https://www.grrr.co.za/blog.php en Tue, 12 May 2026 21:44:48 GMT vBulletin 60 https://www.grrr.co.za/images/avenger/misc/rss.jpg https://www.grrr.co.za/blog.php https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?780-vBulletin-Standardizing Fri, 05 Jul 2013 11:09:27 GMT Well, after several months I wasn't all together happy with my overall design of the grrr.co.za site.

Things had to change. So I made sure I found some time to look around at site and make notes of what I wanted to change.

One thing that was really bugging me was the disparity and silo effect between the blog, articles and forum sections. On top of that they never really looked any good.

As of today, I've finally gone through most of my noted things and completed the standardization of blog/article/forum - you'll feel like you're on the same system whichever one you navigate through.

Ive taken the time to add highlighting and hover effects to all the thing I could, giving the site a nice final tweak to get it looking nice, shiny and IMHO looking good.

I also found myself getting annoyed with Google and Yahoo jQuery scripts loading from their websites on each page load, so, I've nulled those and made the ajax scripts load locally on our domain/web-server instead, improving load-times significantly.

I then looked through several other aspects and found that patches/updates had broken a few things, which I have since fixed.

For now, I feel things are looking much better and more professional, if you can even call a gaming community that.

That's it for the overall design evolution, the next big thing is a move from our shared host to a cloud-based virtual server. This will give us direct access to our own operating system and allow us to install and tweak things the way we want them, as we need them.

Here's to better things to come ;) ]]> SlipperyDuck https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?780-vBulletin-Standardizing https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?8-Green-Energy-and-Big-Business-Plans-Part-2 Thu, 07 Jun 2012 11:28:40 GMT Ok so a commentator (Hubris) asked for a bit more information on the project. Said commentator seems to know an incredible amount on the subject... Ok so a commentator (Hubris) asked for a bit more information on the project. Said commentator seems to know an incredible amount on the subject matter which pleases me.

Project: Power Generations (Carbon Neutral) - 400 kW to 200 MW

The project would be a Biomass Gasification plant. I have done a fair amount of research into these and a few pilot programs in Ireland and the like. They have been very successful in carbon neutral power generation.

I am aware that current barriers such as deregulation stand in the way of projects like these but I am hoping that South Africa is on the path to freeing these in order to meet our growing requirement for power.

The Gasification plants require Biomass products which could be farmed these have additional spin-off products which offer additional avenues of revenue and employment.

My basic idea would be to get business plan in place and approach HNWI (High Network Individuals) that I have had the fortune of being networked with.

Build the plant let it run for 5 - 6 years then sell the plant off. In the 5 - 6 years I hope to recover some of the initial investment for the investors via Power sold back into the grid. And obviously having a Carbon Neutral power generation plant to sell off to IPP's after the initial set up.

In terms of BEE - EE this is not a challenge for me at all, as one of the primary providers of the technologies is a school mate of mine who happens to be BEE - EE. And I do have one or two additional contacts that can assist with and 'tendering' processes that have to be followed.

So for me now it's about laying out the plans and looking at what needs to be looked at prior to putting a portfolio together for the possible investors.

From initial assessments to viability studies for the most suitable locations. Maybe I'm getting excited about nothing and could be taking a shot in the dark and could be completely out of my scope. But nothing ventured nothing gained.
]]> Stu https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?8-Green-Energy-and-Big-Business-Plans-Part-2 https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?7-Green-Energy-and-Big-Business-Plans Wed, 06 Jun 2012 10:55:18 GMT With the increased focus on Green Energies within this country and globally I have been going over a business idea that I've had for the past year.

Not without going into to much detail in the open domain and having some other genius come along and plop the idea out from under my nose I need to turn to a much wiser and well good educated audience.

My Topic is Green Energy

There is definite potential for huge growth within the South African market for Green Energy products and even green or carbon neutral power generation. What are the major barriers to entry?

Cost
Funding / Investment
Technical savy

I've been investigating the different options and have come across one power generation option which may have more potential spin-offs other than the carbon neutral power generation that could be gained.

However to entice investors and venture capitalists I cannot approach possible funders with a golden outlook and provide figures that will be pleasing, I have to be real about this! What are the potential pit falls and implications in pursuing a project like this.

So I turn to my friends with their wealth of knowledge and experience in the worldly world.

Starting off is the key but were does one need to take the first step.

