The Grax Domain

8 Jun 2008 Tester video entry

If you can't watch the video above, you can read what I said in the video below:

Hi this is Grax and I'm doing a little tester video entry.

Now I wanted to do something a bit more than just 'record myself on a digital camera and then upload it onto the Internet'. But the only video editing software that I do have is the Movie Maker thing you get with Windows XP. However I do have Adobe Flash. And I know how to use Adobe Flash.

So I thought I'd mess around with it and see what I can do.

I can import for video into it, edit it and export it out as a flv, which gets accepted by YouTube, Facebook and other bits and places like that. So that means I can create... potentially create all sorts of effects like drawing things on the screen, putting text to the screen, and of course... I can add music.

Now there's two main reasons why I wanted to do this. The first reason is I was doing a search on my video entries on Google and I did "advance", "hair", "studio" and "grax". And lo and behold my YouTube entry got turned up on some other random site. I dunno what it was. I'm guessing it was some collaboration site. The trouble was there was no immediate way upon it to see who I was or how to get to my website. So from now for all new video entries I'm going to be adding a kind of watermark so you can link to my address.

The second reason is regarding my new years resolution I made at the start. Now I said I wanted to play around a bit more with Flash and one of the ideas I had was to create Flash blog entries (or Flogs as I named them). Now the trouble was I kinda quickly realised that this would require a lot of time and effort and I had neither of those (certainly in the case of motivation). However I can do video entries and such. Now I can do that I can essentially churn them out. It's quick, it's simple to do and I can do all sorts of Flash effect on them (if this works). So I'm killing two birds with one stone as it were. I'm keeping up my side of the bargain and I trying to keep it a bit more entertaining.

So this is my tester entry in the world of video blogs. And I think it turned out OK.

Edit: Oooh, turns out you can export things in Flash as an avi file anyways. No flv malarkey for me. Awesome.

20 Apr 2008 RSS feeds are now fixed

Oh dear. Looks like little Grax was a bit silly...

It would appear that people we unable to leave any comments on my site if they were to click through to a page via an RSS feed, with claims of odd 404 error pages. It happened a few times before in the past and I kinda ignored it, but it wasn't until Vixx came along and told me exactly when it was breaking (thanks again poppet) that I actually investigated some more. Why did it break? Well I'd rather not say... *grumble grumble pointing to the wrong URL grumble*

But good news! It was a simple fix to fix and I fixed it. So now it's safe to leave comments if you enter via an RSS feed. It's all going to be alright. Come on now, don't be shy.

So to celebrate, and because Elyse tag me and everyone else to do so, I'm gonna do one of those Meme thingys.

Here’s how you play: Once you’ve been tagged you have to write a blog with 10 weird, random facts, habits, or goals about yourself– at the end choose 5 people to be tagged. Don’t forget to leave them a comment saying (You’re It!) and to go read your blog. You cannot tag the person that tagged you. Yes I copied and pasted this paragraph from Elyse's page.

1. I'm very much a listener rather than a talker. I love listening to other people talking about their life.
2. I'm a shy guy that hides it through silly confidence and blunt honesty. Like everyone else I bet.
3. I believe that you can do anything (and I mean anything) you want in life, whether it be good or bad. You just have to be able to live with the consequences.
4. At my worse I used to weight 18 stone (252 lbs) and have a crappy beard to try and hide my fat neck. Now I'm a relatively healthy 13 stone (182 lbs) with optional clean shaven or manly stubble.
5. I feel that finding the right partner is more important (and much harder to do) than getting the right job.
6. I like to flirt badly with people, things like "That's a lovely dress, it would look good on my bedroom floor". I find it comical and easy to do, especially when you know that nothing will come of it. And really, people like to hear things like "You've got a really pretty face".
7. I've managed to get some people I know to call me Grax rather than my real name. I'm tempted to start introducing myself to new people as Grax and see how many people I can get to call me Grax.
8. I like to go out of my house to do stuff. For example I like to go to the office to do work, or I like to go to a gym to exercise. I don't like doing things like that at home because there's too many things at home to distract me, namely the Internet.
9. I find watching snooker or darts on the TV quite enjoyable and quite relaxing. Much better than any other sport on TV
10. After wearing temporary tattoos and colour contacts out in public I felt like I wanted people to come up to me and make comments about my appearance. Therefore a goal I could try is I'm going to try and approach more people that look plain different and compliment them.

