Tekkub's Emporium of Random Crap

Wut more werk?

2011-12-29T00:00:00-08:00

I probably sound like a douche when I say this, but I really love my job. Especially the people I work with. I don't know how to express how great GitHub is to be part of.

A typical night in The Danger Room

Tonight was one of those nights. Filled with scandal, debauchery, fur, porn, drinking... a typical night in our chat room. I'm not kidding here, it happens more than it probably should. But hey, I came away with two wonderful things:

I just now found out, @luckiestmonkey's dad made me a furry. Another mystery solved.
— tekkub (@tekkub) December 29, 2011

It turns out, Melissa's dad worked at Accolade when Bubsy came out, a game which probably had far more influence on my young impressionable mind than I'd like to admit.

A short time later, @bryanveloso gave me this gift:

Best. Job. EVAR.

Some redesignin'

2011-12-24T00:00:00-08:00

Hope everyone likes the new look. Since I've been spending less time in WoW these days I figured I'd redesign stuff to focus on my ramblings instead. Never fear, I've not abandoned my addons, I've simply moved them off the front page. There will be more to come, but for now I have to go try to pass out so I can get up at a reasonable time (heh, noon) before xmas company arrives.

*Runs away*

ʕ ¨ᴥ¨ʔ ʕ ´ᴥ` ʔ ʕ¨ᴥ¨ ʔ

Grouping series audiobooks on iOS

2011-11-11T00:00:00-08:00

In prep for the upcoming post-thanksgiving road trip I've been loading my phone up with audiobooks. The thing of it is, we like series books, and they are always such a mess in the main book list. Why can't I group them up like discs in an album? Turns out you can, if you know exactly how to tag them in iTunes.

For the sake of this example I'm going to tag The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a radio series of 5 different stories. Tagging is pretty simple once you know what to do.

Set the "Album" to the series name, in this case "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Set the "Name" to the book's name, our first book is "Primary Phase"
Do not set the track number fields. If you do the book will display as "Part 1 of 5"
Use the "Sort name" field to ensure the books sort in the right order within the series. I used "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 1" for the first book, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 2" for the second, and so on.
If you have a multi-file book that you can't combine into a single file, tag "(Part 1)" on the end of "Name" and add a second number onto the "Sort name": "Iron Druid 3 1"

When all is said and done, you'll end up with a base list that has each series, and then within the series you'll see each book as a "part".

Betatesters, TourGuide needs you!

2010-09-11T00:00:00-07:00

Are you in the Cataclysm beta? Like TourGuide? Well, I could use your help. Before you set out questing, download and install TourGuide Recorder in your beta client. This addon will record what quests you do, so I can create guides for the new and revamped zones. I have a little gift for anyone that submits recordings, contact me at beta@tekkub.net for details!

Clearing the Air

2010-02-18T00:00:00-08:00

The past few weeks I have been very quiet regarding the future of TourGuide. Now that the Zygor deal has been announced, I’d like to set the record straight.

First and foremost, Dugi (ultimatewowguide.com) has never had my permission to modify, sell, or distribute, my addon. Over the past year I have talked to the owner of this site a few times, and he has made a few voluntary donations through TourGuide’s pledgie campaign. However, we have never had any formal, legally-binding agreement regarding TourGuide.

Our first contact was back in Jan ‘09. He asked me if he could sell “tourguide data”, specifically citing his own guides which he was translating into another language. He wanted this guide to plug in to TourGuide. I told him his addon is his property, he can do whatever he wants with it. I shamelessly included a link to pledgie, and he made a donation some time later. Around this time he also used my static HTML generator, which was publicly available on GitHub, to convert his guides to HTML. I understood that he would probably sell access to those pages, but as it was generated from his guide data I really didn’t pursue the matter.

Three months later, at the start of April ‘09, I was alerted to the fact that Dugi was distributing a modified version of the TourGuide core on his site. Upon investigation I found that his modifications were simply rebranding the addon as "Dugi’s Guide Viewer" and removing my own free guides. I never gave permission for modifications like this, nor was my addon licensed in a manner that would allow it. Seeing as the changes were only cosmetic, any user that installed this viewer and TourGuide on the same system would have run into conflicts. While I was lucky to not have any reports of such issues, the simple potential for such failure upset me greatly. I pride myself in my addons being stable and efficient.

Naturally, I contacted Dugi and asked him to remove the modified version and link people to the official TourGuide downloads. Dugi expressed concern over the included guides “confusing” his users and did mention licensing, but I did not pursue the matter. I was not interested in doing business with someone that would rebrand my code without permission, or without even asking. Simply put, he should have come to me about licensing before he started selling his guide.

