Gigi's Computer Corner

Homepage

Welcome

Hi, and welcome to GCC. Sorry but this isn't the GNU Compiler Collection. This site contains nothing as amazing. This is just a place where I can experiment with web technologies and share what little I know about computers in general.

In case you're wondering, I'm an IT student at the University of Malta. "Gigi" is just my nickname at University, because I have the same surname as the famous Italian DJ, Gigi D'Agostino. Visit my personal homepage to learn more about me.

Personal Projects

My BSc IT page
The Minesweeper Legacy
Ultima 1 Revenge (Reverse Engineering Effort) hosted files
Picaxo Image Viewer

Resources

Tutorials

Slides provided here may be used by any teacher/lecturer, on condition that s/he does not plagiarise (i.e. does not claim to have written them him/herself). They may be used by students but not everything is explained.

These slides are actually meant for teachers as key points to teach, which may be hard to remember. A teacher should not load slides on a projector and start reading them to a class. That will only put them to sleep.

Any student or teacher who does not understand any of the points in the slides is welcome to contact me on dandago at gmail dot com.

HTML Crash Course (2nd June 2007, revised 19th June 2007) - this tutorial teaches all the important things to know about HTML, from the very basics to XHTML 1.1. It purposely starts by teaching bad practices and then explains why they are bad. You cannot learn good coding before you know how to code, and you cannot code right before you know what is right and what is wrong. Apart from explaining important tags and attributes, this tutorial also gives advice for good and thoughtful coding, and goes into the history of HTML.
- OpenDocument Presentation [ODP: 34KB]
- PowerPoint Presentation [PPT: 225KB]
- Portable Document Format [PDF: 185KB]

PHP Scripts

These PHP scripts may be freely used on the condition that any copyright notices and links to my site are preserved. This is applicable to D-iscussion Board and DGB but optional for Abacus and Mailform. I reserve full rights as the author of these scripts.

These scripts (except Abacus) are in need of a massive update. They need to be re-released under the GNU General Public Licence [TXT], and they are currently vulnerable to spam attacks. Use at your own risk.

D-iscussion Board: PHP forum script version 3.01
- Download source [zip] [tar.gz] [tar.bz2]
DGB: PHP guestbook script version 1.43
- Download source [zip] [tar.gz] [tar.bz2]
Abacus: Simple PHP hit counter version 1.01
- Download source [zip] [tar.gz] [tar.bz2]
Mailform: secure contact script version 1.01
- Download source [zip] [tar.gz] [tar.bz2]

Rough notes

ASP page - this page contains what little ASP I know
Pascal tutorial - I wrote this tutorial when I was learning basic Pascal. It contains only the basic aspects of Pascal; I knew very little when I wrote it. For example, it contains nothing about recursion, pointers, etc. But it's good for beginners.

Articles

First Impressions of your Website [3rd January 2004] - the visitor's impression about the site and the webmaster is a key factor that decides whether the visitor will have a good look at the site or leave after seeing one page. This article lists the main things to avoid in order to give visitors a good impression of yourself.
ADT Stack [14th November 2006] - this article explains how a Stack data structure works internally, in very informal and non-technical language. Apart from teaching the Stack data structure, it also explains what an ADT is, and uses the Stack as an example for the use of pointers.
PC Building Tutorial [7th May 2008] - a visual guide to the steps involved in assembling a PC from hardware parts.

Links

Free Software Tools

HTML-Kit - excellent text editor suitable for just about any computer language.
Firefox - the world's top web browser.
FileZilla - excellent FTP and SFTP client (and server).
Dev-C++ - IDE for C/C++.
NetBeans - Java IDE.
Knoppix - amazing Linux Live CD distribution - great if you want to try out Linux.
Kubuntu - KDE flavour of Ubuntu - great if you want to install Linux.
VMWare - Virtual Machine platform allowing you to try different OS's from your native OS.
Irfanview - multipurpose image viewer, MP3 player, hex viewer, etc.
XVI32 - free hex editor.
PuTTY - allows you to connect to remote machines in terminal mode.
Apache - the world's most popular web server.
Google
- SketchUp - 3D modelling made easy.
- Gmail - the world's best and biggest web-based mail client.
- Earth - tool to view any location on the planet.
- Talk - instant messaging client.

Language Tutorials

W3Schools - good for anything web-related.
The C++ Resources Network - for C++.
Game Programming using SDL - the SDL graphics library is ideal for making games with C/C++.
PHP - official website of the PHP language.

Other Good Sites

Web Pages That Suck - learn good web design by looking at bad web design.
VistaPages - very decent (paid) web hosting.

Articles

7 Commandments all video games should obey - Cracked.com - 29th April 2008
Is Windows Vista Faster Than XP? - Tom's Hardware - 29th January 2007
Shlomi Fish's Advice For the Young - Shlomi Fish - 17th December 2005

Videos

Android

Android is a mobile platform by Google. Although, at the time of this writing [5th May 2008], there are no phones capable of using this platform, enthusiasts have been programming for it for some time now, using the Android Emulator. I'm not really an enthusiast, as I was 'forced' to write software for Android as one of my third year Assigned Practical Tasks. But it was an experience, an experience I'm very much willing to share with any new developers who, like my friends and I, found very difficult with the lack of proper tutorials and resources on the net.

For starters, below is a list of links I found useful when I had to develop software for Android. In summer I might write a few tutorials.

