Broken Chaos / Tropers

Table of Contents

Jack of all (geeky) trades, master of none.

I know enough about nearly any geeky/nerdy topic you can name to hold a basic conversation – or to be interested when it's discussed, at least – but there are few things I consider myself to excel in. Most of those are computer-related or law-related, though I'm not professionally trained in either.

I float around here and there. I don't always endear myself to other tropers, but please try to assume good faith. If something I say bothers you, feel free to question me (in private where appropriate) about my intentions.

Wiki Magic is welcome to contribute tropes that apply to me. (I've been shuffling through lists and adding ones for fun. They're not exact, but all at least somewhat representative of me.)

This entity is an example of:

Blind Without 'Em: First thing in the morning, last thing at night.
- Cool Shades: Required in sunlight.
Canada Eh: Down to the "eh".
Chivalrous Pervert
Double Post: Avoids whenever possible.
Exposed to the Elements: Has 5/- resistance to cold and heat. This allows for a convenient year-round wardrobe.
Finding A Trope: I know Google-Fu.
Grammar Nazi: Moderately obsessive about consistency, as well as grammar/spelling.
Headphones Equal Isolation
Husky Russkie: About 50% eastern European ancestry.
- Stout Strength: No, I'm not the Heavy. I have too much hair and not enough bullet.
Most Tropers Are Young Nerds: Prefers 'geek'.
Not a Morning Person: Rarely awake on the normal side of morning.
Playful Hacker: White hat side of the coin, fun with finding and reporting/fixing security flaws.
Serial Tweaker: Mostly pre-submitting. Also occurs in non-wiki works.
Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Goes both ways.
- Honour Before Reason: Watered-down, day-to-day version.
- Knight in Sour Armour: At times.
Sock Puppet: Has a super-secret sock-puppet.
The Smart Guy: Definitely one of the brains of the wiki. ~Cliche
Think Nothing of It: Stock phrase, though not usually after saving someone's life.
Thread Necromancer: When appropriate.
TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life: Averted, except for a few late nights.
Weapon Of Choice: Knives. Used as a tool, but nigh-always has at least one in a pocket.

CSS:

Useful CSS snips for making the wiki look pretty follow. I recommend using these on a per-site basis only (i.e., only on TV Tropes) through either something like GlimmerBlocker

(or any other content-rewriting proxy) or @-moz-document

(Gecko engine only in userContent.css).

Spoiler colour/hi-light
This makes spoilers hi-light much better than default, providing a black background on white text only when hi-lighted. It also provides better colour for links in a spoiler when hi-lighted (so they're visible).

Code for CSS3 standard (Webkit – Safari, Chrome, etc.):

span.spoiler::selection, span.spoiler *::selection, span.supersecret::selection, span.supersecret *::selection { 
  color: #fff; 
  background: #000; 
} 
span.spoiler a.twikilink::selection, span.supersecret a.twikilink::selection { 
  color: #6495ed; 
} 
span.spoiler a.createlink::selection, span.supersecret a.createlink::selection { 
  color: #ed9564; 
}

Code for Mozilla non-standard (Gecko – Firefox, Camino, etc.):

span.spoiler::-moz-selection, span.spoiler *::-moz-selection, span.supersecret::-moz-selection, span.supersecret *::-moz-selection { 
  color: #fff; 
  background: #000; 
} 
span.spoiler a.twikilink::-moz-selection, span.supersecret a.twikilink::-moz-selection { 
  color: #6495ed; 
} 
span.spoiler a.createlink::-moz-selection, span.supersecret a.createlink::-moz-selection { 
  color: #ed9564; 
}

Spoiler redlink hover
Spoilers that contain a redlink will have that text 'light up' on hover (mouseover). This fixes that, so it stays white all the time. Works best with the above selection/colour fixes.

Code:

span.spoiler a.createlink:hover, span.supersecretspoiler a.createlink:hover { 
  color: #fff; 
}

Line height readability
Optimal readability for line heights (amount of space above/below a line of text) is around 1.5:1 (150% of the text size, 25% each above and below). This adjusts that spacing up to approximately optimal.

Code:

body { 
  line-height: 1.5em; 
}

Top border on spoilers
I prefer a four-bordered spoiler appearance (dotted on all sides) to better denote a spoiler.

Code:

span.spoiler { 
  border-top: 1px dotted gray; 
}

Content rewrites:

These are more complex rules, similar to the above CSS fixes. These can only be done with something like GlimmerBlocker

or Greasemonkey

. I'll leave it up to you to figure out how to get them working, if you're going to try. (These are not printed in monospace since that breaks page widths – some of the replaces are huge, so I recommend copying/pasting to examine them further.)

Remove excess linebreaks
There's a huge number of linebreaks (<br />) on almost every page near the end. These can be safely (from my experience) removed and replaced with a proper clear:both div.

Code (for GlimmerBlocker):

replace(/<br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/>/, "<div style=\"clear:both\">");

Code (generic regular expression):

s/<br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/>/<div style="clear:both"><\/div>/

Pseudocode:

Replace:
<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>
With:
<div style="clear:both">

Fix preview display
The preview (when editing) looks nothing like a normal page. This is due to missing an id tag on one of the divs (and then a few other changes are needed to not break the preview in other ways).

Code (for GlimmerBlocker):

replace(/div.preview_pane\{text-align:left;width:1024px;margin: 0 auto;border:1px solid silver;padding:4px; \}/, "div.preview_pane{text-align:left !important;width:1024px !important;margin: 0 auto !important;border:1px solid silver !important;padding:4px !important; }");
replace(/<div class="preview_pane rounded">/, "<div id=\"wikibody\" class=\"preview_pane rounded\">");

Code (generic regular expression):

s/div.preview_pane\{text-align:left;width:1024px;margin: 0 auto;border:1px solid silver;padding:4px; \}/div.preview_pane{text-align:left !important;width:1024px !important;margin: 0 auto !important;border:1px solid silver !important;padding:4px !important; }/
s/<div class="preview_pane rounded">/<div id="wikibody" class="preview_pane rounded">/

Pseudocode:

Replace:
div.preview_pane{text-align:left;width:1024px;margin: 0 auto;border:1px solid silver;padding:4px; }
With:
div.preview_pane{text-align:left !important;width:1024px !important;margin: 0 auto !important;border:1px solid silver !important;padding:4px !important; }

Replace:
<div class="preview_pane rounded">
With:
<div id="wikibody" class="preview_pane rounded">

Security:

There is no check on the author handle when editing a wiki article. Anyone can 'spoof' being any other troper. Always do IP checks to determine who someone is or isn't.

Gone:

In the unlikely event someone wants/needs to find me, use this e-mail address: removed — anyone who wanted it should have it by now. Might be back some day, but… It's not likely, unless certain mindsets/situations change.

Tropers / Broken Chaos

Edit Locked

This entity is an example of:

CSS:

Content rewrites:

Security:

Gone: