Alexandar Tzanov ~ The Titan » Announcements

Happy Holidays

Alexandar Tzanov — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 16:34:53 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving

Alexandar Tzanov — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:52:25 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it

Invites… Get your Invites here!

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:30:59 +0000

I have created an Invites request page where you can view my reviews of various web sites and services on the web that require invites to become a member, or did required one at the time of the review. As I spend a lot of time on the Internet, I register on many websites and thus come in possession of invites, which I am more than glad to share with others interested to test the web site in question as well.

You can request an invite via two methods;

You can leave me a comment on the blog post about the website you are interested in.
You can use the Invites request form on the Invites page, where you can request invites to multiple services at once.

Either method will get you an invite, IF they are still available. If I run out of invites I will look into getting more, but not all web sites will be willing to share more. If you have invites that you would liek to share, either let me know and I will let you know when someone wants one, or just comment on one of the invites offer posts for others to get a hold of you. In cases when you have invites to a web site that I have not posted about, contact me and I will make a post about it.

Evolution of a blog

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:20:59 +0000

I have decided to change the blog’s theme once again. I want to go with something more professional. I chose BlueBird, because I wanted something less busy, more open and, at the time, I was also high on the Twitter wave.

Lately I have been kind of burned out on Twitter! I am not as excited or obsessed with it, although I do still look forward to connecting with friends and posting random things. I guess everything comes in waves. At least that’s how it is with me. I obsess with something for couple of days to couple of weeks and then I move on.

Anyhow, back to the looks of my blog. I want to have something plain, which will present the content in easy to the eyes fashion. I don’t want to have busy pages, either. I think I will start with trying out few different theme. Currently I am deicing between Mimbo Pro, The Studio and maybe Unbound. I will test their appeal and organization of the content, but I think, at the end, I just might just create my own theme from modifying the classic WordPress them. Just like I did many years ago, when I first started using WordPress. I would provide some examples, but the Archive.org does not have that many archived copies of my site. Besides, I think this was probably before the total data loss I suffered in July of 2004.

After I have settled on a theme or have created my own, I will reorganize the pages and the content their provide. Then maybe I will finally complete the About page. I am doing this, because I want to make my blog more useful. I want to start posting better articles and attract new and regular visitors. Eventually I would like to also have a forum community.

We will have to see who this will go. I see this as “The Evolution of a personal blog”, the evolution of my blog. Looking through old posts and remembering old designs I can trace the changes in my way of thinking and writing. I am definitely more mature and interested to provided something useful and not just random ramblings. Well … for most part. It IS a journey after all. Correct?!

Progress and development is a must.

Advertise here

Alexandar Tzanov — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:04:10 +0000

I have made advertising on my blog available to anyone interested. To find out your available options go here.

New Topics

Alexandar Tzanov — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:02:53 +0000

I have decided to add a few new topic categories. They being: Videos, Useful Sites and Today I Learned. I decided to do this, because during my usual vocations I come across a variety of websites, topics and entertainment media. Some of this I think are very much useful, interesting or entertaining, and this is a way to remember them, as well as promote them.

In the Video category I will be posting videos that are funny, interesting, gameplay or show something useful, like do-it-yourself instructions. Useful Sites will be used for website which offer technical information or some web service. And Today I Learned will be used for random things, not necessarily related to the Internet.

Merry Christmas

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 06:00:42 +0000

Merry Christmas everyone

It’s a BOY!! Woohhhoo

Alexandar Tzanov — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:14:55 +0000

It’s a BOY!! Woohhhoo

Server change

Alexandar Tzanov — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:41:57 +0000

Due to increasing costs of operation the host, from which I was renting my server, closed its doors yesterday. So because of that I had one week, going back, to find a new host and move my data. Because of the number of sites I am hosting and the comfort of being in control of a server and its resources, and because I like to keep my data close, I decided to move everything to a VPS – a virtual private server, which I rented from the same data center in the CBOT building, where my old host had collocated its servers. It was a fast and affordable solution for the situation.

Because the VPS servers, FDC Servers offers, are simply server shells, I had to spend last 5 days looking through RPM repositories, installing and configuring software. It was a learning experience. I pretty much staid up to 2:30 AM every morning, hurrying to get the darn server up to stat, but I did not mind it. I enjoy working with Linux it provided me with some practice.

I finished my configurations early yesterday morning and began to restore the hosted sites. Now I have to finish uploading the last few files of Titan Fusion and everything will be as before. The only thing that would be left to do is to restore the permissions, where needed, so scripts and web applications can work correctly.

