It’s odd, I can’t believe it’s been that long since the last post. There hasn’t really been anything to write about, no trials with code, no revelations, just fairly steady progress. In other news I’ve finished one playthrough of The Witcher 2, which is absolutely blinding. A more recent discovery is the ancient but still utterly amazing Jagged Alliance 2. Go buy, gog have it on sale this weekend!
Category: Miscellany
Using a lot of cues from elsewhere I’ve put together a DMG containing JA2 statically linked to the necessary SDL library. It contains the data for the 800×600 mod my Mythrell and still requires the game data files. More information inside:
Jagged Alliance 2 – Mac Static
The binary is i386 & X86_64 but not PowerPC at the moment.
Google have celebrated Roger Hargreaves 76th birthday with a whole stack of Mr. Men logos. As far as I can discern from the javascript there are 16 of them, after the cut. View full article »
Well that was quite smooth, the application is now in the App Store Right Here!. In other news it appears I’d completely forgotten in my rush to get the site live to include LV partitions for the site and it’s backup. Cue me completely forgetting the LVM commands and having to have a quick refresh on tldp.org. Oh how things have changed so fast! A few weeks ago I stumbled briefly with grant privs in MySQL!
Well actually it was submitted last Friday, but with the announcement of the iPad 2 and everything else I’m not expecting it to go live this week. Suffice to say I’ll be posting a store link or page link here when it’s all gone through.
And I have a reasonably themed wordpress install, integrated with a reasonably themed bbpress install. Not bad having never touched html or css before. Now I just need to gather those screenshots up. So, it’s kinda live:
I need to fiddle with the blog settings a wee bit and of course there’s bugger all in the way of content, but that is to be expected seeing as the app isn’t submitted yet.
There’s some really nice stuff you can do in CSS, one of which is getting rid of graphics for borders, backgrounds, and buttons. Transparency is a boon as well allowing good styling with minimal effort, in my case surrounding pre tags with transparent slightly grey background to help them stand out:
pre {
background-color: rgba(150,150,150,0.4);
border: 2px solid rgba(100,100,100,0.6);
-moz-border-radius: 2px;
-webkit-border-radius: 2px;
-opera-border-radius: 2px;
-kthml-border-radius: 2px;
border-radius: 2px;
margin-left: 2em;
margin-right: 2em;
margin-bottom: 0px;
margin-top: 0px;
padding: 5px;
}
What has been bugging me though after working through a custom wordpress theme to tie in with the website for my application (see here) is how to match dynamically generated css class or ID styles. Such as the ones produced by wordpress functions like the_ID() and post_class().
The answer is quite straightforward in the end. This is how you match dynamically generated class or ID styles in CSS3, it might work in other variants of CSS:
div[id^="post"] h1 {
font-weight: normal;
text-align: left;
}
The above will match an h1 tag inside any div that has an ID starting with “post”.
I’d scanned the w3 document quite a bit but the use of this didn’t sink in until I realised that err.. well class and id tags ARE elements of div, h1 or whatever.
Soon I’ll be able to upload this local wordpress install in all it’s glorylack of content^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H. 
I think I’ve made around 5 abortive attempts to submit my app now, that’s no reflection on the quality of the app store or the submissions process but on where my brain has been focused. Purely on the development of the software and not the support structure that it might need. The latest hiccup came at the final stage which I didn’t realise you had to have prepared prior to approval. The optional web/support site that it asks for are probably not optional if you want people to trust the software and believe that it will be maintained. Cue scurrying off, finding a suitable domain that is free, registering it… and then going “Oh bollocks I don’t actually KNOW how to do this”. So around 5 days later I have a reasonable enough grasp of HTML and CSS to make a basic site and can get on with doing the bit I do understand, systems administration, software, configuration and maintenance.
I knew I was going to have to do that, I was just hoping to do it whilst apple do their approval thang.
So now we’re very close:
- Site content is written.
- Site is mostly configured.
- Email configured, and tested.
- Sitemap scripts sorted out.
All that is really left is:
- Gather 5 suitable iPad screenshots.
