Imphenzia

Yesterday it was thursday and I was stuck doing some work but also racing the 'thursday race' in LFS as planned. I qualified 10th on the grid on A-division and had a good race until lap 12 when I flipped onto my roof and out of bounds in the chicane. My team mates in Nordic Racing Group (NRG) did alright although Nicke had a potential podium finish in 3rd place when he ran out of petrol in the last corner to finish 5th instead - what a shame. Tonight I've been out in Stockholm for a few pints. We started off in the " Bull and Bear " pub and then I can't quite remember where we went, but it was a good night and I had quite a laugh with my mates. Hopefully this weekend will allow me to work more on muisc, games and the new websites.

Today has not been very Imphenzia-oriented due to other commitments. Been to work and the gym and practiced for the Live For Speed race on thursday (it's a new 'Thursday Race' season starting this week). I race for 'Nordic Racing Group' that is proudly sponsored by Imphenzia :) Now, however, I am creating a few copies of Illusion due to some recent orders so I'll ship them tomorrow. I see it's already past 1am as well, hopefully I'll get more time for Imphenzia tomorrow.

Since making music was not to be today - I continued to develop the web sites (I actually did quite a bit earlier today as well). The "my account" page is more or less finished so you can update your details now, reset password, change e-mail address and so forth. I then found my self redeveloping a feature no less than three times hence the title of this blog entry. Lost Password? First I created a feature called "Lost Password" which meant that by clicking this feature and entering your e-mail address you should receive your username and password to your registered e-mail address... Great! Once nearly completing this feature, I realised that since I "encrypt" the passwords in the database using MD5 - I won't be able to send the password through e-mail as I can't ever find out what it is, I (and the program) only see 32 hexadecimal characters which is of no use. Reset Password? I then reprogrammed this feature and called it "Reset Password...

After over a week of solid work put into the new web sites I launched up the sequencer today to see if I could get anywhere with a potential track and all I came up with was this: mp3 file . Not too happy with that and I've learned something over the years, if it doesn't click straight away and inspiration comes flowing once you start working on a track - just leave it for the time being. It isn't possible to imagine creativity and it has to come naturally. I'll close down the sequencer for tonight and head off for the gym. I'll be listening to some trance during my gym session so maybe I get some ideas there, you never know.

It's been  a long time since I've spent so many hours on something producing such a small visible result. First of all I had to learn all about protecting PHP code and form fields that are inserted into the database when logging in with mysql_real_escape_string and the joys of some servers having magic_quotes_gpc enabled and when stripslashes should and shouldn't be used. I've finally protected the code enough from malicious visitors - I don't want to end up like the old imphenzia forums once were if you remember those days. Since I already developed the login / logout / remember me features of the new sites yesterday, the 4 hours I spent on just protecting the code was just plain boring - but not wasted as the result is good and I learned something very useful. Originally I used a javascript called " Live Validation " to verify the contents of form fields as you type in them and the result was quite cool - what it didn't support, however, was verif...

Just a quick note... Continued work on the sites today - mainly added cookie support for persistend logins on the new site. Also started the "my account" page where you'll be able to list your game keys and handle subscriptions etc. Only got a few hours in today as I watched quite a few episodes of Prison Break with my wife and enjoyed some time off with it being easter and all.

I've completed the theme functionality on the new site. Changing the look (and width) of the site is extremely easy and fast. The screenshots that you can see demonstrate this functionality although changes to templates are only minor for testing - in the end result the themes will be quite different from each other. In addition to themes I've completed a user registration process with live java validation of the form fields as you type. This will simplify the process making sure that your passwords match up and that your address is valid etc. The registration process also features validation by e-mail to ensure you don't get unsolicited spam.  Finally - the most important thing I've learned so far is KEEP YOUR CONTENT AND DESIGN SEPARATED. This is the best way to work as changing a theme or page content is super simple once the framework is in place. It's 4:14am now so I'm going to eat something and watch some TV now... then off to sleep.