I hope to make this a series of questions and answers and update blogs on my progress. ]]> Stu https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?7-Green-Energy-and-Big-Business-Plans https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?6-Max-Payne-3 Sun, 03 Jun 2012 09:39:06 GMT I picked up the game on Friday afternoon, and after a long install 4 disks worth not to mention problems with my DVD drive I was finally ready to... I picked up the game on Friday afternoon, and after a long install 4 disks worth not to mention problems with my DVD drive I was finally ready to play.
Starting up the game I am met with a web page like front end, asking for sign in or sign up, no clear instruction on what should be done.
I sign up and login, at this point it asks me for activation code, which I enter.
It tells me activated, great... now what. No start button, no go to game button nothing.
Hitting escape somehow starts the game loading. Yay!
Click settings, lets get the graphics looking great.
Setting are comprehensive, from selecting Direct x 9 to 11 and all the setting relevant to each direct x version.
So I change my settings to the highest possible on everything and click apply, it says game must be restarted...
So it restarts.
I can see my setting have not applied as its blurry and obviously still at 800x600 res.
I proceed to then try a number of different settings to try and get the game to save them.
None work. Eventually I get it to change to the correct res, as that didn't require restart.
I decide to start the game as this has now taken up more than hour trying to get it to work.
Maybe starting the game will save my settings.
This proves to be the case. Start the game, then exit it, then start it again change your graphics settings, it will restart again, then finally your graphics settings will be saved.
This console port bullshit is annoying!

So now lets play.
The game starts out like almost all single players games with a story narrative cut scene, the scene ends and you are immediately in control of max...and the action starts.
This is how it is for the rest of the game.
The game is an interactive action movie. You are told the story through many and long cut scene's that set you up in different places, only for you to play the action part. Some people might not like that control is taken away from the player so often and so completely, and indeed at first I was a tad put off by it.
Soon enough though the absolute brilliance of the action sequences make you forget all about loss of control.
The game is very rich in detail and the game play area's are well constructed.
The game shines because of the bullet time aspect. It hasn't changed much at all since max payne 2, yet it didn't need to. The violence seems to have been upped a notch, so that slowmo last bullet shot that smashes in the henchmans face creates an explosion of blood and gore that is both shocking and very satisfying. Blood and gore are core parts of the game, the violence is almost part of the narrative. Max gets shot up and cut up and broken, and he caries those marks with him through the game. Quite simply the bullet time action is fantastic!

One new feature is the last man standing feature, if you have pain pills in stock and an enemy hits you with a death blow, you will auto take your pain pills and bullet time will be activated focusing on the guy that just shot you. you will be shacking and it will be hard to aim, but if you then kill him before bullet time ends then you survive otherwise you dead.

The story itself is compelling enough to keep you interested. Its no amazing thriller with in depth convoluted plot, but it does what is needed to keep you interested and engrossed.


So in short if you enjoy action movies, enjoy action shoot outs, and if you enjoyed the first games you will love Max Payne 3.

"Unbridled violent action movie with game play and gun fights that will leave you very satisfied .... not to be missed!" ]]> TygerBS https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?6-Max-Payne-3 https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?5-Coud-ISP-s-Police-Hacking Wed, 30 May 2012 09:15:29 GMT There has been a lot of debate recently on the subject of hacking in SA's BF3 community.
Recent PunkBuster bans have many cheering from the sidelines, but also wondering how deep the hacking goes and how to stop it.
Sure anti-cheat software like Punkbuster catch cheating players from time to time but what is to stop them from simply buying another copy of the game and creating a new nick? Nothing. We could simply let software like PunkBuster continue its course as it has done on previous titles, but honestly, is it effective by itself?

One idea is for SA's ISP's to step in. Idealistic? Yes.
How I would envisage this happening is as follows:
Every SA player wanting to play on SA game servers would have to register a unique nick through their ISP account. This would be linked to their IP address and ID that was used for registering with the ISP. The game servers would then allow 'members' only to play. Any game bans from anti-cheat software will carry onto the actual name of the perpetrator (or their parent) and be registered on a national database supported by the ISP's. A lifetime ban would be possible.

Those who have given the previous paragraph any thought will of course see a fly or two doing the backstroke in the ointment. Firstly, to be ranked in the case of BF3, servers have to be open to the public and enforcing a membership system contradicts that. The game developers would have to be on board to overcome this. Secondly, (aside from child pornography) the ISP's focus on an indiscriminate delivery of internet service. Its not in their primary interests to police an industry that should probably have its own countermeasures.
Thirdly, first time gamers would install their games and wonder why they aren't able to connect to SA servers. How would this membership system be advertised to the growing community?

Are there any steps that we as a gaming community can realistically take to enforce gaming integrity in South Africa? ]]> Megageth https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?5-Coud-ISP-s-Police-Hacking https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?4-vBulletin-Improved-Front-Page Tue, 29 May 2012 22:05:43 GMT Aww, the awesome goodness of a slider.

