Shifti - User contributions [en]

Category talk:Story

2022-12-20T19:52:11Z

ClydesdaleTF:

It would be a big help if stories were listed by author as well as title.

: Doing both in a single page isn't possible in the [[:Category:Story|Stories]] page. However, to make this happen it is suggested to add a category tag, like [[Category:ShadowWolf]] to the story (where my name is replaced with the authors) so that there is a separate category per author. To make this work well, however, authors will have to add the same tag to the [[:Category:Author|Authors]] page. (This has already been done for all existing "Author" categories). [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 17:36, 21 July 2007 (EDT)

I recommend a filter for most recent stories
[[User:ClydesdaleTF|ClydesdaleTF]] 14:52, 20 December 2022 (EST)

Category talk:Story

2022-12-20T19:51:17Z

ClydesdaleTF:

Category talk:Story

2022-12-20T19:49:21Z

ClydesdaleTF:

The Curse of Sajhelkunem's Tomb

2011-11-01T11:18:24Z

ClydesdaleTF: Protected "The Curse of Sajhelkunem's Tomb": Just want to protect my work from malicious writers ([edit=autoconfirmed] (indefinite) [move=autoconfirmed] (indefinite))

{{DEFAULTSORT:Curse of Sajhelkunem's Tomb, The}}
[[Category:Equine]][[Category:Story]][[Category:ClydesdaleTF]]
{{byline|author=ClydesdaleTF|user=ClydesdaleTF}}

Samuel Ingram surveyed the sand dunes with his binoculars, knowing the sandy wilderness could contain more than his research team. He knew there were surely bandits camping out here, even under the blazing hot sun, ready to assault an Egyptologist team traveling to an excavation site. The year was 1924, only a few years after the Great War, and Ingram left his position as a flyboy for the Royal Air Corps and found a career in archeology, a career he had only a couple of years dreamt about.

It was midday by the time Samuel’s team made it to the excavation site. It was there he met a familiar face. “Smith? Jacob Smith from London?” Samuel questioned in surprise, “I thought you were going to settle in America!”

“I did, for a while,” replied Jacob, who then took a swig from his water canteen, “It’s a great country,” he continued, “plenty of opportunity. But, it is here where my true talent is. Why, I found the location of this tomb all by myself without the aid of the famed Howard Carter, who, if you’ve been living under a rock, discovered the tomb of King Tut!” Jacob brought a handkerchief to his forehead, wiping the sweat off his brow and went on, “I could unearth this tomb without a licensed Egyptologist team, but, it’s only proper procedure. . .” Jacob had changed a lot since Samuel last saw him college back in England. And at his colleague’s last remarks, he felt like a great trouble to him.

Since Jacob didn’t appear that he would stop rambling on his own, Samuel was forced to interrupt, “Excuse me, I would love to sit and chat about this over tea and crumpets, but I don’t happen to have either on me. But, I do have the excavation tools you requested.”

“Right then,” Jacob responded in a rather unfazed voice, “start unpacking your gear I the supplies tent. Hold on,” he said, curiously, “that’s an odd looking container for storing excavation equipment.”

“It’s nothing,” Samuel vainly attempted to cease his partner’s suspicion.

Kicking up sand as he strode, Samuel approached his colleague who was digging into the huge storage container in awe. “Samuel, my friend, I called for digging tools only, not the Ingram arsenal!”

“One has to come prepared to face potential bandits in a foreign country!” Samuel interjected.

“Prepared? You are militarized! What have we here? I count at least 20 Le Enfield bolt action rifles, over a dozen M1921 Thompson sub-machine guns, several Browning lever action shot guns, and . . .is that a Lewis gun?”

“You know your firearms,” Samuel said jokingly.

“Samuel, lad! The war has done strange things to your mind! An archeologist only needs a handgun, contrary to all your—toys! How the blue blazes did you get your hands on these anyway? I mean, legally!?”

Their heated conversation in an already heated climate continued to go on while Samuel’s men unloaded the rest of the gear. Only when the Egyptian desert began to cool did the two men cease to argue. The night was a cloudless night; a windy one as well. The breeze carried sand over the excavation team’s tents, while the moon and stars shone brilliantly in the heavens above, casting their glow onto the Sahara sand.

The entire next morning was filled the voices of workers as the tirelessly dug in the spot Jacob marked as this tomb’s location. Most of the workers were native to the country, and wore simple clothing, consisting mainly of a white garment and a white turban or veil, quite appropriate for such a sunlit environment. Samuel wore a white collared shirt, sleeves rolled up, and khaki pants along with knee high working boots, very effective against the desert sand. He carried a Colt .45 semi-automatic in his holster along with an Enfield rifle slung to his back. Jacob wore a similar fashion, but wore a blue shirt instead. He also had a fedora instead of a sun helmet his counterpart wore. He had no rifle, but kept a Mauser “broom handle” automatic in his belt holster.

The digging process took longer than expected; even Jacob was worried his calculations were off, but as the midday sun hung over the eager man, the diggers revealed the entrance of the tomb. It was a stone slab with the markings of Anubis accompanied by two eagles and dozens of other bizarre hieroglyphic shapes.

It was midafternoon when the team finally lifted the stone door, revealing what Jacob had hoped to discover, the dark tunnel that was undoubtedly the passage to the prized tomb of Sajhelkunem, a well decorated veteran of one of Egypt’s greatest campaigns. Jacob knew nothing more about this tomb. He did not know about the enchantments and curses set by the priests whose bones now littered the sacred ground of this catacomb.

Down, the stairs took them through the surprisingly wide tunnel with walls adjourned with hieroglyphics. To Samuel and Jacob, these pictures were mere decorations; to Isaac Powell, their highest ranking Egyptologist scholar, these “pictures” served as a clear warning that the whole team should acknowledge.

“Gents! If I may?” The two archeologist leaders turned his way.

“What is it, Isaac?” Samuel’s voice echoed through the tunnel. The team huddled around his lantern, but it was the hieroglyphics that grew their attention.

"First of all," Isaac said, pointing towards the blackness of the tunnel ahead, "that tunnel will lead to a dead end. But first a trap, most likely a pit. I've been through so many tombs in which the first path is a fake one."

"So we'll just proceed with caution and watch for another path," Jacob concluded.

Isaac knocked his fist against the stone wall and marveled at the sound. "This wall is hollow; it needs to come down."

At this news Jacob looked at Samuel and said, "Ingram, get your men and have them bring their equipment."

"Will do!"

Before he could go, Jacob added, “And bring the right tools; we need to bust this tomb fast. It's already getting close to dinner."

"Right, I have just the hardware you need." And with that, Samuel hurried to the camp.

During Sam’s absence, Isaac had time to inspect the hieroglyphics more closely, knowing the wall would most likely be completely demolished. “Mr. Smith?” Isaac called, with a touch of fear in his voice.

Jacob turned to face him. “What is it?”

“I expected to find this—a curse.”

“I don’t care about any curses!” Jacob scolded, clearly upset to find out his interpreter was affected by such fantasies.

“Tell that to Mr. Carnarvon, sir!”

“He is dead,” Jacob said, feeling some remorse for an old competitor. “He died last year.”

“I know very well about his death, Mr. Smith. A ‘mosquito bite’, I read it in the newspapers. But what I meant was that he was part of Howard Carter’s team when they pillaged the tomb of King Tut. His death was a result of the curse. And don’t get me started on George Jay Gould! Now this curse here is not necessarily a death curse. It—”

“Stand clear of the wall—everyone!” a voiced echoed through the tunnel; It was Samuel’s. The tunnel was dark, but Jacob could see this colleague’s workers were holding their excavation tools—or so he thought.

When it all came together, each worker on the far side from the hieroglyphic wall pointing their “tools” at it, he could not stop the inevitable. “Fire!” With that, the tunnel was filled with the deafening staccato report of the worker’s Thompson sub-machine guns. After each worker had unloaded each of their 50-round drum magazines, the wall was but a memory.

“Mr. Ingram!” Jacob bellowed, hardly hearing his own voice, “You may have just kissed your career goodbye. “You are entirely unprofessional—even for a trigger happy military man! Why couldn’t have you just brought the tools?!”

“Sir,” one Samuel’s workers answered, “the equipment tent was gone, along with all the tools! It was pitched in quicksand.”

“If you don’t believe us,” Samuel continued, “ask your team who lazily watched it all sink. Jacob accepted this, knowing this was his own mistake.

