The Infernal City , written by Greg Keyes, is the first of two books based on the award-winning, fantasy video game series “The Elder Scrolls”. It takes place forty years after the fourth game “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion”, but this gap does not stop the author from connecting the two stories together briefly. This well written book provides an excellent storyline, captures the feel of the video game series, and shows the immense value of trust.
The unlikely heroes of the story, a troubled prince, a vengeful mage, a young alchemist, and her Argonian friend are all working together to stop the colossal, hovering city of Umbriel. The story comes to an end, explaining where Umbriel came from, how it was created, and that the king, for lack of a better word, of Umbriel is not the typical evil villain. The cliffhanger ending also leaves you eagerly anticipating the second book, and wondering how it will change the Elder Scrolls series.
One of the biggest themes in The Elder Scrolls is world-threatening villains. The writers of this series have done excellent jobs keeping this old theme from become stale, and this book is no exception. You are left guessing till the end who the true enemy is, and what his goals are. This story rivals that of the third Elder Scrolls game, “Morrowind”, which had one of the best storylines in the game series.
Trust is a huge element in this book. The main characters have never met each other before, but they take leaps of faith with one another, which ultimately allows them to survive till the end of the book. However, it also shows the dangers of misplaced trust. The Prince of the Imperial Empire is lied to his entire life by his father, and even his own soldiers; this ultimately leads to his kidnapping, and almost to his death. He was unable to see through their deception, which ultimately led him to place trust in the wrong people.
Because of the book’s excellent storyline, the way it remains true to the video game series, and its displays of trust, this book is one of the best I have read. Whether you have or have not played any of “The Elder Scrolls” games you can enjoy this book. Because of all these factors, I believe this book will be the foundation for many more “Elder Scrolls” books.
For the past year, the assumption was made that the addition of a blog would empower the community with at least a little knowledge in web design; however, the problem throughout the previous year was that we did not have the appropriate member base within the community. To heighten the problem, we had a massive membership registration event happen here a few months ago, and it was all spammers: 330 of them. Due to this flood of spammers, registration was shut down because the network (which is small and privately-owned) could not handle such lunacy. In addition, few in the community participated to really yield that many articles here. In our combined efforts, though, we were able to produce 41 publicly-posted articles and 5 others that became WIPs and were never completed. 41 publicly-posted articles is about on-target with an average of one article every 10 days.
The Good News
But there is a positive side to the weight of the situation: the site will remain open for at least another year. If we even teach just one person about CSS3, HTML, XHTML, HTML5, and give to them reviews on operating system software, instant messengers, various apps, and deliver other how-to kind of information, then at least that’s one more person who is informed about something.
What will never change
Among the articles that have been archived as ‘private’ are those dealing mainly with politics. There is at least one article that was allowed to remain public: the “Why We Fight” commentary on the Google Video item of the same name. However, subjects on politics, religion, and culture are sensitive and do not apply to a technical/developer blog, and this network doesn’t have the monetary support to pay lawyers should someone come on here and start spouting comments about such subjects. The site’s copyright notice includes a statement that everyone’s posts are owned by themselves: not by the operating body of this network, yet to remain as far away as possible from extremely-sensitive issues involving politics, as well as avoiding irrelevancy (since this is a developers blog), politics, religion, and social issues are usually not allowed. This will never change. Such topics should appear only in the “Serious Discussion” board on the community website.
What will continue to change
But there are some things that will change, and they will change continuously. There will likely be a new theme or revamp of an existing theme at least once every four to six months.
In addition, the content will continue to improve. By improve, this author means the format of the material, the organization of it, the concise nature of it, and how informative it is. This “two-cents method” of writing articles, which, logically-speaking involves an author’s two cents (at least in my case) will begin to disappear. I’ll still continue to put my two cents into these articles, yet I will place them into an HTML5aside element. Within the context of an article, the aside element may be placed to the right if it involves additional information that isn’t 100% tied to the article, or it may be placed to the bottom of the rest of the article in text that has lower contrast so that it is not emphasized.
