opensource « StupidZombie

Archive for the ‘opensource’ Category

Beta of stupidzombie website is available now!

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

OK undead minions, is time to kick the tires of the website. The URL (for now, before we move it to the stupidzombie.com domain) is here.

Again, I will quote Romney on what kind of work he did for the website:

Hi Everyone,

How are you doing? I’d like you to meet Blockhead.

If you have a moment please check out the site that I am building for StupidZombie.com

This was a recent final project for my web design class that I had the great opportunity to work with a real client on. Its still little rough to go “live” yet. I need to get with the owner of StupidZombie about integrating my design with his blog page and a few of the other database links I don’t have access to.

I did do all the branding for StupidZombie myself, including their new mascot, “Blockhead,” based on what the client wanted and competitive analysis of the market. This branding was very much liked and approved by the owner of StupidZombie. You can see his current page here.

I’d appreciate any and all feedback. Especially any compatibility issues you may have with your browser of choice. Also if you can check it out before Thursday I’d appreciate it as part of my last lab is to do a tracking analysis on the traffic to the site.

Thank you from me and Blockhead.

Romney

Great work from Romney. Please visit it and make sure you leave your comments. Tell us what you like, what you don’t and how it can be improved.

Enjoy!

Tags: beta, stupidzombie, website
Posted in opensource, zombie | 1 Comment »

StupidZombie has a logo and you can download a beta too!

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

Yes, more good news. First one is that StupidZombie has a logo; This all product of the hard work of DrRommstein (at ITT, Idaho) and after some time he came with a logo and theme that really reflects the spirit of this project. But I would rather quote him on the explanation of the logo and how he came with the idea.

“Blockhead” as I lovingly call the mascot is a zombie done in classic green, and sucken eyes. The eyes are a little off to relay the message he might not be all that bright. Blockhead used to be a bellhop before he was bitten by zombie some time ago. The bellhop uniform speaks of servitude, friendliness and at your “beck-n-call.” To quote wikipedia:

“The job’s name is derived from the fact that the hotel’s front desk would ring a bell to summon an available employee, who would “hop” (jump) to attention at the desk in order to receive instructions.”

Sounds like a good association for what the StupidZombie program does to me.

I chose royal purple for the uniform – i because when paired with green it just kind of speaks of fun. Purple is also a unique color that not alot of places in society use especially for bellhops. It provides a nice contrast to the other colors and is very complimentary.

The light blue is very upbeat and again speaks of “clear blue skys” and creativity – good energy.

The circles are something I envisioned from the start – maybe its because the main vowel sounds in Stupid and Zombie are o’s. Maybe its a full moon. I know that circles represent often wholeness, completeness, etc. Anyway I think they work real well together.

My last thoughts on a logo: Somewhere inside myself I always think a logo should be cool enough that I would want to wear on a t-shirt, a hat, have a poster of it, just be really cool looking. I think, at least for me, that I really dig this logo. and would be happy to wear any swag with this logo on it.

I think the previous paragraph explains it all :). But now it is time for you to meet “Blockhead” the official mascot of StupidZombie!:

Blockhead, StupidZombie official mascot

Great stuff. Now about the code, I have put together a Java Webstart shortcut for those of you who want to kick the tires and play with the application. No known bugs at this point, but if you find one then please tell me about it and I’ll fix it, and core functionality works. For the release 1.0 I plan to finish the look and feel of the Java GUI and this website and then will focus on adding more functionality.

Run it, enjoy it and eat some brains (OK, only if you’re a zombie)!

Veneblogs: zombie, blockhead, logo, java

Blogalaxia: zombie, blockhead, logo, java

To2Blogs: zombie, blockhead, logo, java

Technorati: zombie, blockhead, logo, java

Del.icio.us: zombie, blockhead, logo, java

Tags: blockhead, friendly, fun, gui, java webstart, logo, recognizable, simple, zombie
Posted in coding, java, opensource, ping, updates, zombie | 2 Comments »

More functionality: Export ping results and filtering

Monday, April 27th, 2009

Yep, now you can export the ping results as a CVS file for later analisys or just for fun. Also you can filter the contents of the result table using regular expressions as you type 🙂

Now is time for the next step which is to add some sexyness to the GUI using Synth.

Tags: csv, export, filter, java, jtable, regexp, synth
Posted in coding, java, opensource, ping, zombie | 1 Comment »

Refactored GUI: Not Using JList anymore, welcome JTable. Also plans for the future

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

So first take a look on the old version of PingBlog (or run it from here using Java webstart):

StupidZombie
Initially the HTML Tag generation and the Ping GUI were separate.

Now the new version offers more details in a more organized way:

StupidZombie ping scree
Big difference using a JTable. Also ping updates are handled better using a Observable – Observer pattern.

The idea is to be able to navigate all the ping types more easily (yes, more directories are comming).

