Pre-NaNo post, plus a calendar!

NaNoWriMo starts in only a few days more!! OMG. I have not done any significant planning the past few weeks due to a couple of personal on-goings, so I’m just barreling head-on this year’s NaNo in much the same way as I did in previous years. D:

Good luck to me, and all of us!

I did make my own wallpaper calendar. I meant to make more sizes, but as with the rest of my planning, I never got around to it; so with much less pomp and blare as I initially planned, here is my NaNo calendar, free for download and use, in wide and regular format.

(Base image is this lovely notebook and pen.)

NaNoWriMo 2010 calendar, regular version

Hope you like it!

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Power Auras Classic: a discipline priest setup

I'm talking about: A discipline priest setup for POWA

A couple weeks back, I wrote an introduction on the World of Warcraft addon Power Auras Classic, an addon that allows a lot of customization in the visual display of auras and effects centered on your character. Some might say that the inclusion of auras by Blizzard is sufficient for their needs, and for that, I salute you! But if the Blizzard auras are not exactly what you’re looking for, and want to take your auras a step further, then Power Auras Classic just might fit the bill.

I also wanted to talk about a “real world” example of the addon in use, and highlight some of its strengths and its flexibility in the process; hence, I am showing Talá’s setup and sharing the actual export as well. I will be showing Eilonwyn’s setup soon as well.

The purpose of these followup posts is not just to showcase what I’ve done with POWA, but also to try and give you an idea of how to work with POWA to set up your own UI–as well as for you to decide if you need more from your auras from what Blizzard gives you. My visual preferences might not be the same as yours, but that’s exactly the wonderfulness of using POWA: it’s your call. It’s your decision. Try a setting out in a raid, in BGs, anywhere–and tweak it as you go to make it better.

I will be sharing my export files, though, in case you’d like a starting point for your own POWA setup. :)

A discipline priest setup

Talá is a disc priest, and my second 80. I’d say her POWA setup is a lot less complicated than with Eil’s, for the sole reason that I don’t get to raid with her as much, and that she got into end-game later. Therefore, it’s easier to start with Talá’s setup, where I can cover the basics.

Please note–these settings are prior to Patch 4.0. Why am still showing it? Because it is still mostly useful, and for the purposes of a tutorial, they suit.

Quite simple, isn’t it? This one shows a couple of things:

Renewed Hope is up
Borrowed Time is up
I have Grace stacks on my friendly target–one stack shown here
Penance is off cooldown and available (you can actually see the Penance icon and Circle of Healing icon together, although obviously only one will be up at any one time)
Prayer of Mending is off cooldown and available
Inner Focus, Pain Suppression, and Power Infusion are also all off cooldown and available
That HUGE Inner Fire icon? That means I don’t have Inner Fire on myself, and that I had better put it on.

Ah, life is good.

Spell procs

Renewed Hope, Borrowed Time, and Grace are three things I’d like to keep track of. Disc priests have a lot more procs, but these three are the ones I decided I wanted to focus on: Renewed Hope needs to always be up, Borrowed Time so I know my casts are hasted, and Grace to make sure I have three stacks up on my tank when necessary (i.e., when not dancing through heroic dungeons).

On the left is the setup for the first ring: Renewed Hope, shown in white. (Click to enlarge.) The rest of the rings follow this style with a few alterations, but this is the meat of the aura.

Since I want this aura to show up when I have this buff, I’ve selected Buff as the Activation By value, and entered Renewed Hope in the text area for its name. I don’t care about stacks (there aren’t any!) so I leave it at =0.

I don’t want this aura showing up all the time: it’s only important when I’m in combat, so I ticked the In Combat checkbox. Just to be safe, I also removed the X mark on Resting; I want to be sure I see it if I’m in combat inside a city.

I chose these simple rings (texture #16) because it’s clean and uncluttered. As a healer, I am usually more focused on the tank/s and/or the raid, so I need to be able to see immediately if I’m standing on fire or have to otherwise move: the minimalist rings along the top (and no auras at my feet) make sure I see enough to be able to react in time.

