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Christopher Reeve: Sept 25, 1952 – Oct 10, 2004

Random Thoughts

I just don’t know what to say. I had planned this morning to make some tirade about birthdays, seeing that yesterday was my 30th, but then I found out about this, and… I’m not entirely sure why, but sitting in my office at work, I broke down into tears.

Yesterday, as I went about my day, I kept seeing “Happy Birthday” all over the place. Store fronts, a pile of newspapers, and loads more… maybe that phrase is just really common and I normally don’t notice, but yesterday I did, and so did Jodi. She said that it made her think that it was a sign, that my mother was saying it, that she was with me. Also going through my head were thoughts of being 30, and all the things I haven’t yet done, and the general mess my life is, and I was thinking about needing to “grow up”, stop playing games and settle in to work. To put aside childish things, to put aside my childhood, and move on.

And now I find that Christopher Reeve, Superman, a symbol of fantasy, of heroism, of childhood dreams, died on my birthday at the same time I was considering putting aside those dreams. If I were a man who believed in signs… well, maybe I am a man who believes in signs, and that’s why I’m crying.

While I go try to collect myself, I leave you with the lyrics to two songs, neither of which really evoke what I’m feeling, but they come close, and neither of which will stop playing in my head for many days to come…

Superman (It’s not easy) by Five For Fighting:
I can’t stand to fly
I’m not that naive
I’m just out to find
The better part of me

I’m more than a bird…I’m more than a plane
More than some pretty face beside a train
It’s not easy to be me

Wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
About a home I’ll never see

It may sound absurd…but don’t be naive
Even Heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed…but won’t you concede
Even Heroes have the right to dream
It’s not easy to be me

Up, up and away…away from me
It’s all right…You can all sleep sound tonight
I’m not crazy…or anything…

I can’t stand to fly
I’m not that naive
Men weren’t meant to ride
With clouds between their knees

I’m only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me

It’s not easy to be me.

Superman’s Song by Crash Test Dummies:
Tarzan wasn’t a ladies’ man
He’d just come along and scoop ’em up under his arm
Like that, quick as a cat in the jungle
But Clark Kent, now there was a real gent
He would not be caught sittin’ around in no
Junglescape, dumb as an ape doing nothing

Superman never made any money
For saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair the world will never see
Another man like him

Hey Bob, Supe had a straight job
Even though he could have smashed through any bank
In the United States, he had the strength, but he would not
Folks said his family were all dead
Their planet crumbled but Superman, he forced himself
To carry on, forget Krypton, and keep going

Superman never made any money
For saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair the world will never see
Another man like him

Tarzan was king of the jungle and Lord over all the apes
But he could hardly string together four words: “I Tarzan, You Jane.”

Sometimes when Supe was stopping crimes
I’ll bet that he was tempted to just quit and turn his back
On man, join Tarzan in the forest
But he stayed in the city, and kept on changing clothes
In dirty old phonebooths till his work was through
And nothing to do but go on home

Superman never made any money
For saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair the world will never see
Another man like him

Books!

Reviews

Normally my Reviews articles are for movies or TV, but I decided today to hit a different frontier… Books.

I read alot of books, not as many as I would like, but alot none the less. And as you may notice from this site (and my subdomains), I also like to write. When I started playing City of Heroes, I got a jonesing for some spandex fiction. Sadly though, there only appears to be two kinds you can pick up at the local books store: Wild Cards by George R. R. Martin and books based on existing comic book characters.

Now, don’t get me wrong… the Martin edited shared world of Wild Cards is probably one of my favorite series of books, but I had read them before… twice… and was looking for something new. I wanted to avoid the books based on existing comic characters because a few of the ones I thumbed through relied too much on prior character knowledge, basically you needed to be a fan of the comic in order to enjoy the book. I asked around for books in a superhero setting that were neither Wild Cards nor existing comics… but all the recommendations I got we more Sci-Fi or Fantasy… lacking that element of the superhero, the comic book, that makes it unique. So finally, after coming to the conclusion that either none had been written or that none had been published, I caved in and bought some books from existing comic book heroes.

And I was pleasantly surprised with what I found.

