Musicalmidget’s Blog

I’ve recently returned home from university after completing my second year. It’s apparently the summer break, but you wouldn’t know it from the weather. It’s rained almost constantly since I got home, and we’re not talking a little rain here, we’re talking torrential downpours that drainage systems across the region are having problems coping with. Numerous places in Doncaster are flooded, as are so many other places across Yorkshire and the north of England in general. I’m fairly sure the house I’ve just left behind in Hull is also flooded, since the news is reporting severe problems on the roads around the area. The news suggests water is knee-deep. It’s not quite that bad in Doncaster, but driving the car to the garage wasn’t fun this morning. Some roads were so waterlogged that the short 20 minute round trip took just short of an hour.

The weather has obviously had an effect on the first day of Wimbledon. A few matches have taken place, but the Henman/Moya match had to be suspended a short while ago. Probably quite frustrating for Tim Henman, since he was essentially only two points away from taking the first set. Wimbledon is really the only major sporting event I follow since I’ve never really been into any other sport. Thus, it’s typical that the tournament by disrupted in this way right from day one.

It’s really shaping up to be a typical “British Summer”. In other words, it’s basically a monsoon.

Updated 27/06/07: Doncaster is now one of the worst affected places in the UK. A large number of houses (particularly in the north of the town) have already been flooded, and it’s feared many more will flood if Ulley Dam bursts. I’ve also seen a number of videos online of Hull, which suggest that the house I’ve just left behind at uni has indeed flooded. Although I’ll not be living there anymore, had this happened a couple of weeks earlier I would probably be going through hell right now, especially since I lived on the ground floor.

Although we’re not in any immediate danger at home (very high above the river), the floods have caused major disruption across town. For that reason, it looks as though I’ll be spending the next few days indoors…still.

I’ve never been one for social networking on the internet, despite the fact it seems to be all the rage with people of my age. However, a little before Christmas, I decided to see what all the fuzz was about with Facebook. The last big networking craze seemed to be about MySpace, although I never really understood what it was about MySpace that made people like it so much. When I signed up to Facebook, I was actually quite surprised. It was something different. The “profile pages” were cleaner and the user interface was pretty nice to use. The photograph tagging system was also something I’d not seen on many other similar such sites. I’ve stuck with Facebook for a few months, but it seems that probably wont be the case for much longer.

The recent addition of “applications” to the site has in my eyes, made it more like MySpace than the fairly decent site it was before. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad to the extent that you click on someone’s page to have your music interrupted by some crappy rock clip blasting out that’s embedded in the page. That said, since the applications arrived, I’ve been constantly bombarded with “requests” to add the same applications as others on my friends list. I signed in this evening to find no less than 12 requests which had appeared in a matter of mere hours. Many of the requests were for applications, and they were mostly for applications which I had previously rejected numerous times. It seems it’s more a chore to deal with requests than to sign in and catch up with recent goings on. That strikes me as strange, since I thought the idea of Facebook was to make it a fun place for all.

The only social networking site I’ve ever been willing to use seriously, and it’s starting to get like the others that annoy me so much. Perhaps I’m a strange teenager 20 year old (bugger), but I don’t think I’m ever going to get on with this sort of thing.

Take a look at the Modifications and Plugins page at MyBB Mods. Notice anything? There are now 200 different downloads available for MyBB 1.2, of which around 175 are plugins. Similarly, 68 themes are now available for MyBB 1.2, and that number is steadily increasing. I dare say the current theming contest at MyBB Fans could have something to do with the increasing number of themes cropping up not just at MyBB Mods, but around the MyBB community in general.

Anyway, since the 200 limit has now been reached, I thought I’d share a little something. I moved back home again yesterday after finishing my second year at university. Today, I decided to sit back and make a start on a few improvements planned for MyBB Mods. The first of these improvements is to do with download previews. The current system is very old and has needed updating for sometime now. Currently, authors can link to two URLs to provide previews of their submissions. In order to bring the preview feature up to date, authors will soon be able to submit images with their submissions, which will then be shown automatically on the download information page (thumbnails will be shown in the case of large images). The system will work in a similar way to the MyBB attachment system, in that you’ll be able to upload the attachment and add it to the submission. There will be a limit on the number of images which can be attached to submissions. Although that limit hasn’t yet been decided, it will be more than two, which is all that the current URL based system allows for.

Fancy a screenshot?

I should point out that the values entered into the form in the above screenshot are blank by default, however I placed information into them for the purpose of the screenshot.

The system is a long way from finished and there are several other features I want to create/improve upon before any of them go live. I’ll be working on them over the summer however, with a little bit of enjoying summer too. I’m sure I’ll post some more information soon though.