“Alright, Sam, no harm done. But you could’ve told us to cover our ears,” he eyed the ear protection Samuel’s team wore. “Let’s get into this tomb.”

The air was very muggy and thin, like breathing into a box of dust. The team thought it best to let the room air out a bit, but Jacob pressed them on, always reminding them of no dinner until they at least find Sajhelkunem’s sarcophagus. Since the lanterns Jacob’s group initially brought did little to illuminate the tomb, he was forced to bring the electric lamps used for the camp. It seemed a bit of an overhaul, but it was worth it. The room they were in, and the objects it housed were clearly revealed. It was a square room, with no other passageways. In this tomb was the dead Egyptian’s coffin, death mask; countless clay jars, golden treasure, bones—no one paid much attention to those, and alters. But, the object that drew the most attention was a chariot made of the purest gold.

“Unbelievable,” Jacob muttered, removing his hat. Samuel was quite fond of the chariot himself; he even climbed right into the ancient vehicle. Just then, the silence was broken by the earsplitting crackle of one of the worker’s guns. Everyone was startled out of their euphoria.

“Who the Tut did that?!” roared Jacob, in a serious but yet humorous tone.

“It was from my gun, sir,” a worker confessed, placing his weapon on the floor. “I did not pull the trigger, sir, it was slung to my back—with the safety on!” he started to stammer now, with a look of terror on his face. He felt something, some strange force in the room. To the rest of the team he looked as if he was losing his mind. Then, he really did snap. Out the door he sped, bolting towards the exit of the tunnel with an inhuman shriek that gave everyone the chills. The electric lamp began to flicker, which added to the tomb’s new eeriness.

Just then, Samuel was pushed over the front of the chariot and into a pile of dusty old bones. He quickly recovered and noticed he was standing in a horse’s crumpled skeleton. But what left poor Sam wide eyed was that his assailant was nowhere to be seen.

A great wind enveloped the room, forming a vortex in its center. “Let’s get out of here!” Isaac hollered, bolting for his life. The rest of the team, including Jacob, followed his example, kicking up sand as they sprinted. Samuel, however, was the last to leave. He tripped over one of his men’s Thompsons leaving his biting the dust, literally. He gathered himself in a hurry and picked up the discarded weapon. He spun around and saw what appeared to be a ghostly image of a man hovering inside the dust devil. In a panic, Samuel sprayed the phantom with his Tommy gun, and ran out the tunnel faster than he had ever run before.

“One! Two! Three! Heave!” Jacob commanded. Every man close by helped slide the stone slab entrance in place in a speed that revealed the desperation to forget this horrendous moment. After the tomb door was sealed, they went as far as trying to bury it.

When the work was finished, Jacob announced dinner and said they would leave at first light tomorrow morning. No one in the camp argued against his word, for they all knew what had transpired that day; some even pleaded to leave tonight. With all being settled, the team sat down to dine. All except Samuel, who felt the most troubled now. He could not forget what he saw and heard. The ghost said things, things in a language Samuel never heard before, but somehow he knew what it meant. “A curse is upon us,” he muttered to himself.

That night, while the men were still dining, Samuel could keep to himself no more. “Doc!” he gasped as he stumbled into the medical tent, “something wrong with me!”

“I can see that,” acknowledged Isaac—not only a professional Egyptologist but a doctor as well, “however, be more specific than a ‘something’s wrong,’ please.”

“I have no way of explaining, I feel like—,” he was forced to clutch his stomach as he grimaced. It wasn’t a painful sensation in the abdominal area, but in all senses the only word Samuel could use to describe it was, “odd.”

“Well, have a seat now, Mr. Ingram, and I will see what’s going on here. You didn’t try any of the steak did you? Jacob is not a very good chief from personal experience.”

“No,” Sam panted, unbuttoning his shirt, "This is not a stomach ache or pain it’s more like—" While Samuel searched for a word to describe his condition, Isaac’s eyes were drawn to his patient’s torso, now covered with fine white hair; also quite deformed.

“I think I see your problem,” Isaac said, shocked at the site. Samuel looked down at himself with a sudden dread, seeing the cause of his discomfort.

“Whoa!” he hollered, “What is this?! Is this common in the desert?!”

“No—I don’t think so. . .” Isaac was lost in thought of Sam’s appearance. Never before in his medical experience had he seen or even heard of this ailment.

He was just about to give an educated guess on his patient’s condition when troubled shouts and groans emitted from the rest of the camp. One man hollered, “Jack! You are a terrible cook!” followed by a few chuckles which soon quickly changed into moans.

“Stay right here,” Isaac instructed, “take a few sips of this water. I’ll be right back!” That being said, Isaac grabbed his oil lantern and strode from the tent, glancing back at Samuel as he left.

By now, Samuel had absolutely no doubt that this was a c curse he and the rest of the team had triggered from the tomb. He began thinking about that golden chariot; the horse’s bones that lay in front of it. He was pulled from his thoughts by a new odd feeling, this one from his head. It began as a common headache, but it stretched from his forehead to his ears, from his ears to his nose.

Next thing he knew, he was yanking his boots off, for his feet started a unique sensation as well. They seemed to tingle, then go numb. However, once he pulled off the boots, he no longer had feet, but hooves. Samuel was no longer confused; he fully realized this curse was transforming his body. Into what, though? A bull had hooves, but so did a goat. Feeling his face shift, he desperately felt he needed to have a look. He stood up to walk, but fell to his knees, which had just lost all qualities human knees would have.

The pants had to go otherwise they would rip. It wasn’t the loss of modesty that had him worried, for what kind of an animal wore pants? What had him worried was the pain it made on his rapidly growing body. It was good he had removed his pants, especially his belt, because after doing so his hands almost instantly began deforming into hooves. His shoulders shifted to a new position; his neck grew thick and long.

It was no question to him what he had become, and was yet becoming. Judging by the formation of flanks from where his knees used to connect to his waist, the shape of all four legs and hooves, his equine tail, and his underside, Samuel was now a stallion.

At this moment, Samuel did not know what to think. At the beginning of his transformation, he was filled with horror, but now, he actually felt quite comfortable, as a matter of fact he felt relaxed.

"Is this really a curse?" He asked himself, almost rhetorically. His thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of half screams and whinnies echoing through the night. It must be for some, he thought to himself with a soft nicker. Walking with equine legs felt like a simple task as he strode out of the tent; as if walking on four legs instead of two was the proper way to travel. Of course, he rationalized to himself, with his new form came new instincts; a new way of thinking.

“My hands!” cried one man in terror. “Dr. Powell! What is happening to us?!”

“It’s the curse,” replied a very horse-like Isaac, now falling to his newly formed hooves.

“Is there anything you can do to stop it?” asked another worker, almost completely transformed.

“I’m a doctor! Not a sorcerer,” Isaac answered back through his fully formed muzzle.

“Isaac!” Jacob’s voice emerged from behind. “Where is Samuel?” he asked, his transformation finished.

“Mr. Smith? Oh, it’s you!”

“Yes… and?”

“Uh, I left him in the medical tent. He was the first to show symptoms of this mutation.”

“Well, go find him and bring him over here. Meanwhile I’ll try to deal with this chaos.”

It wasn’t long before Isaac found Samuel, who was quite close to the turmoil.

“Mr. Ingram! Is that you?”

“Powell, it’s good to see you. Somehow, although we’ve changed, I can recognize most of my workers.” He looked around at the camp, seeing horses everywhere he turned. “It’s over,” Samuel muttered, “I can’t see a single human form”

“Yes, I know. Now, come quick. Mr. Smith had sent me for you.”

“Alright then,” Sam snorted. “Say, any idea how we can still communicate? Isaac took a moment, his ears pricked forward, and then concluded,

“We may still be talking, but not in a way a human could understand. Actually, I don’t hear or understand a difference. Come on, he is waiting,” he said impatiently, stamping the sandy ground with his right fore-leg.

“Alright, alright, I’m going. Wait, I couldn’t help but wonder,” Samuel asked, curiously, “what breed am I?” “You are an Arabian horse, quite an excellent build I’d say. If we get caught, you’d surely sell for a high price.”

Samuel did not find this as amusing as Isaac did. “I certainly hope we don’t get caught.”

“I think that’s partially why Mr. Smith wants you, to figure out a plan for what’s next.”

By the time Samuel approached Jacob, all of the newly formed horses were silent. Most were still wide eyed and trembling on their thin legs, but they seemed to be adapting well nevertheless.

