Frivolous Profundity

Huh – so I was poking around the Internet Archive, and the oldest snapshot they have for my site has a visitor counter at the bottom (yep, we did that then!) that says “There have been XX visitors here since 9/29/98” …

… which means TheMook.Net has been around for at least 13 years, since 1998.

Nice. 🙂

Made a few more site changes and updates for our enjoyment:

• Updated the Soldier of Fortune 2 Player Stats for those who play on our Laid Back Assassins server, the Kill-a-Rama.
• Changed the tracks in the site Jukebox; this set is a shout out to the smoking crews.
• Added a new section called Games and Gadgets – just a few little games and time wasters.
• The biggest change is that I added a second blog, The Hollow Valley. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while – it’s just too out of place to have posts about my unending depression or my mother dying in the same list as posts about TV shows or troubles with my internet connection. The new blog will be for more personal posts and thoughts; I’m not exactly hiding it, but I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea either, so I’m not putting it in the main navigation bar that shows up on every site page. It will only be linked from the core ‘Home’ pages, and the forums.

I think that’s everything. You know the drill – please let me know if you notice any errors, have any suggestions or comments, etc. Thanks for hanging out at TheMook.Net. 🙂

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Howdy Folks!

Had a pretty “productive” (as productive as working on TheMook.Net can be) weekend, most unusual for me, but I got a lot done around the site. Tons of little tweaks here and there to try and get everything working and looking a bit more uniform.

Some of the bigger changes/updates:

• streamlined some of the Blog categories and posts
• added a small Jukebox just for kicks (I’ll try to change the music now and then)
• moved the Gallery into the overall site template (though it still stretches the formatting, at least it looks more like the rest of the site)
• on the SoF2 pages, updated the Clan Roster and the Server Status page (the status page doesn’t look as pretty as it used to, but it no longer relies on ServerSpy, it just runs off TheMook.Net; aesthetics aside, this is good because it no longer sucks $7/month out of the LBA account for ServerSpy!)
• the RPG pages had a lot of work done – I got the fully indexed and cross-referenced version of Mudge in place, and I also posted the complete details for all four of my last campaigns. Took a long time to get it all formatted and uploaded, but I’m really happy that stuff is finally back online.

As always, please let me know if you have any suggestions, or find anything that isn’t working, whatever, I’m always happy to get feedback on the site, good or bad.

I’d particularly like to get some feedback on a new project I’m starting, a small database of combat examples using the GURPS 4th edition rules:

http://www.themook.net/rpg/examples/

That’s the only way to get to it right now, it isn’t in the usual navigation links yet, and the only example posted so far is under “Melee (Weapons) – One“.

I’ll be using that one as a template for all the rest, so I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on the format and layout, the colors, is the example clear enough, all that stuff, before I start using it for many more.

The next big project is a completely fresh reboot of our SoF2 game server, the Kill-a-Rama – expect a lot of changes there in the next week or so as we get things ironed out.

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Due to popular demand (seriously, the only requests I ever got to bring something back were for the webcam – go figure), I have restored the Webcam page, at least for a while; we’ll see how it goes with bandwidth, and how frequently I remember to turn it on.

I’ve also added an “IM Status” section to the main blog page, indicating when I’m online with the various Instant Messenger clients.

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Greetings fellow consumers!

I’ve changed the ‘Donations’ link from the main page to ‘How to Help Out‘, and expanded the info on that page. I’ve also set up an Amazon.com storefront linked from TheMook.Net. Anyone purchasing items from Amazon through that link will generate a tiny commission for me. If you’re planning on doing any shopping with Amazon anyway, especially as the holiday season once again creeps up on us, I would really appreciate it if you could do so through TheMook.Net link – every little bit really does help!

P.S.

By the way, the DRG Server saga still isn’t quite complete – I had yet another bizarre exchange of emails with them, months ago, and will try to get those emails posted soon.

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I’ve been puttering around “a bit” (read: hours and hours of geeky fun!) with the WordPress theme “Blue Horizon” – I quite like it, but decided I prefer a three-column layout. Since I couldn’t find any three-column themes I like as much as the two-column “Blue Horizon”, I decided to just hack it up and see what I could do.

The result is the theme “Cybermook”, the one you are looking at right now. I’ve tested it a bit on both Firefox and Internet Explorer, at resolutions 1280 x 1024, 1024 x 768, and 800 x 600, and haven’t noticed anything breaking. Please let me know if you notice any formatting issues, broken pages, etc. If the theme seems stable enough, I’ll eventually release it for others to use.

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I’ve made some tweaks / changes / fixes to the site – nothing major, just the usual polishing –

• I’ve had an embedded ‘random quote’ for a while, which works just fine in the Firefox browser (which, if you’re not using, is definitely worth checking out … as far as I can tell, Firefox is superior to Internet Explorer in every way) — but it was destroying the page formatting when viewed with Internet Explorer. I’ve finally figured out how to force IE to view the page correctly – the quotes should now appear at the bottom of the main site home page, and just below the post Calendar here on the blog page regardless of the browser you are using.
• Also on the main site, I have changed the gold / yellow background to good old white – you just can’t beat black text on a white background for legibility.
• On the forums, I’ve embedded the same header as the rest of the site uses to ease in navigation (the “|Home| Blog|…” etc.):
  
• Changed around the order of the blog links in the left column.
• Finally, have decided on a name for the blog – “Frivolous Profundity”.

As always, if you have any suggestions or notice any errors, please let me know.

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