upcoming events (30 days at a glance) February 14 2010 - Valentines view the calendar | add an event

Lots of new awards posted

I've added upwards of 15 new awards today, since I was working with the award system recently. Some have already been given away, but many others may still need to be given to some people. Some of the stat related ones (like "Horn Dog" and "Full House") aren't automated yet, so if you try it now you won't get them. I will post a quick update in this thread when those awards have been automated (which will happen in under 12 hours; I'll do it first thing in the morning). If you have suggestions for new awards please share them! There is an award to be rewarded when you recommend an award that gets used too (for those of you who don't have it already)! [ comment | leave a comment ]

posted on: Tuesday - 9:30pm - January 12 2010 · posted by: Lev

Lots of updates scheduled for Christmas day

On December 25th, I intend on releasing the next beta of Theia, and alongside that I will also update TT to the latest version. It's been a few months now since the last update of Theia was released, so there are going to be LOTS of new features to keep an eye out for. Also, I have been spending a huge amount of time modularizing things like Javascript and CSS files, so things may be broken at first. The addition of hundreds of new CSS classes will mean I will have to spend shit loads of time getting the themes up to par. Because of this, I will disable all themes except for the currently disabled Christmas theme, and that theme will be the only one you can use at first as to buy me some time to get the other themes to be fully compatible. Stay tuned for more info! [ comments | leave a comment ]

posted on: Wednesday - 3:06pm - December 23 2009 · posted by: Lev

Apple censors negative, legitimate reviews in App store

Okay, this has kinda pissed me off, and really isn't helping me get over the incredible anti-Apple sentiment I've been gaining the few weeks. A lot of the time at night, I like to play around on my iPhone and check out new programs from the Apple App Store. I stumbled upon one called "Drug Addiction", and was intrigued enough by its "noble" aim to educate people on awareness of drug abuse, so I downloaded it and gave it a look. Holy crap, have I not seen so much flagrant misinformation since the film "Reefer Madness". My biggest gripe with the program wasn't its complete partisanship, or even its scarce scope of information, or even the fact that most of the information was incredibly outdated, irrelevant and antiquated. My biggest gripe was that no where do I remember seeing the word "use". Anytime anyone drinks a beer or smokes a joint, it's "abuse" - well, at least according to this program. No where in any of the few substances listed was there the slightest distinction between use and abuse. Nope, just more of that outdated fear-mongering we've all grown up with. So I thought - heck, even though the program already has a 2 out of 5 star rating out of more than 10 ratings already, I felt it was necessary for me to have my say. So I did, and guess what? My score seemed to have been accepted, but my written review was NOT added. Being all the wise to many of the other disgraceful ways I've learned Apple conducts its business (overly aggressive DRM that can make Microsoft look like a saint, planned obsolescence with iPods and iPhones, unjustified and zealous program review process, removing threads critical of them or their partner companies in forums - to name a few), I felt it was necessary to copy my review and paste it into the notes program in the event that Apple would play big brother. So here it is, my review of a crappy propaganda program - which seems to coincide very well with what other people thought of the program (judging from its score): ---------- First of all, there is an enormous difference between use and abuse, but this app fails to ever make a distinction of the two. Many drugs CAN be used recreationally without necessarily abusing them. Nothing but a lot of antiquated misinformation and scare mongering. Yes, drugs CAN be bad, but let us not forget we all use psycoactive substances, whether it's for a headache, boost of energy from a cup of coffee in the morning, to sleep better, for depression, etc.. Some illicit substances are not nearly as damaging as they are often made out to be, so how about we finally stop with all the scare tactics and focus on factual information from places like www.erowid.org (which focuses on educating and not mindlessly scaring)? The last thing the world needs is more falsified information, which does far more harm than good - by giving people the mentality that if one thing they were told about something is a lie then maybe it all is. ---------- Am I the only one who finds nothing worth censoring here other than my idea? No obscenities (like many of the reviews they allow to be posted), no personal or defamatory slander (like many reviews they allow) - nothing. Just a little bit of reality, that for whatever reason, doesn't coincide with Apple's world vision. You know; commercialism, spending, waste, consumption. All those things that make society tick. Could it be simply that ideas like what I've expressed are not popular by conglomerates simply because they challenge the established structure of society itself? Think about it; we're supposed to buy into the concept of finding happiness through buying things, and all of our super technologies - it doesn't seem a very popular idea to find happiness in a glass of beer, a pill, or a joint, because that undermines the entire foundation of how we have created our economy. "We" don't want people to be able to use substances that make them happy and content with life, because then they aren't going to want any part in much of what "we" think is important in life - namely: commercialism, spending, waste and consumption. So I guess, arguably supporters of drug prohibition may very well be right that drugs may hold a power than causes people to drop out of many social institutions. And maybe it's just my view of the world here, but I see that as a good thing. We *need* more people who's focal point in life is feeling good and happiness, and not all those things we are conditioned into thinking are important. So yeah, let's just keep spreading misinformation, and scare-mongering. It's doing a whole lot of good, isn't it? Screw you, Apple! [ comment | leave a comment ]

