Overhaul

Nov. 14th, 2006 12:03 pm
azurite: (kaiba's the reason waldo is hiding)
As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I'm cleaning out Dragonfayth. Yesterday I just finished implementing a new IP-logging spam prevention measure, and I've already put in a block against Anonymous reviews altogether, and Challenge spam. I've deleted all the spam from the database that I could find (challenges, reviews, etc.) and I sincerely apologize to any members who were inundated with emails from "me" (my email address acts like the Dragonfayth bot that sends out notifications; if you have a spam filter on your email, it may have started blocking my address based on the spam reviews that kept coming in from my address) that had all that spam in it. If ANYONE ever receives ANY kind of spam at Dragonfayth, please let me know immediately so I can take care of it.

On the list for updates to finish:
* Update the character page (more images needed; if someone could check out the Characters page and tell me if I'm MISSING any character profiles at all, that would be much appreciated)
* Update the Help page with Dragonfayth-specific problems
* Update the Submission rules page
* Update the Story Types mod
* Re-add the Poll mod
* Re-add the Featured Author/Story mod(s)
* Re-add the LJ and FFnet Profile Links mod(s)

If anyone can think of any others, from skins to mods available from the eFiction site, let me know.

[livejournal.com profile] betasquad has been SO dead afaik, so I will be killing the phpBB forums for that. There's no sense in having a disorganized database, after all. Next up for cleaning up the database would be giving WikiFic its own database, and doing the same for any other PHP/database scripts I have running (like Enth3 for BEA). I'll see what I can do without making an utter mess of my domain(s). Also, since I have regular 'Net, I should update the main layout and such soon.

That's all I can think of at the moment... I need to post one more (completely OT to this and bordering on fangirly) thing, and then I think I'll take a nap.
azurite: (anzu eye)
Well, fuck. I went to Dragonfayth to finally post the Winter challenge I mentioned here in my LJ a while back, and I noticed there were over 1000 challenge PAGES. Not individual challenges, but CHALLENGE PAGES. Of course all but 2 were spam, and I'm stuck deleting them in batches of 30 in phpMyAdmin. This will take a while. I've since patched eFic 2.0 to not allow anonymous challenges. I will eventually add my winter challenge, and I hope anyone else who has made prompts, fanmixes, or anything else will consider joining DRFA (if they haven't already) and including their challenges.

I'm also contemplating doing a complete overhaul of the databases on my domain, because
a) no one uses the Betasquad forums, to my knowledge, and it's not worth the extra space to have it there.
b) they're disorganized as it is, with the old Epiphany eFic tables located in the same database as Dragonfayth's, WikiFic, and phpBB. But I don't know if/how I can move those sites that I still intend to keep active (i.e. WikiFic, Dragonfayth, eventually Epiphany) to their own databases. Can anyone help?

Oh, and one more thing...

SCOTT IS COMING HOME!
I probably shouldn't be so thrilled that it didn't work out for him in Turkmenistan, and truthfully, it *WAS* unexpected (for him to say he was going back to the U.S), but for some reason, I'm happy that I'll get to see him MUCH sooner than either of us thought.
azurite: (hyd t&t i love you)
Let's see...
* Upgraded Dragonfayth and the site-that-will-be-known-as-Epiphany to eFic 2.0.5 with patches from 4/27 and 4/29.
* Added Story Type and LJ Link mod; still need to add Featured Author, Poll, and others
* Screwed around with this new option in cPanel called ClickBe! Made a weird, semi-ugly version of a new layout, seen here. Has anyone used this ClickBe! thing before? I can't figure out how to change the masthead, add my site title, change the name of links, get information to show up on the main page, or get more than 2 links to show up in the links page.

I also talked to Scott for nearly an hour tonight-- turns out he's not so worried about his phone costs, because he accidentally already paid his May bill, and he even had credit leftover! Hah, funny how that works out. It's almost weird that we're talking so much ABOUT so much, because really, we go all over the map with our conversations. One of the big ones is us going up to San Francisco from 7/17 to 7/21 or 22, though, and I'm not sure how we're going to do it-- drive, plane, or train are all feasible activities, with plane just being slightly more expensive and ludicrous compared to the others. It's quicker, too. Anyway, he's still got to find the time off, and I have to get the money from working.

