Metaplanar Babel

A term I found today that I found amusing:
Parsermancy - using obscure bugs in CSS parsers to hide lines of CSS or entire stylesheets from certain browsers (aka a hack). [via]

CNN.com - Video game artists seek respect - May 12, 2005

“Everyone bitches that games are not art, so let’s show them otherwise,” said John Gibson, curator of an irreverent Hollywood show of art inspired by nostalgia for the classic era of gaming — all of 15 years ago.

Is it really kosher to have that kind of language in a news story?

These MiniPosts are here for those little bits of thought that don’t require a full-length post. They could be simply an interesting link, a random observation, or whatever else. Nifty little plugin, I gotta admit.

I’m still plugging away at my new design. It’s up in the prototype phase at the moment - it’s the one called babelv2, if you want to take a look at it (just a warning, it doesn’t look pretty in IE yet - it works, it’s just ugly). Thanks to Brendan for sharing his discoveries and bits of code. His explanation of how his front page operates was extremely helpful.

I really am impressed with what can be done, template-wise, with Wordpress. I’ve done the Blogger thing, fiddled with Greymatter a bit, and poked around in a few others, but the sheer customizability in Wordpress is tremendous. Sure, you have to learn a bit of PHP to really get the most out of it, but the very fact that you can is impressive by itself. I’ve seen complaints in various places about how Wordpress needs a few essential plugins before it is comparable to the other applications out there, but I’m almost inclined to think that’s a positive thing. The last thing WP needs is to become another bloated, overgrown piece of work that tries to do it all, whether you want it to or not. That’s what makes Firefox great, too - it does what it does damn well and doesn’t try to overwhelm you with a bunch of stock bells and whistles.

Anyway, I’m curious to see what folks think of the new design thus far; I could use some constructive criticism at this point, before I get too attached to what I have.

Edit: As a sidenote, cruinh and I have noticed that, in WP 1.5.1, private posts are actually showing up on the blog defaultly when logged in as the author and not showing otherwise. cruinh says they don’t show up in the feeds either. Spiffy, ne?

From a post on the WoW forums, mostly for my own benefit and future reference.

Okay, got home and bashed it out with pen and paper.

Remember, this is raw base DPS, with only weapons, dual wield and attack power factored in.

For a two-handed weapon of “2h_dps” DPS,

2h_dps = DPS of the two-handed weapon
2h_hit_rate = 95%
main_dps = DPS of the main-hand weapon
off_dps = DPS of the off-hand weapon
attack_power = Warrior attack power
two_handed_effective_dps = (two_handed_dps + attack_power_dps) * 2h_hit_rate

To find the DPS required of a one-hand weapon to produce equivalent dual-wield DPS to a standard two-handed approach…

I’m basing this on two_handed_effective_dps, because it’s easier to work with the miss rate and AP bonus already added, as they’re a big part of dual-wield and a bit hard to extract.

main_dps = two_handed_effective_dps*(100/95)

Remove the miss rate from the mix.

…….. = main_dps * (2/3)

Because we’re dealing with the main hand, if you have equivalent DPS in both hands, the main hand is doing 2/3 of the damage as the offhand is half damage.

…….. = main_dps * (100/76)

Remove the dual-wield missrate from the mix.

……… = main_dps - attack_power_dps

Remove the attack power bonus dps from the mix.

At that point you should have the DPS you need to look for in your one-handed weapons to give you equivalent dual-wield DPS (over time) compared to the 2h that you put into the equation.

I think it’s all finally balanced. :p

And an example:

Okay, as an example, let’s take the Blackhand Doomsaw (fairly popular polearm), and load up with 700 attack power (fairly easy to get).

Doomsaw has a DPS of 54, so we want to find the DPS required of our 1h weapons to make dual wield equivalent in terms of DPS.

attack_power_dps = attack_power / 14
attack_power_dps = 50

two_handed_effective_dps = (two_handed_dps+attack_power_dps) * 2h_hit_rate
two_handed_effective_dps = (54 + 50) * 0.95
two_handed_effective_dps = 104 * 0.95
two_handed_effective_dps = 98.8

Okay, we’ve figured out what the Blackhand Doomsaw is dishing out, with only factoring in the 5% miss rate and the 700 attack power.

main_dps = two_handed_effective_dps*(100/95)
main_dps = 98.8 * (100/95)
main_dps = 104 * (2/3)
main_dps = 69.33 (recurring) * (100/76)
main_dps = 91.228070175438596491228070175439 - attack_power_dps
main_dps = 91.228070175438596491228070175439 - 50
main_dps = 41.228070175438596491228070175439

So basically, you need two 41DPS one-handed weapons to compete with the 2h DPS of the Doomsaw.

