The impossible journey of a madman through Final Fantasies I to IX. What is this?

  Saturday, August 21, 2004

First Pic

I have something for you: the first screen shot. It's just the title screen, but definitely a momentous occasion. For all of the pics I post I will have a small version on this page that will be a link to a fullsize version. So click on the picture if you can't see all the detail. (Hopefully that doesn't apply in this case.)




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posted by Brenden Johnson @ 12:09 PM   3 comments

  Thursday, August 19, 2004

Fixed

Well, I got it working. I am learning about CSS quickly with this whole process. I don't know the more complicated stuff, but the basics are becoming more and more clear to me.

I'm just happy I got it working. I like the navbar, I just didn't like the fact that it hosed my design. There are a few things in the template I wasn't sure about and don't know if they'll work. I'm guessing that they are some provisions for older browsers. If you find yourself on one of those or my site looks weird for whatever reason, I recommend going and downloading the best browser around right now: Mozilla Firefox.

I suppose I could tell you about the problem. The picture of Chaos (final boss of Final Fantasy) over on the left there was set up as the background of the <body> of my html code. I then set the left padding (kind of an "inside" margin) of the <body> tag to the width of the picture to push everything to the right and uncover the picture.

The problem arose when the new navbar code gets loaded after my code and sets the <body> padding back to zero so that the navbar will span the entire length of the top of the page. I played around with multiple padding and margin schemes to no avail when it finally dawned on me that I just needed an extra wrapper <div>. So the <body> stays as it now is, with no padding or margin, and below the navbar another <div> starts with the same charateristics that my <body> used to have. And we have what you now see.

So there you have it, I've been kind of fuming all day and all I had to do was think a little.

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posted by Brenden Johnson @ 3:45 PM   0 comments

I'm broken!

Wow, a new feature, the navbar, gets added to Blogger and my whole site goes to crap. I'm in the process of trying to figure out how to get my design back the way I want it, but I'm not happy. The problem is that Blogger loads a little bit of CSS after everything else which breaks my design.

And the fun part is, it doesn't work as advertised. The search bar is supposedly a "site search" but if I search for anything on my main blog it brings back zero results. Curious.

UPDATE! I *just* found a page, crazily enough, that lets you add your url to google's index. Of course, it says there is no guarantee that the pages will show up. Funny how a competitors search engine was able to crawl and index my pages on its own.

Anyway, I guess that's what I get for trying to become a webdesigner.

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posted by Brenden Johnson @ 9:04 AM   0 comments

  Sunday, August 15, 2004

Nothing substantial yet

I haven't started my game yet. I've been working on getting some color and a little more style into the site Even though I know not many people will ever see it, I will be looking at it all of the time, so I want it to look semi-good.

I am really getting in the process of moving. As a way to cut down on distractions I have put all of my consoles at my new house in a box so I can't play them.

I'll put up more when it is warrented.


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posted by Brenden Johnson @ 11:04 AM   0 comments

  Tuesday, August 10, 2004

The start of something long

Well, the journey is about to begin. I have decided to embark on an adventure of epic proportions.

With the recent completion of my Final Fantasy collection I now have the ability to play every Final Fantasy game from I to IX (except for III) on my Playstation. I am going to play through each one in order.

You may ask yourself why someone would do this? Well, one reason would be that I enjoy these games and another would be that I'm trying to give myself an excuse and some motivation to play through them instead of letting them continue to collect dust on my shelf. (along with the rest of the great RPGs I own)

I have my Playstation hooked up to my computer through an analog capture device and will be able to post screen shots from the more important (I use that term quite loosely) or memorable scenes.

I have beaten 3 of the games that I will play: I, IV, and VI. I have started and not beaten VII and VIII. But I will be starting each game from the beginning. Something I will not do is to try and find every item, complete every sidequest (though I may try to get the Golden chocobo in VII just to spite Steve, and I'm really going to avoid the stupid card game in VIII), or get every character to level 99 (which I have attempted in the past). There is just too much to do in each game to do it all and I hope to finish this tour de force within a semi-reasonable space of time. I will try not to use any online walkthroughs or FAQs unless I get really stuck and need help just to continue.

I don't know how regular my playing will be. Hopefully as I get into the games I will want to continue and at least play an hour or two every couple days. That's probably asking too much of myself, but I'll try. (hopefully my girlfriend won't mind too much)

Anyway, the beginning is coming soon. I am in the process of moving so the start could be delayed or it will at least cause a delay when my computer and everything else actually gets moved.

Oh, I apologize for the site design. I'm not a graphic artist or layout king. I took examples from BlogSpot templates, used the layout tool at the CSS Creator, edited some pictures in the GIMP and I slapped some grays together and ended up with what you see here. Hopefully the design will evolve and grow along with the journey. I already know I'll be changing the header along with each game, but everything else can only change for the better as well.

Until next time, when hopefully Final Fantasy (the 'I' is implied) will be started.


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posted by Brenden Johnson @ 4:00 PM   1 comments