Well just when you thought EA (aka old ruins of westwood) is totally done calling 2008 with the FPS “Tiberium” looks like they have something else up their sleeves with a new sequel to the largely popular Red Alert series. We’ve seen C&C 3 adn Kane coming up previously, so we can technically and most expectedly see Red Alert next in the rotation for a sequel.

Many old time gamers will know Red Alert as part of the Command and Conquer series which took the world by storm and redefined real time strategy since the mid 90s. Red Alert was a classic which we can only reminisce on but will never set our hands on playing given what Red Alert 2 (RA2) can offer in terms of graphics and eye candies.

However RA2 did not quite get the package right in a rather non-catchy and as immersive story line delivered in the classic RA1 series. Coupled with the fact that it simply takes no brains to complete any new C&C title on hard released since the late 90s. I hope EA won’t disappoint with this new title, presumably too, their answer to Blizzards up and coming Starcraft 2.

More info and larger cover shot of what you can expect in this comoing April’s edition of PC gamer here.

Wishing everybody there celebrating Chinese New Year today a very happy CNY 2008 and the Lunar new year of the Rat! It’s the time of the year where you not only get to stuff yourself silly with bak kua, pineapple tarts or turning orange from all those excessive mandarin oranges, it’s also a period to meet up and catch up with everyone, let be some of my distant relatives who I only get to meet “officially” like once a year.

I believe everyone’s all stuffed with their reunion dinner, let be in a restaurant or at home with your family, relatives or friends. I had mine with my family yesterday and will be having another at my grandparents where all my relatives and cousins will be meeting up.

The rat year is also my Chinese Zodiac year as well too. And yea so ya… all the ratty goodness for all!

Prior to upgrading my site and making it more code efficient, I always had a problem of integrating Wordpress and Gallery together seamlessly and call functions from each program without any conflicts. By nature, unlike gallery 2 (G2), gallery 1 do not have a naive system in support for templates – sticking to html “wrappers” which you can add custom code to as the name suggest, wrap your site’s HTML code around the gallery so that it appears integrated with your current site layout.

So why use an older version of gallery (G1) instead of the newer G2? There are many advantages of using Gallery1 instead of the database driven gallery2, namely because of the avoidance of large dependence of databases and slow loading of pages gallery 2 have on my site compared to 1.

Given this issue, previously all my Wordpress Wordpress functions within my photo gallery pages are called out through various strategically located and placed iframes, though cross-browser safe, it’s not the ideal way to display content. Ideally, all content should be rendered and shown on a single page with minimal redundant frames which can possibility slow down load timings and opens up more areas of inconsistently which could be avoided in the first place.

This issue is widely raised in both the Wordpress and gallery forums but with little avail, with even veteran users there concluding:

I decided to look into the integration issue (again), also as part of my the scheduled site revamp and attempts to solve the problem. A Google gave me a possible solution as highlight by Ron on his blog:

What he meant was including the Wordpress functions “blog-header.php” right in the gallery header/footer wrapper template files using a server-side include should solve the problem. However, that will never work even if the included file and path are correct, the functions will never be able to be called.

Ron solution then came about with including the functions right into the gallery core file itself (util.php) with the following code added right at the top of the file:

Which worked for him, presumably be that he is running Gallery 1 with Wordpress 1.2 and below (that was a dated blog post by Ron too).

For me doing that will give me a “gallery has not been configured” error page, which apparently is a big problem highlighted by few who gave feedback on Ron’s blog post as well, but not addressed till now too. Going further into the topic it goes to show that this problem is only evident for all versions of Gallery1 to present and versions of Wordpress 2.0 and below. I am running Wordpress 1.5.

Dissecting the code, it seems that including the Wordpress headers in the util.php files do allow you to call functions within all gallery pages, but a conflict due to common configuration paths to each program confuses gallery with the Wordpress config directory, therefore being unable to find it’s own configurations and thus reverting to it’s “unconfigured state”.

So the final solution is a simple fix to tell both Wordpress and gallery what directories do they belong to, this is done but manually defining the GALLERY_CONFDIR and ABSPATH variables for each. Add these following code to your util.php located in your gallery root folder depending on where your Wordpress and Gallery installations are.

And the problem will be solved! In the example, I have my Wordpress install in a “/blogs” folder from the root, similarly, the Gallery install takes a “/gallery” folder from the root, please change the code paths to suit your install.

Remember to paste that code into any new install of gallery 1 as util.php will be overwritten with each new install.

Please mind the sawdust, the site is currently under a 3 day upgrade where few areas of the site will be upgraded and code re-written. These are few of the various addons planned for the site for a more Web 2.0 layout.

