Pixelfuckers

2011 is almost over and 2012 is starting to show it’s face, which means that it’s time to start planning for failure making New Years Resolutions!

What are you guys resolving to do?

Merry Happy!

=)

Hey my fellow f@%kers. A little shout out to see who’s still alive and kicking. I know as we’re getting older time is a luxury which can sometime be hard to spend on doing things or visiting sites we once used to. Just drop us a little or big hello if you can to let us know the ‘fellowship’ is still kicking ass.

Cheers mates!

Boo!

Phew, finally. Firstly I like to apologize for the long span of time in between updates. This is mostly do to PF going from Rails 2 to Rails 3. Not only does that require a big set of code refactoring, but also a big server refactoring as well. Because I updated PF’s code to Rails 3 I couldn’t routinely push small updates to the live Rails 2 version. The good news is that I finally bit the bullet and just started over on a new server that should be a bit more flexible in the future and is now running Rails 3. In other words now that the upgrade is done I can get back to my routine updates.

In addition to the Rails upgrade there are a ton of small bug fixes and changes around the site. The forums database has been restructured and should now work properly. We have notifications (still kinda beta-y). Just use the twitter style format with a user’s username and they’ll receive a notification that they were mentioned. You can now navigate forward and back between submissions by clicking on the links or using the shortcut keys “j” and “k”.

There is a lot more stuff as well, too much for me to remember.

Because of the massive upgrade there’s bound to be bugs. As always, please use the repository to mark the bugs and I’ll do my best to mow through them.

My next focus is to clean up some of the code in the application. A lot of it is old from when I just first started RoR and could be refactored more nicely. From there we have another big upgrade to Rails 3.1 and then finally PF 2.0 which will consist of a massive front-end restructuring and the addition of a ton of features that I think will benefit the community and making sharing our submissions much more enjoyable and easier to do!

As always thanks for your continued help and support with PF!

Hi All,

There will be a bit of downtime in the morning tomorrow (EST) while I switch servers and do a pretty sizable upgrade of PF. It shouldn’t take to long!

See you on the other side :)

Josh

Hi All,

I just wanted to introduce Dotshare.it . Its a new community dedicated to the hosting and sharing config files mostly different *nix apps started by PF’s own Robin Dipilibupap aka dipiwee. I think its a great idea and something the Internets has been missing for some time. I encourage all you *nix folks to hop on over and check it out!

Cheers,
Josh

Hi All,

Just a quick announcement that we’ll be experiencing some downtime sometime between June 17 and June 19 as I upgrade PF to Rails 3 as well as push up all the updates from the repository. This is a larger than normal upgrade because we’re going to Rails 3, so I’ll need more time than usual. The good news is that once we’re running Rails 3 it will be easy to push updates rapidly again (well at least until we go Rails 3.1 which seems to have a lot of changes). Anyway, as always thanks for your patience!

Cheers,
Josh

The voting for SSC’11 has concluded. I will tabulate all votes that made it in before the deadline and present the winners tomorrow! Stand by for the results!

Hi Everyone,

Please remember to rate the SSC’11 submissions. It is very important that all involved members rate as many of the submissions as possible to ensure that the best person wins each category! To view the entries in each category, goto the Browse section of the site and select the SSC categories.

Best of luck to all members!!!

Cheers,
Josh

Just a friendly reminder that the deadline for SSC’11 is May 13! The rating period will stay open until May 15.

I think we’re all in agreement to push back the deadline. Let’s push it back to May 13. We’ll leave the voting open until May 15. Revisions to existing submissions are welcome, but if you revise, please delete your old submission and resubmit!

Hi All,

I’ve been getting some feedback that a lot of participants are really busy this year, but still want to submit something in. Basically people have been asking to push the deadline back a week or so. Would anyone object to that?

The donations have been wonderful so far for SSC ‘11. Right now we’re up to $230 plus a print of choice from ether’s photos for our prize pool! I think we’ll give the print to the highest overall rating. Huge thank you’s to

• ether – $75
• akka – $25
• mangosango – $15
• thomax – $15

Great to see such fantastic support from our members! Jenn, we’re going to have to shoot a t-shirt your way.

Also speaking of t-shirts: as soon as I finish up with the latest batch of updates including the server and PF itself, we’re going to be making a PF store where you’ll be able to by PF merch. After much though I think this would be a great unobtrusive way to raise funds for our humble home on the net.

Cheers!

4 Categories:

1. Windows
2. Mac
3. Linux
4. Mobile

Rules

Each person can submit once to each category.

The submission that garners the highest average rating in each category from registered members wins that category.

Submissions are due April 29th. The rating period will stay open until the end of May 1. On May 2, the ratings will be tabulated and the winners will be announced.

Update: The categories for SSC 11 are created and ready for your submissions!

Prizes

I will be throwing out $25 in cash, to each of the winners plus a newly designed PF t-shirt. As always, we’ll be accepting donations from the community to sweeten the pot. Feel free to contribute cash or other things like prints, t-shirts, etc. If you want to contribute, get in contact with me and I’ll figure out a way to add your contribution to the prize pool!

I’m really looking forward to this year’s submissions! Good luck and happy customizing!

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen,

Three years ago the storied SSC was without a home. The community had fled the old customize.org who had stopped putting community first and left things on cruise control. The community then built and created a temporary forums with the help of Tab over at GSM where a new sort of experimental system was taking root. One where all those passionate about the community were given admin privileges and could effectively run the community. Dave (miniman), stepped up and voluntarily created a web application from scratch where contestants could submit their entrees to the contest and vote on their favorite submissions. The contest lived on. During that time we used the GSM forums to start laying out a new community where the members ruled and that had some of the best things about the original customize.org. That plan became Pixelfuckers which opened two years ago to host SSC 09. Today the experiment lives on and is more successful than I think we all have originally imagined. PF is still being actively developed and for the first time some community members are donating their time to help squash bugs and improve the site as well!

I’m proud to once again be able to kick off the contest that in many ways helped realize the idea of Pixelfuckers!

For those relatively new to the scene, brace yourselves, this is the big one. We have planning to do, preparations to make, prizes to get together, and a tradition of extremely good desktop interfaces to live up to. Can we keep raising the bar?

To begin as always we’re looking for rule suggestions. Do we keep it the standard format as highest average score between all submissions, or maybe we have categories like we had in some years past. Typically the due date is late April/early May. That sound good?

Also as usual I’ll be accepting any donations into the prize pool, but I can guarantee I’ll have some cash, t-shirts, and prints to give out!

Also, feel free to spread the word and recruit custo folks from all over the scene. I’m sure there are other great custo’ers out there that don’t yet know about the contest, but might be interested!

Looking forward to getting this going once again!

Cheers!