Here’s a little nostalgia for you.  I remember trying to get this to run on my dad’s 16Mhz 386. (QEMM anyone?)  Well, someone has gone and ported Doom over to Flash.  All so you can play it in your browser. Â
I was watching ‘The Simpsons’ last night and noticed something new. Â I believe this is the first big change in the history of the show. They are now in HD. Â Complete with a new – though similar – HD intro.Â
Remember, I am showing you how THIS website came to be. Â There are many different directions to go from here. Â I chose a blog, since it seemed to be the easiest way to share my thoughts. Â My main goal was I wanted to be able to focus more of my time on writing than coding. Â I didn’t want to have to deal with any of the headaches of hosting my own site either.
So, my first step was to find a home for the website.  The good news here, is the web hosting scene is highly competitive and you can find some really cheap hosting.  The bad news is, many of these hosting sites are poorly managed.  I did a lot of research on hosting, and came up with a list that I believe reflects some of the better ones that I found.  - The List - I of course could not test them myself, so I used the presentation of their websites and reviews posted on other websites as a guide.
Things I needed:
Large amount of storage and bandwidth.Â
Server side PHP.
Ability to have multiple MySQL databases.
Must be allowed to serve up my own ads. Â
In the end I chose Lunarpages to host my site. Â At the time I think I paid $6.95 a month. Â They are even cheaper now. ($4.95 as of this writing). They seemed to offer the most bang for the buck and got very favorable reviews. Â I like them so far. You can check them out here: [Lunarpages.com]
So, I paid for the hosting and they sent me a few emails on how to set everything up. Â If I remember right, there were even instructions on how to change the DNS entry at the registrar. Â I’ll talk more about doing this in a later post, but basically, the host you choose will give you an IP address or Nameserver. Â You must then log in to your domain registrar (godaddy, Directnic) and enter this info in the Nameserver field on the configuration page of your domain name. Â What this does is link your domain name with your host’s servers. Â It allows you to type ‘www.sin8.com’ and wind up on this server. Â After doing this, it can take a few days for change to work. Â As far as I understand, it’s synchronizing the change you made, with servers around the world. So don’t worry if typing your website name into a browser doesn’t immediately bring you to your new host.
In the meantime while you’re waiting, you can play around with your new host. Â The better host’s will have LOTS of tools and options to play with, so spend some time familiarizing yourself with them.
Ok, so apparently it is possible to overdose on eye-drops. Â Despite my last post, this is not a photoshop. Â I actually managed to dilate my own eye. Â
(Ignore how tired I look. Â It was a long day)
Here’s what happened. Â The other night, I rubbed my eye and my contact half fell out. It was just hanging on to my eyelashes. Â It was already drying out by the time I got it back in, so I borrowed some eye-drops from a friend. Â He said he uses these eye-drops all the time for his contacts. I should have read the label better. Â It was Opcon-A. Â Long story short, I used way too much of the stuff.Â
Moral: Â Don’t use Opcon-A if you wear contact lenses. Â My eye was dilated like that for 16 hours!!
I’d like to think that I know how to use Photoshop. Â I mean, I use it regularly for this site as well as for touching up photos. Â But the truth is, I only know the basics. Â Â What I actually do is search the web for Photoshop tutorials. Â Its a great way to learn.
I just came across a goldmine that I had to share. Â Photoshop Lady has put together this incredible list of Photoshop tutorials. Â I highly recommend checking this out and bookmarking this page.
February 18, 2009 
Posted in Carl's Blog 
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 There’s even a how-to for age progression
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