Current project

Alexandar Tzanov — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 17:55:42 +0000

This Planet â€“ Currently in development, this site is dedicated to providing the public with information on agencies and organizations, whose purpose is to inform, preserve and restore planet Earth and its natural life and resources. Visit http://thisplanet.info for more information.

Jutiagroup â€“ work on my brotherâ€™s site continues. Work should have been completed a while back, but for the moment it is down to only performing maintenance tasks. The site is dedicated to social events, politics, the stock market and money management. Authors are in need. So if you have a topic you would like to write articles on, even if it is not one of the main ones from above, visit the contact page and express your interest.

Bad SPAM, Bad – this one was spur of the moment. I started it yesterday after I came home and had to deal with the daily doze of SPAM. I wrote a “bit” more about it here – http://badspambad.com.

Reversing the flow on SPAM

Alexandar Tzanov — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 01:27:14 +0000

I am tired of continuously battling SPAM on my websites. I have decided to conduct my own way of combating SPAM. I have decided to reverse the SPAM flow. To do so, I created Bad SPAM, Bad. There I will post any email address that is used in SPAM on my websites.

I wonder how the owners will feel when the SPAM flow is reversed?!

Blog, we have. A new one it is!

Alexandar Tzanov — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 23:33:54 +0000

I was able to convince my sweetie to try blogging. She seems pretty excited to have one, so am I. From the looks of it, it appears that she is planing to give some insides to me. It should be very interesting. He-He.

Here is the web address to her section on Titan Fusion: mandy.titanfusion.net

Happy 2006

Alexandar Tzanov — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 06:00:58 +0000

Happy New Year from Amanda, me and Titan Fusion.

We wish you all happiness, good luck, plenty of health and lots of success in the new 2006. Enjoy yourselves, your lives and appreciate what you have.

Fun, fun, fun and lots of love and prosperity.

Blogger Web Comments for FireFox

Alexandar Tzanov — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 02:58:35 +0000

I have started using Google’s Blogger Web Comments for FireFox extension.

So far I like it, but one problem with this is that it only links and posts to Google’s own web logging service Blogger. This means that there will be posts on my Blogger weblog, which will not unnecessarily make it to this blog. What does that mean? It means that to keep up with most of what I write, you folks will have to visit the Blogger blog (LoL) of mine every once in a while and read my writings there.

Titan Fusion e-Mail

Alexandar Tzanov — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 05:50:23 +0000

As you have been able to see and read the site was down due to the host company having some problems. I host my e-mail service through a different company, and even though you were not able to access your email accounts for more than a week, none of your incoming emails were lost. Well, 99 % of them. Any inbound emails send on Thursday, 09-08, were not received due to DNS forwarding issues. As I mentioned previously, I moved the site to new servers, so anything in the last 24 horse was most likely routed improperly and probably bounced back to the sender.

I apologize for the inconvenience. I hope I will not have to go through this whole process again in the future. But … yes, there is always a “but”, but this is a good “but”. But if you are not able to access the site for any reason, go to – titanfusion.mail.everyone.net. You can log into your email through there.

Hive Minds Hosting is borne.

Alexandar Tzanov — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 05:44:13 +0000

The last hosting incident lead me to something I did not think I would really ever do. What that might be you are asking? Something that guarantees me that my web sites will remain always up and free of charge. I started my own hosting company – HiveMindsHosting.com. At the moment I am still in the process of setting up hosting plans, then I have to decide on prices, followed by developing a nice and interactive web site. I still have to do few other things, like signing up for financial accounts and setting up an order processing system. I have been working on this on and off for the last few days. It is an involved project. Not as easy as one might think, but yet pleasing and rewarding in the end

Do not worry! I am not hosting it from my home computer. It is in conjunction with a data center. So, features and up time are guaranteed, support is guaranteed and low prices are guaranteed. Yes, I will be offering affordable, feature rich plans for everyone. From those with personal sites, who do not want to spend a whole lot for a host, to those in need of affordable and flexible host for their business/large web site.

If you are looking for a host, visit HiveMindsHosting.com in a week or two, and look through the plans. At the moment I am going to offer only Linux based hosting. I might offer Windows based hosting in the future. It depends on the demand for it, but it will cost more.

Success is all around

On-Line again.

