As noted by my previous post, I have a MiniCity. Anyway, I talked about my cute little card thing which generally shows the stats of the city. That’s quite cool, considering I finally managed to get my card automatically updated every so often.

What I didn’t mention was the other side to it. The link.

Every so often, much sooner than the image generation, my link gets the stats and decides what’s important. Then it will bounce to that particular area until the next generation when it’ll decide again. Basically I stick the same link with the card, but when clicked on depending on certain criteria it could go anywhere for the minicity.

So it may decide to increase transport, or industry, or population. I need to tweak it slightly so it doesn’t offer other’s too soon, but it’s pretty neat.

It, along with my image generation script, write the status and update to a email queue script I wrote, which once a day sends me an email summarising the actions. This I like as it means the actions are all there listed, I can see what was linked to, whether or not the image was successfully generated ect…

I’m hoping to expand on my mail queue for other automated tasks. That way I only get one email instead of many. Trust me, many are annoying.

I might tweak the image generation code to include my current rank, then I might just make the image code publicly available for anyone who wants it. It’ll be crude, and it’ll have to be tweaked to get it working for anyone else, but it does the trick for me.

I did try using complicated feed parsers found online, but in the end I used my own basic cURL and expressions to parse the XML.

I did something like this before, but because I didn’t pay attention I didn’t actually have any numbers at the end.

So this time I’m starting with a blank inbox and working it out.

On Gaia I’m a moderator, and when you leave your online light on, you’re constantly PMed messages that could easily be sent elsewhere. We have entire forums dedicated to some of the messages. I’ve said it before, I’m not technical support. Ask in the Q&A forum on Gaia first!

Today is day one, current PM count: 0.

So I’ve got a Minicity since I thought why not. Anyway, since I wanted a way to link to it I created this ->

It’s a card, duh. The city image doesn’t update, since I couldn’t be bothered to do that, but the actual stats do. Population, revenue, transport etc… all update to reflect what stats my real minicity have.

Basically I have a script run every few hours (since sooner is completely redundant) that grabs the information from the minicity site (who awesomely make the stats available in a XML feed to be used) and adds it. EDIT: Yeah, so overnight my timer script decides not to work. For now I’ll have to manually run them xD

Anyway, do me a favour? Click my city link?

I admit it. I’m addicted. I just can’t help it, it’s so… fun. I love adding these little features, tweaking things until I get it how I like it.

My blog has quite a few tweaks on it right now. The whole art section is a bit of modified code by me (still not working quite as I’d like it) and I’ve shoved in plugins all over the place. They do little things, slightly modifying the core functionality of wordpress, but remaining separate so updates are still a snap.

It satisfies my need for change without actually changing the core code. That’s what I love about Wordpress, you can make these changes completely separate from the actual core code, so upgrading is a complete snap.

Unlike phpBB where the plugins actually modify core code which means an upgrade totally fucks up your plugins, Wordpress is actually really friendly for developers.

I don’t know, it seems everywhere I look on the World Wide Web I see stupidity, whether it be dancing monkeys to ignorant people surfing.

Like that girl in New Zealand who went to police that her Bebo account was hacked. That does suck, but the funny thing is they don’t mention how it happened. Not until the very end where the reporter mentions “and never give your password out to anyone”. Right there that indicates that the girl did in fact give her password out. Which is just stupid.

I’m sorry, but there is no valid reason why your personal password needs to be shared with someone over the internet or real life. If you do, you’re an idiot.

The reasons people give are funny. “I need to investigate your account”, “The database has corrupted”, “Flying ponies need it” are all examples. Obviously the third is face, but guess what - so are the rest!

I repeat it,  there is never ever ever ever any reason to give your password to another person at all. If you do, you’re an idiot.

Do you honestly think the people who designed the system put the horrible flaw in there that to investigate a user you need access to their password? If anyone did design such a system they deserve to be shot, as that is the dumbest idea ever (yes, even dumber than a certain celeb).

I guess the only example I can give is this. The police need to investigate you, and they need to check your banking records. They can access this information, as can the bank staff even though your PIN number is never asked for. Your PIN is private and you don’t have to give it out to the bank or police at all.

It’s just stupid.

So I joined Twitter in January of this year since I’d heard a little about it. It’s a site where you can quickly make updates on what you’re doing, and people can see. You can make it web based or even text based, so you text a message in and you can update it.

Just trying it out, I’ve added it to my blog now. Down in the sidebar on the right is a panel called “What am I up to?”, and this is grabbing info from my Twitter page. It’s pretty cool and should be pretty accurate.

Just messing around with it honestly, obviously I don’t post personal information or anything but general updates seem neat.

A lot of people seem to be using it. Why not give it a try? And congrats you stalkers, you lucky devils you. Your job just got easier.