“How did you do it, sir?” asked Isaac, “I thought it would take an hour to stop the chaotic mess.”

“it was quite easy actually,” he answered, “I just stood in place, calm as I could, and somehow just waiting peacefully got their attention. Now, Samuel, my friend,” he paused, eyeing the stallion who stood next to Isaac,” that’s you, right?”

Both Isaac and Samuel gave a low chuckle, as if this was inside joke. “Right you are. I can’t blame you for asking as well.”

“I won’t be the last, I’m sure. Anyways, I’m thinking that we sleep here tonight, because we’re all obviously a exhausted from what happened here tonight. At first light, we’ll head East towards the Nile, and if we follow it just a few miles south of Cairo, there is rumored to be a place Isaac Powell here says lies a cure to these enchantments. Anything you have in mind, Sam?”

“Yes, how do you know these directions?” he asked, quizzically.

“Well, surprisingly we can still read the map,” Jacob replied. “Not even Isaac is sure what we have or haven’t lost along with our human forms.”

“Okay,” Samuel continued, “also, what if we come across horse merchants willing to catch us?”

“I think the answer is quite obvious, Sam. We outrun ‘em! Anything else?” Jacob asked, this time his voice sounding tired and irritated. Pressured by his colleague, Samuel shook his massive head.

“All right!” Jacob announced in front of the entire herd, “it is settled. Tonight, we’ll rest. At dawn, we will head to the Nile River on my lead. Anybody still have a watch? Shuteye is still at 10:00.

The night was as silent as the last, however, the stars and the moon were blotted out by the clouds. Samuel had a dream; a nightmare. It was about the day he was shot down by the infamous Red Baron. However, this time it was different. This time he crash landed in a lush green pasture, unlike the forest behind German lines.

He tumbled out of the wrecked biplane and took cover behind a haystack, for he heard someone or something come his direction. He drew his Colt .45 automatic and took a pack from his cover and saw a majestic white Arabian mare. This is odd, Samuel thought, Arabian horses aren’t common in France, they are from— at that moment, he remembered what had happened, he knew he was dreaming.

He looked down at himself and he was instantly transformed into a horse again. “Come here,” the mare told him, rather affectionately. Samuel was captivated by her beauty and involuntarily galloped towards her. Before he could get any closer, though, this setting faded way and he stood alone in the middle of the Egyptian desert.

But where the mare stood hovered the freakish appearance of the phantom he saw in the tomb. The ghost pointed at Samuel, speaking to him in an ancient language Sam did not know. However, the language shifted to commands in a language he did know, as this scene melted away the same way the previous one did.

“Get up! We’re leaving!” Jacob shouted. Samuel was wide awake now. The sound of horses whinnying filled his ears; he felt them twitch at every sound that was emitted.

“Hurry!” Jacob yelled, “Another excavation team has arrived, and they’re after us!”

“Mr. Smith!” Isaac neighed, “I need help!” Jacob turned to face the Egyptologist, now with a lassoed rope around his neck.

At the sight of poor Isaac being captured in such a fashion, both Samuel and Jacob made a break for it, kicking up plume of sand as they galloped.

It was mid-afternoon, and the sun blazed over the “abandoned campsite” presumed by the newcomers. Things had turned out very fortunate for them, not the fact that they managed to catch nearly half of the 30 Arabian stallions nearby, but mainly because their work here was half done. The tomb of Sajhelkunem was left mostly exposed by the previous campers, and the term “finders’ keepers” was upheld by the new team.

While Carl Evans, the leader of these newcomers, led his crew down into the tomb, Samuel and Isaac spoke amongst themselves, already having the fate of the new excavation team predicted.

“I got to say,” Isaac muttered, “it’s not even fair. The warning was on the wall we destroyed. Now these poor buggers are blindly walking into a trap.” He snorted and gave a strong tug on the rope that tied him to an iron stake.

“Even if we weren’t tied to his pole,” Samuel pointed out as he reared and hammered the stake with his hooves, “they still would have no way of understanding our words. Pretty strange, we can understand both human and horse talk.”

“I’m pretty sure a normal horse does not understand human language just as they don’t understand horses.”

“Aye, but they will very soon… I wonder were Jacob has gone to” Samuel said, changing the subject.”

“He abandoned us,” Isaac replied,” he even left you after your fall. Speaking of which, how’s your arm—I mean—-fore-leg? Sam lifted his hoof and stomped into the sand, testing the movement of his scraped leg.

“It’s fine, the bleeding’s stopped—not too painful now. Despite your shape, not much has changed, you’re still a doctor.”

“Yeah, though there is one change I am grateful for. My vision has improved, no need for those glasses, where ever they are.” “Really? Mine isn’t as…” he stopped as he saw the angelic appearance of a white Arabian mare.

“Mr. Ingram? Are you alright?” For a moment Samuel just stared at the mare as she strode down the sand dune overlooking the camp.

“Isaac, I have a better idea. Do you know how to undo knots?”

“I do, sir, I—” he looked down at the knot in the rope around Samuel’s neck. “Why didn’t I think of that?” Isaac whinnied, amused at Sam’s simple but clever solution. “I should be able to get your lasso off in no time, and then you can do the same for me.”

Isaac tugged at the knot with his teeth and eventually Samuel was freed from the rope. Sam did likewise to his companion, and after doing so, he looked back towards the mare. She was closer now, and her beauty increased with their closeness; Isaac saw her as well.

“You are new here,” the mare spoke in her soft and friendly voice. “I saw what happened to you all last night. This is a very strange place.” Her ears pricked upward as she looked towards the tomb entrance. “We must leave before the ruckus starts again,” she continued, “I know an oasis not far from here. That is where we took many of your friends. We should be safe there…”

The oasis was a fair sight to see. The vegetation was plentiful; the water reflected the starry clear sky in a quality no mirror Samuel knew could.

The mare was right; several of the stallions here were some of his workers. They seemed to be getting along very well with the other residing horses; however, Jacob was nowhere to be seen. His selfish partner went off to end his curse alone. But now, it really didn’t matter. Samuel had grown quite comfortable with his new shape; he didn’t want to change back.

Besides, he was in love with the mare of his dreams. Although there would be no wedding, it’s safe to say they were married ‘til death sets them apart!

“Isaac, we really don’t need you here; give us some privacy will you?” Sam said impatiently.

“I don’t mind him, dear,” his new “wife” replied.

Samuel nickered as if he were chuckling, then added, “No, you don’t understand, you see—” silence fell on them both as their eyes met. She was absolutely beautiful tonight.

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Ingram. I’ll be on my way now.”

“Wait,” Samuel replied, “there’s something I keep wondering about this ‘curse.’ What was it exactly?” he questioned, his eyes never leaving the mare.

Isaac answered him in a voice that almost resembled his lecturer, “Here is the curse as follows. ‘To those who disturb this sacred ground, to whosoever intends to loot this holy tomb, they shall be stripped of their humanity and take the form of my chariot bearers.’ And, although others may take it differently,” Isaac turned his face away from the lovers, for "privacy" reasons, "this is the Curse of Sajhelkunem’s Tomb."

--[[User:ClydesdaleTF|ClydesdaleTF]] 20:12, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

The Curse of Sajhelkunem's Tomb

2011-10-31T19:45:34Z

ClydesdaleTF:

User talk:ShadowWolf

2011-10-28T01:30:25Z

ClydesdaleTF: /* Sitenotice text */

how do you delete a page that has no content? I've had to modify a title of a story page and removed it's content, but the title still appears on my author page.
:Please sign with the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> - but generally you have to remove all content and then kill any links to it you've made. That'll "orphan" it and then an admin can go and do the actual delete. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:43, 3 October 2007 (EDT)
:Page deleted, Oberon. (Recent Edits is a wonderful tool!) - in the future, though, please sign all entries on a talk page using the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> specifier - it's what gives the nifty user link and timestamp. (and in requests for deletion, could you please include the page name ?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:48, 3 October 2007 (EDT)

==Sitenotice text==

Where did you put the text for the donation sitenotice? Normally it'd be at [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]], but I'm assuming since it's not there you've inserted it into the source code somewhere. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 20:46, 3 January 2008 (EST)

Never mind, I found it - MonoBook.php, right? I should move it out of that and into sitenotice, it won't appear for anyone who's using a different skin otherwise. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:01, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:Didn't know about the Sitenotice bit, so yeah, I did a bit of hacking and dumped it straight into the code from the primary skin. I actually had thought about dumping it directly into the Skin driver, but decided not to. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:08, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:There, fixed up. I pulled the code from the source and added a version to the [[Mediawiki:Sitenotice]]. "A Version" because I had to use the same custom tag I created for [[Shifti:Site support]] to do the button. (PayPal kinda requires it be a form with a crapload of hidden fields) — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:16, 3 January 2008 (EST)

