A few days ago I posted about my new sysinfo script, and now I am releasing the code to whoever may want to use it.

This code has some elements that are obviously made to fit it in with my site, but it won't take too much effort for someone to adapt it to their own. Read more to see the code, and download it.

The code is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike license, so follow it! :)

Download:
sysinfo.pl.tar.gz

Nucleus has a nifty feature built in called XML-RPC that is used by a number of blogs to facilitate remotely posting from a desktop application, or from browsers like Flock.

While I have been unable to get it to work with Flock, I have had great success with BloGTK, a program for Linux written in Python.

Nucleus isn't big enough to have its own XML-RPC API, so they use the Moveable Type API. All seems to work just fine :) Too bad the same can't be said for Flock yet, but I am hoping they can fix the issues. I've made a post in here appealing for help, time will tell if anyone can sort it out.

I replaced my simple "uptime" script with a full system information script, all coded by yours truly :) Go ahead and check it out:
http://www.w1ldt4ng3nt.net/cgi-bin/sysinfo.pl

I was getting bored with "Nexus5", so I have made a new style I call "Tinted" It incorporates some new graphics techniques I have learned, but not much new CSS. It was actually quite a straightforward redesign, requiring no re-writing of my websites code besides that which allows me to incorporate a style-switcher on the main page. That by the way is nifty :) Probably my coolest use of PHP yet. It saves your preference in a cookie, so you don't need to continually choose the style you want to see. Expect more viewer-selectable styles to come in the future :)

Another update: Just confirmed that the site does work in IE 7, and rather well. Microsoft finally got something right. To users of IE 5.x and 6.0, this is what you're missing:



Update: Users of browsers other than IE will have noticed a major change in the look of the site. Transparencies...without the transparency. I'll explain. A good friend of mine showed me a trick where you take a background image, make a copy of it, and lighten it to make it look like its being viewed through glass, and then have it as the background for areas you want to look translucent. It's a little more complicated than that, but I am not that great at explaining it. The great thing is, that unlike using the transparency properties in CSS like I used in the old theme, this method is valid CSS. The downside is, it doesn't work in IE 6 and below. And I'm not sure yet if it works in IE 7.

You have no doubt already noticed the new look, do you like it? :) It is heavily inspired by my new desktop theme that I posted about last. It is dark, and it is simple, like almost all of my themes. Simple looks good, simple is easy on the eyes, and simple is easy on my sanity :P I am working on a way to allow visitors to choose their own skin. I'll get back to you on that.

For new viewers, here is a screenshot of the old look:

So, much has happened since my last update. First of all, I had my 17th birthday on June 30, got some cash from relatives, a couple presents, and a very expensive steak dinner at a classy restaurant :D

So I have also really been getting into webdesign and website administration for others. I setup and host a website for a Linux software project, Automatix. Now though, I am also involved in the actual coding of the software, as well as running the website. This website has it all, Joomla for the main homepage, a wiki, a blog (still unused), and a forum. It also has a Debian apt respository, but that is hosted on another server due to the enormous amount of bandwidth it consumes. The website alone is quite busy, seeing hundreds, if not thousands of hits per day. I need to upgrade my internet connection... Overall, this website, and the project has been quite fun, I really enjoy working on it.

Next up is one I just started. I'm basically liberating the website of Artimis Vergadin AKA Casey, Fire of Nocturne. It is a forum currently hosted on Invision Free, just like my forum, The Smoking Bolter was. But as soon as he purchases a database dump, we can move it to my server on its own copy of Invision Power Board. The site is a resource site, and as such has various articles about its subject, so it was only natural that we use a CMS to replace their current homepage. No offence meant towards it's designer, Tengu, but frames are so HTML 1.0, they must go. So the new homepage is currently at this address, until a domain is bought: fon.thenewagemedia.com. Hope you like it Casey :) I certainly have enjoyed setting it up.

I made the backgrounds for the content boxes translucent, personally, I LOVE the subtle effect it makes, looks pretty damn awesome.

Here's the code for those interested:

filter:alpha(opacity=85);
-moz-opacity:0.85;
opacity:0.85;

Add those three rules to your stylesheet for any class that has a background colour set. The values in it set the transparency. 00 and 0.00 would be completely transparent, 100 and 1.00 is solid colour.

:D Yay, a new skin for the site! This is my first self-designed skin. I call it CarbonFibre. I also have a banner, thanks to Dan Crowe, isn't it awesome? I still need to skin the forums, but I'm not too concerned about doing so, as NO ONE USES THEM! Come to think of it...no one reads the blog either, but whatever.

Thank some jackass spammer and his bot for now having to register to post comments. It's not a difficult process, shouldn't take more than a few seconds. I'm working on banning the spammer, but its hard since his IP has changed 3 times within as many seconds. I do think I can ban him by his user-agent, which is unique among my logs, I've never seen it before.

85.47.133.154 - - [24/Feb/2006:22:42:03 -0500] "POST /Justin/blog/index.php?itemid=13 HTTP/1.0" 302 - "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; MyIE2; Maxthon)"

So...hopefully I'll squash that bot :P

I've just changed over from Blog: CMS to Nucleus CMS. "How come it looks the same?" I heard you ask, and I will tell. Blog: CMS isn't a blogging software package by itself, it's more like a collection of different content systems. I includes a wiki (Docuwiki), forums (PunBB), an image gallery (name escapes me), and of course, the blog itself, which is none other than Nucleus CMS. Since I don't use the extra features of Blog: CMS, I've ditched it for Nucleus. It will be much lighter on my server database-wise. Anyway...other than my own code-hacks causing problems with the archives, it all seems to be functioning normally.

EDIT: Archive function fixed :)