http://ecsyle.com/index.php/blog/ Just the ramblings of a struggling artist, the constant student, lost in piles of programming books, empty jager bottles, and cigarette butts en roy@ecsyle.com Copyright 2008 2008-04-16T17:38:00-08:00 http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/silly_rabbit/ http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/silly_rabbit/#When:17:38:00Z Play 2008-04-16T17:38:00-08:00 http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/reno_rnr_the_list_101_who_mattered/ http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/reno_rnr_the_list_101_who_mattered/#When:19:33:00Z Big thumbs up and a thank you to D6 and Champagne & Bacon for their hard work keeping Electronic Music alive and flourishing in Reno. The Reno News & Review has posted their list of the most influential people in Reno music over the last 25 years and has them both listed. I find this to be extremely exciting and it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. The list is a great read in itself. I urge you to check it out. Lists are always controversial. When Rolling Stone released its list of top 500 albums of all time, the comments came fast and furious. “Thanks for completely shitting on hip-hop and the influence it has had,” wrote one reader. “According to this list who needs the last 20 years anyway?” wrote another. Even seemingly safe choices proved divisive. “Please get the stinking Beatles off these lists. They are a glorified pop band that for some reason we are all programmed to believe were great.” Essentially, the comments revealed the problem with lists—they are incredibly subjective and getting two people to agree on what should be included is an exercise in futility. We expect this list to have the same issues. .... With that in mind, here’s our list of the most influential people in Reno music over the last 25 years. While we know not everyone will agree with the choices, we look forward to the dialogue it will generate. Inspiration, Music 2008-04-11T19:33:00-08:00 http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/lunchbox_radio_support_electronic_music_poster/ http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/lunchbox_radio_support_electronic_music_poster/#When:23:49:01Z I needed a break at work today, and I needed to take my mind of all the stressful things related to work. My release today was this poster for Lunchbox Radio: Cross posted in Arts Arts, Lunchbox Radio, Music, Play 2008-04-10T23:49:01-08:00 http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/expressionengine_20_fully_codeignited/ http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/expressionengine_20_fully_codeignited/#When:06:29:00Z Kinda old news, but I wanted to post about it. My favorite web publishing platform, Expression Engine, is looking to release version 2.0 sometime this summer. Ellis Lab, the people behind Expression Engine, are also the force behind the Open Source Codeigniter. They have announced that EE2.0 is powered by Codeigniter. To me, this is incredible. The possibilities are endless. At South by Southwest during our “ExpressionEngine 2.0 sneak preview” I got a chance to reveal some big news about the future of ExpressionEngine that I wanted to explore in some more detail here for anyone who wasn’t able to attend. ExpressionEngine 2.0 is built on CodeIgniter. CodeIgniter is our Open Source PHP based framework.  You can learn more at CodeIgniter.com, but in a nutshell it’s the toolkit that many powerful applications are built on, and now we can add ExpressionEngine to that list. This is great news if you’re an ExpressionEngine user, a CodeIgniter user, or both.  As an ExpressionEngine developer you will have a greatly expanded community of talented developers working with you, and for you.  I said during my talk, “The nerds are excited, and you should be excited that the nerds are excited”.  As a dyed in the wool nerd, I stand by this! If you’re a CodeIgniter developer, this means you can drop a full-fledged content-management system right on top of your existing code base, and have it work.  You want a forum installed?  One click.  You want need member management, a wiki, end-user tools, mailing lists, mobile blogging capabilities, permissions… all there.  One click.  Proven, simple, powerful. Very exciting! Since I started using Codeigniter at version 1.0, I have noticed a huge increase in my productivity, and a huge leap in my knowledge of php and web programming. There is something about coding with Codeigniter that inspires clean, elegant code. A good example of the power of Codeigniter is a very basic CMS I had put together for Noble Studios. It worked, but it wasn’t pretty. It was one hack on top of another, with a bunch of pieces glued together that was very slowly turning into a usable framework/CMS, but I simply do not have the time or resources to properly develop it. We work very quickly and I had to do what I had to do. However, this latest project gave me a chance to revisit the very core of this CMS and I saw the opportunity to do it right. I chose Codeigniter as the core and was able to produce a marketable, flexible, and maintainable application in a fraction of the time it took to build the original. I am most happy with the ACL/User Authentication system, and I am considering ripping it out and making it available as an app for the community. The point is, a good framework really does allow you to spend more time on the real functionality and value of an application. And with EE as the CMS and the power of this framework, we can tackle much larger development projects in the same amount of time as doing it from “scratch”.  