There is a series of books, four of them so far, for the Justice League of America. One book is about the JLA as a whole fighting the good fight, and the other three (of which I’ve only read one so far) take a single member off on his own, with the occasional backup of the JLA. The first book I read was the JLA book, The Exterminators. And when I got into it, I was very happy to see the author not rely on prior knowledge. He explained as he went the relative parts of each character’s background as it was touched on. His book read like a comic without pictures… well, in my head there were plenty of pictures. The book was very well done, all-in-all a two thumbs up review. The second I read was for the Flash, called Stop Motion. Like the other, this author too didn’t trust you to just know the character, but he also didn’t bog you down with 50 years of history in the lives of speedsters of the DC Universe. He told what he needed, that’s it. The story was tight, and exciting… but it did leave me wanting in the end. The finale was just a bit sub par… it was a mystery, and as sometimes happens, the resolution of the mystery, figuring out who done it and why, was much more satisfying than the final conflict between hero and villain. It was like pushing a boulder up hill, excited the whole way up to the top, not knowing what was on the other side, getting to the top, seeing the other side, heart pounding, pushing the rock over the edge… only to see it roll about ten feet and stop because the hill on that side levelled off. It was like a rollercoaster that took you up a huge climb only to have a pitiful drop off the other side. I enjoyed the book, but just was a little less than fulfilled with the resolution once the mystery was unfolded.

There are two more books in the series so far, Batman and Wonder Woman, with a fifth, the Green Lantern, coming soon. I look forward to them.

When I picked up the JLA books, I also decided to grab the two Hellboy books by Christopher Golden, the Lost Army and the Bones of Giants. The Lost Army was a good solid read, and felt like Mike Mignola (creator of Hellboy) had done much of the writing himself. The sense of humor, the oddity of the situations, Christopher captured the essense of the Hellboy comics perfectly in his prose. And like the JLA books, he didn’t rely on the reader knowing Hellboy, not that Hellboy readers really know everything anyway. He would just hint at the past, and give you tastes of the world Hellboy belonged in that existed outside the scope of the story. Right now I’m about halfway through The Bones of Giants… and wow. It’s better than the first book. Christopher’s writing style and familiarity with the mythos now shines with a much deeper and provacative tale. I can’t wait to see how it end.

Anyway, that’s it for now… I’m glad I was wrong about at least some of these comic book novels. I hope more are on the way.

EverQuest… What`s next?

Random Thoughts

I was going to originally post this in the EverQuest category, but that was really for my ideas for fixing EQ… seeing as I no longer play EQ, its a dead category but will remain as is… and this, this is just comedy.

Over on the message boards for Monkly-Business, someone asked, “Now that Omens of War is out, what do you think the next expansion will be?”

Seeing as the next expansion will come after World of Warcraft’s release, and there are a number of games on the horizon, as well as free content patches for City of Heroes, the following was my reply:

EverQuest: The Twenty Other Zones of Faydwer That You Just Never Happened to Notice During the Last Five Years of Playing.

Featuring zones like: Middle Faydark, Dagnor’s Other Cauldron, The Hidden Lair of Meldrath, The land of LXnmoptgWWjyr, The Brownie City, Randomly Generated Dungeon Zone with Poor Pathing and Randomly Placed Mobs 27, and at least three new Estates none of which will be restful!

With this expansion they will introduce new items contain the new NO LOOT tag – you can view the stats and take screenshots and have the items load to Lucy, but you can’t pick it up and equip it! These items are intended for all the people who like to make Magelo profiles for their non-existant characters by picking items that they’ve never seen for themselves and try to pass themselves off as uber!

Also in this expansion, we will be introducing female giants! Ever wonder where all the giants come from seeing as they are all male? Well, rather than fix class balance, we’ve decided to make a whole set of Lore including new zones, spells for mobs that you’ll never get, and new models (since we STILL aren’t going to do new player models no matter how much you beg) all about the story of the where the female giants have been for the past 6 years! All because we know you care!

And lets not forget that we will be introducing a new class! Following both the arcane and physical arts this player can nuke as well as a wizard, heal like a cleric, tank like a warrior, and dps like a rogue.. from ANY ANGLE! This new class, called the Tankmage is bound to turn grouping and raiding on its ear! Class balance? WE GIVE UP!!

