A Mean Idea to Call My Own
December 27, 2006 by Foton • Filed Under Etc. • 3 Comments
Traveling today, back in my adopted town tomorrow.
In the meantime … I’ve done some work on back info you might find amusing. As you’ve probably noticed, I revamped the look around AFK Gamer. (And if you’re reading blogs via feed reader only, you’re wrong.) More importantly, I fixed some of the static pages and expanded the historical record. If you’re the type who enjoys second-guessing others’ poor decisions (e.g. mine) — and we’re talking YEARS OLD decisions here — you might enjoy this.
Within the limits of blurred memories, I documented my game characters and guilds over the past ten years. Here’s an example of why this is mildly amusing: EQ - Original Main: Druid (soloing juggernaut), Next Main: Bard (post-Luclin soloing juggernaut), Constant Alt: Cleric (equip my Mains, kthxbye).
Takes me a while to figure out the system, but once I do, immersion and community be damed, I’m working it.
While it took me weeks to remember all that and piece together the dates, I realized that most of the memories had become fond ones. That’s one of the advantages of losing your mind.
Site Credits
December 26, 2006 by Foton • Filed Under Etc. • Comments Off
Be warned, much of this info would only be interesting to other WordPress hags and extremely bored people.
July 2007 redesign
In honor of three years of AFK Gamer, a new WordPress version and a new theme, Photopress by Brian Gardner. (The official announcement)
While I liked the grid layout of the early 2007 AFK Gamer, I wanted a layout that was simpler and easier on load times. With a database of over 1,200 posts and 4,100 comments, Ye Olde Blog just ain’t what she used to be and load times were frequently awful — especially living on a shared server with morons who run huge cron jobs at 9:00 a.m. every morning.
Above all else, the site had to remain easy on the eyes (no 1,000+ widths, please) and pleasantly white-spaced. That meant no dark themes, no (or few) widgets, light on script-ishness because I know you’re all using NoScript (or SHOULD be), easy to maintain for a code dope like me, and no soft cheeses of any kind.
One theme I considered very seriously, DePo Clean by Derek Powazek. Unfortunately, after sandboxing it for a while, I knew it would require too many modifications to do what AFK Gamer required and many of those mods were well beyond my very limited, trial-and-error type skills. Pity, I love that theme. I did lift the idea for the random quotes from past posts in the footer from DePo. The idea and the coding framework, that is.
I reviewed (and subsequently discarded) every theme from this list, 100 Favourite Wordpress Themes — a blog intern would have come in handy here — but in the end, what I really wanted was a return to the late 2006 AFK, a one-column + expanded footer ideal.
So tada! The return of the one column! Mouseover everything, explore every corner, I’ve hidden tricks and treats everywhere. Plus, bugs! (I’ll get around to it, probably.)
Additional Site Credits:
Still loving famfamfam’s Silk Icons set.
Still loving red.
Still using plugins, but a lot fewer than before.
Still believing that a:visited is overrated.
Still digging the generosity of open source and WordPress support.
Still learning from Podz’ WordPress guides, years later.
Open Issues
Need to implement noteworthy plugin throughout the site, but what a pain that is.Meh, who the hell needs it, a category seems enough.Author comment styling. Again, pain.OpenID integrated for commenting.Ok, OpenID appears dead for Wordpress until someone takes up the plugin for the 2.3 series or they (the royal WP-they who work on the open source WP) integrate it into the core.Safari and iPhone CSS fixes. Goddamn I don’t get paid enough for this nonsense.Width issues, which created margin/padding issues in IE, all fixed. Probably.
December 2006 version
The December 2006 AFK Gamer site is powered by WordPress and the Cutline theme. Previously, I had used a modded version of the Snapshot style and the excellent K2 theme for over a year and needed something … well, different.
The Snapshot website is MIA from the net, but K2 is still alive and thriving — highly recommended. Most everything I know about WP, html, css and whatsits, I learned at the feet of trial and error, and K2.
I reviewed and trialed over two dozen different themes on the AFK Gamer Sandbox subdomain, and looked through at least three dozen others on demo sites. The result of that search was a short wishlist of wannahaves for the blog and a false start: Utom’s excellent 5U theme. While 5U is visually exciting and well written, it just wasn’t right for here, and so the search began anew.
Unlike a site which focuses on shorter posts with a broader topic range, this blog is longer stories (i.e. text) with a very narrow focus. This time, I searched with a clearer idea of what I needed … plus more wannahaves.
I found Cutline one night, when I was supposed to be healing a guild-alt AQ20 raid in World of Warcraft — fuck that, I had to find a new theme — so I was alt-tabbing quite regularly to page through demo sites. Widgets-ready, light on code, well-written, active support and development, and a starting style sheet not that far off from where I wanted to be — ding, Cutline. Many hours of tweaking-this and pimping-that later, the new AFK Gamer is ready for another year six months of gaming commentary and poorly-doctored screenshots.
Additional Site Credits, in no particular order:
Raster, for (incorrectly) declaring that any shade of green was “gay” … I have him to thank for red. (BTW, green is not gay. Orange is borderline, however. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
Utom’s 5U theme, for the special date code used on the front page and for the single-post page Category/Tags/Bookmarks section styling.
