DarqByte

Yesterday marked a very historic moment for me personally. Yesterday at approximately 1:30pm Pacific time, OMGN was relaunched. The new launch is known as OMGN4.

This has been a long time coming. OMGN’s eventual relaunch is the reason that I haven’t been posting on my blog much or doing much else in my spare time, especially since school let out for the summer. But fear not! OMGN has relaunched! The announcement of the relaunch is on the site.

Really, I’m just posting to finally say something here on my blog about all of this. This is big for me. This is the first full-on redesign of OMGN since I launched it back in 2002. It’s been almost 8 years and now the site will finally be running a worthy code and database structure. The design is simpler and less crowded than it’s been for years, and I’ll be exerting more control over the content to ensure higher quality standards are met. OMGN has sucked up a lot of my time lately, and now it can take a little less. But I’m not going to just rest on my laurels, no. I’ll still be working on it and making it better than before.

As  a matter of fact, I’m going to run off and play some Final Fantasy 13 because I’m planning on reviewing it for OMGN. Interestingly enough, I’ve already achieved quite a lot of what I wanted to do over this summertime: relaunch OMGN, finish some books I’ve ordered, play some games, do some side work. Ahh, summer.

Unfortunately, OMGN has languished over the last couple years. Really, it’s been in the doldrums since the summer of 2005 when we hit up E3.  That was a fun time, let me tell ya.

I’ve been working on a new database structure and recoding for OMGN over the last 4 months. I still have a long ways to go, but I’m hoping that OMGN4, which is what I’m calling the new system, will work very well. The new codebase is much better and more modern, the database design is also much better and streamlined. And the new design in the works is shaping up nicely so far.

I’m really at a crossroads for what to do with the existing content on the site. I keep flipping back and forth on whether or not I want to retain existing content when migrating to the new site. And if I do retain existing content, what to retain.

See, I’m transitioning OMGN to a more fully-fledged video game information website. No more exclusive focus on small-market games, more professional writing and content management systems, better design, etc. A lot of the stuff in OMGN that exists now is either outdated, not even real video game content or just plain bad. The URLs are all going to change and I’m stripping the new site of a lot of functionality that existed before.

I’m just not sure where to go. There’s some content on the site that I kinda want to retain, such as some of the newer reviews of games, like Shadow Complex. But there’s just so much junk in the old data and issues with old URLs to new URLs and functionality lost, I think the new site might just be brand-new and clean. I’m just not sure what I want to do yet.

Please, this time I want your feedback and ideas.

So I figured I’d give you a progress report on me in the MBA program as well as some other stuff. This’ll be relatively brief as I don’t have long to write.

I’m taking two classes, as I’ve mentioned before, stats and organizational behavior. Stats is pretty blah for me. I’m somewhat interested in the subject material, but the instructor is really tough to learn from. I don’t think his teaching style works too well for me, and a lot of other students in the class feel the same way. Nonetheless, I think I’ve currently got a high B in there, so as long as I can at least maintain momentum, I’ll pass. But I want an A, dammit.

I’ve been writing numerous case studies and doing group projects and craploads of reading for organizational behavior too. I actually forgot to print and bring the one due today with me, so I have to book it home to print it and bring it back to UNLV with me. Garr. But I’m enjoying the class nonetheless.

Finally, my meeting with the Career Services office ended up with them suggesting to me to work on OMGN for an hour a day. And I’ve been trying pretty hard to keep working on it. I posted my first review up on the site in a long time and I’ve been working on and off on the new database structure and codebase. I’m hoping to have it deployed sometime next summer, heh. It’s gonna take some time.

Well, gotta go!

Hey look, I’m still alive! Whodathunkit after so few updates over such a long time span. Sure looks bad compared to the times I was able to get in 3-4 posts a week, huh…

Basically I’ve been really busy. Obviously. I’ve had all kinds of things going on, such as work, studying for and taking the GMAT, applying for UNLV’s business school… I’ve also taken on a smaller side project with my friend Andrew, getting some of my creative PHP juices going to make a little extra cash on the side. More money is always nice.

