User talk:Wrtlprnft

Hi there.
 * You're my hero too wrtl :P I like it...it's cool :D
 * Yeah, hi :D --Wrtlprnft 04:10, 26 May 2006 (CEST)

questions about wiki management
Please feel free to delete stuff once we've chatted wrtl, since i am taking liberties in talking to you here. You seem to be able to explain things simply, so i was wondering if you could help. I have a wiki, and a bot keeps on sticking stuff all over the place, hidden with div partitions. How can I stop this from happening? If I protect the page, then new people can't edit. How come this wiki isn't plagued with bots? Hope this is Ok my asking... --2020 07:17, 6 September 2006 (CDT)
 * No need to delete it, once the page gets too full I'll move it to something like User_talk:Wrtlprnft/Archive/ and create a new talk page. We had that spammer problem too (just look at the block logs…). Well, first it was solved it by hacking the login page to have differently named fields than the default, in an attempt to confuse bots. That worked quite well, we didn't get any spam for a while. Sometimes users complained, though, as the hack was uncorrectly blocking them as bots.  Quite recently Lucifer decided to install Bad Behavior, which seems to have a blacklist of URIs that bots like to link to and automatically bans them. It works quite nicely, so Lucifer even enabled anonymous edits again.  Hope that helps… —Wrtlprnft 07:47, 6 September 2006 (CDT)
 * I'm going to have to highly recommend Bad Behavior. The catch is that it works by analyzing the http request of the user, and if that http request is out of order, it bans them.  As a result of a bug before I updated to the new version, it got Jonathan when he was using lynx as his browser.  Problem's fixed since I updated Bad Behavior, though.  It's currently banning 3-7 spammers a day, and I'm checking the logs approximately weekly and not seeing any bans that look like real spam.  We've had exactly 1 instance of spam in the time since I installed it, which I think is near a month, and that one instance might have been a legitimate player spamming something (didn't look at it too closely, someone else reverted the page).  --Lucifer 16:32, 6 September 2006 (CDT)
 * thanks... i tried to insert it, but for some reason there is a code error:
 * Warning: require_once(/home/virtual/site61/fst/var/www/html/mediawiki/extensions/Bad-Behavior/bad-behavior/version.inc.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/virtual/site61/fst/var/www/html/mediawiki/extensions/Bad-Behavior/bad-behavior-mediawiki.php on line 142


 * Fatal error: require_once [function.require]: Failed opening required '/home/virtual/site61/fst/var/www/html/mediawiki/extensions/Bad-Behavior/bad-behavior/version.inc.php' (include_path='.:/home/virtual/site61/fst/var/www/html/mediawiki:/home/virtual/site61/fst/var/www/html/mediawiki/includes:/home/virtual/site61/fst/var/www/html/mediawiki/languages') in /home/virtual/site61/fst/var/www/html/mediawiki/extensions/Bad-Behavior/bad-behavior-mediawiki.php on line 142


 * Any ideas on how to correct this? --2020 16:58, 6 September 2006 (CDT)

Cockpit
I love it. However, I would like to edit a few things. Like the camera angles, I hate the way they take so long to return to front position. And one glaring omission: rubber gauge with internal view. But I love the indicators, colour bars on the sides. Btw, do you ever use the map? -2020 10:28, 5 September 2006 (CDT)
 * The camera angles are a totally different thing. That's meriton's camera code, he wrote it. The camera is a big mess right now, noone understands it, and it would be very dangerous to rewrite it all without totally changing its behavior (leading to what we have now, people complaining that it's “different”). That some gauges disappear in incam mode results that this was originally a testing cockpit, so I tested if the camera attribute worked, then I copied and pasted existing gauges, and so half of the gauges disappear in incam mode… I fixed it, use   to get it.
 * Is this a console command? -2020 11:42, 5 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Yeah, sure. —Wrtlprnft 14:51, 5 September 2006 (CDT)
 * I rarely use the map on fortress, most times I use it for chico maps on CTWF, there it's quite usuable. Occasionally I use it when I'm dead too. —Wrtlprnft 11:14, 5 September 2006 (CDT)

Team Monster?
Hehehhe... you cheeky devil... what kind of tags will you have? Tronic Monkey has the funny little trademark sign... you are going to confuse our noobs... if I get any, that is... Team Monster... ehehhe... Seriously™, thanks for taking the step of creating a team without players... brave... —2020
 * Dunno yet. This mostly came out of me talking with Your_mom on IRC about the fact that you'd probably dislike if I joined your teem (seeing that you want the AW people to create a new team). So well, we'll need to see what happens. I hope Vanhayes is gonna join me and help me recruit some more players.
 * Thanks, would love to have you playing with us... the chances are we won't find enough for a team, and we will probably just merge, but.. wth... sounds like fun, doesn't it? --2020 10:28, 5 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Maybe we should target to split up AW into about three independant teams? We already have enough players for two teams, with one month of time for recruiting we might be able to fill those. Just a suggestion. —Wrtlprnft 11:14, 5 September 2006 (CDT)
 * I'll probably try to set a team as well, but I think finding -new- players will be tough. Anyway, I was thinking about inviting people who haven't really played in a ladle or in most ladles. That way we attract more players who probably wanted to play but didn't have a "suitable" place to do it. --Madmax 09:12, 6 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Team Monster is a name we chose because we didn't have anything better, I overlooked that it would have the same abbreviation as Tronic Monkeys… I guess we'll see what happens. Btw you can't use the the '™' sign in arma right now as it's not in the latin-1 charset… —Wrtlprnft 09:13, 5 September 2006 (CDT)

