• The two most popular articles are the name generator and the Horde guide to tame on Azuremyst.
• Someone has looked at my site over an iPod. Cool!
• Firefox is kicking IE’s butt! Hooray for geeks!
• The top five nationalities of people that visit are USA, UK, Canada, Sweden, and Australia. Don’t know why so many Swedish people are visiting…
• Google really likes me. Of all the search bots that visit, it constitutes 93%. Its IP address also has the most page views.
• Someone found my blog by Googled “faeldray” which is kinda creepy because I’m the only person in the world that uses that alias. *puts on tin foil hat* I know because it’s completely made up and completely obscure. Google it and everything that comes up is related to me.
• WordPress.com Stats says that I’m getting over 100 hits per day. Google Analytics says less than 100. I’m gonna believe WordPress because it makes me feel better
• There have been at least 3600 hits from RSS feed alone. A lot of you are like me and enjoy your feed reader.

Now for some character updates:

Nicora reached level 52 and put her first talent point in Ferocious Inspiration. I’m really enjoying that because Blacky crits a lot! The pair of them are still completing quests in Feralas, despite them being too high a level for the area. At least the quests are easy

Aunniaq is still level 29. I’ve been holding back leveling her because I don’t want her to get ahead of Xion. And since he’s created a toon on Hydraxis-H (yay!) and has been leveling it to reach around Khaja’s and Aithne’s levels, his Moon Guard character hasn’t gotten much play. So the other day, Anu just went around killing turtles and collecting their meat to cook with. She’s now about 3/4 of a way to level 30, cooked 60-something pieces of turtle meat, and maxed out her cooking skill at 225. She can’t get the next rank until level 35

Last night, I took Khaja to Tarren Mills and got her fishing from 75 to 120. She also cooked all the fish but I can’t remember how much that skill went up. The funny thing is that despite hating cooking IRL, I’m beginning to enjoy it in-game. I’m thinking of getting it for all my characters, especially Nicora who will have to do a lot of farming to get that skill up.

Lately, my schedule has been going like this: get up at 7-ish for school, finish school at 3:30, go home and take a 2-3 hour nap, work in the evening if I’m scheduled, and then stay up until 2 am playing because that’s when Xion is online. Not the best schedule but as long as I get enough total sleep, I won’t be really grumpy. I know, I’m bad. Like last night, originally I was planning to fish for just 15 minutes until 11pm but then Xion logged onto his Hydraxis character and we chatted and then suddenly it was 2 am. Thankfully I had taken my nap earlier so I was able to get up this morning without too much effort. And I plan to repeat this all over again today.

What I find is basically a flame war (not the worst one I’ve seen but one nonetheless) and someone has posted a link to my blog right in the middle of it! A character named Drotara…wait a minute, I know that name. A few seconds later, I figure it out…you!

I’m surprised by the whole thing. Not mad or anything, just surprised and a little flattered. After all, I’m not the only hunter blog out there yet he only mentions me. So I get this idea…an idea for a reciprocal surprise …Operation Scilohotep.

Phase 1: Creation – January 22, 2008, 11:02 PM

I know which server Drotara is on and that he plays a male orc hunter. So I create an complimentary female orc hunter named Scilohotep. Nothing fancy, just something to get the job done.

Phase 2: Initiation – January 22, 2008, 11:07 PM

I log on with her and…Drotara’s in Karazhan. I may not raid but I do know that that’s a dungeon so he’s probably busy. I won’t disturb him now. Unfortunately I have to go to bed so the next phase will have to wait.

The next day, I log onto the young orc hunter, only to discover that Drotara’s not online.

Phase 2, Plan B – January 23, 2008, 5:46PM

He’s possibly playing his Alliance characters so I create another Scilohotep on that server, this time a female Draenei hunter. Because I like the Draeneis best out of all the Alliance races. She enters the world of Azeroth only to find neither of his Alliance characters online. I’m beginning to feel like a stalker *shifty eyes*

Phase 3: Contact – January 24, 2008, 9:52 PM

This time, there’s a nice queue waiting for me as I try to connect to Drotara’s server. Oh, it says 6 minutes on the screenshot but it took more like 13 minutes. I’m patiently wait through it but I’m glad that this isn’t my normal server.

