Rogue Galaxy: Deego's Battle Preparations session 2

This might very well be the last session of preparing Deego for battle.  There will be a little backtracking to be had if I can get my hands on one of the other two keys I need, but otherwise it'll be all fighting on Vedan, with the occasional departure to see if any of the vendors that I've bought out of a few items that I need have restocked yet, and perhaps some farming of items for various things in the Factory.

So this post could be a bit short, because there's not much to say other than "I'm doing level grinding for Deego."  My goal is to get him high enough level to use the axe I found for him, which will be level 41, plus however many battles it takes to get it to the max state.

Also during the previous session, I realized that one of the quarries (essentially large bounties on unique beasts) I got is on Vedan and I have the item I need to trigger the fight and I know exactly where I need to go to use the item and trigger it.  I'll probably do that towards the end of the session as sort of a warm-up for the fight against Gale.

I probably said this in an earlier post (lol Blogger's lack of any form of a cross-referencing system), but I have no clue what a typical level curve for this game is, so I have no clue if I'm underlevelled or overlevelled.  If I'm overlevelled, it's not by much because I didn't really do any grinding at all before getting Deego.

Another thing.  I freaking hate the mines on Vedan.  All these annoying enemies that I have to jump to hit (max of 3 hit combo, then land, jump, and repeat...) that set the entire party on fire and cause lots of damage.  I guess I need to level up more or something.  I loved one-shotting everything when I backtracked to Juraika and Rosa.  If only I could freely change my party, I could see if Lillika's bow is any good against the "jump-to-hit" enemies.  Also, I need to start doing some weapon synthesis stuff, since I have a lot of weapons ready for it now.

Did you know you can actually sell things at shops in this game?  I haven't found a reason to do so yet.

Anyway.  That's the prologue to this session.  Watch it be longer than the session summary. (post-edit: lol)

Grinding levels for Deego basically consisted of running around Myna (because fuck those mines) in an area with a save point, fighting a few battles, and running over the save point to get HP/AP replenished.  It's cheap, but effective.

I was doing laps around the structure outside of Angela's Bar when I got the item I needed for another one of Deego's abilities, Wonder Howl which is an attack that hits everything.  This ability so happens to be the prerequisite for his Burning Strike, so now I have that, and I got him some Evil Resistance as well.  I began to feel a bit better about him since he finally obtained the standard repertoire of attack boost, protection, thrown item boost, and hit everything abilities.

After a while of grinding and getting bored grinding, I went and completed that quarry.  Wasn't too difficult.  In the process of all this grinding, I went up quite a few hunter ranks.  I've also noticed that the amount of experience required for the next level seems to be fixed at 11616.  I'm not quite sure why it's fixed, but it certainly makes levelling up easier.

After a while of rotating various weapons through I started doing some weapon synthesis and ended up with some pretty awesome sub-weapons for Jaster and Kisala.  After some work maxing it out, it was time to fight Gale.

Seriously.

Since starting Deego's Battle Preparations:

• He's gone up 10 levels
• He's gotten three more abilities, Top Dog, Wonder Howl, and Burning Strike Lv1; on top of Break Throw and Bone Shield.  He also got Bone Shield upgraded to Lv2.
• He's gotten three stat boosts, Attack Up Lv1, Fire Resistance Lv1, and Evil Resistance Lv1.
• I got him a much more powerful axe and a new gatling gun.

Down goes Gale!  I had to watch Deego's health during the fight, but between Bone Shield Lv2, guarding to refill the action meter and reduce damage, and the damage that the axe (Brave Spirit) that was the entire reason I levelled him up to 41 puts out (with Top Dog on at all times), Gale went down pretty quickly.  Oh and Deego's gatling, which I'd found a slightly better one than the one he had when he joined, was a big help when Gale was a bit away from Deego, since Deego's the slow and powerful archetype.

My reward?  A chest I can't open because I don't have the Star Key, a couple items for the Factory/people's Revelation Flows, and an Ancient Scroll II, which I gave to Jaster and upgraded his Burning Strike, which is now a 7 hit combo instead of a 5 hit combo.  Hopefully I'll start finding the things in shops and the wild soon...

A little more exploring would reveal a few more chests, one containing a new costume for Deego.  Also, I found the thinking circle for my other quarry, but I don't have the item to trigger the fight.  Oh well.

