Created a new logo
I decided that the logo redesign is my next step for the project. Blender and GIMP are two editors that I used to design the current logo. The tools I used to create redesigned logo are Inkscape and GIMP. I used Inkscape to design the basic text and add shadow and reflection effects using GIMP. This is the first time I have used Inkscape so I only can discover its features through using it. I found out that it has the ability to directly change the font size without converting the text to image like GIMP does. This means that I can change the content of the text after I changed font size. Inkscape also has drag and drop feature to import different image files into the document, including JPG and PNG. Below is my finished text created using Inkscape:
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The file saved by Inkscape is a SVG file. It can be imported into GIMP as an image file. By following this tutorial, I was able to create a shadow effect for the logo, as well as the reflection effect. Below is the logo with effects added:
This image is directly linked from beta.robbychen.com
Note that this logo might change based on the future development of the site. For instance, I might add or remove some open source software images, such as Ubuntu logo for letter o in my name. However, I will write a post about the change once I make a change on the beta site.
Color Theme Successfully Changed to Ubuntu Radiance (Beta Site)
As discussed in the last post, I’m beginning to update my main site’s layout and color theme. Today I was trying to apply the Ubuntu Radiance theme onto the color theme for the site. I’ve mainly focused on the window title bar where most of the colors are there.
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The first draft of the new site layout can be viewed here: beta.robbychen.com
I have just changed color theme of the site based on the Ubuntu Radiance desktop theme. In addition, I have removed calender on the site because  it doesn’t serve much purpose other than displaying it to show this month’s calender. I haven’t change the layout of the site as well as the logo because I decided to change the color theme of the site first to get an idea on how the final results will look like.
Since this is the first draft, I might change color theme of the site to something else. However, I will keep posted on the latest development of the site. You also can checkout beta.robbychen.com to see the latest site development.
Played Around with Drupal, Upcoming Site Update, and more …
I hadn’t write any blog post since last Thursday. The reason is because I had been playing around with Drupal. Drupal is a Content Management System that is similar to WordPress, in my experience, because it can install additional plugins as modules, custom themes, and add pages. However, Drupal has few other features that need to be configured externally if using WordPress, such as the ability to optimize the performance of the site by enabling compression. Perhaps I used WordPress for long time and don’t know how to use Drupal yet, I have not discovered any usefulness of Drupal over WordPress yet. I will continue to learn more about Drupal and improve my Drupal site at diary.robbychen.com. As you can see through the URL, I originally planed to start another diary blog using a CMS app and change the daily post schedule for this blog to irregular post schedule just like my Tumblr-based blog. I decided first to try Drupal because I tried Joomla before and I can’t seem to use it. I think I will try other CMS if Drupal also won’t work for me.
I also plan to update my main site robbychen.com beginning tomorrow since the spring semester is over. I decided to make this site as a portfolio site that include all the programming works that I have done in the past instead of a tutorial site because this domain name is based on my name and it doesn’t suited for a tutorial website or a commercial website. The current layout on the site is based on a commercial website. I will try to create my own site layout and I have decided to apply the color theme of the site based on the new Ubuntu Radiance theme.
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The ColdFusion to PHP project that I was promised back in January is not possible anymore because I couldn’t find the CA 278 files and can’t convert to PHP without these files. However, I’m organizing the CA 288 class files which is advanced ColdFusion programming. I will rewrote them with PHP as soon as the maintenance of these files is completed.
First Draft of Ideas for the New Website Topic
I created the first draft for the ideas of the new website redesign. Here is the mind-map version of the ideas:
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Note that this is the first draft, which means that I would remove or add certain titles to the draft in the future. There is a to-do item that I’ve included in the portfolio section. I will add the required items into the section after I researched this topic.
If you have any advice on what should I include or not include on the new site, please leave a comment below. Thank you.