Renewed Hope is also more transparent than the others (here at 50%; the others are at 75%). Since Renewed Hope should always be up, the aura needs to be as unobtrusive as possible but noticeable when gone.

I also added a timer for Renewed Hope, so that I can easily see when it’s starting to run out. Nothing fancy here, just the default settings in the Timer tab (with Show ticked off, of course) and a change of position (to position it between the rings), size, and opacity.

As mentioned, all the rest are similar. To duplicate these settings, go to the main settings window, and along the bottom you’ll see a Copy button. Select the aura you wish to copy in the list (make sure it is highlighted), click on the Copy button, and then click on the page you wish to copy it to in the list on the upper left. Just go ahead and select the current page, unless you’d like to put it at a separate page.

You can then open up the new aura–which is exactly identical to the old one, which should be sitting beside your new aura–and change it up. I changed the color and the size, as well as the Activation By setting.

There are two differences for the Grace ring. First, the buff isn’t on me, but on whoever I am targetting. The image on the left shows my activation settings for Grace–it is exactly the same as the others, except that I had ticked the Friendly Target checkbox. So if whoever I am targeting has the Grace buff and is a friendly target, I’ll see the aura (and number of stacks) around me.

The other difference is the stacks display, since Grace stacks up to three. The Stacks tab is very similar to the Timer tab–just click Show, change up the position, sizes, and color, and that’s that ;)

Missing buffs

While there are any number of buffs that I’d need to make sure are available, I decided to have Inner Fire show up as big as can be when it’s not there because I always seem to miss it, when it should always be there.

To the right is the effect editor pane for Inner Fire notification. I have checked Use own Texture so that the Inner Fire icon shows up as the aura itself, and also checked Invert, which means that if I do not have the buff, show me the aura!

Of course, it won’t do to have it right in the middle of the screen, so I have moved the aura off to the side, where it is big enough to be noticeable but not obscuring anything important (i.e., if the buff wears off in the middle of a fight).

Spells off of cooldown

I also wanted to know when spells are off cooldown, such as Penance and Prayer of Mending, and to a lesser degree, know if my clicky cooldowns are also available, such as Pain Suppression, Inner Focus and Power Infusion. The latter I always have to keep reminding myself to put on a DPS, so this is a good reminder for me to have.

Similar to the rings, each cooldown notification aura is similar to the others, varying only in the spell activated on, positioning, and the size.

The left image shows the aura settings for the Penance spell. Like the missing buff aura, I’m using the spell’s texture so that I immediately see what spell is available.

Its Activation By setting is on Action Usable, which means it will show up when Penance is off cooldown and usable.

This means, though, that for this aura to work, Penance (and whatever spell/item is shown this way) needs to be on an action bar somewhere. Don’t forget!

Talá’s POWA string

(To import this string, follow the instructions over at my introduction post!)

As promised, here is Talá’s POWA string! There are two files/strings, as I’ve organized them by proc and by cooldowns.

A warning, though: unless you play on a 13″ screen like me, likely the auras will be slightly off in placement! The auras are almost always relative to the center of the screen, so different screen sizes and makeups will mean different positions. It should not vary too greatly but you may need to go in and update them!

Additionally, due to the use of the Action Usable setting for my cooldowns, these spells (actual spells from your spellbook, not macros) need to be on your action bar somewhere: Penance, Prayer of Mending, Inner Focus, Pain Suppression, Power Infusion. If you only want the procs, though, then this wouldn’t be an issue for you. :)

Power Auras – Talá’s setup

Other interesting POWA setups

It’s always interesting to see what other setups healing toons have, and I’ve compiled a small list of places you can visit to read up more about POWA for heals! If you know of any other interesting healer setups out there, let us know!

Good luck and have fun! Let me know what you think in the comments.

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5 parallel worlds to visit

Parallel worlds have a distinct call to my imagination. The thought that right now, something magical and fantastical might be happening is a happy daydream that I’ve had since I was a child.