How to Truly Listen

Gaming

If you know City of Heroes, and you frequent the message boards, you might be familiar with the battle cry, “Repeal the Purple Patch!” and you might even know what they are referring to…

First off, what is the Purple Patch?

When City of Heroes first opened, it was possible for a player to fight and defeat a foe that was 8 to 10 levels higher than he was. These battles were usually fierce and hard fought, but with the way experience was given turned out to be well worth the effort. See, exp in CoH is done on a scale.. a mob is worth X exp, and then a bonus or subtraction is made based on other factors. The major factor is your level. If you are the same level as the mob, you get X. If you are higher level, you get less than X, and the scale works quickly down so that once you are 4 or 5 levels over it (and the mob is easy to defeat) you get nothing. On the other end, there is no limit… if the mob is 10 levels higher than you and you do 100% of the damage to defeat it, you wind up getting something crazy like 4 or 5 times the exp, so a mob worth 50 exp becomes worth 200-250 exp to a lower level. The issue is, the game is largely balanced around you fighting mobs your level. So, at level 10, you might get 20 exp for defeating a level 10 mob, which is 2% of your exp for level. 50 level 10 mobs, and you level. If, however, you can fight a mob and get 200 exp, then you only need to defeat 5 of them. Problem is, they didn’t expect people to be able to defeat a mob 10 levels above them, and didn’t expect people to level quite so quickly.

As a result, the Purple Patch came into play. What they did was once a mob goes purple (4 levels above you), your chance to hit begins to decline very steeply… VERY steeply. So steep that once a mob is 8 levels above you, realistically you have 0 chance to win the fight because you will be simply unable to do more damage than he will be able to regenerate due to missing. (Originally, it was harsher than this even, the decline started sooner and a mob 5 levels above you was impossible, but they eased up, so the original patch is not important anymore, only the existing situation).

The effect this had on players, was that now that they were relegated to fighting mobs 4 levels above and lower, the exp rewards were not as ludacris as they had been. Leading to the inevitable “they nerfed all the fun out of the game” cries because people couldn’t earn mad exp while fighting impossible odds. To a degree, the players ARE correct. However, as often is the case, they are single minded.

This can be tied in with my MMORPG Project (link over on the right)… See, the players are focused on “repeal the purple patch”, but what they don’t realize is that the purple patch isn’t the issue… its that the mobs they “should” be fighting (according to the developers) are too easy and not rewarding enough. Would they still be asking for the repeal if the fights with orange (level +2) and red (level +3) mobs were more harrowing and yielded a better reward?

I don’t think they would. And this is where the developers should focus. They were right with the purple patch… players should be fighting things 8 and 10 levels above them… but players should regularly seek challenge, even level to red con, and they should find it fun and rewarding.

The devs are on the right track… now its just a wait and see to see if they follow through.

So many yesterdays gone by.

Random Thoughts

In some ways, it still doesn’t seem real. I’m sure that those directly affected by the tragedy of 9/11 would disagree, but to someone who wasn’t, it’s still just hard to believe that it happened.

I remember that day well… I had just woken up. Jodi was gone to work. I settled in to do my usual job hunting since I was unemployed at the time. Flipping on the TV, it was on CNN… I had been watching some silly report on jobs the night before when I finally drifted off to sleep. The anchor cut in on the news and said they were going live to where a plane appeared to have crashed into the side of the World Trade Center in New York.

Immediately they pointed out that this wasn’t the first such event… once upon a time, a plane had hit the Empire States Building. Of course, that was a small bi-plane I believe, and this was a passenger jet.

I watched, eyes wide open, in shock and a little horror as the events of the day played out… a second plane hit the other tower. Then the Pentagon got hit. Another plane went down in Pennsylvania. Then the towers fell…

Three years of yesterdays have passed since then, and still the event weighs so heavily on the United States. I think I finally understand how my parents, and their parents before them, felt about Pearl Harbor. Only, in a way, they got satisfaction. The US retaliated against Japan, we bombed them, and then with the first and last use of Atomic weapons in combat we took them out of the war. Today, there is no country to bomb, there are no people to bomb. The World Trade Center was a terrorist attack carried out by people who fight for an ideal, not for a flag. And how do you fight an ideal?

