Again, more a minor thing than a major thing. Whenever MZDM goes dark, if there isn't an archive of your card somewhere... it's up on Lucidia's hosted/pacards/ directory. With the exception of any cards that weren't in the pa card listing, etc., that is. Meaning: Oni, that card you had done isn't there, but I can probably get it for you. I know there's another hole in the list, please don't get me started on it.

To clarify what I meant earlier:
You, if you are the player of the PA depicted in the card (or one of the PA's in the case of a buddy card), may use them as you will. If you are not the player of said characters... don't. Lucidia Fantasy's involvement, as in the forum administration and all official activities, in these cards extends solely to providing image hosting and allowing linkage to them in profiles and if I decide to allow signatures as large as they are.

AMS is one step closer to being, well... even remotely useful. It's still (barely!) not adding users to a PG's list... at the moment it's just pulling group information and setting up permissions. But even that's an accomplishment.

Plus, now that things are developing, I'm coming up with some better info on additional features/restrictions. Like, for instance, you can blame Angus for the whole automagical "if you add an Avatar, nobody else can" that'll be happening. It will be something an administrator can override, but... not commonly.

After sleeping... more fussing with this thing.

My goal of Krinele having more cards than Ozymandias is nearing completion... mostly through my own work, but apparently circumstance is conspiring to help me. I, honestly, was floored when I found out... but I had to get in action and do my modly duties of putting up the announcement, keyposting the presentation, and stuff like that...

Not that I particularly mind either, but it's looking like I'll be tied at least by the time November's out...

A good start of a weekend.

Okay, I've been up all night nickel-diming my way through the Flash chatposter... presently it reads a file from the MZDM server and tells you who you're logged in as. Big whoop, eh?

Well. It's seventy-five lines of code inside one object that allows it to contact MZDM, read an XML file, check for errors, report a problem if it can't locate the server, return an Avatar Number to "something else", and also allow something "else" to get a URL. When all is said and done, getting the URL is the "simple" one... just slap up a string, and add the Avatar Number to the end ;)

Eh... of course it also listens to the stage to check for a resize event... so it knows where to put itself (the upper right corner)...

Learned a lot about OOP in Flash. And just how many corners you can round off. Also noticed some places where the internal docs aren't quite right... and commented my code accordingly.

Lesse... stuff I added... the "AvatarManagerClass"... okay, that's about all I've done for tonight. Here's what its prototype is doing:

( Boring Stuff. )

Also, of course, have been pondering how to lay out the XML data for this... think I have a suitable solution:
<player>
<avatar number="membernumber">
Avatar Name
<card type="cardseries">cardnumber</card>
...
</avatar>
...
</player>

So... this is looking forward... the flash program will never care if you've got more than one card, or about any series other than the PA series. But the xml's schema should allow for people to both have multiple cards in the same series *cough*Oralee*cough*, and have multiple series.

So, for an example (down the line):

<player>
   <avatar number="2173">
      Krinele Fullin
      <card type="pa">411</card>
      <card type="elt">3</card>
   </avatar>
   <avatar number="632">
      Datallon Implaro
      <card type="pa">312</card>
      <card type="nc4">1</card>
   </avatar>
   <avatar number="3189">
      Kivie
   </avatar>
</player>

I mean, I'm not sure what we'd use such a structure for in outputting a format usable almost exclusively by programs built by the Dat... but it's something to be aware of the possibility of, and thus program for.

Well, a little trinket I was working on today has been pressed into minimal service a bit ahead of schedule.

What, you might ask?

Nothing big, just that I was farting around and working on a character counter thingy for the tag-board. I've got it working, to the point where it accounts for five characters that tag-board treats "funny" (in a completely predictable way. I haven't tested some other special chars)...

Let me say this:

1) I hate magicquotes.

2) Running htmlspecialchars (likely an equivilent thereof) before putting things into a database just... >.<

3) Counting how many characters the user submitted should be done before either of these conversions.

When programming, be prepared to abandon all work you've done on some code to come at it from a different angle. This, honestly, is absolutely key.

I've been doing things recently where I've had to drop everything and start from scratch... and the Projector's about to get much the same treatment. It'll be fun, in the sense that chalking up several months of straight programming and a couple years worth of patching to "experience, better luck next time" is fun.

Ah, well. c'est la vie. I shall have a more productive system when I'm done... I just have to work out all that it needs to do. I'm thinkin' a complicated flowchart or somethin'.

Hmmm... space-pod door... yum, yum...

(( If you get this post, have yourself a cookie. ))

Bleh... had hoped to get at least 4 conversions done today... managed two of them. Ah, well, it's coming along I suppose... just... yea. Suppose being able to sleep enough at night would help, yes?