The Cinema Display has arrived. nugget and I had a joyus time setting it up, seeing what Windows and my 9800 Pro would do with it, and seeing if I could actually manage to use it until the Mac Pro arrives. Given that my desktop is only used for WoW, we've decided it's possible.

I will now be playing WoW at 1280x800, 30 inches across. Maybe I'll sleep tonight.

Tags: mac, wow

Best LiveJournal layout I've seen yet. Non WoW-ers might not understand.

Tags: wow

I have enough WoW characters that listing them all when someone asks is rather annoying. So, to save in typing I decided I'd create a web page with the list. An easy-enough to update format and easily linkable in any number of situations. Only I've done very little html and am lame about learning. Hey, I'm just trying to live up to the slackers!

So, I coded up a simple little web page with an html table. And borders. And viewed it in FireFox. What a beautiful table! It was perfect. I was happy. Until I tried it in IE. Ouch. Okay. Next came Konqueror (my non-Mac wanna-be Safari tester). Very much like IE. And finally Opera. Close to FireFox, but still not as nice. I internally grumbled, and mentioned the differences to a few people. Everyone told me the best way to fix it was with css. Someone suggested taking a screenshot and using that, and if the data didn't need such frequent updating, I just might have.

The problem here is, I've never made a border with CSS. I've never tried to configure a table with CSS. And I didn't want to actually have to do the work of learning something (Oh no!) to make this look decent in different browsers. But I gave in today and asked Google to help me learn. I used CSS to make solid borders, and now had IE's double border look in everything! I grumbled yet again, knowing there was a way to fix it, and yet again not wanting to do the work to figure it out. But boredom won, and I did. Border-collapse seems like a wonderful thing. And suddenly, the double borders were gone! Yay! But the borders were still flat and boring. They didn't have that curved look that the original table had in FireFox. A bit more reading, and I tried "ridge" instead of "solid" for the border type.

And so, the final result. Certainly nothing fancy, but I learned, and the information is there. I'm planning on taking screenshots of each character and linking them, as the Night Elf Equiraptor has. I'm considering a link from races, classes, and professions to the page about each on WorldofWarcraft.com, but I feel it might make it a little busy. If nothing else, this has been a good way to occupy me while long test cases run.

Tags: geek, wow

I feel like my brain is mush, for some reason. Oh well.

Autocross last weekend. See nugget's post for a video. I absolutely sucked. I don't know what it was, but I had terrible problems sticking to the course. I kept going on the wrong side of cones. I was doing better handling the car. I didn't spin this time, though I came close. The car felt very slippery to me. I blame the tires. They probably could have used a bit more air and a bit more tread. Heh. Or maybe I just need to spend an obscene amount of money setting myself up with different rims/tires for autocross days. Hey, I'm spending an even more obscene amount of money on the engine/supercharger, right?

On the supercharger subject: Due to the fact that I'm taking Dan's engine, and Dan is a regular, competitive autocrosser, the installation of the supercharger needs to be delayed about a month. In a way, pout, but in a way, this gives me more time to prepare. I need to make sure we get the right radiator and setup for the gauges BEFORE I take the car in, not after. I do not want to risk blowing up my car because I procrastinated. The machine work on the head will probably take 4 days. Dan says he can do the block swap + supercharger in two, and is willing to do it over a weekend so I can watch (Yay!!!), and then will come tuning. Due to the headwork, the tuning will be more of a challenge. John says he's up to it, but wants to take a couple of days to be sure he does it right. So I'll probably be in The Boat (blue Camry) for about a week and a half. Slushbox, slush-suspension, real roof. Pout. At least it has new struts, a new rear swaybar, and a newly fixed transmission. John was telling me it's now a great car!

Now for some computer geekery. The fan on my Radeon 9800 was making a bit of a squealing noise at times, and if I powered off the machine, it would make a grinding noise for a few minutes when it was powered back on. This inspired me to search for a new fan for the graphics card. I found a Zalman heatsink and fan that looked like it would work well and be quieter. The set arrived today and Nugget and I began the complex installation. The original heatsink did not want to come off and did not want to be unplugged. Once that was done, screws and braces had to be put in the correct location and the heatsink carefully tightened to the board. However, now my video RAM and chipset all have heatsinks, with a larger, more efficient fan/heatsink on the chip. Hopefully this will allow for hours playing WoW with minimal noise levels.

Tags: autocross, geek, miata, wow