User talk:Aichon

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Aichon

ˈīˌkän :Talk

Announcement: I'm no longer active. My talk page is still your best bet to get in touch. —Aichon— 04:39, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Please be aware of the following guidelines before posting here.

• New conversations should be started at the bottom using a level two header (e.g. ==Header==).
• I like to keep conversations wherever they start, but if a conversation ends up here, I will keep it here.
• I will format comments for stylistic reasons, delete comments for whatever reason, and generally do anything else within reason.

Thanks. —Aichon—

Archives: 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | To do

Massively Overdue Quizzle Prize

	Dancing Bear made of Gold!
	Yonnua has given Aichon an animated .gif of a dancing bear made of gold for solving a quizzle! (It might take a second to load)

--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 23:24, 2 October 2010 (BST)

Improvements to UDMap Script

I made several improvements to the UDMap script that I'd like to share with the rest of the world. My version of the script is currently available here. Would you be willing to incorporate these changes back into your own script page? I figured it would be easier for people to download off of your page since they already know where to find it, etc. I don't even have my own User:Thvortex page setup yet on the wiki. Anyway, below is the list of improvements I made.

• Clicking on a space in the suburb map opens the wiki page for that location in a new browser window. Yes, this works for all 100,000 locations :) It's handy for checking the recent status of a building. It did make the script about 300KB larger to include the link information.
• When moving the mouse over the suburb, there is now a GPS coordinate added to the name of the building or street over which the mouse is hovering.
• Clicking on the city map to change the suburb view did not work in Firefox and GreaseMonkey because of the security model that GreaseMonkey uses. Basically window.switch_map doesn't work but GreaseMonkey has a workaround in the form of unsafeWindow.switch_map. Please verify my script still works in Safari though.
• I make use of DumbWitness a lot, and I noticed that UDMap didn't quite work right in the captured screenshot. Basically, moving the mouse over the suburb map was not displaying the building names anymore. Turns out that DumbWitness was munging the page a little bit and when it saw a \" double-quote escape in a Javascript string it would cut off the rest of the code. So in one place I switched to using single quotes and apparently DumbWitness doesn't mind a \' escape. Of course, clicking on the city map in the DumbWitness screenshot still won't do anything because that requires a call-back to the user script, and that's no longer accessible in the captured screenshot.

--Thvortex 20:58, 12 October 2010 (BST)

Holy cow, those changes are awesome and that's a lot of work you did there. Looking through the diff file, I don't see anything unexpected, and after installing it on Safari and fooling around with it a bit, I absolutely love the changes you made (and, yep, the unsafeWindow change works fine).

How did you get all of the location links anyway? I had considered a feature like that at one point, but didn't feel like making a program to go through and determine the valid ones links from the invalid. I figured it'd just be easier and more generally useful at this point to push through a wiki project which aimed to create pages for each set of coordinates which then redirect to the actual location page, but I hadn't gotten around to that either. >_<

The only change I might make is to put the coordinates at the front of the line, rather than the end, that way they don't look like they bounce around so much, but otherwise I absolutely love it all.

Also, I get the distinct impression that you're much more proficient at this stuff than I am (it's just an idle time hobby for me), so any changes you want to suggest to other scripts would be most welcome. —Aichon— 21:29, 12 October 2010 (BST)

What I'd like to know is if this will break any of Aichon's current scripts... >_< --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 21:34, 12 October 2010 (BST)

It doesn't. The changes he made don't affect any of my other scripts from what I can see. I'll have an updated copy linked from my userscripts page in a sec. I did move the coords to the front of the name, and I also turned off the display for dark buildings and educational buildings, since I had inadvertently uploaded that version of the script awhile back (I use that myself for my Philosophe Knight, since we care about Centers of Learning, but I didn't mean to put it up for general use), but otherwise left it pretty much as you had it, Thvortex. —Aichon— 21:41, 12 October 2010 (BST)

Aichon, For the non-descript locations I did a search/replace with regular expressions where the replace string can have \1, \2, etc. to substitute in parenthesized parts of the regex match. To handle the building names, I actually wrote a Python script that processed the Javascript array definitions to figure out which names are duplicate and therefore need to have the suburb added to the link. If you're curious, I can give you that little script as well. For a few like "The Dewberry Building" I had to go back and fix the links by hand. And I meant to say 10,000 locations not 100,000 :)

And I agree that putting the GPS coordinates in the front is a better idea.

