krynsky.com

Cleaker is the Best Wordpress Theme You’ve Never Heard Of

…and I selfishly would like to keep it that way for fear of widespread adoption, but author Adam Walker Cleaveland deserves praise and recognition for his fine work. Prior to my search and conversion to Cleaker I was using 3ColumnK2 which is a mod of the ever so popular K2 theme which I still use for other sites. I decided to switch for a few reasons.

• I was having IE6 compatability issues where the sidebar was wonky and didn’t appear properly
• didn’t like being at the mercy of the modder to update based on newer K2 releases
• I started having some issues with the Sidebar Modules embedded in the latest K2 and once again didn’t want to be at the mercy of K2 for SBM upgrades
• I was bored

My search for Cleaker took a while. My requirements for a new theme were:

• 3 Column with content on the left followed by 2 sidebars on the right
• Flexibility to change the overall theme width as well as the columns
• Support for Widgets (hence Sidebar Modules)
• Navigation buttons in header based on Pages
• Ability to have a custom header image
• Looked good

This was a pretty time consuming process but in the end it was worth it. Cleaker met all of my requirements and then some. The first step was to prepare by porting over all of my existing theme customizations necessary to Cleaker. I’m pretty good about keeping a text file that identifies every customization I make to my theme along with details and the actual code. These items include content from third party services like Google Analytics, code necessary for plugins, scripts for widgets etc. I highly recommend you do this as it can be a nightmare trying to remember where all these pieces are without them being documented. So edited the templates necessary as well as created all the sidebar modules necessary.

After finishing that process I began to concentrate on remaining issues. Currently I’m having layout problems I haven’t gotten around to with my Slickr plugin which I use for my photos page as well as with my Lifestream plugin for my Lifestream page. I’ve been too lazy to fix them as I struggle nightly whether to work on content or design and content usually wins. Not a huge deal and not the fault of the theme.

Next up was customizing the theme a bit for my liking. As I began to dig through the style.css file I was very happy to see that it was lined with helpful commenting. The main thing I wanted to do was modify the column the overall width of the theme as well as the columns. For anyone else interested it is easily done by editing the style values below:

#wrapper – changed width to 1000px
#header – changed width to 1000px
#content – changed width to 550px
#sidbarRight – changed width to 170px
#sidebarLeft – changed width to 150px
#footer – changed width to 971px
ul#Nav – changed to 1000px

There was still one more step necessary for these column changes to work and that was to modify the “contentbg2.gif” & “header.gif” images. Since I was increasing the content column and extending the overall width of the theme, I needed to move the seperator and add to the right side of contentbg2.gif.

Cleaker contentbg2.gif modified

I also had to increase the width of my header.gif image from 900 to 1000 pixels

I made some other changes too such as incorporating the blockquote style which I liked more from K2 and changed the font weight to bold for the headlines. I will probably play with the color scheme and make some other changes as well in the future.

I am very happy with this theme and urge others that are looking for a great looking, and easily editable theme, to give it a try.

My modified version of Cleaker 2.1 Widgetized is available here

Battlefield 2 stats, tips and info

I’ve been hunting and pecking for nuggets of info for Battlefield 2 and haven’t found a single source that has everything. So I thought I’d create a quick little repository of all the info I’ve found thus far.

Note: I will continually update this page as I come across more information so bookmark it and visit often.

Update:6/29/07
I found another cool player stats site called BF2Player.com that is definitely worth checking out and also offers a large number of custom signatures that you can use. Below is the one I selected but there are a bunch more.

Update:6/23/07

• There have been several comments regarding Stats not getting updated I’ve found a thread that discusses the issue here

How to re-install with Expansion Packs & Add-ons

• I recently had to re-install on a new machine and it was a bit tricky considering I had purchased add-ons using the EA downloader. Luckily I found a thread that explained the sequence of loading stuff here

Info Snapshot

• Current Version 1.41
• Official Home Page here
• Download patches and demos here
• More downloads at GamersHell
• Top 100 Mods available here

Tweaking

• A guide to tweaking your system for Battlefield 2 can be found here
• A guide to tweak your complete system for gaming in general can be found here
• Having trouble with crashing to desktop or other lockup issues Some have mentioned that it may be a good idea to clear your cache

Great new overall Tips & Strategy site. This is probably the best and most comprehensive one out there now. It has all the standard stuff like rank and badge requirements but has much more to offer. This includes a guide to piloting helicopters, to specific tactics on all the maps. It even includes easter eggs in the game. Check it out now at http://www.secretsofbattlefield.com/

WidgetBucks – Trend Watch – WidgetBucks.com

Best stats website I have found
BF2s.com
This site goes way beyond any others in regards to stats. It has a super clean design using some fancy css layout that allows for individual column sorting within tables. You do a head to head comparison with another player. And they provide the html to create the fancy image insertion you see below.
You can look me up here.