Version 1.0 details:
And when version 1.0 will be ready? Well, I plan to release a beta version with all the functionality enabled before having the website ready. But the following changes are coming pretty soon:

Sorting and filtering on the table. Easy one but need to sit down and code it
Use Synth for the look and feel of the application
Merge the new logo and look and feel with the GUI and the website. No ETA on this one, except than is a work in progress

Once all this is ready I will offer a Jar for download and a webstart link. Stay tunned, more changes comming this way :)!

And for version 1.1?

Version 1.1 will be mostly bug fixes but also will add two more important features:

More directories. Yes, there are lots of directories out there and StupidZombie will support them all!
Soporte para Español (Spanish support). Should be easy to plug in. Also other languages will be added

So let’s the Zombie domination begin!

Tags: coding, gui, java, jtable, opensource, stupidzombie
Posted in coding, java, opensource, ping | 1 Comment »

Refactoring, refactoring…

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

Yep. Old code was … old, and kind of ugly. Okay, just plain ugly. So refactoring was in order, like on the Ping Factory class which looks much cleaner now:

import java.lang.management.ManagementFactory;
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.TreeSet;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
import java.util.prefs.Preferences;
import java.util.ResourceBundle;

import javax.management.MBeanServer;
import javax.management.ObjectName;

/**
 * Factory class to return the proper Ping instance
 * @author undead@stupidzombie.com
 */
public final class PingFactory {
	
	/**
	 * Supported ping types
	 */
	public static enum PingTypes {
		
		UNKNOWN("", ""), 
		TO2BLOGS("To2Blogs", "PINGBLOG_TO2BLOGS_UNIQUEID"), 
		BLOGALAXIA("Blogalaxia", "PINGBLOG_BLOGALAXIA_UNIQUEID"), 
		VENEBLOGS("Venblogs", ""), 
		WEBLOGS("Weblogs", ""), 
		TECHNORATI("Technorati", ""), 
		BITACORASCOM("Bitacoras.com", ""), 
		PINGOMATIC("PingOMatic", "");
		
		public String desc;
		public String id;
		private PingTypes(final String aDesc, final String aId) {
			desc = aDesc;
			id = aId;
		}
	}
	
	private static PingFactory factory;
       // Rest of the code ommited :)

it is amazing how simple Enumerations simplified the code on this class. Now working on the ping controller, that section is long overdue 🙂

Tags: enumerations, java, refactoring, zombie
Posted in java, opensource, zombie | 1 Comment »

StupidZombie needs a facelift!

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

StupidZombie is a tool that can be used to ping directories like Technorati, Pingomatic, Blogalaxia and To2Blogs for blog updates. It also has the ability to write Tags (with a preview mode) to help users of systems like Blogger. Finally StupidZombie can be called from Cron u other schedule to automate pinging at desired intervals.

We are looking for a talented designer to help us to create the main website and to put together a theme that can be used with Swing Synth.

The project status is “Alpha” and you can take a peek on how it looks on the following locations:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3385/3245886024_94ffaaa358_o.png
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3384/3261535833_e5724cea06_o.png
http://stupidzombie.com/blog/

Skills Needed: Web Design

Contact: Undead at undead@stupidzombie.com

Posted in coding, opensource, ping | 1 Comment »

More work being done

Monday, February 16th, 2009

This week I added fixes to the preferences routines (save, export and import) and also got some time to cleanup the blog; This week will probably play with some graphics elements (at my own peril as I’m not a graphic designer but I have gotten no help so far to make it better).

So far this is the roadmap for this month:

Agree on a common theme for both the website and the GUI
Refactor the Ping controller and Gui that shows ping
Use Synth to enable common look and feel.

So yep, looks like more cool stuff is coming. So far the other pieces work the way I like it and a beta release is not far away (you can download the code from Subversion here).

Veneblogs: java, stupidzombie, preferences

Blogalaxia: java, stupidzombie, preferences

To2blogs: java, stupidzombie, preferences

Technorati: java, stupidzombie, preferences

Del.icio.us: java, stupidzombie, preferences

Posted in java, opensource | 1 Comment »

This is the blog of StupidZombie

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

StupidZombie now has a blog!

StupidZombie is an OpenSource tool that I use to ping my favorite blog directories. It also can create a set of tags that you can use of blogs that support them (like Technorati, Veneblogs and others).

I will try to post updates here about the progress of the project, news and anything related.
Veneblogs: stupidzombie, tags, ping, blog
Blogalaxia: stupidzombie, tags, ping, blog
To2blogs: stupidzombie, tags, ping, blog
Technorati: stupidzombie, tags, ping, blog
Del.icio.us: stupidzombie, tags, ping, blog

Tags: blog, ping, stupidzombie, tags
Posted in coding, java, opensource, ping, tags, updates | 1 Comment »

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