I’ve also had a lot of extracurricular activity going on lately. I’ve had knee appointments, dentist appointments… Lunches with Julia (who finally joined Twitter). Indeedy.

Really, I’ve got something interesting to post about today. The other day a good buddy of mine told me that Laura looks really hot now. Well, she does. She always has been hot to me. But he was mostly referencing her weight loss, which now stands somewhere over 20. I think closer to 25 pounds, but I’m not really sure.

This got me to thinking about how awful men have it when their ladies start losing weight… And before I proceed yes, I know I’m leaving out anything besides heterosexual relationships, but it’s just easier to talk about it this way and it’s a classic example. But yes, men really have it awful.

What the hell is a man to say when his woman is losing weight? It’s a catch-22. There isn’t anything you can say that will be 100% solid.

You’re hotter than before. The response to this is “What, was I not hot enough before? Was I not good enough for you?” Whoops.

You look just as great as before. The response: “None of this weight loss has made any effect? I’m still dumpy?!”

You’ve always been hot to me. The response… Well, I can’t think of a specific response to this, but it could be perceived that you never tell the truth about your spouse’s attraction level. But I think this is the best response out of the three.

So basically, all I’ve been saying to Laura this whole time is yes, she’s hot. Her weight loss does look good but it’s for her, not me. I’ve always been happy with her however she wants to be and am not dissatisfied. Now if I could just figure out what the hell to say…

Oh, on a side note. My weight loss hit a big plateau at about the 190-192 range for over a month, but I believe I’ve finally broken through that barrier because I’ve finally ducked under 190. Hopefully I’ll be posting about my next milestone, 185, here very soon.

I do plan on posting about a variety of subjects soon, so here’s a list that will hopefully keep me on track:

• San Francisco
• Chase Auto Finance issues
• MIT Sloan??
• Perceptions of programming
• Deconstructing arguments & conversation
• Computer building

My skills as a developer have come a long way in the two years I’ve been at my current job. Actually, I’ve been here since March 12th, 2007, so it’s just over 2 years.

When I got here, I thought I knew a lot about PHP. I was kinda wrong. I mean, I was a good programmer, at least I think I still am. But I just wasn’t very awesome at PHP. I’ve grown a lot since then and my style has changed greatly. Let me count the ways.

1. I’ve started doing object-oriented programming. Well, in this day and age, you need to be able to do this. I only worked with PHP 4 before getting here, since I was on shared hosting and all they offered was 4. They only offered 4 at my previous job, too. So now on PHP 5, I do actual object-oriented programming.
2. I’ve stopped using private variables all the time. This was early-on in my OOP that I used private variables a lot. Really, you don’t need private vars much.
3. My commenting is better. I actually comment things now.
4. My formatting is better. I’ve started using more industry-standard stylings, like uppercase TRUE/FALSE and other things you’ll find a lot in the open-source community. Camel-casing has also made a comeback in my programming.
5. I’m better at performance-driven applications. I wouldn’t always pay attention to things like running a function in a loop counter. Now I rarely ever make that mistake.
6. I’m getting better at things like unit tests. I still don’t like writing them, but I’m getting better at them.
7. I don’t use constants all over the place anymore. I used to use them a lot, but now I try to use things like config files and storing things in a registry, as opposed to a definition that can never be changed.
8. I’m learning more and more of Zend Framework. It’s a good software suite, too bad I didn’t learn more of it earlier.

Just a smattering of how I’m better. Nothing spectacular. Just happy to say I’ve progressed.

So I have Twitter loaded up in a tab often and have found that their website alone doesn’t satisfy the features I’m looking for. I know there are Windows applications that plugin to Twitter and all that, but…

I’ve decided to slake my small thirst for non-work PHP development and I’m going to develop a utility for myself. If it turns out to be good, then I’ll allow other people to use it.