Google Android - the official website
DroidDraw - great tool to facilitate creation of user interfaces
anddev.org - this is a really helpful site... which mostly consists of a forum (the admin, plusminus, is really helpful) but also provides a work-in-progress 'andbook'

Playground

My first JavaScript rollover

Meow

 <img src="meow.jpg" alt="Meow" id="meow"
      onmouseover="this.src = 'meowbin.jpg'"
      onmouseout="this.src = 'meow.jpg'"
      onclick="alert('Screeeeeetch!')" />

Gigi Logo with ASCII Art

     /  /\        ___          /  /\        ___     
    /  /:/_      /  /\        /  /:/_      /  /\    
   /  /:/ /\    /  /:/       /  /:/ /\    /  /:/    
  /  /:/_/::\  /__/::\      /  /:/_/::\  /__/::\    
 /__/:/__\/\:\ \__\/\:\__  /__/:/__\/\:\ \__\/\:\__ 
 \  \:\ /~~/:/    \  \:\/\ \  \:\ /~~/:/    \  \:\/\
  \  \:\  /:/      \__\::/  \  \:\  /:/      \__\::/
   \  \:\/:/       /__/:/    \  \:\/:/       /__/:/ 
    \  \::/        \__\/      \  \::/        \__\/  
     \__\/                     \__\/

Provided by Ingram Bondin.

Updates

23rd July 2008
- On 6th July, this site became 2 years old.
- Added a link to the Domino Logic...Gates video.
8th May 2008
- Added a PC Building Tutorial.
5th May 2008
- Added three new sections under "Links": "Articles", "Android" and "Videos".
23rd March 2008
- A new release of Picaxo is available, including a Windows port. There are no new features; just lots of fixes in order to make it work on Windows.
- The Picaxo website also has a couple of new screenshots of Picaxo on Windows XP (both x86 and x64).
22nd March 2008
- As of yesterday, I have been working on a new project, which I have called Picaxo. This is an image viewer written in C using the SDL library. At present it doesn't have much functionality, but it is still a young project. Some nice things about it are that it is lightweight and cross-platform. You can see some screenshots or download the source code at the site I set up for it.
21st January 2008
- Added a few links, removed the banner and created a link to VistaPages in the Links section instead.
15th December 2007
- Added an Affiliates section with a banner for VistaPages.
8th August 2007
- This site has moved to a new location. The old site will no longer be updated, and will remain online for a while.
6th July 2007
- Today is this site's first anniversary.
- Since I bought the Null Neuron domain, this site will eventually move there, as a site under the new Gigi's Gym.
1st July 2007
- Added Ultima 1 Revenge to the list of Personal Projects.
19th June 2007
- Revised the HTML tutorial (crash course), with the following changes:
  - Added 2 more example entities
  - Corrected a typo at Local Links section
  - Added section on Thumbnailing
  - Split Frames section into 2 slides
  - Added part about targeting links
  - Added slide about <fieldset> tag
  - Added page numbers
2nd June 2007:
- Added a Tutorials section, with the first entry being a new HTML tutorial in 3 slideshow formats.
11th April 2007:
- Added a few new links.
- Removed a couple of dumb articles.
- I'm slowly working on a new project - reverse engineering Ultima 1.
14th March 2007:
- Minesweeper 3 released. See the Minesweeper Legacy.
26th November 2006:
- New article added: The Holistic Theorem.
15th November 2006:
- Fixed a few things with Minesweeper 2. Check it out at the Minesweeper Legacy.
- Wrote a new article about the Use of Activity Networks in the Ordering of Tutorial Pages.
- Resurrected the old article about First Impressions of your Website, which is almost 3 years old, from the old Code-X site.
14th November 2006:
- Added new article about the ADT Stack.
1st November 2006:
- My Minesweeper clones now have a website of their own: the Minesweeper Legacy.
29th October 2006:
- Link to Google Earth added.
21st October 2006:
- BSc IT page has moved.
11th October 2006:
- Added ASCII art Gigi logo to the Playground section.
9th October 2006:
- Added BSc IT page.
1st October 2006:
- Added more screenshots and a download of Minesweeper 2.
30th September 2006:
- Added first 3 screenshots of Minesweeper 2 to the Playground section.
29th September 2006:
- Added a few more links.
20th September 2006:
- Added Links section.
27th August 2006:
- I have added all the important features I wanted to add to D-iscussion Board. Therefore D-iscussion Board 4.00 alpha is ready, but will not be released as yet. It will need to go through a period of testing, which may include a public beta test.
18th August 2006:
- Added a section for news from the web.
- Currently working on an update for D-iscussion Board (since yesterday).
6th July 2006:
- Site went online.
- PHP Scripts moved here (including D-iscussion Board, DGB, Abacus and Mailform).
- ASP and Pascal tutorials moved here.
- Abacus upgraded to version 1.01.

News from the Web

28th June 2008:
- Apparently Bill Gates retired yesterday.
- Diablo 3 was announced today.
17th May 2008:
- Firefox 3 RC 1 was released yesterday.
- OpenOffice.org 3 public beta is ready for testing.
8th May 2008:
- From Slashdot: the id Software site has announced that work has began on Doom 4.
5th May 2008:
- Hans Reiser Convicted for Murder - Softpedia - 29th April 2008
2nd June 2006:
- Firefox 2.0.0.4 has been released.
26th November 2006:
- Linux Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) was released last month.
20th November 2006:
- Irfanview 3.99 has been released after almost a year since the last version!
10th November 2006:
- Gmail has five new features.
27th October 2006:
- Firefox 2 has been released.
21st October 2006:
- Firefox 2 Release Candidate 3 released.
- Internet Explorer 7 released.
7th October 2006:
- Firefox 2 Release Candidate 2 released.
29th September 2006:
- Firefox 2 Release Candidate 1 has been released.
20th September 2006:
- Firefox 2 Beta 2 and Firefox 1.5.0.7 have both been released a while ago.
18th August 2006:
- A bunch of new features have been added to Google Talk. These include file transfer, voice mail, and music status and music trends.