User talk:Uzekh

Promoted! --Lotroadmin (talk) 02:41, 12 March 2012 (EDT)

Thanks for...

... your nice contributions, it is very much appreciated!!! Zimoon 18:42, 8 March 2012 (EST)

I agree, thanks for all your work today! -- Elinnea (talk) 22:42, 9 March 2012 (EST)

You're welcome! I'm glad to help. I've been playing LOTRO for a year or so, and have been using LOTRO-Wiki for reference the entire time. Thanks to all of you guys for an amazing site! Anyway, I figured it's about time that I started helping out a bit.

Just FYI, I'm hoping to put together the Westfold Woodworker Recipe Index...is anyone else currently working on that? It would be a bummer if I end up taking the time to do it and it's been done already.

Another question: what's the best way to create a .png file from a .jpg? I don't have any special photo-editing software on my laptop currently. Would any of the normally installed, basic software be able to do the job? Or is there some free software that would work better that I should download?

Thanks in advance for your assistance. :) Uzekh (talk) 23:33, 9 March 2012 (EST)

I don't know of anyone working on the Westfold Woodworker index, and it would be wonderful if that could get filled in - the tier was added months ago, after all. I'm afraid my poor woodworker is still stuck at Master. With Update 6 coming on Monday, most people are occupied so I think you're safe to work on it. Even getting the page created and some basic recipes filled in would be great.

For the image work, if I want to take a screenshot of an icon, I use the Snipping Tool program which is built-in with the Windows 7 on my laptop. It lets me select an area and save it directly as .png, which means I skip the lossy .jpg step. For editing, cropping, or converting file formats I use Paint.NET, which is a free program with good documentation. I was able to pick it up pretty quickly for the basic tasks I need it to do. Other people use GIMP, which is also free but more advanced (which also means more confusing in my opinion).

We had a little discussion a while ago about image editing at User talk:EoD#Icons and there are some tips at Help:Images as well. -- Elinnea (talk) 01:12, 10 March 2012 (EST)

I use the Paint.net program for all my image manipulations. Paint.Net has a download link. To convert from a jpg to png, you simply do a "Save As" and select the desired image format.

I run the program with it set to display dimensions in pixels, and mostly use the "Rectangle Select" tool to pick an area, and "Crop to Selection" to discard everything but the selection. I zoom in (Ctrl-Numpad-+) so I can see what I'm working with easily. For icons, about 10 zoom-ins causes the icon to be 2 or 3 inch high on screen, making it very easy to select the right 32x32 area. (Actually, I zoom in twice, do a rough crop of the icon, perhaps 100x100 area, zoom in another 8 times, and crop out the icon.)

Something that can save a lot of time is using the sticky item tooltips. If you hover over an item and hit "h", the tooltip detaches and can be dragged around the screen. You can have 4 stuck on the screen at a time and a fifth tooltip under the mouse. Take your screen shot. Rename the screen shot to "<item_name> tt.jpg". In paint.net, select and crop first item (Ctrl-Shift-X) and save (Ctrl-S). Then "Undo" (Ctrl-Z) until you are back to original image, zoom all out (Ctrl-B), crop the next item and save as (Ctrl-Shift-S) with its item name, repeat for all 5 items. Then, I open each item's tooltip image while I am editing the wiki. A dual monitor setup helps for this.

I always search first for "Item:<item name" and if not found, click the red-link on the search page. I keep a recent copy of the item boilerplate in a editor where I can copy/paste. I find that a lot faster than going through the "Create new item" page for every item. Use the "Category talk:<type> Icons" page (e.g. Category talk:Chest Icons) to find a generic icon or crop out the icon on the tooltip and save-as a 32x32 png image.

Anyway, those are some of the tricks I use to make my item creation workflow go smoother. RingTailCat (talk) 02:08, 10 March 2012 (EST)

Ravanell hinted about Fraps which can take screenshots and selectable file format and it can record movies --- BMP or PNG is preferred over JPG ... the former are "lossless" but Lotro itself saves in JPG :(. It is free but has extra features for pay. But it does not do image editing, just saving into preferred folder.

Personally I use a mix of a few quite basic editors, PMView (pay) and Paint most often. I never have had the time and/or urge to overcome the learning curve of Gimp or Photoshop, but if you want a powerful and free Gimp is probably your choice. Below powerful there are a zoo full of choices. For some editing I guess Paint (in Windows) is OK, it just depends on what you want to do, e.g. it cannot brighten darker images or adjust color scales in a hood way, but few image editors can do that though PMView can plus you can write your own plugins for certain features.

If you have not yet found it we have the Help:Images page with some hints.

Zimoon 04:28, 10 March 2012 (EST)

Thanks for all the input; I think I have a good start on what to do now. I was dreading trying to edit pictures down in Paint...I've downloaded Gimp and Paint.net, so I'll start fiddling around and see what I come up with. I have a feeling that a majority of the icons which I'll be needing most presently have already been uploaded at some point, so hopefully I won't have to do too much with picture editing at the moment. We'll see what happens. Uzekh (talk) 04:35, 10 March 2012 (EST)

Most icons should be in place already, always have a look at the appropriate Talk page which usually lists the common-icon. If an icon is not found I have found that pilfering one from lorebook usually has the best quality as they have never gone the less optimal path of screenshot (in JPG) ⇒ cropping in some editor ⇒ saving to PNG, where the first step is bound to be lossy. Hence, if the item exists (Google for "lorebook name") right-click the icon and select view image, downlo... ;) Zimoon 04:46, 10 March 2012 (EST)

Woohoo, nice work! :) I've started that tier but still not proficient so didn't want to start the wiki page without having the critical results before... --Goingbald (talk) 00:12, 14 March 2012 (EDT)

