SCHILLMANIA!

01.31.2004: GO, TJ!

TJ Schiller and Josh Bibby: Kicking ass at the US Freeskiing Open

I have never been more proud of TJ Schiller, my "little" (At nearly 6'0", not so little) brother.

TJ and Josh Bibby were on their way to Vail, CO for the US Open when they stayed over at my place in Calgary (having graduated from Grade 12 some hours earlier, I might add,) and waxed it up a bit.

Both are amazing skiiers and are going to break records, provided they don't break anything else (i.e., their knees or feet,) first.

TJ came first place in the Slopestyle comp, and appears to be really making a name for himself; Josh is also going into the next round of competition with TJ against some of the big names in the Freestyle world. It will be interesting to see how things turn out. At the least, these young punks are going to give the older guys a run for their money! Mark my words..

Other comps that TJ and Josh will be in are tonight (Saturday) and tomorrow, assuming they continue to impress. Freeze Online has more on the competition.

Refer to "More Freestyle Freshness" below for some more pictures and content relating to TJ and Josh.

01.18.2004: Test For Pulse

Still kicking, just not in visible space

Assuming anyone reads this: I'm still alive, just busy working on some projects.. namely the replacement for this version of the site - it is nearly a year old, and that probably is a record for the longest amount of time any one iteration of this site has existed for. So I'm glad to say it's been good while it lasted, but it's time for something new.

Also in progress (but on the back burner) are that pesky DHTML Scorched Earth project and (at last check, anyways) version 4.0 of my technical work and experience portfolio site (lots of the usual DHTML trickery on this one too.) Stay tuned for a site revamp, and what hopefully turns out to be the eventual completion of this stuff. This also serves as a reminder to myself for the next time I read this ;)

12.18.2003: SnowStorm Update

Version 1.2a - bug fixes and enhancements

SnowStorm has been updated. From the documentation:

• Opera 7 ("O7") support added.. I think.
• Improved initialization speed (less snowflake objects on startup)
• Netscape 6.x "sticky" snow behavior fixed (now works)
• IE:mac bug event handler bug fixed (script should now work)
• Snow collection feature added
• Snowflake speed is relative to size (Cheap pseudo-3D effect)

It still eats up more CPU than necessary, but in the days of ~3 GHz Pentium 4 CPUs I don't consider this to be much of an issue; animation has never been one of DHTML's stronger points (I develop and test on a 433 Mhz Celeron, so I notice speed/efficiency issues pretty quickly.) Still, it shouldn't be much of a load on newer hardware.

Suggestions/comments/criticism etc. can be e-mailed; alternatively, just drop a message in the "WebPad" at left instead.

Happy Holidays!

12.06.2003: "SnowStorm" Component

Now with GIF support

SnowStorm is another OOJS library-style script that provides a neat animated snowing effect; it also takes advantage of alpha transparency where possible by using 24-bit PNG images, with GIFs as a fallback. The script occupies the full window space by default, but can be configured to stay within a certain vertical area. If you're seeing snow on this page, you are looking at SnowStorm in action.

This script has been packaged for anyone to download and use if they wish. Refer to the links above for more information.

PNG Javascript library?

The PNG "wrapper" library script is included with this package as it's a required component, but I intend to make a separate package for this script along with a documentation page etc. for general use of PNGs in Web development. Stay tuned.

12.01.2003: Smashfest Season returneth. Show your spirit!

Breaking Christmas lights for fun and profit

For profit ? ..Well okay, maybe just for fun. The christmas season is about three things: Family, egg nog (and its alcoholic variants,) and the sound of breaking glass - Christmas light smashing, that is. That's about all the introduction you're going to get.. Now go smash some lights. Do it now!

.. And for those with higher standards?

IE 5+ on Windows 9X+ is required for XLSF2001, my apologies to the other 8% or so. When I wrote this in 2001 I hadn't come to realise the benefits of clean, standards-compliant semantic code just yet. My bad. However, there is light at the end of the light-smashing (heh) tunnel. Hit up the Winter.02 version of the site, which has a "Charlie Brown"-style tree lit up and just ripe for the picking. Winter.02's light smashing routines were written in the same spirit as XLSF2001; now go and show yours! (Hint: Try typing "ciao" for a bonus under IE, or put "javascript:ciao()" in the address bar and hit enter.)

15,000 others smashed 200,000 lights.. In a day

According to about.com, I boast Christmas Light Smashfest 2001 (XLSF2001 for short) "Does not hold much therapeutic or other value, excluding entertainment". Many people enjoyed smashing christmas lights however; the predecessor to XLSF2001 attracted more than 15,000 unique hits on the day of December 26th, 2000 thanks to an e-mail listing schillmania.com as "site of the day". Add up people being at home for the holidays and getting computers as presents (or so I figure, anyway) and you have a lot of traffic!