Thanks Wrtl
I have fiddled about with Ladle pages, and it looks like Ladle-4. Can you think of any more changes? And how can I contact meriton to check it out? 2020 18:59 (GMT+2) 4th September 2006
 * It looks promising now. If it stays structured like that it might avoid quite a bit of confusion. I'll lock the Challenge Board as soon as I wake up on the 1st of october to prevent edits, if you don't mind. Dunno about meriton, he might notice it on the recent changes, otherwise you can contact him on his user page or on the forums, i guess… —Wrtlprnft 12:09, 4 September 2006 (CDT)
 * A couple of minor things. :)  You should include on that page "Where to meet before the tournament".  Also, is it possible to change a redirect?  I was thinking that Ladle should always point to the most recent, and the most recent should have links for historical information on previous ladles.  --Lucifer 22:29, 4 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Well, I am not sure how to set up the IRC channels... Hopefully, when we get to that stage, it will have been set up by someone... unless someone can show me how it works and I can get a few players to test it... Redirect, I think. Thanks Luci.... oh, how can I revert a page to a previous version? 2020 10:28 (GMT+2) 5th September 2006
 * Joda already set it up so you can join any channel containing “arma”. As for creating a channel, just say /join, if the channel doesn't exist it'll be created. There's two ways to revert a page: Either you're sysop and have that fancy ”rollback” link (which is also dangerous if you select it by accident) or you aren't, then you have to do it manually: Go to the history of the page, click on the date of the revision you wanna revert it to, then click the edit link at the top. It will display a warning that you're editing an old version, ignore that (that's what you want anyways), then save the page without making a change. It might be good to explain in the summary to what revision you reverted it and why. —Wrtlprnft 04:16, 5 September 2006 (CDT)
 * To change a redirect go to that redirect page (it'll redirect you to the new locations), then click on the link right below the title (“Redirected from …”), then edit that page to point to the new location. —Wrtlprnft 04:16, 5 September 2006 (CDT)

Your Skin for the Wiki
Lovely. Thanks. Why hasn't it been advertised? Why isn't it the new default? 2020
 * Well, I guess Lucifer has to do that if he likes it. He'll probably want to copy the images it uses onto his server and change the links so the wiki doesn't depend on two servers to be online, which would increase the not–working probabiltiy to PServer 1 not working + PServer 2 not working + PServer 1 not working × PServer 2 not working, that would be more than twice as likely than if everything was on the same server (assuming the probabilities are the same). Anyways, anyone who can test the skin in IE7? It doesn't run under WINE, so I have no way of testing it. —Wrtlprnft 17:09, 1 September 2006 (CDT)
 * In ie6 looks okay i guess, its plain white wherever the white opacity png is. Png's arn't properly handled in ie6 (havn't bothered with ie7 since i use firefox). Looks nice in firefox but i prefer the current default. Anyways good work.--Your mom 21:09, 1 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Actually I'm not using an alphatransparent PNG. It's two PNGs, one brightened a bit for the foreground, and they're both positioned using . Well, guess what, IE6 doesn't support it and displays rubbish, so I'm using a CSS hack to hide the foreground CSS from it. Trouble is that this hack doesn't work for IE7 anymore (it supports the appropiate selector), but that should be fine if it supports , but I'm not sure if it does.  I don't want to use alphatransparent PNGs as they were used in the old skin and caused weird effects for the tabs at the top of the page. This method is safe in the sense that it makes overlapping elements invisible. —Wrtlprnft 03:09, 2 September 2006 (CDT)
 * It's not the new default because it runs really freaking slow on my computer. The background-attachment: fixed needs to be removed for that to change.  Sorry.  --Lucifer 12:45, 2 September 2006 (CDT)
 * It's still running painfully slow on my computer. It adds about 5 seconds on average for each page to render over the MonoBook skin.  --Lucifer 22:31, 4 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Did the old skin run any faster? I don't think it did a lot different than my version. In theory this might be because it's first processing the unchanged monobook skin and rendering that, then it sees the CSS file I added and applies its changes. If this is the case your browser sucks… —Wrtlprnft 04:16, 5 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Heh, yeah, "Your browser sucks" isn't very good web design.... *poke*  Actually, the old skin ran faster than yours, but not nearly as fast as the monobook skin.  The main reason I'm probably having problems with it is the huge size of my browser window and the fact that it takes a lot of work to first figure out how to render it, and then render it in that big space.  Of course, I do *all* of my browsing in this huge window and don't encounter any significant problems because of it....  The difference between MonoBook and your skin is in the neighborhood of 5 seconds, depending on how much crap is on the page (the preferences page takes much longer, a short page takes a bit less).  The difference between the old skin and MonoBook is in the neighborhood of 2 seconds, but it's pretty much a constant for all pages.  It might be the system used like you suggest.  I'd be willing to try something a bit more hardcore to see if that takes care of it.  --Lucifer 20:58, 5 September 2006 (CDT)
 * I'm just saying that your browser sucks on a technical level, not that there shouldn't be done something against it. I guess the only thing one could try is to merge the CSS that's directly on the wiki (MediaWiki:Wrtlprnft.css) into the CSS that's stored in a file somewhere on your server and see if that helps… —Wrtlprnft 03:36, 6 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Thinking about it again, it may of course be just the fact that the images are stored on my server, with has more lag for you, and your browser can't use an already existing connection to your server to get them… —Wrtlprnft 03:45, 6 September 2006 (CDT)
 * That sounds like it might be a winner, and it has the advantage of being easy to test. Can you zip up the images and post them here and I'll stick 'em on the server?  --Lucifer 16:29, 6 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Well, it's three images right now:
 * http://wrtlprnft.ath.cx/wikibg.png
 * http://wrtlprnft.ath.cx/wikibg-white.png
 * http://wrtlprnft.ath.cx/wikibg-yellow.png —Wrtlprnft 16:39, 6 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Can anyone make a personal skin like that? like if i made MediaWiki:lckdscl.css and it would show up in the preference menu? --Lackadaisical 11:36, 20 September 2006 (CDT)
 * No, I asked Lucifer to copy the monobook skin for me and then created that file. You can create a User:Lackadaisical/Monobook.css and put your styles in there, however. Then the style will only apply to you, and if it's good I'm sure Lucifer will add it :)—Wrtlprnft 12:08, 20 September 2006 (CDT)
 * I can do the same thing for you lack, if you'd like. Just let me know, and what you want it to be renamed as.  --Lucifer 16:21, 20 September 2006 (CDT)

