Sony announced that it will stop production of floppy disks in march of 2011. I’m amazed that people still use floppy disks with all the other technology available.

“The 3.5-inch floppy was a ubiquitous and necessary component for storing and transferring files between personal computers for nearly three decades. Sony pioneered the 3.5-inch floppy disk in 1981, eventually replacing the 5.25-inch floppy disk that had previously been the popular storage format.

However, as the size of files and programs grew, the floppy disk was pushed aside by inexpensive and larger-format storage medium. Thanks to the creation of storage methods such as CDs, DVDs, Zip, and USB drives, Sony saw its Japanese sales of floppies decline from a record 47 million disks in fiscal 2002 to 12 million in fiscal 2009.

Most other floppy disk manufacturers had long since pulled out of the market, and Sony itself has already ceased sales to most of its overseas markets.” – Cnet.com – News

These things lasted far longer than I thought they would. But now the question that pops into my head is, what the hell are we going to do with all these floppy disks? I mean, throwing away billions plastic squares wouldn’t be very green of us.

Some Uses for floppy disks:

- AD

Valve is continuing to support Left4Dead2 by adding a new campaign as well as a new game mode called “Mutation Mode”. Everyone week mutation mode will change the rules of how the Left4Dead world works. The first mutation adds a Realism difficultly to versus mode. After playing this mode for 2 hours, I have to admit that it adds much to the games versus mode.

Then you have the new campaign, the passing. “The Passing” features 3 new maps, new weekly game modes (Mutations), a new “uncommon common” zombie class (the fallen survivor), melee weapon (golf club), firearm (M-60), support for infected bot play in Versus, 10 new achievements and more. All these features were added free to the PC version, but if your on xbox, your going to have to shell out 10 bucks.

Read More from valves blog below:

The Passing introduces a series of weekly game mode events dubbed “Mutations.” These are week-long runs of new gameplay modes that range from “Realism Versus” to “Chainsaw Massacre”. Each week one new Mutation is featured and the previous Mutation retired.

Every Thursday the new in-game blog will let you know of the upcoming Mutation. Once a month we will have a poll to vote on your favorite Mutation. The winning Mutation will return the following week.

Our first Mutation is Realism Versus.

For this Mutation, Survivors have all the Realism changes working against them, no glows on items or survivors, tougher zombies, instant kill witches, etc. The Infected have all those changes working for them. This makes the Jockey one of the most powerful Specials for his ability to steer a Survivor out of view. You will want to make sure you have a working microphone so your teammates can hear your screams for help. This Mutation is only available in Versus.

Another example of an upcoming Mutation is Chainsaw Massacre. You are armed with the only thing you need to survive a Zombie Apocalypse: a chainsaw with unlimited gas. Rip apart thousands of zombies on your way to safety. This Mutation will be available later and only in Campaign Mode.

To learn about the other Mutations, you will have to check the in-game blog each week. What we can tell you now is the Mutations will cover different game modes and be available across all Campaigns.

The Passing Promo Video

Valve continues to show that they not only make great games, but they also support the games months after users pay for them.

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I recently had to add BISAC codes to all the books on ereads.com. I did quite a bit of data entry to get this table set up, so I though I’d share it. Excell, MySQL, HTML, and XML.

Click here to download Zip

Are you new to charging for your services? When is it okay to charge more? How can some developers get away with charging $150/hour? Let me try my best to answer some of these questions. I’ve been freelancing since 2002, while I am not an expert on this, I do have quite a bit of experience on this matter. Here is how I determine what to charge a client.

1. Determining your hourly rate

Here is a good way to figure it out.

Find some job listings as a web developer on monster.com or careerbuilder.com. Something that you actually qualify for. Get a few listings together of jobs that you would be a fit for. Look at how much each position makes a year. Find a good average out of those numbers. Once you have that number try this formula:

Your Skill Set Salary / 52 weeks / 40 hours a week  = Starting Hourly
Since you do more than just development for a client (you handle the business side as well) then we add %25 on top.
Starting Hourly + (Starting hourly * 0.25) = Your suggested rate

Example: If your salary fit is 60,000 a year then the formula would look like this:
60,000 / 52 /40 =  $28.84
25% of 28.84 = $7.21
$28.84 + 7.21 = 36.05 – suggested hourly rate

Make sure that you are honest with this part so that you can remain competitive against other freelancers of the same skill level.

2. Taxes!

Yes the first thing I think about when I charge for service is how much does Uncle Sam get. Well if you don’t know, get ready for this: Nearly half (roughly 40%). They do this because freelancers can write off a lot of different things against how much they owe in taxes.

My strategy is to put half of whatever I make as a freelancer in a savings account. At the end of the year (or quarter depending on when you pay) you can use the money in your savings account combined with a list of write offs. Take these to your accountant and have them work their magic. If you have a lot of write offs you should end up keeping a chunk of what you have saved for taxes. That can be considered your personal freelance tax return and you can keep that money for yourself.