Dugi never removed his viewer, even after I asked him. He now asserts that he had permission to do so from me. He did not.

Late last year, Zygor approached me about licensing exclusive rights to TourGuide. Unlike most of the other guide sellers out there, Zygor had his own guide addon. This addon was written by a hired developer, instead of using the freely available addons on the market. This simple fact may have biased me toward Zygor, I admit. My initial reaction to his offer was a resounding “hell no”. I like for code to be free to share, I feel that others being able to see my code and learn from it, and me being able to learn from other people’s code, helps the addon community evolve and become better. However, modifying and selling an addon without permission goes completely counter to this. After much debate I decided to work out a deal with Zygor that would be to both our benefit.

During negotiations I made it clear that my concerns were for my users who had downloaded TourGuide from WoWInterface or Curse. Also I wanted to protect the addon in case the contract were to expire without renewal, so that I could go back to releasing it for free. We were able to reach an agreement that satisfied us both, Zygor got rights to TourGuide while under contract, I got paid for my code, and I will retain rights when the contract ends. Zygor is offering TG up to his users legitimately, and we may work out a deal for me to work on TG while under contract if there is a positive response from his userbase. Zygor has assured me that he holds no ill-will towards my current userbase of free users, and doesn’t wish to hinder those players that already have TourGuide installed on their systems.

I know there is a lot of drama and mudslinging that has already begun, and this post may even be construed as part of that. I hope it is not however, I just wanted to set the record straight on what has gone down, my part in the matter, and why I licensed rights to TourGuide to Zygor.

The TourGuide-Zygor deal

2010-02-17T00:00:00-08:00

TourGuide has teamed up with Zygor guides. Don’t panic! (Fine, you can panic, just a little)

WTF Chuck? You sold out!

Well, I guess you could say that… but let me explain myself!

Nearly three years ago I set out to create a simple, streamlined in-game leveling guide addon. The only guides available at the time (which shall go unnamed) were PDF-based and, in my crappy opinion, of questionable quality. Something I would have never paid for at least. My primary goal was to create a core addon with a simple data format that I could license to those paid guide creators. I never reached a deal with those paid guide guys, being the stubborn ass that I am I wasn’t willing to “dumb down” my guide system for their users. So I set out to create my own guide data instead.

With the core in place, I used those same guides as a starting point, improving on their quest circuits and adding notes and coords where necessary. The idea was to give the user a streamlined sequence, not to hold their hand and play hte game for them. Those guides were good, but far from perfect… especially the horde guides.

At this point the next expansion was due out soon and TourGuide faced one tiny problem: I am a horribly slow leveler (ironically). With this in mind I created a passive “recorder” addon that tracked what the player did, at what coords, and what items he used. Many users ran this addon and submitted their logs (thanks guys!), From which the current Wrath guides were created.

Up to this point, the only money I had made were a few hundred dollars in donations. Nothing to scoff at, but also not something that would help me pay my bills. Don’t get me wrong, I fully understood that my software was free, it wasn’t my day job.

This is when Zygor approached me about buying TourGuide. My initial reaction was “hell no, never”… but with a little urging from my bitchier half I remembered that my initial goal with TG was to create something I could license. So I contacted Zygor back and we struck a deal. That deal is thus: I have licensed all rights relating to TourGuide, as is, to Zygor. They are free to distribute it however they wish, at their request I have taken down my free versions. If the deal ends in the future, rights will return to me and I can do what I want with the addon.

It’s been a great ride so far, and it’s not over yet. Thanks to all my users out there!

Good News Everyone!

2009-08-15T00:00:00-07:00

This week we’ve got your usual patch fixes and two new addons, Good News Everyone! and Gnomish Vendor Shrinker

Good News Everyone!

Yes, I really named an addon that.

Good News Everyone! is a basic proc warning addon based off of OhSnap. The idea of course is to alert you to abilities and procs where you would want to make a decision. That means that every proc under the sun is NOT supported! Holy Concentration is certainly a nice spell, but in the heat of battle I don’t need to know when it’s active… I won’t be changing what spells I cast when it is up.

For now, GNE! simply uses the “thrust in your face” effect to get your attention… but I may add a sound if demand is high enough.

