After years of stating my preference for 3ds Max after finding my initial exploration of Maya’s UI cumbersome at best…I’m starting to rethink things a bit.  After experiencing a curious bug  involving viewport backgrounds in Max that cost me way too much time to “fix”, I’ve started a bit of training into Maya.

While I’m going along, my dislike of the UI is starting to fade to the point where I’m ready to admit that it’s not cumbersome – just different. In addition to that, I’m starting to see some things that seem to be easier to do in Maya from the start than it is to do in Max – all inexperience in Maya and experience in Max included. Although I still reserve the right to keep my original opinion in the end, Maya has certainly shown me enough to give it a fair shot in changing that.

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Today we’re going to talk about banner ads. Now, I know, banner ads are old news – they’re practically as old as the internet itself. However, I’ve been seeing examples of something that’s relatively new – and I really don’t like it.

See, banner ads always came off as a little cheap – they generally destroy the look of a site, and their entire point was to simply make the website owner money without doing anything. But y’know what? That’s understandable. After all, “free” money is hard to resist.  But there is nothing understandable about playing the pity card with Adblock users.

Yes, certain websites include a script for the sole purpose of checking whether or not you’re blocking banner ads on their site, and will (at best) include a message on their site begging you to “Whitelist” their site, because *sob* they need the money.  No. Just… no. First of all, with the cheapness of shared hosting that has more features than you’ll probably ever use (we’re talking less than $10/month) -  you’re coming off like you’re the worst con man in the world.

On top of that, somewhere along the line you’ve forgotten how the internet works. There are billions of websites out there and there’s a good chance that at least one of those websites does things better than you. If you have people that choose to go to your site, the last thing you should do is to guilt them into doing something that they shouldn’t ever have to. Setting up rules for member conduct is one thing, but to try to guilt someone into changing a browser setting just for your insignificant little site? That’s a little presumptuous of you don’t you think?

This practice alone is pretty annoying, but what happens when you mix JavaScript with it? One particular Sims site decided to push the envelope. By that I mean choose to remind everybody why so many web surfers hated JavaScript for so long. See, instead of just putting a little guilt message at the top of the page, this shining example of web developers decided to use the old JavaScript Alert box method. Not only that, but he included it within the header of the entire site. So instead of just one message…it popped up this Alert box on every. single. page.

I imagine the web designer’s goal was to annoy people into submission and I imagine it worked quite well for those who really wanted to be on the site, but didn’t know any other way to get around it. I am not one of those people. Oh, I certainly did want to view the site, but the more a site annoys me, the more I want to fix it. So after a quick Google search, I found that you can add JavaScript exceptions based on domain in Firefox’s userprefs file. So I did. I blocked any use of the Alert function on that domain, and the annoyance stopped.

Again, nobody’s demanding that you just run a site at a loss, deny yourself any income, or not make requests for donations – it’s your site after all, and your time and money going into it. Remember though, it’s your site that visitors are viewing in their browser. Don’t request, guilt or demand that viewers change their browser unless you’re prepared to follow requests and give into demands and guilt to change content on your site.

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That’s right, I changed my hosting, and this is the first post on it.  So far so good…definitely better/more  features, similar if not equal speed,  and oh…about a sixth of the cost.

I’ve moved over pretty much everything, including the old site as well. I’ve gone through and cleaned it up to remove all the spam, locked it down, and have made it available again to view here.

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…but it’s probably the most sensible one. I admit, I’m not much of a blogger – not that I don’t have anything to say mind you, but I usually end stopping 3/4 of the way through a post and end up scrapping it. Hence the reason why of the entire 3 posts in 3 months, only one of them isn’t about the site.  However, the forums at the old site were dead, and the only real use I could make of it was updating the news – in which case, I might as well just do a  blog anyway.

I am actually working on “stuff”, but I’m reluctant to talk too much about any of it due to the seeming inability to focus (and complete) one project at a time.  However there are two projects I’m working on that are worth mentioning, mainly because my interest in both of them is extremely high.

First off, I’m currently working on making a Lord of the Rings Online gadget/widget/ “Rich Internet Application” using Adobe AIR. Previously I had made one for the Windows Sidebar,  but I felt AIR would be a more flexible choice to continue on with the project. If you would like to know more about this or get the Sidebar version, head on over to my blog at http://my.lotro.com/Digital_Utopia. That blog was started first, and seeing how it’s completely LotRO related, it just makes sense to keep LotRO projects over there.

Second, I’m continuing to work on my modeling skills – especially organic modeling. If you think you see where this is going, you’re pretty close, but my focus isn’t quite that narrow. If it pans out, it’s going to be huge – but those are all the details I feel comfortable giving at this early stage. As progress comes, so will the updates.

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If you’ve ever had the misfortune of running into the dreaded I/O operation failed (rename) and tried to google it, you’re probably only going to find people confusing it with the (attribute modified) error, and giving the solution for that one.  Or at least, that was my experience, and why I’m writing this.

This wonderfully vague error message simply means that one of the files that the installer attempted to patch was unable to be renamed. Apparently the installer makes a copy of the file it’s patching, deletes the original, and then renames that copy to the original file name. If it can’t delete the original, or simply can’t rename it – it will throw that error.

So…if you ever run across this error, make sure none of the game files are in use. Although your Anti-Virus may be the culprit (especially if it’s doing a scan), it can also extend to other things, such as say – having one of the game files open in an editor

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…at  least for now anyway. Earlier today I downloaded the jQ theme by Devolux, and proceeded to rape and pillage it until I got something I was happy with. It’s definitely not perfect, but it looks decent enough to live with for the time being, so I can go ahead and work on other stuff.

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Although this is very much a work in progress at this point, DigitalUtopia.org has obviously changed. In lieu of that, I feel an explanation is owed to those of you that still pop in here from time to time, as well as a welcome to those of you who have just stopped in.

From the beginning, DigitalUtopia.org was a php-nuke/phpbb site, which was always too large for what it contained. Sure, the forums came in handy for a particular mod – a certain model that needs no introduction, but beyond that – it was just another site with forums, and very few members.

So this time around, I took a look at my habits, and decided to go in a direction that I felt would be a better fit for my needs. While I haven’t done a project of the scope of dear sweet Alyx since then, I’ve been busy with quite a variety of small projects. These projects have varied from “curiosity experiments” to released projects and services of a smaller scope.

Although I did start a blog on a certain MMO’s website, and have always been a forum junkie, I figured that one centralized location to keep track of my projects, and share these with whoever may have interest in them would be the ideal choice. Since this host has been used the last few years for nothing more than file storage and scripts – and the site itself has been pretty much a ghost town – that the best decision would be to breathe new life into it by making the change you see here.

The past is….hiding

As for the old site? Currently it’s mostly still there – at least in terms of files and the database anyway. So those posts can be retrieved for posterity at some point – if that need ever arises;  however I don’t see that need right now. No, I’m certainly not “ashamed” of Alyx. This isn’t some cheap way of hiding a “youthful indiscretion” with some thinly veiled attempt at maturity. Although I feel that it could’ve been better, I’m much more interested in doing it better than trying to hide it under a Wordpress rug.

At any rate, thanks for stopping by and keep your eyes open for some polish followed by some content!

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