Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by soggie

Who's the game developer here?

soggie — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 02:41:56 +0800

I remember there was one dude in this forum that won top 10 in some international flash game development competition. Who's it again? Anybody here remember him?

Sorry if this is out of topic!

htaccess mod_rewrite rules

soggie — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:03:07 +0800

Ok here's what I've been trying to achieve:

Use Case 1: redirect all directory access (subdirectories also) to ./index.php
Use Case 2: redirect all direct PHP file access (all files, even in subdirectories) to ./index.php
Use Case 3: allow direct access of all other files (jpg,png,css,js, etc)

CODE

Options -Indexes
Options +FollowSymLinks
DirectoryIndex index.php

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !\.(png|gif|ico|css|js|info|install|php|html)

RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|images|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [NC,L]
</IfModule>

In the above example, it successfully show the front page (http://localhost/myproject/) with everything loaded. It also redirected an attempted directory access (http://localhost/myproject/library/) to index.php.

HOWEVER, it failed to redirect http://localhost/myproject/story/ to index.php when there is no "story" folder in my webapp.

I can only satisfy max two of the above mentioned 3 conditions and unable to satisfy them all. Is there a way to fulfill all these 3 conditions?

[addedon]June 11, 2009, 2:09 am[/addedon]Nevermind. I found the fix.

CODE

Options -Indexes
Options +FollowSymLinks
DirectoryIndex index.php

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR]
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !\.(png|gif|ico|css|js|info|install)

RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|images|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [NC,L]
</IfModule>

[WTS] Genesis Culture: Splintered Core T-shirts

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 07:30:00 +0800

[WTS] Genesis Culture: Splintered Core T-shirts

soggie — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:02:07 +0800

Genesis Culture Splintered Core Series

Designer Details

Azarimy
Azarimy is a LYN member and is a lecturer of architecture, currently doing his PhD in London. He draws lots of comics and stuff in his spare time and the splintered core series is his first debut in Genesis Culture, a platform for independent designers.

PRICE:

RM50 per piece (+RM5-15 for shipping charges if not COD) - Stock has arrived

Clothing Details
Cuttings

CODE

Male Cutting:
Half Chest Length Half Waist Length Shirt Length
M 17" 17" 26"
L 18" 18" 27"
XL 19" 19" 28"
XXL 20" 20" 29"

Ladies Cutting:
Half Chest Length Half Waist Length Shirt Length
XS 14" 13" 21"
S 15" 14" 22"
M 16" 15" 23"

Instructions:

PM me and give me your CONTACT NUMBER, E-MAIL, DESIGN CODE (e.g. GC-1101...), and QUANTITY.
I will SMS you my bank account number.
Bank in RM50 to me and I will issue you a RECEIPT to you e-mail.
When the stock arrives, you will be notified and you can arrange a COD with us.
Or, if you cannot COD, we can send it to you via poslaju. You will bear the shipping charges though.

PICTURES

GC-1301 - Charge

GC-1302 - Trail & Error

GC-1303 - Guns & Kisses

GC-1304 - Nuke

GC-1305 - Big Guns UPDATED!

----------------------------------

Sales!!!

1. Vor - GC-1304 - Male M - (Paid, Received) (D)
2. benl40 - GC-1205 - Male L - (Paid, Received) (Not in this list ) (D)
3. benl40 - GC-1303 - Male L - (Paid, Received) (D)
4. benl40 - GC-1305 - Male L - (Paid, Received)
5. XED - GC-1302 - Male M - (Paid, Received)
6. XED - GC-1305 - Male M - (Paid, Received)
7. Kheez - GC-1303 - Male XXL - (Paid, Received)
8. Corpload - GC-1301 - Male XL - (Paid, Posted)
9. azim61 - GC-1303 - Male M - (Paid, Posted)
10. sumutaO - GC-1301 - (Paid, Courier by 3rd June 2009)
11. sumutaO - GC-1304 - (Paid, Courier by 3rd June 2009)
12. ricky300 - GC-105 - Male XL - (Paid, Posted)
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How to write a business proposal

soggie — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:51:49 +0800

Hi guys,

I know this is a noob question, but what should I include in my business proposal to an investor?

