Damen

So now the news is out, that Prince Harry has been serving in Afghanistan for the last 10 weeks. What do you guys think about this ? Was it wrong ? Should anyone be able to go into dangerous areas such as this ? I can only imagine that extreme measures would be taken to ensure his safety.I guess as long as it's a cause he truly believes in & not merely something that "looks good" on his list of life accomplishments I think it's fine, although it is good I think that they are reporting he will now be withdrawn since he'd be a target & could end up getting other people injured/killed in the need to protect him from the enemy. I don't hold the royals in any special esteem even with their Canadian connections as I consider the monarchy to be an outdated thing that serves very little purpose in modern times. They're just more rich people to me.

While playing Sacred and reading through the story line, we find out that there is a Vampiress plaguing the Bellevue area and that she regained her soul after tasting the blood of a Seraphim. We also know that Jacquaire used to ambush heroes in the same area until he encountered a Seraphim.The Seraphim character starts in the small abbey of Bellevue and if I'm not mistaken she had been wounded. Could she have been the victim of either Jacquaire or the Vampiress?.I also wonder what that lonely merchant in Ice Creek Dale is doing there. Perhaps he likes the solitude but such a remote location must be bad for business?

For those of you with children, and hectic lives (wait - aren't those synonymous?) my wife and I have found, at least one thing to help take some stress out of our day - Dine Without Whine. What is it? My wife would say a godsend. It is a meal planning service. For ~$7 a month (cheaper than the price of one meal at a restaurant) you receive a weekly meal plan that is balanced, easily prepared, and that the kids actually will eat. Last night the meal was pizza pancakes - pancake batter filled with cheese, pepperoni, and green pepper dipped in pizza sauce. I wasn't too keen on the idea, but it was rather tasty. Not all the meals are so kid-centric, but my kids have eaten nearly everything we have tried without too much complaining - feat in and of itself. Not only do you get a weekly menu, already planned, but you also get a detailed shopping list ready to print. Every item has a letter beside it corresponding to the recipe the item is used in, so you can easily scratch things off the list if a dish on the list sounds totally unappetizing. Check out their website, http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ There is a sample menu you can download and try out. In addition, there are some other options through the parent company that are linked through this website. There are many "menu planning" sites out there that offer similar programs, and my wife and I were a bit skeptical about them all; however, we have been pleasantly pleased with the meals we have had over the last six weeks.

For those of you outside of the US, I am sure you are aware but may not follow too closely the democratic candidate primary elections. I won't get into a political rant, this is not the forum for that; however, I do want to share a link to Senator Barack Obama's transcript on his speech he gave today in Philadelphia: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ I read this with just to keep up on the chatter and I was truly moved by some of the things that he has laid out in this speech. There is much truth in what he is saying, not saying he will fix it nor that anyone can fix it, but it needs to be addressed before we can move forward. You may not agree with the man, his ideals or anything else, but this is one great bit of speech writing.

Well there is always gonna be that small group, or maybe large, who are there just to put the great experience around. And knowing how strict SCEA is with everything that may result in a lawsuit they will be sure to be the consequences high, maybe even suspension of PSN accounts. The voice chat is most likely going to be a confirmation thing, as in; if someone wants to chat with you over voice they will click a little thing asking you to accept their feed or something. Just what I think they are going to do with it is all. You don't HAVE to purchase new clothes. They will give LOTS of stock ones for free, and you get free items for achievements made in game. But there will be special items that if you want you will have to pay for, one of their three ways of keeping it free. If that's what it takes to keep it free then I have no problem.

It is a very fun game, one reason it might have looked a little sluggish is that the demo download from the PSN store is a really old version. It was pre-release anyways. The actual games runs a lot smoother without glitches. Well the PS3 is moving into the K/M realm. On UT3 you can plug in a USB keyboard and mouse and BAM there ya go! Playing just like a PC shooter! You might think, "Hey! That isn't fair for the people who don't use it!". Well they have a filter setting in the matches so you can ONLY allow K/M players or controller players or both. So I think very soon most shooters will support K/M on the PS3. I haven't seen any real implementations with this on the 360 yet but even without using it for games on the PS3, it has a built in web browser you can use it for!

