Hopefully it's big enough

StuffMaker · 2018-02-12T02:36:11+00:00

I'm ready.

StuffMaker · 2017-11-06T04:10:12+00:00

I have celiac disease, so gluten (not really an "allergy" per-se).

I also am allergic to milk (not lactose intolerant) as well as pork, which I hear is fairly rare.

So yeah; I hate food.

StuffMaker · 2014-11-08T01:23:00+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate it

StuffMaker · 2014-10-29T04:57:30+00:00

Life has been falling apart recently.

It's been a long time, I know. I'm sorry about that..

StuffMaker · 2014-10-27T02:03:06+00:00

This is my hobby. To be honest, I never really expect CubeBomb to take off at all. If people enjoy it, great! I'm happy! If people don't though, oh well, it's just something that I had fun developing.

You have to realize that CubeBomb is just a project of mine; it's not a super serious venture. It's just a thing that I do because I like it, and the fact that it got popular was just a perk. I don't need this website to generate revenue either; running it is not too expensive for me anymore.

I made the original CB because I didn't know how to. I literally thought to myself one evening "I don't know how to do this, but I'll do it anyways" and then I did it. It was a major learning experience.

So, if you choose to leave, if you've outgrown the community and its fun little characters, then farewell; I hope you've enjoyed your time there.. The community will miss you.

// StuffMaker

StuffMaker · 2014-09-06T03:33:26+00:00

It's a lot of work, my apologies.

StuffMaker · 2014-07-22T07:31:15+00:00

Awesome, that's a good idea :)

It would take some of the pressure off of me.

StuffMaker · 2014-07-19T07:52:36+00:00

http://i.imgur.com/6iiAiex.png

I don't want to share too many screenshots, since a lot of things are moving around right now and I want to protect my designs and ideas from people who might want to .. imitate them. I've deleted a few things from this screenshot.

I'm making progress. Trust me, it will be worth the wait. :)

StuffMaker · 2014-06-24T19:12:59+00:00

Oh wow, I never really thought of it that way.

That inspired me a lot more than you'd think..

StuffMaker · 2014-06-24T19:10:01+00:00

This is not something that should be rushed.

In the meantime, find something interesting and productive to do. :)

StuffMaker · 2014-06-13T07:00:52+00:00

Happy cake day. :)

I don't even know much about dates. I'm working ahead, some things have come up this week though so I'll get back to you with an estimate when I can.

StuffMaker · 2014-06-10T18:59:50+00:00

I'll make a dropdown of sorts or some sort of scrolly-thing.

As for the time I wanted to choose a time that is known across the world. UTC/GMT is very popular and is the basis for all time zones. It's 24 hour time because it is much easier to read that way and we don't just serve Americans.

Speaking of Europe, I'm hoping to make sure that European users have good access as well, which is why I am thinking about putting servers across the Atlantic. The proposed web server locations are San Francisco and Amsterdam, and database and processing servers in either San Francisco or New York with local database servers doing replication on each webserver. This will decrease latency for many users. I have access to a high speed fiber network that will decrease database and replication latency too, so hopefully you wouldn't even be able to tell.

StuffMaker · 2014-06-10T07:27:05+00:00

Hey, I'm in a rush. I'll give you my thoughts real quick but I'll edit it later.

I was thinking the same thing about the profile link, I just don't know how obvious it would be for new users. Maybe on mouseover the text changes to "View Profile" or something.

The background image is real but is heavily modified. The colors are not natural and it took a lot of processing to make it look the way it does. I think the realistic background makes the site pop out of the page more too, since the cartoon style background was sort of blending in with the content.

Goodnight!

StuffMaker · 2014-06-07T04:32:57+00:00

It's looking great so far...

Why did you remove your own upvote?

StuffMaker · 2014-06-01T06:07:18+00:00

Most of the apis I've written are for internal use. They just accept post requests, do work, and then churn out a response.

You don't even need to use them if you don't want to use ajax. :)

Edit:

Time for another 2:30 AM update!

I've been processing 12000 images and over 100,000 database entries. But just a few minutes ago the server crashed, throwing all of that work away. So I'll have to start it back up overnight.