It took a few hours to figure it all out.
When I first installed the Slider - things just didn't to what I wanted, I couldn't figure it out.

I eventually figured out where many of the settings are.
With the slider your images have to be located on your site too, so you can't hotlink to another website.

With that I had to figure out about VB Image galleries.
It seems there are some good ones out there, but they all cost quite a bit.
Eventually I figured I'd just use the Built in Album in the user profiles.

There I found some limitations I couldn't get images to do what I want and the hunt was on to figure out why.
Had to go through many setting to find the limitations for JPG and PNG files. Their dimensions and file sizes were all set very low. Changed that.

Then Created a public Album and uploaded some files and tested again.

I found the Slider was just stretching the images and warping it. After much searching, I eventually just caved and decided to simply re-create the images in the 500px × 312px dimensions to simply fit the slider perfectly rather than tax myself over the ways and means to auto-magically resize proportionately.

Re-created, re-uploaded and tested.

Colour me impressed, it looks purdy cool.

Thats me for the day. ]]> SlipperyDuck https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?4-vBulletin-Improved-Front-Page https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?3-vBulletin-more-is-more Tue, 29 May 2012 14:21:48 GMT So, it's quite a beast.

It's a new Mindset too.
Finding and fixing issues has been a challenge, but patience and determination have won the day, at least so far.

Adding, changing, customizing, things are hidden all over the place.
I do enjoy the challenge of learning something new, so I'm not overwhelmed.

Now that things have started taking off, I'm quite stoked with the "What's New" feature, the "Friends" as well as the Visitors Message featutes.

All adding much value here, things that our users will discover over time.
One thing that did annoy me, that thankfully I quickly found a package/plugin to remedy, was the inability of regular users to change their own usernames.
Thank the pope for plugins.
Now users can log into their profile (from the quick menu below the main menu) [forum Actions] - [Edit Profile]
Then change their username from the second option "Username Change - Optional"

Quite handy.

Anyway, thats me for the day. ]]> SlipperyDuck https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?3-vBulletin-more-is-more https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?2-vBulletin-The-progress Sun, 27 May 2012 11:08:00 GMT vBulletin, our new software driving this forum. Specifically the publishing suite as opposed to just the regular forum software, is exceptional.... vBulletin, our new software driving this forum.

Specifically the publishing suite as opposed to just the regular forum software, is exceptional.
Features and workings of this beast and popping up here and there all the time.

During my exploration, I found the "promote to article" feature.
This feature is probably the one that gives me the biggest smile of them all, since the speparation of the CMS and Forum software has always been such a big issue for me. Now that we are fully integrated into one package, our users can just write a review or article of some sort in the normal forum threads, admins and/or moderators can simply promote that first post to an official article, chosing under which section/category it should reside.

It's really so easy and convenient.

One thing that is argueable not so great, though is actually a good thing, is the sheer volume of permissions required as you add plug-ins/packages to your software. Whist this isnt true for all plug-ins out there, it's true for most.
With users sitting in several usergroups as per our legacy forums, having to carefully go through each usergroup and double-check a massive amount of permissions each time a package is added seems cumbersome.
I with they could do that in the reverse, as in, install a plug-in/package then click on the package itself to assign usergroups and permissions there. Anyway, this is a necessary evil i suppose.

All in all, I continue to be amazed at the quality of this software. Kudos to vBulletin. ]]> SlipperyDuck https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?2-vBulletin-The-progress https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?1-Turning-Over-a-New-Forum Sat, 26 May 2012 11:57:30 GMT Well, it's an interesting day here at GRRR Squad head quarters.

For the first time in our history, we've gone ahead and purchased Web Software.
Previously we used SMF/Joomla/Concrete5 and other things, in an attempt to get more out of our little web-home than in the past. The old adage is applicable, you get what you pay for.
It took quite a lot to customize the free stuff, but was never really what we needed.
Our community needs to grow, with that we need the integrated CMS/Blog/Forum software that allows for single login and a host of plug-ins and features that you just can't get for free.
So here we are. The day has come, we've moved to vBulletin 4 publishing Suite.
While it's not quite done yet, the potential is already quite evident. Everything is well integrated into one single package and it's the most supported CMS/FORUM code available on the internet.
Sure it cost us a bit, but well worth it.

The migration was simply spectacularly easy. Other than having to re-examine all the permissions and resetting some things, which, whilst taking a long time, never became taxing, the process was actually very easy. I look forward to doing a lot with this new setup and am eager to see better community involvement as a result of this spectacular change.
My blog will update with additions and findings as we go along. That's it for now, see y'all soon.

Slipperyduck ]]> SlipperyDuck https://www.grrr.co.za/entry.php?1-Turning-Over-a-New-Forum