::Heh. I was just working on that myself. Good to know I was on the right track. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:20, 3 January 2008 (EST)
::This is odd. It appears that integral.org is in the spam protection filter, I can't save [[Main Page]] now. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:37, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:::Not in any of the spamfilters I installed. It's not in the central MediaWiki list or in the site-specific list. I'll look deeper. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:00, 3 January 2008 (EST)
:::[[Special:Version]] doesn't have any spam-blockers besides [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist SpamBlacklist] and none of its lists have "integral" anywhere in them. So I don't know what the problem could be... Everything I've installed is hacked to not bug people that are in the Admin group about '''''ANYTHING''''', so I'm at a loss as to what the problem could be. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:04, 3 January 2008 (EST)

::::Well, whatever the problem was, it seems to have passed. I should have saved a copy of the error message but I suppose it's moot if it doesn't come back. BTW, I hope you don't mind the little tweaks I made to the sitenotice banner. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 23:38, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:::::Nah, it works. And I've reverted the changes I made, since it wasn't the cause of Felix's problem. He saw the Captcha, but apparently either 1) Didn't know what it was or 2) Couldn't read it. So I've just gone and given the "Author" permissions group a Captcha exception. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:49, 3 January 2008 (EST)

What do you think of the notion of putting a progress bar in the donation request, as demonstrated in [[Shifti:Sandbox]]? Wikipedia does it that way, and it might give people more incentive to donate in order to get rid of the banner. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:23, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:That's pretty nifty. Maybe have the bar in red, though :) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 01:30, 4 January 2008 (EST)

::There, added a color parameter. Red's a bit garish, though, maybe something a bit more pastel? [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:43, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:I hate that banner!! It offends me, I must destroy it by donating! *snicker* :)

--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 23:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:Wolfy, how do I become an author? I already have a story written.
[[User:ClydesdaleTF|ClydesdaleTF]]--[[User:ClydesdaleTF|ClydesdaleTF]] 20:27, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
::Easy, you wait for an admin to notice the story insert and hit the button :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:44, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

:Thanks! I'll be sure to write more soon! How'd you like my first one? [[User:ClydesdaleTF|ClydesdaleTF]] 01:30, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

== Broken Discussion pages and Captcha errors ==

Not sure what's going on. When I click on the Discussion link on a page that doesn't have a discussion, it takes me direct to that page's edit frame (NOT the Discussion page), and I seem to have full edit rights on it. Something seems to have gone wonky along the way.

Pre-existing Talk pages seem to work fine (as evidenced here), though when I was trying to post it gave me an "out of captcha" error (When I tried to post it on the Current Events page that is.).

Oh and for the TF Types, you may want to add "Plant" (for TF's that are not animal based, but not quite Dryad based for the mythical category), and "Inanimate" (and maybe even Robotization or however you want to classify it).

I'm not quite sure if inanimate would be good enough as a catchall for a "living material' type TF (think X-Men's Colossus, and Ice Man, who turn into living steel and living ice respectively), or if we might want another type for that as well.

--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 13:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

:I'm working on this, but apparently the 'title' parameter isn't being properly set. When it's a red-link PHP is getting a URL that looks like 'index.php?title=XXX?title=XXX_talk&action=edit&redlink=1' and it's seeing that first 'title=' and not the second one. I'm trying to figure out how to solve that.
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

::Turned out to have several causes, all related to various problems with a code upgrade and several other problems that cropped up. Since I have yet to see this problem re-occur, I'm going to call it 'fixed'. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:38, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

== Story submission captcha? ==

I just went to post a new story and after I hit the 'save page' button, it took me to an edit screen that had:
Your edit includes new external links. To help protect against automated spam, please enter the words that appear below in the box
at the top. I looked and looked again and couldn't find any external links in my story. In fact there was no markup at all once I removed all the tab-indention on the paragraphs.

I'm all for automated systems blocking automated systems, but this sort of struck me as odd. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:01, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

:The regular expressions might have triggered on a non-link URL. But I cannot be certain, as this is the first report I've seen of it. (and sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Also, as long as I'm bugging you guys, any chance of getting an inverted color scheme skin? Dark text on a light background seems to be more difficult for me to read for any length of time than light text on a dark background. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

:The new 'shiftimin' skin took a while to get fully functional, but you could, likely, use "user CSS" to get the same result. Give me a bit of time and I'll see if I can get a "map" together for the CSS behind the "monobook" skin so you can override it easily. Alternatively you could poke at the CSS yourself, but...
:There is a page giving a minimal explanation of CSS at [[Help:Custom css]] and we have a page open to user additions about CSS hacks at [[Custom CSS Hacks]]. I've been planning to do up a page explaining the various classes of the primary 'MonoBook' skin for a while. Guess it's about time to actually get to work on that. (and again, sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

== Question ==
...from a nubcake guy. Just asking, is a story allowed to be set in a video game universe ([http://halo.wikia.com/The_Halo_Universe Halo]: w00t!)? 'Cos I wanna write a TF story set in there, but I'm not too sure if this is allowed on Shifti. Hope it's yes, 'cos it's already in progress. Thanks! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]
:We have no restrictions on fan-fiction, but if we receive a take-down notice it will be removed. (I run the server and would be the one facing the legal actions - so I will not fight a DMCA notice unless I am certain it is invalid) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
::Great! Well, I'm pretty sure Bungie, the copyright holder, encourages fan fic, so I think it's ok...Note "I think". I'm not sure how they'd react to TF fan fic. Thanks for confirming (and once again for the fave I can't tell you how much that means to me)! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]
:::Most companies are open to fan-fic, because it helps with the popularity of their product. And you got the "fav" because I saw real promise in the original and in your willingness to take constructive criticism. Every other author in my "new authors to watch" section has shown the same promise, though they haven't all been available to take the constructive criticism that could be offered. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:24, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi there! This is the noob writer, Drake, again, here for a fresh wave of bother-the-administrator. Sorry to bother you, but here I am. Bothering you. Anyway, I was hoping you could help critique my new story, [[User:WolfyDrake95/Finding Himself|Finding Himself]], which I uploaded a couple of days ago. I got comments from Guvnor of Space and Concerned Reader, but I thought I'd ask for your opinion since you were the only one who seemed actually care about my first, and admittedly not-so-good, story. I do hope you can drop a critique and a comment to help me improve.

The above was an email that I sent to you but received no reply for. And also, about the fanfic that this section was initially about: can I upload screenshots? Halo features a Theatre mode in which one can take screenshots of players or NPCs, so I think I could use screenshots to illustrate characters, etc. Anyway, thanks for reading so far! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]], 23:43, 27 June 2009

:Hey there, ShadowWolf, it's Drake again. Hope you could look through my [[User:WolfyDrake95/Letting Go|new story]], in case you haven't noticed. Yea, it's not very good, and it took a strange direction halfway through writing (becoming all wierd and sappy), but I hope it would merit, at least, a critic. Of course, if you're too busy, it's okay, I'm fine with that. I'm pretty sure critiqueing new writers isn't exactly the only thing you do ;).

:And by the way, if creating new info tags were possible, a "Critique Requested" one might be more effective in garnering critiques than the "Comment" tag that's provided. And in regards to my Halo-fanfic, is it okay if I put screenshots from in-game to illustrate? It'd be useful for people to understand what I'm saying, since Halo isn't as well known as Star Wars. —[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 12:48, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

::Sadly I'm going to have to decline a critique on that story. I have tried reading it and found that it did not interest me, sorry.

::As to the images... I am unsure about this, as there is content in the texture-maps and such that will wind up as part of the image that are copyright MS/Bungie. However... This would appear to be a case covered by the "Fair Use" exceptions, so unless a lawyer that uses Shifti can answer otherwise, go ahead and upload.

::The 'critique requested' template itself should be easy. I'll have to see about that at some point today. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:35, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

:::All right, I understand if you don't want to critique. I do know that this isn't exactly my best story...I suppose every writer has times when he writes bad. Just that I get these times more often. I sorta knew it was already bad, but I guess I needed someone to tell me that it was lousy, right to my face. Ah well.

