Rogue

Publicly online, sound - glorious sound, & sacrifice.

Follow up:

Recently I've been working on various production centric applications and systems on site. In the background however there has been an ongoing request for updates regarding the community website for the companies local lead-in-blood reduction drive targeting children.

With the whole thing happening outside the standard project developing procedure, I've been treating it appropriately - low priority with work being done on it when everything else is out of the way. Unfortunatly in typical clueless fashion the original request was "We want a website" closely followed by "We want it to have a content management system".

Which is essentially another reason I'm putting it off. Developing a full featured CMS which is production ready is not something to undertake lightly.

This week they brought in a print-media specialist who had been doing a lot of their promotional material for them, and it turns out they'd asked them to do a website design too.

At this point I'd already invested a few days perfecting a gorgeous template. It was completely standards compliant, valid CSS & pure semantic markup, the whole shebang. The whole response cycle occured in roughly 4 seconds initially with approx 1 second cycles for nav. For a system built completely dynamically at runtime and coded by a single ninja over two or three days; that's pretty damn fast in my book.

Imagine my surprise when;

1. I was told that random print-media specialist had a design.
2. They expected me to build the design.
3. The designer said "Do we really care about people who don't have Flash?", "Do we really care about people with disabilities?", and "Do we really care about people with small screen resolutions?".
4. The primary content of the template is only a 200x200 square. When typical page content will be a thousand words or more.

I know in the past I've been vocal about my dislike of the need to deal with the hundreds of nuances between the different web browsers when they are all meant to be implementing the same standard, and also having to deal with the infinite variation of end user configurations and user types.

But as much as I complain about the state of the web, at least I deal with it like any professional should. I don't just go "Oh well I wanna do this. If it alienates 70% of my possibly audience I don't care, I'm gonna do it anyway". This is online content for crying out loud, public online content, with a target audience of... everybody.

I tried to explain that to them but got incredulous stares and "I have made websites before!". So in other words I got no-where.

In response I've decided to just build precisely what the give me. I'm not going to put my name on it anywhere. When it turns out that it's slow as hell, you need to download a flash player for half of it, it has fixed dimensions in all axis', and only a small percentage of people can see it - most of which probably won't care - I'm going to be sitting back and laughing. I tried to explain the necessity for adherance to web standards and so forth, usability, etc. They had their chances. >

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This week I ordered a brand new set of Logitech speakers. What was wrong with the old ones you may well ask, the quality 2.1 Logitech setup circa 2002 are surely still going strong!

Well yes they are actually. They havn't spontaneously combusted, started electrically discharging into the furniture, or in any way had their output degrade. There is actually nothing specifically wrong with them at all.

But since I got a real soundcard I've been wanting to see it really stretch it's wings. And I just can't do that on the little 2.1 setup. The X-Fi Platinum is not a cheap piece of equipment, so to purchase it and not really see any massive gain over the ASUS onboard sound chipset is fairly depressing (Although not entirely unexpected).

So now I've got a set of Logitech Z-5450's on the way. Apparently they're half decent with their range, and they have wireless rear speakers which is something I definitely need (here's hoping that doesn't degrade the audio quality).

While thinking about where I was going to mount the rear speakers it also occured to me that having my PC setup in my loungeroom, although convienient, is not really the best way to go. For an activity which is relatively solitary and sedentiary having the lions share of a large living space set aside for it just isn't wise.

So I've gone ahead and cleaned out the second large bedroom in the house and set it up as a bit of a 'study'. It already had my bookshelves in there, and now it has my stereo and a comfy chair or two in addition to my rig.

Since the entire room is essentially a space dedicated to chilling out and the PC itself, there is now plenty of room to have my case down on the floor beside my desk and still have plenty of room to open it up and work on it. All without having to disconnect everything or move any furniture. It's rather good.

The new room has a driveway between it and the next house as opposed to the other spot in the living room which has less than a metre between it and the neighbours place. What means that I can hopefully actually crank up the volume without anyone noticing (plus the neighbor on that side is old, so hopefully has poor hearing ).

The new room is a better size for positioning surround sound satellite speakers, smaller for heating purposes, has a window which doesn't face onto the street (so random people won't see my gear then break in and steal it), and is just generally better all around.

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Here's a little something-something I wanted to share. For those of you who don't read The Escapist, there was an article by Whitney Butts on the reflection of meatspace responsibilities on the MMORPG environment. This is the last few paragraphs;

I escape the stress of the real world by playing games. I escape by being the guild master of a successful raiding guild in World of Warcraft. Lately, my escape is not an escape. It's a second job where I'm CEO. The currency is DKP and the employees are guild members. My subordinates are officers, class leaders and raid leaders. Logistics are raid strategies, personnel issues are drama bombs and company politics are guild politics.

I do it because I love to help; I love to see so many people happy when a new goal is achieved; I love that feeling of success, but it's really not that much fun. I sacrifice my escapism so others can enjoy theirs. I do my job as guild master, I make sure as many people as possible are happy and I keep things moving, but it's not fun - it's work.

The stress of the job doesn't come from keeping track of things, it comes from people who fail to realize the work that goes into making sure they can make their Wednesday night raid and get a new item.

Time and time again, it's one excuse after another. "I don't want to help, I want to PvP." Thirty-nine other people are relying on you to help because they helped you get the gear you need to PvP. "I've done that enough already." Sure, but if you help your guild mates do it, we can unlock more content. No one gets it, but when you join a guild, you join a group to play together; not use and abuse your friends and guild mates to get what you want and then leave them high and dry when it's their time to shine.

Someday, it will be fun again. I can only dream that someday it will click, and everyone will realize how much a few leaders sacrifice so the rest of the guild can enjoy the content we all enjoy. Someday, a boss kill will result in a smile from me instead of the dread of "oh God, what kind of loot am I going to have to deal with now?"

For now, I'll do it because I love to see us succeed. I'll do it because I take pride in knowing that I helped build my guild. Although I find myself afraid to log in and face so much work, it's just like when you wake up on Monday morning, staring down a work week in a job you love; but there's still that dread. But I always know one thing: There are good people and good friends there to help make everything go smoothly. If it weren't for them, this job would be nothing more than a pain in the neck.

Those sentiments I think are valid for everyone out there who sacrifices their time and money for the greater good of the members of their respective communities.

It's done because you know you are making a difference. Without you the state of things would be worse off. And occassionally, very rarely, but still every now and then - you see a smile and a laugh, a cheer, or even someone else chipping in without being asked. And it's all worth it.