TAAG
Big updates coming for the TAAG program. On Sunday, I hope to have the following:
– 100+ new fonts uploaded
– A preview page that will show you all of the fonts
Pic to HTML
One of ideas I’ve been toying with for a future project is a Pic to HTML program. This appeals to me mostly because I made one way back in the day and have lately had a few requests for it, I have a few new ideas that I think would make it worth writing, and because it would sort of compliment the TAAG program. I was thinking of making it an online web app, so I decided to survey what else was out there. One of the apps I saw had a disclaimer from the author, saying you had to login before you made anything. This was because someone was apparently uploading gross/illegal images to his server.
I would assume, and I may be wrong on this, that he knew the images were gross/illegal because he was logging what images people used in his program. Though he did later say he wasn’t doing this, so I’m not sure how he knew. However, this did give me some pause. I guess I’m naive, but using these web applications I would assume everything I do is private, however, this is most likely not the case in every web app. When the app isn’t on your computer, you don’t really control where the data goes. Hell, someone could write an online app and then funnel all your data to some marketing firm or use it to spy on you.
These ideas kind of creeped me out, and made me realize why online apps probably aren’t more popular. So if I do decide to make a Pic to HTML program, I’ll probably make 2 versions – one you can download, and one you can use online. Though I promise you all that I’d never log any info you inputted into one of my programs. However, we’re talking about weeks from now (hell, TAAG isn’t even done yet), and I have some other ideas I’m playing around with, so at this point in time, I don’t know what my next project will be.
Fourm
On my stats page I’m noticing I’m getting around 20 hits a month to http://forum.patorjk.com. I’m not sure if there’s a link somewhere on the web pointing to that, or if people are checking to see if the message board still exists, but there are no forums on this site. At the current moment I’m averaging 70-something hits a day (though the past few days I’ve been getting 100+ visitors, which has been cool). I have no plans on bringing the forums back until I’m getting 500+ visits a day, and even then I’ll have to think about it. I did really like the community this site once had, but you can’t grow something like that overnight, and I don’t want them to be a ghost town (what they ended up turning into the past few years).
Blogroll
Are there any likeminded sites out there? In the past, I felt like I was part of a community of sites, these days, I sort of feel like I’m out on my own. Like I pointed out a while ago, a lot of my previous contemporaries have either abandoned their sites or gone on to other things. Hell, I don’t regularly visit many programming sites / blogs anymore. I feel like I should be though. I was linking to my (real life) friend David’s site, but he hasn’t updated it in 7 months and it’s mostly just for his personal photos anyway.
Perhaps the author of that service simply checked his referer logs to see the names of certain files. I believe it’s quite difficult to find any programming sites that still continue to talk about Visual Basic 6 in full discussion as everyone that does serious programming work, and even some of the newer programmers, are migrating to VB.NET. I bought a reference book, skimmed through it, and know the subtle differences between the versions, and VB.NET makes things easier once you figure out how to recreate things that had previously existed such as Winsock. I’m not quite sure how to go about including Windows API references in the code, but I haven’t really tried too hard. The only thing that I see as .NET’s downfall is you have to obfuscate your code, or they can be more easily decompiled similar to those applications in Visual Basic 3.
By the way do you still need those fonts from Fallen Legion? I meant to send them to you after the attempt failed the first time, but I took a trip, and was away for a bit.
That could be true, still, I’m sure there are people who are sneaky and would save the images people upload.
I was actually somewhat interested in VB.NET – I even bought Visual Studio 2003 for $15 (student discount). However, it’s hard for me to justify spending the time to learn something I can already easily do in another language (VB6). Plus, we don’t use it at work, so it wouldn’t have any benefit there (currently I’m doing Java EE stuff). I’ll probably get around to it at some point though.
The Fallen Legion fonts would be great. Just rename the dot zip to something else if it doesn’t let you send it. Or you can send it to my aol address. I still have it, I just rarely check it.
I’ve just sent the Fallen Legion program and fonts in the original “TheFallen” ZIP file to your AOL email address as I know they accept the ZIP format. Being how I am not a “professional” programmer I generally just write programs when I feel the need, but it is apparent that Microsoft is going to be dropping support for Visual Basic 6 within the next year.
Thank you so much for that!
Wow, it was last compiled December 1, 1998. That would have been while I was a junior in High School. It almost makes me cringe to see myself writing “u”, “2”, and “laterz” as if they were words. And I have no idea why I listed “Howard High” as the company name for that program. That copy of VB was mine, not the school’s.
It also appears to list my old web address:
http://members.xoom.com/thepatmaster
I’m so glad I later went with “patorjk.com”.
Anyway, I’m rambling. Interesting to know that VB6 will soon be discontinued. I’ve actually thought about developing my new stuff in Java, since it’d be cross platform, however, that could be a pain in the butt. I’ll have to weigh the pros and cons of this later.
A revamped PIC2HTML would be most welcome. I still have your old one hanging around and just wish it was more powerful, allow for bigger images, etc.
Don’t get to use it too much cause I keep pushing it and trying to produce as big as possible images… and the machine hangs… indigestion… but would welcome a new, more powerful PIC2HTML, yep! 🙂
I may make one. It’s on my list of “maybe’s”. I just have to figure out what new features I’d add and how I’d want to present it.
Eh.. I hope you like my scrawny trouble Sorry, for off top, i wanna tell one joke) What weighs 909 kg (2,000 pounds for all of you inefficient, non-metric “people”) and is bare to the bone? A skeleTON!!!