Now with the “half your money goes to taxes” mentality when you would have charged $30 per hour you now see that as making 15 an hour after taxes.

3. Don’t Guess, You May Lose Money

In the beginning of my freelance career I would often set a price for a website. For example in 2003 my rate was $600 a website. That included design. This is how those projects went down most of the time.

Project will span 2-3 weeks:
a. 2 hours of phone calls with client
b. 5 hours of design
c. 3 hours of back and forth emails about the design options
d. 8 hours of HTML / CSS development
e. 6 hours of changes

So that’s:
600 / 24(hours) / 2(taxes) = $12.50 per hour.
My goal was $30.00 an hour.

By guessing, I ended up working very hard and using a skill set that I went to school for. I would have earned the same as a clerk. ( no offense to any clerks out there )

4. How to Charge, the correct way.

Here is how I charge my clients.

First, I find out as much as I can about the project:

Features - List out all the features you will need to program/install through out the entire website.
Database - Find out of the client can supply any data-entry or spreadsheets full of data that the project might need.
Design -  How long am I going to spend designing? How many rounds of revisions will be allowed?
Programming - Try your best to estimate how long it would take to program each feature one at a time and list it out.
Responsibility - What is the client responsible for delivering to you. If they are late will it hold up the project. If they have a lot of content that they still have yet to create, it’s sometimes good to charge extra to keep the project alive. Set deadlines for the client to deliver content. If the client misses it’s deadline it should add days to your deadline.
Deadline - Is the client going to set a tight deadline? Is the deadline open ended?
Additional talent – Is the project to big for one person? Are you going to have to hire additional help? Get estimates from other developers prior to giving client a cost.
Misc Costs- Hosting costs, domain names, turnkey software.

So here is my formula after I figure all the above out.

Example: Let’s see what I should have charged for the website project in 2003:

By using this formula I found out that I should have charged $1075 instead of the $600 used in my last example.

5. Conclusion

There are many ways to figure this out, however my formulas have worked well for me. As long as you are honest with the hours you are working, you will remain competitive and fair. If anyone would like to share their ideas or opinions, post them in the comments section.

-AD

I am starting a new category dedicated to fitness. I’ve been sitting behind a desk for 6 years, and it has taken it’s toll on my energy, mind, and body. Three months ago I was at my worst,310 pounds. I would lose breath going up stairs, moving furniture, or even trying to take a brisk walk. I felt like the poeple from the movie “Walle”.

Since then I’ve decided to make changes in my lifestyle and stop letting the fact that I’m chained to an office chair 8 hours a day keep me weak. I’m now down to 287 and dropping. Here is what I have been doing to make a difference.

1. Calorie Control.  The math is very simple. You can eat your weight in pounds multiplied 100 to maintain your weight. Eat less then that number and you lose, eat more and you gain. So I was 310 pounds, which meant I could eat 3,100 calories a day. In order to lose, I starting eating a 2,000 calorie diet.  This worked for me, but everyone is different.

2. Don’t Sleep with a full Stomach. In the USA most of us eat our biggest meal last. We load up on a big meal then crash for the night, or even worse, stay up and eat more later on. In order to maintain this lifestyle I started to work out after dinner. 30 minutes on free weights every other day, and 30 minutes of cardio everyday.

Here are some good examples of free weight exercises with video demonstrations:
http://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/strengthening/free_weights.php

With cardio the trick is to keep your heart rate up, but not too high as to strain yourself. Don’t stop moving when resting, make sure to keep walking even when your out of breath. If you are breathing very heavy try putting your hands behind your head for a few breaths to give your lungs the most room possible.

My cardio routine:
a. Jogging
b. Short distance sprints
c. Jumping jacks
d. cross over steps

Be sure to switch it up as much as possible and don’t stop moving.

Use this online caculator to find out how many calories you could burn with a 30 minute workout:
http://www.internetfitness.com/calculators/calburncalc.htm

3. Google Food! Are you about to eat something new or something that doesn’t have nutritional facts. Search the food on google. You can easily figure out exactly what you are about to eat.

4. Little Things add up. Take every opportunity you can to walk a little farther or make extra effort. Take the stairs instead of the elevator, park in the farthest parking spot, get off the bus a stop early, or anything that may add more steps.

5. Motivate Yourself. The hardest part for most people is to get motivated. Some things that I do to keep myself in check are:

a. Weigh your self every day.
b. Get competitive with others trying to get in shape.
c. Visualize what you want to achieve.
d. Plan activities for when your in shape (going to the beach, playing a sport, fitting into old clothes)
e. Whenever you pass up an opportunity to eat an unhealthy food, count it as a victory.

6. Work out in the office. If you can do this without getting your self in trouble, it is really great. Set challenges for your self to do X amount of push ups every hour, or go for a light jog during your lunch hour.

