Mockfideousness

I really wanted to have this release out the door before the holiday (I had hoped at one point to have it ready by the end of the world as the Mayans knew it), and it was a day late for a New Year’s release, but I’d rather get it right than stick to any particular deadline.

I’ll probably never stop working on Cascading Slides (I have a wish list long enough to keep me busy for the rest of my life), but this is the first version I am really, truly happy with.  For all the praise it has received, it has also brought criticism, particularly with regard to the funky opening UI (album list/main menu). I’m afraid the purpose of the app has been eclipsed by a non-intuitive opening UI, and that many who have tried it haven’t really understood it because they couldn’t get past that main window and into a hierarchically-organized album.  Not only has that part now been completely re-written and simplified, but it also comes with a demo album (“Universe”) that shows off its potential.

You’ll need the latest and greatest version of Java to run it (1.7 or later), but you should get that, anyway.  Oracle seems determined not to let Java stagnate while they own it, and JavaFX has some really cool stuff in it…

OBD

Ever since I can remember, I have had a TV in my bedroom.  They say it’s not good for you, but nothing worth living for really is, is it?

So like many other pop culture bed sponges, I simply can’t fall asleep without having “the TV on.”  (Small shout out to Poltergeist at this point–I can’t imagine the remake will thrill me much with its TV People.)  I put that in quotes because these days, my computer is my TV.  I like to fall asleep to recordings of my favorite shows, and always have.  Back in the day, I used a VCR, and had a substantial collection of VHS tapes (my college dorm neighbors were always borrowing from my collection of “Cheers” episodes because I had painstakingly recorded them with all the commercials cut out).

(Another side note here, but I suspect I use parentheses a bit too much.)

In the new millennium, digital files are where it’s at, but until I created Media Shuffle, I had no way of easily falling asleep to back-to-back “tapings” (not always in front of a live studio audience) of my favorite sitcom cheese.  Now, I do.  And thanks to its un-patented design (none pending), I don’t even have to think much about what show(s) I want to fall asleep to.  I just click one button, and let the app decide for me.

And it’s yours for free, too…

(You’re welcome),
OBD

Cascading Slides Online Help

Better late than never…

OBD

That’s right, once the trial period expires, the app no longer goes full retard!

It’s just “special.”

You’re welcome,
OBD

Here’s why I decided to create my own web traffic log analysis tool:

That’s the graph that my site hosting company is providing me, showing traffic to my site in the form of daily “page views.”  Those spikes are traffic from me, making changes and updates to the site, and then testing the public view.  Those page views are generated by JavaScript, so it doesn’t show me traffic from users without scripting enabled.  More importantly, this data doesn’t help me understand just how many people are visiting certain areas and resources on the Globalisk site.

The “detailed statistics” link doesn’t help much, either.  It’s also page views, but by directory/page, and without breaking the total down by day/date.  Some numbers look terribly wrong to me, too.

Although I did manage to find a perfectly good, free log analysis tool for Windows, it produces too many reports, detailing too much information I don’t want, and no view showing exactly what I did want.  Since I’ve done plenty of NCSA log processing in the past, for a couple different websites, the simplest solution seemed to be my favorite part about being a programmer: make my own app.

NCSAnalysis is a simple, free, Java-based web analysis tool that processes log files to produce Excel-formatted reports detailing unique IP (site visitor) traffic on a daily basis:

Excel view of data produced by NCSAnalysis

You can filter out traffic from certain IPs, and from web bots/crawlers.  It also lets you track hits to individual resources, such as program installation files, audio files, etc.

You’re welcome.

OBD