Because of that, I’ve always been impressed when writers create their own worlds. Most of my favorite books have their own worlds, and how these worlds “work” is one of the biggest pulls of a story for me: how they’re connected to ours, if it’s possible to travel between them, the small details that change every day living for the parallel world’s creatures.

Here are five parallel worlds that I think are worth checking out. Traveling to them would be another matter, likely dependent on when I would arrive there ;)

1. Stephen King’s Dark Tower series

I’m not a horror genre fan. I scare very easily, and the after effects are unpleasant: the images stay with me a long time. I avoid horror books and movies, but may, at times, watch or read movies/books with only an undertone or horror to them.

Hence, I’ve never been a Stephen King fan. And I doubt I will ever be.

However, I am a big fan of his Dark Tower saga. It is a series of seven books, each one thicker than the last, and chronicles the last days (uh, years? decades? centuries?) of Roland of Gilead, the last gunslinger. As he starts out traveling from In-World to Mid-World and End-World, you discover that his world is connected in some way to our world. He draws people from this world and we travel with them, this last ka-tet, this last group of people: the last gunslingers. Jake Chambers, Eddie Dean, and Odetta Holmes all hail from different whens in this world.

What’s also quite interesting is that he managed to weave multiple threads/characters from his other stories into this series, so much that I almost want to read the rest ;)

2. C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia

By this time, everyone probably knows about Narnia–or has at least heard about Narnia–so there is not much to explain. What most know is that Lucy Pevensie stumbled into Narnia by walking into a wardrobe, and that there are talking animals and fauns and Aslan the lion who has Liam Neeson’s voice.

But my first experience with Narnia was its very beginning, having started with The Magician’s Nephew first: how Aslan sang the world to life, and stewardship of the land given to humans; how evil came into that world, so new and pure.

This was very interesting to me because of the parallels to Bible stories and Christian beliefs. I read this when I was young and it influenced me and my convictions significantly. In the same vein, CS Lewis’s contemporary and friend JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings has parallels with Christian beliefs, just in a different, more obscure manner (case in point: I only realized it when I read The Silmarillon).

3. Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom/Abhorsen series

This is a “different sort” of parallel universe. The Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre live exactly side by side, on the same piece of land: Old Kingdom to the south, and Ancelstierre to the north. Each country–if you will–knows of the existence of the other, and crossing to the other “country” is permitted with proper credentials and permits.

However, that border–where the Wall stands–is the only thing they have in common. Ancelstierre is just like our reality, if set a bit further back; but The Old Kingdom is ruled by kings and queens, where the dead walk, where the Charter and Free Magic exist. The Charter can be felt at the border, and a little further into Ancelstierre if there is wind from the south.

In the same way that charter mages cannot wield the Charter when further into Ancelstierre, Ancelstierran technology breaks down when in the Old Kingdom. Paper disintegrates. Mechanical equipment like guns refuse to work. No communication lines. And the way the Northerners talk, it’s really as if The Old Kingdom was a completely separate reality. They scoff at its ways, its methods. Like any sane human, they think the existence of magic mumbo-jumbo is a load of bull. They may give respect to its King, but magic? Are you serious?

3.5 Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom

I felt like I needed to give a nod to Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series. It operates under a more “traditional” parallel universe structure, and would really garner a place in this list by itself, but I felt it a bit like cheating to include two worlds from one author ;)

4. Jasper Fforde’s Tuesday Next series

Book lovers, you must know this book. There are no ifs and buts. Thursday Next is a literary detective: her day job requires her to look for forgeries and manage literature and its effects in a world where literature is pervasive.

Yes, that’s right, that’s her day job. Thursday is moonlighting as a Jurisfiction agent: as she can jump into books and novels, she has become part of the literary police force–literally. And this is the meat of that world: a world where book characters come to life, where being in books is their “day job”, where characters sometimes commit petty crimes. Like trying to become the protagonist when they’re only a supporting character. It’s a world where Jane Eyre originally ended sadly, but Thursday Next engineered it so that we have the much better ending we now know.