7. Don’t drink corn syrup. No soda’s, energy drinks, or fake sugar based drinks. Stick to real fruit juice and water. I’ve been drinking crystal light when I want a little flavor. By cutting those types of drinks you basically cut 200-500 calories out of your day right off the bat.

8. Don’t rationalize “It’s okay to eat this piece of pie because I’m going to eat celery for the next few days.” No it’s not. It’s fine to snack once in a while, however, don’t get into the habit of rationalizing away your diet and work out routine.

9. Conclusion I haven’t even scratched the surface on this topic but I hope that I was able to give some information to anyone chained to a desk like I am. Remember if you really want to change, It’s not by dieting, but actually changing the way you live your life.

Hey Everyone! It’s been a while since I posted anything because I’ve been focused on perfecting the layout of this website. However, I have a few drafts here in the wordpress vault that I shall be finishing up and publishing over the next week or so, all good stuff.

Anyway, I thought I’d share a bunch of flash games that I played over the summer while waiting for huge FTP uploads/downloads to complete. All of these games are free to play.

1. Infectonator : World Dominator

Story
You are a mad scientist that has access to the ZOMBIE VIRUS and you want to take out the world one city at a time.

Gameplay
You play the game by clicking on a map (that looks very much like google maps for NES) and then choosing a city to attack. You click anywhere to splash your virus on wondering people to turn them into zombies. The zombies you create then attack other people and infect them with the zombie virus. The goal is to destroy the entire city.

As your zombies feed on people, people drop money, which you will want to run your mouse over and collect. You can use your money to by many different kinds of upgrades to make your zombies faster, stronger, and longer lasting.

Another interesting ability you gain is your able to call in super infected zombies similar to what you fight in valve’s Left4Dead series. You can also spend money to upgrade these guys.

Video

Link
Play This Game!

2. Arcanorum

Story
This is what the world would be like if they invented a helicopter in the 14th century.

Gameplay
You control a medieval helicopter armed with melee weapons and fight other medieval helicopters with melee weapons. The more of them you kill the more cash you get to by better weapons and armor. There is a story, I didn’t really read any of it because you basically just have to keep defeating enemies. The game is fun and you can complete it in about an hour.

Video

Link
Play This Game!

3. This is the only level

Story
You control a blue elephant that is stuck in some weird twilight zone episode.

Gameplay
The goal is to have the elephant reach the exit. Each time you each the door your poor elephant spawns right back in the same spot it started from, except that the room is slightly different. The controls reverse, the gravity changes, the rules change, and other differences. It’s a pretty fun puzzle.

Video

Link
Play This Game!

4. Madness Accelerant

Story
You control the star of the madness series as he fights his nemesis, the evil clown.

Gameplay
This game is a side scrolling shooter with tons of different weapons scattered throughout the game. You run out of ammo fast so you have to keep killing enemies and taking their weapons.

Video

Link
Play This Game!

5. First Person Tetris

Gameplay
It’s Tertis with a twist.

Video

Link
Play This Game!

After hundreds of hours of programming, designing, and data entry, the ereads website launched yesterday.

About Ereads

E-Reads is a trail-blazing reprinter of out-of-print genre and general fiction and nonfiction by leading authors. Their books are available in all e-book formats and paperback. E-Reads was founded by literary agent, Richard Curtis.

About the Website: Before

Ereads.com used to be a blog website with ASP pages supporting a book catalog. Google’s “Blogger” was used to publish the blog and the books were updated via an simple ASP content management system. The old design had an out-dated look and only offered the bare minimum detail on books published by E-Reads. Another challenge was that E-Reads had all their book meta data in various spreadsheets on a local file server. It was a flawed system, but one that worked well for years.

About the Website: The Plan

The plan was to build a new website that was powered by a database with all the scattered meta data. It sounded simple enough, but there was a ton of work to do. First we needed to come up with a design for the website and a logical design for how the database would function. Production Manager, Nathan Fernald, was given the task of coming up with a new design, while I was charged with building the database and designing the engine.

About the Website: The Blood, Sweat, and Tears

After compiling all the data from various spreadsheets we found that we were missing about 60% of the data on over 1500 titles. Since the company was started 11 years ago buy an entirely different staff, we had no way to recover the missing data other than manual data entry. I built a CMS that had a database to fit all the meta data, imported all the excel spreadsheets, and began the attack on all the missing information. We had to add covers, isbns, sample chapters, retailers, contracts, missing authors and various other data into the system. In the end of all the work, the database grew to 90 thousand rows of data.

About the website: The Launch

Ereads.com is now powered by wordpress as well as a powerful new PHP engine (built by me :bows:). The CMS allows our staff to post books with sample chapters and an unlimited amount of retailer links. The blog had been designed to run faster and allow guest bloggers to make appearances from time to time.  Functions that the CMS provide are: production management, meta data exporting, contract tracking, rouge data filtering, a robust book search engine, and much more.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in this project.