• Integrated photo gallery is now database driven
• Lightboxes for photo previews
• More user friendly shoutbox with reply and possibility AJAX powered
• Integrated tooltips throughout the site
• Wider layout for 1024 horizontal widths
• Several code rewrites and optimization for fast loading

The photo gallery is currently completely inaccessible at the moment, please bear with it.

In the meantime if you are seeing any images of layouts out of place, well nothing to be alarmed!

Been all round Singapore and visiting grans in the afternoon. The rain kinda dampened the need to drop by Chinatown to check out the festive happenings and goodies there. Then there was the Track and field outing in the evening.

It was a short dinner gathering at Hongkong Street cafe at East coast with most of the track team there. There were beach side games earlier in the afternoon which I wasn’t able to make. But otherwise was told it was put short due to the rain in the area (Not to mention the jams all round the marine parade area which made me late as well too).

Had their trademark Chicken and Pork shop curry rice, topped with some dim sum for a modest $14, got to catch up with my juniors and alumni members such as Ronald who is in the internet telephony mlm business. The gathering also saw a reunion of some long lost seniors where most of us going “MIA” since the hectic final year project period.

As with every track and field tradition, each senior is presented with an intricately hand-made card personalized to the given impression and milestones we had contributed. It’s also interesting to see how who are portrayed from the eyes of our juniors.

Just to name a few of the rather interesting drawings, Zhongyan our jumper also like to drink and chomp on other people’s food especially after race lunches, thus he’s drawn running who refreshments at the finish as a bait, Weiwen was drawn as a gorilla given his “on the surface I look like I will kill you look” & Shunqiang, being named Xiaoqiang was drawn a cockroach.

I was drawn as shown on the left, quite accurate I would say, haha if that means standing way ahead of everybody for the ummmm, “top student” part, but thats some defined 6 packs I’ve got there haha!

We all made our way and gathered round the marine parade community club top floor basketball court to chill out interact with out juniors, with each senior taking turns wishing and sending their regards to the juniors before bidding officially farewell to all.

We have the especially the organisers to thank for this event. Though it’s a simple event with no fancy BBQs and stuffs, it did get the intention and objective through- to officially send off the seniors in a cohesive and memorable way.

Was around school today (for one of the few last times) with the team to collect my Spinnovex gold certificate. Theres alot to catch up not to mention bidding farewell to many of our anticipative lecturers (not to mention many photos as well) who took us during our course of studies. I apologize for my absence over the last week as the period spanning from last Tuesday to Thursday as that was my class end-semester chalet period. Nevertheless, managed to find some time to get an entry for the event up:

Less than satisfying BBQ
The first day started with a simple check in and setting up the place for everybody. Contrary to shopping and preparing food ourselves, our organisers ordered catered BBQ for dinner, which was rather a big the disappointment as the bbq wholesale center with catered food is not only expensve (about $120 for one night) but only offered enough food for the labeled “20 people”. The spread only encompassed a a single tray of beehoon, few satays, hotdogs, crabsticks, fishballs and rice balls which can’t even feed us all fully at all. I did not interfere with the organsing this time round but from my own experience of organising and going through countless BBQs, $120 for food brought by yourself and prepared by yourself can even feed 20 people for 2 consecutive nights of BBQ, but I was a guest haha… so relax bah!

Fret not as there was more food!
Thankfully, there was our classmate Ryan to the rescue with his connections and having worked in a fast food outlet in Downtown east itself, we managed to get a large abundance of (yet guilty-ly) fast food leftovers later that night (enough to feed an entire army) all sent to our chalet unit itself, where most of us pigged out over supper and playing cards and playstation console games.

Endless card games

And few PS2s to boot!

1st Night BBQ

Night suppers and walks
Moreover, for those who still cannot get enough of food, there was a planned late night walk cum supper to the nearby neighboring 24hours coffee shops in the area followed by a walk along pasir ris park with ghost stores to tell.

Waterbomb teamgames
Field games, especially ‘monkey’ and waterbombs were played during the whole our the following afternoon to pass the time, with the bomb fight ending with lots of wet and bruises bodies, not to mention sun burn taking the biggest toll among most of us there. There was team based “capture the ball” almost like paintball using some built up sheds and tables for cover, otherwise there was the “free for all” bomb fight to end the afternoon with. Dinner was the same fast food together before calling the night with more late night card games, outdoor walks and not to mention disgusting forfeits.

Waterbombs aways

Roar Gorilla domination!

Football club shot

We definably could not get enough of the Macdonald’s $2 breakfast meal for the morning where we checked out. Though the chalet was not totally the well-organised and that aside it definitely satisfied it’s objective as a closing event organised to celebrate the end of the semester and Spinnovex. And man do I have to run more to rid all those excess calories taken in from the fastfood!