Another Chapter

Because my time is limited. I am in the process of training lightdarkness how to convert and enter simfiles into the FFR database. You may see some new songs that go up today, some may be synced, some not, some may be there and then dissapear later. In order to show him how it works, we have to do it live. I would expect later tonight or tomorrow that he should have the process down and things working fine.

Yes, this means new songs for the orginal FFR.

Cheers,

Synthlight

***SYNTHLIGHT EDIT***
No, I am not sick. I am just very busy with business etc and 2 people working on FFR stuff happen to be faster than 1. LD now has the power to handle new songs. There will be more songs for R2 but we are in the middle of making some major changes to that engine.

***LD EDIT***
2/26/05 – Added Bubble Bobble Hillbilly Rodeo to Arcade
2/27/05 – Added Turbulence to Dance
2/27/05 – Added X-Dreamer Final Cut to Dance
2/27/05 – Added ASB to Purchased. Goto the FFR Shop to buy the song for 500 credits.
3/2/05 – Added a song, can’t remember what it’s called, or where I put it!
3/3/05 – Added Balloon Fever to Arcade. Warning, it’s very hard!

500,000 Very Crazy People

Wow. That is about the only word I have to express my feelings about a
certain something that arrived in the mail for me last week. What is it it you
wonder? Well maybe it would be better to show a photo of it.

Yup, they sent me a plaque for my years of service on this little project we
call FFR. It has every name of every staff member on FFR (along with their real
names which I blurred out). It was completely unexpected. Actually, when I was
opening the box I was thinking to myself that this must be a joke because it was
wrapped in layer upon layer of packaging and bubble wrap. I felt like I was
trying to get to the center of a tootsieroll pop. As I neared the actual
contents of the package all I could think of was that someone had sent me a
plate by mistake. It took me about 15 seconds to realize that it was actually something for ME. I could not believe it! In all my years of working with websites and BBS
systems(we are talkin late 80′s), I have never..ever.. received anything like
this. Again, the only word I can think of is "wow..". After years of working on
this project, it is nice to know that we have maintained such a tight knit and
caring community here on FFR that continues to grow every day with no signs of
slowing down. It still amazes me when I watch the member count go up by the
hundreds and sometimes over a 1000 per day. I am grateful for every member.

Speaking of Every member, it just so happens that by the time I post this
story, we should have exactly 500,000 members. It’s just crazy.. just crazy..

2
Thanksgiving’s ago I made a small list of what I am thankful for. I think I will
close this story with something similiar and strictly off the top of my head.

I am thankful for people caring enough to visit FFR on a regular basis
I am thankful for the plaque I received in the mail
I am thankful for the doors that FFR has opened
I am thankful for the mods in the forum and chat that put up with all kinds of
bullsh*t every day of their life
I am thankful for the musical artists that continue to support our project
I am thankful for the staff that watches my back 24/7
I am thankful for Konami and the wonderful genre of games they created
I am thankful for my family letting me spend time on FFR even when I don’t have
much time for them
I am thankful for linux
I am thankful for anyone who puts up with me
I am thankful for Halo2 multiplayer and not campaign
I am thankful for the people who AIM me and don’t get upset when I don’t answer
right away
I am thankful for thanksgiving
I am thankful for Jason Key for providing custom chat software and believing in
FFR
I am thankful for my awesome keyboard
I am thankful for the late nights that soccr has put into R2 so far
I am thankful for Vonage
I am thankful to those of you who used to listen to me DJ on the radio last
summer
I am thankful for having a 3year old who can play Halo2
I am thankful to my clients
I am thankful that I have this odd skillset to get me through life
I am thankful my wife doesn’t get upset when I don’t go to sleep until 6am
I am thankful we have 500,000 members
I am thankful for each of those members
I am thankful we have almost 700 people browsing during peak times
I am thankful this list is almost over
I am thankful I only took 3 minutes to write all of this list
I am thankful you read it
I am thankful I am not feeling as old as I really am
I am thankful I am switching to cingular instead of sprint
I am thankful about partnerships I cannot tell everyone about yet (ooh!)
I am thankful that BPRC is getting married in 1 day
I am thankful that this is the last line I will say thankful on

Thanks again everyone for sticking around during these last couple of years. It
has been strange watching some of you grow up during this timespan. I
have watched some of you go through highschool, some of you graduate college and
even watched as a few of you enter into the military for your training to serve
our country (Spec!). Thanks again for hanging around and seeing FFR for the
community that it is. FFR is here for everyone to enjoy. This is why even after almost 3 years, you have not seen a single pop-up ad. FFR is as free as always and it is important to me that it stays that way, even if I am the one that pays for it. NOW BACK TO UPDATING FFR!! RIGHT NOW!! BREAK OVER!

Cheers,

Synthlight

Hello Moto

Well, my wife gave birth to our second son last weekend. I thought it was
finally time to write up a little news story with the details. I will spare
everyone the delivery pictures and go straight to a photo of my oldest son
holding his new baby brother. It is safe to say that last week has been sort of
crazy. We will be focusing again on R2 improvements next week.

Name: Brendon Michael Webb
Weight: 7 pounds 8 ounces
Length: 21 inches
Birthday: December 4th, 2004 11:01am

OMG

Well.. My wife is in labor 4:38am.. Time to go to the hospital! See you guys in a few days! Can’t talk, gotta run!

Cheers,

Synthlight

Rewind

I will be looking into the issue in the original FFR that prevents people from buying songs. I will do my best to get this resolved by the end of the day.

Cheers,

Synthlight

Nov 30th Radio Show on FFr Radio

November 30th radio show.

http://ffrradio.com:8000/listen.pls

It’s my birthday, and I will be doing a live broadcast of my set starting around 5:30pm pst, 8:30pm est. It will be a mixture of Drum ‘n bass, trance, hard trance, and psy if I get around to it. And yeah, just see what’s up. I don’t know how long it will be, but it should go for a couple hours.

FYI, the radio server is back up, so the autoplaylist will be on too if you want to listen.

*EDIT* Yes, i know about the autokick the server has been doing.. it isn’t something I can control, and it isn’t anything on my end. I’m sorry it is occuring, and hope you will just bear with it.

Optimizing

The forum is NOT down but the forum block on the right is not active. I am testing some results of queries with it off. You can still get to the forum from the top navigation and the left navigation.

Cheers,

Synthlight

*EDIT* Does everyone see a significant increase in the speed of the site right now?

Extreme Fix

Ok, maybe it isn’t as good as it sounds. I fixed the song “Extreme” the original was compressed in… mono… and flash didn’t like that. So I ran it through and recompressed it as a stereo .mp3. It should be working fine now.

You MUST clear your cache in order for Extreme to work.. unless.. you have never loaded it before.

Cheers,

Synthlight

Updates But No Baby

Well, it was either one or the other right? My wife is not in labor yet we have some updates for you guys.

Group order is correct now on the group select screen.
When switching difficulties on the difficulty select screen, the icon no longer gets stuck.
When exiting options, it returns the song wheel to the song you were previously on.
When exiting the score screen, it returns the song wheel to the song you were previously on.

At this point we are at R2 Public Beta .12 and still moving forward on bugs and features.

Cheers,

Synthlight

*EDIT* A new error just popped up in the difficulty select screen. If you move too quickly, it breaks it. We are fixing it right now and this message will go away when it is fixed.