:::As for the pictures, thanks! And for the template, another thanks. You're one hell of an admin! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 04:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

::::It's not that it isn't a good story, Drake. The problem is that when I tried reading it I was not able to get more than a few paragraphs in before I said "this is depressing"—I do not read anything that I can say that about because I suffer from bipolar disorder. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 11:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

::::Um...then I guess I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. And yeah, I guess I shouldn't write so many depressing stories; it certainly gets a little boring after a while, and I suppose you're right in that when people read stories, they probably won't like those that make them all depressed. I should put a warning on that story one of these days! Anyway, I think I should start on my more normal stories soon.
::::I don't know what to say about that last bit of what you said because I'm just a kid, and I'm not very smart and I'm terrified that I'll say something insensitive or insulting or whatever. I do that a lot of times, and the people on the receiving end tend to take offense. Sorry.
::::On the upside, I'm thinking of writing a PaW story soon. It's a cool story setting, the Pig and Whistle. Looks like a good setting for assassinations!
::::Still, thanks for taking the time to clarify the issue. I suddenly feel happy. :) —[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 13:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

:::::I don't offend easily—and if you ever do, you'll know it. Depressing stories can be good, too, but I stay away from them for medical reasons—bipolar disorder means I have massive mood swings and reading depressing stuff just feeds into that. There have been several times when I've read something really depressing and it had a very bad impact on me.
:::::On another note… You are a lot more intelligent and mature than most of the "kids" these days (IMNSHO). Most "kids" these days have almost no idea how to put a sentence together and you are one of the few that I have run into that can take criticism.
:::::As to a PaW story… The setting was created, as it says in the description and rules, as a "reboot" of the "Tales from the Blind Pig" setting. Within the last couple of years the "Blind Pig" setting has had numerous arguments over what is and is not "canon" between authors who have seen the setting grow and contributed and people just finding the setting. Because the creator has left it behind it has become something of a "lawless waste" with no real controls and people changing it from what the creator said is actually the reality of the setting. To solve this and make the setting much more internally consistent I asked around and a small group formed to generate the new setting. There is a lot more to the setting than has been revealed or is likely to be openly revealed to anyone anytime soon.
:::::And we tried to define only what was needed to give the setting its own identity so that the people actually interested in writing a story set there could create the setting itself. We only ask that you not set the story outside of the NAR/RoT/Quebec area unless you are actually from that other area. The reason for that is simply that we wish to allow people from those other regions to have control over what, exactly, happened to their regions after the collapse. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:45, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

{{Green|Well Wolfy is from Singapore, so he could open up that side of the world. On a side note, all 14-19 year olds I know on the internet have trouble with basic grammar and spelling when talking normally, so I wouldn't quite call your writing juvenile.}} --[[User:Concerned Reader|Concerned Reader]] 14:29, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

:Well, actually Singapore is pretty boring. Nothing's really cool or fun here (maybe I'm just used to it?), and society feels very...suppressed. There's no space for individuality. If you try to be yourself, you get mocked and stuff (like when my friends discovered that I was on Shifti). Bad story material. And as for deciding what happens to my region...I dunno. Best I don't, I have terrible imagination and my mind only circles around video games that I play.
:If I might refer you to the [[User_talk:WolfyDrake95/Letting Go|talk page]] of Letting Go, you'll find the rough plan of this PaW story.
:As for my writing, I won't deny that I'm very, very proud of it (my downfall), which is why I hurt a lot sometimes when criticized without knowing why (thus why I seemed so upset when I replied to ShadowWolf's declination). I also have a somewhat existant superiority complex (I got really jealous when ShadowWolf commented that Rabbit was impressed by CR's Rebuilding. Puberty? I dunno.)
:Even though I know I'm not that good a writer, I like to think that I write depressing stories because of my "painful experiences in life". Actually, it's because I read a lot of Michael Bard's work (both the sad ones and the happy ones). Both of which are awesome, by the way. I'll admit that I'm a fan of his. <3
:Oh, and thanks for the compliments, you two. I can feel my ego swelling already. :) —[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 14:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I hope I'm doing this right and putting it in the right place. If not, please accept my apology. If you have the time, I would like for you to take a look at the stories I've posted and offer some criticism. I've read enough of your material to trust your judgement. Also could you suggest others who might be able to help me to improve my work?
Thank you
Alveric

Just a quick question. I'm thinking about posting my stories on TSAT. Do you know where I can find some detailed instuctions on how to do that? I'm afraid my tech-savvy is on the low side.
Thanks
Alveric

With TSAT being a defunct e-zine, I'm assuming you're referring to the TSA-Talk mailing list. For that, well... First sign up for the mailing list, then the following advice will help:
# Make sure that your post is plain-text - copy to Notepad first and check for any characters that have disappeared. A number of us do not use Windows and the UTF-16 that windows uses for things like "smart quotes" becomes mojibake for us.
# If it contains adult material or things not safe for work, make sure to include the NSFW tag
# Don't expect comments and don't be so attached to your work that negative comments or criticism of any kind causes an adverse reaction
# Check spelling and grammar - the list is populated by quite a number of authors - some of which have been published. We do like to see people actually making an effort towards making their writings legible and understandable to others.
--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:04, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm been on the mailing list for a couple of months. I'll procede cautiously.

Alveric

Just made my first attempts to send a story to TSATalk. I sent it as an attachment, then thought attachments might not work, so I sent it the second time in the body of the message. I hope I didn't screw it up too bad.

Alveric

I noticed that on the 'All Authors' page, I'm listed as User:Alveric rather than just Alveric. Is there some way I could correct that? Thanks --[[User:Alveric|Alveric]] 17:09, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

:Fixed. Seems you just had the category set and the actual template we use for setting the stuff wasn't. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 17:16, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! --[[User:Alveric|Alveric]] 18:02, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

== RSS Feed? ==

Not sure if there's much you can do about this or if I'm using it wrong or expecting the wrong things. But I've signed up for the RSS feed on Shifti, and I'm not only getting the new changes soon after they occur, but I also get a bunch of changes that were already reported to me, often multiple times.
--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 11:46, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:That's the way the RSS feed works. It works similar to how the 'Recent Changes' page works by default. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:: True but it seems to be picking up changes it has already reported that haven't had any actual new changes done. For example, when Bryan was adding/updating the separator graphics, the RSS feed repeated it twice for each change he did, and that seems to happen a lot.
::--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:::I'd look closer - there were, in most cases, two files uploaded/updated - and yes, there is a bug somewhere in the system that is double-logging some events. I haven't been able to track that one down, though. It's about time to take a look and see if there is a new version of the code available, however, so I can see if an upgrade fixes the problem. (Most notably it is the new-user stuff that gets double-logged, but I have no idea how this is impacting the RSS feed) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:37, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:::: I meant that as a general example thouhg; not that in particular.

:::: Another example, I just got an RSS update now. I've been watching the feeds and had no recent updates from Shifti since this morning whence I'd gotten Jon's latest update and a few hours. The update I JUST got says there are 8 new changes, including Jon's After Hours addition again, Wolfy's New world addition and 4 entries for the RSS Feed discussion. (Despite this being the 4th entry now). All of the entries have a time of 4:03PM ADT. --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 19:21, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

::::: Odd... And I'm not really that knowledgeable about the MediaWiki code-base (yes, I can hack on it, but...) I have a feeling that the problem lies in how the system works. I think that it might be compiling a list of all changes within a certain period and sending it out. And if it isn't keeping a proper time-stamp on the items, that is a violation of the RSS spec, IIRC - since it is then pushing out duplicates without a way for readers to determine that with any degree of certainty. I'll sign up to the RSS feed myself and see if I can track the problem. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Okay - I've got my client signed up to the RSS feed for the [[Special:RecentChanges|Recent changes]] page. Let's see what this edit does... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Now I've seen the problem and it sucks. That one previous edit led to a major flood of '31 new edits' in my feed reader. Looks like I was right - it isn't properly date-tagging the entries. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:35, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Looked at the raw XML of the feed and it doesn't look like there is an error in it - though there might be. Let me go take a look at the RSS specs to see if I can figure out what is missing and/or not being set properly. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Ooooh... I think I just found the cause. Apparently the feed is claiming to be RSS 2.0 but it isn't putting a stable <guid/> tag on any of the entries. This tag is the method by which most RSS readers decide whether an item is new or not. The feed here does not have them. This is probably an oversight on the part of the person that wrote the code, but I cannot say. I'm going to go check Wikipedia to see if they have it there - because if they don't then the only reason that feeds of Wikipedia aren't getting overwhelmed is because of the volume of edits there. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Changed it to include the link-url as a guid - it should be genuinely unique to a specific page revision. Lets see if this fixes the problem... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Okay - I give up (for now) - because that last edit showed up with a massive number of others and the added <guid> tag doesn't seem to have helped any. Unless, of course, those <guid/> tags need a bit to start showing up... I really don't know. Might be time for me to look into cleaning out the cache table of the database. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:20, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: And that looks like it did do it after all. Bug report being marked CLOSED/RESOLVED. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Bug not completely resolved. On restart my RSS client has shown a singularly massive flood of repeated messages. This does not make sense to me, as it was not doing this during the testing yesterday - and I am willing to bet it will not show such action today. However it might be that the text I am using to generate the data for the GUID tag is not as stable as I once thought - this bothers me and makes me think I might have to go much deeper into the code for changes. Perhaps as deep as altering the 'feed item' class so that it requires the actual ID of the revision so that said ID can be used for the GUID. --[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:39, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Sadly... It looks like utilizing the Date of the edit might be the only way to uniquely identify them - in combination with the page title, that is. However, I shall not be making those changes at this time. What I shall be doing is finding a way to interact with another developer so that I can be certain this will permanently and fully squash this bug. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

