About
Quick Info
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The Site
This site is the personal website of Brian "MrSpandex" Henk. It is mostly a coding project I use as a testbed for programming ideas. Much fo this code is either transferred to or taken from other website projects of mine. I suppose the goal of this site is to re-invent the wheel. Though a lot of software is already available to do many tasks that I wish to do, writing my own allows for much more flexibility, and also allows me to more quickly develop other applications.
I started this site in late 2006, and development will never be finished. If the site ever resembles something complete, I intend to start over and rebuild with the knowlege I have gleaned.
Deployed Features:
- Completely XHTML 1.1 compliant code
- All content seperated from design via complete CSS 2.0 styling
- Dynamic site theme based on sunset/sunrise
- Dynamic folder indexing and display of both links and photos
- Automatic thumbnail creation and photo organization
- Complete RSS feed object to allow for easy creation of RSS feeds
- Nightly RSS feed regeneration
- High performance dynamic photo gallery
- Advanced user visit logging and geo-location
- User-based back-end
- Easy to use back-end for links
In Development Features:
- Lightweight news system for home page
- 'Things' system
- Projects system for displaying completed and in-development projects
- East to use back-end interface for News, Things, and Projects systems
- Simple image hosting feature, similar to Imageshack
- XML-based backup
Ideas for the Future:
- RISK-like simulation of visitor browsers in a global war
- General user registration for back end to allow for user-submitted links and other community features
- Database management tool similar to phpMyAdmin
- In-Browser FTP tool
- In-Browser File manager
- Quotes system
My Bio
A lot of people have asked me how I came up with the name MrSpandex. Was it because I had a spandex fetish? Was I high? Did I get it from some oscure joke? In reality, I was just trying to think of a funny name for a character to fool around with in Planetside. A lot of other names were taken, and eventually, for no reason I know of, I typed in MrSpandex. Thus, a legacy was born.
The name MrSpandex may have originated from Planetside, but the player did not. "Brian Henk," which MrSpandex sometimes prefers to be called, was born on August 12, 1989. Some birthday parties later, at which he recieved some very nice digital watches, Brian saw something that would change his life forever. It was a game. It was Red Alert.
The drive to play the game away from my cousin's eventually caused me to buy our first PC and connect it to the internet. Not long after, I had bought my own, which I would retrospectively name Alpha, and I learned a great many things. These were the days of Dialup, and games were generally too intensive. This was all fine and dandy until I saw it. It was for pre-order. It was Planetside.
At this point, I had no idea what a Massively Multiplayer Online game was, but I did understand an FPS with huge environments, vehicles, and hundreds of players on each side. This game would require an upgrade. It took me a few months to convince my parents to get faster internet, and for me to buy a new computer. Around Christmas 2003, I finally downloaded the trial. Actually, I downloaded and played 5 7-day trials. The fifth one I kept and began paying for the game.
I crossed my knowlege gained only from a lack of games before, and the challenges brought about by having many new online friends to do things that would make me who I am today. The problems I solved usually involved creating a website, some type of server, general organization, or leading a group of people in an all-night raid of Hossin.
Alas, the days of Planetside's glory came and passed. I began to focus on something new: Creating a website to sell custom PCs. I dreamed the site would be fully dynamic. I need only enter the product names and make suggestions. An ambitious first attempt at PHP, to be sure. The project would become an intense task for a week or so, then I would loose interest. Every time I came back though, I would start over with a better plan and using knowlege gained from the last attempt. To this day, the site isn't done.
However, showing the unfinished site to my friend got his interest, and he soon hired me to make him a site. He became my salseman, selling my services for a chunk of the profit. And it can all be traced back to Red Alert.