While I do a lot of programming at work, it's all operating system code in C. I'm still somewhat of a newb when it comes to Javascript and Web development in general.--Thvortex 22:17, 12 October 2010 (BST)

Dangit all, why didn't I think of just processing over that array? Such a simple solution. For some reason I had it in my head to run a bot over the wiki in order to resolve the building names that repeat, and it was going to be more effort than it was worth. And sure, I'd be interested in having a copy of that script around for possible later use. —Aichon— 00:15, 13 October 2010 (BST)

The script is here. Commented lines on top are the search/replace expressions I've been using. The Javascript declarations were close enough to Python's that I could just copy & paste the code over. The extra o += ... code was to keep the order of the declarations the same on output. I would tweak the script slightly for each building type.--Thvortex 06:43, 13 October 2010 (BST)

Many thanks. And thanks again for the changes to the script. They still look great a day later. ;) —Aichon— 22:46, 13 October 2010 (BST)

Damn my eyes!

Where is UD? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 13:37, 15 October 2010 (BST)

Found it. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 13:41, 15 October 2010 (BST)

I'm so confused... —Aichon— 16:18, 15 October 2010 (BST)

Your News update from the 6th. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 17:33, 15 October 2010 (BST)

Oh, that wasn't my update. Someone else posted it. I just responded. —Aichon— 18:10, 15 October 2010 (BST)

mac

What IRC client do you use on mac? Also, what's the story behind the text gradient code you have as your header on this page that can only be seen on safari? It's incredible. -- LEMON #1 13:51, 16 October 2010 (BST)

Colloquy is my preferred IRC client (I use it with the Synapse theme that it comes with). It's free and works great.

As for the gradient, basically, both Firefox and the WebKit browsers (Safari and Chrome) support "alpha masks", which you can kinda think of as images that you can put on top of/overlay on other images or text which make different parts of the lower image transparent to different extents. For a different analogy, they're more like those slides/transparencies that you'd use with the old fashioned overhead projectors, but rather than being completely clear, you can put any image on them that you want, and when you lay it over another slide/transparency, it would block out parts of the lower image. Anyway, in addition to that, WebKit supports the ability to create gradients programmatically, which can then be used as an alpha mask. So, that's what I did. It should work in both Safari and Chrome, I believe. Firefox will eventually get the ability to do it, I'm sure. And maybe in 10-15 years IE users (assuming it's even still around) might be able to enjoy it too. :P —Aichon— 17:08, 16 October 2010 (BST)

Oh man, that's fantastic, didn't realise it worked on Chrome too. -- LEMON #1 07:56, 18 October 2010 (BST)

If something works on Safari, 999 times out of 1000, it works on Chrome too, since Google used Apple's open source WebKit rendering engine as the basis for Chrome. I've run into a few things that work differently, especially since Chrome auto-updates with newer versions of WebKit whereas Safari users have to wait for Apple to push out updates, but they are almost always identical in terms of how they show things. —Aichon— 09:12, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Sweet. Is it only text specific, or can I apply it to styles as a whole? For example, say, my current signature, could I make the background gradiented and leave the text normal? -- LEMON #1 10:53, 18 October 2010 (BST)

You can use it for whatever. If you wanted to use the gradient as an input to a background-color, I see no reason why it wouldn't work. You could bypass the entire alpha mask too, if you just want a gradient. —Aichon— 15:35, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Yagoton Groups template

I don't actually care about the Sanitarium being in the historical groups or not. However, all they ever did in Yagoton is that ridiculous cinema tour, back in '07. I don't deny the historical facts at all... However, they have never really been located in Yagoton nor did they been at all active in this suburb since this time (if we can call that active...). If you think they don't deserve to be placed in the historical groups then I don't really know where to place them. I have already deleted their name in the active group on the main Yagoton page before transfering them to the template. If they get removed everywhere, they'll simply get forgotten.