: Not sure what's going on, but the problem seems to be cropping up again. I've gotten RSS feeds telling me of changes that I've already gotten before (and before and before)... --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:52, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

::Has to do with how the URL's are generated. Since I'm using the URL as the GUID, it looks like there is a periodic shift in them. I have zero clue how to fix it, because I'd have to come up with something that is genuinely unique as an identifier, and I can't think of anything that would work there. (at least, nothing that is actually available to the feed generator) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:15, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

== ShiftiMin-related stuff ==

I expect to be poking at the new theme with sharp sticks during the [[TSA-Bash]] anyways, but in the meantime I discovered (largely by happenstance) that if you're not logged in, there's no "log in / create account" link in ShiftiMin! I'd say that's a bug - unless we want to become a really exclusive club. ;) 
Looking pretty decent otherwise; we just need to figure out how to handle the menu organization. (Plus about eleventy billion other pet peeves with which I intend to drive you TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE. Mua ha ha.) --[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] 15:30, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

:I thought I'd gotten that bug (GAH! Must be related to me changing the user-options bits to a drop-down from the long list it was)
:Since Shiftimin does not work on versions of IE prior to 8 without a massive javascript hack it is not meant to be used as the primary skin for Shifti. This means that the 'missing login/create link' is a very low priority bug.
:I am currently poking at ideas for another design that is as (or more) minimalistic but is also designed to take full advantage of modern browsers CSS3 support and HTML5. That redesign is not public yet, since it is currently little more than an image in the GIMP.
:Oh, and I already am 'TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE' - I just hide it well. So driving me there is a very short trip... And... If you have any ideas at all for changes, just dump them here. I'll get on top of the ones that are fast/easy to implement immediately.
:And if you have Fx3.5 available, look at Shifti using the Shiftimin skin. All kinds of nifty little hacks I've added that target it. (Okay, so they could probably target Safari/WebKit and Konqueror/KHTML as well... but I'm not going to try and support all the alternative browsers until they agree on the format for the CSS. And Opera '''STILL''' does not support even the 'border-radius' property or the 'box-shadow' or 'text-shadow' properties)
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:02, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Hey there, ShadowWolf. Just poking in here to point out what seems to be a bug. The SiteSearch function isn't working; I believe it has something to do with the server crash and tech replacement the other day. If I click the Search button it shows

:A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:
::SELECT page_id, page_namespace, page_title FROM `shifti_page`,`shifti_searchindex` WHERE page_id=si_page AND MATCH(si_title) AGAINST('' IN BOOLEAN MODE) AND page_is_redirect=0 AND page_namespace IN ('0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','12','13','14','15') LIMIT 20
:from within function "". MySQL returned error "145: Table './shifti/shifti_searchindex' is marked as crashed and should be repaired (malfoy)".
I guess this isn't normal, but I'm also guessing that you might have already noticed. Anyway, sorry that I can't donate. I don't have PayPal or MasterCard or anything. —[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 13:15, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

::Thought I'd run the "check and repair" before bringing the new server live. Guess it didn't actually do the repair... It's fixed now - sorry for not spotting it myself :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:03, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

== Redirects ==

Just a heads-up, I noticed that [[PAW General TimeLine]] was linked to from [[Talk:Rebuilding]]. I didn't check all the redirects so there might be others. In general I think it's best not to delete redirects left behind by page moves, especially not when the redirect's name still accurately reflects the content it's redirecting to - even if you fix all the internal links there's still the possibility that other pages out on the web point there. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

== Links on archived pages ==

Hi ShadowWolf! Thanks for the welcome. :-)

I made the edits to the archived page because, well . . . posterity is nice, but if you don't actually get to the site intended, that's not very useful to readers! At WikiFur we either update outdated links, replace them with a link to archive.org, or remove them altogether; leaving them broken tends to results in linking to spam sites sooner or later. And WikiFur's old site is going down imminently. [[User:GreenReaper|GreenReaper]] 01:58, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

:Ah, well... I've added a new section to the front-page. For that set of archived pages we really should keep the links up-to-date. We have a larger problem right now that is in the process of being worked out - I'm sure you've seen the site-notice banner... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:21, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

== Spam Flood ==

What can we do about this? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 04:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

:So far there's only about a half dozen spam postings showing up per day, which is IMO quite manageable in terms of manual deletion. I'd recommend avoiding anything that might slow down legitimate posting. Maybe tweak the account creation captcha, if that's easy to do (I'd bet that spending more than a few hours working on it will probably be more time than is taken doing manual cleanup for the next month :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

:Right now I have a lot to do - including fixing the donation button. But a better captcha system than what we have is a good idea and I've been wondering if maybe using ReCaptcha would be a good idea. Very few spam-bots have cracked that one so far. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:18, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Seems to be coming in just brief surges. After that page of spam last night I went to bed expecting to have dozens more to delete in the morning, but no more came in. This one, too, may pass. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:35, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm moderating another Wiki, and it's been hit as hard, if not harder. It's annoying to say the least, and we're trying to figure out better options ourselves, but there isn't much that can be done. Damn spammers. --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 12:07, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

:I'm not going to try and fight the losing battle of who can outwit who. The only winner in that game is the spammers and everyone else loses big. The trick here is going to be finding a better way to secure the account creation and, at this point, file uploads. I have thought about an oversight system for monitoring uploads/page creation by new accounts, but it seems too draconian to me. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:24, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

This is getting worse than it was before. Looking at the Recent Changes page is very discouraging. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 08:18, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

:Looks like we'll have to change Captcha systems (there might be a way to use ReCaptcha, which is a "proven hard to break" system) and I am going to change the upload permissions so that you need to have "author" status. Give me a bit to look at things - the problem is that any system we go with has to be both easy on humans and tough on bots... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 11:42, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

::Sounds like a reasonable step to me, Shifti is not very image-oriented anyway and only a few stories have them. Shouldn't be any need for non-authors to upload them. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 23:20, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

:::Uploads locked to Authors and above and it turns out the Captcha system was disabled entirely for some reason. I've re-enabled it and told it to use a question/response type of Captcha instead of the images. I'd have gone with ReCaptcha, but that is not part of the modern code, apparently. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:38, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

User talk:ShadowWolf

2011-10-27T20:27:30Z

ClydesdaleTF: /* Sitenotice text */

how do you delete a page that has no content? I've had to modify a title of a story page and removed it's content, but the title still appears on my author page.
:Please sign with the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> - but generally you have to remove all content and then kill any links to it you've made. That'll "orphan" it and then an admin can go and do the actual delete. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:43, 3 October 2007 (EDT)
:Page deleted, Oberon. (Recent Edits is a wonderful tool!) - in the future, though, please sign all entries on a talk page using the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> specifier - it's what gives the nifty user link and timestamp. (and in requests for deletion, could you please include the page name ?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:48, 3 October 2007 (EDT)

==Sitenotice text==

Where did you put the text for the donation sitenotice? Normally it'd be at [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]], but I'm assuming since it's not there you've inserted it into the source code somewhere. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 20:46, 3 January 2008 (EST)