posted on: Thursday - 9:07pm - October 29 2009 · posted by: Lev

Suggestions for the calendar & clubs urgently wanted

First of all, you might want to look here: http://www.sikosoft.com/item/537 Anyhow, I am working on improving the calendar and group features in Theia... There are lots of planned changes already, but I'm sure some of you may have more. If so, please share them as soon as you can! [ comments | leave a comment ]

posted on: Tuesday - 2:23pm - September 29 2009 · posted by: Lev

Massive overhaul to friendship system functional! :)

Good god, did it take a whole loooot longer than I thought it was going to. But, I personally think it was worth it if I may say so myself. Oh, sadly I have not even tested any of it using anything but Firefox, since IE users please give me a heads up if there are any issues with the drag and drop functionality. Yeah, in case you hadn't picked up on that already, this is the first instance on TT of a user-end drag and drop interface! I say user-end, because I actually added drag and drop functionality to the admin panel for ordering spotlight entries right before. Anyhow, it's all thanks to a free, powerful library in Javascript called JQuery (mental note: gotta add them to Theia's thanks page). I *hope* it will feel intuitive once you realize that "yes, there is actually something really simple to use on TT". If you don't want to be friends with someone you can drag them into the box to the left of where you create friend groups. Friend groups simply allow you to create any number of custom friend groups, where you can take people from your friends list and put them in sub-groups. For example, if you have family on TT, you could make a group for "family", or if you go to school with some folks you could create a "school" group and put that friend in it. Again, drag them from the users to the left to the group on the right. Dragging a user from one of the right custom groups to the trash area only removes the user from the group, whereas dragging a user from the left area (all friends) to the trash area will remove the friend entirely! (note: I am aware of a bug in which deleting someone from your main list will not remove them from any of your custom groups.. since none of you even have custom groups yet, I figure I can take care of this tomorrow). You can delete the group by clicking the X to the left of it's name, and you can rename it by clicking it's name (this is an editable field). Everything is AJAX based, and saved upon whatever you do. There are no buttons to press and nothing you need to think of other than dragging people around and managing your groups (which really can't be easier). Oh, and if you look at the screenshot I attached here; if you don't see something organized like this on the friends page for you, hit your browser's "refresh" button, because style sheet and javascript files have been updated and your browser may be using cached ones! Please report any issues... It's smarter to create an account @ www.sikosoft.com and report bugs there since you'll get in on a contest for $100. [ comments | leave a comment ]

posted on: Sunday - 8:50pm - September 06 2009 · posted by: Lev

Friendship updates underway - mind the "friends" page

I've been working on the friendship system lately, and currently it's only half setup, so if you look at the friends page now, you'll see an ugly, unorganized mess. You can play with it if you want, but I can't guarantee anything you do there now will be saved by the time I am finished. Hopefully by tomorrow most of it will come together. There should then be a way to remove friends, and add friends to custom friend groups. It's all going to use a drag and drop interface - I'm going to really try and focus on using a nicer interface with sorting things, organizing stuff and so forth. If it's not working tomorrow, it will be done before the weekend is over, because it's the only thing I've been working on lately (a good 10 hours today). [ comments | leave a comment ]

posted on: Friday - 9:31pm - September 04 2009 · posted by: Lev

Win $100 by reporting bugs!