>_> Dr. Lopez hasn't gotten back to me yet about Tokiwa's credit transferring, or whether the courses I plan to take are upper-division or unit equivalent. Prof. Hirota might be able to help, but she won't be here or available until next Thursday! ARGH!

Still need to:
* clean room
* write papers
* play FFX and FFX-2 (I WILL BEAT YOU, VIA INFINITIO!)
* scrapbook
* figure out website crap
* watch Indiana Jones
* stop staying up so damn late when I WAS tired before!

Meeeeeeeeeeh. Lately I just don't have much to say. It doesn't come out right, anyway.
azurite: (Seto x Anzu Grr/textured)
Okay, so I managed to kinda-sorta-not-really figure out what's going on with the images for Azurelist, my very boring (as of this moment)-looking collective. Eventually I'll get a spiffy layout up, and it'll essentially link to all my sites, all the fanlistings I own (all of ONE at the moment), all the affiliates I have for all my sites (can be broken down if they're affiliates of an FL of mine) and fanlistings I've joined. I'll have to go to all those FLs and notify them of the change of URL...

But the stupid thing is, even if I've got the images showing up in Azurelist, they're not showing up in e3, the admin panel for the whole Enthusiast 3 script. I cannot figure out why. If I change one root path to work one place, it doesn't work someplace else. Why can't the damn install file be a bit more explicit about what path goes where, and what the format should be? When should it be /home/username/public_html/... and when should it be http://www.something.net?

Here's the confusing bit:
(1) You can go to Settings in the admin panel and change the path for the installation path, the root path (Web), the root path (Absolute), the Affiliates Images Directory (collective), the Joined images directory, and the Owned images directory. I changed the latter 3 to just plain affiliates/, joined/, and owned/, but while they show up in Azurelist, they don't show up in the Management section of the install (e3).

(2) For individual fanlistings, you can go to Owned, Edit, Database, and head to the Affiliates section, and select the Move Directory radio button. It says this: Please don't forget the trailing slash; this folder (absolute path, i.e., /home/user/public_html/images/) must have proper permissions set (i.e., must be CHMODed to 777). Well, like I mentioned before, there are two places where there is the affiliates folder. In the individual fanlisting folder (bea/affiliates) and in the collective folder. But it's having the same problem as above. o_o I don't know what to change it to! It keeps on trying to pull the images from http://www.seventh-star.net/e3/owned/2_ceruleansan_88x31a.gif when the image is really at http://www.seventh-star.net/azurelist/owned/2_ceruleansan_88x31a.gif. But I don't know where that e3 root path is coming from, except for the 'Installation path' which is SUPPOSED to be at e3... I think. AUGH!

Does anyone know what I could do? (Aside from copy/pasting the folders... a temporary, and annoying solution)

Tagged by [livejournal.com profile] seeshellirunMemes to distract me from what I should be doing )

TAG!
[livejournal.com profile] atlantian_magic
[livejournal.com profile] guardian_kysra
[livejournal.com profile] rhapsody_dragon
[livejournal.com profile] schmollieollie

I'm looking forward to working more on WDKY, but I realize I should probably try and find some episodes online. I don't care if their dub or if some amazing person actually had the mojo and time to sub the original Japanese episodes... but I can't handle raws. Anyone know where I can go? GetItFido takes forever to load (if it loads at all).

I'm still confused about this whole metric system thing. I must have asked this a bazillion times, and I know I never would have left the chapter completely unconverted. I shouldn't be so much of a nitpicker, but I am. After all the conversions this silly sugar cookie recipe has been through, I doubt it could make a tasty batch after all. But that's what suspension of belief is for, right?

In any case, here's my main question:
What is used for DRY measure in the metric system? I've heard grams, I've heard mL and Liters, and I've heard metric tablespoons. Supposedly there's even a metric cup! I'm finding all this conflicting information though, so I would just like to know what metric folks have in their kitchens.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but grams is for weight, right? Ergo, if I had X amount of flour measured in grams, it would NOT be the same amount of brown sugar, right (in grams), because flour is lighter than brown sugar, yes? An equivalent WEIGHT of brown sugar would likely mean a SMALLER amount... if I've got this right.

