Computer

Finally updated to Drupal 6.3, a security update.

Wasn't much to tweak, just had to remember my hacks for taxonomy.module (to sort taxonomy by weight and name) and taxonomy.pages.inc (depth = 'all' instead of depth = 0). Oh, and the latest Views release candidate introduced some small changes that had me go into the announce_block view to fix how it displayed the date field. (It was putting a label I didn't want.)

More or less it was a painless update (as it often is) so woo! I could either do more tag cleaning, or just sit here and space out at the screen. :P

*stares*

...or I could try to update Marinelli theme. I'm a version behind, but I rewrote enough code from the original that it'll be a bit of a pain, considering the fact I am all lazy about learning to use a revision control system. I really should get into that habit sometime soon. :/

...well, to be honest it's something I've wanted to actually redo for a while. The Caduceus site, I mean.

Here's the main page that I've already shown before, and the actual journal part. The purpose of the journal will be for Jon and I to write in-character things about Ryshy and Alexsei, to help us flesh out how we'll separate them from Exalted's Creation and into Eskarne (my original setting for the Anthegenia Cycle, and yes, also the name I gave the Great Bird in Reborn Again. It means "Mercy".)

For the user profiles, I ended up using a nifty Nucleus plugin for customizable profiles. Even if there'll only ever be two users for the Caduceus, I just had to get it done *right*. ^^;

I went through a few different and interesting blog software and CMSs before settling back with Nucleus, one of my staple favorites:

Okay, so I tried restarting Sims 2 and it just wouldn't start. At all. Jon went and looked for a solution for me 'cause I was busy fuuuming. D: Turns out that I needed to delete my groups.cache and accessories.cache from C:\My Documents\EA Games\Sims 2 (or the Vista equivelant which is more like C:\Users\[myusername]\Documents\EA Games\Sims 2).

I guess either Freetime itself, or the patch, ends up writing garbage into those caches, so I had to delete them to force the game to remake 'em. (Of course, I backed them up first, and you should too if you want to try this).

Other stuff... (mostly RPish)

So, the next expansion, the 8th (?!?) is going to be "Apartment Life" it looks like. The concept seems somewhat like University except with no school, and it applies through a Sim's entire lifespan.

Man. I know I am going to buy it. =_=

I recently uploaded a patch for Freetime that included a Securom update that borked my game. Well, I got the dreaded message indicating a conflict with emulation software (which I don't haaaave. This computer is clean!) I was despairing I wouldn't be able to play, until I found this link to a forum explaining how to fix it.

To put it short, rename your SIMS2EP7.exe (found here, assuming you did the default install: C:/Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 FreeTime/TSBin) and download this new version straight from Securom.

Worked for me! :O So thought I'd pass it along in case others who play Sims 2 PC and run into the same problem come across my site.

Just did a few changes to the node layouts. So exciting, huh? :P

I decided (after editing Talliska's journal to do the same) that I'd only display categories on the teaser, and put the tag list at the very end of the full node view. Makes things look less cluttered, though it doesn't actually reduce db queries, since I have to traverse the terms *anyway* to pull out the categories separate from the tags. But that's to be expected.

Also I tweaked the code so the author/date/categories will only display for blog entries. (Pages are static, and events have their own dates on them anyways.) And I went into contemplate and edited the node template for events so it wouldn't use <h3> any more.

Now I really want to play Talliska in DR, but I keep futzing around with the journal instead! =_= And making things like this (a placeholder page, helped me practice basic CSS) and this (made with Nucleus - I'll stick a PSU screenshot in the layout later to make it look more interesting.)

(Also, this post ended up LONG!)

But I've mostly gotten things set up the way I wanted them, now. Here's some of the annoying things I had to contend with:

1) The user login box had odd formatting for the list bullets. I was actually ranting to Kalli about this for a while. I finally fixed it, by taking out the line-width argument the creator of my base theme (it's called marinelli, by the way) stuck in the loginblock CSS.

2) I made the BAD mistake of trying to activate the theme developer module packaged with devel. I don't know WHAT was wrong with it, but it started eating my PHP memory like crazy whenever I loaded the modules page. Geez... I had bumped up the max allocation in php.ini to 40M and it was still trying to allocate more! And it started spitting bunches of raw code at me, too.

Bleargh... I hate CSS. I really, really hate CSS!

On the other hand, though, I have Drupal 6.2 running now, after a day of slaving over database backups (I had to do a restore at one point, it was painfully slow and nervewracking), manually updating modules, having to redo my URL aliases at least twice, and *re*-learning Views because Views 2.0 has an entirely different layout to it. (I managed to get all my views working again, though, woo.)

I'm still poking at various little niggling details of things. Having such a beautiful monitor is a blessing and a curse... I *love* the way my site looks on my screen, but some of the colors just look horrific on Jon's. Argh. I grew out of sticking to web-safe colors a long time ago, so I guess that's to be expected, but it's annoying looking over his shoulder and thinking to myself "Bleah, that looks SO much uglier than I thought it did!"

Oh, I managed to find a non-database query intensive way to print categories and tags per entry. But I still have to tweak the full views... now they print tags twice. WTF! Ahhhh, going to be a long night still, I can tell.

I got my limited edition boxed set of Portishead's new album, Third, yesterday.

My god, it's *gorgeous*. I mean... it's everything I was hoping it'd be and yet it's surprised me a lot. I mean, it's Portishead, without a doubt. The whole album has their mark on it. But it's got a different feel to it from their previous two albums. I think it's particularly the percussionist(s?) they started using, it gives something of a primal feel to the songs. Yet it's still electronic, primarily, or at least acoustic put through electronic filters.

So it's this mix of primal and modern... timeless, somehow, and with Beth Gibbons' haunting vocals floating over it all. It's just... beautiful. I mean, this is THE album of the year for me. I waited 11 years to hear what Barrows, Utley and Gibbons could come up with musically and creatively, and I am NOT disappointed.

I've been playing this album... over... and oooover... on repeat. Going to learn every one of the vocals if I can!

I ran Emberdays today, because duh, it's Monday!

And I ended up running a lot longer than I thought. Like, 3 hours longer. *boggle* Mainly because I was too pissed/distracted the night before to really work on anything. I'd say more, but the reasons are too personal to say here.

I ended up spending the majority of the time trying to keep up with all my NPCs while writing the descs for all the guests, and then the people at the end: Miral (who for some reason decided to pick on Valeriya, bad NPC!) and Daruban in particular. I was saving Daruban's entrance for last, though I don't know how it will affect things just yet.

I'm tired... really worn out, but I'm installing Sims 2. Slooooow process. I'm on the third expansion as I speak (Nightlife) and have 4 more to go. I also found out I forgot to save my Churasan eps before reformatting the old hard drive. So sad. Those took *forever* to torrent and now they're all gone. :(

I'll write more when I feel coherent enough to write stuff. o.O

I ran more ED today, which... went all right, I think. It was just slow and delayed, and Valeriya hardly got any play, which made me sad. She still got to drag Kamal along though. Hah, it amused me to write him there, like some sort of angry tiger on a leash.

The pacing kinda got shot by my lateness and slow posts and such, so hopefully I can get things going again next week. Grey and Kraken are going to play Milena's convo with Iesan later in the week (probably Friday.)

Other than that... Soul Collectors is slowly shaping up in terms of players. I've got: a Dusk Abyssal, Dawn and Eclipse Solars and a No Moon Lunar. (The Eclipse is the only completed sheet so this roster may change later). I'm still wondering whether I gave too much for the chargen. :/ I probably did, but it's too late to change it now, sadly. So I just have to hope, HOPE! that the others will be reasonable.