- Gather 5 suitable iPhone screenshots.
- Write a little support page, probably just formmail for now.
Ideally I also need to:
- Install blog, easy.
- Skin blog, err….
- Install forum, modified to allow .chefdoc. Probably easy.
- Write CV. Which I’m crap at.
WordPress/Akismet & Slickr Flickr updated to latest versions.
*Post originally contained information on how to backup your comics, redacted at the request of Comixology’s CEO.*
Digital comics are a great thing, and I’m slowly amassing a reasonable library of them through the fantastic Comics.app (Comixology) on the iPhone/iPad. One thing concerns me though and almost holds me back from buying all the issues of Witchblade I want so I have the full collection. Seeing as I’m currently selling all my dead tree copies of the same I want to know that my digital comics are safe & not going to go anywhere. There’s no option on Comixology to view what you’ve purchased in the past and certainly no options to download CBR’s or similar of your purchases. As has just been pointed out to me by David Steinberger (Comixology CEO) they are indeed viewable on the web, here:
Comixology Online Comic Viewer – Account login required.
I swear that was white paging for me last night, which is why I decided to look into scripting an extraction process in the first place.
So the problem with digital distribution is that in a lot of cases you do not really own what you buy. What happens when digital distribution providers vanish? You are normally left with a purchase encumbered by DRM that you cannot read. Your investment wasted. This is a worrying development in consumers rights. If I purchase a comic/book/cd/game in a bricks and mortar store nobody can really take that away from me. I can scan it/copy it and keep it if I so wish and nobody is really going to know unless I start waving it around on the web. I can also loan the item itself to friends. They can enjoy that and go on to collect/purchase the item or recommend it to their friends leading to increased sales. Admittedly Kindle are doing this now and it’s a great thing, bringing some of the functionality of real books into the digital world.
What if I choose/amforced to abandon the provider… Say I no longer can use an iPhone/Android or have some argument with Amazon and refuse to use their services? I have made those purchases, not rented them. It’s not like deciding to avoid Waterstones or Sainsbury’s.
How do I take them with me? Well in many ways as it happens but with laws such as the DMCA and others it makes it potentially illegal to do so. Like so many strict interpretations of copyright law when handled by corporations they criminalise and therefore marginalise the very people who are the biggest fans. A recent example of this for me was the BBC’s showing of some of Bob Monkhouse archive. He was a huge huge fan of TV/Radio comedy and did everything he could to archive these for his personal use. It got him arrested, although charges were eventually dropped. Some TV shows now recognise this dichotomy, I believe Tru Blood is very lenient towards it’s fans use of it’s imagery. Other’s not so (*cough*Harry Potter*cough*). Another recent example I saw on 4chan’s /co/ board. Somebody had ripped and posted scans of an entire comic for others to read, effectively saying this is ace look look! The author of the comic noticed and joined in the thread, not to condemn but to encourage. Get out there, read my stuff, please buy my books. That’s to be applauded, it clearly worked for him and drove sales. Perhaps that only works for the smaller publishers… would it have worked to promote say, AP Comics Darkham Vale or Com.X’s Bazooka Jules, the first two issues said x/6 the 3rd said no such thing and turned out to be the last. Similar stories exist with Young Liars by David Lapham and other big names as well and that series was beguiling, confusing and excellent. It didn’t work for the piloted and then leaked TV version of Warren Ellis’ Global Frequency, mores the shame.
I for one am happy to get digital comic books to read for less than a 1/3 of the price UK stores tend to charge. It’ the price point digital distribution should be, significantly less than the corporeal version not some 10% tip of the hat. iBooks especially but Kindle and Waterstones etc. take note… your prices are a fucking joke, in some cases 50% plus (amazon) higher than you yourself sell the dead tree version. There is NO way a digital copy of a book should ever cost more than the dead tree version. Are they trying to protect their paper manufacturing arms? Perhaps publishers, in a vertical investment, have shares in managed forests, tree felling, pulping and paper producing industries and they think this protects their alternate revenue streams.