Over at SikoSoft, I've just started a contest, where the winner will receive $100 (either as an amazon gift certificate or sent to a paypal account). For all the rules go here: www.sikosoft.com/item/win_100_by_reporting_bugs If you have the time, please give it a shot.. no one tried in the last one, so you never know if you're one of the only people this time. You just need at account @ www.sikosoft.com - but if you have one here, you'll find it very similar since it is the same system! Additionally, as a generosity to any member of TT: I will create a completely fresh installation of Theia for you (upon request) so you can try out every single admin tool and feature that is available. If you want me to do this for you, just get in touch with me somehow. [ comments | leave a comment ]

posted on: Monday - 8:13pm - August 31 2009 · posted by: Lev

Overhauling the frienship system

In the next version of Theia, I wanted to work on improving the friendship system in various ways. I know it is pretty weak on here, so please feel free to make any recommendations. So far the only things I know I will add/improve are: - avatars display right off the bat in listings instead of just the name - ability to create friend groups (family, work, school, etc..) - ability to stop being friends with someone Please share any ideas you have because I would like to get this support included ASAP! [ comments | leave a comment ]

posted on: Sunday - 4:36pm - August 23 2009 · posted by: Lev

Lots of updates!

As you should be aware by now, Theia is the software that runs TT. Yesterday was the release of another version, and, like always, I try to update TT as quickly as possible. Some of the newer things are "related items" (which is done automatically now, through a tag comparison check), massive improvements to the "my status" feature (all updates are now saved for one and formed in a time line like Twitter). You can also respond to people's status updates, and follow other people's updates (and even receive a notification when they post one if you like). I've finally improved the tag cloud functionality enough that I am satisfied with using it on places like here, so you'll probably also notice that box of lots of popular words on TT. The larger the word, the more often it appears throughout TT, so the idea is clicking any of those words will jump you around to lots of points of interest related to those terms. Hopefully now you all can understand why I've been stressing the importance of properly tagging items. Tags are also what the automated "related items" feature uses as well, so tagging is important for everything on TT as well as for search engines finding TT. Avatars should also now appear in the chat rooms, but not yet in the chatter box... I will probably incorporate an option for that in the chatter box in this next version (as well as a sound effect for a new message in the chatter box). Things should also be quite a bit quicker on many pages, and generally perform better overall. I've cut down the mySQL query count by over 10 queries (when using virtually every feature at once in Theia). Lots of things are now cached, and many logical operations have been optimized to put less strain on having to think as often. The biggest optimization (in my opinion, at least) is the chatter box, which loads countless times quicker for me now (there was a performance issue I mentioned seeing with it before). For a complete list of bug fixes and source changes, look @ www.sikosoft.com/item/whats_new_in_100b4 [ comments | leave a comment ]

posted on: Sunday - 1:04pm - August 16 2009 · posted by: Lev

Like reporting bugs? - maybe win a little while at it

I just started a contest over @ www.sikosoft.com, which will last for the remainder of the month. Since I am still paying all these prizes out of my pocket, it's only a mere $25 for Amazon.com, but still it's probably not very hard to win either. The winner will be whoever gets the most confirmed or fixed bug reports in the month of August at www.sikosoft.com. This also means you need to create an account there (it's quick and easy, and the whole feel will be very similar to TT, for obvious reasons!). Currently, there are only a handful of members even there yet, and none are active now, meaning all of you have just as good a chance as anyone else. For more details on the rules, go here: www.sikosoft.com/item/contest_for_25_amazon_for_reporting_bugs [ comments | leave a comment ]

posted on: Monday - 4:08pm - August 03 2009 · posted by: Lev