NaNoWriMo week 1 recap
Gasp! A video blog post!
Hi, I'm Angela, a girl with a blog on five different psyches:
girl,
geek,
reader,
writer,
gamer
Choose your poison ♥
Gasp! A video blog post!
These days, the page meta tags for keywords and descriptions are generally ignored for SEO, as search engines get more and more sophisticated and as people try and cheat rankings by padding their meta tags with words. I haven’t been paying attention to it myself, but that’s not any reason to get shoddy with meta tags!
Sometimes page descriptions do matter: they show up in search result pages, when sharing links in Facebook, and other small things. For a WordPress blog though, these aren’t usually baked in by default. Your keywords and description are actually your website’s description!
That isn’t very helpful when you’re sharing a link and a description of your whole blog shows up instead of what the link is all about. :/
So I sat down one day and tried to figure it out for my blog. Because of how my blog is set up, I wanted the following things:
And here is my function. :)
function get_keywords_description( &$keywords, &$description ) {
if( is_home() ) {
// home page should have blog-wide description and keywords
$description = get_bloginfo('description');
$keywords = "list,of,keywords,here";
return;
}
if( is_category() ) {
//categories you actually want to track/"specialize"
$CATEGORIES = array( 3, 4, 5 );
global $post;
$categories = get_the_category( $post->ID );
$current_top_category = 0;
foreach( $categories as $c ) {
if( in_array( $c->cat_ID, $CATEGORIES ) ) {
$current_top_category = $c->cat_ID;
break;
}
}
$cat_info = get_category( $current_top_category );
$description = "{$cat_info->name}: {$cat_info->description}";
switch( $current_top_category ) {
case '3' :
$keywords = "list,of,keywords,here";
break;
case '4' :
$keywords = "list,of,keywords,here";
break;
case '5' :
$keywords = "list,of,keywords,here";
break;
}
return;
}
// not home page, and not category page
if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
$description = get_the_excerpt();
endwhile; endif;
rewind_posts();
global $post;
$tags = get_the_tags($post->ID);
$cats = get_the_category($post->ID);
foreach( $tags as $t ) {
$keywords .= "{$t->name}, ";
}
foreach( $cats as $c ) {
$keywords .= "{$c->name}, ";
}
$keywords = rtrim($keywords,', ');
}Actual usage is pretty straightforward.
<?php
$keywords = $description = '';
get_keywords_description( $keywords, $description );
?>
<meta name="description" content="<?php echo $description; ?>">
<meta name="keywords" content="<?php echo $keywords; ?>">It’s not as elegant as I’d like–look at those horrid loops, and the use of the global $post–so if you have any suggestions on how to make it better, let me know!
Because it is November and it is NaNoWriMo, it is also the time of year when procrastination from writing becomes so fun and so…exciting! Procrastinating now feels so…rebellious.
Here are my top nine nifty ways to not write a novel in November!
What are your favorite non-novel-writing activities during NaNoWriMo?
A couple of weeks ago, 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. I also wanted to talk about a “real world” example of the addon in use; hence, I talked about Talá’s discipline priest setup after that, and this week I’ll be talking about Eilonwyn’s arcane mage setup.
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. 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. :)
Important note: the samples I have up here are based on Eilonwyn’s pre-patch auras, so yes, you will see Icy Veins as a cooldown for my Arcane setup. However, the POWA export file I’m sharing has been updated for patch 4.0.
Eilonwyn was my first 80, and I’ve been raiding with her longer than with Talá; hence her POWA setup is much more “mature” than Talá’s. That was pretty much the reason why I’ve decided to end with Eilonwyn’s setup! You will see a lot of similarities between her setups and Talá’s, as when I had reworked Eilonwyn’s old setup, I also redid hers. I’ll just briefly pass through the similarities, and move on to the more advanced auras I have for Eil.
As a recap, here are her auras:
All systems go!
Now, don’t be scared. That’s what it looks like when everything is up, but in reality that doesn’t always happen. In the above screenshot, that’s how it looks like when I have four stacks of Arcane Blast, a Missile Barrage proc, all types of equipment procs (I track spellpower and haste procs together respectively, or else the screen would be very confusing), all my cooldowns are on, my Mirror Images are up (images not shown here), a nice druid has given me an Innervate, a nice disc priest has given me Power Infusion, a disc priest has also shielded me (or one of my wards is up!) and I have procced Incanter’s Absorption.