Never mind, I found it - MonoBook.php, right? I should move it out of that and into sitenotice, it won't appear for anyone who's using a different skin otherwise. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:01, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:Didn't know about the Sitenotice bit, so yeah, I did a bit of hacking and dumped it straight into the code from the primary skin. I actually had thought about dumping it directly into the Skin driver, but decided not to. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:08, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:There, fixed up. I pulled the code from the source and added a version to the [[Mediawiki:Sitenotice]]. "A Version" because I had to use the same custom tag I created for [[Shifti:Site support]] to do the button. (PayPal kinda requires it be a form with a crapload of hidden fields) — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:16, 3 January 2008 (EST)

::Heh. I was just working on that myself. Good to know I was on the right track. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:20, 3 January 2008 (EST)
::This is odd. It appears that integral.org is in the spam protection filter, I can't save [[Main Page]] now. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:37, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:::Not in any of the spamfilters I installed. It's not in the central MediaWiki list or in the site-specific list. I'll look deeper. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:00, 3 January 2008 (EST)
:::[[Special:Version]] doesn't have any spam-blockers besides [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist SpamBlacklist] and none of its lists have "integral" anywhere in them. So I don't know what the problem could be... Everything I've installed is hacked to not bug people that are in the Admin group about '''''ANYTHING''''', so I'm at a loss as to what the problem could be. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:04, 3 January 2008 (EST)

::::Well, whatever the problem was, it seems to have passed. I should have saved a copy of the error message but I suppose it's moot if it doesn't come back. BTW, I hope you don't mind the little tweaks I made to the sitenotice banner. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 23:38, 3 January 2008 (EST)

:::::Nah, it works. And I've reverted the changes I made, since it wasn't the cause of Felix's problem. He saw the Captcha, but apparently either 1) Didn't know what it was or 2) Couldn't read it. So I've just gone and given the "Author" permissions group a Captcha exception. — [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:49, 3 January 2008 (EST)

What do you think of the notion of putting a progress bar in the donation request, as demonstrated in [[Shifti:Sandbox]]? Wikipedia does it that way, and it might give people more incentive to donate in order to get rid of the banner. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:23, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:That's pretty nifty. Maybe have the bar in red, though :) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 01:30, 4 January 2008 (EST)

::There, added a color parameter. Red's a bit garish, though, maybe something a bit more pastel? [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:43, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:I hate that banner!! It offends me, I must destroy it by donating! *snicker* :)

--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 23:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)

:Wolfy, how do I become an author? I already have a story written.
[[User:ClydesdaleTF|ClydesdaleTF]]--[[User:ClydesdaleTF|ClydesdaleTF]] 20:27, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

== Broken Discussion pages and Captcha errors ==

Not sure what's going on. When I click on the Discussion link on a page that doesn't have a discussion, it takes me direct to that page's edit frame (NOT the Discussion page), and I seem to have full edit rights on it. Something seems to have gone wonky along the way.

Pre-existing Talk pages seem to work fine (as evidenced here), though when I was trying to post it gave me an "out of captcha" error (When I tried to post it on the Current Events page that is.).

Oh and for the TF Types, you may want to add "Plant" (for TF's that are not animal based, but not quite Dryad based for the mythical category), and "Inanimate" (and maybe even Robotization or however you want to classify it).

I'm not quite sure if inanimate would be good enough as a catchall for a "living material' type TF (think X-Men's Colossus, and Ice Man, who turn into living steel and living ice respectively), or if we might want another type for that as well.

--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 13:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

:I'm working on this, but apparently the 'title' parameter isn't being properly set. When it's a red-link PHP is getting a URL that looks like 'index.php?title=XXX?title=XXX_talk&action=edit&redlink=1' and it's seeing that first 'title=' and not the second one. I'm trying to figure out how to solve that.
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

::Turned out to have several causes, all related to various problems with a code upgrade and several other problems that cropped up. Since I have yet to see this problem re-occur, I'm going to call it 'fixed'. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:38, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

== Story submission captcha? ==

I just went to post a new story and after I hit the 'save page' button, it took me to an edit screen that had:
Your edit includes new external links. To help protect against automated spam, please enter the words that appear below in the box
at the top. I looked and looked again and couldn't find any external links in my story. In fact there was no markup at all once I removed all the tab-indention on the paragraphs.

I'm all for automated systems blocking automated systems, but this sort of struck me as odd. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:01, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

:The regular expressions might have triggered on a non-link URL. But I cannot be certain, as this is the first report I've seen of it. (and sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Also, as long as I'm bugging you guys, any chance of getting an inverted color scheme skin? Dark text on a light background seems to be more difficult for me to read for any length of time than light text on a dark background. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

:The new 'shiftimin' skin took a while to get fully functional, but you could, likely, use "user CSS" to get the same result. Give me a bit of time and I'll see if I can get a "map" together for the CSS behind the "monobook" skin so you can override it easily. Alternatively you could poke at the CSS yourself, but...
:There is a page giving a minimal explanation of CSS at [[Help:Custom css]] and we have a page open to user additions about CSS hacks at [[Custom CSS Hacks]]. I've been planning to do up a page explaining the various classes of the primary 'MonoBook' skin for a while. Guess it's about time to actually get to work on that. (and again, sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

== Question ==
...from a nubcake guy. Just asking, is a story allowed to be set in a video game universe ([http://halo.wikia.com/The_Halo_Universe Halo]: w00t!)? 'Cos I wanna write a TF story set in there, but I'm not too sure if this is allowed on Shifti. Hope it's yes, 'cos it's already in progress. Thanks! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]
:We have no restrictions on fan-fiction, but if we receive a take-down notice it will be removed. (I run the server and would be the one facing the legal actions - so I will not fight a DMCA notice unless I am certain it is invalid) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
::Great! Well, I'm pretty sure Bungie, the copyright holder, encourages fan fic, so I think it's ok...Note "I think". I'm not sure how they'd react to TF fan fic. Thanks for confirming (and once again for the fave I can't tell you how much that means to me)! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]
:::Most companies are open to fan-fic, because it helps with the popularity of their product. And you got the "fav" because I saw real promise in the original and in your willingness to take constructive criticism. Every other author in my "new authors to watch" section has shown the same promise, though they haven't all been available to take the constructive criticism that could be offered. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:24, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi there! This is the noob writer, Drake, again, here for a fresh wave of bother-the-administrator. Sorry to bother you, but here I am. Bothering you. Anyway, I was hoping you could help critique my new story, [[User:WolfyDrake95/Finding Himself|Finding Himself]], which I uploaded a couple of days ago. I got comments from Guvnor of Space and Concerned Reader, but I thought I'd ask for your opinion since you were the only one who seemed actually care about my first, and admittedly not-so-good, story. I do hope you can drop a critique and a comment to help me improve.

The above was an email that I sent to you but received no reply for. And also, about the fanfic that this section was initially about: can I upload screenshots? Halo features a Theatre mode in which one can take screenshots of players or NPCs, so I think I could use screenshots to illustrate characters, etc. Anyway, thanks for reading so far! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]], 23:43, 27 June 2009

:Hey there, ShadowWolf, it's Drake again. Hope you could look through my [[User:WolfyDrake95/Letting Go|new story]], in case you haven't noticed. Yea, it's not very good, and it took a strange direction halfway through writing (becoming all wierd and sappy), but I hope it would merit, at least, a critic. Of course, if you're too busy, it's okay, I'm fine with that. I'm pretty sure critiqueing new writers isn't exactly the only thing you do ;).

:And by the way, if creating new info tags were possible, a "Critique Requested" one might be more effective in garnering critiques than the "Comment" tag that's provided. And in regards to my Halo-fanfic, is it okay if I put screenshots from in-game to illustrate? It'd be useful for people to understand what I'm saying, since Halo isn't as well known as Star Wars. —[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 12:48, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

::Sadly I'm going to have to decline a critique on that story. I have tried reading it and found that it did not interest me, sorry.

::As to the images... I am unsure about this, as there is content in the texture-maps and such that will wind up as part of the image that are copyright MS/Bungie. However... This would appear to be a case covered by the "Fair Use" exceptions, so unless a lawyer that uses Shifti can answer otherwise, go ahead and upload.

::The 'critique requested' template itself should be easy. I'll have to see about that at some point today. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:35, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

:::All right, I understand if you don't want to critique. I do know that this isn't exactly my best story...I suppose every writer has times when he writes bad. Just that I get these times more often. I sorta knew it was already bad, but I guess I needed someone to tell me that it was lousy, right to my face. Ah well.