Scilohotep the orc logs on to find Drotara in Sethekk Halls. Hmm…must be some part of the Outland I haven’t heard of yet. That means I won’t be interrupting him if we chat! I whisper him and strike up a conversation…

Here’s the chat that I recorded with a nifty little mod called AutoChatLog (edited for spelling mistakes >.<):

Scilohotep: Hi! I’m a fan of your blog and I just wanted to drop in and say hello
Drotara: Oh thanks. I always wonder if anyone reads it.
Scilohotep: No problem. I subscribe to the feed so I get every post. They’re a really good read.
Drotara: I am glad you like it.
Scilohotep: Funny thing is, you’ll probably know me. See if you can guess it from my name.
Drotara: Hmmm
Scilohotep: I’ll give you a hint…read it backwards.
Drotara: Oooh! Hey hey!
Drotara: Petoholics Anonymous!
Scilohotep: LOL, right on the dot, man!
Drotara: That’s awesome you came by to say hi.
Scilohotep: Well, I noticed that you pasted my URL in the WoW Forums (in that spirit wolf flame war) and it surprised me so I thought that I’d surprise you
Drotara: Yeah, some of those people. Can’t wrap their head around things that might be fun.
Scilohotep: They are entitled to their opinion but they were QQing just as much as they said we were, LOL
Drotara: For sure. Hehe
Scilohotep: Just out of curiousity, why did you post my blog of all the ones you could have chosen…like your own?
Drotara: Your blog was an example of someone who enjoys doing things like taming pets for fun, rather than min/maxing stats
Scilohotep: Hmm, I suppose so. Well, thank you for that. It was nice to get the attention, albeit unexpected as it was.
Drotara: Haha
Drotara: Your welcome. I enjoy reading your blog a lot.
Scilohotep: Thanks. I try
Scilohotep: And just so you know…this is so going in the blog, lol
Drotara: Haha awesome.
Scilohotep: Well, I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing. Have fun and see you around
Drotara: You too! Thanks for stopping by!
Scilohotep: You’re most welcome. I’ll go down in history as your first fan visit, lol
Drotara: Indeed you are!
Scilohotep: lol. Later *bows deeply before you*

It was awesome talking with Drotara and I hope I get to do again sometime…maybe with another unsuspecting reader or blogger. *flashes a big toothy grin as she surveys everyone*

Of course, he beat me to the punch on posting about this but that’s alright because I know I’m slow on these things. However, I found out that Sethekk Halls is actually a dungeon and that I interrupted him in the middle of it.

/headdesk

I can be such a n00b sometimes. Sorry, man!

If you’ve been using an installed version of WordPress for your blog, you’ve probably noticed the little bar just under your admin menu to update to the latest verison 2.3.2. Apparently there’s some security fixes in there including the fix for a hack that allowed anyone to see your draft posts. Frankly, I wasn’t too worried about people seeing my draft posts (not like I have any national secrets or anything) but that little bar was bugging me because I’m almost OCD about keeping my software and stuff up-to-date.

Only doing this wasn’t simple for me because apparently the WordPress scripts were using a little too much memory and I kept getting Allowed Memory Size Exhausted Error. In frustration, I downgraded and upgraded two more times, only to get the same result. I was about to write a email to my webhost when I happened to check their support database and lo and behold, there was my answer! I created a custom php.ini file, placed it in the subdirectory that is this blog and bing! Everything knows works perfectly. Did I mention that I love my webhost? Buy your hosting from her, she’s a super nice lady and has the cheapest prices you will ever see, I swear.

So, enough about that and onto a related topic that I’ve been meaning to cover for a while. Before, I wasn’t able to get ItemStats working on this blog so I had come up with a custom solution that was a little bit…complicated. I actually ended up getting ItemStats to work but I was having problems with it dealing with the permalinks and I don’t even think the entire script is supported anymore…

Then Thottbot, quickly followed by WoWHead, came up with their own handy solutions in the form of a JavaScript that you just link to. Seriously, that was it. So, this is my little tutorial of how to implement it in a WordPress blog:

Step 1: Get the code from either Thottbot or WoWHead. It’s your own personal preference as to which one you want but I personally prefer WoWHead. Their tooltips just seem prettier and quicker. It’s what I use anyways.

Step 2: Open the theme file to edit it. They say anywhere will do but knowing my code, I think the best place is just under the </head> tag. To get to that, log into your admin panel for your blog, then the Presentation link in your menu, then Theme Editor in the submenu that will load with the page. There should be a menu on the right side of the screen and you’ll want to select the Header file to edit.

Just note that the changes you will make will only affect the current theme. If you change your theme, you’ll have to go through these steps once again.

Step 3: Place the code into the Header file. Scroll down through the code and look for the </head> text. You can use the Find command (under the Edit menu) of your browser if you wish. Once you find the </head> text, place the code that you got from Thottbot or WoWHead under it on another line.