In other news..

Got some photos of the Rocky Mountains ("The Rockies") over a recent trip to BC. They turned out alright for the most part. It would be pretty awesome to be living at the base of one of those things.. Just make sure you stay clear of any known avalanche-prone blasting areas ;) Click the photo at right to view higher-resolution versions of this and others.

11.17.2003: Bring the SnowStorm (DHTML, that is..)

DHTML/Javascript snow script version 1.0A (PNG)

Over the last month or so I've been working on some OO-style animation and PNG libraries. One of the results is visible above; though quite full of bugs I'm sure, the effect is kind of neat: Alpha-transparent snow. The relevant snow script, for anyone interested, is at snowstorm.js. This takes advantage of alpha transparency via PNG, more on this below.. In the meantime, a download-friendly version of this is being worked on. Check back later.

Why PNG?

The primary benefit of PNG is alpha transparency, which makes for nice overlaying without the so-called "jaggies" that GIF suffers from. The downside is that IE does not "natively" support PNGs, you have to use a proprietary filter to get the transparency to work (among other things). For this reason I have been messing around with a PNG wrapper library which can add the IE crap while leaving the base HTML code as clean as possible - All that's required is a class declaration including "png" on said element (which can use GIF by default, which is what all buggy/non-PNG-supporting browsers will see.)

For anyone who may be interested, the relevant script is png.js. It has not been tested on a large number of configurations, presumably there are plenty of bugs remaining to be worked out. I believe it's a step in the right direction though for adding PNG support without having to sacrifice code structure, meaning or validity.

The following are simple examples of code that can be used with the PNG library currently in development, and will be "transformed" to PNG under supporting browsers:

<img src="image/foo.gif" alt="Foo image 1" />

<div style="background-image:url(image/foo.gif)">Foo image 1</div>

<style type="text/css">
#foo, div.foo {
 background:transparent url(image/foo.gif) 0px 0px no-repeat;
}
</style>
<div id="foo">Foo image 1</div>
<div class="foo">Foo image 1</div>


The PNG wrapper can determine image source or background image URLs either directly from the attributes, or via the "rendered style" object (proprietary method under IE, and DOM under Mozilla). This is used to either transform the current element or replace it with a new element (in IE's case) containing the correct URL and/or filters needed to display the PNG correctly.

Using this method, older and non-PNG-supporting browsers should degrade gracefully as GIFs are provided "by default". To access the DOM after it has been parsed but before the body has loaded (important difference: the GIFs and other external sources have not yet loaded), the call to the script can be placed in an inline (CDATA-typed, so it's still valid) script block, eg.

<script type="text/javascript">
pngHandler = new PNGHandler();
<script>

Realising that very few people likely actually read this stuff, I'm going to stop at this point and write more later when I have something concrete to demo ;)

10.26.2003: More Fish Stuff

Jack moves in

Two Jack Dempseys were recently given to me by a friend. During the night of their addition, two Neon Tetras mysteriously disappeared, and the following day a smaller Pleco was found to be dead. Interesting how that works! Nonetheless, they have proven to be fun fish to have.

There are two of these fish, and they are quite colorful both in appearance and behavior. They like to dig in some areas, mostly around their "caves" where they hide out; when swimming around, they're usually friendly towards each other provided there isn't food up for grabs. When feeding time comes around, "Big Jack" takes over control and reminds the smaller guy of this if he gets too near. Goofy-acting fish at times, but they are amusing and entertaining to watch.

10.24.2003: Ugly Hallowe'en Theme

Suits the season, I suppose

If there's one time of year where the "Bold" theme I originally designed for this site actually "works", it's right now while Hallowe'en is on everyone's minds. Speaking of which, make sure you blow up lots of pumpkins, set off large pyrotechnic displays and cause general mayhem and chaos in your area. Then post it somewhere where we can all enjoy the results ;)

The theme can be changed via the small icons at the top right.

10.09.2003: I <3 Spam

Bring it

Here's a little spam "honeypot" for the spambots: spamluvr@ihatespam.dyndns.org. That is all ;) .. Just want to see how long it is before that address is picked up and repeatedly bombarded with spam attempts. Time to have some fun with the spammers for a change, I say.

Ten days later..

Apparently it only takes 10 days, at least in this case, for an e-mail address to be picked up by spambots. How wonderful to know that our penis-enlargement-offering, finance-your-way-to-freedom-pushing, apparent failers-of-marketing-class ignorant spammers  are out there looking out for our best interests ;) Middle fingers extended vigorously in all of your general direction. Sorry guys, I just don't need a bigger member or  have the need to refinance. Nor did I ever sign up for either of them, so drop it already.