…is that hardly anyone’s ever happy with what they’ve got. Everywhere you turn, internet or RL, people are complaining because reality doesn’t fulfil their expectations. Games are too hard, or too easy (often the same game), too much of a gankfest or boring, great story but shitty controls or graphics, etc etc. The political scene, well, we won’t even go there. Firefox has security holes (and improved market share), oh noes! *sigh* This expectation of perfection is so freakin absurd. Of course Firefox has security holes - it’s developed by a small team of human beings who aren’t perfect, and most users don’t pay a damn cent for it. Yet still people bitch and moan that their “perfect” Firefox has flaws. Guild Wars made getting some of the higher, more powerful skills difficult to get, and people bitch because they can’t play GodCharacter0351 out of the box. Boo freakin hoo.

Anyway, I’m just tired of reading complaints about everything under the sun everywhere I go. I could point to dozens of examples of why world peace will never come about. We, as a race, constantly shoot ourselves in the foot, bickering (rather heatedly, might I add) about the most pointless, trivial things, like who’s more important or who gets more hits or who killed more players or who’s a fanboi fanatic. It’s ridiculous. God is probably busting his ass in heaven, laughing at us all.

And yes, I am aware of the hypocrisy of complaining about all the complainers~ I’m as human as anyone else.

On a slightly different note, we have beautiful weather here today again, and I have nothing pressing to do this afternoon. Life is good.

Edit: and the hospital up the street had cookies right out of the oven. woot!

We went hiking on Skyline drive, in Shenandoah National Park yesterday, with Jon’s mother. Somewhat surprisingly, we had a gorgeous day for it. The wind up in the mountains was a little cool but very nice after a decent hike, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I wish I’d remembered to charge up my camera, so I’d have some photos to share.

I haven’t been up to the park much at all, so it was nice to drive through and see some of it, even though a lot of the trees hadn’t quite started budding, since it’s cooler up there (and we’ve had a very cool spring anyway). One of the trails we took led up to a cabin now owned by the Potomac Appalachian Trail Society that used to belong to .. someone in Jon’s family, though I can’t remember who. This place is on top of a mountain, miles from anything, surrounded by trees. Remember before, when I asked when the last time you’d stopped to listen and heard no cars, no music, nothing but wind and bird calls? Well that’s what we had here. Amazing, really. It was so peaceful up there; if my allergies hadn’t started acting up like crazy, I think I could’ve sat there all day, doing nothing. That had to have been the most relaxing place I’ve been in a long time. Again, I wish I had had my camera, so I could show you all what it was like. Jon’s stepdad took some pictures on his digital though, so maybe I can get him to send me some of them. Actually, here’s a picture of the cabin from the trail.

Anyway, I had a great time; I think we underestimate how good it is to get away from all the technology and general busy-ness of life sometimes. Hopefully Jon and I’ll go back up there to try out some of the other trails soon.

For your amusement. I highly recommend Sith Apprentice.

What a sucky Friday. We’ve had a number of little set-backs today, but here are the highlights:

1) Parking is a premium where I work. I come in at 6am just so I don’t have to walk 3/4 of a mile from my car every day (laziness at its best, I know). Then we get this nice email today stating that our lot is being used to house construction crews and equipment - starting next Monday. The lot is going to be closed until August 12th. My boss is in her office telling my supervisor that “at least it isn’t winter” but sheesh..

2) Our book jobber just told us that their website database isn’t really reliable since they did their system upgrade last September. We’ve spent the past several weeks trying to reconcile our system records with the jobber’s system records through this site that we assumed was being automatically updated and corresponding to the actual database on their end. But no, it’s not. And do they bother to tell anyone that their site isn’t fully accurate? Noooo! Of course not! And their bloody contract is up this year! They should be kicking their butts to communicate and fix problems, not ignore them and hope we don’t see them. This is pretty freakin’ major. We just wasted about 2 weeks of my time, my supervisor’s time, and our student assistants’ time, trying to figure out what the heck is going on.

*grumblemumblebitchmoan*
Don’t mind me, I’ll be over in the corner, beating my head against the wall. *thud*

..but what’s up with all the flaming gravatars?