tuxUG - The Xeno Underground

Latest Discussions

1. Notes:
2. 28 Apr 2021, 1.13 pm
   Quick update: I think we'll keep the light indigo for text links and the orange buttons for buttons. Maybe a little more red into the buttons--nothing really differentiates the two, but trying to go halfsies ;). With CSS1 we can't have any hovering visuals so what you see is what you get. Hmm. But the bigger picture here is I want text links to look different from the buttons to have a little variety for the website. All the text content on the page 'story text' will not use white, but instead silver for increased readability and reduced eye strain. Today I learned that the higher contrasts I was attempting to do caused "vibrations" in the color while reading them! Hmm. It's a real thing that the professionals barely ever talk about online from what I can tell. It basically means your eyes have to do a lot more work focusing on the higher contrast. I'm now back to aiming for a 6 to 9 (ish) contrast ratio so all items flow nicely one to the next.
   
   The website will look funky for a day or two. With F-NR we are going all the way back to the stone age (as far as CSS/webpage styling goes) and including all browsers with full CSS1 capabilities. (Roughly IE5 or so.) It was decided that since we're going for a NoScript approach on F-NR we'll leave the CSS2/3 and Javascript for Jade Valley. With a full CSS1 compliant website people with PCs from the mid 90s should be able to connect with no issue. Remember, we're still trying to spruce it up a bit... just keep CSS1 in mind lol :). ~Zentiger
3. Quick update! 12 Apr 2021, 9.50 am I am reverting back to my preferred "3rd shift" routine/lifestyle starting tomorrow (13 Apr) at 9.00 pm. I have a plan in place now. I just really connected the dots that are on top of the dots. I meditated on the tigerMVI/website code and my intentions with all of it. I had realized I fell into one of my old traps of "always re-inventing the wheel." What F-JV does, F-NR will do and vice versa. But I'm actually going to just start with the VueJS2 code and build PHP counterparts. I kinda broke down and asked the Tao what I should do...continue trying to mend and fix the tigerMVI code because in the end I know it's going to be the code style/format for certain things. The Tao said since it's all just beginning I can do it "once more" a refresh/cleanse/rework and rebuild from the ground up as long as I remember this is to be the last refresh/rebuild. And so that is what is happening. Tomorrow night 13 Apr 9.00 pm. It's going to start the final draft before Live and continue building until the "Live" website is done/finished. There's so much riding on this and that's why the building blocks for this and other projects have to be just lined up like this. Not "perfect" as we are so inclined to say but just "lined up" or aligned.
4. Quick update! 11 Apr 2021, 9.00 am I have come to a better understanding of GLP. I have realized that I was stirring the muddy waters over there and not really letting that collection ferment as it was designed to. What happens at GLP happens every 2 or 3 months or sometimes less. I don't think they realize just how routine it has become for them...it's on full display to everyone else.
   
   I just think it's funny the choices that certain folk make as to who they want to roleplay as and about. It made me happy for a bit to go along with their flow. The sort of glamour of a back-alley drug deal lol. The little net nannies are over there just waiting to morally judge you...but that is a good thing because it gives their life a tiny wee bit of purpose. That current form of back and forth is slowly re-addicting and re-grabbing the people who like to roleplay to escape. Some have started to realize it recently...the loop. Because of that I have even more of a reason to use their website less and less. A knick-knack on the shelf or something to do. That morality checker kick that the mods get over at GLP...it has come to define them. No good can come from that.
   