The “real world” is not entirely our world, being a lot more technologically advanced and yet retaining some “artifacts” of times long past. But the thought that the characters in the books we read are alive–that they are aware, and have their own thoughts and opinions–well, it’s such a heady feeling.

5. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series

I’ll bet everyone expected this entry ;)

A list dealing with parallel worlds can’t be complete without the Harry Potter books. To be sure, the massive popularity of the books kind of turn me off (blame it on the last remnants of the need to rebel!) but this doesn’t detract from the fact that the books are vastly enjoyable and present a very vibrant, interesting world that runs right along with our Muggle existence.

The mixing of time in the “real world” (as necessitated by Harry’s living with his relatives) and “their world” I felt was done really well: an interesting meld of the mundane and the magical. It made me appreciate the fact that modern technology makes our lives a lot easier in ways we take for granted: nothing is more marked in reminding us of this everyday magic that we already have than Mr. Weasley’s attempts at understanding and replicating “real world technology”. The apparent fascination he has with our “magic” is not only charming, but a reminder that sometimes, we really don’t need to imagine so much to experience magic–or to be wary and vigilant about the Dark Arts in the form of guns and other similar modern objects.

With our thoughts, we make the world

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.”

Did I miss any of your favorite parallel worlds?

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Progress, or lack thereof: list o’ links instead

I wish I could say that I’ve seen some progress with my NaNoWriMo research, but I haven’t been able to look into it again. Shameful, I know. But I’ve bookmarked a couple of sites to read through/study in preparation for NaNo, and I thought I’d share some of them in case it’s useful to someone else.

The most research I will likely be doing that may be relevant to others are on language creation and world building, hence the list of links is geared towards that.

On making languages

On Philippine history/legends

General worldbuilding

If you know of other websites, please share!

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Trying out HTML5 local storage

I decided I’d try out HTML5′s local storage after reading Christian Heilmann’s Smashing Magazine article on local storage. (Check it out, it’s worth it.) It’s always looked very intriguing, and the article reminded me to give it a whirl.

I’ve always wanted to have the slide-out tray menu on the left retain the visitor’s “setting”, but had no way of doing so reliably. One might say that using local storage is far from reliable, but it actually made sense: it would provide enhanced experience for those with newer browsers, but degrade with older browsers (read: just ignored). And I set off on making it work.

The end result is as you see it on the left, with the following piece of relevant code:

    var expanded = true;
    if( localStorage && localStorage.getItem('whimsical-tray') == 0 ) {
        expanded = false;
    }

    // some initializing of the animations and events

    if( !expanded ) {
        toggleCollapse();
    }

    Y.on( 'click', function(e){
        var storeVal = ( box.fx.get('reverse') ) ? 1 : 0;
        localStorage && localStorage.setItem( 'whimsical-tray', storeVal );
        toggleCollapse();
    }, '#nav-site-tab' );

Crazy simple, it’s almost too good to be true.

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30 before 30

Thanks to Kim, I came across this gem: 30 before 30. Thirty things to do before one turns thirty. I have a bit less than three years to go, which is both “not a lot” and “plenty of time”.

It is quite challenging coming up with 30 different things to do, which is why I don’t have 30 things in this list yet. Given the time frame, I feel a good number needs to be fairly significant, but something that is conceivably attainable within three years, especially when looking at the whole list. I also wanted to put in experiences that I’ve never had before, that other people might say any thirty-year-old should have done. It needed to be fairly varied, and somewhat interesting.

Some things were easy to put in, such as experiences I wanted to have. Some things were scary, such as goals I wanted to achieve.

And so: this is my 30 before 30 list.

Some things I felt like I wanted to add, but relied too much on a couple things that didn’t seem to be even 75% reliable, such as participating in cosplay (I’d never do it without someone else doing it with me, and none of my friends are into it), or walking down the beach on a moonlit night and having a romantic dinner on the dunes (it wouldn’t be romantic unless it was with that special someone), etc. Maybe I’ll add them back someday.