Reporting the news and delivering accurate, organized, well-managed, and informed data concisely is of prime importance in any article. The two cents must come later. There are some articles containing a personal bias that even I have written, and the personal bias should not be mingled with the relevant information. So the methodology of article-making here at Valimar Design will be a factor that will constantly change as time marches forth – particularly over the next year.
Happy…New Year?
Essentially, it is Happy New Year for the network. Though this network has been in operation before September 1, 2009, those were the “prehistoric” ages. This blog wasn’t actually started until September 9, 2009, or somewhere around that time. So yes, it is Happy New Year! The time of the writing of this part of the post is . By the time this article is completed, it will officially be September the First – a very important date not only for the network, but in my personal life. It is also the birthday of someone close to me.
In “honor” of this “New Year’s Celebration,” the Valimar DesignforumCast feature will be returned to the community website. Few have used it in the past, but perhaps there is still hope for that, and it could catch on one day.
Challenges Ahead
Recently, there have been some social issues on the community website. While our founding rules did not allow the introduction of forum-based role-playing games, those rules were thrown away in 3 different cases – soon to be 4. Due to some unpleasant staff-RPG membership relations that were indeed the fault of the webmaster (this author), we have (thanks to me) some challenges ahead that otherwise we would not. A disgruntled memberbase – even if it’s just one user – is never a good thing, especially when the disgruntled member is a former member of the staff. This has happened in previous renditions of the network, namely in mid-to-late-2008 when, of course, a forum-based RPG was involved.
Given the fact that forum-based RPGs seem to bring out the worst in certain people in some cases, this author does not look forward to the hosting of new forum-based RPGs, aside from the two we have already. It’s a big world, and a big internet. If an RPG needs to be hosted, then it can be hosted on any site out there. The current staff aren’t able to deal with the types of RPGs that are often hosted, and so we are likely to refuse the hosting of any new ones. It’s not restriction of freedom, but more the decision to decide what to do with our own private property. The network is not designed for forum-based RPGs. It is designed for discussions and posted content concerning items such as web design, computer science, operating systems, technology, science (physics, astronomy, cosmology, quantum physics, chemistry, biology, etc), discussion and modding of games such as Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Star Trek: Armada, and artwork in general.
The challenges ahead should not be magnified more than they already have been. Where it comes to the people of the community, some challenges just aren’t going to improve the cause. Five times have forum-based RPGs destroyed sites that I have once known of. New forum-based RPGs aren’t likely to be approved anytime soon. It may be a disappointment to some, but a blessing to others.
The New Day
Greet the new day! May this new year be much better than the year that came before! And, if you have trouble with understanding an article on this site, please offer up questions about it. Good luck!
Because this is a new WordPress installation, with a new theme and all, it may be well and good to make up this post as a way for us CSS specialists to get all the margins, padding, backgrounds, borders, positioning, floating, clearing, colors, and so on right!
Starting with inline tags!
abbr: Declares an abbreviation. The title attribute has special semantics, in that it is used to contain the very word the abbreviation is shortening, such that <abbr title="Hypertext Markup Language">HTML</abbr>.
bold (<b>): Makes text bold. Stylistically offset text, such as keywords and typographically emboldened text (W3C:Markup, WHATWG)
Citation (<cite>): Intended to represent the title of a work (e.g. a book, a paper, an essay, a poem, a score, a song, a script, a film, a TV show, a game, a sculpture, a painting, a theatre production, a play, an opera, a musical, an exhibition, etc) (HTML5 <cite> Tag: quackit)
Deleted Text (<del>): Text that has been deleted will likely appear with text in strike-through or line-through. This is text that has been edited out of the current article, but has not been completely erased. An optional datetime attribute, similar to the datetime attribute for the HTML5 Time Element, may be used to indicate the date and time that the deleted text was, well, deleted. Appropriate time formats include 2010-09-10T10:18Z or 2010-09-10 if you just want the date, or 10:18 if you just want the 24 hour time.
