Xblaze

Hey guys,

User Account Problems
I’ve just noticed as massive problem in relation to people who registered for accounts on this Blog.
There were about 40 accounts just sitting there because confirmation e-mails weren’t sent out to those who signed up.
This is partly my fault, for not noticing sooner and partly my server’s fault, for not properly supporting PHP’s mail() function.
I’ve now rectified the problem. E-mails will be sent via SMTP, ensuring that no-one misses another e-mail.
If you signed up for an account, feel free to re-register your account (you can use the same username).
I apologise to everyone who signed up.

New Domain Name
On a lighter note, I was able to aquire the domain xblaze.co.uk for use with this site. Update all your book marks, and begin using xblaze.co.uk as the primary address for XBlaze

I just want to take some time to talk about bugs. Horrible bugs.

I think there are two pretty nasty bugs that need to be announced (there are more, but I don’t think they’re as severe as these ones).

Bug #1:

XBlaze will crash each and every time you attempt to connect if your account has more than 255 buddies. Regardless of whether or not they’re online or offline. Until this bug is tracked down and fixed, XBlaze has a 255 buddy limit per account.

Workaround: Try not to exceed 255 buddies, or if you already have more than 255, delete some by using the official Xfire client. To do that you’re going to need access to Windows, it’s a sad state of affairs. You can use a friend’s PC, or download a trial version of Parallels and install Windows and Xfire using it.

Bug #2:

XBlaze will crash each and every time you attempt to connect if you have more than one Outstanding Invites received.

Workaround: This one’s a little easier to deal with. If you go to http://xfire.com/profile and login using your xfire account details, you can view your Outstanding Invites at the bottom of the right hand column. From there you can remove invites, allowing you to remove them and reconnect to XBlaze successfully. Before you remove the requests though, make a note of their usernames and you can add them yourself when you log back in.
This isn’t a problem with invites you have sent yourself – only invites you’ve received from other Xfire users.

Over the period that I took on the XBlaze project, I’ve been learning a lot about Cocoa and Programming for Mac OS X in general. However, I’m still not a master programmer, in fact I’m still finding a lot of stuff rather difficult to comprehend, especially code written by other people.

Because Kainjow wrote almost all the code that is in XBlaze, I’m still in the process of figuring out which bit does what, and why he’s written things the way he did. Also there is the underlying library that powers XBlaze, XfireLib. I’m still finding my way around that code too.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is forgive me for not fixing these bugs as soon as they’re found. I’m still learning the ropes and in some cases, I just don’t know what to do to fix things. If anyone out there wants to write a patch and submit it, they’re welcome – the source code is available on the download page.