09.28.2003: DHTML Network layer Beta

"RPC-JS" Library in progress

RPC-JS is the best name I've been able to come up with (so far, anyways) for a Javascript-driven networking layer. It's arguably been one of the more involved challenges I've taken on; see chat example at right for reference.

There is no client-side socks/socket layer currently available to developers, so the idea was to try to come up with something that would allow for communication between multiple web clients through a common web interface (ie. a web page.) This in effect has accomplished that, although it does take advantage of some peculiar browser quirks and involves some trickery on the backend.

How it works

Client RX

Put as simply as possible, there's a broadcast server that each client establishes a persistent connection with (via a PHP-based proxy); this is the RX channel through which RPC (Remote Procedure Call) "packets" are received by the client. As you probably guessed, these are of course nothing more than blocks of Javascript. The trick is that this content loads from an iFrame, and each block of script is executed as it is received, as a "stream" of data. This iFrame never finishes loading as the broadcast server never closes the connection - Thus, a persistent connection for receiving data is established. One downside to this is the user sees indications of "loading" in their browser after the body onload() event fires - One potential downside is that some people may think the page hasn't finished loading yet.

Client TX

To send an RPC "packet", a query string is appended to a <script> node generated on-the-fly by the RPC library - This generates a GET request on the broadcast server, which then echoes the RPC packet across all connected clients.

Broadcast Server

On the server side, a simple daemon listens on two ports (one for persistent outgoing TX connections, one for brief incoming RX connections). One port could be used for both TX/RX, I broke it up to make distinguishing the two easier.

The server sends a simple HTTP/1.0 header on both ports, but does not send a content-length header or close the connection on the TX port; this makes the client wait for data to be received in the iFrame, and does not hang up until the server closes the connection. Thus, a persistent connection is, in effect, formed.

When the server receives a request on the RX port, it simply accepts the data and closes the connection, then broadcasts the request across all connected clients (therefore, the reason it's called a "broacast" server.)

.. And, so?

Real-time, two-way communication can be established between multiple clients connected through a common web interface (like this one you're viewing right now.) No flash, no Java, no plug-ins or other proprietary stuff - There are many potential uses, a small multi-user chat being a very simple example. Once the library is more solid, the intent is to make it a reusable component that any Web Developer type can plug into their projects.. Of course, there are some rough edges to iron out, but hopefully those won't take eons to find and solve.

Issues?

The ones I've run into so far comprise mostly of cross-domain scripting issues (ie. no calls can be made to a parent document from an iFrame in a different domain.. and under Mozilla, not even on a different port  .. the port and domain have to be identical in that case.) Other strangeness I've seen involves the PHP proxy script behaving erratically client-side if multiple windows are opened. Not sure what the cause and/or solution is yet.

Summary

Early tests have shown it's pretty reliable. I haven't had the chance to really load-test it, though theoretically it should be able to handle at least 10 simultaneous clients. I've seen six people chatting without issue at the same time, but past that I can't say! ;)

09.24.2003: Mercedes-Benz gets fresh

Home Page reskin goes live

After several weeks of solid development, Mercedes-Benz' USA site got a facelift; the new home page design is 100% Flash (for clients that support it), and an underlying DHTML version is rendered for those who don't.

An interesting feature of the home page is its structure; We developed it with SEO and bandwidth in mind, keeping one common code base that handles both Flash and DHTML clients via client-side scripting while maintaining search engine friendliness and bandwidth limitations at the same time. Clients supporting Flash, for example, will not download the large HTML images that would otherwise be displayed - We accomplished that by using structured HTML that allows CSS to "skin" the page via background images, rather than using script to set properties via DOM calls or hard-coding image references in the HTML.

The HTML base structure (copy and links) is sent regardless of client capabilities. This allows search engines to pick up the links and interpret the document, and also provides the content for the DHTML page should it need to be displayed. If the client supports Flash, the "skinning" CSS remains disabled and the Flash is written out to the page via Javascript. At the same time, the DHTML content is removed from the DOM via a removeChild() call (minus the footer content, as it is displayed beneath the flash version too.) This DHTML removal happens after the document has been parsed, but well before the page and images have time to load. Thus, potential for bandwidth "waste" on images is minimized. (The CSS skin however, which references the largest images, does not cause any images to start downloading; it is disabled by default and is enabled only if the DHTML version is activated.)