As for passing this Meme on I think I'll pass it on to..... YOU!

Yes you!

Well go on then. I haven't got all day.

26 Feb 2008 Grax all over your face.... book

Grax Domain been pimped out to the masses.

I just so happened to be browsing along Facebook and I noticed an interesting little app called Flog Blog. It's nothing more than a simple RSS feed reader with a Facebook skin on it, but I figured it would be a good way of getting more site exposure.

So now you can read my latest blog entries on my Facebook profile.

That is all.

14 Dec 2007 Moving Servers: Complete

Bloody hell that was a feat an a half...

A few more kinks to iron out? A few kinks my arse!

Anyway the move to the new server is finished and everything should be back to normal for your reading pleasure. I'll be doing a big blog dump over the next few days to get this place up to speed.

On a side note I felt like adding two new categories to the site; Thought Of The Day and Religion, although I'm not sure if the Religion category is 100% accurate seeing as it contain almost nothing else apart from the Alpha Course stuff that I've done (which I've completed now, no more sessions for me). I might change the Religion category to something like Alpha Course or something. I dunno.

Edit (16/12/2007) - Screw it I'm changing it from Religon to Alpha. It just makes more sense.

3 Dec 2007 Moving Servers

The Grax Domain is gonna be in the process of moving servers. Hopefully it will be a painless process and everything will be completely sorted and out of the way by next week (I gotta find a decent place to have me stuff hosted first).

But if something fishy happens to the site then you'll know why.

I'll save any new entries until the move is complete.

Edit (8/12/2007) - Nearly there. Just a few more kinks to iron out...

12 Sep 2007 Useful bits of code

I've been racking my brain over this ActionScript problem for days. Why is it that in ActionScript 3.0 you cannot easily set the alpha of a dynamic textfield? You can se the alpha of a movieclip or sprite, how bloody hard is it for a textfield?

Fortunately I found a link on the internet with a working solution (and no it is not "You have to embed the font, wah wah wah"), featuring filters. It's right here:

http://www.oddhammer.com/tutorials/alpha_dynamic_text/

Then it dawned on me. It took me a long while and rewording my google search to find this solution. And it was the only one. Surely there must be many people out there like me, looking for the solution but to no avail.

Plus it'll be a pain in the ass for me to find the link again.

Therefore I have a quest. No! A mini quest. I shall create a new category in the Links section called Useful bits of Code and inside it shall be an ever growing list of links that I find handy as a computer Internet programmer geek type person. Bits of code to aid me. Anyone who happens to read this is more than welcome to share my booty.

Oh, and I've added a couple more links namely in the Blog section.

17 Jan 2007 New Skin: Pink Angel

Feeling inspired I have whipped up a new skin to go onto this site called Pink Angel. You can view it by clicking on the Pink Angel link underneath the navigation buttons to the side. Or to view the Pink Angel Skin click here.

It's pink and girly, but I like it too.

15 Nov 2006 The Grax Domain v2.0

After several months (on-off) of hard work I can now reveal to the public Grax Domain version 2.0.

Doesn't look like it's changed much does it? Well... I like this layout. But there are changes. In fact there are the following changes:

• First thing you'll notice is the navigation menu. There's bits popping out! That's the power of CSS! This way you'll be able to access the pages you want quicker
• The archiving of past entries has been restructured and tidied up a bit
• You can now search through past entries
• You can change the layout of the site (as before) but look what happens when you mouse over the skin link. A thumbnail pops up! Wheee!
• There's a couple of new layout available. Nothing graphically amazing, but mostly designed to make this site easier to read. Accessibilities the buzz-word (or something like that). Also the existing layouts Original and Hunk have been remade.
• There's now a sitemap.
• There;s now a proper emailing form that you can use to contact me. Handy if you don't have an email client like Outlook.
• There's some new stuff that's been added and updated here and there.
• The Magic 8 Ball's results page has been removed. It's been filling with spam far too often and I don't know if anyone actually reads the results. It just seems like too much hassle. Let me know if you think this is wrong. Besides the 8 Ball will get an update in the future.
• I've removed the 'Image Security' thing for the comments pages and replaced it with a tick box. It seems to be working fine for The Art of Grax, so I don't see why it shouldn't work here. I'm going to trial it for a while and see what happens
• I made a fav icon for the site. Aren't I special? =D

30 Oct 2006 New Grax Domain: Beta

Over the past few months on and off (during my spare moments) I have been working on updating the whole website. Not just with updated content, but a restructure, adding of new features and making it more accessible for all. I have practically finished it all. But I want to run it as a 'test run' before I make it all official. Y'know, something like a couple of weeks or so to iron out all the kinks and stuff.