Not really a problem for me, mind you... But I thought it would be best that I mention it. -- •Eagle of Fire• 

 •[Talk]•  05:30, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Oh, I don't have a problem with them being outright removed. In fact, that's generally the preferred way of handling groups that didn't make a profound impact on the suburb. So, yeah, if you don't think they should be listed with Yagoton (and based on what you described, I think you're right in saying they shouldn't be), then feel free to remove them completely. —Aichon— 05:35, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Erm... Seriously? If I were to do that, I would probably erase at least half the groups. :P

I don't think it would be a wise idea. Even though the vast majority of those groups didn't have much of a profound impact, they are still part of the history of this suburb. We simply happen to have a lot of it around... -- •Eagle of Fire• 

 •[Talk]•  06:32, 18 October 2010 (BST)

As long as we're talking about historical groups, ehhh, it's your call, since it's a suburb you know far better than I, but if it were my call, I probably would go ahead and erase about half of them.

If you look around at most of the other suburbs, you won't see many or any historical groups, and that's because the bar is pretty high to be considered historical (a lot of people actually seem to support the idea that a group should be listed in Category:Historical Groups before they can be listed in that section of the suburb listing, but that is by no means an actual rule). Yagoton definitely has a more storied history than most suburbs, as you pointed out, which I think was the reason they already had more suburb-level historical groups than probably any other suburb in the game (5, prior to your edit).

Even so, the usual protocol is to just delete groups that go inactive unless they made a big impact on the suburb, as I said, and if you look at other significant suburbs, such as Darvall Heights, Ridleybank, or Pitneybank, you won't see nearly that many historical groups listed there (3, 0, and 4, respectively). That may be an indication that the bar is set too low in Yagoton now (12 groups after your edit). Plus, adding so many of them dilutes the impact of having the other ones that are definitely historical listed (e.g. Amish Liberation Front, Ghetto Cow, and Gingerbread Men, all of which attained city-wide recognition).

Rather than take my word or have to make a tough choice yourself, however, I might suggest that you instead merely post a list of the groups that went inactive on the talk page for the suburb and try to garner some consensus on which of them should be considered historical, using the ones that were already listed as the bar against which the new ones would be measured.

If we're talking about Sanitarium, however, since they are possibly still active elsewhere, they should not go in historical (that section is only for inactive groups), but if they are not in Yagoton currently, then they should not be in Hostile either. This sort of thing is pretty common on the wiki, and the proper course of action is to simply remove them. I'll probably do it tomorrow if you don't beat me to it, honestly. —Aichon— 09:42, 18 October 2010 (BST)

If you ask me, I'd be way more prompt to remove Ghetto Cow and Gingerbread Men from the list than I would do the Sanitarium. I played all my character life in Yagoton and I never even knew they existed before they appeared on the list...

That's why I am reluctant to do hasty changes. They might have been present in Yagoton but I never met them. Or they might simply have been added because they did a very minor visit in the past... It is not really easy to know.

As for the Sanitarium: while I know that group is still active elsewhere, they definitely had an impact in the suburb a long time ago and then left. That they are still an active group or not was not really of concern to me when I added them there: I added them there because they were an historical group of Yagoton itself. The Wiki terminology is always confusing and easily wrongly interpreted. It is no wonder that there is constant edits over edits. -- •Eagle of Fire• 

 •[Talk]•  16:14, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Well, I could easily see re-adding them once they go inactive (or if they return, of course), but the purpose of the list is to either highlight active groups or inactive ones that made an impact. Since they fit into neither at the moment, they should be removed. I know the language is confusing, but that is what's meant by it. And, again, I'd suggest taking it to your suburb's talk page, since they'd be better judges of which to keep and dump than I would be. —Aichon— 19:08, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Don't I need....

A reevaluation 8 months after my last promotion? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 20:28, 18 October 2010 (BST)

Nope, not unless you get demoted. Bureaucrats aren't subject to re-evaluation unless they get demoted since their election counts as a show of community support. So, for you guys, we show the next time that your seat is up for election on that template. The only "evaluations" you have to worry about are the usual 3 month cycles or a 12 month mandatory election if for some reason you didn't go up in the meantime. —Aichon— 22:51, 18 October 2010 (BST)