Now that we're getting into Black Desert, despite not knowing a lick of Korean and very little of its story, Vaesis has started a new adventure with a new character. As everyone that's read her writing very well knows, she writes some really, really good stuff. English isn't even her native tongue, yet she makes me look like a child scribbling on a piece of paper when it comes to writing.

With this new game upon us, we have a new life and another 10/10 bangable character. If you're into the fictional chicks, at least.

Hopefully we learn more about the game soon, so we can see her go a bit more in depth about the lore of the world, giving her just that little bit more freedom in these stories.

Read her new stories, Homecoming and Herbs.

That means midnight for me. But after playing the game for the last few nights, I'm hooked. It's midnight at the time of this writing, I'm patching the game and drinking a cup of coffee. And I don't even do coffee, bro. For the next nine hours, while the servers are up, I'll be in and out of the game -- sometimes I'll stop for breaks or to check if my videos are recording properly. This is our fourth night in the beta and I'm excited! This is definitely looking like the one. Now only if they'd pick up a western publisher...

Check out more about Black Desert on the best fan site, Calpheon.com; like us on Facebook; or subscribe to our YouTube channel for some cool videos.

On to see if that patching is done!

So for this week, she'll start off with that GW2 image.

Source: http://vaesis.com/blog/new-thang-screenshot-of-the-week

Note: Below indicates that the user has followed my Textpattern to Ghost migration tutorial, but it doesn't matter which software you're moving from. Textpattern is a mere example. Disqus hosts your comments itself, so you can use this guide for any Disqus comments.

Okay, so I followed your Textpattern to Ghost tutorial and already had Disqus. How do I transfer my comments over?

Disqus has three different migration tools available to those that need to transfer their current Disqus comments over to a new website or URL structure. The three tools are,

• Domain Migration Wizard — this migrates your comments over to a new domain that contains the same URL structure as your previous one. Example: mysite.com/awesome-cookies-post to mynewsite.com/awesome-cookies-post. This is the easiest method, but again, only works if your URL structure stays the same.
• URL Mapper — this is likely the one most people will use, especially if you migrated from another software to Ghost. This is where you'll download a CSV file and edit each URL where you have discussions and swap them to the new URLs.
• Redirect Crawler — this one automatically crawls your URLs if you set 301 redirects to your new blog posts. The most passive way of having your discussions pointed in the right direction, but the hardest method to use.

Since most people will be using the URL Mapper, we'll follow that.

Grab the CSV from your Disqus admin panel

Log into Disqus and grab your site's CSV. The link will be http://YOURSHORTNAME.disqus.com/admin/discussions/migrate/. Just change the beginning of the link to reflect your shortname.

Click on the "Start URL Mapper" button, and on that page click on the link that says

If you'd like a list of URLs we have for your forum you can download a CSV here.

This will send your CSV to your email address. Inside of the file, is a plain list of every discussion linked to your posts. You'll need to apply the new link next to each of those on the same line. The correct format would be:

http://example.com/2014/01/22/post-name/, http://example.com/post-name/

The above assumes that the first link is your URL structure, as shown in your CSV file, and the second part — , http://example.com/post-name/ — assumes that you're using Ghosts default URL structure. You would add a comma immediately following your old link, then use one space and input your new URL.

Since you may have hundreds or more links to edit, a much quicker way of doing this would be to use a bulk search and replace tool. Notepad++ has a nice feature that allows this so that the process is much quicker.

Or use 301 redirects so Disqus does this automatically

If you'd prefer to use 301 redirects, you can do that as well. This is a lot less work but you'd have to know how to redirect your links appropriately. In my case, I did this in my Ghost configuration file for nginx:

...

# rewrites blog to postname (used after Textpattern migration to Ghost)
rewrite "blog/(.*)$" /$1 permanent;

...

The above simply rewrites, for example, http://teccanique.com/blog/ghost-with-disqus-comments/ to http://teccanique.com/ghost-with-disqus-comments/ since my Textpattern installation used the same slugs, minus the blog subdirectory.

After rewriting your URLs with permanent redirects, head back over the the Disqus migration section and click on the button that says "Start Crawler."

And there we have it, migrating your Disqus comments over to your brand-new Ghost installation! If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment in the Disqus comments below and I'll get back to you.