So here's the recipe (sugar cookies):
1 1/2 cups sugar <--> 287.5 mL (should this be in grams?)
2/3 cup shortening or butter <--> 153 grams
2 eggs <--> SAME
2 tablespoons milk <--> about 30 mL
1 teaspoon vanilla extract <--> about 5 mL
3 1/4 cups flour <--> about 323 mL (should this be in grams?)
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder <--> 11.5 grams
1/2 teaspoon salt <--> 2.47 mL or 3.04 grams (which should this be?)

Now, do my conversions (done at http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/cookingconversions.asp, thanks [livejournal.com profile] guardian_kysra!) make sense? Would someone in a "metric kitchen" have the spoons, dry measure cups/spoons, and liquid measure cups/spoons to measure things like this?

Whew!

Jan. 9th, 2006 01:22 am
azurite: (bow before anzu!)
Okay, so my last three entries are What Doesn't Kill You Review Replies for chapters 19, 20, and 21 respectively. Chapter 22 is now up on FFnet and the old version of my site, though I'm still working on correcting past chapters before I put the story up to that point on Dragonfayth. MMorg is coming next.

Blue Eyes and Apricots will soon do an email check-- so if you joined with an email you're no longer using, please correct it now! I will be sending a mass email to everyone, and if it gets bounced, I will remove those members from the list. I already did that for one person tonight ([livejournal.com profile] winterwing3000? Our "problem" is solved.) and I will do it for more. TAFL also notified me that they got my "Finished" form, so it's official-- we're official! However, I seem to be having a weird error with the script where people are joining but not showing up in the admin panel. I don't know what is causing this, as the site IS patched against security issues, and I haven't made any changes to the config.php file. Hopefully I'll get some sort of reply on the forums.

Dragonfayth may also be having errors-- has anyone besides [livejournal.com profile] guardian_kysra had trouble uploading stories? If so, the problem might be a timeout error caused by Copy-Pasting the stories rather than uploading them from a file. Try saving the stories as TXT, DOC, or HTML files, and uploading them that way. If that still doesn't work, the script HAS updated to 2.0.3, and there have been 2 security patches that I wasn't aware of. I'm going to find out what I need to do to fix these and still maintain the mods we've made. Here's a tentative list of mods, just in case the site gets buggy in the next few days as I update:
* Fanfiction.Net Author Link
* LiveJournal Link
* Advanced TinyMCE editor with PHP Compressor (+ Security update)
* Featured Author block
* Poll block
* Story "Type" mod

I'm going to find out if I can make the patch updates to the files without overwriting the mods; since I have so many mods, I'm not sure which files I edited, and I don't want to have to do them over and over again. But if you experience any problems, let me know.

I'm going to be a little batty lately what with work today, tomorrow, and Wednesday, and also trying to juggle getting money for Study Abroad any way that I can. I'll still be working on site updates and WDKY23, but if I'm hard to reach, that's why.

Oh, [livejournal.com profile] baine? I read those chapters you sent me, and I have this to say about that: YOU FREAK ME OUT, WOMAN! That's pretty much all I can think of, though.

Er, anything else? If so, you'll find out later. I have to get SOME sleep tonight.
azurite: (bad grammar. no cookie!)
Okay, so I finally got around to updating the eFiction archive on Animanga Collision. I've decided to scrap the idea of separate sites, and just work everything together under the masthead of Animanga Collision. It's cute, it's old school, and it's going to have tons of stuff. So far, there aren't too many anime or manga listed, but that'll obviously change as I remember what I know about everything. I don't aim for AMC to be the end-all, be-all site for every anime or manga I've ever been in... and there will be games there as well, such as FFX, Star Ocean 2, and so forth.

It's planned to only be a one-person site; that is, I'll be the only author there. There's already wide-open archives out there, though I'm open to other people signing up and commenting/reviewing, or possibly in the future, submitting rants and essays. I'll be taking care of everything else, from character profiles and data to fanfics.