Alexandar Tzanov — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 05:55:07 +0000

I am Back. Yahhhh, hahahhaha. As you have been able to see and those of you who have Titan Fusion e-mail have been able to experience, the site was down for little bit over a week. That was due to my host, Ankahost.com, going kaput. But, as I am writing this, I decided to see if their web site has gone back up. It has, and this is the message I found there:

www.ankahost.com
firstly, sorry for this inconvenience.I was sold to new owner of ankahost.com.New owner name is Joshua Brady.But this new owner is deceitful / fraud.This new owner was deleted all domains info from server.Sorry for this inconvenience.We aggrieved about this new owner too.
Please send us your all domains and account info to this below email address, we will re-create your account to new server;
info@ankahost.com

Well, too bad for them. I guess!!! I do not know what they are doing or were trying to do. Maybe make some money. I will send them an e-mail with the information for ClanMP.us and have them host it again. I will have the site with them until the end of the hosting period I had paid for. Unless they give me few months in addition for free. For now though, judging by their writing skills, I am going to wait, to make sure that this is legit. I do not want it to be a hack or some domain name take over. If their site goes back to its old looks or something similar, I will send them the information and have them recreate the account.

Busy with Life.

Alexandar Tzanov — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 05:38:17 +0000

Hi everyone.

There has not been any activity on my part on the web site and this blog for over three weeks now. It is not that I am done with this, I am far from it. The thing is that I have been busy with work and lots and lots of traveling. To add to the above, I am moving into a new apartment, four times the size of my current one. Woo Hoo!!! The sweet deal of that is that my rent will only grow with half of what I am paying for my current apartment. The sweeter deal is that my sweetie is moving in with me.

I guess, what I am trying to say is – there will be more of me tinkering with the designs and plenty of new posts to the blog ones things settle in a week or two!?! This entry is just to tell you all that due to a hectic adult life, I have not had any time to do much of anything on the computer. There will be more, though. There will be bunch of entries posted with a back date, so make sure you read back.

And, it is late now, but I was not home nor near a computer. To be exact, I was helping to clean the new place, because the woman living there before was DAMN dirty.

Happy Independence Day to all.

New design coming up.

Alexandar Tzanov — Fri, 13 May 2005 16:58:04 +0000

I have finally started working on a new theme design for my web site, which I will apply through WordPress. I have decided to call the theme Ruby Red. I like the red color, and my web site used to be in red before I upgraded WP to 1.5. The Ruby Red theme will only apply to pages other than my blog. That way the blog will appear to be completely separate section of the web site.

Right now I am just using a basic layout. There are no bells and whistles, nothing fancy. It is all set up just enough so it will provide the site content and still be able to display it as if it was separate from the blog. The reason why am doing that is through WP I will be able to manage the content a lot quicker and easier. Other wise I will have to create a separate SQL database, populate it and do all kinds of other things. Right now my time is occupied by other elements, thus I am taking a shortcut and integrating my web site with WP. As a result WP becomes my CMS (content management system).

Let’s just see what comes out of my work. It is all an experiment. If it workers out – good, I will continue to use it and customize it. If it does not, I will just have to make everything separate as I had it before. There is no reason why it should not work. I have seen it done on many other web sites, which utilize WordPress as CMS.

Once I am done with the theme design, I will start work on a home page. I already have the layout sketched in my mind. After that, I will just have to play with the .htaccess configuration to have the home page display and not the blog page. Once that is done, I am in business. Woooo Hoooo

The Tfnet Gallery is here.

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 03 May 2005 16:19:13 +0000

About a week ago or so I finished setting up the Gallery application on the web server. It is configured and ready to be browsed. I did not link it with the rest of the web site when it was ready and I had uploaded the first batch of images, because I wanted to make sure it functioned alright.

At the moment, I have uploaded only couple of web cam pictures series I did in the fall of last year. I have vast amounts of pictures, so as I scan them I will create more albums in the gallery. Among my family pictures I will have galleries for the avatars and signatures I have collected over the years, and continue to do so. I will also have few galleries of comic and funny images and some other things as well.

You can visit the gallery through the following link titanfusion.net/gallery.

Gallery on TFnet – coming soon.

Alexandar Tzanov — Sat, 09 Apr 2005 04:40:14 +0000

Tfnet’s gallery is around the corner! For a long time now I have been saying that “soon” I will have a gallery on the site with all kinds of pictures. Well, I finally got around installing a gallery on the web site last night. I have used Gallery in the past and I am still using it on the Clan MP web site, but i have also come across many web sites which use Coppermine Gallery. So, instead of going the old fashioned way, I decided to give Coppermine a test. I did that only because it uses an SQL database as part of the gallery’s structure. This is an upcoming feature with version 2 of the Galley. At the moment Galley 2 is in its beta status and from reading on its web site i understand that the beta does not even have all the features, which already existing in Gallery 1, active/working. The above is another reason why I decided to test Coppermine. I wanted to see what it can provide me with, while I am waiting for the final or close to final release of Gallery.