The objective is to propose stock options of my company to the investor, probably aiming for 500k to 1mil as growth funding.

The question I am really asking is, what should I focus in on my business proposal? I have never written a proposal before and know nuts about doing ROI, breakeven and sales projections. Are these even necessary in a business proposal?

I currently have these put into my proposal but kind of got stuck:

1. executive summary
2. business description
3. SWOT analysis
4. marketing plan (target audiences, prospective customers, marketing campaigns... etc)
5. operations description (team, biography, strategic alliances, etc)
6. financial projections (ROI, breakeven, revenue projections, etc)

Is this complete?

Splintered Core Series T-shirts... comment away!

soggie — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:49:33 +0800

Hi guys, got more stuff for ya'all.

View and comment away! This one is done by one of our own LYN members - Azarimy!

CHARGEEEE!!!

Trial-and-error? Not on the battlefield!

Bullets and Glossy Lips... equally fatal?

Big a$$ Viceron... with wrong printing. Had to send back to printer.

KLCC Nuked

----------

ON-SALE NOW:

http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1013666

Sinned Series tees

soggie — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:07:07 +0800

It's Dennis' turn now. Check them out and comment away!

GC-1201 - Twisted Womb

GC-1202 - Machine Inside

GC-1203 - Guitar Teddy

GC-1204 - Hollow Man

GC-1205 - Carousel

[BULK] Pre-order Dreamwalker Series

soggie — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:43:38 +0800

Genesis Culture Dreamwalker Series

Designer Details

Daryl
Daryl's an animation producer and has an avid interest in drawing zombies. A zombie apocalypse is probably his vision of salvation for the human kind. Eating brains and moaning all day long... can life get any better?

PRE-ORDER PRICE:

RM40 - Stock arriving on 28th Mar 2009, collect in KL Design Week

FIRST 50 ORDERS ONLY!!!

NOTE: Colors is still under revision. However, you are free to change to another design if you wish to, or get a 100% refund back.

Clothing Details
Cuttings

CODE

Instructions:

PM me and give me your CONTACT NUMBER, E-MAIL, DESIGN CODE (e.g. GC-1101...), and QUANTITY.
I will SMS you my bank account number.
Bank in RM35 to me and I will issue you a RECEIPT to you e-mail.
When the stock arrives, you will be notified and you can arrange a COD with us.
Or you can take your receipt and collect it in KL Design Week, which we have a booth there

PICTURES

GC-1101 - Brain Food

GC-1102 - Heartless

GC-1103 - Sleeping With The Fishes

GC-1104 - Blind Love

GC-1105 - Eternal Love

----------------------------------

Pre-order List

1. LazyChildren - GC-1102 (Male M) - Paid
2. LazyChildren - GC-1101 (Female S) - Paid
3. Vor - GC-1102 (Male L) - Paid
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Dreamwalker Tees

soggie — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:11:38 +0800

Guys, our designer Daryl has launched his first 5 designs. Let me know what you guys think of them!

GC-1101 - Brain Food

GC-1102 - Heartless

GC-1103 - Sleeping With The Fishes

GC-1104 - Blind Love

GC-1105 - Eternal Love

Static vs Instantiation PHP

soggie — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:48:52 +0800

Ok lemme give you two classes:

CODE

class Logger
{
public function log( $string ) { ... }
}

class LoggerStatic
{
public static function log( $string ) { ... }
}

// Example A: Using Logger
$logger = new Logger( );
$logger->log( 'test' );

// Example B: Using LoggerStatic
LoggerStatic::log( 'test ' );

Which one is better in terms of memory usage and performance?