Right now, I have the following "Story Types" defined, and I was wondering if anyone had any other ideas on what I might write about a fandom:
* Essays (could include things like 'ship manifestos)
* Rants
* Fanfics, including:
   * Shortfics (Oneshots)
   * Crossover Fics
   * Alternate Reality Fics
   * Fusion Fics
   * Remixes
   * Songfics

The Genres would stay the same as for Dragonfayth, but they wouldn't apply for things like Essays and Rants. The latter two categories would be placed under their fandom and in their appropriate sub-category, but again, this is a whole hierarchy I haven't quite decided on yet.

It's still buggy, because I essentially copied all the files (inc. mods) from the Dragonfayth install, and not all the database/CHMOD changes have been made. I guess I'll have to discover them as I go along. So far:
* category changes error - Same with Dragonfayth. I can't rearrange the categories, and when I try to change the category description text, I get an error: Fatal error: Call to undefined function: build_formjs() in /home/***/public_html/amc/admin/categories.php on line 156
* poll block initialization error: A fatal MySQL error was encountered. Error: (1050) Table 'amc_fanfiction_poll_votes' already exists

...And you know what? I don't like unreliable people. I know, I know, there's REAL LIFE. It sucks, it's horrible. That's why you don't make promises you can't keep. And I'm just one of those people that is very hard to please. I'm also a former nail-biter, teeth-grinder, and hair-chewer. I have this great chapter for WDKY all ready to be posted, and every single person that has said they will look it over or beta it has either forgotten about it/me or gotten so busy that they couldn't even drop me a line with a quick apology.

I'm very tempted to just post it as-is, but I'm also afraid of the backlash, because I know there are things I don't spot when I proofread my own story. So here is my desperate plea for attention, help, and a beta-reader (or two)! WDKY22 needs an editor. Any volunteers? (Link  goes to [livejournal.com profile] betasquad. Not a  member? Join!)
azurite: (atemu's determined)
Okay, I'm not sure who to blame for this one-- Vince for bringing me to Bob's party, Marc for playing against me first, Jimbo, or Christal. Regardless, I bought Katamari Damacy the day before I left for San Diego-- with my GameStop bucks, it was just a little over $12-- quite a sweet deal, if you ask me! But of course, I'm addicted.

And I'm still stuck on Make A Star 4, which is the same level I played to and got stuck on before. I've ranged from the low 50s to 99.8cm-- so blasted close! But alas, I just can't make it up to that 1m mark! ;_; How irritating! I did manage to work up a sort of stratagem: get the caramels, dice, and pins first, then the mah-johng tiles. Follow up with the batteries and then the erasers, and roll off the table to get the parsley, Lego blocks, round batteries, and mice. Get big enough to pick up Mandarin peels, shogi tiles, and the mini-Pylons. When all the small stuff from the living area is stuck, grab the books separating the main room from the porch, and grab the watermelons, the soda cans, and the flowers. Head around the side of the house underground; grab a few spiders, some rats and mice, and the little Jumbomen. Head up into the kitchen/bathroom area, and try to roll up to the counter to get the present. Move onto the boy's room and grab some toys, and then drop out the balcony to the garden. Grab the microphones and fireworks, and see if you can grab some potted plants and buckets. Try and roll up to street-level, and start grabbing balls, cats, briefcases... and then I always run out of time. Sometimes if I can manage, I wander around in the garden to grab cucumbers, rulers, birds, and more cats...

My policy at the moment is to spend 10 minutes (the time you're given to make the 1m Katamari) reviewing [livejournal.com profile] fourhouseunion applications, WDKY22, and then go back to Katamari. o_o

Beat it! And I made Cygnus too, although I had too many ducks.

Something that's been on my mind about Scott. )

It has occurred to me that anyone that could possibly tell Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa about their mother (Padmé Amidala) is dead. The list:
* The Jedi (massacred by the clones & Anakin)
* Obi-Wan ("died" at Darth Vader's hand)
* Yoda (died before he really told anything to Luke outside of his Jedi training)
* Bail Organa (died in the explosion of Alderaan)
* Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader (duh.)
* The Emperor/Chancellor Palpatine (duh 2.0)

Who else was there that DIDN'T get killed in RotS? I would cite Jar-Jar, but who the heck knows where in the galaxy he might be? And even if there was someone else --such as the new Queen, or another Senator from Naboo-- how would said person know/seek out Luke and Leia, and why would the two of them believe whatever s/he/it had to say? How would the connection to Naboo even be made?

