finally, the dreadful summer sem is over. I have a day of rest then it’s time to put some plans into action. 3 web related projects, a new product in development stage which I will need to write a proposal for, finalize the documents I need for the work term, and getting a new computer system that can handle rendering for my up coming 3D freelence stuff. no rest for the wicked. : )
I’ve been doing admin for a site I built about a year or two ago. I’d never paid much attention to the number of people visiting. Well I’d just took a look today, it averages about 1.7k visites a day. This site has so much potential for hosting ads.
People who know me well, know that I have a horrendously large collection of music videos. They are in all sorts of formats(avi/mpg/dat) and all sorts of file names (chinese/japanese/eng). Now I’ve tried many many media players that’s suppose to keep my whole list of mvs and play them randomly. None of them really works well. Either they crash because of the file name or they just can’t handle the format switching very well. Windows media 9 + works really well, but I hate it’s hot key config and stupid skins. So I decided to make use of the good old mediaplayer 6.4. It’s still the best player I’ve ever used, doesn’t use much resources, pops right up when you call it even on low end hardware.
So onward to making the playlist. Mediaplayer since I don’t remember when has use asx to stream media file. It’s basically just a xml text file. Next we will get a list of all the files in the mv directory. Several ways you can do it, but I have cygwin installed, so I’m gonna do it the linux way. To get the list, we will use regular expressions (finally, some practical use for it) type "ls -F | egrep ‘.*[^/]$ > list.txt’"
If you dont’ understand it, then you can just type the filenames out by hand. At this point, you should look into MSDN to see the specs of the asx format. I’m a bit lazy and just want it to work, so everything is wrapped within a asx tag. Within that, every entry is in it’s own entry tag. And within an entry tag, I put in a title tag just to see which file is playing, and a ref tag to tell the player where the file is. That’s pretty much it. Save the file, name it whatever.asx and drop it in mediaplayer.
I haven’t worked in the random part, but it shouldn’t be too difficult. I’d probably do a sort or some kind after the egrep pipe.
Well, there you go, a very stable media player with a list of all your (my) music videos. now back to studying. That’s right, I have 2 exams tomorrow yet I can’t help but to make the play list. (my mind also floated away for a while and wrote a tutorial on how to fake camera focus in a 3D enviroment with the least rendering work, man….I really should be getting back to studying)
While studying for my exams today, I kinda drifted off and start playing with ps2 dev softwares again. Finally found a web browser, so I can somewhat use the ps2 like a computer. Supposely it can play mp3s in the browser too, I will try that next time. So about the strange discovery, obviously browsing with the joypad isn’t that convinient, so I plugged in keyboard and mouse. If you’ve been to my room, you know my ps2 is on the lower level of my tv stand, and it’s a carpeted room. I was too lazy to find a mousepad so I’d just use the mouse on carpet. It actually worked out great, it’s even better and more precise than using a mouse pad. Maybe I should start a company that makes mouse pads from carpets. : )
oh, mind you, it was an optical mouse, the old roller probably won’t work (after a week or so).
There’s suppose to be some hack to put the whole browser into the memory card so I dont’ even have to boot from disc. Will look into that later. (I’m still not too happy about the mod I got on my us version ps2. It’s probably those no soldering mod chips. The biggest problem is that, it won’t do 2nd entry by pass. So I must have the disc in the system before it starts. Any disc changes after that can’t skip the disc check. That’s also the reason why my ps2 still haven’t got linux installed.)
f….k finally finish that INT assignment, 2 and a half hours late but whatever… Specs wasn’t as clear as it should be, the online resources are crap. And the stupid vi keeps lagging. In case you are wondering, the assignment was to built a little search engine cgi only. What can I say, cgi is useful but it’s old. I’d muchrather be working in php. Oh yea, after using vi for an hour to setup the password authorization and configing apache, I still hate vi. Next week is exam week, then I will be resting….not really, more work ahead, but good fun work.
Just finished a short execise dealing with cgi and tainted variables. Took me 5 and a half hour to complete. It would be easier if there were some clear instructions or tutorials of what the hell I should be looking for. Anyway, after trial and error, research and stuff, I’m done. First thing I do, close all the source codes and web resources I was reading. I simply dont’ want to look at it anymore. I know some things are better for one to discover and learn, but for basics like these, hell just give it to me straight so I can work on something else.
Anyway, I would have finished it the day before if I wasn’t so tired. Passed out on the floor while I was working on it.
I really do work hard and I get results too. 41.5 out of 42 on my last database test. Sounds cool…but it’s not. Common, sql statements? anyone can do it. I bet I can teach a kid in grade 6 about sql and he/she will do just well of a job.
Weekend before the end of classes, I should be working on my final assignment. I spent 8 hours fine tuning javascripts and making sample pages that makes use of the javascripts. It’s sort of doing research for work. Not that I’m working fulltime right now, I will be in Sept. This is more for my freelence stuff. Just looking for some free and easy to impliment drop down menus. ….can’t believe I spent 8 hrs on it. Was only planning to do it for an hour or so. Hope this isn’t a sign telling me I’m destinied to stay as a web developer, though it is what I’m good at by nature.