While before Christmas many where syaing about the calibre of PS3 shooters coming soon,The subject has somewhat gone off the boil,Partly due to delays to titles like UT3, & the terrible Blacksite Area 51.But, Fear not, Because if your after an extra shooter to add to your collection, here are a few Underater shooters, that are far better than there average reviews suggest...So Here's a quick look at a few...The Club, Orange Box, Medal of Honour Airborne, Conflict denied ops & Lost planet..The ClubBizarre creations, the makers of the Project Gotham City.. Millions play & love Project Gotham because it seemlessly moulds together your standard Race, with the "Kudos" system, which rewards its players with points for skill,The system has been around since Midnight Street Racing on the Dreamcast (Kinda like Project Gotham 0.5)And it's the kudos system that makes Project Gotham the title it is..However With The Club, Many reviewers have approached the game as a simple "Run & Gun Shooter..."and the scores have been dissapointing,However If you approach the club like you would Project Gotham You find it's much more of a game...Sure there's no Story line, and a typical Kill isnt that tough,But it's the skill element which makes The Club the game that it is...Every Kill gives points, based on distance, hit location and prior moves.So smash through a door, pop some guy in the face, side-roll behind a crate and pop-up to take out another guy, then spin 180, to fall the guy shooting down on you from behind..This simple scenario might take a grenade in some games, and you'd pass it without a second thought,But the club challenges you, to go for the head-shots, to roll in & out of cover between shots, and to spin hitting skull markers to further increase your multiplier.You can play the club running from A to B and killing the goons, and it's a pretyt poor game,But if you want a challenge, try to beat the leaderboards scores in there millions, and you will realise that the club is a much more entertaining, challenging & rearding shooter than first impressions.The Orange BoxAnother shooter that hasn't received great reviews, and theres no wonder why, Steam decided to develop Orange box for th eXbox 360 & Pc, but allowed EA to designate there own small french in house developers for the Ps3 version, and.. it shows..On the PC & 360 Orange box has been stated as the best game this side of the millenium,And althoguh the PS3 verison isnt as good, it's still a damn good shooter.Sure, Half-Life 2 is an old game now,, it's been around on the Pc for donkeys-years,But combine that, the two expansion chapters, aswell as Portal & team fortress and the quality sounds amazingSure the Ps3 version has a few framerate issue sin places, and team fortress 2 can be laggy quite easily, and Portal, while a brilliant innovative puzzler it isnt worth the money alone.But, Half life 2 is still 5 games in one,, it's still getting reviews for 80-85% and just because th e360 / pc version got reviews close to 95% it doesnt mean the Ps3 version is a bad one.Medal Of honour: AirborneWhen medal of honour was released, it made me laugh,, actually it almost made me cry, MOH:Airbore was the only game to be released on th e16th November,,,Great, But on the 9th came Call of Duty 4,, And that pretty much put an end to any number of people buying MOH:Airborne,then people looked at it, 6 levels, high recoil and not as good as COD4, ment MOH:A wasnt ever going to be a top game.However It's still well worth owning,COD4 is modern warfare, so it leave splenty of scope for this world-war based shooter,ike many wanted with COD, there are vehicles, you do parachute from a plane, And the levels are even less linear than COd4 meaning you can do anything anytime (as long as they all get done)There are only 6 main misisons, but judging that each will take an hour, and you probably wont do them all first attempt, your looking at a longer single player campaign than Cod4, And while call of Duty currently has the monopoly in online shooting, Medal of Honour is still a purely enjoyable FPS, that is well worth picking up.Conflict: Denied OpsAfter playing the demo, I admitted that Conflict Denied ops was "utter b0ll0cks"graphics are barely last gen, let alone next gen, 2 characters with 2 weapons each seemed somewhat boring, and the promise of online modes didnt seem all that promising.However now I own the game I can see it's an entirley differant shooter,Weapon upgrades evolve your weapons in a Splinter cell way, adding gun cameras, shotgun & grenade launcher attachments, and giving you a RPG to play with.the game isnt particuarly tough, and many of the objectives can be overlooked aslong as you get from A to B.theres not much in the way of a story,, you go there, shoot, you go here shoot, stop this, save him, and hooraaah the world is a safer place.The story mode isnt groundbreaking but it's still a decent enough game.But it's multiplayer where it counts, play through the whole story in co-operative, online split-screen , as well as multiplayer deathmatch's etc, it adds an awful lot to this shooter.overall, while not as good as you'd hope after the previous games in the series,But not as bad as you amy have thought especially after the poor "Empty" demo which features the 1st part of the 1st misison (before you touch any upgrades / vehiclesAnd Finally............ Lost PlanetBut Lost Palnet has been receiving mixed reviews,The 360 fanboys are giving it a score around 6/10, saying "it's just a 360 port a year too late"But other scores are coming in at a steady 80% stating that while it is a 360 port, it's done well, it still has the great 16 player online multiplayer, and a pretty damn good selection of weapons/ mech's and a strong single player story.the best of all is, it will cost ?25... and while I'm getting it after near-completing it on the 360, many people who owned it originally will be put off, especially considering the only addition is a few new characters in multiplayer.But for Anyone who never had Lost Planet on the 360, Then for ?25 this is a must buy,It wont knock Call of Duty 4 or Rainbow Six Vegas's fan-base,But it will give you a good 5-10 hour sof enjoyment both on & offline