Create your account

Head on over to the Disqus website and create an account if you don't already have one. Hit the button to add Disqus to your site and fill out the information that you need to: http://disqus.com/admin/create/

Open up post.hbs

In your theme there will be a post.hbs file. Open that up and grab the code that Disqus gives you. It should look similar to this:

<!-- Disqus -->
<hr />
<div id="disqus_thread"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
    var disqus_shortname = 'YOURSHORTNAME';
    var disqus_url = '{{url absolute="true"}}'; // Tells Disqus the absolute URL of your blog post

    /* * * DON'T EDIT BELOW THIS LINE * * */
    (function() {
        var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true;
        dsq.src = '//' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/embed.js';
        (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq);
    })();
</script>
<noscript>Please enable JavaScript to view the <a href='http://disqus.com/?ref_noscript' >comments powered by Disqus.</a></noscript>
<a href='http://disqus.com/'  class="dsq-brlink">comments powered by <span class="logo-disqus">Disqus</span></a>

Change the shortname variable to the shortname that you set (if you copied it from Disqus, it'll likely already be in there). The disqus_url variable doesn't need to be changed, and this is useful to tell Disqus the exact URL of the discussion.

In post.hbs, you'll see {{/post}}, which indicates the end of the post. Just before that, paste the above code. Some people prefer to paste the code just after that line, but with the disqus_url variable, Disqus will fail to load unless it's inside of the post content.

Boom. You have Disqus comments in every blog post.

can i haz comment count?

Of course you can! Open up the index.hbs file and find:

<time datetime="{{date format='YYYY-MM-DD'}}">{{date format="MMMM Do, YYYY"}}</time> {{tags prefix="in " separator=" | "}}

It should look similar in other themes, but this is for the default theme, Casper. Paste this next to it or somewhere nearby where you might want the comment count:

<a href="{{url}}#disqus_thread">Comments</a>

You can edit the text that displays through your Disqus admin panel. The above "Comments" will usually only display as Disqus is loading on your site — afterward it'll change to the text that you define. In my case, I set it as "post a comment" when there are no comments to display.

To style the link, go ahead and add a class to it. Something like,

<a class="comment-count" href="{{url}}#disqus_thread">Comments</a>

And add the .comment-count class to your screen.css file and style it up the way you'd like it. You're all done!

This info is from Ghost's Mail Configuration page.

Which service to use?

You'll need to use a third-party service to serve your blog's mail. In the link above they detail using Mailgun — this is something I didn't want to use, since I prefer to not use third parties whenever possible. But since we have to, I decided that I wanted to use Outlook (Hotmail), because I have teccanique.com set up over at the Windoes Live Admin Center and use that as my primary form of communication anyway. You don't need to set up your domain with Live Domains, but you can if you want to.

For this example, we'll just stick with the traditional email account at Outlook or Gmail.

Get ready to paste

Open up your config.js file in the root directory of Ghost. Find the line under Production that says "mail:"

It should look something like this:

mail: {},

Paste the following over that line:

        mail: {
            transport: 'SMTP',
            options: {
                service: 'Hotmail',
                    auth: {
                        user: 'someonehere@live.com',
                        pass: 'mysuperduperpassword'
                    }
            }
        },

Now all you need to do is replace the email and password above with your hotmail email address and password. It's that simple. The same thing goes for Gmail and other popular services. For Gmail, replace 'Hotmail' with 'Gmail' and use your Gmail address and password.

It's recommended to use something other than your personal email, so you should sign up for another account. In my case, I use Outlook as my site's email provider, so I simply used contact@teccanique.com for that.

As of right now, Ghost only uses this to send you a new password in case you've lost yours. After you've got this set up, restart your Ghost installation and try to request a new password to make sure it's working correctly.

yoursite.com/ghost/forgotten/

You should receive an email at the address you used to sign up for your Ghost admin account.

For those that want to include tracking to their Ghost installation, it's a simple matter. This may, in the future, be an included feature of Ghost, but as of now we're going to have to add this stuff in ourselves.

Note: this guide is intended for Google Analytics, but most tracking codes will be implemented in the same way.

Grab dat code

Head on over to your analytics account and grab the tracking code that you need for your website. It should look something like this:

<script>
  (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
  (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src='http://teccanique.com/g;m.parentNode.insertBefore' (a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');

  ga('create', 'UA-NUMBERS-HERE', 'YOURSITE.com');
  ga('send', 'pageview');
</script>

That will be found when clicking "Admin" at the top-right hand side of your screen, selecting your property from the drop down, then clicking on Tracking Info. A drop down will come up, then click on Tracking Code.

Paste dat code

After grabbing that code, copy it and open up your theme's default.hbs file.
yoursite/content/themes/yourtheme/

In Casper, Ghost's default theme, it'll look like this:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
{{! Document Settings }}
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />

{{! Page Meta }}
<title>{{meta_title}}</title>
<meta name="description" content="{{meta_description}}" />

<meta name="HandheldFriendly" content="True" />
<meta name="MobileOptimized" content="320" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="{{asset "favicon.ico"}}">

{{! Styles'n'Scripts }}
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{{asset "css/screen.css"}}" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Noto+Serif:400,700,400italic' Open+Sans:700,400" />

{{! Ghost outputs important style and meta data with this tag }}
{{ghost_head}}
</head>

...