After installing Coppermine last night and looking through its features and playign with its UI, I can say, I will continue using Gallery as a bridge between Tfnet’s visitors and my collection of images and photos. I still do not know how Gallery 2 would organize the albums, but for sure I did not like how Coppermine did it. I also did not like the user interface nor how multiple images were uploaded. Although I did like how I could add additional information to a newly added or already uploaded file. Not that i cannot do that with Gallery, but this one was a bit more rich on options.

One of the main differences I saw between Gallery and Coppermine is Gallery only works with images while a Coppermien album can contain any type of file in it. This makes Coppermien more of a files organizing and delivery system than a simple gallery collection of albums and pictures. I s’pose that would be a wonderful and extremely useful interface for a web site, which delivers a fair amount of various types of files to its visitors. In my case, though, I simply do not have use for it. Any files other than images, I have and want to share with you, TFnet visitors, I would organize in a fashion of my liking.

For now I am going to install the Gallery 2 beta version and keep it up to date with any new releases. I will update TFnet and the site map page with a link to the gallery ones I have it installed, configured and with some albums created. Keep checking back for the official news announcement of the opening of the TFnet Gallery! In it you will find not only photos of my family and I, but also my collections of avatars, sigs, funny pictures and drawings and many others.

Yet another change.

Alexandar Tzanov — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 23:23:39 +0000

Yes, you are seeing it right! There is, yet, another change to the look of Titan Fusion. Yesterday I got rid of all the pages I designed myself and made the WordPress app part of the main view and function of the website.

The new WordPress 1.5 version allows for users to create posts, which are displayed as pages. I decided to make use of that feature and moved the contents of all the pages I had designed and turned them into pages on WordPress. My last design of the site was actually pretty descent, and I think that I might have a new design of mine in the future. For now I have decided to try out WordPress as a form of content delivery system and thinker with its looks and skins. I will probably end up creating a skin of my own likings for WP before I even start working on a new design for my site, independent from WordPress.

I am going to try fixing up the pages to the point where the feel of the WordPress app is of actual website with independent pages. Right now some of the contents look funky, because WordPress is changing all my code to be XTHML compliant. Looks like I will have to start learning XML to make the pages come out looking like I want them to.

Slowly I will have everything in order. I have few ideas of what I want to do. For now, I at leased, do not have to think about how I code things so they come out looking and working right in both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

I think I might redesign the clan MP website as my next project.

Website source code updated!

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 07:53:45 +0000

After half a dozen completion attempts and numerous changes to the code I have completed the reconstruction of the website’s pervious multiple page structure to a single page with “if else” statements. This structure is not exactly what I wanted it to be. For one I am not using the SQL database like I had planed before I started. Two I am using a lot more include now, which is opposite of what I wanted to do, if you remember from my post yesterday.

When I first started working on the website today, I began with a SQL database, but because of the way SQL and in particular PHP work, I was not able to use a database. For now! SQL is designed to store plain text. It should not contain any code. The few includes I was using would not execute. After spending couple of hoarse trying to figure out why none of the includes would run, I got in touch with a friend of mine. Jason, who runs his own hosting business. His company is called Hax the Planet. He explained to me that because SQL is designed to only store data in plain text and because the PHP parser runs only once when generating a page, the page contains whatever was in the data base. In this form the page contains the unexecuted include statements, which is why I was always ending up with missing content.

In direct result of the above I had to forget about using SQL database for now. I only need one for vast amount of text content, but at the moment I think I am doing just fine with integrate WordPress into other sections of the website, not just my blog. This is also how I end up opposite of what I had planed and using more includes than before. From all the previous web pages I was using, I got rid of the templates and only kept the actual content of them. So, now I have one index page with one template’s design to maintain, and a simple “if else” statement to update when necessary. It is much easier to make new pages, and keep site content up to snuff.

For now I am happy with the code of the site. The next step of the site update will be a facelift. I am going to work on some new graphics and experiment with some new colors. Once that is done, I might start recoding the site again. LoL, I know next time would be much easier.

New blog added to Titan Fusion.

