Techman's World has a new background!

After a few days of work, and more thinking, I have decided that the current background you see right now on the site will be the successor to the old background image that was used here. However, if there was any changes that were going to made, I'd probably change the orientation of the image.

Why I actually made this change

I actually made this change for a few reasons, some more important than others.

1. The old image was old
2. The old image was had a low resolution, which made the website look unprofessional.
3. The site needed a new look
4. Making a gradient was a fairly easy thing to do
5. The whole web in general is moving towards gradients, whether image or CSS3.

The actual gradient I am using is an image. Right now I do not have time to sit down and learn how to code in a CSS3 gradient, and I also want to maintain compatibility with earlier versions of Internet Explorer (ex. IE8). Even though my Internet Explorer audience is rather small, I am choosing not to alienate them with this change.

Feedback

If you want to post some feedback, you can do so in the comments below. You can also hit up the live chat (on the tab bar at the top) and drop some lines. The live chat has a nice amount of users who are in the lounge channel as well, so you can even discuss with them.

Some site design ideas

You know, for over 2 years now Techman's World has used the same background for the site, and almost the same amount of time for the logo. While the logo definitely isn't going away (although the colors could be slightly modified, who knows), I think that Techman's World could use a better & improved background image.

I'm leaning towards a gradient as a replacement for the background image, and it will most certainly contain the classic green and blue colors (hopefully anyways).

The decision to lean towards a gradient isn't a very hard one either -- These days it's relatively easy to make a gradient using tools such as GIMP and Adobe Photoshop. I remember when a friend of mine actually made a gradient using hand picked pixels -- boy was that time consuming.

Improvements made to Techman's World IRC (Apr. 07 2014)

While being kind of absent from posting on Techman's World, I've been hard at work improving the chat network, adding some new features, fixing bugs, and fulfilling requests.

Here's a list of improvements. I'll explain a bit about each one after the list (if necessary):

1. Support for more languages via the Techman's World IRC Services
2. Mail functionality is now enabled and required for certain actions
3. HelpOp information for basic FLAG templates are now available
4. You can now set services to send you an email every time you get a new memo, etc

If you run OpenSSL on your servers, you need to read this

Even though I'm just another carrier of this information, I still think it is important to make a post about it.

If you run OpenSSL on your servers and use it for high-profile applications (or basically, what your server is actually meant to do), then you need to read about CVE-2014-0160, aka the Heartbleed bug.

Fun Friday: A classic chemical reaction

Thinking about what to write today, I decided to jump back into Chemistry. While I am not going to write a whole story on a chemical element and my adventures with them, I do want to give everyone an interesting video to look at.