Just did an update on the peripherals hooked up to my PC. My mouse/mousepad combo now consists of a Razer Deathadder coupled with a Steelseries Qck Mass. I've also "upgraded" my screen, going for a 24" Asus V242H. I'll try to write a more thorough review on'em sometime, but on a first impression, the Deathadder and the Qck Mass is a kick-ass combination (although it takes a little time getting adjusted to the mouse's size).
Peripheral update
Just did an update on the peripherals hooked up to my PC. My mouse/mousepad combo now consists of a Razer Deathadder coupled with a Steelseries Qck Mass. I've also "upgraded" my screen, going for a 24" Asus V242H. I'll try to write a more thorough review on'em sometime, but on a first impression, the Deathadder and the Qck Mass is a kick-ass combination (although it takes a little time getting adjusted to the mouse's size).
phpBB2 to phpBB3 - offline conversion
It took a while longer than I had anticipated... but here's the short article on the offline conversion from phpBB2 to phpBB3 that I did for Fórum Coimbra. The guys at phpBB have a nice tutorial covering the main operations, so I advise you to follow it. On this post, I'll cover mainly the problems that can show up during and after the conversion.
First off, although it's possible to perform this operation on-line, personally I recommend the off-line way (especially if you're on shared hosting). The off-line process should be faster in most cases (unless you have a monster server), while providing you the ability to run a few test conversions without taking up server resources - before doing the final conversion on Fórum Coimbra, I performed 4 test conversions off-line, which helped me minimise problems and schedule an accurate time frame for the maintenance, so I could notify my users when they should expect to have the forum back on-line (which is always a nice touch). It will also eliminate all the problems related to limitations on the web host side, which probably represent most of the problems people face during the conversion.
Now, for the database's characteristics. This conversion involved a 140mb database, on a forum with around 5.500 registered users and 110.000 posts.
After downloading the database and adding it to your phpBB2 off-line installation, make sure that everything's working nicely (especially if your board uses a language with specific characters - if you use bigdump, changing the configuration file for the proper encoding might be required). Converting the forum is a fast process, took around 5 minutes on my PC (i7 920 with 6gb RAM). If you have your message board set to a language other than English, you might see some error messages related to lang.php during the conversion - just ignore'em, it's usually caused by a progress indicator sentence missing the translation in your language files.
Now that the database is converted, you also need to rebuild the search index. This is the lengthy bit... it lasted almost two hours. If you're using XAMPP, my first tip is to change the default configuration file for MySQL. XAMPP's MySQL is configured for low-memory systems (64mb), which is disastrous for this operation. I advise you to fetch a config for something better (if you're not confident enough to mess around in MySQL's config files, search for the "large" or "huge" default MySQL configs). Otherwise, you're in for days of waiting for this operation to end.
After rebuilding the search index, double check if everything is working fine and if the configuration is correct (I noticed a few differences here - plus, there are new options in phpBB3 that you also need to configure). Then comes an important step: in the admin panel, reset the statistics and resync the post count. If you don't do this, there's a good chance that search engine bots are mistaken for your first users (ie, when google's bot is indexing your board, it'll show up as one of your human users on the "who's on-line" box). This happens because phpBB2 treats these bots as visitors, while phpBB3 identifies them as users - I'm guessing that there's a user id conflict happening. It's kind of weird that this hasn't been fixed yet in the converter, but the manual fix is also easy to do.
After this, another annoying problem that might show up is related to passwords "lost in translation". Sometimes, users will get a message saying that their password was lost during the conversion. Using the "forgot password" option or setting it manually in the admin panel won't work. The only fix I found for this was to create a new user, with a password generated manually, and fetch that password's text directly from the database using phpMyAdmin. Then, all that's left to do is paste it on the user who's having problems and let him know you've changed his password (do remind him to change it again once he logs on for security reasons). This is another thing that should be fixed in the official converter, but wasn't... and the fix is a bit more annoying to do (especially since you don't know to whom it may happen, you'll have to hope that the users with problems will contact you - it also involves a bit of messing around with the database, which some users might not be used to do).
Other than this, everything should be working nicely. You might want to check the smilies if you had personalized ones or want to keep the old ones (I hate phpBB3's smilies, so I kept phpBB2's on my board) and expect the database to be larger than the old one. The conversion process itself is quite fast and painless when performing it off-line, the only boring bit is the search index rebuild process. Once everything's done, you can just upload it.
