Cram Asks Anything

[Cramulus]

This is the opposite of an "ask me anything" thread. Feel free to answer any questions you feel you're qualified for. These are kind of random (and specific) because they relate to various creative projects I've been brewing.


1. I'm putting together an english to conlang dictionary. What FONT should I use for the body? (in b4 "lol arial") Right now I'm using Centaur, but it doesn't look very good bold at 9pt size.

2. Id / Ego / Super ego (freud). Lion / Lamb / Bull / Eagle (leary's circuits 1-4). These are two ways to describe the forces underlying individual human psychology. Do you know of any other ways to categorize the forces within the human mind? (the function of this question is actually to brainstorm different races one might play in a weird live adventure game)

3. If you were to sort all Gods into five or six categories, what would those categories be? For example: Love, War, Nature, Wealth, Trickery, Sovereign. (function: same as above)

4. Is anybody interested in playtesting a larp? This means actually gathering up 3-5 friends with boffer weapons and playing this game I'm writing. If not interested in play testing, anybody interested in reading over some rules and telling me if they're comprehensible?

5. I need a new career. What would I be good at / have fun doing?

6. Can you recommend a website which will teach me web design / css? I want to start putting together profitable projects, and one of the key elements is learning how to design a goddamn wobsite. I dabble in html, but feel like I should advance my knowledge until it is worth cash-money.

[NotPublished]

6. Can you recommend a website which will teach me web design / css? I want to start putting together profitable projects, and one of the key elements is learning how to design a goddamn wobsite. I dabble in html, but feel like I should advance my knowledge until it is worth cash-money.

This post is just assuming you have no prior knowledge to programming -

It is very easy to pick up HTML / CSS, and for the sake of making things easier pick up either PHP or ASP (My personal opinion - Avoid the .NET framework, its a fucker to host)

Personally, PHP is very good with backend, and with a opcache installed (and good programming practices) its damn fast. Think facebook (Ok but they have a tonage of cluster servers, you can still achieve very good speeds via caching however)

As for HTML / CSS - Your best off with

http://www.w3schools.com/Css/default.asp - Css
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp - Html
http://www.w3schools.com/PHP/DEfaULT.asP - PHP
php.net/manual/en/tutorial.php - PHP
http://www.w3schools.com/JS/default.asp - Javascript

As you can see, I think the w3schools.com website is the Number 1 stop, as always it helps to have prior programming knowledge. If not, work on experimenting .. I'll be happy to give you a hand whenever possible.

If you know what to look for -
http://planet-source-code.com/

--- I'll find my other links and edit

I recommend you getting DreamWeaver CS4 - it is the best damn IDE imo, and your best to get into the habbit of avoiding using the WYSIWYG editors and just hardcode the HTML.

PHP is my prefered choice, there is alot of support out there for it. And it is easy to work on a local environment (I just use WAMP Server, there is LAMP server for Linux - Apache/Mysql/PHP server)

*edited to fix links*

[Cramulus]

awesome thanks    I just pirated dreamweaver, was looking for the best angle to attack it.

[Dimocritus]

#4- I'll read over the rules at least.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Tizag helped me loads when I was getting started in web development.

ETA: Stay the fuck away from Dreamweaver - kill it with fire.

[Cain]

3. If you were to sort all Gods into five or six categories, what would those categories be? For example: Love, War, Nature, Wealth, Trickery, Sovereign. (function: same as above)

up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom

[NotPublished]

ETA: Stay the fuck away from Dreamweaver - kill it with fire.

Why fore? whats your prefered?

[Richter]

1.  I don't know jack about font / editing.

2.  2 axes, Calm mindset vs. Agitated mindset and Will to change what is vs. Accepting what is.

3. Creative (crafting / home / trickery), Fertility (including romance / attraction), Elemental, Death, Leadership, War

4.  Yes.

5.  Writing or editing gigs with various publications?  You will go into various depths of WEIRD without blinking, you make non judegmental NICE with just about anyone, and can write / edit no questions.  

6. Ask Suu.

[P3nT4gR4m]

ETA: Stay the fuck away from Dreamweaver - kill it with fire.

Why fore? whats your prefered?

I prefer notepad++ Dreamweaver produces hideous markup and gives you next to no control over the end result. It's ugly, dumbed down and pointless.

[NotPublished]

ETA: Stay the fuck away from Dreamweaver - kill it with fire.

Why fore? whats your prefered?

I prefer notepad++ Dreamweaver produces hideous markup and gives you next to no control over the end result. It's ugly, dumbed down and pointless.

I forgot about notepad++...

With regards to Dreamweaver - If you plan on using the WYSIWYG editor, then of course its going to do terrible unspoken things (Which was why I mentioned your best to hardcode).

I just hardcode in DreamWeaver (So its like an expensive Notepad++) - If I wasn't given the CS4 suite I would probably go with Notepad++

[Nast]

1. Sorry  to respond to your question with another question, but you say your making a conlang dictionary? Does the language have a name?