See the </head> right there? Paste the analytics code just before that. Then save the file.

After that, you're good to go! Just restart your Ghost installation.

Note: Before doing anything, ensure you make a backup of all files and databases. While this guide does not touch any of those things and simply uses copies, do so anyway. It's good practice.

Export to a WordPress readable format

So first, we'll need to figure out how to get our Textpattern posts in a WordPress formatted XML. Luckily, through Google I found Drew McLellan's Textpattern to WordPress exporter on Github, so this cut the time down to do the transfer by quite a bit. Go ahead and download that file and upload the php to the root of your Textpattern blog. Unless your TXP config file is in a different place than the default, which isn't likely, you don't have to edit any settings in the php file you just downloaded. Now simply navigate to yoursite.com/textpattern-to-wordpress.php or whereever your TXP root is located.

Edit the XML to change the image link locations

Depending on where you upload your current Textpattern images (for Ghost to serve), you'll be wanting to edit the URLs. Mine were in:

teccanique.com/images/

Whereas Ghost uses this structure:

teccanique.com/content/images/

— on top of using yearly and monthly directories, which Textpattern doesn't use by default. So what I did was I backed up all of my Textpattern images into a folder called "txp" and uploaded that to /content/images/txp/ in Ghost. All of your Textpattern images will be served from this folder after your migration. Name it whatever you want to.

Now we're going to open the XML in a text editor. Many people use Notepad++, which is a great tool for a variety of things. Open it up, and use the search and replace feature. Your search should be something like teccanique.com/images/ and your replacement should be teccanique.com/content/images/txp/. Bulk replace all of the links in one go and save the file.

Download and install WordPress

Next you'll want to download WordPress and install it. I made a temporary subdomain at wordpress.teccanique.com and installed it there. You can do it on your localhost as well, or even this entire process on localhost, but I did this out of preference.

After getting WordPress installed, go ahead and get into your admin panel and select the Tools -> Import option. You'll need to install the WordPress importer plugin, but that should be done automatically after a couple of clicks. Now import the Textpattern XML that you edited and get those posts uploaded to WordPress.

Convert WordPress categories to tags

Because Ghost, at the time of this writing, doesn't have categories and uses tags, you'll want to convert your categories into tags. Your Textpattern categories should have successfully migrated over to WordPress categories.

Grab this plugin and install it: http://wordpress.org/plugins/wpcat2tag-importer/

It hasn't been updated for a while, but still works as there hasn't been changes in the way WordPress uses categories and tags. There may even be a method of doing this natively within WordPress, but I didn't look into it as I wanted a quick solution.

Use the plugin to convert your categories into tags and then look at your post list to see that it was successful.

Export your WordPress posts into a Ghost-readable format

Now we're almost there! Grab the official WordPress to Ghost exporter here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/ghost/

Install it, read the instructions in your admin panel (all of which you should have done by now), and then export your posts into a json file.

Import your posts into Ghost

Lastly, we'll be importing our brand new json file into Ghost. As of now, there's no way to find the link in the back end of your Ghost installation, so navigate to the link:

teccanique.com/ghost/debug

Change the URL to where your Ghost installation is installed. On this page you'll find the importer, so click on that and upload the new file you exported from WordPress.

Ghost should have done its thing, and all of your posts should now be under your content tab and fully published on your site!

That should be it and you should now be good to go. Since you've already uploaded your Textpattern images to your desired directory and changed the links with a bulk search and replace function, all of your images in your posts will be linking to the correct place.

If you need any help with this, be sure to leave a comment and I'll help you out where I can. It's fairly straight forward, but for those that haven't done anything like this before, it might seem chaotic.

So with Ghost's catchy, stylish, new... stuff... I opted to go with this instead. Just writing this blog post right now feels really good. I don't even know all of the Markdown stuff yet since I've mostly been using Textile while blogging, but it's easy enough. That's how it's meant to be though.

Anyway, with all of the updating out of the way, I can finally relax and get back to blogging. The last time I had a post up was back in November, so I'd prefer two-month gaps to not happen. If anyone is on Textpattern and wants to move over to the groovy Ghost software, I'll write up a quick tutorial about how you can go about transferring your posts over without losing data. I'll also include a small bit about transferring your Disqus comments over to your new URLs -- that is, if you use Disqus currently. If you're using the native TextPattern comment system, that will be just as easy to transfer to Disqus.

