After nearly 3 years of having this blog, and all the times I said I would put up some tutorials, I guess it's about time I actually did that :P.  I intend to make my tutorials short and sweet, well, because I'd rather be keeping up with my YouTube channel or adding useful links to this site than doing grammar checks on blog posts, :D programming experience is assumed...

Anyway, XSLT, or eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations, is handy for converting any XML-compliant documents into other XML documents.  The perfect example is on this site's front page; you see I have links from GameTrailers, Joystiq, DigitalFoundry, and Gamasutra, all in their own little sections.  Well, you don't really think I copy-paste those links to my site every few minutes, do you?  No, each of those sites provides an RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) for public use.  RSS is a subset of XML, and as such can be modified by XSL, because an RSS document/feed is an XML document.  Sooooooo, what I'm doing is slurping up the RSS from their site, and using XSL to reformat the data in those feeds for use on my site so that it conforms to my site's look and feel.  Voila, valuable content for my site's users, and that content will now update itself!

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Visitors will no longer be able to register on the old pheedbaq.com, as I have permanently disabled registration there.  The new site (the one you're on now) is now open for new user registration.  If you currently a user on the old site, please re-register on the new one if you wish to have an account here.  I will not be transferring accounts over, in order to weed out spam registrations and users who no longer wish to retain their account.

Just added a bunch of useful programming/software links to del.icio.us, a service that allows you to catalogue all of your bookmarks online and tag them for categorization.  The great part is that you can then syndicate any combination of tags as their own feed.  I've taken advantage of this and set up a Programming section full of these RSS link feeds (and some good vids) that will now update themselves as I add things to del.icio.us :)  It's all about entering things in one place and referencing it from there.  I'm starting to like the Web 2.0 and all its' cloudiness.  If you get the chance, check it out!  They offer browser plugins as well to make it really easy to bookmark as well.  You can also follow all of the links I put on the pheedbaq account, see below for the link.

The service web site: http://delicious.com/

Just the pheedbaq del.icio.us bookmarks: http://delicious.com/pheedbaq

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Just added a blog roll to the main page, should be below the gamasutra section.  Two friends of mine both have sites/blogs, so I figured I'd add them in case anyone is interested in their content.  The first, CobbNet.net, is done by a network admin, and has some nifty networking tools.  The other, Computer Programming and Magic The Gathering, is a blog about the card game Magic The Gathering, and the deck-building program my friend has written called Forge.  He also talks about programming issues that relate to games in general.  Check them out!

I'll be migrating some of the posts from the old blog to the new one.  I will mark each one with its original post date.  I'm only migrating the ones that will actually be useful, so they may as well be new if you haven't seen them before, but I thought I'd let everyone know.

I've created two new sections, Retro Gaming, and Programming Tools.  Bear in mind these are sites and tools that I myself use, so there's no chance they're going to turn into junk listings trying to catalog every possible link for a given subject.  I put a lot of time and effort into researching the sites and tools I use, so expect these listings to be the cream of the crop from what I've found over the years and still use.  You may notice a bias towards free sites and software, but rest assured if it's on the list, it's quality stuff.

There are still some tweaks to make here and there, but for the most part, this is the new site! In the process of doing this, I ended up learning XSL, which is what allows the site to consume and reformat the RSS feeds from GameTrailers, Joystiq, DigitalFoundry, and Gamasutra.  I'll have to put up a tutorial on what I've learned from that at some point.  Tutorials like that will probably have their own page, but it's possible I might keep them as blog posts, we'll see. The idea of overhauling the site was to provide people with content that I myself use, without needing to do a blog post for it every single time.  So I've created what is essentially a mashup of different gaming/programming sites plus my blog.  Everything except my own content will update itself (thanks to XSL), leaving me free to focus on blog posts, tutorials, etc.  I think this will make the site much more appealing and give people more reason to stick around and visit frequently.  The nature of the site hasn't changed, but there'll now and in the future be better integration of content.... Read More »

Just a note that I recently acquired a twitter feed and a facebook page. Also don't forget I've got tons of gameplay and walkthrough videos on my youtube channel.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/pheedbaq

Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/pheedbaq/350862156487

YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/pheedbaq