We’ve attacked them as best we could… removing a regime that supported them, the Taliban… but we haven’t stopped them, they still take and execute prisoners. Japan was stopped because we showed them that the losses to themselves would be too great to pursue their course… but Al Queda… they are all willing to die for their ideal, so even 99% losses isn’t enough to stop them. Fighting terrorism is like punching water, it shifts and moves but you never damage the water. And deep inside, down in the places where only my fear of death lives, its now joined by a fear of a war that will not end. A war against people without a country, without a flag, without borders or a homeland… a war against an ideal.

I extend my deepest sympathies to all of those who lost someone in the 9/11 tragedy, and to all of those who have lost someone in the following three years of trying to find and fight the ideals of terrorism.

And lastly, I extend my sympathies to the administration that has had to deal with a situation unlike any that has come before them. They’ve done about as good a job as can be expected, despite what those who oppose them would have you believe.

Dragon*Con

Random Thoughts

Yesterday I got back from 4 days at Dragon*Con.

If you don’t know what it is, go here. Short version, its a convension for Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Comics, Horror… Books, Film, Games, etc… Everything.

I had fun as usual. I managed to go through a few panels and seminar things on gaming, writing, publishing, short films, and more… Plus I got to see tons of people in various costumes, and meet people from all over who have some of the same interests that I do.

We snapped a few pictures and those are up in the Pictorials section. Not alot, but.. well, check it out and see the reason.

Next year I’ll be more prepared.

Paycheck

Reviews

I had wanted to see Paycheck in the theater, but somehow I kept missing it. It showed up from Netflix this week, so I finally got to see it.

The basic plot is this.. Ben Affleck plays a guy who excels at reverse engineering. He gets paid alot of money to reverse engineer a product and then design a product that is similar but better. And when he’s done the job, he has his memory of the time erased so that there is no proof that the reverse engineering (or technology theft) has occurred. Normally these jobs are up to 2 months in length, during which time he’s usually secluded so the only memory he loses is the time working. However, he takes an eight figure job that is going to be three years in length.

After the three years is erased, Ben’s character is broke, arrested, and his personal items have been switched. He manages to escape and realizes that he switched his own personal items, and this envelope of 20 things is going to lead him to what happened during the last three years, and exactly why someone is trying to kill him.

I had heard alot of bad things about this movie.. but honestly, it was good. I had fun watching it, considering the plot twists they avoided the clear cliches and plot holes it could have brought up, and the fight and chase scenes were excellent. Oh, I forgot to mention, John Woo directed it.

I give it a hearty two thumbs up. Its not a movie that will save the world, but its not a waste of time either.

The Mysteries of Mathematics

Random Thoughts

Now, I know that not every person in the world is good with math. I am good friends with people who aren’t. However, it stands to reason, that if your job encompasses some level of mathematics, that at least with that aspect you would be fairly decent with.

Enter Client X.

Client X asked me to design a report for him. This report involved a bunch of totalling and summarizing that he is going to use to support sales. This man is also responsible for setting all the standards for sales, and the price breaks, markups, and discounts. In his job he does a lot of number crunching, and he’s held this job, and others like it, for twenty years.

On this report, he wanted to see not only the base price and company standard markup, but several levels of markups and discounts, so he could easily see profit margins and work with his customers to get them the best deal to secure business without hurting his own company. A 5% discount, and markups of 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%. When I wrote this report, I used standard math principles: to get, for example, a 10% increase on a price you multiple the original amount by 1.10. This is a derived number, as follows:

X + (X * 10%)
10% is equal to 10/100 which reduces to 1/10 which is 0.10
X + (X * 0.10)
pull the X out
X * (1 + 0.10)
or
X * 1.10

This man argued with me, stating that multiplying by 1.10 was exactly the same as dividing by 0.90. He even tried to explain it with math… something like “dividing by the reciprocal is the same as multiplication”. Of course, 9/10 is not the reciprocal of 1/10, but that didn’t stop him. We went around and around until he finally brought in his boss who agreed that dividing by 0.90 was the same, and instructed me to use that method since it was their company standard. So I did.

A couple of weeks later, Client X calls to explain to me that my report is all wrong. “Our sales people are having to fudge the numbers to make them work,” he says. “The markups and discounts aren’t coming out right,” he continues. I wonder why that is? Client X now starts telling me my math must be wrong, he goes over how to do a 10% markup by dividing by 0.90, and I confirm that’s what the report is doing. “But then why are the numbers wrong?” he asks, puzzled. “Hmm, well, on your 10% numbers, are you off by about 1% or $1 every hundred?” “Yeah,” he says, “how did you know?”

