We did a little bit of clean-up work on a few of the databases connected to JoeUser today.  Here at the office, it feels like the site has been snappier in pulling up articles. How does the site speed "feel" to everyone else now?  Were you even noticing any slowness the past few weeks?

The new forums went up the other week, and the reaction has been decidedly mixed, with some very vocal opponents to the new format. The goal with the forum upgrade was to have a consistent forum system across all the Stardock sites that was: 1. Faster (the old system was very slow under load) 2. More Stable (Fewer server application errors are a good thing!) 3. More closely resembled the "standard" sort of forum layout you see elsewhere on the 'net, making it easier for new people to ge...

The forum updates that have been going on across the rest of the Stardock websites have finally made their way to JoeUser.  There are a whole slew of changes that hopefully I'll get to describing and documenting later for everyone, but one of the most immediate differences people have already noticed are the Forum Avatars; the little pictures that appear next to people's names on forum posts. We've had avatars for a while, as anyone who had one before would have it show on any comment they ...

Is the list on the right actually updating?

The day approaches... soon now I will load up all my worldly goods into a truck, and then set out for the mysterious land of... Michigan! But before that day arrives, a great number of things must be done… oh a great number indeed! If you've never had the pleasure of moving across state lines, by yourself, then you are missing out on a unique exercise in misery and frustration that can only be somewhat approximated in written description. However, I shall do my best to communicate to yo...

Welcome back LEGO Fans! After a 6 month haitus, I'm back with my LEGO Star Destroyer Photo Blog. When last you read about my progress in October, I had completed the base frame, stand, and one quarter of the hull plating. Well, after months and months of delay I sat down again with all the bags of plastic pieces strewn about me and set to work. I only intended to get maybe the rest of the hull plating done and then save the rest for another weekend, but well... that didn't exactly work. ...

WARNING: Self-congratulatory fluff type of article follows. If you don't like anniversary/milestone posts, please go elsewhere! Two years ago today, I posted my first article here on JU. It was just days after I had graduated from college and was setting out on the grand adventure called life. In the article I set myself 5 goals for the following year. Get a job, become financially indepenent, become more social, meet a nice girl, and start to figure out what I want to be doing in lif...

Yesterday the news broke that Firefox 3 final would be released to the public on Tuesday, June 17th

With every new major version of Firefox, changes are made to how the browser renders pages, in an effort to get closer and closer to published standards.  Unfortunately, since the major web browsers all render pages slightly differently, custom stylesheets have to be built for each specific browser we support.  Since Firefox 3 will render pages differently than Firefox 2 did, this means we will need to update our stylesheets so Firefox 3 works properly with our web sites.

At the moment, we do not officially support Firefox 3 on WinCustomize, JoeUser, ImpulseDriven.net or any of our forums.  We will be adding support for the new browser version as quickly as we can, but we do not anticipate that we will be ready by the browser launch on Tuesday the 17th (we're kind of busy with something else right now).  If you use Firefox 3 with our sites in the meantime, you will still be able to use the sites well enough, there will just be formatting glitches where elements may not display properly on the page.  We know about these, we are working on them.

As we know about these issues, please do not post threads to the forums complaining that the site is broken with Firefox 3.  This post is everyone's official notice that we're aware of the problems and will be working to fix them.  Any posts complaining of issues will be moved to the Site Issues forum and locked.  Please do not clutter the forums with such posts.

Currently, we do not have a definite ETA on when Firefox 3 will be fully supported on our sites. In the meantime, please continue to use IE6, IE7 or Firefox 2 to browse our sites.

This morning, as I updated myself on the happenings of my friends via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, one of my friends posed an interesting question…

“My worry about this brave new world of social networking is that it may alienate us from “real life” friends, especially ones not on the grid.  So, great, I feel so connected to people I’ve never met, but what about family and friends I’ve known for years?  Do they get short shrift?”

I actually think the real danger here is something related, but much more basic; the strong sense of familiarity and safety we develop with people we, in fact, do not actually know.  It’s just so easy to share our lives with the world with a few clicks of the mouse and taps at the keyboard.  We post our innermost thoughts once and let everyone read them.  We follow the lives of our friends and acquaintances, and even complete strangers with ease.

Last night we recorded the third episode of the WinCustomize SkinCast.  From what Spencer is telling me as he edits this one, it's the best so far and I think we're finally starting to get a hang for recording these.  Technical issues aside, it took about 45min of recording to get the 20min of quality content.  Most of the 20min cut out is just us laughing anyway.

So with three episodes in the can, here are some random thoughts on creating a podcast for a community site:

1. When nothing is going on of note, it's really hard to come up with a topic
   The idea behind the SkinCast is to react to what's happening in the community.  Sometimes though there isn't much happening.  For episode 2, as an example, there were very few new skins that week.  It was a lot of logons and bootskins, but no much that we could get a discussion going about.  The forums were also particularly quiet that week so there wasn't even a topic of controversy to go over. 

Technology, Entertainment, Design.  TED is an annual conference that has been going on since 1984 where visionaries from all over the world come together to present "Ideas worth spreading"  Originally a conference focused just on those three disciplines, it has since expanded to cover many disciplines.

The annual conference is invitation-only, so for years the only way you would get a piece of what was presented was if you were part of the elite group, or if you knew someone who went and gave you a recap later.  This keeps the conference very controlled, and keeps a feeling of intimacy and adds a bit of weight to what is discussed.  This isn't some massive industry event with press and bloggers crawling all over it.  This is about important people sharing important ideas.

1: //This is a test of the codeblock plugin for Windows Live Writer 2: using System; 3: public class HelloWorld 4: { 5: public static void Main() 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine( "Hello World!" ); 8: } 9: } This is just a quick test of the " Insert Code " Plug-in for Windows Live Writer.

JoeUser Tags: blogging , misc , politics Do the tags from LW work?

My ePenis is huge...  I just got this new PC on Tuesday.  Complete with a 24" widescreen monitor and an nVidia GeForce 8800GT video card.

Alright, I missed out on last week's fidget, but I blame that mostly on the fact that I took Friday off and didn't touch my PC pretty much the entire weekend.  It was a much needed and helpful bit of rest.  I gamed, I slept, I watched a lot of TV and generally did nothing productive.  But now I'm back again with a weekly wrap-up of what I've been up to and my random thoughts. What I've Been Playing Burnout Paradise I finally got the Burnout License, and h...