So, story.  Turns out the Morarty family was just using Gale, and it's likely that the Daytron Corporation is responsible for the whole thing.  That and they stole the tablet.  So I have to go back empty-handed...  Not that I could have picked that thing up anyway, it took a huge transport ship to lift it in the cutscene.

Hunter rankings-wise, I got up to rank 40.

Sub-session complete.  I suppose it's only appropriate to end a battle preparation sub-session with the defeat of the boss that caused me to need the battle preparation sub-session in the first place, so next session will be a real session again.  I didn't even leave the mines, so I haven't seen what if anything happens when I return to town (I imagine I should talk to Angela...) and when I return to the Dorgenark.

Fewer Complaints About Flash Cookies

So, after updating Firefox, installing a newer version of BetterPrivacy, and managing to accidentally delete all my flash game saves before hacking BetterPrivacy again, I decided on a whim to keep the settings cookies around this time.

The settings cookies store your settings for each domain that has ever tried to set a flash cookie on your system.  They're stored in a separate directory structure from the actual cookies themselves.  In the past, I kept deleting them, but as I've found through experimentation, they're important.

I'm not sure what else they store, but it doesn't matter.  They store one critical piece of information: whether or not you want to allow that domain to set flash cookies.

Yeah, how could I have overlooked that?  lol

You access a menu either by right clicking on any given Flash object and selecting Global Settings, or by (at least on Windows) going into your Control Panel and selecting Flash Player.

This settings dialog has four tabs, but we're primarily interested in the first one, titled Storage.  There, you can click one all-important button: Local Storage Settings by Site.

In here you can see every domain that's ever tried to set a Flash cookie, and set each one to Ask me, Allow, or Block.  Don't want a flash cookie from a specific domain?  Select Block.  Want them?  Select Allow.  Rather get a question from Flash asking for each individual cookie?  Select Ask me.  There you go.

Honestly, once you get this set up for all the Flash-using sites you visit on a regular basis, there isn't much need for BetterPrivacy.  Set Flash to ask you when a new site wants to store information, hit Deny when that new site wants to store information (or Allow if you'd rather allow it, lol), then open the settings and configure for that domain.  There you go.

Now I've got Newgrounds automatically allowed and all the other domains ever blocked.  And it hasn't affected my use of Flash games or video players at all, unlike the "disable third-party flash cookies" option that's only available if you somehow find your way to the other, more obscure settings page buried on Adobe's website.

I haven't yet tested this with locally-run Flash games, including the titles I previously mentioned: Machinarium, TRAUMA, and The Binding of Isaac.  Therefore, I don't know how configurable that is.  But internet-wise, I'm set.

Just remember: keep the settings cookies.

Minecraft Wiki tweak

The column on the right side of every. single. fucking. page. that squishes the page content together and makes everything difficult to read finally annoyed me enough that I made a style in Stylish that gets rid of it.

Since it's rather simple, I'll just paste it here, and anyone who wants it can just hit "Write New Style" in Stylish, paste it in, give it a name, and save it.

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml); @-moz-document domain('minecraftwiki.net') { #bodyContent2.en { margin-right: auto !important; } #curse-panel { display: none !important; } }

Enjoy.

Small tweak

The MAL signature image will now finally remember its show/hide state across page loads.  The reason I hadn't had this functionality in there to begin with is because Blogger restricts your use of certain bits of Javascript functionality, as well as your ability to load external scripts.  I found a way around it, so now the feature can happen.

I can understand them wanting to restrict those bits of functionality, but at the same time, this is a completely benign use of said functionality, so it annoys me that they don't at the very least have an API to do it.

I'm skirting around mentioning exactly what's restricted and how I got around it on purpose, but it's not too hard to figure out.

So, yeah.  XT-8147: 1; Blogger: 0.

Of course, it only works properly in standards-compliant browsers.  I haven't tested it, but it should fall back to the old functionality in lesser browsers.  It may generate errors in the process, I don't care.

In other news, YouTube thinks I'm 109 years old and I'm unable to change this.  I probably gave a fake birthday on account creation, but the absence of a way to change it mystifies me.

YAY, FORFUCKINGFINALLY

BLOGGER NOW HAS A COMMENT SPAM FILTER

FUCK YOU CHINA

Edit: What the hell, it was there long enough for me to flag some comments as spam, and now it's gone.  Random Bullshit still has it, but THE BLOG THAT ACTUALLY FUCKING NEEDS IT doesn't. What the fuck.