Good luck to me :x

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The beginning of the end: also known as WoW patch 4.0

I know I promised a Power Auras entry, but because Patch 4.0 went out last Tuesday, a number of my current auras understandably don’t make a whole lot of sense. For “tutorial” perspective, they’re fine; but for an actual usage example, they won’t be as relevant. So I’m taking a bit of time to tweak my auras a bit and change my auras post to make sure it’s half useful for someone else.

So, in replacement of that–and because I do want to talk about it a little–Cataclysm rambling inc!

The day everyone became noobs

When I came home, ready to jump right into the game, I was devastated (alright, just annoyed and sad) to find out that Blizzard couldn’t apply the patch because I had no hard drive space left. Uber fail. So I had to restart things and fiddle a bit, and then came the uber long installation. I felt like I was going to go crazy from the wait.

I logged in to find the guild in Naxxramas and ~~QQing~~ discussing the changes to their respective trees, how the DPS is looking, what rotations have changed, etc. I went straight to my mage to try and get some semblance of order going. Everything was out from my action bar (even Mana Strudels!) and my key bindings disappeared (on Bar 1 no less), so I spent a good amount of time last night putting everything back, tweaking macros and auras, and finding the right rotation.

I never got around to trying it out in a raid tonight, but I did try both Frost and Arcane specs. Unfortunately my priest will have to wait for the next day.

Twitchy Arcane without the missiles

Very twitchy, but all is not lost. I liked the older Arcane better (the “go crazy to empty-your-mana-gauge spec”) in terms of the feel of the playstyle, but I’m willing to give this a couple runs.

Current theorycrafting points to the switch to Mage Armor for the regen, and optimally you should be staying at 85% mana and above when not in your burn phase. So my target dummy fight looked like this:

Stack up Arcane Blast to 4.
Hit shiny cooldown macro: Mana Gem (to bring me back to 100% mana, as well as Improved Mana Gem effect), clicky trinkets, Arcane Power, and Mirror Image. I have MI glyphed to make sure it doesn’t affect GCDs. Speed pot (or likely Wild Magic pot, going forward) is there somewhere with a modifier.
Burn phase: AB spam regardless of whatever procs, right down to a bit over 40%.
By this time you should have an Arcane Missiles proc. Hit it, gain the T10 haste bonus, and then hit Evocation to get mana back to as close to 100% as possible. If you don’t have an AM proc, well, you don’t really have a choice: just hit Evo directly.
Conserve phase: use whatever “rotation” to keep above 85% mana. The idea is once you hit your cooldown macro, you get your mana back up to 100% at the start of your burn phase.

Rinse, and repeat. When to hit the burn phases depend largely on fight length and burn requirements on fight strategies. How you do the conserve phase also depends largely on your gear level. With Mage Armor on, and not-bad luck with AM procs, this can be fairly straightforward, but somewhat annoyingly twitchy for me. This may be due to lack of replenishment, so when raid-buffed it should be easier to stay in that range.

A friend of mine pointed out that the MI cooldown is at 3 minutes, and AP cooldown is at 1.5minutes–these sync up very nicely. However, your mana cooldowns aren’t synced up. Mana Gem is at 2 minutes, and don’t forget you’ve hit Evo separately from all your other cooldowns. Mana gem should preferably be up when you start your burn cycle. Evo should be up by the time you end your burn cycle (unless the boss is dying). So usually, by the time Evo will be up, just a couple more and MI will also be up…and so I end up waiting instead to make sure I get Quad Core in. Unless there are damage buffs for MI at level 85 raiding, you can probably hit MI separately then.

Also…only two arcane prime glyphs. Groan.

Shattering frosty things again and again and again

Ah, frost, the underdog of mage PvE specs. It doesn’t seem very promising for 80s raiding, although a number of factors may be coming into play, like my lack of familiarity with the play style (it’s very reactive) and latency (it has a lot of instants, and I feel my 200-400ms latency is horrible for such a spec). On both nights (pre-nerf and after) my Frost sustained DPS testing were both 2k below Arcane (pre-nerf: Arcane was 10k sustained, Frost 8k sustained; post-nerf: Arcane was 8k sustained, Frost 6k sustained).

