Sherbert Interactive Labs

New server activity

Sabin — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 05:07:33 +0000

We haven’t been too busy here, but I did just get a few servers up and running.

The first is Minecraft. I started a server for my son and I to play together. I may open it to the public at some point, but not just yet.
Lineage I: It’s an old-school game that’s still fun.
Ranarok Online: almost opened. I just need to get the client situated so I can test it.

Diaspora

Sabin — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 14:09:05 +0000

After spending most of the weekend snaking around the bowels of Centos5, I have diaspora development code running on the server. I’m not going to make it publicly available yet, because there are still a lot of bugs in the source code — it being a pre-alpha release — as well as it not being as bullet proof on the server as I would like to have made it.

In the next few days, though, I hope to have a pod available for folks to play with.

The project is written using Ruby for the middle layer, some Rails components, and a NoSQL database in the back called Mongo. It runs on an http server called Thin, but there are some Apache ports out there.

At any rate, that’s what I’ve been up to in the labs for the past few days. I’ve also been checking out quite a bit of the functionality available through Jolicloud 1.0 — upon which I am typing this entry — and have been inspired by some of the web-based apps that are being made available through the little OS. I’ll have more to report on that in the next week or so.

In closing, I’m looking to connect with like-minded folks here in VT. If you’re a developer, UX designer, IA, or some other alphabet person in the web-based world, give me a ping. I’d like to start a VT-based group for discussion and promotion of the work we all do in our fields.

What’s Cooking in the Labs

Sabin — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 13:58:18 +0000

When I started coding, it was 1996 and I was sitting in front of a Compaq white-cased behemoth in the JSC computer lab. Netscape 3 was still the standard browser, but I was more familiar with Lynx that was running on our library’s VAX system. HTML represented freedom for me. A way to publish and write — my two great joys — at the same time. In other words, I’ve been coding for a long time.

During that time, I picked up some bad habits. We all did. It was enough to get the layout working. I satisfied myself with using only lowercase tags and being as clean as I could with my use of the ubiquitous “spacer.gif”. Over the years, I’ve dropped some of those habits in favor of new, XHTML/CSS2 ones. I want to drop them. I love HTML5 and CSS3. They just make me happy.

So, for what it’s worth this site validates to the HTML5 standard, and I’m working ont he CSS aspects of it. There are some habits that are harder to break than others. For me, at least.

This site represents my own personal journey back into the world of interactive publishing/writing, and the “labs” represents my own experimentation with those bits that help that journey. This week: Dojo, PHP 5, Non-relational DBs. Fun!

UPDATE: I ran my CSS through the W3C validation service, and the only elements within it that are not valid or those required to implement some of the CSS3 design elements (as few as there are) of this site. Namely, the -moz and -webkit prefixed items.

Here in Vermont

Sabin — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:35:15 +0000

Sherbert Labs is now in our new location: alongside my actual personal location, to be honest. We moved up to Vermont about a month ago and are still just settling in.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the direction I would like Labs to take, and I have a vision of a few different things. I think custom, “macro-biotic” hosting would be cool. I.e., hosting services customized for specific locations. We would first start in Vermont, of course. Secondly, I want to begin in earnest with our gaming ideas (more on those later).

The whole point of this venture is to provide a base of experimentation for my wife and I to try out the various online ideas we’ve been batting around for years. I’ll continue to post here as progress is made or directions are changed.

First post and explanation

Sabin — Sun, 16 May 2010 03:28:32 +0000

The new site’s up after a haitus of almost five years. I haven’t been idle in that time. In fact, I’m working as an Information Architect in Boston, MA and continue to work on my blog at onegecko.comas often as I can. This site is a new direction for me, though. In amongst the other things I do during the day, I’ve continued my experimentation with code, servers, applications, etc. I would really like to share them. That’s where this site comes in. I’ll reveal more later, but for now please remember to come back as I get more content going.

The very first thing I’m testing is this site itself, in fact. The entire thing is rendered using CSS3 and HTML5. Backed by a WordPress publishing engine, the site is an experiment in semantic markup and publishing. If you’re using Google’s Chrome browser, Apple’s Safari, or Mozilla Firefox, you should see a fairly clean — though grey-scale — design and layout. Other browsers will render the page in the order in which the code is layed down. There should still be semantic meaning, however.

This is an extremely important subject to me. When I first started coding professionally, I was working hard to separate code and content, form and function. HTML5 and CSS3 appear to let us do that. As both an information architect and web developer, I find this a fascinating and necessary addition to the technological landscape. Standardized markup will help us develop better search algorithms for organization of information, while a more semantic-based code foundation will make content distribution that much easier.