AberrantAbsurdity

Sitepoint recently announced that they are releasing a CSS Reference site.  If you signed up for the forums before December 1st, you get a free invite.  I was about to go out and buy a CSS reference book for my web design career but I might just try to see if I can use this in my workflow.  From what I understand, they will be releasing a companion book so you can have a handy shelf reference and I might just get that.  In the mean time though I will poke around the reference site and see just how useful it is.  Check it out if you are a member of the Sitepoint forums by clicking here.  It looks like they will be making an HTML and JavaScript reference site as well.

Today is Blog action day. The day thousands of bloggers post something about the environment to raise awareness. I know it is very near the end of the day but I definitely wanted to contribute my post.

The tips I want to recommend have to do with something that has been all over the news lately. Al Gore getting the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in towards “solving the global climate crisis.” He created a group called The Alliance for Climate Protection. I need to do more research as I have never been a big fan of Al Gore, but the Alliance website has quite a few good tips on it. I have always wanted to go more green, such as getting solar energy or something, but never really new how. There is a great article on the Alliance website that offers quite a few suggestions.

I hope everyone starts doing at least a little to help out the environment. I am really not a hippie or anything, but we can do things better and I know it will take some time. But if everyone starts doing just a little, it will add up to a lot.

1. Your character advances even when you aren’t logged on.

I think the way EVE skills work are great. It takes a certain amount of time to learn a particular skill. The time is determined by the attributes your character has, which is based on how you made your character. Once you set the skill to train, that time counts down whether you are logged in or not. You can increase your attributes by training in learning skills as well which will lower your training times in the long run. The only downside is that you can’t queue your skills, you have to log in to change your skills. That isn’t that bad though, CCP(the company that created EVE) wants people to play and enjoy the game, not just pay a monthly fee for people to gain skill points. There is a great tool as well for planning out your skills called EVEMON, which will actively monitor your training progress and remind you of a skill completion even if you are not logged in.

2. The universe in EVE is freaking huge.

EVE Online may not have as many players as World of Warcraft, it may not even have as many players as what are logged into World of Warcraft at any given moment. But at least with EVE you don’t have to worry about trying to figure out what server your friends are on. There is only 1 server. Ok, so there are multiple servers, but they are transparent to the player. There are over 5000 star systems in the EVE universe. If you want to hide from someone, it isn’t that hard. At the same time though, all you have to do to meet up with your friends is agree upon a certain star system to meet up in. You also don’t have to visit the same place twice if you don’t want to. I forgot to mention how beautiful the graphics are as well. Each system has it’s own unique look to it, and when you really start exploring you can find some amazing looking systems. One of the things that has always bugged me about MMOs though is traveling. With EVE you can set autopilot to warp from one place to another. It does take a bit of time, but you can do other things while warping. I suggest you monitor your progress though, because pirates can pull you out of warp and attack you. This brings me to my next point.

3. Combat – Battles have never looked so pretty.

The combat system in EVE Online is amazingly in depth. So in depth that many people will naturally shy away from the game because it isn’t really for the casual gamer. With most games, when it comes to combat, there is usually one or two effective strategies for whatever class you play. In EVE each ship has a purpose, and then you can custom fit it for a specific mission be it electronic warfare, interdiction(pulling people out of warp), drone support where you have a bunch of small AI fighters that fight for you, or head on combat. Narrowing it down further to the head on combat, first you have to design your defenses. There are 3 levels of hitpoints that ships have, shield, armor and structure. One of those 3 will be your “tank.” That will be the portion of your hitpoints that can take the heaviest beating from either having a massive amount of hitpoints, resistances to the various types of damage, fast regeneration of those hitpoints, or a balance of all of those. Then you have to plan on what kind of damage you want to dish out. When working on that you have to try and guess what types of damage the person you are fighting will be the most weak to. Different weapons also have different ranges and utilize different types of ammo. With bigger weapons it can also be harder to hit smaller, more agile ships. All this combined with an almost unlimited number of skill combinations make for a very intricate combat system. The visuals for combat are also quite amazing. The explosions in game are spectacular. When you see someone getting hit by a missile it is pretty impressive, and when a ship blows up the explosion is even larger. There is a video called Day of Darkness, which shows some great combat.

4. The community and company make the game…literally.

Yes I know I only said 3 reasons, but this could be the most important one. First, because the game can be so involved the average age of the players are much higher than a typical MMO. Last I heard, the average age for players of EVE Online is 27. From what I have seen, this makes for a much more mature community. I haven’t seen any flame wars on the forums and everyone is very willing to offer tips and help. There is a player made group in game called EVE University, whose soul purpose is just to help out new players to understand the game and play it better. CCP as a company is also very attentive to it’s players. They are always taking suggestions, and if the suggestion is feasible they will try to work it in. Some of the things they just implemented are bombs for stealth bombers, larger areas that in game corporations can take control over, and a heat system giving players the ability to overpower systems for a short amount of time. The company is also creating an oversight committee of players to visit their headquarters in Iceland once per year to make sure that no one at CCP is helping anyone in game to cheat and that everything is balanced.

*This post was written as part of Blog Project Three

I know this is a really really noobish thing, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out how to get a couple of things centered on a website I was working on.  I looked all through my copy of CSS: The Missing Manual, but it didn’t describe it anywhere.  So I did some searching online and found an about.com page that said the easiest way to center something is to use margin: auto;  This works great for all browsers except IE6 and below.  For that I just gave the same div text-align: center; and everything was great.  I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out before, but it really makes sense now.  It is putting the same amount of margin on either side of it.

It is time for a redesign.  I have had the same look to my blog for about 2 years now.  Time to change it.  I am thinking of possibly going with a three column layout this time, but I haven’t really decided yet.  I submitted my site to a couple placed for some reviews but I would also appreciate any readers who are willing to offer suggestions to do so as well.  Just leave your tips in the comments and I will happily see what I can do about adding it to the design.  Since I am currently deployed and stuck in the middle of the ocean, I have a bit of free time.  A redesign/reboot is one of the things I want to accomplish before I return stateside.  I submitted to Performancing.com for their professional review and I hope I get selected.  I am also thinking about submitting it to UBlogMe.  So we shall see how everything goes in the next couple of months.  I am a little said that I missed the May, 1st blog reboot day, but at least it inspired me to move forward with my redesign.