WorldSkills Singapore: Aftermath
Wow, just wow. It’s over.
Anyway since I’m a Silver medalist and I don’t need to participate anymore
WorldSkills competition, might as well leak some of the details here. 
In the beginning I was actually still undecided about hand-coding or using
Dreamweaver to assist in the development. Eventually when I saw the paper
immediately I knew that I should be able to hand-code in 18 hours. What was
unexpected was the application requirements for Day 1.
With the application requirements needed for Day 1 and they mentioned that
the design factor will only be marked on the third day I decided to put up
the basic interface structure and code, code and code.
I started building the MySQL class which was a quick and simple one. Most
importantly, it allows me to get the data with just one line of code, like
this:
$db->getVars('SELECT * FROM users');
You could probably say this article pretty much saved my life A LOT: http://www.woyano.com/view/410/PHP-and-Working-with-Databases-for-the-Lazy-Sod.
Only on the last half hour of the day that I realised something that screwed
me up the whole day, THIS:
Crap, something unexpected. No I didn’t type that exact JavaScript code shown
on the picture, it just gave me this after I used the header function to
redirect the page after a successful entry to the login and database (adding
stuff in).
End of the day, I have to thank Microsoft for making my day really bad 
Arras.Theme – Gaming Edition 1.1 Features
I’m locked down all the features that will be in the 1.1 update for Arras.Theme – Gaming Edition. I’m almost done with the update and hopefully I could release it by the end of the week.
Most of the features have been decided from what I have seen from those who have bought the theme (through incoming links ). Some of them include:
- Appearance tweak for ‘Latest Comments’ at the tabbed sidebar
- Appearance tweak for ‘Text Widget’
- Dropdown list for archive pages
- Showing the default ‘Next / Previous Posts’ links if WP-PageNav plugin is disabled
- Adding of the ’scaletop’ meta option, which allows you to choose whether you want the image thumbnail script to crop and scale from the center (default) or from the top
- Added the option to choose the position of the navigation bar (before or after header) from the admin panel
- Added the option to choose the order of display of news posts, via date (default) or via category
- Added the option to limit the amount of posts per category when the order of display is set to category
- Added help links to admin panel
- Added the option to choose a fixed height for each widget at the bottom content sidebar (recommended if you have more than two widgets in the sidebar)
- Added the option to choose the number of 125×125 square buttons in the admin panel (HTML fields will appear accordingly)
Arras.Theme Updates
I’ll be releasing a small update to the Gaming Edition the following days to come, which has minor tweaks and fixes, as well as some minor improvements to the theme.
As for a new premium theme, I was wondering the possibility of doing a flash based premium theme, probably for a showcase / product listing site. Viewzi is one inspiring website I could look into and build upon.
No Standalone RA3 Premier Edition in Singapore!
In my previous posting, I mentioned about the crazy pricing of the RA3 bundle in Singapore, which is SGD 219 for the commander’s edition and SGD 119 for the officer edition. I thought of getting the premier edition alone as I don’t see the use of paying that much for a game.
Then, I looked at the FAQ at the preorder page for Singapore and I saw this:
Will I be able purchase just the C&C Red Alert 3 Premier Edition?
As this is a limited run, there will be no standalone Premier Edition of C&C Red Alert 3 in Singapore. There will only be the standard edition of the game from 29 October onwards.
Oh great, screw you EA. You just lost another customer!
What’s Next?
Finally completed three mind-boggling days of competition. Though I screwed up on the first day (no thanks for MS IE7 javascript ‘Operation Aborted’ bug), the last two days were a breeze for me. I should actually pat myself in my back for handcoding a website in 18 hours x_x
Now back to my school’s final year project and WordPress themes. Speaking of themes, I’m still looking at ideas on my next Arras.Theme. Here are some of my ideas:
- AJAX commenting and post viewing like K2?
- A new interface for WP showcases?
I’m not sure if those who bought my theme will post here, but if you do, I wouldn’t mind if you comment on the current theme over here. Even if you didn’t buy it, it would be great if you could post any feedback on Arras.Theme, any new features you would like!
Signing off.