Thirded.

Subject: Thirded.
Author: Scapegrace
Posted on: 2019-02-01 20:00:00 UTC

I actually had a little trouble parsing it at first - not because of any bad writing, but because my brain actually shut down when I realized what was about to happen to Jacob and Lise, and that it was the right thing to do, and that nobody else could do it.

"I was thinking of a small inscription. Something along the lines of 'They did the job they had to do'-"
"No! How dare you! How DARE you! They did the job they DIDN'T have to do!"
-- Lord Vetinari and Sam Vimes, Night Watch

And yes, I deliberately left the quote incomplete to avoid spoilers.

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Micro-plug: "Dinosaurs", with Kaitlyn & Huinesoron by Huinesoron on 2019-01-30 15:43:00 UTC Reply

"Are dinosaurs real?"

Kaitlyn swatted away the hand that had lifted her headphone away and span her chair to face the intruder. "I don't think you understand how this works," she said over the cheery chords of the Shire theme. "When I sneak up on you and ask bizarre questions, it's funny. When you do it to me, it's the worst thing ever."

Agent Huinesoron looked briefly mortified, but then he seemed to take in the smile on her face and relaxed. He said something that Kaitlyn couldn't hear over the music, then looked immediately guilty.

Kaitlyn tugged off the headphones and dropped them onto her console. "I'm going to assume that was a grovelling apology," she said, then regretted it immediately as the elf's obvious guilt deepened. "Sorry, that was meant to be a joke," she assured him. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"It's... it's fine." The elf shook his head in bewilderment. "I'm sorry, too."

"No need." Kaitlyn pursed her lips in thought. "Unless you broke the lock to get in here," she corrected herself. "Selene gets kinda antsy about her privacy."

"No, she let me in," Huinesoron said hastily. "I know her from back in DOGA, remember."

"Ohhhh, that makes sense." Kaitlyn beamed, then reached down and fiddled with the controls on the side of her chair. With a hiss, the seat rose up, adding about a foot to her height, bringing her that much closer to eye level. "Well, it's good to see you! What brings you here?"

"Er." Huinesoron coughed. "Dinosaurs?"

"Yes! Right." Kaitlyn tugged at her waistcoat, straightening it. "In what canon? Because I'm sure you know as well as I do that there's a Triceratops in Mary Sues and a T. rex in Internal Affairs. I'm told there's a Velociraptor or something here in Floaters, too, though I've never met him."

"We've got a Quetzalcoatlus in Analytical Science," Huinesoron supplied. "But I meant your world." He frowned. "Or mine? Because Middle-earth is the history of World One, correct?"

"I mean... maybe?" Kaitlyn wobbled her hand in what she intended to be an illustrative gesture. "I think World One is the future of Middle-earth, without the reverse necessarily being true." She frowned. "Something about chiral history, I think? You'd have to ask one of your DAS lot."

"I asked Norlossë from Multiversal Physics," Huinesoron said, his lip twitching in an involuntary smile. "Her answer was about as coherent-or-otherwise as yours."

"That actually makes me feel pretty good," Kaitlyn mused. "If no-one understands this stuff... anyway, sorry! You were saying?"

"Dinosaurs," Huinesoron reminded her. "Are they real?"

"Why do you want to know?" Kaitlyn leant back, her office chair issuing a deep rumbling sound as it tilted. "Is this for a mission, or just a new hobby?"

"An old one," the elf said. "You know I'm in the geology division at DAS? Well, I found some rocks in the White Mountains during a recent survey that could be dinosaur fossils - except I'm not even sure that's possible." He frowned slightly, head tilting to one side. "So I suppose it was a mission, too, in a way."

"Not just 'a way'," Kaitlyn corrected. "Infrastructure - or whatever Analytical Science counts as - missions are still just as mission-y as Action missions! Don't put yourself down."

"I'll remember that," Huinesoron murmured. "So... dinosaurs?"

"I know, I know, I'm getting to it." Kaitlyn drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair and sat up straight. "Previous caveats about chiral history aside, there are two schools of thought on the matter," she explained. "The first is that yes, dinosaurs totally existed."