Now to see if Vaesis wants her blog moved over to Ghost.

You can see the site here: http://jumpingpuzzle.com/

Or if you can’t be assed to click a link, here are a couple of images of the general design.

Over time more features will come on top of the features we currently have. Because this fan site was launched more than a year after Guild Wars 2 released, we’ll have to work extra hard to get it noticed. But it will happen — of that, I have no doubt.

You can view the original bio on With the Wind. It will also likely be updated there before I update it here.

Name: Isel Cahal [ee-sell or is-ehl]
Age: 24
Race & Origin: Human with Elonian ancestry
Occupation: Freelance mechanic, hunter and farmer

Background & Family History: Isel is the daughter of Luf and Iselia Cahal, now diseased, and sister of Adair. Although unknown, their lost sibling Calum Saunts grew up as a noble in Divinity’s Reach. Isel and Adair are commoners, living day to day, wage to wage. The Cahal family was never the most extravagant of families, though they found ways of getting by. Even after losing their home and youngest child at the time — Calum, known then as Neron [neir-ohn] Cahal — the poverty that had struck them did not stop them from finding their place in the world. That is, before the death of Isel and Adair’s parents. Strong-willed, this sibling family hunt and farm, and have set up a small food stand selling meat and vegetables in the township of Claypool. Claypool was the chosen location of their new home by their parents many years ago because of its walls and resilience to centaur attacks.

Appearance: Long, dark brown hair, almost black, that is sent aback by a single band and braid. Isel takes great care of her appearance. Despite being a mechanic, she is seemingly always clean, with never a spot of oil or gun powder on her face or hands. Like all of the Cahal family, she stands just above average height. Her tall, slim figure is said to be perfect for the elegance that she displays as she tinkers with machinery. Her appearance is said to be kept neat because of the stories she heard of Neron being lost; she will always have an eye for detail, never letting a strand of hair stick out or losing a bolt during a job. Like her brother Neron, she has deep green eyes.

Strengths: She knows how to use a wrench. She’s no stranger to explosives and weaponry, and she’s a great cook. It’s said that she cooks for Adair every day after he comes home from a hunt or after farming.

Weaknesses: Fighting. As elegant as she can be with machines and technology, she is often falling flat on her back after shooting a rifle incorrectly.

Loves: Chocolate and any sort of fruit. She is always craving sweets, but she’s never seen eating them in front of anyone but Adair. She loves him dearly, and is always trying to make him happy. While she was not born when Neron was lost, she thinks about him from time to time, hoping and praying that he’s still out there and doing all right for himself. She hopes to one day see him, but she has a deep fear that he has been dead since the day he was lost.

Hates: The look that her parents used to have on their faces as they gazed at her. She and her brother Neron are the only two in the family with deep green eyes, and while Neron and Adair now look very much alike, that was not seen as they were babies. After Isel was born, looking into her gorgeous eyes had always brought sadness to her parents. From the day she was born until the day that they died, every now and then the stare they would give her would have her feeling down for days. She knew they hurt, and she hated that she brought that upon them.

You can view the original bio on With the Wind. It will also likely be updated there before I update it here.

Name: Calum Saunts
Age: 28
Race & Origin: Human with Elonian ancestry
Occupation: Officer in the Vigil

Background & Family History: Calum’s family history, other than the fact that he is Elonian, is unknown. He grew up with a noble family, the Saunts, since he was mere months old. Seemingly abandoned on the streets of Shaemoor just outside of Divinity’s Reach during a centaur attack, Jothan Saunts found the child and took him under his care ever since.

Calum’s stepfather, Jothan, and his wife Marah had been blessed by the Gods the day that they found Calum. Years ago, the Saunts had lost their only son due to an unknown illness. Marah Saunts had not been able to bear children for years since. It is said that the reason for this was contaminated water, possibly due to bandits. Three years later, however, she had given birth to a second child; Aleron Saunts.

Although unknown, Calum has an older brother and younger sister. His parents are no longer living.

Calum and his stepbrother Aleron have always gotten along with each other fine, despite the many differences between the two. Day and night, light and dark; Calum and Aleron were always seen this way by peers and parents alike. Growing up, Aleron took many things over the top and exaggerations tended to be even further exaggerated. Every day he would become the opposite of what his father Jothan had hoped. Calum, on the other hand, had always been the strong-willed, kind-hearted son that Jothan sought within Aleron.

As much as Calum would like, he cannot help his brother tunnel back through the dark path he’d led himself into. Practicing dark arts and feeding from Tyria like a rat, Aleron seeks power and wealth beyond what his father had already provided him..