Definition (<dfn>): A term being defined, followed by a definition of that term. The title attribute of the dfn element has special semantics such that anything within the title attribute is itself the term that is being defined.
stress emphasis (<em>): Makes text italic in most browsers. Now known in HTML5 as stress emphasis, or something pronounced differently than surrounding text (W3C:Markup, WHATWG)
italic (<i>): Makes text italic. Text in an alternate voice, such as foreign words, technical terms and typographically italicized text (W3C:Markup, WHATWG)
Inserted Text (<ins>): Text that has been inserted will likely appear with text that has a dotted underline (CSS: ins{border-bottom:1px dotted}). This is text that has been appended into the current article at some point. An optional datetime attribute, similar to the datetime attribute for the HTML5 Time Element, may be used to indicate the date and time that the text or content was added. Appropriate time formats include 2010-09-10T10:18Z or 2010-09-10 if you just want the date, or 10:18 if you just want the 24 hour time.
Marked or Highlighted Text (<mark>): Text that has an importance different from that of the em or strong elements. This text may be used for search results or to highlight text in a quote. Text that is marked (highlighted) will often appear with a yellow (#ff0) background and red (#f00) text, along with being in bold and/or perhaps in italics.
Short quotation (<q>): Used for small (non-paragraph or non-block) quotations. In most browsers, a quotation mark or " will appear before and after the short quote. CSS can be used to eliminate the quotation marks, add padding for an alternate background indicative of the text being a quote, or replace the quotation marks with some other similar symbol.
sample output code (<samp>): A sample of computer-generated code, such as that used for reporting error messages. Use this a lot when complaining about errors in Microsoft Windows! This could also be used for an equation after a variable.
Legalese or legal fine print (<small>): Use to declare a copyright or statements you wish to place into fine print.
generic inline text span (<span>): Generic inline-level text that can be given a class as to further style the text (and content) inside the span element.
strong (<strong>): Makes text bold in most browsers. Classically known as strong emphasis, the tag is used as strong importance. Nesting of strong elements indicates a higher importance. (W3C:Markup, WHATWG)
Subscript (<sub>): Use for subscripts, as in the chemical formula for glucose: C6H12O6
Superscript (<sup>): Use for powers, such that E=mc2.
variable (<var>): Used to declare a variable. E=mc2
A game engine that fully supports DirectX 9 and 10. This will allow more people to play the game, and allow those who are looking for a better graphic experience to enjoy it more. Also, the engine needs to support more accurate scaling. Oblivion was terribly under-scaled. Some of the issue with its scaling are blatantly apparent.
The game will also need Morrowind’s expansiveness mixed with Oblivion’s gameplay. Morrowind’s territory skillsets and magic are clearly far superior to Oblivion’s, however Oblivion is overall far more fun to play. Capturing the best of both games in this respect will overall make the game far more enjoyable.
Mass Effect is the first game I have seen really make a Personal Actions system work, and I think TESV could only benefit from such a system, even if is scaled down a lot.
Minimal weapon and armor customization would also go a long way to improving everyone’s overall gaming experience. Any game is more enjoyable if you can “make it your own”.
A jaw dropping story that is better than Morrowind’s and The Shivering Isles’. Need I say more?
It’s been quite a breakthrough that has led up to this post. In the last post, Updating to WP3, it was mentioned that the custom CSS style sheets and the custom Javascript per article functions were not available. Well, within less than a day, this is no longer a problem.
The Easy JS-CSS Addon which had worked previously in old WordPress 2 now works once again here. Some modifications had to be made so that the Javascript posted would appear inside the body of the HTML, but those modifications made it impossible to apply the CSS and Javascript to the pages, as well as the archives.
Another problem with jQuery was repaired. The problem was a conflict in which the Javascript error returned was $ is not a function. This required moving from using the $ associated with jQuery to using $j and hence, all jQuery $ prefixes must also include the ‘j’ in them. As such, a line such as $(".code").toggle(); will now have to be written as $j(".code").toggle();. It is a very slight change that will prove to be a pain in the ass to the article posters here (like that means, just me at this time, since other authors are off doing other things lately), but must now be done to prevent conflicts.