"Okay..." Huinesoron eyed her warily. "And the second?"

"The same," Kaitlyn said, grinning widely, "but with a big argument about feathers. Does that answer your question?"

"I think it does." Huinesoron returned her smile, pairing it with a nod of thanks. "You've been," he considered for a moment, "very helpful."

"Nah; but I'll accept the 'helpful' part." Tugging at the console, Kaitlyn swung herself back round and picked up her headphones. "After all," she said, slipping them on and letting the music wash over her again, "that's what friends are for."

There's kind of far more prehistoric animals in the PPC than I realised; it's fun!

As for why hS didn't just ask the archaeologists at DAS-AWAY: Durand has trouble separating the concepts of 'dinosaur' and 'dragon', and Joan doesn't like to deal with anything pre-industrial if she can help it.

hS

Also: website update! by Huinesoron on 2019-01-30 15:50:00 UTC Reply

It's been over a year in the doing, but I guess it's time to bite the bullet and just announce it... Huinesoron's Webplex has officially moved over to Neocities, and can now be found here:

Huinesoron's Webplex

The move - the first time I've left [Free]Webs since the launch of Bonsaimallorn back in '03 - comes because Webs have been getting slower and slower, and I wanted something that I could actually update without a struggle. There's a lot of out-of-date backlinks which I'll need to sort out, but everything should now be linked from the new site.

There's even a few new things scattered throughout there, though not as many as my original idealistic plans. One that might interest a fair number of you, though, is the official hub for In Life's Name, the PPC/Young Wizards stories some of us wrote a while back. Included in there is something I don't think I've shared before: a short piece by Kaitlyn entitled Mars.

So there it is! If you find a dead link or any images that don't work, I'd appreciate a heads-up; there's a lot of stuff on there, and I'm positive I've missed at least a few things.

hS

The link to the Temple of all Faiths appears to be broken. (nm) by Hieronymus Graubart on 2019-02-03 13:34:00 UTC Reply

That? That's why I'm moving from Webs. by Huinesoron on 2019-02-04 09:11:00 UTC Reply

I'm sick and tired of 'oh, no-one's visited this in six weeks? WELP SHUTTING IT DOWN NOW.

It's not like they even remove the files; all I have to do is go in and click on a page from the site editor.

GRUMBLE.

hS

re. Mars by Delta Juliette on 2019-02-01 03:15:00 UTC Reply

...ow? I know that the ultimate price is a thing wizards are called on to pay, some times, but... ow. Kaitlyn writes it well, I'm tearing up even on re-reading.

(And I might be working on October's vacation and gathering report in Young Wizards metaphor. Stay tuned.)

Seconding. by S.M.F. on 2019-02-01 03:37:00 UTC Reply

Also: aaaaaaaAAAAAA? ;a;

Thirded. by Scapegrace on 2019-02-01 20:00:00 UTC Reply

I actually had a little trouble parsing it at first - not because of any bad writing, but because my brain actually shut down when I realized what was about to happen to Jacob and Lise, and that it was the right thing to do, and that nobody else could do it.

"I was thinking of a small inscription. Something along the lines of 'They did the job they had to do'-"
"No! How dare you! How DARE you! They did the job they DIDN'T have to do!"
-- Lord Vetinari and Sam Vimes, Night Watch

And yes, I deliberately left the quote incomplete to avoid spoilers.

Kaitlyn didnÂ’t do a bad job there. by Hieronymus Graubart on 2019-02-03 13:33:00 UTC Reply

That'll do. (Exaggerated British Understatement.)

HG

Liking the new site! by Iximaz on 2019-01-30 19:25:00 UTC Reply

I haven't encountered any issues on my end just clicking around; it looks pretty good to me. I will agree with Thoth though that the images you have for the Young Wizards shorts should probably come with text as well; it took some guesswork on my part to figure out whose was whose.

(...Also, did you ever do a magic circle for Mirror, Mirror? I can't remember...)