Appearance: When eyes are first laid upon this dark-skinned man of Elona, one that stands above the average height, many common folk tread lightly in fear that he may have a temper. Donned in full plate armor with his helmet nestled between his arm and hip, Calum has a powerful presence. His charm is hidden by a frown that is seemingly impossible to remove. Few have ever seen him smile while on duty for the Vigil, unless it’s a quick smirk when a beautiful woman passes by.

Calum’s hair is dark and untamed. He feels no need to do anything with it other than keep it clean after a hard day’s work. His facial hair is kept neat, but only because he knows that appearance is important outside of the battlefield. Why he keeps his facial hair neater than the hair on his head is a mystery.

Strengths: Dignity, loyalty, intelligence, and anything else you would find in a high-ranking officer. Calum has grown up to be this way because he was both taught to be and because it came natural to him. Unlike his younger stepbrother Aleron, he shows respect to everyone — whether they are deserving of it or not. He is a fierce fighter and losing is never an option for him. His stubbornness has been seen as both a strength and a weakness.

Weaknesses: Stubborn as all hell and will never back down from a fight with a centaur or risen. The how-to of a bow eludes him, and he is never seen with a rifle despite being as good a shot as any. He likes to get up close and personal, even when his intuition tells him he shouldn’t. He can’t keep a relationship due to the fact that his job is his life.

Loves: Female companions. At any point of the day, if Calum can have a lady by his side, he’s just that much stronger. He’s no pervert, nor is he looking for any sexual favors. He simply enjoys the company of women. Many say that this is because he was always coddled by his stepmother, Marah.

Hates: Not being able to accomplish a given task. He also dislikes anyone that is lazy. He believes everyone has a role to play, no matter your background or profession. The only role that you can’t play is one of a bum or a drunk.

About a month later (yesterday), I asked her if she wanted me to create a guild site for her. WtW originally had one before, or two if we count the one on Enjin, but after the guild had a break from playing, the Enjin site went inactive. If you don't know what Enjin is, it's basically a shithole where all the drama-filled roleplayers for MMOs reside. I'm sorry if that offends anyone, but it's 85% true. The rest of you, I'm sure, are an awesome bunch. I have nothing against roleplayers since my girlfriend is one, but I do have things against people that make it their lives rather than a hobby. But I'm deviating, so let's get to the design!

This is based off of a MyBB theme that I had made several months ago. I figured "why write up an entirely new theme when I have one sitting dormant and unused by anyone," and I can make it even better. And so far, I have.

Of course it will gradually start looking better over time, but I want to get the bulk of the design complete and ready to use as soon as possible. Functionality that I'll be adding is the ability to add your character to your profile and linking his or her profile to the appropriate character biography. Since I figured some character bios might be off-site (such as on personal blogs or other roleplaying forums), I'll make it as simple as pasting a link. That'll make it easier for me as well.

Annnd that's the progress I've done so far. I won't take any screenshots of other areas of the design, but you'll be able to see some of it when it's live (whatever sections are visible to the public). There should also be posts of the design that this is based on splattered through the older posts on my blog. You can check the archive if you want.

Three weeks and over one hundred hours later... my god, man. I'm addicted. I don't think I've had this much fun in an MMO since I played my first MMO, Runescape, back in 2001. Yes, laugh at me. I played Runescape. But you know what I mean when I say "my first." We all do. That first one is always the one you remember most clearly. Just think back to the first MMO you played and let the nostalgia start flowing. It's awesome.

Anyway, with that said, I thought I'd post a few screenshots of how well SweetFX works with Guild Wars 2. If you don't know what SweetFX is, check out this link for information and to find the small download. It's an extremely versatile shader that makes games look fantabulous with some small .ini changes. You can even modify the look of your game directly while you're in it; no need to load and reload constantly to get it looking just right. And hey, if you're the lazy type like me, many people provide their presets for certain games. Just use your pal Google to find the file you want for your game.

Here are some before and after shots of GW2. The second image will always be the one with SweetFX running.

Raena and Adair (with zerg) tearing up a champion boar.

Raena and Adair being badasses.

Adair standing on a hut. Because standing inside of it isn't hipster enough.

Staring at the fireflies.

What a pretty statue!

Slaughtering the giant Behemoth.

Dat sun.

From left to right: Adair Cahal and Raena Arvalle.​ (orly?!)

This champion troll has nothing on us.

I'll also leave these here. They aren't before/after SweetFX shots, they are all with SweetFX enabled.

Raena, up close and personal.

Leah Vonsky, a ditzy yet smart engineer.

Adair Cahal, looking like a badass pimp troll slaying... guy.

Just some scenery.