My dummy test looked like this:

Start out with the Frostbolt+Waterbolt macro to get the Water Elemental going, and then hit the cooldown macro. Frost doesn’t really have a burn phase like Arcane, but well, you have trinkets and Icy Veins (QQ, I miss it for Arcane).
Hit the Water Elemental’s Freeze to force a Fingers of Frost proc, then hit Deep Freeze (unless FoF has already procced; it seems to proc with nice regularity).
Then normal cycle starts: frostbolt normally, but if you get Fingers of Frost, you can either Deep Freeze, Frostfire Bolt if you have a Brain Freeze proc, or Ice Lance. All those three spells are instants, so it feels very twitchy. It’s possible to end up chaining FoF. Any time both Deep Freeze and Freeze cooldown is up and you don’t have an FoF charge, hit Freeze+Deep Freeze.

There are a couple challenges with this. The Water Elemental’s Freeze spell brings up a targeting circle, which means you need to be always ready to put that circle down where the boss is. PvP regulars probably have this down pat, but since I only use my mouse to move, in a boss fight it’s usually…not in the right position.

Shiny frosty auras!

It’s also a little tricky making sure you’re hitting the correct buttons in your priority queue, especially when you have FoF up. A lot of times, I’d have FoF up, and would start hitting Ice Lance, when Brain Freeze would suddenly proc at my last cast. This isn’t such a big deal, but is a bigger concern when Deep Freeze comes back up suddenly.

Something to note: currently on live, Brain Freeze consumes the two charges of Fingers of Frost. Apparently this is a bug that has been fixed on Patch 4.0.3, so we’ll likely see the fix soon-ish.

Which is which?

I feel it’s a bit early to tell which spec I’ll mostly play in. Leveling would likely be Frost, as it seems likely that even with slows applied automatically, I’ll have a lot of downtime by playing Arcane (well, duh). It depends on how smooth out of combat mana regeneration is, and how fast our mage food tops us off.

Level 85 endgame raiding experience may still change, since mages get a number of new spells and there’s a lot of stat inflation going on with Level 80. For frost, the inclusion of Frostfire Orb in our rotation (we get Flame Orb at level 81, which turns into Frostfire Orb with the aforementioned talent) may give that little extra, and for Arcane, not having as much mana as we have now may certainly make burn phases considerably shorter and conserve phases more challenging.

As for Level 80 endgame raiding, either will work unless your guild requires you to be in the top DPS spec: and frost is not that.

In terms of playstyle, Arcane requires a lot more control than Frost–a different kind of control. Where Frost goes crazy with shattering things–and therefore “quicker payback” in terms of pew pew feel–Arcane is carefully managing mana so it can go freak out on its burn phase. Frost feels more frantic. (Again, I have no experience with PVP, so I can’t comment on how that feels.)

You might say Arcane doesn’t eat the marshmallow, and Frost does. A lot.

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Starting The Wheel of Time, and a giveaway

I'm talking about: The Wheel of Time

I’ve started reading Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time last July. Actually, that’s not strictly correct: I started listening to it last July. I was going on a trip with a friend, and I wanted to have a book with me. And I wanted to make sure it would last any downtime we needed.

So I went on Audible and, and seeing that the audiobook version capped at a whopping 29 hours and 32 minutes, I was sold. I’d always wanted to try reading it, but just never got around to it.

Admittedly, I never did get around to listening to it seriously during the trip. The next month, though, I was bedridden for dental surgery, and having nothing to do, I resumed the audiobook. I was promptly hooked, on to the second book before the week was out, and since I was still bedridden, I used up another Audible credit for it.

It’s probably too early to tell, but Jordan’s world is amazing. It may likely be a bit dragging for people who prefer quick reads like Harry Potter, as Jordan has a very descriptive style of writing, but I can certainly see why this is a classic. I still have a lot to read before I get up to speed, but I do have a fair bit of time, I think ;)

A giveaway

Before I left the Philippines, I had gone hunting for the books, since books are cheaper in the Philippines than Singapore. I found only found a small selection, but that’s likely because I only went to a small branch of Powerbooks–we didn’t have a lot of time.

