Obsolescence
===========

I'm fairly sure that deviantGALLERY will no longer work, as the new default deviantART gallery has changed somewhat, and it also now provides all the features that dG did, without the hassle of installing Greasemonkey etc.

I say "fairly sure" because I don't actually have Greasemonkey installed at the moment - I got a laptop a while ago and I've been trying (and failing) to have somethign resembling a "lean, mean, browsing machine." So why I'm using firefox at all is a very good question. And I haven't got my javascript-child installed either. you might call me a blood-traitor. Or you might not, because I'd probably get upset.


Shadows
=======

I've always been somewhat in awe of the deviantART shadow generator, sh.deviantart.com. It doesn't get much limelight, but it's a pretty cool tool. If you've never played with it, you ought to have done.

Now. I was going to write a brief synopsis with illustrated examples, but it seems that one is no longer allowed to play with the URL's to generate your own shadows. Which is rather a shame, IMHO. Whether this is just a momentary glitch, or a permanent change, only time will tell. (It may of course be a result of me playing with it the last week!)

In its heyday, you could make multi-coloured shadows. Which was always a source of amusement. By manupulating the parameters, you could get big shadows, flat shadows and everything in between. It's a real shame that this resource may be lost to us entirely.

After my little synopsis, I was going to give a history of my attempts to replicate this cool little program, including such excitement as "libpng" and "Segmentation Fault. Core Dumped." however I've sort of run out of steam now so I'll skip to the ending where I saw the light and managed to implement it last week using PHP (in a way that doesn't require humongous arrays, so it doesn't take minutes to run) rather than stumbling about with C.

I've put up a demo, the same examples should work. The URL syntax is almost the same, thought th efirst numerical parameter is 3 x the dA equivalent, as I couldn't see the reason for using floating points in the URL for that parameter, and you put "sh.png" on the end instead of "null.png" or "logo.png" as I didn't implement the logo feature.

If anyone is quite as excited by this as I am, I'll post the PHP source, and some JavaScript that will let you use it.

Otherwise, Happy Holidays to anyone and everyone - here's a festive shadow to get you in the mood!

Update: The coloured [link] shadows are working again now (yay!)

Microsoft releases Windows Defender while rivals bicker ComputerWorld, Oct 06

Old news, I know, but it raises an interesting point:

I think it's reasonable to take issue with the fact that Microsoft supplies a substandard operating system, and then supplements it with an anti virus program.

But it's quite absurd that Symantec et al. are complaining at Microsoft for not releasing their code so that they can make proper anti virus programs.

I immediately thought that surely the best solution would be for Microsoft to program the virus protection into the kernel, surely this would make windows inherently more secure out-of-the box.

But would the antivirus crowd then complain about this? If the in-kernel AV was done well, it could surely put them out of business, or at least severely dent their profits.

So as I reach the end, this is more of a legal rant than one about Microsoft. If, hypothetically, MS decided to implement the Linux kernel into the next version of windows (pigs might fly), and suddenly it was far more secure and less prone to virii, would Symantec sue Microsoft under anticompetition laws?

More importantly, would they win?

So, it's one thing to say MS is bad for selling bad software then providing add-on fixes, but what about basing your entire business model on another company's deficiencies, and then taking them to court when they eventually shape up their act?

Yes. I know this isn't that relevant to the quoted article, nor is my argument based on factual sources. But it's an interesting thought, don't you think?

Ok, after the long wait, I managed to knock together a dAv5/dG sort of friendly get-together thing. As in, I don't think its as flash as it was before, but meh. It works. I'll update it to make it nicer later

Go update it here!

• Hopefully nice menus like the dA menu and friends menu on the toolbar, instead of icky dropdowns.


• Some kind of pagination indicator thingy.


• Integration with dA search, at least some of the time.


• Other stuff... maybe. Depends on how dAv5 progresses I suppose.

Anyway enjoy



Turns out the auto-updater won't work between v0.7 and v0.8 so everyone will need to go to my site and download it manually of their own accord. (Damn)

There was never any love lost in this relationship, but the two have finally been unceremoniously thrown together in such a was as to cause as little damage as possible.

deviantGALLERY 0.6 solves any problems you may or may not have been having, and blasts its way into the future like a ... cannon.

Download it now!




If you are still using Firefox 1.0.x, you will either have to upgrade or put up with the nag message.

Poor you.




In unrelated news, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong; and greasemonkey JS errors now return the correct line number. Whether the benefit of one outweighs the annoyance caused by the other, I don't know... I'll keep you posted.

forumJUMP is a Greasemonkey script for Mozilla Firefox. It re-creates the "jumpbox" that was around in deviantART v2, that you could use to quickly navigate between forums.

And that's about it.

You can get hold of it right here.




Yes, you can! Although it's pretty much finished, I am not entirely sure that I managed to find all the forums (official, non personal ones). So if you know/find any more, let me know and I'll put it in.

Also, I'm not 100% happy with where I positioned the jump boxes, so I would value your input in that respect.