Kalimat al-Mutafalsif

For those that use Linux, read my post yesterday, and decided to check out the website for Dungeon Runners, I apologize. I should have pointed out that their site is very, very unusable on Linux (ok, to be exact, I haven’t gotten it to work with any version of Ubuntu, and Firefox). That changed today when I cooked up a small GreaseMonkey script which hides their Flash “movie” that plays in the background. Its not really a movie, its actually just a static image, but its loaded as a Flash movie. Anyways, its quite easy, go install GreaseMonkey, then the following script:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Dungeon Runners Linux Compliant
// @namespace      http://thesnarky.com
// @description    This removes the flash "movie" which blocks the main site for Dungeon Runners
// @include        http://dungeonrunners.com/*
// @include        http://boards.dungeonrunners.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

var objects = document.getElementsByTagName("object");
for(i=0; i
Can download it by clicking here: http://thesnarky.com/wp-admin/dungeonrunnerslinuxniceuser.js
This finds the one Flash object named bg_chars (which is the offender in this case) and tells him to go quietly sit in the corner. And such, all is right in the world, I don’t need to boot into Windows to troll the forums (just to play the game).
				

I’ve taken to playin Dungeon Runners as of late, trying to scratch that itch that leaving WoW created. Actually, I’m quite happy to be done with WoW, and Dungeon Runners is casual enough that I can play and not get pressured into sticking on for long hours for “Just one more Ony raid”. In addition, Dungeon Runners is free, so long as you put up with ads you barely even notice!

As always I get distracted from playing games by writing stuff for them and DR is no different. They just released a service where you can nab an XML version of a player’s data and though it has some bugs its quite a yummy service. I spent the day hacking up a viewer for it, and this is what I came up with:

http://threeplanetssoftware.com/software/dr/

Its fairly empty right now, but the character stuff works as well as NCSoft will allow. In fact better, as I’ve solved an issue the other developers of these viewers hasn’t, the fact that some icons have the wrong name. So, anywho if you want to see it work, you could check my stats: the character’s name is Segfault.

Oh and just to satisfy the geeks out there: This is built in PHP, using simplexml to chew though the data. Pretty URLs are (obviously) done with mod_rewrite and javascript on the form. Tooltips are made using the Walter Zorn tooltip library.

I’ve got a Livejournal that I started about a year before this blog, roughly the month leading up to college. Jeez, and reading back on that stuff makes me think I’ve come pretty far, in a good way. Anyways I started that blog to encourage my friends to get through school, the idea behind it was “If I can make it through college, you can to.” Here to say I’ve done it. My last finals are over, all I’m waiting for is to get my degree in the mail (eh, and a transcript might be nice). BA in Arabic as well as Computer Science. Graduate work done in Informatics, specifically security related fields, and random coding done for 3 professors who will use it in the future of course will not show up on the transcript, but that ‘party time’ I ‘wasted’ has prepared me for the world to come, I think.

In not so boastful news, I’m currently working (read: started coding tonight) on a game site that I think will be really fun. Its a little ‘Snarky’ twist on a great game dating back to the 17th century and after bouncing the idea off the good simud folks, I think more people than just myself will love it. Hoping to get it done (read: a presentable beta version) by Christmas.

Along the same lines, Three Planets Software is finally getting a site. I don’t like the style yet, and am tweaking stuff still, but my professional side can be viewed over there.

You may recall I like cute cat pictures with captions. I’ve been really into viewing the voting pages lately because there’s LOTS more pictures every day that you don’t get to see otherwise. Unfortunately these pictures don’t have individual links given with them so I couldn’t paste into relevant conversations, and lets face it, every conversation can be relevant to a cute cat so I hit this problem daily. That is, until now. Have a go at this page. Ugly as heck, but leads to cuteness.

To use it, lets say you’re browsing the voting page when you find something adorable. To get its link, right-click on the picture, and copy the image’s location. Paste that link into the URL field on the vote_link page, then hit ‘Find’. At the top you’ll be given the first link you gave (to make sure it’s working), and the link I generate to its individual page. Click on the second ‘here’ and there’s your link!