Mars was good and made me smile, as did the dinosaurs one. I'd love to see Huinesoron go to a museum with lots of fossils (and weird out anyone within earshot exclaiming over them). :P

Not yet. by Huinesoron on 2019-01-31 10:43:00 UTC Reply

I have an idea for it in my head (I think you pretty much spelt it out, actually), but they take a fair amount of energy to actually craft. I do intend to create it, though. :)

... I swear, if that idea makes Agent Kaitlyn drag Agent hS off to the Natural History Museum, you will be making an extremely baffled cameo.

hS

XD I can only imagine... (nm) by Iximaz on 2019-01-31 11:32:00 UTC Reply

Oh, bugger. I mean, yay! >.> by Neshomeh on 2019-01-30 18:06:00 UTC Reply

But I JUST went through fixing all the old Freewebs links on the wiki, and now it'll have to be done again. Siiigh. This is why I hesitate to move my own stuff. {= P

Seriously, though, how is Neocities, usage-wise? Does it feel good over there?

The parts of the site I've looked at so far appear to be in working order. All the banners and things are showing up, links seem to be correct. I'd go with a less lurid shade of green for the background, though. Not more than #00B000 or so.

Like this.

Sort of. The Board's rendering of my margin is wonky. But the point is, on full monitor brightness, it'll be easier to look at while still being a pure green. {= )

~Neshomeh

I know, I know. by Huinesoron on 2019-01-31 14:01:00 UTC Reply

Though given how many times links to my stuff have changed, I'm sure half of them are wrong anyway. ^_~

Neocities is actually really comfortable to use! The dashboard is set up pretty much like a Windows folder, and you can either edit files in there (their editor has a green-on-black mode, which feels very 80s-movie-hacker), or upload them from your computer. Uploads will automatically overwrite previous versions, and it all happens fast. Webs was taking most of a minute to move to a sub-folder; Neocities is just as fast as the computer.

Bottom line: I've finally started testing changes on an offline version, because it's now really easy to put them onto the live site afterwards.

The green... I know, I know. :-/ But. It's currently Huinesoron Green, aka <font color="Huinesoron">, and that amuses me too much to change just yet.

I probably will at some point, though, 'cause it is pretty bright. The colour is CSS, so at least it'll be quick to switch.

hS

Would anyone mind if I used a bot on the wiki? by Neshomeh on 2019-01-31 20:54:00 UTC Reply

I've considered it before, but this seems like a perfect time to actually do it. {= ) This seems fairly simple to use and therefore difficult to mess up. I'll probably set up a Flower account for it to run on, like one of the janitors. They're fun.

Re. the rest: Great! I've been converted to the joy of offline editing with Notepad++ myself, so it's good to hear that works well. Maybe this is a good time to actually move the Lost Tales, and maybe even Neshomeh's Archive, too. Especially if I get a FittoniaBot (or something) to help out with the tedious part. ^_^

~Neshomeh

Seems like a good plan to me. (nm) by Iximaz on 2019-02-01 15:14:00 UTC Reply
No objections. by Hieronymus Graubart on 2019-02-01 15:02:00 UTC Reply

I guess you’ll use the bot to update all the Lost Tales links. Yeah, that’s obviously Janitor work.

HG, Archivist’s Apprentice
No objection from me. by Huinesoron on 2019-02-01 13:21:00 UTC Reply

Though I'm not sure how useful it'd be in this particular case - I restructured the site while I moved it, so you'd need to know exactly where everything came from and went to.

Heh, my offline editing is all done through plain old Notepad, which makes Javascript a bit of a nightmare. I might look into ++ and see if it will work here...

As for moving your sites: the only concern I'd mention is that if someday, Neocities is going to go the way of all its predecessors. The more sites the PPC has running over there, the more we'll need to rescue when it falls...

hS

And this is why you keep local data. by Thoth on 2019-02-01 17:44:00 UTC Reply

For those technically savvy enough, I actually potentially endorse GitHub Pages for hosting. At the very least, GitHub is good place to keep your website sources if you wanna back them up. But even just putting your stuff on the hard drive is a good option.

For the archivists in the audience, "wget -mk " is a command line command that will grab an entire website and convert all the links automatically for you so that it no longer points to where you grabbed it from. This command is included in Mac computers (just launch "Terminal" and type it in), but not on Windows.

