Published on October 7, 2013
I've been using Point as my DNS provider for some time now, but somewhat recently they were bought out by Copper.io. I don't know anything about these guys, but I've been burned by being the client of a bought-out company before, so today I decided to proactively jump ship to another provider. I wanted to stay with a free provider, and so after asking around I've decided to go with CloudFlare.
Already I can see an improvement, with DNS lookups taking anywhere from 1/2 to 1/3 as long as they used to (50-75ms with CloudFlare vs 140-150ms with Point). Not that I expect that will really be noticeable, but hey faster is faster!
Anyway, since I changed DNS providers I've had to go and update PDDNS to support the new provider. So if you've been looking for a decent dynamic dns updater to use with CloudFlare, give it a try!
Published on October 1, 2013
I've just finished making the first (and most significant) changes to www.RandM.ca in quite some time:
First, and most noticeably, I've moved from a hand-coded site to a site powered by GetSimple CMS. This should make it MUCH easier for me to keep things up to date around here! If you check out the Products menu, you'll see a couple entries related to this CMS software (the changes I made to enable multisite management, and the theme I'm using on this site). One of the bonuses of using this new CMS/theme is that it's VERY mobile friendly, so not that I expect many people will be loading this site on their phone, but if they do, it should hopefully display quite nicely.
Second, and hopefully not noticeably, I've moved to a new web host. There was nothing wrong with my previous host, but it was about 5x as expensive as the one I'm now with so I figured it was worth the time/trouble to switch.
If you run into any problems with the new site, just let me know.
Published on February 13, 2013
Apparently I've been ignoring my news page here! Since my last update, these new releases have taken place:
In addition to those releases, I've created an account on GitHub and released the source to some R&M software, as well as ported some other DOS BBS related software to Windows:
I really need to implement a way to keep this site up to date when news releases are made on one of my other sites!
Published on August 4, 2012
If you're reading this, the website migration has finally been completed! I got busy with a lot of other things, so this took way longer than expected. Everything should now be in place though, so if you notice any problems with the site, please let me know.
Published on June 25, 2012
I'm currently in the process of switching webhosts. Currently I'm running on a pretty low end Linux VPS, where I hand code everything in PHP. Which sucks. So I now have a somewhat less low end VPS running Windows 2003 that I'll be transitioning to, which will allow me to rewrite everything in C# (I guess I could have used Mono to rewrite everything in C# while still staying with Linux, but I don't know how well it would have run with such a small amount of RAM available).
Anyway, hopefully the transition won't affect anything here, but I figured I'd mention it in case shit hits the fan in the coming days since you'll know why!
Published on March 1, 2011
Don't know who, if anybody, would be interested in knowing what I'm working on, but I've added a new Roadmap page to the site that'll allow me to keep track of what I need to finish in order to make more timely releases.
Published on June 15, 2006
I've just uploaded a new version of MannDoor, v6.06.15. It contains changes submitted by Michael Preslar as well as some fixes to enable FreePascal v2.0.0 compatability.
I also released a small utility the other day called R&M GetVersionEx(). It was just something I used to find out what the GetVersionEx() API function returned on various versions of Windows. Pretty useless, but it was written in Delphi without using the FORMS unit, so it may be a good example for other people who want to write a program this way. (Not using the FORMS unit means you interact with the Windows API directly. The benefit is that your compiled .EXE size is miniscule in comparison to the FORMS enabled version of the program, the drawback is that it's quite a bit more work. It's cool to try at least once though.)
And for those wondering, progress on GameSrv has been a lot better this past month or so. I'm moving in a few weeks so that'll interrupt things for a bit, but once we're settled hopefully I'll be able to keep up the progress and get something useable released!
Published on March 19, 2005
Yep, I've changed the layout again. I stole this one from (you guessed it) OSWD. It'll need to be tweaked a little since it doesn't handle font size changes very well, but it's a great start.
In other news, I'm working on GameSrv again (yay!). The bad news is, I'm starting from scratch (again!). It's not because I've lost the source, which is the usual reason, but because I've decided I really don't like Borland C++ Builder very much afterall. So the new version is back in Borland Delphi, and it's looking great. I found some nice tutorials on building hybrid Normal + Interactive Service applications, so it'll run normally on Win9x systems, and as a system service on NT* systems (as any good server should).
I'm swamped with my new job (check out bmjupdates.mcmaster.ca to see one of the projects I work on - it's free to sign up, but probably only interesting to health professionals) and in the process of moving, so development is slow, but with any luck there will be an '05 release for sure! ;-)
Published on December 11, 2004
I thought I would mention I updated the navigation bar off to the left (which you probably noticed), but the main purpose of this update is to let you know that yes, I'm still alive, and yes, I'm still working on stuff here. I just finished my last semester of school so hopefully things will be a little less hectic shortly, and I can get back to working on some of my programs again. Stay tuned for updates.
Published on July 1, 2004
As you can see, I've just uploaded a new layout for R&M. This new layout uses better CSS code for positioning and sizing of the elements on the page, so it'll display properly at any resolution, and with any font size (within reason).
The new layout is also using a little JavaScript to make the navigation bar on the left side of the screen stay visible as you scroll down the page. CSS has positioning tags to do this, but they don't work in Internet Explorer so I decided to use the JavaScript method instead.
I'm not sure I like the way the menu looks (it's kind of plain), so that may change soon. But other than that, I can see this new layout staying for quite some time
P.S Happy Canada Day eh.
Published on May 20, 2004
Just uploaded a new copy of MannDoor. No new functionality or anything, I just updated the Virtual Pascal specific units to be compatable with build 279
Chachi (of oddware) has just uploaded v1.0 of his User Feedback door. He wrote it for GameSrv, to give users the ability to communicate with the SysOp.
You can download the file here: feedback.zip
Published on April 12, 2004
I just uploaded a new version of my old screen saver, Manntrix. It's a "scrolling green characters" type screen saver, and comes with full source code. It'd probably make a good starting point for someone who wants to write their own screen saver.
Published on April 2, 2004
Just a minor update to point out that the HOWTO page has been added. Thanks to Al Robres for pointing out that it was missing.
Published on February 21, 2004
If you're reading this, MannSoft is now officially dead. For years I've been typing the name and never given much thought about it, but a couple weeks ago I actually spoke the name aloud in a conversation and everyone looked at me like I had two heads. It turns out that most people seem to think MannSoft is a better name for a gay porn site than for a software company, and since I'd already been pondering the idea of ditching the MannSoft name, this just helped make the decision for me.
And this is where R&M comes in. It can either be spoken aloud as "R and M Software", or if you put the "R" and "and" and "M" together it resembles the word "Random", so I'll probably pronounce it as "Random Software". It's not really any catchier than MannSoft was, but at least it doesn't have the gay porn site euphemism!
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