   I'm all about truth and I think it's time I describe why I'm all about truth. It'll be my first post here at tuxug. But I'll give you a taste. There's a lot of roads to equality that can be either forced, paved, freely given, or other ways...for the end goal of equality. One of the many ways you can slap down the corporate CEOs and multi-national companies is with truth. She's a beautiful babe. (Fun tidbit...her avatar is literally the Statue of Liberty. When the muses gave the men and women the idea to build that statue they really took their time to make sure it all came out right.) One of the many great equalizers.
5. Quick update! 10 Apr 2021, 1.42 pm Still working on the current theme but updating the color sets. Got a better handle on it now since not going for a full tetriadic theme. We'll figure this out.
6. Quick update! 7 Apr 2021, 5.06 pm Decided to have a "road map" of sorts as a panel! This keeps everyone on board with changes, maybe "focus groups" (chat?) and everything on the same page. Will also be better focus for myself personally to get things done. Working on the database and guest vs members approach and running the numbers and test groups to see the best approach to take. Once it's up and running there are plans and feature sets already in place so we're future-proof. The largest chunk of the work is just about done-- a 90% level. tigerMVI(PHP) with its Models system is nearly identical in format to our javascript implentation! tigerMVI(JS) utilizing VueJS2 ~Zentiger
7. Work In Progress So to get the real feel for the theme of this forum...we are recreating the 1920's USA noir [link is to a Dick Tracy wikipedia] with a detective theme of that day in a theme that is popular in comics, movies, and literature. You're looking down at a poker table...maybe you're latest detective case files spread out on the table...maybe it's your latest haul or stash...that's the color scheme we're going with. Sort of a faded felt scheme with trying to portray playing cards as buttons and marquees as links on the table--bringing future tech to the table.
8. The folks over at http://godlikeproductions.com have gone full censorship and absolutely crazy at the main conspriacy website of free speech on the internet. In light of this we are full steam ahead on bringing this website up asap. We fully believe GLP is meant to be therapeutic for people like Trinity and Elaine so we won't ever talk smack on the website but boy if some of their practices are annoying. You now see what capitalism mixed with feminism turns into. Full disclosure I think they are trying to get individuals to login with their member accounts so they can source and track...which puts another coin in the coin jar that they either work for a government/feds or pony up to one. And what moderator bitches about moderating? Heh. So, we're going to improve upon all of GLP's mistakes. Although a final thought on that...they may just have a community where every thread is reported 20 times or more and they feel like their karma/social score isn't enough of a 'punishment' so they ban IPs or go full potatoe and just ban anonymous posting--the one thing that brought the people in--but now they have the numbers to do what they originally intended (the karma/social score punishment system.) You'll see that our system is more used for the flow of topics and just generate feedback among members and guests. There will be some rewards eventually but it won't be in any form of a punishment system.
9. Food for thought: they now realize at GLP what I meant by "just fade away."
10. We are bringing in sourcing and development tools from Git and Github so we can have coders from all over working on their bits so our bits and their bits can mingle properly.
11. We will have banned words that will be abbreviated with initial letter and 3 asterisks, so like this: n***. But they will hopefully be few. Israel and Jews will not have any special protections here but that's not to say we hate them--we don't. K*** will be a banned word too. But the list will be freely available to view as it will be processed from the DB [database] itself. Our delimiter [which may change from time to time with ample community warning/advisement] is this: "if a word's creation or intention [not use] is used to be derogatory in nature that word would be banned here." Like n*** vs. t*** [for transexuals.] While it could be viewed [or even used] in a derogatory sense here, calling someone a "tranny" for cross-dressing would be allowed here (slightly discouraged of course...we are inclusive but we want people to remain themselves here.) Whereas saying n*** for someone being black colored isn't. That isn't special protections for blacks [or any PC-appropriate term here], that is just basic human protection against racism. Transexuals and cross-dressers often have commonalities and traits shared amongst them.
12. Our goal here is to be a proper underground...being a place where people can freely talk and be themselves. We know even having a little bit of censorship can put off some folk. However, imagine if predators then came to our little place, with all those freedoms also available to them, who knows what would happen to our people at that point?!
13. Why the dective case file look for member and guest panels? Imagine an environment where a detective genuinely calls an underground home. A place where they're the law but they also remember where they came from. That is one of the thoughts we hope to instill here. Need a bump? Well, consider the 1930's Noir environment. We're attempting sort of a 'noir meets old nightclub' look with additional softer dark colors added for eye candy and to help alleviate extended eye strain.
14. The list items here pertaining to our rules will be added to a rules panel in the future.
15. Oh and if covid-19 ever gets you down remember that it's got the wealthy, politicians, CEOs, FBI/CIA/etc, all wearing face diapers too. And a lot of wealthy people have died from the covid-19 if they had a pre-existing condition. There's a silver lining. All the the rich and wealthy, the shareholders, managers, IT, investment firms, landlords/property managers, they've all come to realize they aren't as untouchable as once thought...it was a good wakeup call.
16. I know it sucks to wait a couple more weeks but think of all the funny memes and symbolism and such that could be achieved should tuxug go Live on April 1st. ;) It's really not a case of the chicken or the egg but just getting a new hen house to pamper the chickens and provide some chicken feed! Lol.
17. Although Xeno means "stranger" hopefully you can start, if you need to, to open your mind that being a stranger (to x,y,z) doesn't necessarily equate to a bad thing. But the social norms of group/herd attached to everything [thinking/living/workspaces] and more as time goes on...makes one worried or anxious generally when dealing with the word or notion of a stranger.
18. The Stranger ("S.") was kind of the original noir intended for the underground, however, in comics and other places there's a big "S" out there that's actually a sigil for a family name. The "S." would be viewed as like a signature line. However, we do have a bunch of options to go with. Really at the end of the day any variation of stranger/xeno ['xenan'] will really make do and still keep us together as a community underground.
19. ~Zentiger

