mama_soap

Mindset is a new beta search tool from Yahoo. Their so-called new 'twist' is that it sorts the results according to whether they are commercial, academic or research oriented. This is (finally) something from Y! that Google does not have already (unless I'm mistaken). Looks interesting.

If you're referring to the avatars, I suggest you go to "My Controls"->"Edit Avatar Settings" and then either select one from the gallery, or upload your own. Hope this helps Is there any specific error message that you're getting?

Yes, I use Fedora 2. Plenty of people think Mandrake (it's called something else now) is among the best distributions. I'd love to look at it sometime...

That's right, I'm on Fedora 2 (still 2... I've heard 4 is on beta already). Thanks for looking at the page, MarCrush. I might mention the site is finally up now, and is located here. Just posted it for review. Perhaps the mods will want to close this topic. Cheers!

A few days ago, I posted a snapshot of the front page of my site, and luckily, no one hated it. Er... so far Finally, I have the whole site up and running, and I will be grateful for any suggestions/feedback. I've tried it on Mozilla, Opera, Firefox, and Konquerer and they seem to be rendering it OK, almost the way I want it (firefox is drawing borders around the buttons, I'll try and fix that asap). I'd really appreciate help here... if you could just look at it and tell what you thought of it, it would be wonderful. The "Entertaiment" section won't work, all the game applets I have are too big and I'm trying to push it into my current layout. Since I have other things to do, I'll get this done in a week or so. Also, the problem of the month and article of the month (the main things, really) will not work because I have to make sure I'm not infringing any copyright laws. The articles will be mine, of course, so no problem there, but the problems will be borrowed from other sources, and I need to confirm that it's all right. Again, I'll probably need a few days to sort this out and put 'em up together. I have a link to Xisto in the About->Credits section. I'm not sure if this is enough. Ideaz? A banner/button, perhaps, that I should be using, instead of an obscure text link? Finally, the forums. Again, this seems to be running all right on my comp,but I still need to make sure it's universally ok, lol. Again, if you can look at it, it'll be really nice. Nicer if you join, hehe If you have any suggestions... I mean, feel free to rip my site apart and abuse it -- I've grown a thick skin lately. *big, stupid grin* For nobody's information, I built the site using a text editor and Opera. No phpNuke, no Dreamweaver. So it's probably looking thoroughly unprofessional, please let me know what you think if you have the time. Cheers, Neel

It is rumored (or perhaps known) that one of the 'good guys' will meet their end in book 6. Sirius died in book 5, who'll be next? What's your bet?The harry-potter-haters can ignore this discussion, lol

Yes, I think I will just use an application to do the spell checking - it's just that I'm on Linux and Open Office can be... a little tiresome sometimes. Not a big deal, of course phpBB does have a spellcheck MOD, but I don't quite know about ipb either. *mumbles in an afterthoughtish way* A decent feature to have, though.

Oops... I think the installation didn't quite go off as smoothly as it should have. I haven't gone through the entire error code yet, but perhaps you can elaborate on exactly what you did? Those easyMOD errors shouldn't show up unless you tried to install it - did you download and try to install easyMOD? If yes, then we probably need to know what exactly you did...

I just registered I think you have a pretty cool layout and nice design, and generally very well done. But I'll second both suggestions that have come in from rejected - the purple of the banner is mildly distracting, it would be nice if you could change that; and I, for one, am looking forward to more downloads & content. But really good work overall. Keep going...Cheers!

I'd vote for phpBB. I think I've mentioned this before... the fact that it's open source so that you can fool around with the codes if you want to, (and yet it is fairly straightforward even if you're phpphobic) makes me feel it's a pretty good choice. The thing about installing mods is that you can have exactly what you want for your forums. Makes it more unique, more customizable. Besides, I think the support at phpBB is very extensive. Although I haven't seen enough of IPB to make a fair comparision, I am pretty sure I prefer phpBB because I like stuff that's completely and thoroughly free Just an opinion, of course, no offense to IPB.