I am a sucker for having series books in the same edition however, which means when I got here in Singapore and saw Kinokuniya with a complete collection in an entirely different edition set…well, I was sold.

Which means, I have a completely new, still-wrapped edition of The Eye of the World to give away. (What else would I do with it? It’s such in pristine condition.)

To enter, you can do either of two things: comment on this entry with who your favorite character in The Wheel of Time is, and why; or if you haven’t read WoT before, why you’re interested in it. Names will be run through a randomizer, so you don’t need to feel pressured to write an essay ;)

A couple notes: I don’t mind spoilers for this kind of epic series, so don’t worry about that. I’ll be contacting the winner via email, so be sure to leave a working email address (and I assume you are alright with giving me a mailing address). The book will be sent from Singapore to wherever via regular mail in a bubble-wrap envelope, so standard shipping duration applies.

Giveaway ends next Thursday!

Giveaway has ended, and congratulations to Demory!

4 Comments

The 2010 NaNoWriMo Novel plans

I'm talking about: plans for NaNoWriMo 2010

This year’s NaNoWriMo undertaking will be a story idea I’ve had for the longest time, but I’ve never started because it wasn’t the “right time”, whatever that is.

You see, I’ve been plagued with “not-the-right-time-itis”, as well as “I-think-I’m-the-best-thing-since-sliced-bread-itis”. I will always feel like I need more research and practice before I write “my masterpiece”.

Uh, wake up, Angela. It’s not even done yet. How in the world will it be anywhere near a masterpiece?! You don’t even know if the idea is interesting!

So I decided I’d whack myself over the head, laugh heartily at my stupidity and ignorance, and sit down and write the damn thing badly. At least, at the end of NaNo, I will have 50,000+ words of crap and I can either finally trash the idea, or if it’s actually usable (:O!!), start the manuscript massacre.

The premise

It’s an almost-alternate-reality slightly-historical fiction novel, based on an event in early Philippine history: Ferdinand Magellan’s arrival in the Philippines, and Lapu-lapu’s battle against him. Lapu-lapu is hailed as the first hero of the country, that Magellan was the enemy, that Humabon was a traitor. But were they really what they seemed to be? We know of Magellan, Lapu-lapu, Humabon, Pigafetta. But there are so many other people then. Did all of them think the same?

Hence my story was born. Slightly historical, but I don’t want it to be: I don’t have enough research, I don’t even speak Cebuano (though my mother is an Ilongga). Since I like reading and writing fantasy, I’ll weave some elements in, give it a sense of magical realism. Something with the feel of Arlene J. Chai’s Eating Fire and Drinking Water, which I think is brilliant, chilling, amazing.

Too many things to do, so little time.

Yes, there are far too many things to do to prefer for NaNo. I’ll have to wing most of it, but some things I want to look into:

Create a language – I want to further remove the setting from strict historical fiction to a looser one, hence the differing language. It will remain similar to Filipino (Tagalog dialect, although theoretically this should be Cebuano), with some similar words.
Re-read Eating Fire and Drinking Water for a refresh, as well as other magical realism novels, depending on time. My “writing voice” is easily swayed by books I am currently reading, so I should be very careful if I read other books with differing styles.
Flesh out the characters a bit more, put down some notes in writing.
Sort through older research work on folk tales – I did a fair bit of research earlier on some folk tales, but have dumped all of these into flat files with no real organization to them. I need to pinpoint ones that I need to look into, again.

I have my work cut out for me, but I should just barrel ahead, whatever preparation (or lack of preparation) I’ve had.

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Playing with rotation animation in YUI3

I'm talking about: adding a custom animation type to YUI3, and IE's Matrix filter

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away–well, actually, it was just during the Yahoo! Open Hack SEA held in Jakarta, Indonesia–one of the things I got caught up on was working with animations in YUI3–specifically adding a rotation animation. I was high on tea latte and from lack of sleep.