[Cainad (dec.)]

1. Dunno.

2. The Warrior, The Sage, The Fool, The Judge. I have jackshit to back this up and would be hard-pressed to come up with any examples of it that aren't completely pulled out of my ass.

3. Gods of the World (the Earth, weather, sun god, the natural world, other things that exist regardless of humanity), and Gods of Humanity (War, leadership, generosity/compassion, knowledge; things that are, at least in some sense, human-specific)

4. Yes. I can have a group of 3-5 people ready to go on nearly any given weekend, with boffers to boot. Also willing to look at the rules and, if you like, forward them to others who might be able to offer an informed opinion.

5. Con artistry, Cult leader, professional bon vivant

6. I think other people are more qualified to answer this.

[Xila31]

#2 I would say, based on things I've read, another way to think of it is Childlike-self, Adult-self, and Elder-self. In that Id = the child who wants what it wants now. Ego = the adult who knows it can't have what it wants but keeps wanting it anyway. And the Super Ego = the elder who tells you that you can't have what you want so sit down, shut up, and back in my day I had to walk to school 40 miles etc etc. (Does that make sense.) You can use this with any form of life, just sub out child for "hatchling" or "cub" or whatever.

Also, I like your catagories for the Gods. I would use the same ones. 

[Bu🤠ns]

2. Id / Ego / Super ego (freud). Lion / Lamb / Bull / Eagle (leary's circuits 1-4). These are two ways to describe the forces underlying individual human psychology. Do you know of any other ways to categorize the forces within the human mind? (the function of this question is actually to brainstorm different races one might play in a weird live adventure game)

Isn't the traditional 4 Lion, Man, Bull (Ox) and Eagle unless, of course, lamb is an applicable substitute.  Then that would lead to the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John  or Earth Air Fire Water, there is maitri  (kindness,) mudita (pity,) karuna (joy,) and upeka (equanimity) as the four noble truths...IHVH tetragrammaton or fourfold name of god...The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death...DNA: adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine...

3. If you were to sort all Gods into five or six categories, what would those categories be? For example: Love, War, Nature, Wealth, Trickery, Sovereign. (function: same as above)

Lunar, Sun (dying), Love, Communication, Sky, War, Masculine, Feminine, Omnipresent.

5. I need a new career. What would I be good at / have fun doing?

Work with the dying or go be a carny.

6. Can you recommend a website which will teach me web design / css? I want to start putting together profitable projects, and one of the key elements is learning how to design a goddamn wobsite. I dabble in html, but feel like I should advance my knowledge until it is worth cash-money.

W3schools is  seconded.

[Triple Zero]

my html/css webdesign bookmarks:

w3schools is a great quick-reference for CSS
yes boring but i really have these all bookmakred separately for easy access.

http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#pseudoel
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#pseudoclasses
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#text
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#table
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#positioning
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#padding
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#outlines
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#margin
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#list
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#generatedcontent
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#font
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#dimension
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#classification
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#border
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#background

and also for HTML:
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/default.asp
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_entities.asp

quirksmode is your first stop to check what things work in which browser and why not:
http://www.quirksmode.org/css/contents.html
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=box+model&as_sitesearch=quirksmode.org <-- I have programmed this as a quick search into Opera. Also check out those articles on the box model, not right now, but when you got a decent grasp on CSS and are running into your first browser incompatibility bugs.

random web design related bookmarks and articles
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/code-html-email-newsletters -- if you ever need to write an email newsletter, be very wary that it's a completely different world of html, like you're coding for the web of '98 all over again.
http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites-what-they-are-why-theyre-cool-and-how-to-use-them/ -- good article on CSS sprites
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/sprites/ -- possibly better article on CSS sprites. also ALA is a good blog with good other articles
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_design_contracts/ -- if you're gonna start freelancing webdesign, you're gonna need a good contract otherwise you WILL get screwed.
http://24ways.org/2008/contract-killer -- the guy who wrote this is pretty awesome.
http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/previews/index_abc.png -- free set of icons for use in websites
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/grid-design-basics-grids-for-web-page-l/ -- grid design is a useful foundation for designing a page.
http://www.opera.com/company/education/curriculum/ -- i haven't read this, but it seems pretty fucking thorough, if you need a fully-assed tutorial on webdesign, I think this might be your ticket.
http://www.37signals.com/svn/ -- something about signal vs noise in design
http://www.usabilitypost.com/2009/05/29/the-1kb-css-grid-part-1/ -- more about grid design
http://drewish.com/tools/vertical-rhythm -- vertical rhythm is a part of grid design

that's a straight dump from my bookmarks. there might be more but i haven't bookmarked those.

another tip, don't learn PHP. that language deserves to die out. you were already going to learn Python, right?

either way you;re probably not going to code web applications yourself. however, you can knock out pretty awesome websites using WordPress. the trick is to use the Sandbox Theme, which is a barebones semantic HTML skin for WP. then with CSS you can easily make it look like whatever you want.