Changing Website Topic
I have not updated my main website robbychen.com since I began to blog more often. Although I got this domain last year, I haven’t used it until this semester. At first, I didn’t have any ideas what to do with this website. I decided to temperately store my class assignments. My goal for this website became more clear after I began this blog. I plan to change robbychen.com topic relevant to the topic of this blog. It will contain video tutorials for GNU/Linux and web development. It will also include all of my web development projects, as well as their source code. But first I will redesign the website to fit the new topic. I plan to complete before this semester ends.
Discovered a Bug in the Web Application
I encountered a small bug in my Computer Concepts web app while I was doing the assignment using the app. It seems to always output a forward slash in front of each single quote on the print layout table. Please refer to the following screenshot if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
Forward slash bug. Click the image to enlarge
Thankfully, I found this post in the Dev Shed forum that provide a native PHP function to remove the forward slashes. I applied the function stripslashes($string) to the output value and the forward slashes are now gone.
Here is the updated source code for anyone who downloaded my last source code:
http://www.robbychen.com/cs110/worksheet_sourcecode.zip
If you find more problems while using the app, please leave a comment. I will fix it as soon as possible. Thanks.
Web Application Link added to the Homepage
I have added the link to the web app to the robbychen.com homepage. In addition, I have also enabled the link to the CS 110 Computer Concepts homepage. Right now it only has one item, the assignment aid web application. Since I created this web app, I will make a copy of this application and modify it to connect it to the database to post my future assignments for this course. This weekend I will also enable the links for other courses I’m taking this semester.
Since I believe in open source, here is the source code for the web application (NOTE: The only files that are missing in the source code are jQuery Javascript files, you can find the download links for these scripts in my last post):
http://www.robbychen.com/cs110/worksheet_sourcecode.zip
Site Will be Down Tonight
My hosting provider just announced that their servers will be down this evening for maintenance. Since I won’t login to the blog to post updates for my project because of the announcement, I will post my project as well as the article I was planned on publish onto the blog tomorrow. Hopefully my hosting provider will fix the 500 error I has encountered on my site this past week.
Changing Plan
I just found out this morning school is open today despite that today is President’s Day in the US. I have to postpone my project to Wednesday since I don’t have access to a scanner to scan the original assignment sheet. Right now I’m completing assignment for Computer Concepts class. I know the web app for helping me to complete this assignment is not finished yet. Since this assignment is due tomorrow, I have to complete this by hand. Besides, if I finished building the web app, I don’t have access to a printer to print out the assignment, and I have classes until ten o’clock on both evenings today and tomorrow.
So I decided to delay my web app “release” to Wednesday. Today I’ll complete my Computer Concepts assignment. The completion of the web app will be tomorrow. On Wednesday, I will scan the original assignment sheet to my laptop, compare between the web app and the original, and upload the project. As I wrote on previous post, it will be uploaded under the CS 110 homepage on robbychen.com website.
Creating my First Web App
I’m currently creating my first web application to aid my class assignment, specifically CS110 (Computer Concepts). The reason I came up with this web app idea is because there are 12 Chapters in the textbook for the course and we must answer the questions at the end of every chapter, but there is only one sheet of assignment paper. The professor told us to xerox some copies for future assignments. I thought this is a good idea to create a web app based on this sheet of paper. Originally, I planned to use scanner to scan it to my PC and directly working on it. Because there aren’t any good OCR tool available in GNU/Linux, as far as I know, and my writing is terrible, I decided to convert it to a web app.
Today I started creating the web app. I finished coding it using HTML and PHP and putted it to test. I used it to complete the Chapter 2 assignment. During the test, I was beginning to come up inspirational ideas, like auto change to the next text field in the same table column when it reaches maximum length and move the last incomplete word to the new text field like word processor. Unfortunately, I only knows little about JavaScript. I’m researching on how to do these. Maybe I will keep these ideas for my next project if I didn’t find anything on how to accomplish these.
I plan to complete the web app tomorrow. It will be “released” under CS 110 homepage on the robbychen.com website.