How did I know?

100 * 1.10 = 110

100 / 0.90 = 111.111111111111…

I wonder…

Let me tell ya, there is just nothing sweeter than having someone force you to do something wrong only to be able to throw it in their faces later.

The Future of the Game

Gaming

I’ve probably ranted about this before… but of course that won’t stop me from doing it again.

What’s wrong with EverQuest?

Honestly, if you enjoy the game as it is, nothing. Sony has laid out a path of developement for their virtual world that they are progressing down, and if you enjoy the places it goes then EverQuest is a happy fun place. If you don’t though, EverQuest is, as the popular phrase among other ranters goes, dying.

The Real World, you know, the one we live in, is huge. It has a vastness that most people never bother to try to comprehend. But if you are one of those people who try, you’ve looked at this planet and seen what the 6 billion or so people on it have done. Cities, towns, farms, roads… there are really very few places that are truely barren of human life. Places in the Arctic and Antarctic come to mind, as do a number of deserts and other places. Now consider that 70% of the planet is water and has, realistically, no population of humans.

In the world of EverQuest, much of the game is like the oceans. If you run from Qeynos to Freeport, which is 6 to 8 zones, you’ll likely run into maybe a dozen people. These are zones that at one time housed a hundred or more. 10 to 20 people per zone, and on many servers with the East Commanlands Bazaar, 100 people without breaking a sweat. The game is empty.. at least until you get to level 65 and start raiding, then you have 500 people vying for the same 3 to 4 zones and encounters.

EverQuest has become a land of raiding and high end gaming. There is little place for the truely casual player anymore, the slow and steady explorer, the quiet dreamer. If you try to play the game that way now, starting at level 1, you’ll quit in 3 months, guaranteed. Its just… lifeless. Now, if you powerlevel, and race to 65, you may play for much much longer. This is where the “game” exists. However, step away from the dozen zones built for the “high end” game, and you’ll find it just as empty.

Sony has nurtured a game that has expanded with its players, but it hasn’t grown. Arathur in Qeynos still says the same things he said 5 years ago. The same quests are still there, some are even still broken. Sony had lived under the impression that the game is better off going to new lands than to dare alter the existing game. Its true, players get angry when content they either remember fondly or have yet to experience disappears, but these angry players don’t quit. Verant understood this. While they did give up the Kunark expansion that nearly doubled the size of the world, they also gave us “Bloody Kithicor” as the once benign Kithicor Forest turned into a place of vile evil once the sun has settled beneath the hills, changing a zone for levels 1-10 into a place filled with wandering level 30-40 undead. Ask any player who played during that time, and they’ll recall it. Ask any player who started in the year or so after and they’ll have heard of it. Only 2 or more years later is it possible for a player to play the game and not hear of “Bloody Kithicor”. Verant developed player lore: stories that lasted long beyond their occurance. Sony hasn’t done that.

In the history of game expansions, EverQuest was always expanding. From Kunark, to Velious, to Luclin, to the Planes of Power, to Broken Skull Rock, to the Lost Dungeons of Norrath, to the Gates of Discord, and looking forward toward the Omens of War, only one expansion didn’t add new lands. The Lost Dungeons of Norrath added camps to existing zones, and dungeons off those and more existing lands. You didn’t need a port, or to ride a boat. It was the old world brought to life again.

Right now, there are zones in EverQuest sitting empty that are a part of storylines gathering dust. All they would need to do is resurrect those stories, revamp a zone or two, add a zone or two, add a dozen instanced dungeons, and the players would come back to the old worlds. The travel paths of old would be alive again with the footfalls of adventurers. Mayong Mistmoore could return to power and take his seat in Castle Mistmoore evoking the resurgance of evil in the Faydark. The frogloks of old Sebilis could begin to rebuild their armies in earnest, gathering strength from the growing darkness in their halls. The gnolls of splitpaw might stumble on to an enormous power, strengthening them and spilling out into the Karanas.