What will come after the spoon?
hyeheh well, actually i was going to thank you for fiddling with the wiki for ladle, but couldn't send a message since the forum didn't allow it and this is the only way i can think of getting into contact.... i was wondering, after waiting for 2 weeks for the spoon to finish.. do you think it may be too early to start off on the next competition...? i have opened it up to a few people to get initial feedback.. what do you think? &mdash;2020
 * hehe, actually I got the same PM 3 times :D
 * I think we should wait a few months for people to settle down... It's getting harder and harder to organize matches, people are just not that interested anymore, but I'm sure the interest will come back after a while. And don't mind my wiki corrections, just try to adapt that style since it is the "correct" way to do it, at least it generates the most sensible markup --Wrtlprnft 21:41, 21 May 2006 (CDT)

The name or character sequence wrtlprnft
Where did it come from? I noticed that wrtl ≈ wortel (Dutch for root/carrot) and prnft ≈ printf (C for print formatted) from the beginning but that's about it. —Jonathan 06:45, 28 January 2007 (CST)
 * That's pure coincidence :) My 4th grade math teacher used the name (probably a similar sounding variation of it, most likely Wrdlbrmpfd). When I first had to register somewhere I used it as username, and kept it ever since.  Interesting associations, though, never thought about that.  …  —Wrtlprnft 07:25, 28 January 2007 (CST)
 * Ah. Am I creative now? —Jonathan 08:28, 28 January 2007 (CST)
 * Yeah :) —Wrtlprnft 10:59, 28 January 2007 (CST)

Background image hosting
Your server seemed unreachable for a while. It almost made me revert your Monobook modifications because I got black text on black backgrounds and endless attempts to get the background image, but it loaded when I was about to make the edit. Another reason could be that you replaced the old Monobook. —Jonathan 05:42, 28 May 2007 (PDT)
 * Feel free to host the images somewhere else or get tank to upload them to the wiki's server. Tank actually told me to overwrite the monobook skin because for some reason the old “Wrtlprnft” skin didn't survive the server move and he figured the plain monobook skin wasn't needed anymore.—Wrtlprnft 08:41, 9 June 2007 (PDT)
 * I thought that people might like the old monobook. I'll PM Tank so the image won't be gone if the wiki isn't as well. —Jonathan 09:24, 9 June 2007 (PDT)
 * Talked to guru3 on IRC, he uploaded the images to his server and I changed the CSS to use them. Monobook is the default skin now, too.—Wrtlprnft 11:45, 14 June 2007 (PDT)

Those strange removals
Heh, I keep adding stuff here. Those edits seem to be caused by the page being improperly passed as a GET parameter. +es become spaces, &s remove all content afterwards and I haven't yet tried to find the pattern behind %. Why is a mystery to me, and I'm not sure whether I should ban. Probably not because it doesn't seem to come from the same IP addresses repeatedly. —Jonathan 06:11, 10 June 2007 (PDT)
 * Maybe it's an improperly written spambot that tries to add “content” to the end of the page?—Wrtlprnft 08:00, 10 June 2007 (PDT)
 * Diff of the sandbox—At least this bot admits it sucks :)—Wrtlprnft 10:14, 1 July 2007 (PDT)