Well I only heard about it recently but if anyone hasn't heard about it, this is a must! It is going to blow my mind when it first comes out, hopefully I get to beta test this baby. Well in relevance to the clan the benefit of all of us using it is unmeasurable! I think once it comes out it should be required to use it really. To be able to have a vitrual clan "base" where we can all hang out and discuss strategy and play minigames and show stuff off is awesome. Also it will be allowed to join directly in teams from Home to games like CoD4 and others. I personally can't wait, anyone else as excited as I am? You can read a nifty article about it here if you haven't heard about it: http://www.ign.com/articles/2007/03/07/gdc-2007-home-explored or watch the two part youtube demo from E3 (or GDC not sure which): Part 1: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Part 2: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ or the trailer: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ or Phil Harrison interview: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ They are well worth watching!

Lol yes, Dora did not have such a good ending in this little scene. Maybe I will make more with even more gruesome endings?! lolthanks for the compliment not very well draw but it is okay I suppose.

Well while sitting my my system support class my friends and I get into some random and mostly weird conversations. Well one day last week we somehow got into the field of how Dora the Explorer isn't shown any more and how the person who did her voice now does the voice for Diego on "Go Diego Go!". So we started talking and it got to the point of us realizing how stupid the show is and we thought up this little idea in the comic. I was going to make an animated short of it but I just made this instead. If anyone is not aware of the show, it is was a little cartoon where Dora would walk around on little mission and a lot of the time would ask the little kid viewers to find stuff on the screen and she would congratulate you. So this was a little funny thing that came up. Ha, when I think of it we also came up with the idea of giant trampolines for landing spacecrafts from outer space instead of having them crash in the ocean. So they would fall on the trampoline and when it was at it's lowest point the astronauts would jump out and the ship would be flung into some jello.

Thanks for the reply!Yeah, it was quite a big task set for upon. And yes the whole site functions correctly, lots of debugging a full weeks worth I believe to get all major kinks out. The advantage is that I will be presenting this in front of the panel so if I am aware of something that won't work I can just go around it.As for the cookies, my friend Jon(hippiman from the forums here) did the code for the cookies initially with javascript but I can answer your question on that.When the person logs in it checks the database for what type of user it is that logged it(i.e. admin, rs, csr) then in turn creates a cookie with the value of the result. So what that code is doing is checking the value of the cookie, and if it doesn't equal(!=) admin then it redirects you to the security page where it states you don't have sufficient privileges. This is one every page in a similar way except the index. The work order pages makes sure only an admin and csr can access it and the same with the resolution page. If you go to the site and log in, (if using firefox not sure about ie.) go to tools>options>privacy>show cookies. Then find the name of my site(damen.trap17.com or you can search cookies for loggedIn) and you will see a cookie called loggedIn and the value of it will be Admin.All of the functions work correctly so if you would like you can add a work order and resolve it to see how everything works also.Hope I answered your question too.

