I do not like bugs. At all.

That night it was very hard for me to fall asleep. I kept checking and rechecking my bed and in fact didn’t fall asleep until one am. This happened the following night as well. Absolutely petrified to get under the covers. This is worse than the time a giant moth was in my room and we never found its body. I really do not like bugs.

In less buggy news, I am in love with orange soda. I like working with IPB skins. So I thought, orange soda theme. Oh yeah. Anyway I haven’t actually made much progress on it yet, probably because I discovered orange is very…orange. But hopefully on next day off I’ll be able to focus on it.

Hi, I'm orange

Case in point, here is a gem from 2002, which would be near the sites genesis. Although thankfully the actual first layout is filled with X’s.

Moiraine and Thom...love bubble?

Back then, whatever the header image was I made sure the site matched. So all that lovely orange-red font/scrollbar/links would change. How exciting! I was surprised to discover how much more personal site updates were back then. Another aspect I blocked out, I guess.

My god that banner! I suppose back then everyone had ugly websites so I can forgive myself, but I can remember being so damn proud of my Paint Shop Pro 7 “skills”. Ah, the good ol’ days.

The most recent and functioning site snapshot in the Archive is from 2005.

How pale and...there.

I don’t have anything really against this layout. I think it does highlight how static the front page was for a good long time. Not to mention, the actual site description at some point vanished. Which reminded me Kate was suppose to help with that!

Anyway, after a brief break I started up my workout routine again only this time in the high intensity. Eh, yeah, needless to say my body is very tired. But it feels so good to be back to exercising. That’s about all I have to say about that.

But WOT! Oh WOT! Sweet has once again graced us with a wonderful cover, although at least you can tell who’s who unlike most works. Except his ever changing vision of bodybuilding Rand. But there is a comment over on Dragonmount that I just love to pieces!

Well, none of the characters look like the love child of Fabio and Timothy Dalton, posing for a romance novel. That’s a start. Also it doesn’t appear that any of the characters are in the middle of busting out The Robot on the dance floor. That’s good. He seems to have grown the characters from hobbit to normal human size, also an improvement. No impossible arm angles that remind me of things I drew in 4th grade.

I think secretly Darryl K. Sweet is a true genius artist. How does the man manage to create art, from scratch, that perfectly captures the awkwardness of a live photo shoot featuring models that have absolutely no idea how to look good for the camera? I would have to go through a lot of trouble finding people off the street, dressing them in funny clothes, and telling them to pose for me in some strange scene, in order to perfectly capture that “I have no idea what to do with my hands, eyes or face” look. Sweet can just draw it up freehand. I mean check out the Ben Kingsley/Captain Picard looking guy guarding the back of the line. I can almost hear the artistic director on the photo shoot telling him “Ok, we need this to be a candid shot, do NOT look at the camera!”. I can almost see in real motion Mr. Kingsley-Picard trying his damnedest not to look at the camera, and failing.

I never would have thought to make the Tower of Ghenjei out of that blue river rock I have on my back porch, but it looks pretty classy. I like how the roots of all three of the prominent trees in the background look like the legs of overweight women straddling camels headed in the same direction. And evidently Thom lately finds himself opting for a gleeman’s cloak with a European cut.

CK

I am very, very excited about this next book. But I swear on the baby Jesus there better not be a Moiraine cliffhanger. I do not even know what I would do.

Anyway, my writing. Thing of it is, since this past Wednesday I’ve been sick. I had an upset stomach Wednesday night, Thursday I came home with a fever, spent Friday feeling sorry for myself, Saturday trying to recover and now I just wish I could breathe normally. So it is doubtful I’ll make the deadline, although I will still try my best, but in all honesty this is the first time I’ve been able to sit at a computer without getting blurry eyed after five minutes.

Oh and also: I finally watched the pilot of Battle Star and wow, EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE NOW! Amazing how that works! I am not like Kate and reading up on everything because while she seeks out spoilers I hide from them, so I was clueless on so much but looking up would have revealed too much. Anyway, now I know.

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Why did I do this

All worth it..maybe

Anyway, Ayleena’s left leg is no longer spinning around like some teacup ride and any other doll that needs restring is just going to have to live with being floppy.