Other Updates
Complete (not WIPs) demonstrations of web design and development work hosted on the Valimar Design Development Site will be transferred to this site. All WIPs will remain on the ‘dev’ site until they are either completed, become ignored, or are rejected.
Current work on the Community Site includes an Elder Scrolls: Oblivion RPG, as well as a Sci-Fi RPG run by some of the currently low-activity members there. There hasn’t been much discussion over there about web design, science, or artwork and the brunt of that site’s focus has been on freaking games and RPGs, which, while interesting, are far from the supported focus points of the site. But if the RPGs and games keep the interest of the members there for long enough, it might sprout some interest in the site itself, and especially the subjects that I believe are the focus of this network. But, even if that isn’t the case, as long as the RPGs are going to be something fun, that’s alright. I am thinking about making the Oblivion RPG completely public soon. However, the Sci-Fi RPG, Shattered Mirror isn’t doing so hot at all. It went from bickering and complaining to a couple of people getting banned to the current inactivity.
I was thinking of removing TinyPortal from the extensions the community site supports, but not out of spite for the software. TinyPortal has done well, but given that some of its features and more (including topic CSS and Javascript, along with enhanced BBCode) are included in the forums themselves, posting full-featured articles would only be a matter of keeping the current front page setup. Of course, then I thought…well, the article system may not be needed there, but everything else is. I’m always the one who tries to make complete and total use out of everything I put my hands on. If there’s one thing that seems under-used, or something that’s used way too much, I always try to find a way to streamline it so that all the under-used or else annoying stuff is out of the way.
Thus, I’m keeping TinyPortal. However, their main website is shutting down. There will be no additional versions of TinyPortal to speak of…at least for now. They’ve gotten TinyPortal’s newest versions to work with SMF 2.0 and who knows? When SMF 3 comes out, perhaps there will be some surprise version of TinyPortal to be released, if forums are still around by then.
If, however, the current community site can be made even more user-friendly by porting it into this WordPress blog with its own downloads and social network systems in place, TinyPortal may not be needed. As I said, I depend on TinyPortal for its front page material and downloads system more so than the articles system. And the front page layout is more-or-less just blocks just like WordPress’s widgets. The recently-updated forum topics block is basically nothing more than a forum system; therefore, there’s not much else that is needed. Including a recently-updated forum topics, recently-added-and-updated files, and recently-updated-and-added articles widgets would be nothing short of tedious, but it wouldn’t be difficult. Getting this site’s theme working the way I want is what’s really at stake.
The Future Theme
The Cobalt 2010 Theme is what has been used on the Community Site for quite some time, and it was ported here as well. Strangely enough, WordPress 3 launched with a new theme called Twenty-Ten, which is what this site uses (contemporary to this post). I’m going to start building a 2011 theme based around the great accomplishments of the WordPress team in their theme, as well as the mostly-great accomplishments of the Cobalt 2010 Theme. The thing that bogged the prior theme down is that there was some negative margins on the right side when the content was centered. Instead of having content centered, the new theme will basically use 100% of the browser viewport. Some of the media queries with CSS will need to be redone as the new theme is constructed. One thing I noticed with the new theme is that, while it is HTML5-ready, it does not yet use HTML5 elements. I’m certain that this is mainly because it isn’t supported by many browsers. Yet, Remy Sharp’s HTML5 Javascript work (found on HTML5Doctor.com) makes at least many of these worries a thing of the past (considering you have script enabled).
The new theme for this site will be code-named Turn the Page with an actual name awaiting last call. Turn the Page is basically a statement that this site will be using HTML5 as much as possible, and not simply to jump on the bandwagon of new means better. It’s not some attempt to cling on to the newest buzz-words. HTML5 is much more than a buzz-word, unless you’ve never looked into it or read anything about it. An example of a buzz-word would be something like, Web 3.0, which while in effect is poorly-described and doesn’t in any way say to me that it’s better than Web 2.0 semantics and syndication. Web 3.0 is supposed to be the Semantic Web. What’s Web 4.0 then? The Internet becomes self-aware? That’ll be the day *looks forward 20 years and says to myself, I might eat my own words *.