Of course, priesty bubbles can’t proc IA anymore. And Power Infusion does not work with Arcane Power up. So this sort of color menagerie won’t be happening together anytime soon. ;) (Blizz is getting in the way of my disc priest/arcane mage love relationship.)
Waiting for my cooldowns to come
I also use Power Auras to give me quick feedback on whether my cooldowns are available, and if needed, when they will be available. The different between Talá’s setup and this is that this shows up when my cooldowns are unavailable, and when they’ll be back up. The timers above them indicate the time left.
You’ve seen the similar rings I’ve used before, although this time, I also have rings around my feet.
Along the top would be my clicky cooldowns, and along the bottom are equipment procs. Yellow rings are for haste, red rings for spellpower gains–this way, I can quickly gauge if I’m hitting harder or faster, or both. The pink ring is for Quad Core (4pc T10 proc), and the orange ring below is for Cultivated Power (the proc from Muradin’s Spyglass, which stacks up to 10–stack number is shown in the middle!).
All the rings are using similar textures (texture #16), but the bottom rings are flipped over:
Yay for texture reuse!
For Arcane mages, one of the most important things to look out for is the number of Arcane Blast debuff stacks you have built up, as you need to control your mana usage and your damage output.
I could have used the Stacks tab to just show me the number of stacks, but Arcane Blast stacks are like no other stack in-game, and I’m just not as good with boring numbers. A separate effect for each stack would be AWESOME! So: below is a series of images outlining my auras for my rotation: Arcane Blast debuff at one stack, at three stacks, at four stacks, Missile Barrage proc at four stacks, Missile Barrage proc at two stacks, Missile Barrage proc at no stacks.
The above effect is done by carefully overlaying each aura setting so that it “builds up” to a VERY EXCITING OMG PEW PEW time when all the SHINY LIGHTS are, er, lit. It also tells me that the more bright blue on my screen, the more I’m in danger of depleting my mana, since my spells are hitting harder but costlier. (And, yes, it’s more fun during burn phases when ALL THE SPARKLY LIGHTS ARE LIT!)
Click the image below to see the settings for all four Arcane Blast states (it’s huge!). This is where you can see the “magic” of the Stacks field in the Activation tab shines.
Cooldown availability is handled slightly different here, by the use of the My Spell Cooldown activation setting. When my clicky cooldowns are unavailable, these icons show up with a timer; otherwise, they’re hidden from view.
Lastly, I wanted to be sure that I clicked my mana gem as early as possible to have it available again in the fight later on–but it’s also important not to waste any extra mana gains by clicking too early! This is one example of where a “cascading aura rule” works really well.
First off: I want to hit my mana gem at 80% mana and below. Of course, I could just have a notification for 80% mana…but what if my mana gem isn’t available yet? I didn’t want it cluttering my screen then.
(Click to enlarge.)
The above is an example of how to go about doing something like this. In the POWA string and above, the 80% mana indicator is visible, but I actually have it way down (almost invisible) in practice. (I’ve yet to find out how to actually completely hide it.)
Above, you can see the “31″ in the text box just below the name of the action/item. The 80% mana aura needs to be activated before the mana gem action is also activated. In this way, you can have two very different activation rules for one aura.
(To import this string, follow the instructions over at my introduction post!)
As promised, here is Eilonwyn’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 mana gem, your Mana Sapphire needs to be on your action bar somewhere. I know that sounds like a no-brainer–of course your mana gem is on your action bar!–but I actually have a macro for my mana gem which doesn’t trigger this aura :)
Power Auras – Eilonwyn’s setup
It’s always interesting to see what other setups mages have, and I’ve compiled a small list of places you can visit to read up more about POWA for pewpewing:
Good luck and have fun! Let me know what you think in the comments.
Christmastime is just around the corner, and I’ve started to give a thought or two about gift-shopping. As a book-reader myself, I’ve always wanted to give books, because they can be so much more than “just books”.