Well for the past month or so I have been working on a Programming Competition project in AP Computer Science. Some may know I am quite fancy with graphics and HTML but yes, I do program too. But man, even though I am decent at it, it bores the crap out of me. Well being the project leader I do most all of the work and I just use the two other members for support and error testing. We receive a packet with our project problem in it. Make a fully functional support site for a company. Of course with some other more little details but honestly since we are in the advanced section, they kinda leave us hanging with A LOT of stuff. So I take the point from the polygon and try to connect the dots and hope I got them connected in the right order at the end. Well last year we went into the competition not knowing what the hell to expect and were finally forced to resign because of unreadiness. But we still went to the showfloor to see what everyone else had, my Bill Gates is showing! lol Well this year I was damned and determined to get first place and by golly I think I may achieve that goal! I have busted my *bottom*, coming in after school and during lots of other class periods to get this thing done in the two - three month period I had to work in, that includes not taking a lunch period in school! Well everything you will see on the site was made from scratch, everything is programmed with PHP, with minor bits and pieces with javascript (just for function calls). The HTML was made by me of course and so was the whole company idea and wording. JoDaJo Support is the name of the site, a clever combination of my team member names (Jon + Damen + Josh). The sole purpose behind the site is support tickets basically. And the work flow goes like this. Customer calls in with problem, Customer service representative(employee) takes customer information and submits a "work order", this work order gets stored in the database and assigned to a Resolution Specialist(employee), the RS see he/she has a work order and goes to resolve it, RS submits solved work order. That is the main back bone of it. Extra pages are, Admin(Creates new employee accounts and manages existing ones),news(view all work order status's), and contacts(look up employee information for work uses). This may seem simple in theory but not so much in the programming side. I am trusting enough of everyone here to let you see the final version before the competition panel, with access to an admin account. Please don't abuse this and try to exploit bugs with the site because I am sure if one wanted to could find them easily. Although I do not believe anyone here would. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Username: Damendaman Password: admin This is an admin account to allow you to view all pages. I am also trusting enough to hand over the raw files for anyone who might be curious to see what kind of coding all of this requires and see the insides of it. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ For a seventeen year old High School senior I believe I have outputted a nice little project here, wouldn't you agree? -Damen

I am always teaching little things about flash to my friend Sabina. So usually what I do is just think of a little clip I want to animate and do it to make sure I can, then go through it with her step by step. I admit to not knowing strenuous amounts about flash but I do know my basics and a lot of little things. So if she believes I can help her at all, I will sure try. I usually teach myself everything so it is fun to be able to help others. So onto my newest little lesson. Some may have seen in tutorials in places not sure if there are any out there. But this isn't really a tutorial more or less telling you how I did it. For the swf. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Might want to make the screen size a little smaller so it runs smoother, I was too lazy to make an html file to size it down. (edited with html) And the fla. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ download it and look through it all. I made sure to label all the of layers for you so you can see what is what. Most all little clips I make are only one frame long as this one is. Movie clips inside the one frame can make it as long as you need but the one frame makes it tidier. The earth was made with a mask and a flat picture, same with the clouds just going the other way. The stars is just and easy fade in and out. The text is suppose to resemble a neon light coming on. That is just a movieclip for the dropping of it, then when it gets to the pendulum I have it stop the frame on a new movieclip that does the swinging back and forth. Pretty simple over all, but just a fun little thing that anyone can make with basic knowledge. Feel free to edit the fla if you like, but please don't pass it off as your own, don't know why you would but just telling y'all.

Never skipped class. I used to be a bad little bugger in middle school but once I got to high school I straightened out a lot and am not a straight A student with a perfect 4.0 GPA and in the top 6% of my class. I realized that because I come from an extremely low income family the only real way to pay for a higher education was to do well enough in school to get a full ride or at least a GIANT scholarship. And you may say I don't really need to go to college but I do if I want to become what I want to be in the future.So back to the subject, no I have never skipped. Nor have I ever seen a reason good enough to skip for. I really don't see the advantage. You risk getting in major trouble, why not just stay in class and not do anything? I think skipping only a couple times is not okay either.I will admit to not going to class though, but for school activities. Like if I know I don't like to go to english class and there is a thing I could sign up to do that hour I might do it, but I still end up getting caught up by going there after school.

Well i am not sure if this actually a way I use to wake up from a dream. But a long time ago my dad taught me a way to wake up without having to use my alarm clock. Can't remember how it came up in conversation either.But basically before you go to bed you are most susceptible to hypnotizing, and when you are to that point when you are just about to go to sleep, repeat the time you wish to wake up out loud ten times. And for the first couple nights it didn't work. but he kept saying to keep trying. So I did.Low and behold the next week it started working, of course it isn't exact. without about ten minutes before is what I usually have.But it really does work. I haven't used my alarm clock in over three years. Now of course there are reasons why this won't work for some people. If you stay up late at night your body will to exhausted to be able to wake up using this.But just a little thought that came to mind when I read this.

