2008 June

Recommended Video: Priest Mind Control

After seeing this video I created a priest alt called Abzie.

Sulfuras: Another Remake

I’ve become discouraged. Sulfuras isn’t working out like I’d intended. The system itself is working quite well (and coded beautifully if I do say so) but I’ve been thinking “why?” Most guilds can just use EQdkp. So I copied Sulfuras to my backup directory and who the hell knows what I’ll be making of it.

Sulfuras: Basecamp meets WoW meets Awesome

Previously, Sulfuras was a WoW service site. But it’s evolved. What Sulfuras now is and will be is the Basecamp of World of Warcraft. It’s currently in development, and likely will be for a while, but here’s the run-down of what it will be.

• Users will register with a name and realm. Their guild will be extracted from the armory. Guildless users may not register. If their guild exists on Sulfuras, they’ll be redirected to it’s page. If not, they’ll be opted to create it and given admin status on it. They will have the ability to pass it on to another user.
• Guild page will have a calendar of current and upcoming raids. If a raid is scheduled for today, they will be alerted on each page they visit in a non-intrusive message at the top of each page. In a future release, a message board will exist for each guild.
• After a raid, members will submit the loot they got while on the raid. An admin will need to verify each item submitted. On a raid page, loot will be listed in addition to the member who got it.

Some more details:

• From back to front, it will be coded in Ruby on Rails CodeIgniter.
• It will use easily-degradable AJAX for item confirmations etc.

Best yet, a large portion of it including the user-system is already done. I still have a lot of work to do, but hey, it’s the summer. The current website will be up until I am able to take it down, until then you can view the new site at ?gutsy.

Fixing Scrolling Issues in WicketPixie

Out of the box, Chris Pirillo’s WicketPixie theme (the one you see on this site and his) feature some nasty scrolling issues. It’s very choppy and slow, and makes some sites nearly unreadable! But, the problem isn’t foreigners, it’s CSS elements with fixed attributes.

For comparison, scroll from top-to-bottom on both my website and Chris Pirillo’s. The difference should become fairly apparent!

Naturally, WicketPixie features two fixed elements. The background and the bar along the top. This means there are two steps in solving the scrolling issues, neither of which are very hard at all.

The first is going to the Design tab and viewing the WicketPixie options. Make sure Background Image Position is set to scroll, not fixed. Pixie was quite stubborn when I was changing this and it required a few attempts before the options actually saved. Be warned that the checkbox at the bottom of the options page becomes checked mysteriously regardless of your current settings. Be sure to uncheck it if you require before saving your options.

The second is slightly harder, but still no problem. It involves editing some CSS, which cannot be edited through the standard Theme Editor, but must be edited through FTP due to it’s location in wicketpixie/css/screen.css. Find the CSS for #topbar (it’s near the top!) and comment it out. This is done by adding /* before the # in #topbar and a */ after the } at the end of that block. This is so your changes can be reverted easily.

Next, paste the following anywhere in that same CSS file.

#topbar {
	position: absolute;
	top: 0;
	float: left;
	margin: 0;
	width: 100%;
	padding: 5px 0 19px;
	background: url("../images/topbar-bg.png") repeat-x 50% 100%;
	z-index: 999;
}

And voila! Your scrolling issues should be fixed.

Update: Zavrion has uploaded the edited screen.css file. Download it and upload it to WicketPixie’s css folder to apply the CSS changes above. Download!

Microsoft is Never Gonna Give You Up

Today I switched from my normal Xbox LIVE gamertag ABZ1NTHE to my new MLG custom-games only tag abzinthe OR NOT. In the process, I figured I might as well cancel my brother’s account while I’m at it. He hasn’t played in a few months and only ever uses my Xbox anyway, so I went to live.xbox.com and found out that I need to call Xbox tech support in order to unsubscribe.

I have an odd history of speaking with tech support.

Natalie was easy to talk to. Me, being Canadian, spelled out the “zau” in “zaussome” as zed-aye-you, and she kept asking how I spelled “zed.” I eventually noticed and said “zee” instead. She passed me to some other guy, I didn’t get his name, who would help me cancel.

I know I should have expected this, but while Microsoft is Never Gonna Give You Up, they aren’t at all hesitant about letting you down. He looked at the gamertag and said “Wow, you have plenty of acheivements. Are you sure you want all this work to go to waste?” I told him it was not my concern and neither his. He asked if I had any friends who might like to take control of the account (which is against there terms of service, by the way,) I told him that all of my friends already had a gamertag.

Eventually we actually get somewhere. He keeps twisting my words, but in the end he gives me a confirmation number and says the account will not renew itself after July 8th. After this, he says “okay,” and the line goes silent. I guess Microsoft will never say good bye.