I was one of a small team of Web Developers working on the project, I contributed a large amount of code to the behavior of the home page. We have received positive feedback within two days of launch, and I expect it should continue to be a success post-launch - It's been a great project to work on, and the team I worked with made it all the more fun. Mercedes-Benz USA is a client of CRITICAL MASS, my current employer and provider of breakfast every weekday morning ;)

09.08.2003: Zero To Ninety In 60 Minutes

(OR, HOW NOT  TO SET UP AN AQUARIUM)

I recently took over the care of "The General", an Iridescent Shark (actually a Catfish, they look somewhat like a shark though - hence the name.) This fish has had at least three previous owners. When the last one decided he'd had the fish for long enough, it was my turn.

These fish can apparently grow to about 4 feet in length (he's about 1 foot long now), so the larger the tank they have, the better.. I got him in a 20-gallon tank, which was far too small; he barely had room to turn around, let alone swim. I found a great deal on a 90-gallon tank, so I invested in one and set it up. Moving was relatively painless, though amusing.. The General put up quite a fight, but we had him outmanned and outmaneuvered at every turn.

Normally I wouldn't mention this sort of thing, but the plan is to tie in some web-cam sort of interface with the site. So there it is.

08.17.2003: Disc Golf in Calgary

Nice weather, too bad about the smoke

Centenary Park is home to one of Calgary's three or so Disc Golf courses; I'd say it's a close second to the private "Park 96", which is fancier based on my somewhat limited experience (I've only played one sixth of the course) there.

Scores were not kept for this round, which is probably just as well - I did get a birdie, but there were a couple of double-bogies in there to help round things out for the worse. Visibility was definitely for the worse due to the forest fires going on in parts of the province and in BC.

To see some related photos and video clips, click on the picture. (Insert pop-up warning here.)

08.12.2003: Summer Vacation

Good Times

It was nice to take some time off during the summer, and in particular some time in the Okanagan. I bought a Pentax Optio S (read: really small digital camera) in order to take a bunch of pictures while I was down. The results include standard "35mm" images, panoramic images and some video. Without further ado, here's the Panoramic Image Viewer and the 35mm Image Viewer.

07.20.2003: Interim Update

160-Pixel Image Upgrade

So it was only three months behind schedule (and I'd say "over budget", except there isn't one).. but the 160-pixel image "thing" is finally up and running. Images can be created (albeit slowly perhaps) and submitted to the site. There is a layer of PHP on the backend handling a bunch of legacy formats - four as a matter of fact - it took the better part of a day to get it all sorted out. The previous version of this was written about three years ago and was relying on DOS executables compiled in Borland Turbo C++ and/or MS QuickBasic 4.5. Either way you choose, it wasn't pretty :) .. This new version uses PHP's GD library to generate PNGs on-the-fly, which are then cached for future retrieval. I could probably write more about this, but I doubt anyone actually cares. 'Nuff said! .. Enjoy.

07.01.2003: More Recent Development

BoxLib V1.0.20030701

BoxLib is a lightweight, object-oriented DHTML library that adds rounded corners and funky style to the standard HTML container element, the DIV. It serves the same basic functionality as seen on this page, but has been edited to be more generic and conducive to further customization.

DHTML Scorch Progress

"Progress" may not be the most accurate word, but there has been some forward movement - development is continuing. Perhaps a screenshot can explain best.

Disc Golf and Related Shenanigans

And in other news..
Rumor has it that Scott has not been spending much time on his computer lately, due to this strange Disc Golf activity which has been fighting with his computer for priority time over the past month; it would appear that the game is winning over the machine. Scott says in his defense he has Jim McFadyen to blame for indroducing him to the sport. Geoff Sowrey has the story.

Scott seems to have problems with overstable discs and their attraction to water, as well as low-hanging bushes - particularly thick areas (the disc-golf eating kind) where they tend to get lost. Fortunately only one has been lost to the Bow River thus far, one (expensive) $27 mistake.

05.03.2003: Recent Developments

Amateur Photography: 360° Panoramic attempt

This panoramic photo was taken during a week vacation in the Okanagan Valley of BC, where my family lives. I had intended to take a bunch of pictures because of the unbelievable view from my parents' back yard. Overall the photo turned out quite well; I intend to take more shots in the summer, fall and winter and then compile those images somehow into an interactive seasons piece (or something similar. Given the nature of the seasons, it appears I still have a while to think about it.)

3 years of "SCHILLMANIA!"

It was May 2000 when "Schillmania" originally hit the Web - before then I was known as "schill99" under XOOM (now NBCi and defunct as far as hosting goes, I think).. it doesn't feel like it's been just three years, but domain registration records rarely lie.

