text files with the title of the post as their filenames. After seeing the design, I got drafted to make the Twisted Kaiju Theatre website. Because the website already had a large pre-existing archive, it was decided this would be more design and not so much PHP. To this day it uses (heavily modified) variations of the template I created. This website contains mature content. This is about the time period where I realized I was making inroads into webcomic development, after receiving requests for several comics. I began building a full webcomic platform, and surprisingly, after a long period of rapid development it became the most feature-laiden online comic platform available; It was using a database, authors could create multiple custom archives with options to sort, display, and organise strips. It included page caching for larger websites, user accounts with comment, and other features. This also expanded into building the Web Comics Choice Awards website, where I used the database of comics submitted for award nominations to jumpstart a comics database.  Promo image for build 8 of HyperComix Manager WayBack snapshot of Manager blog Wayback snapshot of Library, my Comics database I was beginning to build a portfolio and needed hosting for my various projects, so I began working with Galacnet, I would create designs and tools in exchange for hosting. Today, my designs remain unchanged. Due to unreliable hosting and my data getting regularly deleted, when my hard-drive crashed the loss of several projects and the entire comic system forced me to cut ties with Galacnet when I found the data had been deleted again. Ironically, my personal website, aside from lost content, is still functional. There was a brief period where I worked for the online comic Least I Could Do. In a complete reverse of Kaiju Theatre, I was primarily programming and maintaining. After the design of the website changed several times and the unpaid nature I was working under, I was forced to hand off the website in favor of finishing high-school. College soon brought me into heavy C/C++ development. I quickly moved from command-line games to full SDL-type projects. My first project in college meant to take 4 months to prepare, was to be a basic drug-wars clone - but with games instead of drugs. The assignment required a classic "Jimmy the Wrench wants to buy all your games, do you A) B) C) or D)", with 3 different endings. I build a procedurally generated city in ASCII, with unique stocks in each tile. 6 computer players explored the board in a logical manner, attempting to make more profit by buying low, selling high, upgrading their bags, etc before you or the other computers had a chance. They would buy each other out during the game, and attempt to buy you out. Your goal was to make enough money to buy out all the other players. I also provided art for the game as well. I learned all the code I used before I was actually taught it. Eventually I moved to SDL after passing the first "major" project. When people found out how our team blew away the first project, we had no shortage of selection for people to join our next project. Unfortunately, our artist didn't produce any, ynow, art. I ended my second project after doing all the art in addition to programming, the additional workload made it very difficult to meet our own lofty expectations and I learned about cutting projects back. In the end we had a 2D platformer with enemies spawning across generated terrain of various themes. It included basic cinematics, and a sleek menu similar to the XMB used in the PSP/Playstation 3. At this point, college was becoming a bust, and I joined the military. This is where most of my online projects died off. Hypercomix, which was on its last leg experienced a domain-name expiry, killing the project and its database. Today, most of my work is in art and conceptualizing. I have rebuilt my online platform as a more generic "HyperSapphire" system, for any website as opposed to just comics. I'm starting to use actionscript 3, and the next iteration of HyperSapphire is in development as a hardened plugin-based platform for the web. | |
Kver.ca loaded
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Posted by Ken Oct 24 2:23pm '09 |
| Welcome to Kver.ca, my personal portfolio website. After a great amount of procrastination I've finally gotten something done. Please bear with the website while content is loaded. | |