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Troubles shot (I think)

I was able to get help fixing the styleswitcher, so it should work now! Yay! (The styleswitcher links for the Wargle layout are just above the footer, fyi.) I also think I fixed the reported problems with the Wargle layout's navigation; I don't have access to functional copies of IE6 and IE7 at the moment, though (damn you Wine Internet Explorer, why do you lie to me), so I am unable to verify this on my own. If you have either of those browsers, can you switch to the Warbird style (on any page; no need to stick to the test page anymore) and let me know if you can use the navigation? If not, and if I still can't fix it, well... at least now you have the other two layouts to choose from, so you can still browse the site normally. Sorry for the inconvenience (and also for the brief instances of downtime today that resulted from my tinkering). Now I can finally get started on the alternate version of this layout that I really wanted to do before, sheesh.

I also got some help with the comment system I'm using, so you should actually be able to use double quotes in your comments without them looking funny later.

 

EDIT: HOWEVER, somehow I have magically managed to break the fanart gallery again. The images are still there, the descriptions are still there if you hover the mouse over a thumbnail, but the lightbox effect no longer works and they're all displayed in an ungodly long list running down the page. What the hell, man. I'll try and fix that soonish, I guess grumble Crisis averted. Styleswitcher broke the gallery, but I found a workaround that'll do for now.

Happy New Year!

A few things to say today.

First of all, you'll notice that I went ahead and set all the pages back to the Lugia/Jolteon style. I got an error report from someone the other day saying that the Wargle layout was effectively unusable in Internet Explorer. I'm still waiting for them to get back to me with more details about the problem, but in the meantime I switched to a layout that definitely works in all browsers so no one else has trouble navigating while I work on it. If you had a similar problem with the Wargle layout, or if you have access to Internet Explorer in one version or another and wouldn't mind giving me a hand in troubleshooting whatever's wrong, the Wargle layout is still visible on this test page; I'd appreciate it if you could check it out in IE and email me a detailed account of anything that's broken (screenshots are a big help, by the way). I'll repair it as soon as I can get a better handle on what's wrong.

EDIT: After a quick check on one of my other computers and some additional emails, it looks like the problem is in older versions of Internet Explorer; IE 8 seems to work fine. I am so far beyond caring about IE 5 that it's not even funny, and I'd rather not have to care about IE 6, but if you're using IE 6 or IE 7 I'd still appreciate it if you could let me know what's wrong. I've also noticed a few other minor problems, so I'll be checking those as well. Hopefully it'll all be sorted out by the time I get the styleswitcher fixed.

Speaking of layouts, this reminded me that I still need to puzzle out what's wrong with the styleswitcher; if I can actually get that fixed, then at least if the problem with the Wargle layout is "entirely IE's fault" I can keep the layout and give IE users a functioning alternative. I'll see if I can't get some help with that problem later today, after I get some other obligations out of the way. I also need to get a little assistance on the new comment system, which for some absurd reason is not able to handle quotation marks correctly. Argh.

I don't have any actual content updates for dcNET itself at the moment, but I do have another little project-side-thing to show you. Insubstantiality is a simple blog I started for fandom-related... stuff. (The title will probably change a million times before I'm satisfied with it, which is why it's only listed as "Fanstuff Blog" in the Network menu.) It'll mostly be personal thoughts about the various fandoms I'm interested in, discussions of projects I'm working on, things like that that aren't appropriate for the updates page of dcNET itself. I don't know whether anyone will actually be interested in reading whatever goes up there, and I don't especially care—I just think it'd be helpful for me to actually write some of it down and get it off my chest and out of my head. Right now the only post of note is a list of "fandom resolutions", fanthings I'm going to attempt to start/finish/keep up with this year; aside from a resolution to update moar none of them are directly related to dcNET, but if I'm able to hold to them successfully then I'll have stories, art and other content I can add to the site anyway, so there's that.

I also finished another story for 649, so that should hopefully be up later in the week after I tweak a few things.

Hope your 2010 was great and that your 2011 will be even better. And that I can keep that "update dcNET more often" resolution. Yup.

Fandom Resolutions

It's a brand new year, and at this time it is usually customary for people to rattle off long lists of ways in which they would like to better themselves—primarily things that they really ought to have been doing all along anyway, like not turning into a huge ball of lard, and were simply too lazy to bother with until now for reals, but you might as well start sometime, right?

Though I am practically perfect in almost every way1, I have identified a few areas in my fancrap-related life that could stand a little improvement. Just for funzies I have outlined these areas below for your viewing pleasure, as well as a few goals I'd like to meet. Maybe if other people can see them, I'll be shamed into actually keeping up with a few of them. We'll see.

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Hello world!

