We now have trophies for highest-voted art of the day, week, and month! Also, we've gone back and given the trophies that the art from the past few months should have won.

Also, we're hoping as many of the art portal members as possible will be around for our "reboot" this afternoon. Since a member of the portal can only extend 4 offers a day, the portal will get back up to speed if everyone is around to accept them. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, see Tom's front page post.)

OK, you can all go back to clicking on ads now.

Overheard at a pub: "You wanna know the real reason Patrick Swayze died? Cause I KICKED HIS ASS, YO!"

I think this is funny. You're not laughing, but I don't care. Fuck you.

Some of you may have heard that one of our mods got their account phished and among other annoying things, everyone in the art portal got descouted. Fortunately, I made an "undo" feature for that, which we used once we wrested the account back. Unfortunately, there were some bugs with that, and so now I have a bit of a mess to clean up.

In other news, I have slept with a number of very attractive women in my life, and will likely sleep with more in the future. I also get paid very well and live in my own apartment in a nice neighborhood of downtown Philadelphia. The kid who messed with our site, on the other hand, lives in his mother's basement and, sadly, has never kissed a girl. As he also wears XXXXXL-shirts and lacks the courage to meet the eye of any female ever, he almost certainly will never have sex in his entire life. I hope you will all take pity on him when he is 50 years old and still skeeving around the furry conventions.

OK, much work to be done. Bye for now!

Tom: Anybody want to do lunch?
Various staff: Yeah.
Tom: You wanna go walkies?
Rob: What?
[Tom goes into the bathroom.]
Jeff: Did he just say "Do you wanna go walkies?"
Bob: Yes.
Jeff: I've never been so filled with rage in my entire life.

I'll give you a hint ... actually, no I won't. Just be sure to get your panties in a bunch as quickly as possible.

By the way, anyone interested in my ongoing music experiments can check out my newest creation:
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen /240047

I am terrified to announce that I now work for mankind's largest Communist government! We staff have come around, and we now see that subjugation is preferable to freedom. The website - that is, our new layout - is a big joke, and we are certain that it will bring lame, boring failure, and certain death.

I have to admit, it pisses me off to remove all adult stuff from here. I dislike it, but I think that we ought to unblock it. Nonetheless, I worked long and hard so that all users, bitches and idiots alike, would be unable to oppose our will.

Hope you hate it, because I hate you all!

As some of you may know, users have been unable to embed videos from Vimeo for a little while, even though we claim to support them. I am happy to inform everyone that they are now working again! Below is the trailer for a film by my friend Danielle. Now, I will cross my fingers and hit the submit button.

Mike's popular Flash port of Doom was nominated by FHM for Web Game of the Year, and you can vote! Follow the link below. Use the list on the right to vote. Doom is at the top of the list!

Vote for Doom

Mike worked hard on that little marvel, so here's hoping he takes the prize.

(This text is here because, apparently, my image - which speaks for itself - must be accompanied by text.)

I recently had a user send me a message asking advice about web development. He's a computer science undergrad, and wants to build a serious, user-based website. I wrote a lengthy reply, then decided I should just post it here for everyone to read:

1. Learn a web language thoroughly. I'd recommend Ruby or PHP. Ruby is a better-designed language, whereas PHP has better performance and a bigger community. Ruby pays better on the open market because the average PHP developer is incompetent.

2. Use a framework. In Ruby, that means Rails. In PHP, the two big ones are Symfony and CakePHP. Symfony is great; I haven't used Cake. This leads to point 3:

3. Use third party software whenever practical. E.g., don't write a custom blogging system - use WordPress or the like.

4. Learn SQL. Learn how to setup a database. Use MySQL or PostgreSQL.

5. Learn modern Javascript techniques, and use a framework. Prototype, jQuery, YUI, Dojo, and MooTools are all good.

6. Learn modern CSS and use XHTML. Use conditional comments, not parser hacks. Everything must validate all the time, period. At the same time, don't get too caught up in doing everything the "right" way. As with everything, you have to trust your judgment.

7. Developer time is more valuable than computer time. The bulk of a comp. sci. education is thus irrelevant for web applications. Even here at New Grounds, our biggest resource bottleneck is database IO, not code performance or memory consumption.

8. Always design and write code with other developers in mind. It may take longer in the beginning, but it will pay itself back again and again. Just take this on faith, because it is absolutely true. Write code that reads like a paragraph. Give things long, descriptive names. Make a class for everything, even if it only has one method and no data. This will be as helpful for you as it is for others.

9. Learn to use Linux. The web is Unix based, and that environment is more powerful for the developer anyway. You will have to administer a *nix box at some point, so start learning now.

10. When in doubt, Google. There is not one thing you will ever think to do that has not already been done very well and blogged about.

Here's some more links:
The HTML specification. - This is also most of what you need to know to write proper XHTML.
Design mistakes
Code mistakes - Memorize this. All of these things can be avoided almost all the time.

It's not all as hard as it sounds. You'll make plenty of mistakes, and you'll look back later at code you wrote two years prior and just shake your head. That's the life of a developer.