Edit 2: Oh, I see.  It's Blogger being counter-intuitive again.  You have to have comment moderation on to be able to access it.  So basically I can't have the best-of-both-worlds solution, where legitimate users can post unencumbered and shithead spammers get filtered.

To War!

This post is an addendum to the Custom Ad-Block Filters post I made earlier.

Like I've said before, Sankaku Complex really needs a script surrogate for ideal ad-free functionality.  Being that one pretty much doesn't exist and writing it would take forever, we can play cat-and-mouse with Artefact.  It's not like anything can be changed that prevents us from being able to attain ad-free full site functionality, so Artefact's really just making Sankaku more convoluted in the process.

There was a change not too long ago.  I edited the necessary remedy into the post mentioned above, but AdBlock Plus supports a much better way to push the necessary changes to the masses: a filter subscription.

Custom AdBlock Plus filters

EasyList generally gets the job done, but there are some sites where it's either overzealous or just plain doesn't do anything.  Fortunately, you can add your own custom filters.  These can be exceptions to allow overzealously blocked content, element hiding rules to get rid of more complex things you'd rather not see, and of course regular URL filters.

On ScrewAttack, EasyList basically prevents their video player from working properly.  I went in and figured out what to add exception filters for in AdBlock Plus so the videos would work, but the ads wouldn't.  Simply add the following exception rules, then refresh the page and enjoy.

@@|http://v.giantrealm.com/saf/*$domain=screwattack.com,third-party @@|http://v.giantrealm.com/sax/*$domain=screwattack.com,third-party @@|http://play.giantrealm.com/video/*$domain=screwattack.com,third-party @@|http://vcdn.giantrealm.com/giantrealm/screwattack/*$domain=screwattack.com,third-party

Others, like Sankaku Complex, have recently merged their ad scripts in with scripts that provide core functionality for the page, resulting in all the core functionality breaking in addition to the ads being gone.  They even have the nerve to put a red bar at the bottom of the window bitching at you for blocking ads.  The best solution for this would be a NoScript script surrogate, but it's remediable within AdBlock Plus as well.  Basically, you need four exception rules to let their scripts run:

@@|http://data.sankakucomplex.com/img/www/d/* @@|http://*.sankakustatic.com/wp-content/themes/* @@|http://www.sankakucomplex.com/wp-content/themes/* @@|http://208.100.24.244/javascripts/*

And then you need the following shitton of element hiding rules:

sankakucomplex.com##div.spacer iframe sankakucomplex.com##div#sp1 iframe sankakucomplex.com##div#sp2 iframe sankakucomplex.com###sidetop sankakucomplex.com##div[align="center"] script+a sankakucomplex.com##div[align="center"] a+div sankakucomplex.com##.sidebartopa sankakucomplex.com##.sidebartopb sankakucomplex.com##.sidebartopc sankakucomplex.com##.side120a sankakucomplex.com##.side120b sankakucomplex.com##.side120c sankakucomplex.com##.side120xmla sankakucomplex.com##.side120xmlb sankakucomplex.com##.side120xmlc sankakucomplex.com##.side300xmla sankakucomplex.com##.side300xmlb sankakucomplex.com##.side300xmlc

Also, if you run NoScript (and you should be), you'll need to allow 208.100.24.244 to run scripts.

Want to clean up Twitter a bit? These element hiding rules will hide promoted trends and that stupid promotion thing towards the top of the right column.

twitter.com##a.promoted-trend twitter.com##div.user-rec-inner twitter.com##div.user-rec-inner+hr.component-spacer twitter.com##div.definition twitter.com##div.definition+hr.component-spacer

Hate those hover cards?  All the information they show is redundant and they get in the way when all you want to do is click someone's name and go to their profile.  Add this ad blocking rule to get rid of them.

http://a*.twimg.com/a/*/javascripts/hover_cards.js*

That's pretty much all I've done with custom filters right there.

Edit: Sankaku just made yet another change to the site, moving their merged ad/site functionality script to a different subdomain.  The relevant exception filter above has been changed to reflect this.  This really makes a script surrogate more desirable, since Artefact knows that moving that script around messes with everyone who blocks ads.  Unfortunately, there's no way for a user to add their own script surrogates to NoScript, so I'll have to play around with removing my exception filters and using GreaseMonkey to add the missing features back in.

Edit 2 (August 1): Yet another change.  Javascript relevant to the popular articles box and the recent images browser was moved to an IP address.  The relevant filter and instructions have been added above.