You can see the beta of the new Grax Domain at http://www.graxdomain.co.uk/beta/. That's not so hard to remember now is it?

I won't list out all the updates just yet, but keep an eye for 'Past Entries' and the site map at the bottom. As ever feel free to post comments, suggestions, spotted bugs, tips, and so on. Input is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

11 Sep 2006 RSS feeds for The Grax Domain

You can now subscribe to the rambling and doodles of Grax. You can use the following feeds:

• All new entries RSS feed
• New miscellaneous entries RSS feed
• New rants entries RSS feed
• New art entries RSS feed
• New reviews entries RSS feed
• New updates entries RSS feed
• New dreams entries RSS feed

You can also subscribe to RSS feeds on The Art of Grax, so you'll never miss my latest and greatest creations.

After a while of studying how others do it I've created some home made php pages and a php class that generates RSS pages dynamically, which I'm quite pleased with. I intend to add some XSL styling to the RSS feed for extra goodness. This is the next step towards a better Grax Domain.

20 Aug 2006 The Art of Grax v2.0 (beta)

The Art of Grax has been revamped.

After a long while of on-off coding action and one final push over the weekend I have remade the website from scratch. The things I've done are:

• Given the whole site a new skin. Not longer will you stare at a sterile "My First Website" white sorry excuse for an online gallery. There's colour and interesting positioning of stuff.
• No more tables! The site has been rebuilt to be XHTML standard compliant.
• It uses a couple of custom-built PHP classes within the code. Nothing super-complex, but it works.
• There's the starts of XML within the site. Each individual picture is generated by PHP making an XML thingy and then the PHP processing it.
• The comments text fields has javascript elements in them for validation (ready for AJAX) but can function just fine without javascript.
• Oh yeah, I've added a few new pictures on the site too.
• Not to mention clearing out all the God-damn spam posts it's been getting!

All in all it a pretty solid rework I think. However there are a couple of things that I've left out (until a later date), partly because I really wanted to replace the old site ASAP and partly because I'm don't fully understand the XML technology yet:

• I originally wanted the site to have elements of AJAX, name the side gallery loading a new picture AJAX-style, but I just don't know how it's done. But it should all be set up for me to plug it in when I do work it out.
• I wanted to look into RSS feed, but I didn't get to adding it to the site. Again I'm not sure how it works but I will figure it out.

I'm pretty happy with what I've got. It is a beta however (basically I'm just covering my ass just in case one of you smart-asses points out an error) so if you do spot something wrong with the site, let me know.

In fact, just tell me what you think of it overall. Any comments, critics or suggestions let me have 'em.

11 May 2006 Nezis.co.uk version 2.0

I've finished remaking my illustrator friend's site. It's taken a couple of months worth of free evenings to complete. Even though I can't take any credit for the design of the site, I've really proud about the coding I used to make it work. It's an infusion of Flash, Actionscript, PHP and XML, all coming together like a mass orgy of love. All for 85k worth of filesize (plus the external picture that gets loaded)!

Anyway, feel free to have a look. Let me know what you think of it. ^_^

www.nezis.co.uk

7 Mar 2006 Those damn web robots!

What the fudge?? Ah crap. Those damn automated spammer are getting my sites all gunked up! It's affecting the comments, the Art of Grax, even the 8 Ball's been affected! I was hoping it would only be the Guestbook that would be affected. Bah, I'm gonna have to stick on that image security code thingy on each of the forms. I'm sorry, but it the only immediate solution that I can think of that will allow me to filter out all the crap with the minimal of effort. I'm lazy, I can't be arse to delete stuff every day.

8 Jan 2006 Stylesheet assistance: What the hell is going on?

OK here's the situation. I've recenty changed some code for this website and changed the stylesheet as well to generally make it more cleaner. And I am sure it works fine.

Then I had one complain about it acting funny. This kind of funny. As you can see the footer links are not on the foot of the page, the buttons are on the right and the text is right at the bottom. Then this said person said that she looked at it in IE and it worked fine. So it's probably a browser issue.

The thing is it works fine for me. I've tested with Firefox, Internet Explorer, I've even downloaded Opera to try it out, and it works exactly as I expect it to. I've even tested it on browsers at work and it's all fine.