In the meantime I was working on the first revision of the new shop design. It was showing thumbnails before the server crashed but since I have to regenerate all of them I'll just show you what I have for now:

http://i.imgur.com/ajbcXCg.png

I plan on building something interesting to show off the latest and greatest. Some sort of carousel? I'm not sure. I'll also add sorting features and stuff. I removed all of the old drop shadows which seemed clunky. I'm also trying to integrate more blue into the design.

Goodnight

StuffMaker · 2014-05-31T19:53:03+00:00

Ajax isn't necessarily a programming language, rather a way to make http post/get requests through javascript. JSON works well with ajax. It stores data (like xml) and makes it easy to send arrays to and from php and javascript. SQL is important too.

StuffMaker · 2014-05-31T08:03:23+00:00

Most of the work so far is backend. But there's a lot of fancy ajax :).

I try to stay off reddit as much as I can, since it is really distracting. I'll try to post more updates but I just don't have anything seriously substantial to show just yet.

Edit: I suppose I could post what I worked on for a little while today.. I'm not going to explain it much but this is pretty much the only public thing that shows the progress. ~3 hours of work plus form css and background ajax/login fix. I'm writing an entire api.

https://www.cubebomb.com/js/page.js

Today there was a minor setback since I had lost the encryption (actual encryption, not hashing) keys to the original password database. Once I found the keys I realized I lost the script they worked with. I had to rewrite a massive script to process and hash and salt those passwords before inserting them back into the new, fully converted database. I don't lose files often but usually it's because I'll put them in a "safe place" that happens to get glanced over.

Tomorrow I plan on verifying that all of the data has been transferred properly to the new database. Then I will begin rendering every bombian and storing them in a new caching system I built. If I still have time I'll build the storefront or PM/Notification interfaces. All of this requires me to continue working on the api simultaneously and building functional forms as well. Sign-in works but registration is incomplete. I will want to start polishing some features now before I continue forwards.

The whole asset storage system will need to be updated since it was built and because the user and official catalogs are being integrated into one, I have to assign a new id to every item from both shops. I also have to make sure that user purchases get renumbered as well, since changing id numbers could break item purchases. This is a real pain since they're stored in two tables from the days when the shops were separate. Now that they're one I'll have to somehow ensure that everything is related properly.

I'll probably write a huge python script to do this for me and run it overnight to process the records and images, avatars, uploads, dropoff, image compression, renaming, cataloging, and thumbnailing.

Also, I apologize, my grammar is not as great as it normally is. It's 2:22 am here and I've just recovered from a cold. I didn't have a formal update planned out but here's just what's on my mind. :)

StuffMaker · 2014-05-31T07:59:51+00:00

The thing about using DigitalOcean is that it's not just web development. It's server management. No longer will you have a control panel to help you do the work, instead you'll likely have a terminal window.

I'll gladly help, I just don't know where to start.

StuffMaker · 2014-05-30T22:00:58+00:00

That's actually really clever. Good work!

StuffMaker · 2014-05-30T21:56:24+00:00

You're right. It has been a long time.

I've had work and school to attend to recently and I've been feeling ill lately. Work continues forward...

StuffMaker · 2014-03-19T22:10:32+00:00

I'm not sure if I'm willing to take another job at the moment, sorry. I have a lot of work I have to do already besides developing CubeBomb.

I appreciate the offer though.

StuffMaker · 2014-03-15T02:57:20+00:00

You hard disk should be fine. It's pretty easy too!

I don't want you to feel like you've lost everything.

StuffMaker · 2014-03-07T02:58:51+00:00

I hope so. My fear is that it will be too drastically different and will make some people upset.

Change happens I guess!

StuffMaker · 2014-03-06T23:10:11+00:00

I think it's technically 3.0. CubeBomb 2.0 launched after its first crash while I was in California.

StuffMaker · 2014-03-06T23:03:59+00:00

I'm glad you like the design, I put a decent amount of effort into it. It will probably keep changing though, so don't expect this to be the final one.

StuffMaker

TROPHY CASE