Scorched Earth remake: "DHTML Scorch"

The DHTML Scorch project has been moving pretty slowly over the last month, due to vacation time and lack of free time elsewhere. I'm hoping to get something put together for June - at the moment multiple tanks can take turns blowing each other up, the terrain is affected by explosions and gravity is taken into account. The turn-based play is currently being worked on.

TJ: More freestyle freshness

My younger brother finished off his ski season with an impressive number of wins at Freestyle comps in both Western and Eastern Canada. Click on the picture for a larger version.

03.21.2003: Site Revamp

Hello, World

Welcome back (or "hello and welcome", perhaps) to my personal, experimental design site. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the standards-compliant code. After five years of mostly "IE-only" styles and broken design on anything else, it's about bloody time I got around to designing with the rest of the non-IE:win32 world in mind.

What is..

"Schillmania?" .. A site based on experimental DHTML-driven code focusing on funky, interactive applications, fresh interface design and other things that just plain waste time ;)

Standards good!

The site design has been given a much-needed overhaul - it was long overdue (the last redesign before this was Fall/Winter.02, which replaced the Summer.02 design around October.)

This version of the site has been designed to validate with an XHTML Strict DTD, and by that reasoning it should render properly in most recent browsers (Use 5th-generation and up for best results), and degrade gracefully in others (like Netscape 4, or - better yet - Lynx.) A decent chunk of the code in this design is CSS, dictating the layout - I have attempted to separate presentation and content layers as much as possible - but there is a growing amount of Javascript handling the "web apps" and other interactive stuff such as the Webpad, 160-pixel image and Arkanoid sections.

I have tested this code against IE and Mozilla on Windows and MacOS platforms and have found it to render fairly accurately across them with 5th-generation+ browsers. Feel free to send e-mail describing bugs if you find any (screenshots always help).. this is assuming of course that someone actually reads this stuff!

Features

• Table-less fluid content driven by CSS, reflows to fit window
• "Theme-able" interface via CSS (see icons @ top right)
• Structure, structure, structure
• Funky OO-style Javascript
• Graceful degrading in older browsers
• Valid XHTML Strict code (well it should  be, anyways)

Known issues

Netscape6:mac seems to have an issue with the leftmost column on this page - if you're using this browser/OS combination, then you'll see exactly what I'm talking about (eg. it isn't there! ). I suspect a browser bug but haven't nailed it.

IE5:mac has issues with dynamically loading Javascript via DOM methods, so the Webpad refresh and post functionality is broken under that browser currently. Small horizontal scrollbars also have been noticed, a minor annoyance.

Projects: Overview

DHTML Scorch

The redesign has taken some time, but I can now get back to working on the next project: "DHTML Scorch" (the best name I can think of so far), a DHTML rendition (who'd have guessed) of the classic tank-wars style game "Scorched Earth" - originally created by Wendall Hicken. (God bless that man. I spent many hours playing that damned game).

As with Arkanoid, the goal is to write cross-platform, standards-compliant, Object-Oriented, clean yet funky code (Javascript/CSS/HTML.) Time will tell!

DHTML Arkanoid

Following the DHTML-prefix trend recent work seems to be following, this is an attempt at recreating another arcade classic in DHTML. Approximately 125 KB of it, actually - which entails the core javascript routines, CSS and HTML code.

DHTML Arkanoid spanned about 4 months from start-to-[near]-finish, with the majority of the work in the latter months being addition of "features" to the basic game. It was a great experiment in writing Object-Oriented Javascript, writing efficient code (as far as one with limited knowledge can reasonably optimize Javascript, at least), and designing with cross-browser functionality as an end goal. I think I reached most of these.

Oh and did I also mention 100% bug-free code? .. right, I didn't. Now I remember why, this thing isn't quite there yet ;) - I doubt it will ever be very "solid" in terms of robustness, just because of the nature of Javascript and in particular the way the level "loading" functions are written. Some browsers still seem to barf with an "undefined/undeclared" object error every so often.

Freestyle Skiing @ Winter Games

My brother, TJ Schiller, was at the 2003 Canada Winter Games in March.

He scored 3rd (bronze medal) in tabletop (big air), 7th in moguls and dual moguls, and 9th in aerials.

He's 16 and was one of the youngest competitors in the Men's Freestyle event. He was told by after his second mogul run that he is only one of a few men in the world to have ever scored perfect points on air. Needless to say I'm extremely proud of him!

His friend Josh Bibby did well also, taking second place in the tabletop competition.

TJ also scored first place at the Apex Mountain BC Freestyle Canadian Series in January, in both Juvenile Men's Moguls and Big Air.

I think I'll just stick to web development, myself! :)