Step 4: Click the Update File button on the lower right and…you’re done. To get the tooltips to show up in your posts, you must first find the items by searching Thottbot/WoWHead for them. Once you’re on the item’s page, copy the URL that’s in the address bar of your browser, and link whatever text you want to it in your WordPress post writer thingy.

I hope that was fairly simple to understand. I could also post an optional addition to this tutorial of how to use the macro expander plugin that I talked about in my first tooltip tutorial. But I’ll leave that up to you, the readers, to see if you want it. If you do, just post a comment below asking for it and you shall receive.

Anyways, enough of me basking in my own glory. I have two more blogs to link to since they linked to me.

Chronicles of a World of Warcraft Hunter – The name pretty much speaks for itself. Here’s to Gebeorgan, who emailed me to say hi and mentioned that his blog linked to me. Good man, G!

Less QQ, More PewPew – The life of a reroller – This guy I actually found through my referrals. He may be quiet but that’s not going to stop me from linking to him.

Man, look at that. I’m up on people’s blogrolls with BRK and Mania. …Okay, I’ll shut up now.

I get a little one sentence blurb on Mania’s Arcania and suddenly my visits are through the roof! If that’s not a signal to write more of my A Newbie’s Life series, I don’t know what is.

I am going to…really. I have a bunch of posts planned but I’ve been too busy actually playing WoW to write about it. You’ll get some of those this weekend, I promise.

Here’s what you need to do:

First you will need to get the macro expander plugin. This is not totally necessary but I highly recommend it because it makes things easier later on.

Next, you need to make some changes to your theme. Do that by going to your admin panel -> Presentation -> Theme Editor. Select the “Header” file from the list on the right.

The following code I’m going to give you was not written by me, but by Okoloth of Armor Musings. However, the code he wrote is for Blogger blogs and I’ve just adapted it to work with WordPress.

Anyways, you need to find the </head> tag in the “Header” file. Then add the following code above the </head> tag:

<!-- WoW Item Popup v1.3 --> <style type="text/css">
#wowitemfloat { position:absolute; left:200px; top:200px; z-index:100; }
.poor { color:#9d9d9d !important; text-decoration:none; }
.common { color:#ffffff !important; text-decoration:none; }
.uncommon { color:#1eff00 !important; text-decoration:none; }
.rare { color:#0070dd !important; text-decoration:none; }
.epic { color:#a335ee !important; text-decoration:none; }
.legendary { color: #ff8000 !important; text-decoration:none; }
.artifact { color: #e5cc80 !important; text-decoration:none; }
</style>

If your website has a white background or some other color that will drown out one of the class colors (purple on purple, blue on blue, etc.), you can add a background color to the text. Here’s an example of how you would do it (look for background-color in particular):

.common { color:#ffffff !important; text-decoration:none; }

Now, add the followig code below the </head> tag:

<!-- WoW Item Popup v1.3 --> <style type="text/css">
#wowitemfloat { position:absolute; left:200px; top:200px; z-index:100; }
.poor { color:#9d9d9d !important; text-decoration:none; }
.common { color:#ffffff !important; text-decoration:none; background-color:#999999;}
.uncommon { color:#1eff00 !important; text-decoration:none; }
.rare { color:#0070dd !important; text-decoration:none; }
.epic { color:#a335ee !important; text-decoration:none; }
.legendary { color: #ff8000 !important; text-decoration:none; }
.artifact { color: #e5cc80 !important; text-decoration:none; }
</style>

If you haven’t already, download the macro expander plugin and unzip it. Open macro_expander.php in a text editor (like Notepad) and look for the line that says ADD YOUR OWN MACRO FUNCTIONS BELOW THIS LINE. So after this line (obviously), add this code:

function macro_item($name='Wolpertinger', $number='32233', $class='rare')
{
return "<a href='http://wow.allakhazam.com/item.html?witem=$number' class='$class' onmouseover='showWowitem(event,$number);' onmouseout='hideWowitem();'>[$name]</a>";
}

Save the file, upload it, and install the plugin per the instructions on the plugin website.

To use it in your posts, type something like this:

It follows this basic syntax:

All this information can be found on Allakhazam or Wowhead. The item name is obvious, the item number can be found in the URL of the item page, and the class can be deciphered by the color:

Grey = poor
White = common
Green = uncommon
Blue = rare
Purple = epic
Orange = legendary
Red = artifact

That’s it! Hopefully these instructions aren’t too confusing to follow, and I don’t believe I missed any steps. If anyone has any comments or questions, please post them.