Finding a photographer

soggie — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 01:08:28 +0800

Hi Guys, I'm a newbie in the photography sub-forums so I don't know what to expect here.

Hopefully can get some advise from you all.

Firstly, the background. We are going into KL Design Week by the end of March, and we need to do some last minute photo-shoots. Meaning this friday. We've already got the models and venue, but now are fidgeting for a photographer.

We tried doing our own photoshoots last time with a DSLR and the results were... how to say... horrible. Well that's what happen when you decide to throw in an amateur monkey (aka me) with an expensive camera, so this time we're hoping that more experienced people would do it instead.

I know I might be asking too much, but well here goes... anybody here willing to help us out? Thanks in advance.

htaccess rewrite rules

soggie — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:58:39 +0800

Hi guys, this is my htaccess:

CODE

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ projects/ib/index.php/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

<IfModule !mod_rewrite.c>
ErrorDocument 404 projects/ib/index.php
</IfModule>

Basically, I want to route everything to index.php, which is located in my project folder. Right now as you can see it, it routes it to the folder projects/ib/, but what if in the future I change the folder name? Like to projects2/ib or something like that? Is there a way to put a variable in the htaccess file to use a server constant like {BASE_PATH}/index.php or something like that? I just need a constant that refers to the directory where the htaccess file resides in.

Thanks!

Any sprite artists in here?

soggie — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:35:34 +0800

I'm experimenting with building a simple game engine and the only thing I don't have is artistic skills in sprite drawing. Any of you here good in making 2D sprites?

You are a Taliban if...

soggie — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 05:36:06 +0800

1. You refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to beer.

2. You own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launcher, but you can't afford shoes.

3. You have more wives than teeth.

4. You wipe your butt with your bare left hand, but consider bacon 'unclean.'

5. You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide.

6. You can't think of anyone you HAVEN'T declared Jihad against.

7. You consider television dangerous, but routinely carry explosives in your clothing.

8. You were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than setting off roadside bombs.

9. You've often uttered the phrase, 'I love what you've done with your cave.'

10. You have nothing against women and think every man should own at least one.

11. You bathe at least monthly whether necessary or not.

12. You've ever had a crush on your neighbor's goat.

LYN Art & Design Gathering

soggie — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:12:26 +0800

Yo dudes, how about we meet up on 4th Jan 2009 in Midvalley?

Get to know each other in person and chill out.

Venue: Midvalley
Time: Evening 8pm - 10pm
Date: 4th Jan 2009 (Sunday)

Participants:
1) soggie
2)
3)
4)
5)

-----------------
PM me if you want to join up, along with your contact number so that I can contact you and give you updates on the gathering. It'll be fun

Designer Tees - sharing the journey

soggie — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:56:40 +0800

Hi guys, after months of hard work we've finally pushed out the first 5 designs of the curve series by Parkland, one of our affiliated designers. I'm selling them in the Garage Sales thread, but I'd like to get the opinion of you guys in here. Do comment away and let me know what you think.

================================

Boy, this is a long journey to get to this point. I'd love to share the process of Tee printing with you guys so that aspiring tee designers here can get more knowledge in this industry.

I'll start with the "How to get started part".

Start with the right mind

I've tried to start a T-shirt company with another partner before, and that venture failed horrendously. After hitting so many walls, I think it's only fair that I share my journey over here.

We started out with big dreams. Looking at brands like Mastermind, Bape and Baby Milo, we wanted to launch designs and ride on the reputation of some popular underground DJs that my partner happened to know. So we got out and decided to sell these shirts at crazy prices, and hype it out.

The only problem is, we didn't have any designers. Nor could we trust each other's design sense. So we came to LYN and tried to recruit designers. We found some good ones, and got a couple of designs, and everything seemed okay. Then we found a supplier who's willing to print for us and then we gave them the green light.