Oh, and if you think I missed any buffs or you find a “reactive” ability that doesn’t trigger like it should, let me know on GitHub

Gnomish Vendor Shrinker

The other new addon this week is Gnomish Vendor Shrinker. For some time I’ve wanted a better vendor frame, but motivation is such a bitch. Yssaril was nice enough to allow me to go all OCD on AdvancedMerchantFrame… mix in a bit of GAS (crud, I need to release that too)… and there you are.

Quick feature rundown: simple scrolling list instead of big buttons and “pages”, highlights recipes you don’t know to make them easy to find, one-click buying, alt-click full stack buying, and a search for those really big vendors that have way too much shit.

Patch fixes

This week I’ve also got a few patch fixes going out:

Quel’evel was partially broken by the new quest log, but as a bonus the fixed up code is even smaller.
EquipSetUpdater had it’s button sat upon, so I changed it’s behavior to override the “save” button instead of creating a new button in the already-crowded equipment manager frame.
teknicolor was mostly replaced by the new chat name coloring, but there were a few features that Blizzy missed, so it covers those now.
Panda got updated panels for the new jewelcrafting stuff (thanks to the users that dug up the itemIDs so I didn’t have to).
Kennel got some fixes to some not-patch-caused issues.
tekKompare wasn’t broken by the patch, but some new goodness was added which it now takes advantage of.
Bimbo wasn’t broken either, but I added some stuff for lower level toons, since I’m currently leveling a bearcow.

Interview & Kennel per-zone pet settings

2009-06-20T00:00:00-07:00

This week NoStockUI published a little interview with me. I know I got a little ranty, especially about Wowmatrix, but you’re welcome to skip over those parts. Thanks to Matticus for the change to ramble a bit, I’m happy to support a nice UI-centric blog.

Oh and it’s the weekend that means new addon builds…

The highlight this week, Kennel now has per-zone pet settings. This means you can set Kennel to always use the same pet when you are in a zone or subzone. Want to show off your White Kitten when you’re in Stormwind, or your Cockroach in Naxx? Now you can!

Setting a pet is fairly simple, summon the pet you want, open the config panel, and click “Add zone” or “Add subzone”. A new rule will be added for your current pet in your current zone or subzone. Subzone rules will always override zone rules. If no zone or subzone rule is found and a pet is needed, Kennel will fall back to the random pet settings.

Horde wrath guides (finally!)

2009-05-31T00:00:00-07:00

After far too long of a wait, I’ve finally compiled Northrend TourGuide files for horde. As usual, you can find the download at WoWInterface.

A big huge thanks is due to Spugnort’s guides. After the development policy was laid down by Blizzard, their TourGuide files could no longer be given to paying customers only. Instead of removing their in-game guides, or simply ignoring the policy like some other guide authors (I won’t name names…), they instead donated their guides for the betterment of TourGuide for everyone.

I’ve gone through each guide, merging in ally guide data for the neutral quests and the quests that are similar for both factions. TourGuide Recorder data from users (thanks guys!) has also been merged in, so you should get some nice coords even if you don’t run LightHeaded.

Again, big thanks to everyone that made this possible. Even though I’m usually not one for paid guides (hell, I wrote TourGuide to undermine the ones that I thought were poor quality, especially for a paid product…), I encourage you guys to hit up Spugnort’s and show them some support for donating their guide data for everyone to use.

Oh, and if any of you hordies out there have the time, I’m still missing a guide for Storm Peaks. You could use the ally guide as a starter, since 2/3 of the zone are neutral quests.

Equipment Manager Fun

2009-05-23T00:00:00-07:00

As I’m sure you’re aware, patch 3.1.2 finally brought us the equipment manager. I love it in all it’s simplicity, but I’ve found that it’s lacking in two little areas… it doesn’t link to the dual-spec system, and it’s only about 4 friggin clicks to update an existing set. As I am unable to overlook design flaws like this, I’ve written Crossdresser and EquipSetUpdater.

Crossdresser

First up we have Crossdresser. This addon will automatically switch to a chosen equipment set when you switch talents. There’s a minimal config panel in the addon config UI, as well as two little “CD” buttons on the equipment manager and talent UI panels for fast access.

Oh and as a little bonus, if you hover over the titles in the config panel you’ll be shown that spec’s details.

EquipSetUpdater

Next we’ve got EquipSetUpdater. This addon simply adds an “Update” button to the equipment manager. Pick a set, change the items in it, and click. You don’t have to dig through the icon list, nor will you have to click past that annoying “do you want to overwrite” dialog.

Note that there appears to be a bug with “Ignore This Slot” not being loaded by the manager, so you will need to set this each time you update if your set ignores slots.