• Ruby
• Sinatra Web Framework
• Datamapper ORM
• Haml

I’m currently filled with excitement similar to the anxiousness I had during my thesis days, just without the worries and deadlines. I’m already created the models, and I’m looking forward on the creation of my administrator panel for ChanLu. Doing something without pressure does feel better, but doing something with pressure and finishing it with flying colors feels more satisfying. So, I’m placing a deadline on myself, the application must be 90% working after two weeks, or better yet – earlier. I’ll be documenting my progress at least once per three days.

After the meeting, we had a wallpaper Challenge, this is the sixth challenge and I do think this wallpaper looks decent. Our topic was “New Orleans”, as in the city located in Louisiana. I have no idea about New Orleans, so I ended up using a picture of One Shell Square – the tallest building in both the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana. Then, I edited the whole thing to be a haunted building. I do like how the end result looks like, but I’m sad that I haven’t put into much thought on creating a wallpaper of New Orleans, but it’s understandable since we’re only given five minutes to think of a concept, and an hour to create the whole wallpaper.

About the Project Collective, I have here more information on what we’ve been up to.

In the creation of this website, we are following a certain process from Todd R. Warfel:

• User Research – (Designers)
• Requirements Definition
• Content Analysis
• Business Objectives
• User Goals
• Technology Selection
• Card Sorting
• Site Map
• Process / Task Diagrams
• Wireframes
• Prototype
• Usability Testing
• Visual Comps (Mockups)
• Style Guide
• HTML CSS Templates
• Testing
• Launch

I crossed out the areas that have been completed. The bold ones are what we’re currently doing. There are three tasks for these processes: Data Requirements, Experience Requirements and “Persona” of the site. I’m doing the Data Requirements and I assigned (because I’m the leader) the other two tasks to my officemates.

Here’s what I’ve come up for the Data Requirements:

One of my projects is to work on the ChanLu Redesign mock-ups and start recoding of the web application. But… what happened instead? Ok, I won’t be ending up in excuses. I have been watching Naruto Shippuden for about more than a week now. I’m really behind the episodes since during my thesis, even though I wanted to watch the series, I didn’t. I just had the time now and my officemates are updated to the latest manga chapter. You know how horrible the feeling is when your friends are talking about what’s happening on the newly released chapter, and you have no clue about it. So now I’m about 3/4 of all the episodes of Naruto Shippuden. I may eventually read the manga, but I’ll manage my time better.

About 2 weeks ago, my Ubuntu was upgraded from Hardy Heron to Jaunty Jackalope with the help of Wayne. We decided for a fresh install so all my settings and applications were gone. I reinstalled Songbird just now, and even VLC media player. so I may watch anime and movies in this operating system. Also my localhost is ready for the development of ChanLu, but I’m on the addicted mode of watching Naruto.

Also, I posted earlier about the “designer’s website” at my workplace. We now have a deadline on the end of July. So we must hurry up on the development process of this website and hopefully have more time working on ChanLu besides the other projects I’m working on. But I’ll try on making some freebies to make up for the delay on the development of ChanLu.

I drew a rough sketch of a woman which is supposed to be “possessed”. If I don’t feel lazy this sketch maybe cleaned and colored in using my favorite designing software, Photoshop. I entitled this sketch as “Possessed”, since my brother said that the character looks “sinasaniban (Tagalog word for possessed)” when I showed him the drawing. I’m actually happy about his comment about the drawing, since I was aiming for that emotion/image from the very beginning. Though this character has no clothes, this is not Hentai or porn. I haven’t placed any details yet since its a rough sketch, but it may belong to the “artistic nude” genre/category. The artwork style doesn’t look like anime/manga, it looks rather western and semi-real, but I like it more that way, since it adds up more to the “possessed” look. I don’t think it would look nice having a cute faced anime girl doing that pose instead.

I’m posting this sketch so as you readers may comment if this looks awkward or if there is something wrong with the anatomy of the body that I can’t tell. I did base some parts of the pose at Posemaniacs then improvised to have the certain look and feel that I want. So please do feel free to comment or suggest anything to make this sketch better.

Also, besides drawing I have been thinking of redesigning ChanLu, though I assigned the task of creating the logo to Rogelio. With the redesign I’m also planning to recode ChanLu from scratch at the same time.

I will be using the Ruby programming language (thank goodness the Dreamhost supports it) using Sinatra web framework this time, with an additional ruby gem called Haml, it would help me speed up on developing ChanLu and the template codes would look so pretty and makes it more fun to code! Wayne helped me on installing the ruby gems on Dreamhost. But I’m gonna install Datamapper myself, but I’ll ask for his help again if I encounter any problems.

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After downloading the Zip file, I started out looking at some files, and replaced my config file with the new one, since there were some differences which I thought would be needed by the new version. After uploading the files, I immediately pointed my browser to /wp-admin/upgrade.php.

I was told that my database was old and needs to be upgraded, so I pressed the continue button. Then I was forwarded to install.php. I was shocked but I though that it was just reconfirming values about me and my site.

Then I was redirected to a page giving me the new password. Then when I logged in, my posts, pages, links, everything was gone. The problem was caused by me though, so I needed to find a way to retrieve my data back.

Then I started losing hope of ever getting my data back, losing interest in my blog site due to the incident, but I didn’t give up yet, I tried looking for backups. In my Dreamhost account, there is a backups user but unfortunately, the data backed-up only stays for about five days and all was gone. I was about to post something really really bad on my blog due to my data loss, though I remembered that in DreamHost, there is a “restore database” option. That was my last resort, when I accessed the DH mysql admin panel, I tried on the “restore database” option. At my luck that I was able to restore my database to the state it had 13 hours ago. I was able to restore my data. Thank goodness, then I uploaded the old version of the config file, and Tada! My blog is back!

I was so happy that Dreamhost has a Restore Database feature. If  it wasn’t for that, I would have deleted my blog and would wait for decades later, or maybe just months later to open a blog again.

The new WordPress Admin looks awesome that the last version. I can access all the pages in one click, unlike the past version that they were sub navigations under a tab. The Dashboard is now dashing! I love the part where I can organize the positioning of the the elements to what I feel is much more important to me. This version is definitely better and easier to use than WordPress 2.6 below.

WordPress Logo image from: Webs Wonder Design
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I was surprised when I logged into my email today, since I usually check using IMAP. The site colors suddenly changed to light blue, with a notification message stating that new themes are now available on Gmail. I really didn’t like the default set of theme on my mail, so I dropped by the themes section to change.

I was shocked to see that Gmail Themes doesn’t only feature themes with different shades of colors, but themes that look fun and modern like the Ninja theme (that’s what I’m using now). Their themes also have some cool tricks, like changing the way they look based on the time, so they ask for the user’s Location to synchronize the time. Now, I’m excited to see how my theme would look later.

Themes are not available with Google Apps, though I’m hoping that  Google will include themes to the Google Apps, for my ChanLu and PixelMai mail to look more fun.

Now my blog finally exists. Hopefully this website will be stable and last for a long time. I tend to write a lot, even useless junk, so please bear with me.

For this site, the title is not definite yet. I may change it anytime, or I may merge this site with my future portfolio (a project for next year).