For tech heads, Neocities actually runs an IPFS node. This means that you can run a node that will act as a fallback for accessing your site using IPFS should Neocities ever fail. I mean... nobody actually uses IPFS yet. But maybe one day.

I would heavily endorse not using Notepad. For one thing, Notepad only barely supports that Unix line endings that almost every other application in the world expects for text files. For another, ++ and other editors have support for all kinds of fun stuff that makes the editing experience much better.

I mean... by Huinesoron on 2019-02-01 22:03:00 UTC Reply

... I have a backup. I was mostly thinking of the unthinkable scenario in which either Nesh or I were no longer around, and then our sites crashed. ^_~

I think I do actually have something running off GitHub Pages - I wanna say it's the Board's CSS stylesheet? Not sure.

And the main reason I haven't looked at alternative coding utilities - other than that for what I do it's barely necessary - is that I ~~do most of my HTML/Javascript at work~~ engage with coding in a location where downloading new software might be contraindicated. :D

hS
Website archiving with wget on Windows by Tomash on 2019-02-01 20:47:00 UTC Reply

This is a copy-paste of a message I sent to Nesh that should be useful for anyone trying to take copies of websites:

The magic incantation for archiving stuff

wget -x -p -m -np -k -E http://example.com/optional-subdirectory/

To use this:

1) Download the latest wget.exe from https://eternallybored.org/misc/wget/ put it in a new folder where you'll want to keep your stuff
2) Then, Shift+right click on the folder you put wget.exe into and select "Open Command Prompt here"
3) Type in the magic incantation, hit Enter. The bits with dashes can go in any order, so long as the URL is last and the word "wget" is first.
4) There'll be a folder named example.com or what have you in the same place as wget.exe, and all the files there will have been rewritten to not have absolute references to other parts of your site (if you don't want that behavior, remove the -k , if you also want the originals, add -K)

(For a short explanation:
- wget is a program that's designed to download things
- Most of this is various options to control how wget will download things
+ -x says to always create a directory for the thing you downloaded
+ -p means to also download all the CSS, images, and so on that a
downloaded page needs
+ -m is shorthand for all the thing you need to ask for to get mirroring
+ -np prevents the download from following links that don't point into the site being downloaded (well, above the directory the thing you started from lives in, but that's minor)
+ -k enables the "make this download self-sufficient" rewrites mentioned above)
+ -E adds a .html to web pages that were missing one)

- Tomash

That makes it a tad harder. by Neshomeh on 2019-02-01 17:36:00 UTC Reply

But not that much. Since the individual missions and whatnot are mostly on Gdocs, and those haven't changed (or have they?), I'd be dealing mainly with "home" pages in batches anyway.

Now, when I do the Lost Tales, I did keep the file structure the same, so I'll be able to do that all in one solid go. ^_^

Oh, yeah, that happened. Really, really surprisingly quickly. Tomash's wizardry is invaluable.

As for Neocities eventually failing... well, all my stuff is backed up on my laptop and Archive.today (or whatever it is now), I think. Also, I think I might become a subscriber? At five bucks a month, it seems reasonable, and if enough people respect the Internet way of electing to throw money at things we value, hopefully it'll work.

I suppose I could maintain things on both Neocities and Tripod indefinitely, but... eh. {= /

~Neshomeh

Mobile Breakage by Thoth on 2019-01-30 17:59:00 UTC Reply

The new website looks nice, but the layout seems to be broken on mobile devices. Additionally, the only way to access the In Life's Name stories is through an imagemap, which I *strongly* advice you to reconsider. I know it looks pretty, but there are a lot of accessibility issues with doing it that way.

In Life's Name is updated. by Huinesoron on 2019-01-31 10:27:00 UTC Reply

I actually always intended to have a table of contents; I just... didn't get round to it. I've fixed it now, and added the all-important last page (or at least, last that non-wizards can see...).

As for the layout - broken how? It's deliberately designed to pare itself down to a single column, which works perfectly on my phone. The top and bottom bars get slightly messed up, but the main body works pretty much as intended.

hS