I found a Wordpress Plugin that allows you to display your stats from bf2s.com. The plugin is available here. An example of the output with my stats is below:

Ultimate Tools Utility for Battlefield 2
I came across the following tool which has lots of good features

You can download it here

Ribbons, Badges and Medals

The best site I have found to contain the most detailed information is Ubar which is now part of BF2S

• Battlefield 2 Ribbons Requirements
• Battlefield 2 Badges Requirements
• Battlefield 2 Medals Requirements
• Battlefield 2 – Special Forces Ribbons Requirements
• Battlefield 2 – Special Forces Badges Requirements
• Battlefield 2 – Special Forces Medals Requirements

Below is some other basic info.

Best First Weapon to Unlock
After reading posts on many forums, the overall concensus appears to be either the Spec Ops or Medic kit

If you want evidence of this it can be found at the Total BF2 Forums here

Remove intro demo movies
This will allow you to automatically bypass all intro movies and take you directly into the game.

Assuming you installed in the default location:
Go to C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2 Demo\mods\bf2\Movies
Create a folder called backup
Move all files into this folder EXCEPT for:
noise.bik
menu.bik
menu_loggedin.bik

Others instructions state to delete the files, but I feel safer moving them to another folder in case they become necessary in the future with a patch.

Run game in 1280 x 1024 resolution
This is a common resolution that people are running that isn’t supported within the in-game menu.

Simply modify your shortcut to the game to include these parameters:
+szx 1280 +szy 1024

So your shortcut should look like this if you installed in the default location:
C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2 Demo\BF2.exe” +menu 1 +fullscreen 1 +szx 1280 +szy 1024

Console Commands and other inforamtion
A comprehensive list with additional information is available here

Graphs & Charts of Weapon Damage and more…
A table containing this information and more is available here

Rank Requirements and Weapon Unlocks
Below is a breakdown of the Global score necessary to achieve a rank and whether a weapon unlock will become available.

* Also requires + Awards: Basic Knife Combat Badge, Basic Pistol Combat Badge, Basic Assault Combat Badge, Basic Anti-tank Combat Badge, Basic Sniper Combat Badge, Basic Spec Ops Combat Badge, Basic Support Combat Badge, Basic Engineer Combat Badge, Basic Medic Combat Badge

** �Also requires + Awards: Basic Armor Badge, Basic Transport Badge, Basic Helicopter Badge, Basic Aviator Badge, Basic Air Defense Badge, Basic Ground Defense Badge

File downloads – Patches, Demos, Movies, Screenshots, etc…
I think the best collection of these can all be found on this single page at 3D Gamers

It was only a matter of time before someone created a Battlefield 2 Wiki. I haven’t checked it out yet but this could be a great source of info.

Battlefield 2 Case Mods
these case mods are awesome!

Robin Williams plays Battlefield 2 as a sniper
You can read about it here

Tom’s Hardware tears EA and Dice a new one on Battlefield 2’s early release
The pull no punches in there story available here. I will start off by saying that I love BF2 but the fact does remain that we have all become frustrated for a product that really wasn’t ready to be released to the public. Let’s hope they learn from this.

Purchase Battlefield 2 Items

Saviour or waste of time? We’ll see

Don’t know about most people, but I am a huge victim of telemarketers. I get on average 2 calls a day. This is one of the most irritating issues I have in daily life, and I’m pretty easygoing. So when I heard of the National “Do Not Call” Registry I got excited, but know that all too often evil finds ways to work around the system. Regardless, I hope the system helps and today I became aware of the website to monitor so that you can sign up when it becomes available.

Trying to make my life easier

I have to remove excuses from updating my site. Currently I’ve been wanting to put up more photos of my kids, but I’ve been hand coding those pages so my laziness gets the better of me and I rarely update. So I was on the hunt for a script to make my life easier and I think I found a script I’m going to use. I will be playing with it some more and hopefully get some new photos up soon.

Current distractions
Listening: Interpol
Watching: Y Tu Mama Tambien
Playing: Desert Combat

Feeling black and blue from all the red and brown

I’ll start by saying that I love my wife dearly and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her. Ok, now that I got that out of the way I’m glad another american consumer holiday is about to end. The only thing nice about the madness created by these celebrations are the cynical flipsides created. Here’s a an assortment of alternative cards in case you couldn’t find just the right one for Vday