I have been wondering - it will be really nice if we could have a spellcheck feature on these forums. I'd personally like to quickly spell check my posts before sending them in. I know that the "Preview" feature should suffice, and anyone really obsessed with spellchecking should probably copy his(/her) post on a text editor and check it there. However, this is a facility I've been used to on a few other forums, and it'll be a nice add-on. It would probably help members whose first language is not English as well. I am not too sure about this one, but I'd like to see the Creativity Forums split into two subforums, if that is not too much trouble - personal and non-personal. I find that personal poetry is generally very different from poetry you want to get published, and I would react differently to a poem if it was written for publication. If there are enough people here who want professional feedback and aim to make a beginning in the lit scene out there, perhaps they deserve a corner of their own? If such a corner does come up, I can promise to contribute there. (For those who believe that so-called 'professional' poetry has its roots in personal feelings, I must mention that I agree completely. However, I wouldn't react to a personal poem by saying 'the meter is shaky in S5,L2 please change it to...'. For poetry that wants publication, certain technical points need to be noted. Which is why I'd probably be happy if it was separated from personal poetry.) Finally, the Graphics and Animations section might have a section for the Gimp. I'm sure it's a professional image editor plenty of people use. Just a thought. Cheers! PS: By the way, if anyone is wondering if I have any credits to go by in the context of literary creativity, then this may be relevant. But I can only promise to contribute, and I certainly do not claim to be a professional. Only a beginner trying/hoping to help

Thought I'd drop by to say I'm extremly impressed with the layout, design and content of your site. You're wonderful with the CSS and XHTML. Although I'm sure you're tired of hearing it - I'll say it again, your photographs are wonderful. I especially liked Lines and Candle, but all of them are very nice. The only tiny nit - not really a nit, more like an off-hand thought - I might have is the favicon. I wish it was 'more blue' to match with the rest of the site. But you're the design expert, and I'm sure you know what you're doing, so you can ignore this I think by a supressed menu, mizako meant having a 'collapsible' menu. I'm not sure if it's possible, although I've seen javascripts doing it quite well... it's usually useful when you want to conserve space, but with the sort of layout you have, I am not sure if it is necessary at all. Cheers, and keep us posted on new developments. It would be absolutely wonderful if you could create a mailing list and inform users when new photos are uploaded and other information - provided you have the time, of course.

Fair enough... I think it's a pretty good idea. I was setting up my cash mod (primitive, of course, when compared to credits system here), and I set it up so that whenever a topic is promoted to the 'popular' (or 'hot') stage (i.e., it gets more than x replies, x being a suitable number ) the topic poster gets some extra cash. I thought that was a decent idea. It'll probably nice if it's implemented here, although I'm fine with the current system as well (very poor attempt at diplomacy, I'm afraid )

Ok, I think I'm kind of delayed here; but this may be useful for those who haven't done the coppermine integration yet. I did try using Coppermine, but it ran into a database error. Although I'm sure I can sort that out by merging the phpBB database with the Coppermine one, I decided to install a phpBB mod instead. This is what my forums look like right now. If you like the look (you probably have to be someone who likes things kept simple, lol), then perhaps you should download it from here*. I'm not sure how well it will work with Easy Mod, a lot depends on what other mods you've installed. My installation was fairly trouble free, only had to make a few trivial changes. * Note - as far as I know, this is probably not an official phpBB mod. Use, like all disclaimers say, at your own risk

I love the GIMP. It's wonderful.That apart, I like Firefox a lot, although I use Opera more these days, because I've fallen in love with it's integrated mail client. Very neat. It's freeware except for a little banner ad that's not even distracting. I'll stop here, though, don't want to begin another firefox v/s any-other-browser argument right now.Don't think anyone has mentioned emacs yet - very powerful text editor with syntax highlighting, runs on Linux and Windows.LaTeX for mathematical typesetting.Acrobat Reader for the pdf files.That's all I can remember right off... Cheers!

It's been a while since the last post here, but I'm going to post anyway, this is question after my heart... Someone (I think it was Caveman) mentioned Orwell earlier, and I thoroughly agree. 1984 was probably one of the most powerful political satires (or black-humor-book as they call it) I've ever read. I recently re-read Animal Farm for the third time, and it's also a book I like very much, especially the way the pigs keep modifying the commandments (e.g. 'No animall will kill another' --> 'No animall will kill another without a reason'!!). I'm not sure about life-changing, but a book that did influence me rather deeply was Sophie's World. Then there's Kafka's Metamorphosis and Sartre'sNo Exit; The Stranger by Camus, all of them were... to put it briefly - influential. Looking forward to more on this -- I'd be curious

Teen violence did exist before computer games did, didn't it? I'm reasonably sure (although I don't have stats to support this) that there are teens who exhibit instances of violence without having had any computer game influence. On the other hand, I know plenty of gamers who are teens, crazy about games, but sane enough (no harm to society ). I am against anything (game or non-game) that spreads the idea of war, violence, et al and glamorizes them. However - while I'm sure there are cases where computer games have been responsible for teen violence, I cannot imagine that being an exclusive reason. Like Xboxgamer1200 put it, there are books, movies, and other media that can influence one's mind just as dramatically (sometimes even more) as computer games. I'll second that. We're all different people, and react differently to different things. Sure, some games may have accelerated the concept of teen violence, some may have contributed non-trivially to certain instances of teen violence -- but it can't be the only influence out there. It's a complex world Of course, I am still against anything that glamorizes violence and makes you think it's really cool to murder someone off the street - and if a game is going to do that, I will be against that too. But I must mention this - if something 'makes you think that x=y', that is no reason to believe x=y. If you do, and then suffer any negative consequences (of believing x=y), it's partly your fault. Does that make any sense?