Everything that Sony needs to revitalize the world of Norrath is within their grasp… but the catch is, you can’t revamp a zone for only the players who pay. If Mayong returns to power in his castle, you can’t have the new Mistmoore available only to those who buy the new box down at Besy Buy or who order it online for digital download. Free content seems to be a bad word at Sony. But free content could save them.

EverQuest has peaked. At this point, the only thing they can do is retain customers. New customers (true new customers, not someone’s second or third account) will be few and far between. Players entering Norrath now are presented with an enormous empty world. The social aspect is gone at the lower levels. So eiher you suffer in a world of silence, or you have a friend who helps you catch up to the “real game”. And many new players, and players new to gaming, don’t want that… they want to experience the game, not have it handed to them. The only way EverQuest will ever gain customers again… free content. A revamping of the world so that it isn’t so empty and lifeless below level 65.

City of Heroes, World of Warcraft… there is blood in the water, and they smell it. These games are making large worlds that are vast beyond their borders, designing games to be enjoyable and populated at all levels. In City of Heroes, for example, even when you are level 43, from time to time doing missions you’ll be forced to travel back to Atlas Park, the lowest level zone in the game, for a door mission, or to talk to a contact, keeping you connected to the rest of the world.

EverQuest needs to change, or it will, as they say, “die”.

I`m smarter than you!

Random Thoughts

Before continuing, and before you get offended, lets specify exactly who “you” is before I explain why I’m smarter.

I’m redesigning the layout for this page using CSS and DIVs to accomplish what tables do. Why? Because if you do it with DIVs and CSS instead of tables, later on you can move objects around your page using the CSS instead of redoing the entire godawful thing.

So, I want to have my page, which has 2 columns (the articles and the menu) to appear as though its on a white “stripe” down the page. I ran into a snag while doing it, and I searched all over the internet trying to find a solution to it only to find a large amount of people offering incorrect solutions and/or people saying it couldn’t be done. If you, the reader, fall into the group of someone who either provided an incorrect solution or told someone what I did could not be done, it is YOU who I am smarter than.

Now.. what did I do?

See, the snag I ran into was this… it looks simple. You just make a DIV with a white background position it absolutely, then put the content in it positioned relatively. Easy, right? No.

This is the snag. When you position the articles relative to the white box, when you try to position the menu, it positions relative to the articles, not the box. (Relative position means its relative to the last non-auto positioned object.) Since the articles are of variable length, I can’t use negative positioning to do it relative to the articles.

So, you say, the articles are always longer than the menu, just position the menu absolute and leave a margin on the side so it “appears” to be in the white. No.

Do me a favor, on the menu, click on Fiction, look at the page, then come back here.

Done?

Okay, see how it looked good? It didn’t when I did what you were just saying (and what almost every post out on the net suggested). See, Fiction one day may be longer than the menu, but for now the list of fiction on the site is not. So, when I did the suggested method, it resulted in the menu exceeding the length of white.

Surely, you say, there must be other solutions? Why not put the menu in a white DIV too and position them both? Well, you see, if you do the articles and the menu totally separate, you lose the ability to do a white “stripe”, as one will invariably be longer than the other.

Well, you now say (and many of you did, out on those help forums), why not use one of the many tricks to just place a white block that extends the full length of the page? That doesn’t work either. See, some browsers don’t (and according to the standard, shouldn’t) support a property of height: 100%. At least not how you might imagine. Sure, it goes to the bottom of the browser… but when you scroll down, the white has stopped.

Okay, you say, you give up, I’ve tried all your solutions and they all fail. But the page looks right, so, how did I do it?

The articles are in a div that has a white background, so that there will be white extended as far as the content goes. And the menu is positioned absolutely so that it appears in the white stripe. But wait, did I say that didn’t work? Yes, I did. By itself, this method does NOT work. However, before all the other DIVs on the page, there is one called whiteblock. This DIV has the same absolute position of the article content div, but it has a specified length of 1400px, which just so happens to be just larger than my menu. So when the content of articles isn’t longer than the menu, the whiteblock shows down to the length of the menu (its drawn first, so is logically on the bottom, only showing when nothing else is on top of it).

In theory, my menu won’t change too often, and when it does, I need only adjust the height of whiteblock to maintain the look of the site.

Voila. To all the people who said it couldn’t be done, or provided incorrect or incomplete answers… I’m smarter than you!