• Latest Updates
• 03 Apr 2021, 8.59 am
  I'm going to work through the day today and get it all finished and wrapped up. It was too difficult with extended reading on the dark green with all variations of white and greys. I couldn't get the contrast to work properly even with many different shading combinations. 6 hours is my goal. If you develop eye strain within that time the theme/coloring doesn't work for me. It's a hard game but one that I care about. So instead of (just) looking down at a pool table theme/noir I'm going for a sort of 'horse ticket' theme (the betting tickets on horses back in the day, a strip of them.) Smaller text with alternating row colors. It's not going to be the 2nd place trophy either...since it'll be the first one that will really work for us! :) ~Zentiger
• 28 Mar 2021, 5.36 pm
  Decided on using the amazing website Font Squirrel exclusively as the source for our self-hosted fonts...our idesk will include it in the help panel in the future w/all pertinent links and information. It should alleviate the Content-Security-Policy issues that are starting to rise up in browsers. The goal is this: Bree Serif for all title/banner text, Liberation Sans for captions/note text, Solway for all story/body/content text, Fira Code for all code blocks. They are all licensed free fonts and we'll include all the proper linkage so you can download them easy and fast. ;)
• 27 Mar 2021, 4.33 pm
  Updated the forum with results of latest work (mostly theming and initial database tests.) Reconfigured tigerMVI to ensure we can get all the functions (panels) in javascript so we can ensure all features are the same with F-NR and F-JV.
• 15 Mar 2021, 7.14 pm
  Side note added later: The F-NR and F-JV will both house the same feature sets, it's only their display that will be different. Since we're back on board with tigerMVI [our coding/development model] it'll be a snap to get the javascripts up for F-JV once F-NR is completed. F-NR is "Format-News Reel" and F-JV is "Format-Jade Valley."
  
  Just created the page that will house our topics. You can view its' progress by clicking any topic title link and there's one provided here for early access: here. We just setup initial git repo. Finished the idea behind panels--basically just all the functions and services a website can provide--we can have guest panels, member panels, "Wanted" Panels for item sharing/trading, Chat Panel for an in-house realtime chat function etc., etc. Still unable to reach previous two volunteer developers--probably for the best. I wish them well. We now have tigerMVI back up and running and working on it in tandem with the VueJS2 version of the website [Jade Valley Format.] Still working on the underground theme to the website where guests will only be shown as GID: and members only shown as MID:. Clicking their member panel links though will show their name as a sort of detectives' case file. ;) The name shown will be encased in quotes in the top right with a picture of 210px by 210px (there's one used for default if they choose not to use an 'avatar.') Also we will allow 3 images for the members' panel. Guests will be allowed to edit their own Guest Panel, as long as they still have the key the server gave to them. That means they may have to "hotlink" their VPN links (save to bookmarks) if using one. It's an unfortunate side effect of using VPN but we will not use resources and time to try to recover access to a Guest Panel. ~Zentiger
• 05 Mar 2021, 1.15 am
  Decided to go back with the journal/book theme. There were far too many variables and such to get the "dark mode" theme to be compatible for disability standards and still allow it to be presented in the manner we wanted [slated for a future selectable theme however.] Database should be up tomorrow hopefully.
• 02 Mar 2021, 2.12 am
  Please note that no navigation links are working yet. Shoon! ™
  After a few days of research and looking at current popular themes used online across many websites it was decided we are going to go with a tile format utilizing a dark background in a sort of reddit dark mode. It has been proven in many studies that dark mode websites can save a phones' battery life almost 30% if entirely used for web viewing on that battery session. While we will try not to incorporate a "club scene" with neon colors (nor a grey scene) we will strive for a saturation and readability [contrast] rating for all colors of a 6 to 9 (more info here--scroll down a bit.) Our ultimate goal is to keep all elements with a contrast rating of 9 but that would lead to eye strain with elements as the eyes would then have no highlights to focus on so we will work in some 6 ratings as well to help. We want this all to last! This incorporates all the good standards for disability and eyesight with only the very top severity of the disabled and eyesight won't be able to see all the colors and saturation properly. Not to worry though, we have a "High Contrast" theme for News Reel Format, planned for the future. The final naming scheme for the site availability options is News Reel Format and Jade Valley Format. We are constantly ensuring these formats aren't viewed as some sort of commercial package and thus chained to some law or legalese somewhere.
• 23 Feb 2021, 11.55 pm
  Website is currently in testing. It appears our new webserver is working blindly fast--very nice! There will be 2 editions of the new tuxUG/tuxug (The Xeno Underground.)
  1. News Reel: [Default] Will be completely server based with no scripts (Javascript.)
  2. Jade Valley: This will be our full-featured implementation that will make use of VueJS2 and Javascript. It is still under development and will be available at tuxug.com/jv