Now comes the tangles and thorns. My partner was obsessed with making money. Maybe it's a good thing in business, but because I had a day job at that time I couldn't commit as much as I wanted into this project. So the talk of profit sharing started at 50-50 and went all the way down to 30-70 (with him taking the bigger slice), and naturally, I wasn't very thrilled with the prospect.

Next came the problems of supplies. We wanted to print only 100 pieces, but the t-shirt tags had to be purchased in quantities of thousands. Anything less than 2000 pieces of tags, nobody would want to commit to it. And then the supplier was unreliable. Our first batch was late for 1 week and the next was even worse.

In the end, things got so bad that we split ways.

The lesson? FOCUS ON THE SUPPORT INFRASTRUCTURE FIRST.

What I mean is, before you even think of making money or anything, you gotta make sure you have solid contacts with your suppliers. Make sure they are reliable before you go big. And don't forget that your DESIGNS count as part of the infrastructure too. Without a good design, you won't be selling AT ALL.

In hindsight, I realized that having CONNECTIONS is actually not that great as it seems. Yeah, my partner knew a lot of celebrities. But so what? He claimed that he could make it work but then by the end of the day no matter how "close" he is with these people, you can't be sure that they will help you out with hyping up your product for free. After all, it's still a money-talk world.

For aspiring entrepreuners, I would say you need to establish your foundations before you even try to start selling. I joined up with other friends and started Genesis Culture, and we had a solid foundation to build on. We joint-ventured with an apparel factory that already had a solid clientele and controlled the manufacturing supply chain. This way, we had more flexibility in planning our product launches and deadlines, and thanks to the supreme reliability of our supplier chain we had the confidence to tell our designers EXACTLY how long their designs would take to go from digital copy to shirt sample to final stock.

So, having a solid base, we started approaching our designers. We could give them all sorts of crazy promises and the great thing was, we could actually DELIVER them. Again, thanks to having a solid foundation. We could even align them and tell them exactly when their design would be sold, which to the designers was a great thing.

The journey so far

I can't emphasize enough - build up your support infrastructure first before you even attempt to do anything. It'll make life easier, trust me.

Now once you have your foundations, the next crucial thing is team work. Team work team work team work. If you talk to your partners like they're a bunch of cash ponies that you can ride to your financial success, then forget about it. The reason why everything was so smooth in our operations was because the three of us were willing to work together.

For example, we screwed up because of miscommunication. And it wasn't a simple screwup. The screw-up cost us a massive loss of RM1600+. In a startup company, that's a HELL lot of money gone down the drain. So what did we do? The first thing we did was to correct the situation. Salvage the situation. Planned and re-planned and calculated the cash flow again, taking into account the losses. And we eventually developed a solution that negated the losses. Then only did we lecture the people responsible on their mistake and they took it like a man.

It's team work like this that gets you places, and it's the trust that you develop with your partners that makes the challenging life in business much easier. It's good to know that you have people watching your back, and to solve problems first instead of wallowing in emotional tantrums that does nothing more than hurt everybody.

Questions?

I would love to share more, and would gladly answer your questions here if you have any. In the mean time, enjoy the results of our sweat and blood

==========================

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Design Intepretation

soggie — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:25:39 +0800

Check this one out:

Tell me what you interpreted from the design itself, the meaning behind it, or no meaning at all.

Fire away!

PS: Comments are welcomed. Kevlar worn and well prepared for flak.

Ripped off by web designer

soggie — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 04:38:48 +0800

Ok here's what happened. I engaged a web designing company to help us flesh out an e-comm website, which costs RM3300. In the invoice it states that we have to pay 30% of the cost in the beginning, and the job involves creating an e-comm website along with the payment gateway and I had told them to use Drupal + Ubercart and just give me the template along with the payment gateway integration so as to save time.

Now that was at late October. The deal was to get the website up in 2 weeks. The contact person told me that they'll get a draft design out by 4th Nov, and a prototype by 11th Nov, and by 13-14th Nov there was no news. So I sent a couple of e-mails before getting a reply, and they said they were busy with something else and can only commit to it after the exhibition. So okay fine.