You're always suspended Jon! Is that that much a surprise?! lolJust try to keep them up higher is all I can think of.

I personally use Eclipse. Eclipse is an opensource program that is originally made for programming Java. But they have many extensions for programming C++ and some others. They have an Add-on called PHPeclipse and that is what I use. It includes features to manage the mysql servers, and apache although I just use easyPHP for that. It supports highlighted syntax and realtime debugging. Also at the bottom is a intergrated browser to see your work realtime also. It has tons of cool features and I really like it. Better than notepad++ in case someone mentioned that already. Well here is the link to the eclipse site and to the PHPeclipse add on download site. Eclipse: http://www.eclipse.org/ PHPeclipse: https://sourceforge.net/projects/phpeclipse/ I strongly suggest it if you are looking for an editor for advanced or beginning users. Hope I was helpful.

It's been a while with no reply.Has anyone had the time to look at my little collection here or has it been overlooked through the mass of threads?

Well I have a friend of mine that I edit a lot of pictures for. So just wondering if you all wanted to take a look at them. To make it easier and so you can see what I actually did to the pictures I made a little webpage that shows the previous and new version of the photos. In a lot of the photos I did mostly color work, some others are different though. So just take a look and tell me what you think. And this one below is one I did just a half hour ago so I didn't have time to edit the html file. Gallery Page: Link Old Image: New Image:

I do agree with you mostly, but there is a difference when it comes to digital photo retouching and wearing clothes to make us look "better" These clothes do not actually portray someone as something they are not, if someone wears a sweater and they look nice in it, it is he combination of their attractiveness and the sweater that gets the effect. Now with retouching in a photo we end up changing the appearance someone to the fact of it not being them at all. If that is confusing here is an example, if you remove a mole on someones picture, and someone sees that picture they would expect them to not have a mole. Therefore portraying the person as something they are not. I do understand to the point that should not be crossed, but in my opinion there should be no editing done if someone is going to put across the message that, that is actually how they appear to the naked eye. Very good point you have brought up.

I am sure many of you guys here know that with the world of digital editing, lots of the faces we see on our magazines and such not are extremely edited to make more them more "Appeasing". So, I made the following image below in only about twenty minutes. And take note that I am not quite good at this at all and people out there are MUCH MUCH better at it than me. But as you can tell you can completely change the structure of the face and in some cases the whole person can become indistinguishable if edited too much. The techniques used can be applied to remove imperfections and such things alike. Just an interesting topic to discuss over, what's everyones thoughts of the idea?

I'd like to see a nice tut on this also, very nice work indeed.

Yup, as long as you own it! What you want to do is go into your domain hosting providers website. Log into your account there and try to find out where to edit your account settings. You want to find something like "Name Servers" and you will find two or more text boxes on the screen. You want to change them to "ns1.trap17.com" and "ns2.trap17.com". You will start at step six! And rather than me explain the rest just read this post from rvalkass: Hope this helps. I think a sticky of how to do this should be made in the members section if there isn't one already.

Thanks t3jem!I agree with you and I have been thinking about how to arrange all of the photos with most of them viewable. The one you are talking about is a panorama so it's difficult. It is quite easy for me to move the photos around in ANY position with a click and drag so I am sure I will find a suitable position for them all!Thanks again!

Well to make the text short, I am doing a project for my Graphic Design class, (from which I believe I know FAR more in graphic design that my teacher..), and the project is to make a completely legit postcard. We must have the following things on it. Front: Collage, eight photos exactly. Name of place. (I took upon myself to raise that stardard, to a border,background, picture borders and what not) Back: Barcode. Printing press name. Divider line. On right side: Postage place marker. Lines for: to(name),address,city,state, and zip. On left side: Enticing clause about the location. Place for personal message. I will go over all of these requirements of course because I don't really like to go under the standards and would rather see what I can come up with. Here is what I have so far for the front. I haven't started on the rear side yet. All of these photos are from NZ, in or around Auckland. The other two photos are of a friend, the one I am planning on sending it to. Some may know her from that little flash movie I made for her, and she is still in the hospital so this makes me happy to make it for her and get my mind off the worries. Front side is in attachment. Back side will be posted when I start on it. What I need from you guys here is just some overall feedback of how you like it so far, the good the bad and the ugly of it. This is going to my best friend so I want it to be perfection times a million. Thanks guys!