Chuck's Musings

My last entry is dated January 12, 2010… hah! I’ve been too busy with work to write about anything in a while.

Many of my more recent entries were about my computer/electronics cravings. I mentioned something about going socket AM3 but I instead ended up with a LGA1156 Core i5 setup. I also changed a lot of my computer’s components amongst other things, got a new car, bought a Nintendo Wii console. Finally, I’m planning to get myself an SLR next month (a Nikon D90).

Now that I’m on the topic of “new stuff” and “work”, I forgot to mention here that I’m now working for cr8v Web Solutions still as a PHP Web Developer. I still have the same home-based work arrangement as I did with Zallas; we also have the same work shift, migration to the new company was pretty painless as far as I am concerned.

I’m pretty much trying to enjoy the fruits of my labor while I still can, because I won’t be able to do these stuff once I’ve decided to settle down…

I hope my D90 purchase would be the last of this recent string of purchases, haha, I really need to start saving for real.

Now that I mention it, I really should set up a photo gallery section soon to make use of all this space.

I’m looking into selling my current CPU-Mobo-Ram trio and build myself an AM3 rig. Why AM3 and not Core i7? Well, it’s kinda hard to source the parts locally, and if they are available, they’re expensive despite making compromises to the setup. I’m still planning on keeping my BFG 8800GT, and besides, the onboard Radeon HD4200 on the 785G motherboard would make a great backup video when I do intend to upgrade my videocard as well.

Anyway, I’ve decided to go with the following setup – an AMD Phenom II X4 965 cpu, an AM3 motherboard based on the AMD 785G / SB710 chipset, and 2 sticks of 2GB DDR3 memory.

I’m still trying to decide whether I should skip the Phenom 955 and go directly to 965. It’s only a 200MHz difference with the 965 costing P1,250 more (about $26).

It’s been a while since my last post… almost a month actually. It’s just that I’ve either been too busy with work, or enjoying work too much that I kinda neglected doing my regular stuff here for a while…

With that said, I’ve been working too much and haven’t had the chance to enjoy my salary yet… well, one of the first things that came to mind was getting a camcorder (which, actually is already happening, haha!), secondly, my computer upgrade itch.

Damnit, I’m eyeing the Samsung T260HD LCD monitor, and I’ve also been itching to upgrade my processor, motherboard and RAM.

Christmas is approaching, all in due time I guess.

If you’ve visited the front page recently, you’d have probably noticed the mailbox on the far right side of the lawn. This mailbox will be linked to a contact form (which I haven’t started coding in yet, haha!).

Also, I’ve made slight modifications to the top navigation bar. The menus are now semi-transparent. I’ve yet to decide if I’ll keep it that way or revert to the old solid white and gray menus.

Aside from that, I am hoping to be able to find the time to work on the other planned features of my website. Please keep coming back for updates.

Since I’m way ahead on my tasks schedule, I’ve been tasked to work on mashups of our current modules.

This is going to be yet another fun experience for me!

I’m currently in the planning stage of it, but I’d have to come up with a working prototype of the API tomorrow. I should be able to think of something as I sleep over it today so it won’t be a problem. I’ve always been able to get work done in my sleep anyway.

I thought I put enough effort and attention to the main website’s design so far, so I figured I start working on the actual testing area’s theme. So here’s my second revision of the “laboratory” theme’s logo:

That’s Dirt the Lab in a lab-coat, presumably working in a lab, but I still have to draw in the lab, lol!

It’s 1:38pm (12:38am CDT) so I really should get to bed now, lest I risk not waking up in time for today’s work shift.

I was rearranging some stuff earlier today, I didn’t like how my alternate design turned out (the one with semitransparent content blocks partially overlapping with the top portion of layout). So I reverted to the original layout I made. I still have to work on the content area’s layout though.

Aside from that, I added two circular icons representing the major areas of the website. The first one being the home page and the second being this blog’s home page.

Also like previously mentioned, I coded in a little widget that grabs the ten most recent blog entries and displays their title and excerpt on the home page.

I’m still thinking what else to place into the home page though.

The hosting package I bought includes 10GB space and 300GB monthly bandwidth. 10GB! I don’t think I could use it up by myself, lol. My dedicated partition for my local web-server on my computer is 10GB and after 6 years, I only have 3GB of website, PHP scripts and pictures in it!

Maybe if I had a camcorder, I could fill this space faster, hahaha! Hey, with your own 10GB space and 300GB bandwidth, why settle with low quality video hosts like Youtube, right?