EVula's Blog

A progress report on the Lair redesign

For those that don't know, I'm in the middle of redesigning the Lair. It's a pain in the ass project, to be sure, and has taken quite a bit longer than I was wanting it to. However, I am making progress.

I currently have 15 directories fully converted and verified that they are valid: About, Cheat Codes, Copyrights, Games, General, Misc., Escape Velocity, Humor, Opinions, Junk, Reviews, WarCraft 3, Quote Archive, EV Bible, and the Link Archive.

The main thing that has been eating up my time on this is sorting out all of the different styles for everything. A lot of my old code is, quite frankly, crap, meaning that I have to rethink a lot of it. For example, let's take the "Alien vs. Predator" line from the existing Reviews page (modified slightly for this page):

At least it uses <span> tags, I say; some of the parts of the Lair still have <font> tags. *shudder* Anyway, it's extremely cluttered, and has a ton of redundant tags. Here's what it has become (again, modified slightly for this page):

The first bit of code had 331 characters; the second has 141. That's less than half the size, and it looks exactly the same (though I did remove the < and > that exist currently, that's the only change). While it may not seem like a whole lot of code, on page with 31 instances (like the Movies page), it can start to add up.

Ultimately, though, I think that I'm going to end up slacking off when it comes to updating the entire site right now. When I put up everything, nothing will look like the current version of the Lair, but if I don't get much further along, I'm going to just quickly convert stuff over for the new style, rather than going, line by line, finessing every bit of code. Specifically, I'm guessing that the Survival Guide won't be validated until the middle of the year. :)

Eventually, this blog, the Store, and my personal site will all get recoded to match the rest of the Lair (right now the Store and personal site at least have the same look and feel; this blog, on the other hand...). However, I'm probably not going to worry about that until after I publically update the Lair for two reasons:

1. I need yet one more thing to do like I need a rash on my ass. Lovely mental imagery, I realize, but it's true. At this point, I just want the update to be done, period.
2. The Store and Blog will be very tough. Because the blog is run through MovableType, rather than a simple file (like I have everything else on the Lair), I'll have to tweak a few things to make sure all the templates are updated properly. The Store, on the other hand, will be forced to have seperate style sheets; one for the local Store pages (which I won't give a damn about being valid; too much work to convert CafePress' code every single time), and one for the CafePress pages (since CafePress forcibly inserts something into the header of every page, I can't just override it with my own code).

Once I'm done with the Lair update, I'll be able to turn my attention towards other sections of the Empire. I did up a To Do list for 2005, and I'm going to be making some major changes to evula.org later this year, as well as a few things here and there on evula.net. Maybe something even bigger is on the horizon... <cryptic grin>

Hah, spam is funny!

This is just too damn funny. I got an email titled "MAIL SYSTEM ERROR - RETURNED MAIL":

Dear user evula@evula.com,

We have received reports that your e-mail account was used to send a huge amount of spam messages during the recent week.
Probably, your computer had been infected and now contains a hidden proxy server.

Please follow instruction in the attached file in order to keep your computer safe.

Sincerely yours,
evula.com technical support team.

Now, aside from the smug smile I have on my face that is the result of having a Mac and not needing to worry about the aforementioned hidden proxy server (or the .zip file that was attached to the email), the "evula.com technical support team" part is going to have me laughing for the rest of the week. Good job, spammers! :)

I now have a validated blog, hot diggity damn!

So I'm just a little bored here at work, so I decided to validate my entire blog. Well, not the whole thing; I only went back to the Adventures in CSS entry; I decided to stop there because (a) I'm not that bored and (b) that's when I first started really caring about valid code, so it seems to be a good place to stop. Maybe I'll patch everything else up at some point down the road, but for right now, it's good enough for me.

I suppose that, once I get a bit further along with the Lair conversion (a lengthy entry about that is forthcoming), I'm going to want to put up some sort of teaser about what everything will look like. Is there anything in particular that you want to know about it?

The Forums are back!

Because of the hard work from andcarne and his brother David, the Forums are now back. All of the deleted users have been restored, though there are a few glitches in the system; all of their email addresses are just plain wrong. If you email me about it, I'll fix it so that you can recover your account.

Also, all deleted accounts lost all their PMs and user data (signature, preferences); that's a small loss, though, when you consider the fact that you at least have all your posts. :)

Another glitch that we'll need to get through is the complete and total lack of proper permissions for certain boards. Those of you missing your mod spots should mention as much in your emails.

Edit: If you're having trouble logging in, delete your old cookies for the Forums. That should clear up any issues.

Personal Stuff

So, I found out yesterday that my (somewhat estranged) ex-stepdad is dying of sclerosis of the liver. Today, I went and saw him at the nursing home that he's at right now.

He's in rough, rough shape. He can barely talk, and was breathing very slowly, heavily assisted. I was only there about 10 to 15 minutes; I didn't know what to say, and when I did try to make small talk, he could barely speak. The fact that he was tired and kept slipping in and out of consciousness didn't make conversation any easier, either. Eventually he made note of the fact that he was so damn tired and I told him I was going to leave to let him sleep. I'm going to go see him again on Saturday; with any luck, he'll be dead by then. I feel sorry for him, and he must be in fairly intense pain. The only thing I can wish for him now is a quick, painless death.

In other news, the Forums are almost ready to come back; the only thing remaining on them is for me to upgrade phpBB. Oddly enough, I don't feel like doing that right now. Go figure.