This is my introductory post on my summer program to both explore and provide evidence for the LCS. I will be posting my experiences in semi -journal form here. But I may also have supplemental postings explaining what I am doing and also why I am doing this.. This will depends on time constraints. As the busiest part of job season is also during the summer. This will also depends on "interests levels" withing this forum community about this topic and its content.

I encourage other to participate here and ask any questions they would like to.

I'd like to introduce people who don't play it (most of this forum) to Minecraft. It is a sandbox game which is very modular and is pretty fun to play. There are two gamemodes, Survival, where you survive for an indefinite period and Creative, where you have unlimited resources and you can build whatever you want
The game is also multiplayer. In Survival Multiplayer, you and your friends (game server supports up to 999 people) survive together. In Creative Multiplayer, you and your friends can build whatever you like. There is one more gamemode, hardcore, which is like survival, with some difficulty tweaks and your premium status is revoked world is deleted upon death.

It is 84 F in Indianapolis, IN with storms on the way. How about you?

Windows Explorer gives you options for how you want your folder list to look. For example, you can use small icons, or you can have your folders in a list. Which do you prefer? I prefer the list, because small icons make it look like my user folder is unnecessarily large.

Personally, I've had many failed attempts to blog, and haven't given it another chance in the past few years. I loved doing it way back in the day though. Perhaps I'll try it again sometime.

Have you ever owned a blog?

Desker Suite is a free, GPL-licensed "social website" suite, aimed at being a free alternative to commercial products such as vBulletin and the Invision Power series of scripts. It is developed by DeskerSoft, an Indianapolis-based software development company. It includes a forum and blog feature as of 1.0-RC1.

1.0-RC1 (Release Date: TBA):

• Incomplete beta release
  
• Multimedia sharing module not complete
  
• CSS relies mostly on normalize.css
  

I recently decided I'd be interested in trying to do some 3D modeling, but I don't really have any software that is good for that sort of thing. I'm on a tight budget, so all of the stuff from AutoCAD won't really be suited for me, but autoCAD is probably far more than I need anyhow. Anyone have any suggestions on a decent free program that is beginner friendly?

Personally, I love computers, and do quite a bit of projects at the computer. A good workstation can definitely make a big difference. Unfortunately I don't have a whole lot of money on hand, but given I had the resources, my dream workstation would be...

Desktop with
16GB DDR3 RAM
Intel i7 CPU
3TB Hard drive for data, with 300GB SSD for storage
Dual-boot with Windows 7 ultimate and some linux distribution
Two monitors at 1920x1080 pixels

Laptop with
8GB of RAM and another i7.

And of course the really awesome extras of a decorated desk area with neon lighting, printers, lighted keyboards, and what not.

Of course a setup like that would be ridiculously expensive. My actual workstation looks nothing like that. So, what would your dream workstation look like?

000webhost is one of the few free webhosts that has been around for an extended period of time. They offer generous bandwidth and disk space limits on the surface, but like all free webhosts they will suspend your account very quickly if you use any real resources for your website. They don't put ads on your website, so they really can't make much money off of what they do. In addition, many accounts are created for malware purposes, so 000webhost will often suspend accounts just because they suspect something going on when there is no problem whatsoever.

So, I figured since some of us here have some experiences with free webhosts I'd start a discussion on it. What's your experience with them?

Ajax chat is a popular ajax IRC script that has many basic features using an ajax protocol, making it very simple for users without the need for flash or an IRC client. It's generally more advanced than many ajax IRC bridges, so for users who don't know a whole lot about IRC, it has many advantages.

On the other hand, Ajax chat clients can be very server intensive on older servers when hundreds of people are online at a time, and don't have many of the advantages that committed IRC users have come to love in IRC. Users usually don't leave their ajax chat open like they would leave an IRC client open, and for multiple channels at once it is inconvenient.

What's your preference?