The Hemingway theme, and its many variants, for the text-focus styling and the expanded footer seen throughout the site.
famfamfam’s Silk Icons set.
Gotchaforce, for his superior game dock icon sets on Deviant Art, used on the Dec 2006 design’s History and Guilds sidebars. I couldn’t find his licensing information in the sets or in his profile — I’m assuming sycophantic linking is sufficient.
The header images are (poorly doctored) screenshots from my gaming collection, except the one above, which is the famous Maxell dude. I used various photoshopped forms of the Maxell dude (aka Blown Away) for much of 2006’s blog header. His retirement was widely mourned — he lives on!
Over a dozen plugin authors for generously sharing their time and efforts.
And, the WordPress support forums for answering the 34,904 questions I had on how to do this and that. Long live open source!
Open Issues
Admin/register tab alignment- To hell with it. Put in footer and slapped some sense into it.Google toolbar autofill- possibly fixed with Google Toolbar 3, otherwise no idea how to fix thisEdit this post/page linkNoteworthy plugin not operational- fixed. Added if cat call to index, single, and archive.
Retired Designs and Banners
Guilds
December 26, 2006 by Foton • Filed Under Etc. • Comments Off
Lord of the Rings Online
- 04/07 - Present - Tiny kinship of WoW guildmates on vacation/hiatus from World of Warcraft. Currently working on noob - intermediate zones.
World of Warcraft
- 7/07 - Present - Smaller raid guild of mutineers and shanghaied players sailing the open seas of the 25-man gear zones.
- 11/05 - 7/07 - Endgame raiding guild with approximately 70-person roster, including level 60+ alts. Was working on Karazhan (for the slowpokes), Gruul’s Lair, Tempest Keep, and Serpentshrine Cavern, until I ruined that dream (to hear their side of the story). Pre-Burning Crusade: Blackwing Lair, Ahn’Qiraj-40, and partial Naxxramas on farm.
- 7/05 - 11/05 - Beginner raiding guild (aka TwatGuild) that was allied with the guild I joined in 11/05. The guild alliance was working on Molten Core and Onyxia at the time.
- 12/04 - 7/05 - Small guild of friends from other games, principally EverQuest. Our guild motto … No, you can’t join us.
- 11/04 - 12/04 - Star Wars Galaxies PVP guild moves to World of Warcraft. (AFK Gamer stories Part I and Part II)
Star Wars Galaxies
- 3/04 - 7/04 - Rebel PVP guild (that would eventually move intact to World of Warcraft).
- 8/03 - 2/04 - Small guild of friends, mostly from … (wait for it) … EverQuest. Primarily we were a tradeskill/crafter guild that sporadically got some PVP action. (Adventures chronicled in The Grumpy Master Architect) No drama in my leaving this guild – just grew weary of moving harvesters around each day and loading up factories.
Dark Age of Camelot
- 09/01 - 12/01 - Joined a guild of former Magestorm/EverQuest guildmates in the Dark Age of Camelot beta program and continued with them in the live version – heavily into Realm versus Realm (RVR) combat.
EverQuest
- 4/02 - 8/03 - Endgame raiding guild. EverQuest officially became a second job for me, however, that taught me an important lesson: Never again.
- 2/02 - 4/02 - Moved my characters to the newly opened Stormhammer server, the premium subscription server. Joined one of the guilds that formed on opening day out in East Karana. We did some raiding, progressed, then the Guild Leader walked away with the guild bank. (AFK Gamer story)
- 4/00 - 4/01 - Formed a new raiding guild with some players I grouped/leveled-my-alt-with near and in Karnor’s Castle. I became increasingly annoyed with the nightly whining and planned my escape into Anarchy Online and the Dark Age of Camelot beta.
- Late 3/00 - Early 4/00 - I joined this endgame guild shortly after the release of Ruins of Kunark, EQ’s first expansion — the only guild I’ve ever been kicked from. This is me being nice: I wasn’t right for them, they weren’t right for me. This is blunt: I’ve got better things to do than equip a guildleader’s whore wife, and I said so, with slightly more tact. At any rate, they booted my disrespectful ass unceremoniously one evening, shortly after I logged on. Heh, good for them — never woulda worked out.
- 1/2000 - 3/2000 - Beginner raiding guild that was in the middle of the curve, progression-wise. Eventually this guild fizzled, mostly because the Guild Leader started banging a new guildmember, and our Assistant Guild Leader, his real life wife, had a problem with that. Go figure. (AFK Gamer story)
- 3/99 - 12/99 - Magestorm guild moves to EverQuest. We spend most of our time in March 1999 asking guildmates if the servers are back up yet.
Rolemaster: Magestorm
- Autumn 96 - 3/99 - The best damn PVP guild in the game. This game didn’t have in-game mechanics for guilds; the best they could do for players was to change a character’s name to include a guild acronym at the end, e.g. Foton_GOTD, for Guild of the Douches in our example here.
Anyone who says we weren’t the best is LYING or has a poor memory.
afkgamer.com