Edit 3 (Also August 1): For Sankaku Complex, I have a much better solution in place now.

Edit 4 (August 4): Twitter moved p.promotion.round and added a "recommended users to follow" "feature" so your home page can be cluttered with shit you don't care about.  Twitter rules updated.  Also fixed an omission in the Sankaku exception filters.

Edit 5 (August 5): I can't believe I neglected to include the filter to block Twitter's hover cards.

Edit 6 (August 19, 2011): Updated Twitter filters for the shitty-ass new layout they're so proud of.  Just go use TweetDeck already.  Spoiler: Since I use TweetDeck, this will be the last update to the Twitter rules in this post.

Edit 7 (Also August 19, 2011): Blogger ate all the <br /> tags and carriage returns in the post.

Edit 8: (April 23, 2023): Blogger thinks this post contains "sensitive content", but doesn't tell me what was objected to.  I read the policy, it doesn't forbid the language I used, or links to external sites.

Because some people don't seem to think this is obvious: I am not responsible for the content of any external site I link to.  Sankaku Complex regularly contains adult content, or at least it did ~12 years ago when I last looked at the site.  If you have a problem with their content, maybe don't look at their website?  I have no control over their content, don't be ridiculous.

Snowed in... again...

Where's your global warming now?

Pop-Tarts shirts? Really?

So Pop-Tarts has a promotion where you can get a Pop-Tarts T-shirt in one of three designs. The interesting part is that you can make your own custom design. I wanted to see just what this entailed, so I went to their site and played around with the shirt designer thing they have.

I was hoping I could make a shirt that said "Toaster Strudels Suck" or "I ate a lot of Pop-Tarts and all I got was this lousy T-shirt", but they have a fairly restricted editor for you to work with.

You have one of 5 Pop-Tarts logos to choose from. It insists that one of them must be on the shirt. It backs this up by getting rid of the remove button when you have your chosen logo selected.

There are a few different flavors of Pop-Tarts available to put on the shirt, some random graphics, and some background stuff. I played around with it a bit and made some random innuendo designs that I didn't save because you have to have an account and their shit is broken. I get a lovely ASP.NET error page in an iframe upon clicking the "Log In / Register" link.

I did however find a way to move the Pop-Tarts logo off of the shirt. Normally if you try to do this it goes "lol r u srs" and pops it back on the shirt, but you can abuse the ability to scale the logo to move it off. What you do is:

1. Put the logo in the upper left corner. Overshoot a bit, it'll pop it back to the correct location for you.
   
2. Hold the Scale + button until the logo stops increasing in size. This will take a while.
3. Drag the logo a small distance. It will pop back so that the lower right corner of the logo is in the lower right corner of your editing space.
4. Now hold the - Scale button until the logo stops decreasing in size. This will take a while.
   

Me: 1 - Corporate logo bullshit: 0

BAWWWWW PEOPLE BLOCKING ADS

In another Newgrounds themed post, they've rolled out their banners targeted at people running AdBlock Plus (like me).

The funny thing is, all I had to do was right click on one of them and say AdBlock Frame and now they're gone. A little playing around with Stylish hid the boxes they were in and it's back to life as normal.

Edit: I put my style on userstyles.org so others can benefit too!

GG Newgrounds.

The main complaint is that by blocking their ads, people are somehow causing them to lose money. This is bullshit, because if they get paid per impression and there are people seeing the ads, then they're still getting money, just not as much of it. Slower positive cash flow != negative cash flow. Learn basic algebra.

Aside from that, think about it. Why are the people that run ad blockers compelled to do so? The ads that have become the stain on the underpants of the internet are flashy, annoying, consume system resources for no gain to the user, and are generally intrusive. The user of the web browser should be firmly in control of the content they see on the internet, not the providers of said content. If I'm blocking your ads, it's because I wasn't going to click them anyway and they're just taking up valuable space that could be otherwise devoted to your site's content. That's what the internet is about. Content. Not advertising, not commerce, but content. If someone doesn't want to see your ads, just live with it. Don't cry and make special banners to show people in place of your ads that bitch at them for blocking your ads. That's not going to make people turn off their ad blockers.

Seriously.

Much later edit: LOLWUT GH:M THE THING THAT SHOULD NOT BE EXPERT BASS SIGHTREAD FC 2ND PLACE ON PS2