Fact is, I just started thinking of this out of the blue, because I think a "Luke and Leia find out about their mother" fic would be rockin'. But I'm terrified of looking into the Star Wars fandom for a fic that fits this profile, and I sure as hell won't start another fic. But hey, if there are fans out there, I'm open to recs.

Oh, and Blue Eyes and Apricots is up. I mentioned that in my mailing list, but I thought I'd give it a shout out here, too. All new content, new layout, new affiliates, and more. I'm still waiting on Garfour's response for the art, TAFL's response for the fanlisting's "official" status, and any new affiliates.

Finally, KYSRA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The scanner shipped today. :)
azurite: (Honda knows kung fu!)
Okay, so I'm breezing through HP4: Goblet of Fire so I'll be ready for any discussion over at [livejournal.com profile] fourhouseunion and ready for the movie, too. Tickets just went on sale at Fandango, but Scott seems sure that we'll be able to get tickets for the midnight showing on the 18th. Frankly, I don't care whether I see it with him or not; I just wanna see it! /dork

Next up... CSS!? Geh, I hate cascading style sheets. I tried to modify the one for Dragonfayth's new main layout, "Romance" but for the life of me, I can't get the font to change to something a bit nicer than Times New Roman. Arial, Verdana, Geneva, even Tahoma would be nice, but for some reason all the text in the blocks is Times New Roman! Eeew! I need help figuring out what part of the style.css or the TPL files that I modify so that it changes that. I'll be posting on the eFiction forums later.

I've already posted about a categories error, which I think might be solved; I'll have to check later when I tinker around with the site a bit more. I just might make the category icons myself, just because I actually have some idea as to what I want them to look like. They'll have to be relatively small though, probably no more than 75 x 75.

On top of that, I've gotten a good response from Lazuli (not the same as our Laz, I don't think... if it is, color me shell-shocked), one of the developers, about implementing a mod for "fic types" like "Oneshots" and "Songfics" and the like, sort of like how there's already a special area for Challengefics (and their responses) and Round Robins.

After that, I need to tweak the alignment of all the boxes (namely, the news boxes) on the main page for each of the layouts, and mess around with the banners so that they actually say Dragonfayth or something. ^^ Heh. I have a lot of banners and old skins stashed away, and with some tweaking I can make them work for ver. 2.5 of DRFA.

Next up: Creative writing class. I finished all my analyses and my facilitation packet last night, so today should be a breeze, and I hope I get out early. I'll go home and muck around for a while (work on the end of WDKY22; 21 went up last night at FFnet, MMorg, and the azurite_updates ML) and then at 5:30, there's a CSUN Cat People meeting I found out about! Yay for cats on campus!
azurite: (bow before anzu!)
Okay, so I finally upgraded Dragonfayth to eFiction 2.0. It looks good; it has several more skins that came with the package, and the whole admin access thing looks fantastic. I still need to do some tweaking in terms of the CSS (font is WAY too big for my taste), but that's easily remedied.

Right now, I'm plagued with the same problem that hit me last time, when I was contemplating between InkTank and eFiction. What kind of categories and genres should I use? Since this archive is fandom and pairing-specific, it's not like FFnet or MMorg in the way that you start out with a big, main category (e.x. Anime, TV Shows, Music) and then break it down into sub-categories (e.x. Yu-Gi-Oh, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Backstreet Boys). Each of the sub-categories has GENRES (Romance, Action/Adventure, Drama, etc.), and a story can fit into multiple genres. Some genres have SUB-genres (for example, Romance might have Hentai as a sub-genre).

How the heck should Dragonfayth try and categorize things? Last time, we had confusion because a fic can be:
* A Type A fic and a Type B fic, where Type A or B might be Songfic, Chaptered Fic, Continuation Fic, Alternate Universe, etc.
* A Type A fic and a Type B fic, where Type A or B might be a Romance, Drama, Action/Adventure, etc.