I’ve always meant to come back to it, make it work across browsers, package it up prettily sometime, but I’ve never been able to. This entry has been in the database ever since the hack day, actually. But never put up because I just couldn’t finish it.

But it feels like a waste to let the code (as hackish, and likely useless as it is) fade away, so I’m pushing on and publishing this post anyway.

Animating the element

I wanted to follow as closely as possible whatever convention was used in YUI3, and as such I wanted the code to animate go something like:

YUI().use( 'anim-rotate', function(Y){
    var rotateAnim = new Y.Anim({
        node     : '#rotate',
        from     : { 'rotate' : '0' },
        to     : { 'rotate' : '180' } // we turn #rotate upside down
    });
    rotateAnim.run();
});

The question was, how? It was actually pretty straightforward after I’d taken a look at some code. I needed to add a “rotate” behavior to Y.Anim. Y.Anim.behaviors contain functions that determine what styling changes happen on each “stage” of the animation via the set() function.

Firefox and Safari have -moz-transform and -webkit-transform and they work well, accepting numeric inputs which is pretty much what I needed in order to have Y.Anim calculate the steps needed.

However, Internet Explorer’s BasicImage just doesn’t play nice; it rotates only in 90-degree steps. *throws random stuff at IE* This article discusses an IE implementation that works in increments, but when I tried porting over to the script, it ended up doing rather odd (funny!) things. You can observe the funny sample here, and see for yourself.

I spent two nights trying to figure out exactly why IE was doing this weird flipping out thing: the math was correct if I used a calculator. Rotating the image manually in increments using DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Matrix was working without any of the weird flipping.

Finally, I tried looking at the exact values that were coming out of Math.cos() and Math.sin(). It was usually correct–until the animation gets to 90degrees, 180 degrees, etc.

The culprit

Math.cos() and Math.sin() accepts values in radians, not degrees. So I needed to convert them (degree * Math.PI/180) and then perform the appropriate function. And Math.cos(90*Math.PI/180) is not 0, but rather, 6.123233995736766e-17.

And no, there is no way to round it up to a more moderate value. Math.round() rounds to the nearest integer, not some-decimal-place-I-want.

Yep, boys and girls, they are splitting hairs somewhere.

So apparently, it wasn’t an IE issue. This value came up in all the browsers I tested. IE’s “mistake” was in not giving us rotate() like the other browsers, but I suppose they have better things to do in their time than make things rotate (which is likely for the best…).

In any case, here’s the code I used. Maybe some IE developer will see this and make things work somehow ;)

A quick disclaimer: it’s a hack, and not even cross-browser.

YUI.add( 'anim-rotate', function (Y) {
    Y.Anim.behaviors.rotate = {

        // this function changes the style of the node/element
        set: function(anim, att, from, to, elapsed, duration, fn) {

            // get the actual degrees to rotate the element
            var v = fn(elapsed, Number(from),  Number(to) - Number(from), duration);

            // now set the styling
            anim._node.setStyle( 'transform', 'rotate(' + v + 'deg)' );
            anim._node.setStyle( 'webkitTransform', 'rotate(' + v + 'deg)' );
            anim._node.setStyle( 'MozTransform', 'rotate(' + v + 'deg)' ); // FF 3.1+ only :(

            // IE stuff; doesn't work as intended :P
            var deg2radians = Math.PI / 180;
            var rad = v * deg2radians ;
            var costheta = Math.cos(rad);
            var sintheta = Math.sin(rad);

            var m11 = costheta;
            var m12 = -sintheta;
            var m21 = sintheta;
            var m22 = costheta;

            var str = "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Matrix(sizingMethod='auto expand' M11="+m11+" M12="+m12+" M21="+m21+" M22="+m22+")";
            anim._node.setStyle( 'filter', str );
        }
    };
}, '0.0.1', { requires: ['anim'] });

Again, I have the full code I used up here, if you wanted to check out the oddness of IE as well ;)