Alexandar Tzanov — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 18:52:25 +0000

Last night I added a new blog space on the site for my friend Paula. I have talked to here about blogging before and I have explained to here what it is all about. She showed interested before, so I offered to host one for her few weeks ago, but did not get too far with it. We were talking on the phone last night and one of the subjects of our conversation was my blog and how she looks through it to keep updated on what is up with me. I told her that if she wants one I would gladly host it and maintain it for here. She answered in the affirmative, so now she has a blog on Titan Fusion.

You can find here blog at the following address: http://paula.titanfusion.net/ She already has couple of entries and in one of them she expresses the same conclusion Brad has expressed to me verbally:

…but I think this is a good way for people to “let things out.”

It seems like the three of us, and I am sure millions of other people, find writing/blogging a great way to let off some steam. Hoa, anther “durrhh” moment for me, because, heck, that is how it has been for very long time in this world.

Upcoming site update.

Alexandar Tzanov — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 18:49:29 +0000

I am going to start recoding the site, soon. I want it to be more PHP and SQL structured (like I have not said that before). There were some problems with page includes toward the end of last week. You might have seen the error written pages if you had visited the site at that time. I know that these problems will be avoided when the pages are generated from the database. That is not to say that I won’t be using includes in the future, I am still going to. I love using includes! I will just have to on fewer occasions and only where necessary.

After I am done with the recoding or maybe while I am doing it, I will also make a page for all the blogs hosted on Titan Fusion. So far there are only three, but lets hope this number will grow soon.

WordPress upgraded from 1.2 to 1.5 beta.

Alexandar Tzanov — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 04:58:48 +0000

This morning I decided on upgrading my blog’s application WordPress from 1.2 to 1.5. I have hesitated to do that for long time. Originally I had decided to wait for the final release of WordPress 1.5 before I upgrade mine, but I started with the beta when I decided to host a Brad’s blog. Since then I have been looking over the application and I do like the new feel and flexibility I have with it. It is more organized and automated. Managing files and styles is now incredibly easy. Instead of having a big file, which contains everything, like I had with the current release I was using, now components of the pages are separate, which makes customization easier.

The upgrade went without a hitch, so far. I did it tonight and it has been few hours since I upgraded. I have been customizing and familiarizing myself with some of the files, and so far I have not seen any errors. I only added and changed few things to tailor the looks of the current design. I am not planning on doing much more than that at the moment simply because I am only using a nightly build. Ergo, the files I changed will be overwritten next time I upload a newer nightly build. For now I will wait for the public release of WordPress 1.5 before I start making hardcore changed to the looks and adding plugging.

Even though namy changes are not possible at the moment due to necessary future updates of the files, I still recommend to anyone using the current 1.2.X release of WordPress to upgrade to 1.5 beta. There is plenty to like about it. Do it, you know you want to!!!

Audio Blogs!!!

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 08:29:12 +0000

I thought of something new today to try and of course to experiment with. It is an Audio Blog! What is an audio blog? Exactly what it sounds like, a blog entry but instead of being a text entry it is a recording. This way for anyone, who is too lazy to read my entries, can listen to them and of course enjoy my sweet voice with a sexy accent.:cool:

I will try to have most of my future text entries also converted to audio, but this is not guaranteed. Whenever I make any audio entries, which are not just a conversion of a text entry, I will include a summary or production notes of the audio entry and any highlights or links mentioned in it. This will allow you to decide if you want to listen to me or YES.:razz:

All audio entries, individual or text accompanying can be found under the Audio Blogs category. The audio files will be encoded in MP3 format. You can download the files to your computer or simply stream them from the server.

I am also thinking of buying a hand held recorder. Having one will allow me to record my thought and reactions to things I see or do or people I interact with during the day. I am positive this would be something entertaining and also give you an inside in my daily ventures.:grin:

Here is the first audio entry:

Of course it is just an audio transcript of this entry.

SQL server problem.

Alexandar Tzanov — Sat, 01 Jan 2005 22:22:37 +0000

There was a problem with the SQL server today. I am not sure what the problem was! Applications like WordPress, which I use for this blog and the ones I host as well as on my front page and few others on my site, and the Forums on the clanmp.us website were not working. As a result all of the pages were producing errors. The weird thing was that basic query and simple pages like the battles and about pages did work. On top of that, the weirder thing was that the ssi tool which feeds the news posts from the forums to the home page on clanmp.us was working while the rest of the forums did not.

Now everything seems to be work fine and it is all back to normal. There is no loss of data, which is even better news. This is the first time I have experienced a problem like this with the current host. Let us hope this was the first and last time this happened.