However, I’ve never been able to give books as gifts. If my choice is a good one for my receiver, there’s also good chance they already have the book. If they don’t already have the book, there’s a chance they won’t like it. Gift certificates to book stores almost feel like a cop-out (although I do personally like them). Coffee-table books relating to an interest are also usually on the expensive side.
Without the luxury of wishlists, how do you go about giving books as gifts, if you ever do?
This November, Literature and Latte has a special offer for NaNoWriMos: a preview of Scrivener 2 that will run until December 7, as well as discounts! 2.0 has also been officially released yesterday–you can buy it straight off or try the 2.0 demo. I’ve played around a bit with 1.0 before, but have never got around to really using it until now: I’ve opened the previous Scrivener version only a couple of times, which meant I had a lot of leftover demo time (Scrivener counts the number of days you actually use the application for the demo, not the number of days installed in the system.)
I was suitably impressed with the earlier Scrivener, so I was looking forward to use Scrivener 2–the list of new features sounds pretty nifty, not the least of which is syncing to Dropbox (which I mentioned briefly yesterday).
I’ve only started using Scrivener with my NaNo novel, but I’m liking it quite well so far. Before I sleep, I repeat to myself what the scene I would be writing tomorrow would be, and when I wake in the morning, I bring up my machine and start writing in full-screen mode while I’m still half asleep. How far I get to has usually depended on what kind of scene/writing I was doing, but I get to at least 500 words this way. I go through the text quickly when I’m more awake to week out sleep-drunk misspellings (I might not remember what words were if I waited!), but otherwise leave the text intact.
I sync to my Dropbox folder, and leave for the rest of my day. Throughout the day, when I have spare moments, I write a little more: either via the iPhone app Plain Text, or using TextMate. When I get home and ready to write again (usually after dinner and whatever chores I need to do), I sync quickly and make sure the new files are at their correct locations before I start writing again.
The application is suitably unobtrusive when needed, and very customizable in terms of what font I’d like to see when I’m writing. The full-screen mode is wonderful–I’ve used apps with similar capabilities before (WriteRoom, for example) and I’ve always loved it, being someone relatively easy to distract.
To be honest, though, I was quite surprised at yesterday’s release, given that while using it for one whole night adding research materials, Scrivener 2.0 hung on me thrice. Three times in one night while doing something elementary–adding an item to the binder–does not feel to me as something entirely polished. Granted, there are always bug fixes and upgrades to correct things–but honestly, if I wasn’t quite determined to like Scrivener by now, I would just as likely have quit the application and deleted it off my system altogether. I would not like it to happen when I am actually writing.
(There is autosave, of course, but thankfully I have been trained in the Art of Always Saving Lest Something Bad Happens. Sometimes to my own detriment.)
I have mentioned this issue to the @ScrivenerApp people, and have been invited to email them about this, which I did as promptly as I could. I sent the email (a thorough report for bug-squashing purposes) two nights ago, and have yet to hear back from them. It’s not a show-stopper, but certainly a damper to my otherwise wonderful experience with the application.
If you’re doing NaNo, or just doing a lot of writing, give Scrivener a try. A beta for the Windows version is currently ongoing as well, so it won’t be long before this wonderful application gets shipped over to the sad people stuck on Windows ;)
Pretty much everyone probably knows about Dropbox by now: an application that syncs files online and across pretty much any device that can take it. I’ve had it for quite a while now but have only really started to utilize it recently.
This isn’t really “new” technology, nor are they the first to do something like it. I’ve used similar programs before, most notably one with a cute pig as an icon! (Sadly, I don’t remember what its name was!) Dropbox doesn’t have as cute an icon, but they have adorable stick figures: that counts for something, right?
Dropbox's referral illustration
Like its predecessors, usage is simple: put a file inside the Dropbox folder, and it gets uploaded online. Going on another machine with the Dropbox client application, you also get the file there once the client has finished syncing with the servers.
I used to store just files in it: presentations, source code, and the like. But there’s a lot more to Dropbox, and here are five things I do with Dropbox.
