Comments are now working, and I've written the back-end pages to manage them. Woohoo!

Just testing out the mobile posting feature....

The last entry was from 2006, my site has definitely gone stale. But I'm in the process of moving from a custom-made C++ app running on my home computer, to a PHP/MySQL site hosted elsewhere. My C++ app was a fun project for a while, but it was pretty frail compared to any REAL web solution.

I still need to implement comments, and get the music section back online, as well as a few other things. I've actually written a back end for myself now so managing/updating this thing will be A LOT easier... hopefully that will translate into more frequent updates??? Only time will tell!

So, PARDON MY DUST! This site is still very much so under construction.

I feel obligated to post how I managed to get both my roommate and myself connected to C&C3 online at the same time under the same router, because I haven't seen the solution anywhere else. Hopefully, Google will do it's job and direct anybody with a similar problem here.

The situation: Both my roommate and I (running Windows Vista) want to play C&C3 online at the same time, both connected via wireless to the Linksys WRT54G router.

Normally, getting a game to work online involves opening a port, so the router can know to whom to direct network traffic. C&C: Generals was like this. No biggie! Open up two different ports: one pointing to me, and one pointing to him... and then change the setting in the game.

C&C3 posses a problem in that it requires a LARGE amount of ports open to work that you CANNOT change from within the game. You can set a single port to watch, but the game itself requires a large range to work.

The solution: Port triggering. Port triggering is like port forwarding that activates when a client starts talking to a specific port. This allows selective port forwarding as each client needs it and thus, we both have access to the full range of ports needed to run the game. The probability of collisions is low, given the large range. So the settings look like this:

• Set ports 2049 through 29910 to be triggering ports
• Set any port NOT in that range to be forwarded to a specific player on the network. Do this for all players.
• Then, in the Options->Network tab in the game, type in your port that you forwarded in the previous step.

And you're done! If anybody else tries this, let me know, as I'm curious as to whether it really works... or it was just a fluke that it worked for us.

There is a known issue that if one of us hosts an online game, and the other joins AND somebody outside the network joins the game, both of our games (and the router!) crash when the game is loading. However, playing 1v1 online against my roommate works, and playing in different games online at the same times work, and hosting games works.

So I just finished a lab in my digital logic design class. I had to design a circuit that took input from 4 switches (on/off ... binary style) and displayed the corresponding decimal digit in an LCD window. After designing the circuit at a gate level, then writing it in VHDL, I was able to use a program to translate it and upload it to a project board. I then proceeded to test it out... and when i flipped the switches... I saw the correct numbers come up on the LCD.

and it was tite as SHIT.

I guess I'm in the right major if I thought that was cool.. haha. The weekend is almost here! Thank freakn goodness.

-Brandon Valosek, EE nerd