Recipe cooldown times

The other day User:Goingbald created a utility template for cooldown times. In the case Turbine would change them again, a rare chance but.... You may want to look at Template:Recipe-cooldown .. I just added usage to it. There is no need to walk back over your edits, you may suggest RTC to use his bot on them -- I have not yet applied to have a bot, but I guess I should ;)
Zimoon 05:32, 10 March 2012 (EST)

That could come in handy; I can appreciate the thinking behind having a template for particular bits of information that have the potential to be changed en masse. However, I've run into a bit of a formatting issue related to the cooldown times. The cooldown times display acceptably on individual recipe pages, but on the recipe (blueprint? schematic?) index page that I'm working on, the default column widths are narrow enough that the cooldown text runs onto the next line, making it look sloppy. In order to make it look presentable, I adjusted both the column widths and the text itself slightly. I input the cooldown time as "6 days 18 hrs", making it short enough to fit on one line. If I switch to using the cooldown template, the output will be irritatingly messy (at least to me) unless I widen the columns again. What would you suggest that I do? Increase column width to fit? Reduce it so "6 days" and "18 hours" are on separate lines entirely? Grin and bear it? Obviously, it is beneficial to have uniformity across the site, so I'm reticent to change the formatting too much on a page like a recipe index. Uzekh (talk) 05:50, 10 March 2012 (EST)

I believe we can fix that by adding an extra parameter so it well be something like 2d 18h which tentatively would read "2d 18h". Me too was baffled about the long output when I noticed it at some guild page, width is precious at all we pages as we never know a users preferences regarding screen size/resolution and browser window size. Personally I never have maximized window but want to keep an eye on what is going on in chat etc. in a "column" to the side. Thus we should care for widths, always. Nevermind, I will look into the template right away.

But it can definitely be used as-is at recipe pages, right?
Zimoon 05:57, 10 March 2012 (EST)

Yeah, I think the existing template would be perfect for recipe pages. Uzekh (talk) 06:00, 10 March 2012 (EST)

The template now optionally allows also for "narrow" output, see the examples at Template:Recipe-cooldown. -- Zimoon 06:26, 10 March 2012 (EST)

Implemented and working like a charm. Thanks! Uzekh (talk) 06:33, 10 March 2012 (EST)

Thanks for improving & using that small template I did quickly! I wish I could make bots, who could put some reference on how to do it? --Goingbald (talk) 00:12, 14 March 2012 (EDT)

Finally!

Thank the Lord. Minstrel instruments complete. Now it's time to finish up the Great River quests and get me a nice dusty Worn Symbol of Celebrimbor :D Uzekh (talk) 20:54, 13 March 2012 (EDT)

Bravo! I've felt guilty for quite a while that all the instruments are so poorly documented here. It's a big relief that you've been able to take care of them so thoroughly! -- Elinnea (talk) 23:14, 13 March 2012 (EDT)

I'm glad I was able to help out! Uzekh (talk) 12:31, 14 March 2012 (EDT)

Category:Medium Armour (The Riders of Stangard)

Thank you for adding the various "Enduring" items of the "set" -- Category:Medium Armour (The Riders of Stangard).

I don't know if you "didn't realize" or simply didn't get back to finish them ...

Here's the "fixes" I just made to all of them ... There is still quite a bit more to do -- the recipes and the standard items need to be added, and the set comparisons still need to be done. (One Set Comparison idea: The Great River (Anduin) Jewellery Set Comparisons. I haven't really looked at how to layout the armour sets. Drazner's may be another format worth exploring.)

And then this same thing needs to be done for the other similar categories in the Tailor's Craft log. (All are Reputation Recipes) Ones that I have at the moment on my Tailor:

• Category: Light Armour (Men of Dunland)
• Category: Light Armour (Théodred's Riders)
• Category: Medium Armour (Men of Dunland)
• Category: Medium Armour (Théodred's Riders)

• Note that there are Cloaks for these as well

• Category: Light Armour (The Riders of Stangard) -- also from Colbrand

Also the Tailor Westfold Recipe Index needs updating for all of the above. I moved your entries from Guild to their appropriate groups (Stangard and Théodred) - may not be as much there to do as it first appeared.

Take a look at the changes I made to your entries. Basically, the following:

1. The Recipe is NOT the same name as the output (i.e. of either the Standard or Critical Success items).
2. I made the "headings" BOLD. (Much easier to read that way.)
3. You labeled the items as "Standard Output" when in fact they are the "Critical Success outputs." So I created the appropriate "Standard" version line and relabeled your original line as "Critical Output."
4. I slightly reformatted the output lines to make them easier to edit.
5. I created Category:Medium Armour (The Riders of Stangard)
6. I added the line [[Category:Medium Armour (The Riders of Stangard)]] to each output to get them into the appropriate category.

Thanks again, and feel free to "dig-in" if you have the time. Some of what I've encountered and have been talking about are here:

• Category talk:Item Sets

--Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 00:53, 9 July 2012 (EDT)

Argh! -- see :Talk:Tailor_Westfold_Recipe_Index#Medium_Armour_.28The_Riders_of_Stangard.29 -- starting to look like Budda's Elephant and the Blind men.

--Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 18:53, 9 July 2012 (EDT)

Thanks for taking care of this for me. Sorry for leaving it in a state of incompletion. I had a system of updating as I went, and it sounds like I may have left the page before finishing the process, so there was a lot of errors. It probably made it more confusing than anything for you, so I apologize. I don't even remember why I stopped a year ago, but soon enough, I started law school, so that pretty much killed any spare time I had. At any rate, very belatedly, good work fixing my problems, and thanks for your help!

Uzekh (talk) 17:42, 29 June 2013 (EDT)