Bah, only now did I find-out that the link to e-mail me on the left-hand side wasn't working! Thanks to JG from Florida for letting me know that there were no e-mail links on my website :) (if you're reading this now JG, I'm creating those savegames you requested, and will have them ready for you sometime this weekend)

So that link is obviously fixed now, what else is there to say? Oh yeah, Nyerguds, the one responsible for several great C&C patches/fixes for The First Decade - has requested I make a Dune II SHP converter (create Dune II SHPs from, say, a PCX file). What use is a SHP converter for such an old game? Well, the original C&C's mouse cursors were built on that format, and he hopes to use such a tool to create custom cursors for his C&C total conversion.

I was very surprised to find-out that nobody else has done this before, so I decided to step-up to the challenge. It's bit of a sidetrack from the current stream of Red Horizon development, but I always did intend to provide a small toolset as a part of the overall project.

From a program design perspective, I welcome the addition because it then forces me to develop more separation between what used to be such tightly-coupled program modules. And so far, it has helped me to create a more robust set of file objects; ones that support both saving and loading, which will be of great help in the future.

Now I've managed to get units to show-up on the screen, and to make them selectable (pics). Doing so has raised some challenges (not surprising, since I've never programmed a game before), but it's becoming more of a test of my aspect/object-oriented design skills, rather than programming sounds and graphics.

One thing I've been seeing a lot of recently is blog sites. I've even included a few of my friends' blogs to the links on the right. As well as reading their content, I've been checking-out how they're structured because I've been considering expanding this site's program to restructure the news portion in a similar way. It won't be too hard as my web host - interAdvantage, who have been very good to me considering my slightly different website requirements - includes several features in their standard plans which I can use. It would be kinda cool to finally use some more of what I pay for too. My only worry is that it'll detract from the rest of my free time, and I'll admit right now that I don't have a lot of that.

Another free-time killer on the horizon is a new space pic. I'm aiming to create something along the lines of an aurora, which will give me some reason to start using Terragen again.

Lastly, I'll need to expand the Stuff section to include some e-mails that I've been writing. Sounds rather mundane (I mean, e-mails, c'mon), but I've been writing them in a manner consistent with some of the books I've been reading during my commute between work and home (it's a long train ride otherwise). The recipients have been pretty happy with their narrative style and content, so I'll be putting them up here to archive them, and for future reference.

I've spent the past few days overhauling the behind-the-scenes workings of this site, using the many things I've learned at my work since it's last major overhaul. It's been a good little practice for me as I spend some time and practice with technology during any lulls at work.

Now that's out of the way, I'm gonna work towards adding a few screenshots to the Red Horizon section. After checking-out other C&C projects out there (like a port of C&C to the Nintendo DS), I told myself I really gotta get some pics. So next on the agenda: playing some videos from the missions and taking screenies to put up here.

I've been working on the new Red Horizon addition to my website, as made evident by the new links in the navigation bar to the left. If you investigate these new pages, you'll soon see that lots of it is still to be completed.

As well as these new links on the left, I'm trialing a to-do list and current progress list in the Stuff bar on the right. People keep asking me what I'm doing now, or if there are any updates on this or that, so hopefully this will answer that question. If it doesn't, well I'm at least hoping that it will inform others that I'm only a 1-person shop spending little time on his hobbies and more time getting distracted by other things, like Halo ;)

If you're reading this, then your DNS has been updated and now points to my latest host for my website :)

After the debacle with my previous host and their JSP hosting issues (their short answer about whether I can get JSP hosting fixed: NO!), I've finally moved on to a host that can supply those services. But what does that mean for you? Probably nothing at all :P

This whole migration to JSPs was both a learning experience, and to make maintaining my website much easier for me. But that doesn't mean you've gained nothing out of it. Firstly, the space wallpapers are now available at maximum JPG quality (the ones via the links to the various resolutions, not the display image). Secondly, I've been working on adding a few walkthroughs for some of the more difficult missions in my campaign. If you go to the Campaign - Missions page, you can now find that some of those missions names have become links! Give 'em a click, you know you want to ;)

(I've used 3 smileys in this news post alone; I must be in a good mood)

Nothing much to report: just fixed-up some broken links, and some HTML in the Artwork pages (the justified alignment tag was working too well in FF 1.5).

Looks like I'll have to wait a bit for my hosts to fix their Tomcat/JSPs problem. In all honesty, I didn't expect instant results 'cause it is Christmas; everyone is entitled to their holiday. But after that, then I go medieval on them ;) So I'll have to maintain ye olde HTML files for just a little bit longer. Either way, welcome to the new home for my website. To celebrate, I've got another space wallpaper to share with y'all:

• Wallpapers - The Path Of Angels

OK, so I didn't make this wallpaper to celebrate the move to my new domain, it just happened to be finished now. Once again, it was inspired by very strong elements in my life. But worry not, the theme isn't sad or emo this time.

I've also got myself a deviantArt account. To visit it, you can click on the link to the right under the 'More of me' header. Alternatively, you can type ultraq.deviantart.com into your browser.

Mwuahahah, HOT domain name ACTION! http://www.ultraq.net.nz/

There's nothing there yet, just the front page acting as a place holder until I sort every other little detail out. Apart from just a domain name and hosting, I've been given a tonne of other technologies to play around with, the most interesting one for me probably being JSPs. With the extra space, processing power, and general stuff, I'm gonna investigate the extra things I've always wanted to do, before making the final move to my new home.

I've just been re-arranging some content on this site as the stuff for me to watch over just becomes more numerous. The most noticeable change is the assigning of the Wallpapers section to be a subgroup of Artwork. The most un-noticeable change is the biggest one: the re-writing of the JavaScript that is used to display the content. Hopefully there shouldn't be any broken links, and any that were caused by the new scripts I have caught. If there are some dead links leading to pages that look like there should be something going on, it would be really nice if you would let me know. Contact e-mail address is on the left, where it has always been :)

Keeping everything at Brinkster in-synch with my local copy has always been difficult. Trying to get by without FTP isn't easy, and that upload interface of Brinkster's isn't top-notch either. But hey, it was all free.

So, as a Christmas present to myself, I'll be moving the site on to bigger things (ie: a paid service). Goodbye ads, and hello convenience!

After seeing my friend update his own website (Jandal's Webpage), his layout reminded me to finally put up links on my page. Just like him, I thought I'd just dedicate my right sidebar to the links instead of making a page for it. I'm really not sure what the hell to put up there, so I just found myself adding links to places that I find myself in quite often. Although, if I truly continued along that path, I'd end up putting links to several - other - random - places, as well one to where you can find the new Netscape Browser.

(was that too obvious? lol?)