Some people at the eFiction archive suggested I have the main categories using TIME:
* Season 0 (Toei), or pre-Duelist Kingdom events (Vols. 1-7 of the manga)
* Season 1 (NAS), or Duelist Kingdom (Vols. 8-15 of the manga)
* Season 2, or Dungeon Dice Monsters, the VR World, Battle City, Noa's Virtual World, and Alcatraz (Vols. 15-31 of the manga)
* Season 3, or the Orichalchos arc
* Season 4, or the KC Grand Prix arc
* Season 5, or the Memory World/Ancient Egypt arc (Vols. 32-38 of the manga)
* Alternate Universes (fics that do NOT take place within canon)
* Continuation Fics (fics that take place AFTER the events of the Memory World saga)

That could work out great,  but then I wonder-- what about fics based on Yu-Gi-Oh! R, the spin off manga which takes place between Battle City and the Memory World? Where would that go? Same thing applies to the Yu-Gi-Oh movie, which takes place directly after Battle City...

Hypothetically speaking, a fic would go in the time section where it STARTS to deviate... that is, WDKY would go under Season 2/Battle City, because that's pretty much where it starts. It makes references to past events (Dungeon Dice Monsters, Duelist Kingdom), and warps other events (Noa's VR World), and hints at events to come, but would be changed from canon (the movie, Orichalchos).

Well anyway, long story short, please help me out here. :P I'm stuck.
azurite: (Anzu's Future)
I've posted Chapter 20 of WDKY to FFnet. It's going up on MMorg soon, and I'm also in the midst of updating Darkness Rising with its new layout. However, I need to re-organize the site a bit and make sure all the pages are linked properly. Once all that gets done, I'll make an announcement over at azurite_updates... but I still have some work to do, especially with getting all my fics organized.

Expect another oneshot fic from me within the next two days. The deadline for [livejournal.com profile] ygo_lyricwheel is almost here! I got a hard song, though... ~_~

What's done over at Darkness Rising
* New index page with affiliates
* Characters page completed (Anzu, Mokuba, Honda, Jounouchi subpages completed)
* Anime page completed
* Manga page completed
* Fanfiction page MOSTLY completed (added new fics, including [livejournal.com profile] 30kisses)
* Links page MOSTLY completed (needs organization, link check)
* Card Equivalency List completed
* JAP<->ENG card info page completed

What's left
* [Duel] Monsters page
* Egypt Page
* Secret page (Millennium Items)
* Other stuff...?

Uhh... aside from more stuff and layouts for BEA/DRFA (eventually), WDKY21+, and a few random oneshots, I think that's it for the up-and-coming...

Oh yeah, check out my new LJ layout, courtesy of Lin Kuruzu and [livejournal.com profile] ceruleansan! :D It's so pretty, and oh-so-Seto x Anzu!
azurite: (hales371 - Anzu kicks ass)
ATTENTION [livejournal.com profile] guardian_kysra! Hem-hem. Do you happen to know where that 20themes list you "gave" me for Christmas is? Because I thought I had it in my Memories, but I can't find it anywhere! ;_; And Mamono and I have decided you deserve pimping rights, and we want it posted on the official 20themes community, so people can give their 20answers to it and spread the Azureshippy love. (And by any chance have you browsed WDKY17 yet? *puppy eyes*)

I've joined a bunch of "number" communities as of late-- [livejournal.com profile] iconfiend100, [livejournal.com profile] 52_flavours, and a few others... it's going to be one very interesting, "creativity-packed" summer... I hope, anyway.

Hey, and where has Snapdragon-chan gone? [livejournal.com profile] luckisalady, that is... *sniffles* She was one of my betas for The Rose Chronicles... *wails*

Mamono and I are still conjuring up domain names. We have some interesting possibilities, and I downloaded this domain name checker thing-- it generates domain names from up to 10 keywords, mixes and matches them, uses hyphens, and then checks the availability of up to 15 of the domain names produced. The rest I can always check using register.com or something... most of them are hogwash, but I like a few. Who knows where this hunt will go?

Speaking of hunts, I'm also compiling all the fanfiction LJers here have posted-- on LJ. Not up on FFnet, or just beta... whatever. I want them in my Memories, even if they're not answers to Challenge fics. So please post your links! (Kysra, Mamono, Atlantis, Svelte-- this means YOU!)

Oh yeah-- hello to all the people on my FL who I don't know, never introduced themselves, and friended me for some weird reason!

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