Even so the mild fear I had that More Workouts would be just a rehash of the original has been banished. There is no doubt in my mind that I will now be doing more intense sessions than previously. My legs muscles weep at the thought but in the long run it is for the best.

Like eating more fruit is for the best. I like fruit. I even like veggies. Getting myself to eat more of them is a bit of a challenge. But I bought a bunch of bananas on Saturday and if I don’t eat them soon they’ll go bad so, at least that’ll be however many servings taken care of over the next few days.

I’m still on a low meat intake diet. OK that makes it sound fancy but basically as I told Kate ages ago, I try to avoid meat aside from seafood. And since I live in the desert it isn’t like I encounter seafood dishes that often. This basically means fast food is out of the question which sucks because McDonald’s has some damn good cheap cheeseburgers. But the longer I go without the easier it gets. Or so I tell myself. It also saves me money (not eating fast food, that is) and that is always a good thing.

Civ V is coming

Civilization V is being developed and is expected fall of this year. Woohoo! It would seem they have been working on the game for awhile, and I’m not sure why they waited until now to announce it, but beggars can’t be choosers.

It is not that Civ IV has lost its glamor to me or anything, but I would like to see some much improved AI. Better combat would also be great, but to be honest I suck at war anyway. I will be spending time trying to actually improve on my own game skills–as if I had any–so at least I can have a good foundation when the new installment comes out. Although it would be nice if it made it easier to enjoy my turtle tendencies. Or maybe I should learn to not expand too far without a standing army. WHATEVER.

Civilization V takes this definitive strategy game series in new directions with the introduction of hexagon tiles allowing for deeper strategy, more realistic gameplay and stunning organic landscapes for players to explore as they expand their empire. The brand new engine orchestrates a spectacular visual experience that brings players closer to the Civ experience than ever, featuring fully animated leaders interacting with players from a screen-filling diplomatic scene and speaking in their native language for the first time. Wars between empires feel massive as armies dominate the landscape, and combat is more exciting and intense than ever before. The addition of ranged bombardment allows players to fire weapons from behind the front lines, challenging players to develop clever new strategies to guarantee victory on the battlefield. In addition to the new gameplay features debuting in Civilization V, an extensive suite of community, modding and multiplayer elements will also make an appearance. (source)

We never did do any multiplayer stuff on Civ IV, but maybe we will in V?

This is for Zenzen. 25k due March 28th Swedish time.

Jelsoft developers spoke of vBulletin 4, but then one day it was revealed that no actual work had been on 4, just talk. New, rather useless and/or ill implemented features were being added to the 3.x line, features that screamed “I want to be MySpace!”. There was the Ad Sense fiasco. Oh, not to mention price raises for both the product and renewal. And of course, the now infamous leak. Not only was vB4′s rewrite going to take years longer than expected, but Internet Brands seemed bound and determined to drive away long time customers.
After seeing version 4 in action I have to say I would be very disappointed if I had paid for that script. And when 5 comes around you’ll have to pay $$$ all over again!

On the IPB side, I recently added my voice to those who wanted a soft delete feature in IP.Board. After a couple of weeks a developer blog update showed that the team had made progress on implementing this into 3.1. That isn’t to say they stick in everything people request, but what they do is give feedback on their feedback. That is to say, if something won’t be added they explain why. They also ask for clarification of feature requests so they have a better idea of what the user is actually asking for, how’d they like it to work within the existing forum etc.

phpBB were, and probably still are, good with talking about their current development. They were just really stubborn and seemed to be focusing on how they themselves would administer a forum and maybe not so much on the end user experience. vBulletin seemed just as focused on trying to attract MySpace users to use VB powered forums, without really thinking things through. IPB seems to be trying to refine what they have before adding onto it, which is also something phpBB did. I guess when it comes down to it phpBB’s lack of spam protection is what makes me not really like being an admin of that software. I would pick MyBB over it. But even so, that free script is able to give better communication than vBulletin PR? I don’t even mean the guys behind the scenes busy coding, I mean people who are supposedly getting paid to talk to the customers.

Oh oh oh oh! I don’t know if it is obvious but I love reading about drama involving scripts! I did the same thing when Joomla! came into being, and now it seems SMF are going through some issues. There is the standstill in development and management issues. I never paid much attention to SMF because I find it ugly and confusing, so a lot of this is kind of “dur” for me, but still…drama drama drama.