Some people might say that I should ignore this one complaint, on the grounds of she's using a 'special' browser for 'special' people, but I have to be sure.

Could people PLEASE tell me if something is wrong with this site as it is. Drop an email, or leave a comment, I don't mind which. Prove her right or wrong.

Thank you.


When I said "2006? Bring it." this wasn't what I had in mind.

31 Dec 2005 I'VE HAD IT UP TO HERE WITH THE LIKES OF YOU PEOPLE!!!

That's it, I've had it!! I'm sick and tired of all those stupid adverts popping up in my guestbook. Porn, fake watches, loans, porn, casino, mobiles, porn, porn, porn! The list goes on. Every other day I had to clean out half a dozen of these 'entries'. Trying to ruin my good name with misplaced adverts; how dare they!

So I've had to add a little image code thingy to the guestbook sign-in page that you need to fill in before you can submit. I'm sorry to the honest people in the world, but they made me do it.

But I've got plans for those people who want to whore out my Grax Domain for their cheap gains. Oh they'll pay. They'll all pay....

*evil cackle*

I win.... ^_^

Also while I was at it I've also did some code cleaning to my site. You probably won't notice anything too unusual or new, it's just so it's all tidier. If you spot any odd goings on let me know.

9 Aug 2005 "... No doubt you'll be wanting to make a decent time of tea..."

I've now completed the "How to make a cup of tea" flash animation, as how I originally intended it to be... More or less. There's a new scene at the end of the animation and there is now background music.

I am both ecstatic and disgusted with its completion. I'm really happy than now it is all done to a satisfactory level and that I can now leave it alone. I really hate the way I had to show-horn in the extra scenes into the animation due to poor its poor structure. Oh, and lip-synching is quite a bitch until you get the hang of it. Overall kudos to me! ^_^

You can see the flash by clicking the link below:
How to make a cup of tea. FINAL

I've also submitted the flash into Newgrounds for a public rating. Please feel free to rate the animation by clicking the direct link below (you may have to wait a short while before it gets fully accepted by Newgrounds):

How to make a cup of tea on Newgrounds

30 May 2005 Been Keeping Busy

I haven't been adding new entries to this site for a while, but I have an excuse. I've been busy updating and tweaking my various sites and pages, as well as looking for new work. I haven't finished them all yet but I've make a fair old bit of progress.

• Update my CV, both online and offline. You know you want to hire me.
• Convert my 40K Gallery into DIV tags. So it'll be easer to make it look pretty in the future.
• Convert the Art or Grax gallery into DIV tags. So it'll be easer to make it look pretty in the future.
• Convert the Marvel Database into PHP and DIV tags and move it to friends server.
• Transfer my detox entries to their own pages, which can be found in the Stuff section.
• Create artwork for these detox pages.
• Sign my face up on Hot of Not website and put the link in my Bio page so that people can rate how pretty I am. I'm just asking for it, aren't I?
• Create new skins for the following site cos I'm a little bored of the old stuff:
  • Grax Domain
  • Art of Grax
  • 40k Gallery
  • CV
• Draw some more dammit!

Hopefully I'll strike off and add more things to do when they happen.

23 Apr 2005 Links and Tweaks

I sometimes worry about how bad my memory is and my ability to procrastinate, so I'm taking action.

Firstly I've added some new links so that I can remember them when I'm away from my computer. I have also added a tick box for when you add a comment, which sends out an email to you whenever a new comment is added. It may or may not prove popular. Only time will tell....

I'll probably put the SimpleImg feature on hold, or at least add them infrequently. This is because I have a few art pet projects that I want to complete and I want to dedicate as much of my free time, or what's left of it, as I can.

Strike off three things off the To Do list. That's right, it has gotten so bad I've written out a To Do list. On Paper. And stuck it on my wall. I'm fed up of putting off things that need to be done because I get distracted. Hey, maybe I should create a page for the Grax Domain called "The To Do List". Yeah, it'll have a huge list of things to do (hence the title) and I'll cross them off as they get done. Yeah, what a great idea!

... Man I'm so bored....

22 Feb 2005 Entry Category Thumbnails

The thing is y'know I said that I've categorised all these enteries? And that I would do work on other things like applying proper style to the other sites I got? Well... I couldn't help myself. I've created little thumb images to indicate what category they come under. Much like the one to the left of this one. See? It me behind my computer, thusly indicating an update. Clever isn't it? I will say now that I have blantantly copied this idea off various other blog sites, including Mia's site. Or in other words; "Thanks for the inspiration guys." ^_^ Anyways I'll get back to the other proper stuff that I'm mean to be doing later.