By last week, they still had not came back with anything, and 3 days ago I finally had it. I had my partner call up the company and said we want to cancel, since the progress is so slow. So I wanted to know, if I were to cancel, how much would I need to pay and what would I be getting.

Now the fun begins.

They said we need to pay that RM 825, but didn't mention what we'd be getting. So we pressed the issue, and they said that we had to pay that money because some "groundwork" had started on the website. They showed us a link, which showed only a vanilla Drupal installation with Ubercart installed, but zero theme work done.

I was, of course, pissed. Big time. Let's backtrack a bit - the work they are charging us is (1) the site map, which is just a bunch of framework boxes drawn from Microsoft Paint or Word, and (2) a standard installation of Drupal + Ubercart which can be done by anybody in under half an hour.

All that for RM 825?

I quote the mail:

QUOTE

hi. thanks for calling us ytd. we understand the situation now.

for us, the 30% deposit we receive will pay the programmer the price we
deal
with him, besides that, its also to cover the service fees since we start
doing the site map design accordingly to what we have discussed during our
first meeting.

the programmer will get 30% of what the service charge we n him agreeded
before start the web.

hope you and your team understand that, the money you pay isnt 100% for web
site, but post-production as well.

This is what set me off. I don't really care what is their arrangement with their programmer. I pay RM 825, and I'm getting practically nothing at all.

Not to mention the delays.

Is this considered a rip-off? What do you guys think? I'm really pissed off now to think of a good way to handle this.

MySQL query problem

soggie — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:41:01 +0800

Hi guys, I have two tables:

STORIES
- id
- title
- content
- status (0 = inactive, 1 = active)

COMMENTS
- id
- storyid (foreign key to stories ID)
- content
- status (0 = disabled, 1 = active)

You see, for each story, there might be x number of comments. What I want is, in one single query, get the TOTAL comments for each story (story and comments are a one to many relation).

My current code looks like this:

CODE

SELECT s.*, SUM(co.status)
FROM stories AS s
LEFT JOIN comments AS co ON co.storyid = s.id
WHERE s.status > 0
GROUP BY(co.stodyid)

There are 2 problems here.

1) For some reasons, when the comment table is empty, the query only returns 1 row of data
2) The SUM returns NULL when there are no comments instead of 0

Anybody here knows what's wrong?

Performance Evaluations

soggie — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 06:45:48 +0800

For everyone who has ever had or given an evaluation - just remember, It could have been worse. These are actual quotes taken from employee performance evaluations.

1. "Since my last report, this employee has reached rock-bottom and has started to dig."

2. "I would not allow this employee to breed."

3. "This employee is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definite won't be."

4. "Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap."

5. "When she opens her mouth, it seems that it is only to change feet."

6. "This young lady has delusions of adequacy."

7. "He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them."

8. "This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."

9. "This employee should go far, and the sooner he starts, the better."

10. "Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic thingy to hold it all together."

11. "A gross ignoramus -- 144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus."

12. "He doesn't have ulcers, but he's a carrier."

13. "He's been working with glue too much."

14. "He would argue with a signpost."

15. "He brings a lot of joy whenever he leaves the room."

16. "When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell."

17. "If you see two people talking and one looks bored, he's the other one."

18. "A photographic memory but with the lens cover glued on."

19. "A prime candidate for natural de-selection."

20. "Donated his brain to science before he was done using it."

21. "Gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn't coming."

22. "He's got two brains cells, one is lost and the other is out looking for it."

23. "If he were any more stupid, he'd have to be watered twice a week."

24. "If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you'd get change."

25. "If you stand close enough to him, you can he! ar the ocean."

26. "It's hard to believe he beat out 1,000,000 other sperm."

27. "One neuron short of a synapse."

28. "Some drink from the fountain of knowledge; he only gargled."

29. "Takes him 2 hours to watch '60-Minutes'."

30. "The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead."