The Gimcrack Miscellany

When developing purely informational sites, or “brochure” sites as some call them, I used to spend most of my time creating, un-creating, and re-creating style. “Hmm… that color doesn’t look right there.” “That line’s way too thick.” “I can’t believe I was going to put that background image there.” After completing the initial draft of the style and taking a break to work on content or go home for the night or even just get a cup of joe, you can rest assured that I would return to my desk and redo everything.

I have to admit that, by advancing my CSS and HTML skills over time, I’ve gotten better at creating style that has more modular and universal qualities. But wouldn’t it be cool to have a bank of complete style templates? Sometimes don’t you just want to avoid worrying about which color scheme you’re going to use? Isn’t it nice to imagine a website template that contains all the images you need, instead of having to open Photoshop and figure out how to make a background floral brush to match your website (or worse - pay for a kit of Photoshop brushes)? You don’t? Oh.

Well I do. That’s why I was glad when I found these templates that are completely valid CSS and XHTML. Now, I can use these templates as a basis for informational websites that I do in the future, as well as really any other kind of site. Obviously if the client wants something specific I will still have to tap into my design skills, but imagine how much faster it will be to make a very simple website for, say, a landscaping company. Beauty is just minutes away.

If you need some convincing, just look around you. This website is based on a template called Dirtylicious, and I think it’s darn delicious. My bro’s game site is based on another one of the templates from this site. I believe there are around 20 templates there right now, and they can be used as is or modified to suit your wildest fancy. Just make sure you give the proper credit to Arcsin, as I have done down at the bottom of my page. You can also browse their Wordpress templates library to skin your blog.

Best of all, they’re free!

I spent so much time recently in Outlands with my level 70 paladin that I started getting pretty nostalgic about life back in good ol’ Azeroth. I created a few new characters, namely my tauren druid, and I’ve been loving the simple life of the 10s and 20s.

I recently got my night elf priest up to 20 and my dreanei warrior to 24, so I’ve been lvling like crazy the past couple of days. It got me thinking about my favorite places in Azeroth, and I decided to go ahead with the first installment of my soon-to-be-famous (er… maybe not famous) top fivers.

So, without further ado, here are my top 5 favorite zones in the World of Warcraft (not including the Outlands):

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I’ve introduced this topic with grumblings mostly on the semantics of how our parish worships, specifically length of service and singing scripture readings instead of speaking them. I’m going to continue doing that same thing here. I will make conclusions and give explanations as to why it is so important a little later. Please keep in mind that I am speaking in the context of my parish unless otherwise noted.

Why do we do things the way we do? There have thus far been two ways of looking it, and I can boil it down rather simply. Either change things to suit you and risk opening up the possiblity of endless change, or never change anything and do not allow for that possibility. The Protestants ultimately came to be because someone changed one thing that was undoubtedly a very valid point. In doing so, however, the line was pushed and has never been reestablished, which explains why there is such a huge difference between Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants.

I disagree with this line of thought; it is not actually black and white. First I will explain why it shouldn’t be, and then I will explain how it actually isn’t.

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It’s always nice to avoid starting from scratch, in this case when making a website. There are lots of website templates out there that let you plug your content right in, but what if you actually want to do some of the style yourself? Here’s some templates that provide style structure without forcing you into a color scheme or font family.

This site even tells you if the template is unsupported by older browsers, and I believe all the templates are XHTML 1.0 compliant.

I don’t think I’ve ever played a game as consistently as I’ve played WoW the past 16 months. There are only two games I’ve played that have rivaled WoW in /played time, and they are Heroes of Might & Magic III and Half Life 2/Counter-Strike: Source.

I’m sitting here with a 70 paladin with 23 days of /played time, as well as a myriad of 20+ alts including a 50 mage, 32 warlock, 23 hunter, 22 warrior - the list goes on and I didn’t feel like linking them all here. You’d think I’d be somewhat burnt out by now, especially with a full time job, my wife, friends, family, and web development on the side.

I am not.

Included in my current plans are to make my paladin a master of potions, get my mage into Outland, and have at least one of each class at or above 20 so I can decide who gets to be my lucky #3 toon.

I believe I’ve settled into a pretty good arrangement with WoW. I am able to play 5 hours a week at work (1 hour per day at lunch), around 3 hours each Monday night while my wife is in class, and various times during the weekend. This way, I’m never letting RL trump WoW, but I’m not disregarding my precious toons either.

I have no idea how much longer I will be playing WoW, but at this rate I do not foresee an end.