First off, although it's possible to perform this operation on-line, personally I recommend the off-line way (especially if you're on shared hosting). The off-line process should be faster in most cases (unless you have a monster server), while providing you the ability to run a few test conversions without taking up server resources - before doing the final conversion on Fórum Coimbra, I performed 4 test conversions off-line, which helped me minimise problems and schedule an accurate time frame for the maintenance, so I could notify my users when they should expect to have the forum back on-line (which is always a nice touch). It will also eliminate all the problems related to limitations on the web host side, which probably represent most of the problems people face during the conversion.
Now, for the database's characteristics. This conversion involved a 140mb database, on a forum with around 5.500 registered users and 110.000 posts.
After downloading the database and adding it to your phpBB2 off-line installation, make sure that everything's working nicely (especially if your board uses a language with specific characters - if you use bigdump, changing the configuration file for the proper encoding might be required). Converting the forum is a fast process, took around 5 minutes on my PC (i7 920 with 6gb RAM). If you have your message board set to a language other than English, you might see some error messages related to lang.php during the conversion - just ignore'em, it's usually caused by a progress indicator sentence missing the translation in your language files.
Now that the database is converted, you also need to rebuild the search index. This is the lengthy bit... it lasted almost two hours. If you're using XAMPP, my first tip is to change the default configuration file for MySQL. XAMPP's MySQL is configured for low-memory systems (64mb), which is disastrous for this operation. I advise you to fetch a config for something better (if you're not confident enough to mess around in MySQL's config files, search for the "large" or "huge" default MySQL configs). Otherwise, you're in for days of waiting for this operation to end.
After rebuilding the search index, double check if everything is working fine and if the configuration is correct (I noticed a few differences here - plus, there are new options in phpBB3 that you also need to configure). Then comes an important step: in the admin panel, reset the statistics and resync the post count. If you don't do this, there's a good chance that search engine bots are mistaken for your first users (ie, when google's bot is indexing your board, it'll show up as one of your human users on the "who's on-line" box). This happens because phpBB2 treats these bots as visitors, while phpBB3 identifies them as users - I'm guessing that there's a user id conflict happening. It's kind of weird that this hasn't been fixed yet in the converter, but the manual fix is also easy to do.
After this, another annoying problem that might show up is related to passwords "lost in translation". Sometimes, users will get a message saying that their password was lost during the conversion. Using the "forgot password" option or setting it manually in the admin panel won't work. The only fix I found for this was to create a new user, with a password generated manually, and fetch that password's text directly from the database using phpMyAdmin. Then, all that's left to do is paste it on the user who's having problems and let him know you've changed his password (do remind him to change it again once he logs on for security reasons). This is another thing that should be fixed in the official converter, but wasn't... and the fix is a bit more annoying to do (especially since you don't know to whom it may happen, you'll have to hope that the users with problems will contact you - it also involves a bit of messing around with the database, which some users might not be used to do).
Other than this, everything should be working nicely. You might want to check the smilies if you had personalized ones or want to keep the old ones (I hate phpBB3's smilies, so I kept phpBB2's on my board) and expect the database to be larger than the old one. The conversion process itself is quite fast and painless when performing it off-line, the only boring bit is the search index rebuild process. Once everything's done, you can just upload it.
Orbix - new Android game
Orbix is a new puzzle game for Android devices I'm currently developing, with what I like to call an "open methodology". This means that the core gameplay is already implemented, but where it goes from here will depend heavily on player feedback. So, if you have an Android device (doesn't matter if it's a phone or tablet, should work on all of'em), check it out and let me know if you have any comments, suggestions, bug reports, etc. You can find it at the official Android Market, but if you search for Orbix in other places (like Appbrain) you'll probably spot it as well. The game currently has only one game mode ("Survival Mode"), where you have to play till you lose. However, further game modes are planned (and you can always suggest some as well). Please keep in mind that the game is in an early stage, so many of the interface elements are rather primitive. My main objective at the moment is to test the gameplay: is it easy to play, can you figure it out quickly, does it progress at a good pace, do you have any suggestions, etc.
Here's the QRCode linking directly to Orbix on the Android Market. If you have an Android device, try it and let me know what you think (the game is completely free - it doesn't even have those annoying ads).
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