| bookofjude @ 2008-11-25 13:06:00 |
Nocturne Alley Offline! or, Have You Seen These Images?
Music: acciohead - killer wizards
Well,
I know I've been promising to do it for quite some time, and I haven't yet got around to working out where to host it, or how to distribute it to you wonderful people, but I've mostly completed my offline version of N_A. Here are a few specs:
1. Size:
Currently, uncompressed, it's about 35 megabytes. Obviously, this is quite scary for people with dial-up, however, using LZMA compression (via 7zip), I've managed to get it down to between 6 and 7 megabytes. Obviously, this is going to be ideal for people on dial-up.
I will offer it in several other zipped formats (tarball/.tar.gz, bzip2, zip, and possibly rar), including 7zip. Currently, 7zip would require that you download and install the 7zip archive program, which is free (open-source), and thankfully not too large.
More on that later.
Edit: The size just seems to be racing up. I've managed to collect more images, along with some supplemental material/NA.net sites, pushing the total size, uncompressed, to about 79 megabytes. As such, distribution will be completely different. I'll offer a 'whole shebang' file, possibly on Sendspace, while also having 'just posts', 'images', 'supplements', and 'navigation' archives as modules.
2. Content and format:
Content is HTML. This consists of all of the parsed journal entries in the list of links that 
orpheusinjapan (hooray, thank you!) posted to 
nraged a while back.
Collapsed comment threads have been uncollapsed, all external images have been fetched and converted to a local link (stored in icons/ for user icons, and images/ for non-icons).
3. Indexes:
There'll be a chronological, post-by-post index for the entire game. There will also be character post-by-post indexes (also in chronological order), and if I can work out how to format it, a chronological incident index.
4. Navigation:
Either as part of the main archive, or as a separate one (depending on file size), I'm intending on making a HTML-Frames-based navigation interface, with the ability to 'bookmark' the current page, go previous/next chronologically in the game, and previous/next chronologically with player posts.
I don't think it will be ready for distribution until sometime over the weekend. I'm still ironing out some rough edges and attempting to find images that have been lost. Which is where you lovely people (and hopefully any players who are still monitoring this community) can come in.
The list of images that I've not been able to find online is here, hosted via pastebin.ca. Unfortunately, I've not included a link to the actual post. I'll try and update it sometime. Edit: Slightly less readable, but following post:image format: http://pastebin.ca/1266391
If you have any images on your hard drive that you think might help or that match these filenames, please leave a comment and I'll try and organise a way to get them off you.
If you know any of the players who are not monitoring this community and have a way to contact them, please link them to this post, or ask them if they still have any of their images. About 50% are character-specific web hosting that has since been lost.
On one final note, I'm looking for ways to distribute this. If anyone has some web space with bandwidth to burn and FTP access that they don't mind donating to this, please also leave a comment!
I think that's everything. Long Live Nocturne_Alley!
Comments:
| tabiji @ November 25 2008, 03:31:28 UTC |
It took you all this time and you don't even have links to the specific posts?
Tsk.
;)
| tabiji @ November 25 2008, 03:41:21 UTC |
Also, THANKYOU a billion for this. I've had a constant fear of LJ losing NA's posts.
(parent)| darththalia @ November 25 2008, 04:04:44 UTC |
You're amazing! I can't wait to see the finished product.
Also, I could probably provide webspace if you need it--I should have enough bandwidth for everyone. Drop me an e-mail at thalia@destinysgarden.net if you want to talk.
| bookofjude @ November 25 2008, 07:02:10 UTC |
Awesome! We're now looking at 25mb for the whole shebang in a 7zip, but I might go mediafire/rapidshare for the big ones. I won't know until I'm finished fetching the rest of the images off NA.net.
Thank you for the offer, will drop you an email.
| bloodybrilliant @ November 25 2008, 04:10:07 UTC |
sdl;kfja;lej8fra;olfja
<3333333333333333
SO. EXCITED.
Good luck with this. I didn't save any pictures so I don't think I could be of any help there. If I did, they'd be on my desktop and probably lost. ): But I hope you can find the lost things!
| bookofjude @ November 25 2008, 07:02:25 UTC |
I am so lame because I spent three hours reading it last night instead of finishing it off :))
(parent)| snackbreak @ November 25 2008, 05:25:39 UTC |
ZOMG, AMAZING!! PROPS TO YOU. MAAAAAAD PROPS <3
(parent)| bookofjude @ November 25 2008, 07:02:52 UTC |
Me and Sirius already started a club, we just didn't tell you because you're not invited. It's the We Hate Big-Arsed Werewolves Group. We have to hold the sign up on our stick legs though, we ran out of posts.
Propping myself up with Harry's stick legs!
| bookofjude @ November 25 2008, 07:03:32 UTC |
Enthusiasm is great. It's been something I've beat myself up over for ages; I knew there was a word .doc file, which is fine if you just want the text... But quite frankly, I want icons and the *feel*, you know? So I've been meaning to do it for ages. Just glad I finally got around to it.
(parent)| xnera @ November 25 2008, 06:11:10 UTC |
Holy frak, Jude. This is awesome!
I approve of 7zip. *nods* Great program. As for distribution... bittorrent, maybe? That way no one's FTP access will get slammed with large data transfers. After time it'd probably have to be moved to FTP once people stop seeding it. I've never created a new torrent, but maybe someone reading this has done it, or we can try to figure it out.
| bookofjude @ November 25 2008, 06:40:43 UTC |
Yeah.
Currently, with the nocturne-alley.net images, we've ramped up to 22mb for the 'whole shebang' version. I'm thinking that several will be needed: one with just the plain text for the people who want just the plain text.
Bittorent is actually a great idea. I'll need to look into it, thanks!
 |
hezzabeth @ November 25 2008, 07:54:06 UTC |
I would love to publish this into an awesome coffee book on cafepress.com or something like that.
(parent)| bookofjude @ November 25 2008, 08:11:47 UTC |
Awesome, but most likely *very* large. However, I would be looking into it myself.
(parent)| portkey @ November 25 2008, 09:10:38 UTC |
This is seriously fucking rad. As are you. Seriously.
(parent)| bookofjude @ November 25 2008, 09:12:52 UTC |
I now have this horrible feeling that I will upload it and people will think it looks horrible and then my name shall be a curse forever! That's probably just me paranoid, but heh.
I'm currently working on indexes at the minute, then the rest of the moodthemes, then finally the rest of the internal links.
| orpheusinjapan @ November 27 2008, 02:47:01 UTC Wow... |
this sounds amazing, although I must admit, the tech speak totally lost me. Hopefully the download will come with step by step instructions?
If you have my Word files, you have all the images I have but hopefully the missing ones will come out of the woodwork.
It's funny what we do for the love of this game, no?
Cheers.
| bookofjude @ November 28 2008, 09:41:23 UTC Re: Wow... |
Yeah, I tend to ramble a bit! Yes, the download will and in fact does!
Of course, feel free to post there if you have any issues.
And I think it's just the obsessive compulsive fact that it's not so much the actual text, but the whole view of things (comment threads, 'lj-like', mood themes, icons) and such that made the experience for me. I just had to immortalise the whole thing in one delicious package.
| orpheusinjapan @ November 28 2008, 23:16:53 UTC Re: Wow... |
And great instructions too! I'm up and running, so far so good. It's amazing! Thank you so much. I am no longer obsessing over livejournal going down. Now I'm obsessing about losing my USB key, and the two CD copies.
Cheers.