I’ve started syncing my Firefox bookmarks across machines using Dropbox. There must be a nicer way to go about this, and I’m sure it’s right around the corner, but this way is just nice for me. I’ve never liked a lot of the bookmark syncing products out there because it hijacks my bookmarks toolbar, which I dislike. This way, it’s just…in the background.
However, there is one caveat here: make sure Dropbox has finished syncing to/from the server before you start Firefox or shut off your machine, as you can end up with inconsistent, conflicted files on your Dropbox and no way to determine which is the right file.
Yes, we start to see the power of symbolic links. Syncing Adium logs across machines is done pretty much the same way! The first time I did this, it took a while to finish uploading all of my chat logs, so be prepared to wait a while.
Oh, absolute love. No longer do I have to worry about differing settings between computers–symbolic links and Dropbox has me covered.
[amari@amari ~]
$ ln -s ~/Dropbox/Data/bash_profile ~/.bash_profile
[amari@amari ~]
$ ll ~/.bash_profile
lrwxr-xr-x 1 amari staff 38 Oct 2 16:39 /Users/amari/.bash_profile -> /Users/amari/Dropbox/Data/bash_profileI’ve done the same for some other config files, like my vim settings file.
Absolute godsend, this one. With all the online accounts I have accumulated over the years, it’s a horror trying to remember passwords; so having 1Password worry about password information and syncing is wonderful. I’ve never used KeePass, but I swear by 1Password.
Creativity does not have a set time: if an idea hits, I like being able to capture it. Being able to quickly write a note, a blog idea, a story snippet and file it away in Dropbox for later is an absolute godsend: two wonderful tools for me here are Scrivener 2 and Notational Velocity, both of which have syncing/saving abilities to external folders.
Scrivener 2 is currently in NaNoWriMo preview mode, as Scrivener 1 does not have this syncing ability built-in (although you can save your Scrivener file in Dropbox, of course). With the new version, you can sync to an external version and specify what format the file would be in so that you can edit it elsewhere and pull in changes as needed.
Notational Velocity is a handy notes-taker, which also has the ability to sync with Simplenote, along with saving/retrieving the notes in plain text format in a specified folder (which is great for syncing via Dropbox).
Dropbox is awesome, but remember: Dropbox syncing is done online, and your files are put on the Internet (and versions are kept of it on Dropbox servers). While the syncing Dropbox does is secure, they are still a third party; so bear that in mind before syncing every single bit of your life.
Last week, and the days leading up to it, was crazy. My father was here last weekend after a business trip in Malaysia, and I got sick twice last week. I know that’s not really much of an excuse for not scheduling posts up, seeing as I did get to raid on Wednesday and Thursday (Kingslayer!), but there it is, nonetheless.
Dad has been here a couple of times, so we didn’t really do a lot of touristy things. He did a bit of shopping, we went for reflexology (I should really go more often–my parents have paid up for a good number of sessions), and we had a game in Settlers’ Cafe. At night he played through all the demos I downloaded in my Playsation 3, lol.
I accompanied him to the airport to send him off in the wee hours of Monday morning, got chilled by the almost-empty morning train on the way back, and then got rather soaked with the sudden downpour of rain when I got out of the station. Never underestimate Singapore weather, folks. Fact.
In any case, today marks the first day of NaNoWriMo. The plan as it stands now is virtually nonexistent. I haven’t done a lot of research, so my novel/first draft will be fantastically crappy; I crammed some research yesterday, which only made me feel a lot more unprepared (how do they count years? what is the marriageable age? when are the men considered adults, and the women?). Which should be okay, as long as I get somewhere with the story, yes? I’m planning to try and get around a thousand words written in the morning, and another thousand at night, which would result in 2,000 words a day: a good number over the minimum words a day (1,667). This should be interesting.
Over the weekend I’ve also tried to do a couple of scheduled posts, although I’m planning to give myself a bit of slack if I miss a week or so. To be honest, I have a lot of post ideas in my calendar, just haven’t the time to develop them all. Sometimes, it does feel a bit like a “job”, but it’s a nice sort of job. A job I can ignore for a while ;)
There will be plenty of means to procrastinate this November, which means my work is cut out for me ;)
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