Well, it's been another year since we didn't win the Artvoice Best of 2005 contest. I hope maybe this year we will have a better chance. I think last year a lot of people voted online and then it seems like those votes went away at some point. Maybe someone else knows more details about how that worked.

Another problem is that a lot of you voted for best blog but we aren't really a blog, we are a blogging/community website, and they do have a best website award so it would be best to vote for that. If you want to vote for someone's individual blog that would seem more appropriate for the best blog contest.

Anyhow, I guess we should try again although the motivation of getting ntoiced so that we can get a new server has been resolved since Artvoice is hosting us as a result of meeting Jamie at the event last year.

The best way is probably to vote by filliing out a ballot in artvoice but you can also click on the image above to vote online

I fixed the userpic maker so that you once again can cut userpics out of web based images without having to use photoshop. You can even use it to cut userpics out of images on your journal. Basically, just like it says enter the URL of the image from the net (try searching for some on google images), then when the pic loads, drag the box where you want to crop and click just outside the upper left hand corner.



On another note there is a Best of Buffalo Contest sponsored by Spree. There is a category for Best Blog and Best Buffalo Website. It is in the 200s. Yes there are that many questions but you do not need to answet them all but you can win a prize. The survey is here

Jenks, the email a post from your mobile function works again with the new code. Using this you can post from a non WAP/XHTML mobile phone to your journal including both text, sound, and images. The only requirement is that you can send an email from your phone.



--paul

I moved the userpic upload and usersound upload buttons back into the control panel at the top of the page. This should make it easier for people to find and use them. Your profile is now an actual link under your userpic labeled (my profile). It is right above journal overview and journal dots.

Usersounds now work in IE as well. You can play them by clciking on the speaker icon that shows up under anyones userpic that has uploaded an mp3 usersound.

Last night I upgraded about 50 files involved in the site code and it got really late so I left my text editor open with all the files saved so that I knew which ones to upload in the morning.

Then windows did its stupid magic. It auto updated my computer and decided that it was appropriate to do an auto reboot without my approval. Seeing as the files were saved it wasn't too much danger but I no longer knew what changes I had made from the total site code. This lead to me having to re-upload everything so if you have any problems or something seems out of the ordinary, go ahead and send me an email.

--paul

I am slowly going to giving out larger file space. The first upgrade is that your usersound is now allowed to be up to 5MB. Right now in firefox there is a flash player that plays the sound by displaying a little speaker button under the contact links, under your userpic. You can test the player using firefox by clicking on the speaker icon on my journal here (e:paul)

I will probably finish the IE player tomorrow. Until then you can still upload mp3 files on either system and as always you can get to them from your profile.

To upload a file, click on your userpic and click on the same little speaker icon. With the new system you are limited to mp3 files. You can still upload midi and wav files to your regular journal entries.

I will streamline this system better later.

Under every user's userpic is the Journal Overview and Journal Dots link. I updated them and fixed them so that they are both finding the styles again.

Joural Overview is the title, link to and first 200 words of every journal for that user. Mine might take a while to load on a slow computer because I have around 2000 entries.



The journal dots are a quick and easy way to visualize you old entries and flip though all the old journals you wrote. The ones you visit get black borders so you know you already saw them. Orange ones are ones with categories. The red ones have not been categorized.



If you switch to month view you can see the journal dots listed in a per month fashion which gives you an idea of when you wrote the most.

I was going through some stuff today when I found this old picture of estrip in 2003, when it was pretty much my journal and my personal friends. Wow, how much it has grown since then. Here we are more than 2 million words later.

This is about the RAM post [inlink]paul,4143[/inlink] I wrote yesterday. Thanks (e:jenks) and (e:uncutsaniflush) for donating to the RAM drive, you guys are awesome. Should I name it the jenks-uncut chip or the uncut-jenks pic!? lol

If anyone else can donate I would appreciate it. Just click on the donate button above the lastest journals list. You can donate with paypal.

In response to (e:ajay)'s comment about ditching the motherboard for one that takes DDR RAM. The motherboard I have already has 1GB of RIMM and dual xeons in it that I don't really want to pull out because they are working and happy in it. It also seems so sad to just get rid of it, it is a huge $450 piece of plastic and metal and has a lot of life left in it. I can't justify it environmentally. But definately, the next one will not have RIMMS.

[size=m]historical background[/size]
Here is a little history of the machine that is (e:strip). In 2002 I started working on my MFA at UB and was working hard on Virtual Reality and 3D. I was determined to have a really powerful machine with the latest graphic card and processors. At the time I bought the motherboard, it was the only dual processor motherboard I could find with AGP 8x which I needed for 3D at the time. RDRAM was also really popular and fast (6400MB/s) back in 2003.

Sadly enough, that mega fancy graphic card (ATI firgGL X1 256MB ) now lives its outdated life in a cardboard box because the server just didn't need to server web pages. Anyone want to buy it?

It felt really strange downgrading to the new consumer grade video card I got at compusa, but I figured the less complicated, the less that could go wrong and the server definately is not a graphics workstation anymore.

Slowly, I started to realize how expenive 3D is. It is a never ending cycle of buying the latest greatest hardware and software. I lost patience for 3D design and moved to web. By 2003 I decided to make (e:strip) as a class project for my Virtual and Online communities class. It needed a server and I decided I could repurpose the one that I was using for 3D. The problem is that I could never seem to afford the connection. I tried to host it at home with my adelphia connection but serving a site is against their TOS agreement and would have been a constant battle with home internet usage taking up the whole pipe. Sometime (e:matthew) can make Azureus take the whole internet down. So instead, each month I paid for it to be hosted elsewhere. When it was tiny in 2003 it only cost $7.99/month for the first couple months. As it started to grow I ended paying $40.00/month for a virtual server space.

Then just a month or so ago, Jamie Moses from Artvoice offered to let me host my server there and now whenever you type something or use the site, you are actually just using my computer which is living in their basement.

Anyhow, so I think it is a waste to just throw it out?!

The site has been transfered to the new server. I am still leaving the old one up for a bit just in case. Unfortunately, elmwoodstrip.com.org has not fully transfered everywhere. I believe in some places it has. In the mean time you can use mobl.us which you will be automatically redirected to when you visit elmwoodstrip.org/com. All three are the same web site. At least for now.

So play around with it and send me a site email if there are any problems.

--paul