19 Feb 2005 Grax Domain V1.2 ish

Behold the newer looking Grax Domain!

Not a lot different from the last one, is it? Well it's better because I've completely saturated this site with DIV tags and is nearly running entirely on Cascading Style Sheets. Which means in theory I can apply different looks to the site by changing the CSS. But then you knew that part already. If you look hard enough and if you actually care you'll notice a few little tweaks on this site, like the hyperlinks.

The only things that are not affected yet are the 40k Gallery, The Art of Grax, and the 8 Ball. Why? Because it took sooo damn long sorting this site out that I feel I deserve a break. But threat not, they shall be converted in the near future.

I've also categorised each of these entries and you can view the past entries by category. Go to The Past News to see the old rambles.

Now all I gotta do is go round the site and make sure I haven't broken anything...

1 Oct 2004 Some links update.

I've added a couple of new links on the links page. It's mostly for my benefit really, because they're links to my friend's site and I keep forgetting their addresses. Plus it's a little bit of free advertising for them.

If you don't want me to link to your site, or can think of a better description of your site (there isn't one for those two currently), feel free to let me know. :)

6 Sep 2004 It returns true believers!

At last! After far too long being out of action and taking far too long to sort out, the Marvel Database is back live and running properly again! I'm so happy that my first proper website is working again. Joy!

But it came with a price. I couldn't continue to fix the site round a friends house cos he didn't say it was OK to do so (thanks buddy), so I resorted to use the local Net Cafe, This Net Cafe to be precise (nice people by the way). The trouble was it was costing me money to fix the site, y'know "Time is Money" and stuff. It cost me several trips and about £30 to get the Marvel Database working again! Still I shouldn't have to do something like that again for a long while now.

£30... And I thought web developing would be a cheap hobby. :P

31 Aug 2004 It returns....

Well, after several attempts round my friends house (thanks buddy, you know who you are) I'm finally making some headway over sorting out my ASP stuff. The Magic 8 Ball is now fully operational and is waiting for you to ask it for its wisdom. The Marvel Database is still out of operation, but all it needs is a couple more trips and a phonecall.

(but then again, I doubt anyone cared about the second site. It's all about the 8 Ball. :P )

24 Jun 2004 Behold the terrible power!

I made an online Magic 8 Ball for all to play with. If you ever need a yes/no type question to be answered then this is the thing to use.

Oh by the way, I created this application using ASP. Who's Code-Fu is rusty now? ^_^

19 Jun 2004 Picture Time

Hey everybody. I've got a new picture in the SimpleImg category in the Art of Grax. Check it out.

14 Jun 2004 A Link to the Past

I've decided to add a couple more links to the Links section, because I felt it has been negleted. One of those links is to X-Entertainment. The main reason why it's been added is because of all the '80s relics it has.

It was great to be reminded of all the cool things that I grew up with in the 80s. They were mainly toys like M.U.S.C.L.E Men,. G.I Joe, Battle Beast (my face lit up with joy when I saw them again ^_^), the list goes on. And there are also film clips of 80 adverts. You've gotta check out the singing California Raisins. Ah memories...

To anyone who grew up in the 80s I recommend this trip down memory lane.

12 Jun 2004 Your Thoughts About My Thoughts

Now you can add comments about the things that I write. This site is becoming more and more like a Blogs journal site rather than a simple portal site.

10 May 2004 New Stuff

I've added a new section for putting in random junk which I find cool. It's called Stuff. So far it's kinda empty. I don't wanna put files in there cos it'll eat my limited bandwidth. But it'll get more used in the future.

27 Apr 2004 I can draw... honest

The Art of Grax is now online. Here is where you get to see my 'artistic' skills, and you can leave comments about them. Be gentle. ^_^

15 Apr 2004 Updates

I've updated the links section. Incidently you may be interested to know the test results I got back: Edit: In the interest of tidying up I removed the link from here. Go to the 'Stuff' section to find the results.

4 Apr 2004 Be my Guest

A guestbook has now been added to the Grax Domain. Feel free to sign it, just follow the rules.

7 Mar 2004 40k Whoo!

Added a new section called 40k Galleries. This is were you can see my range of Games Workshop Warhammer 40k armies