Code, Web Dev 2008-04-03T06:29:00-08:00 http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/comments_open_on_artwork/ http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/comments_open_on_artwork/#When:17:51:00Z I have enabled commenting for the Arts section. It was live for a minute but I took it off and I can’t remember why, so I have turned it back on. Arts, Meta 2008-04-02T17:51:00-08:00 http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/got_a_new_car/ http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/got_a_new_car/#When:08:30:00Z Finally. My old busted honda civic just wasn’t cutting it. It was well past time to upgrade. So I got this, an Audi A4 Quattro 1.8 Turbo. Woo! Play, Snaps 2008-03-28T08:30:00-08:00 http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/the_tree_of_life/ http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/the_tree_of_life/#When:08:21:00Z Saturday night after a little bit of mushroom and absinthe, I was flipping through my sketchbook and stopped on this drawing. I like this drawing, and it was just a sketch of the tree of life. Man growing, evolving, his mind reaching its absolute potential. Staring into this drawing I realized something. Slightly trippin I quickly wrote it down on top of the actual sketch. The irony of man is that his constant search of the meaning of life, god, etc, is always in the one place he cannot actually look. Arts 2008-03-27T08:21:00-08:00 http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/using_captcha_plugin_in_codeigniter_with_form_validation/ http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/using_captcha_plugin_in_codeigniter_with_form_validation/#When:18:57:00Z Codeigniter ships with a captcha plugin that is not documented in the User Guide. The code is commented well and has examples though. This is how I used the captcha plugin with form validation to help stop spam on a basic contact form, without using a table in my database. It seems unecessary to add this call to MySQL when we could easily just store it in session.  First, our controllers method. This handles setting up our form validation rules, building the captcha, and storing the captcha data in a session for retrieval later. We have a rule for our captcha field that is a callback to our validation function, “cinput_check”. <?phpfunction contact(){    $this->load->library('session');    $this->load->plugin('captcha');    /* Setup captcha defaults */    $captcha_defaults = array(        'img_path'     => './images/captcha/',        'img_url'     => 'http://site.com/images/captcha/',        'img_width'     => 200,        'img_height' => 50,    );    $this->load->library('validation');    /* include your additional form field rules here as well */    $rules['cinput'] = "callback_cinput_check";    $this->validation->set_rules($rules);    /* include your additional form fields here as well */    $fields['cinput'] = "Captcha";    $this->validation->set_fields($fields);    if ($this->validation->run() == FALSE)    {        /* since validation failed, generate new captcha           data and update the session */        $cap = create_captcha($captcha_defaults);        $form_tpl['captcha'] = $cap['image'];        $this->session->set_userdata(array('cinput'=>$cap['word']));        $this->load->view('site/contact_us', $form_tpl);    }    else    {        /* Continue to process form */    }}?> This is our call back function, and validates the posted captcha value against the generated value stored in session. For some reason checking $str against the value in $this->session was not working, so I simply bypassed that and used the value from the input handler. <?phpfunction cinput_check($str){        if ($this->input->post('cinput') != $this->session->userdata('cinput'))        {            $this->validation->_error_messages['cinput_check'] = 'Incorrect Captcha characters.';            return FALSE;                                    }        else        {            return TRUE;                }}?> The form is just a generic form, but here is what the captcha field looks like for reference: <p><?php print $captcha; ?><br /><label for="Captcha">Type in the code:</label> <input type="text" name="cinput" id="Captcha" value="" /></p> For more information on Codeigniter check out their extremely well documented User Guide. Code, Web Dev 2008-03-26T18:57:00-08:00 http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/lunchbox_radios_first_radio_liners/ http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/lunchbox_radios_first_radio_liners/#When:04:03:00Z Over the weekend The Mantis and I made our first Radio Liners. This was the first time I have attempted to create anything with sound. It is definitely fun and I am excited to learn more about it. We used cubase to record and compile the audio. We made one for Jager Hour, our not so consistent show where we play records and ramble on until we are too drunk to continue, and for general broadcasting on Lunchbox Radio. Check them out! Jager Hour Lunchbox Radio Arts, Lunchbox Radio, Music, Play 2008-03-26T04:03:00-08:00 http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/amsterdam/ http://ecsyle.com/index.php/site/amsterdam/#When:03:03:01Z Noble Studios took us on a trip to Amsterdam for a 2 day workshop, team building, and they 5 days of whatever the hell we wanted. It was not wasted, although, we definitely were. The workshop was unexpectedly productive and the entire trip has brought the whole office closer together. We were mentally stripped down built up again. Personally I feel refreshed and focused. More focused than I have been in a long time. We knew it was going to be a good trip from the minute we got the airport at 6am. Everyone was all smiles and completely embracing, especially towards Nicole. This is the first time they have met here and honestly, they probably, up until that moment, didn’t think she existed! The flight was easy. We started drinking in Reno and didn’t stop until Amsterdam. Definitely made the trip smoother. Once we were finally there, and thanks to our pilot we got there an hour earlier, we unloaded our gear and headed straight for a coffee shop. From here the trip is a blur of laughter, fun, productivity, art, drinks, good food, and flight butt. Oh and the best pot I have ever smoked. I could probably go on and on on details that are unimportant except to those of us that were there, but I won’t. Basically, the trip was amazing. Everyone I work with is amazing. And it was absolutely incredible to have shared this experience with Nicole and crew. I can’t wait to go back to Europe. Nicole and I at the Bushdoctor coffee shop: Drawing and smoking at the Bushdoctor: The best pancakes I have ever had in my life. Something I am going to crave for years: Inspiration, Play, Work 2008-03-26T03:03:01-08:00