Tried the whole blogging thing before maybe one or twelve times; didn't quite pan out. Figured hell, it's a new year, might as well try again anyway. Here we are. Have fun. (Would've used my old LiveJournal for this—it is just kind of sitting there and rotting, after all—but WordPress is shinier. LJ will just have to be for stalking other people's journals, then.)

Why the nth attempt at a blog, you ask? Not sure, really. It's not so much that I feel like I have anything earth-shatteringly interesting to share as it is that I have a whole bunch of fanwork ideas and such that I want to get off my chest somehow, and I guess this is how I've decided to do it. I doubt that this will attract a huge following, and I don't really care whether it does or not; I'm running under the assumption that actually writing about this crap will make me feel better about being Captain Never Start/Finish Anything, and hey, maybe someone will have some interesting input or something. Bah.

So! The forecast calls for fancrap, and lots of it. Fanfic ideas/plot bunnies/brainstorming primarily, maybe the occasional picture or ramble about fakemon, maybe some discussion about fandom itself. Probably lots and lots of stupid memes I happen to steal from whomever, with the excuse that "it's going to help me think about/organize my fic, totally." I also have some other, uh, ideas and things I want to talk about; not going into detail because it's four in the morning, but I will say "Zork" and "audience participation" and leave you to ponder those (hint: they're two separate things) for however long it takes me to remember to ramble about all that. A good deal of this will probably be Pokémon-related, but I've also got nagging ideas for stuff like Tales of Symphonia, Golden Sun, Fire Emblem, maybe some Ace Attorney... pretty much anything involving anything else I like is fair game here. (This would probably be a good time to warn those of you who chance upon this blog from Pokémon-related places—most of you, I imagine, since pokeymans fans are the only fans I bother associating with atm—that, yeah, those other fandoms may actually be pretty prevalent here, as opposed to Altered Origin where I say it's "not a Pokémon fansite" but then never do anything else ever anyway.) Can't promise regular updates, but now that I have something resembling a direction for this blog it is at least likely that they will appear more often than "lol never". For a while, anyway. Check back often! Or don't! That's cool too!

I am extraordinarily fickle and so the blog title, tagline, theme and more are subject to change without warning and whenever the hell I feel like it. You have been... warned. (four in the mooorniiiing)

I will try my hardest to keep real life as far away from this as humanly possible, aside from the occasional "school happened and that's why blah is late" or whatever. It's not like there's any actual loldrama or major accomplishments goin' on there anyway; wouldn't want to bore you! Will also attempt to avoid original fiction/art/sfdhhfda stuff, if only for the sake of order. (One of these days I will get all of my original-work websites/blogs/etc./atsdhf done aaaaaaa) That's all primarily seekrut anyway. So yes. Fancrap. That is all.

In closing, it is four in the morning and I've already broken my new year's resolution to stop staying up so damn late. Whoops. Your irregularly-scheduled rambling will begin when it isn't fllhdghljbnadg-o'-clock. Probably it will also contain a much lower concentration of sentence fragments. Posts made at keyboardsmash-o'-clock are notorious for those.

December 3rd

If you've kept an eye on my past few news posts, or perhaps taken a casual stroll over to the to-do list, you might have noticed that the date "December 3rd" has been popping up a lot; no further explanation has been given, however. So what exactly is so special about December 3rd? Why did I make that a deadline for all these site updates, and why was I rushing to get it all done at the last minute thanks to NaNoWriMo and school eating up the entirety of my November?

Why, it's dcNET's third birthday, that's why! Hooray, confetti, song and dance, et cetera!

"What's that?" you ask? "Since when? What ever happened to birthdays one and two?" Well, actually, it's a funny story...

...okay, no it isn't. The truth is, I completely forgot when the site's birthday was. (I'm sorry, baby, I'm a terrible person... you know I love you, though, right? D: ) I only checked this stuff on a whim a few months ago; at first I actually thought that it was October 4th, which is when I purchased the webspace and a domain name. Turns out that that domain name was actually a different one, though, one I eventually plan to use for non-fandom, original stuff. dcNET's domain name was purchased in late November/early December—not quite clear on the exact date—and as far as searching through my old website files can tell me, dcNET itself went live on the internet for the first time on December 3rd, 2007. I felt bad for completely forgetting about it for two years, so I decided that I'd start celebrating it this year. And there you go! Birthdaytiem.

The following updates would have appeared sooner in the day, by the way, but I was still rushing to finish some of them and then my mom took the family out to see Cirque du Soleil in the middle of the afternoon. It was a great show and all, and I really enjoyed it, but way to cut into my website's birthdaytiem, Mom. >|

BUT it is not yet 12:00AM where I am, so there is still time! Let the updates begin!

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