It is unlikely that the original poster was talking about targeting individuals or small buissnesses. I guess there are companies out there who prefer professional services (and are willing to pay for it) to the free ones, and do not have the time to make the logos themselves - it's simply not their job. I agree in that I would probably not buy logos, simply because I can't afford to , but that doesn't mean that there aren't people out there who will buy 'em...

I've used Easy Mod for a couple of modifications, and it's worked out pretty well. Not without hiccoughs, though. My policy is to manually fix the errors run retured by easy Mod, and modify the install file accordingly - i.e., remove the steps which you carried out yourself I prefer to do the SQL myself, can't risk it with 'beta quality software'. The first MOD I installed was the attachment mod. Then the category hierarchy mod, which worked beautifully (so far, at least) and then the cash mod. However, the last two turned out to be slightly incompatible, and I had to make some non-trivial (well, non-trivial imo, since it took me SO long to figure out what was wrong ) changes. I guess I'd love to install a shoutbox and a photo gallery in the future. In fact, I'm planning to do so soon enough. Oh GAWD!! Why didn't you tell me before?? Ew... now I am sorry I spent three nights modding my forums! But that's a very cool thing to know anyway, in case my forums crash sometime (god forbid...)

I think I'll second that... the text in red could be a little bigger, or you could scale the whole banner Other than that, nice, sleek look - neat work!

I like the Matrix trilogy very much. I'm not into movies in particular, but I do watch them now and then. And the Matrix was a fairly memorable movie. I can't get enough of browsing their official sites. It's become a regular passtime to read cast&crew interviews. I liked Twister too, and am waiting for the Hitchikers movie (hasn't come out yet here, in India). I enjoy comedies like Rush Hour, although I do watch movies in all genres

No, I think it was pretty good However, you could look at it in more than one way - especially with such "story problems", where how the problem is 'worded' can make a non-trivial difference to how you understand it. Obviously, the dollar cannot be missing, and most people realize that it's a trick of the language (i.e., the way the problem is phrased). You can find five distinct answers here: A Math Forum Discussion Should be interesting Cheers!

Oops - I'm sorry, did not mean to add the smiley bang in between that line. I'm afraid I did not check the preview properly. What I meant was 'b )', as in 'point b is that...'. Gosh... sorry again

Hello, I was wondering if it is possible to install LaTeX on the server? I want to ensure that my forums can have Tex code along with the regular BB code, so that mathematical text renders itself correctly in the LaTeX format. I could use the LaTeX render MOD along with MimeTeX, without installing either LaTeX or ImageMagik. However, I am hesitant because - a) I am not sure if I am allowed to do this, and it will be nicer to have LaTeX installed, and although I've done it for my PC, I am not sure if I could (or am allowed to) do it for my site, especially considering it might overrun the 150MB limit. I'm not dying for this -- it's neither urgently required nor is it a minimum necessity; particularly considering I upgraded to phpBB 2.0.15 and installed the attach MOD so that users can simply upload the pdf files of their work. Having said that, though, I think it will be a nifty feature to have, considering I'm planning on forums where a lot of discussions will probably be math-centric. By the way, if the LaTeX installation cannot happen, I am curious to know if I can use something like MimeTeX - that is, if I am allowed to do it myself. Relevant links: The LaTeX render page Math Links [An Example of a forum that uses this feature effectively, and rather nicely.] In particular, perhaps I should quote what is really relevant, if you don't have the time to browse through the links, this is from the phpbb forums: I get the sneaky feeling I'm asking for too much. If that is the case, I'm sorry, I'll just forget about it. If this can be done, however, I will be delighted Thank you!

Cannot add much to what has been said already - I do like the look of the forum, especially the colors. Not a gaming freak, unfortunately, so cannot help or even comment of the categorization. Some forums have gone without description, some have inadequate description; maybe you should look to modify that, and obviously, do something to get more traffic - even something as naive as adding quick fun games (perhaps flash ones) does help - better than nothing, imo. Other than that, good work :DCheers!