:::As for the pictures, thanks! And for the template, another thanks. You're one hell of an admin! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 04:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

::::It's not that it isn't a good story, Drake. The problem is that when I tried reading it I was not able to get more than a few paragraphs in before I said "this is depressing"—I do not read anything that I can say that about because I suffer from bipolar disorder. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 11:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

::::Um...then I guess I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. And yeah, I guess I shouldn't write so many depressing stories; it certainly gets a little boring after a while, and I suppose you're right in that when people read stories, they probably won't like those that make them all depressed. I should put a warning on that story one of these days! Anyway, I think I should start on my more normal stories soon.
::::I don't know what to say about that last bit of what you said because I'm just a kid, and I'm not very smart and I'm terrified that I'll say something insensitive or insulting or whatever. I do that a lot of times, and the people on the receiving end tend to take offense. Sorry.
::::On the upside, I'm thinking of writing a PaW story soon. It's a cool story setting, the Pig and Whistle. Looks like a good setting for assassinations!
::::Still, thanks for taking the time to clarify the issue. I suddenly feel happy. :) —[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 13:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

:::::I don't offend easily—and if you ever do, you'll know it. Depressing stories can be good, too, but I stay away from them for medical reasons—bipolar disorder means I have massive mood swings and reading depressing stuff just feeds into that. There have been several times when I've read something really depressing and it had a very bad impact on me.
:::::On another note… You are a lot more intelligent and mature than most of the "kids" these days (IMNSHO). Most "kids" these days have almost no idea how to put a sentence together and you are one of the few that I have run into that can take criticism.
:::::As to a PaW story… The setting was created, as it says in the description and rules, as a "reboot" of the "Tales from the Blind Pig" setting. Within the last couple of years the "Blind Pig" setting has had numerous arguments over what is and is not "canon" between authors who have seen the setting grow and contributed and people just finding the setting. Because the creator has left it behind it has become something of a "lawless waste" with no real controls and people changing it from what the creator said is actually the reality of the setting. To solve this and make the setting much more internally consistent I asked around and a small group formed to generate the new setting. There is a lot more to the setting than has been revealed or is likely to be openly revealed to anyone anytime soon.
:::::And we tried to define only what was needed to give the setting its own identity so that the people actually interested in writing a story set there could create the setting itself. We only ask that you not set the story outside of the NAR/RoT/Quebec area unless you are actually from that other area. The reason for that is simply that we wish to allow people from those other regions to have control over what, exactly, happened to their regions after the collapse. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:45, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

{{Green|Well Wolfy is from Singapore, so he could open up that side of the world. On a side note, all 14-19 year olds I know on the internet have trouble with basic grammar and spelling when talking normally, so I wouldn't quite call your writing juvenile.}} --[[User:Concerned Reader|Concerned Reader]] 14:29, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

:Well, actually Singapore is pretty boring. Nothing's really cool or fun here (maybe I'm just used to it?), and society feels very...suppressed. There's no space for individuality. If you try to be yourself, you get mocked and stuff (like when my friends discovered that I was on Shifti). Bad story material. And as for deciding what happens to my region...I dunno. Best I don't, I have terrible imagination and my mind only circles around video games that I play.
:If I might refer you to the [[User_talk:WolfyDrake95/Letting Go|talk page]] of Letting Go, you'll find the rough plan of this PaW story.
:As for my writing, I won't deny that I'm very, very proud of it (my downfall), which is why I hurt a lot sometimes when criticized without knowing why (thus why I seemed so upset when I replied to ShadowWolf's declination). I also have a somewhat existant superiority complex (I got really jealous when ShadowWolf commented that Rabbit was impressed by CR's Rebuilding. Puberty? I dunno.)
:Even though I know I'm not that good a writer, I like to think that I write depressing stories because of my "painful experiences in life". Actually, it's because I read a lot of Michael Bard's work (both the sad ones and the happy ones). Both of which are awesome, by the way. I'll admit that I'm a fan of his. <3
:Oh, and thanks for the compliments, you two. I can feel my ego swelling already. :) —[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 14:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I hope I'm doing this right and putting it in the right place. If not, please accept my apology. If you have the time, I would like for you to take a look at the stories I've posted and offer some criticism. I've read enough of your material to trust your judgement. Also could you suggest others who might be able to help me to improve my work?
Thank you
Alveric

Just a quick question. I'm thinking about posting my stories on TSAT. Do you know where I can find some detailed instuctions on how to do that? I'm afraid my tech-savvy is on the low side.
Thanks
Alveric

With TSAT being a defunct e-zine, I'm assuming you're referring to the TSA-Talk mailing list. For that, well... First sign up for the mailing list, then the following advice will help:
# Make sure that your post is plain-text - copy to Notepad first and check for any characters that have disappeared. A number of us do not use Windows and the UTF-16 that windows uses for things like "smart quotes" becomes mojibake for us.
# If it contains adult material or things not safe for work, make sure to include the NSFW tag
# Don't expect comments and don't be so attached to your work that negative comments or criticism of any kind causes an adverse reaction
# Check spelling and grammar - the list is populated by quite a number of authors - some of which have been published. We do like to see people actually making an effort towards making their writings legible and understandable to others.
--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:04, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm been on the mailing list for a couple of months. I'll procede cautiously.

Alveric

Just made my first attempts to send a story to TSATalk. I sent it as an attachment, then thought attachments might not work, so I sent it the second time in the body of the message. I hope I didn't screw it up too bad.

Alveric

I noticed that on the 'All Authors' page, I'm listed as User:Alveric rather than just Alveric. Is there some way I could correct that? Thanks --[[User:Alveric|Alveric]] 17:09, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

:Fixed. Seems you just had the category set and the actual template we use for setting the stuff wasn't. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 17:16, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! --[[User:Alveric|Alveric]] 18:02, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

== RSS Feed? ==

Not sure if there's much you can do about this or if I'm using it wrong or expecting the wrong things. But I've signed up for the RSS feed on Shifti, and I'm not only getting the new changes soon after they occur, but I also get a bunch of changes that were already reported to me, often multiple times.
--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 11:46, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:That's the way the RSS feed works. It works similar to how the 'Recent Changes' page works by default. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:: True but it seems to be picking up changes it has already reported that haven't had any actual new changes done. For example, when Bryan was adding/updating the separator graphics, the RSS feed repeated it twice for each change he did, and that seems to happen a lot.
::--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:::I'd look closer - there were, in most cases, two files uploaded/updated - and yes, there is a bug somewhere in the system that is double-logging some events. I haven't been able to track that one down, though. It's about time to take a look and see if there is a new version of the code available, however, so I can see if an upgrade fixes the problem. (Most notably it is the new-user stuff that gets double-logged, but I have no idea how this is impacting the RSS feed) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:37, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

:::: I meant that as a general example thouhg; not that in particular.

:::: Another example, I just got an RSS update now. I've been watching the feeds and had no recent updates from Shifti since this morning whence I'd gotten Jon's latest update and a few hours. The update I JUST got says there are 8 new changes, including Jon's After Hours addition again, Wolfy's New world addition and 4 entries for the RSS Feed discussion. (Despite this being the 4th entry now). All of the entries have a time of 4:03PM ADT. --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 19:21, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

::::: Odd... And I'm not really that knowledgeable about the MediaWiki code-base (yes, I can hack on it, but...) I have a feeling that the problem lies in how the system works. I think that it might be compiling a list of all changes within a certain period and sending it out. And if it isn't keeping a proper time-stamp on the items, that is a violation of the RSS spec, IIRC - since it is then pushing out duplicates without a way for readers to determine that with any degree of certainty. I'll sign up to the RSS feed myself and see if I can track the problem. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Okay - I've got my client signed up to the RSS feed for the [[Special:RecentChanges|Recent changes]] page. Let's see what this edit does... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Now I've seen the problem and it sucks. That one previous edit led to a major flood of '31 new edits' in my feed reader. Looks like I was right - it isn't properly date-tagging the entries. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:35, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Looked at the raw XML of the feed and it doesn't look like there is an error in it - though there might be. Let me go take a look at the RSS specs to see if I can figure out what is missing and/or not being set properly. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Ooooh... I think I just found the cause. Apparently the feed is claiming to be RSS 2.0 but it isn't putting a stable <guid/> tag on any of the entries. This tag is the method by which most RSS readers decide whether an item is new or not. The feed here does not have them. This is probably an oversight on the part of the person that wrote the code, but I cannot say. I'm going to go check Wikipedia to see if they have it there - because if they don't then the only reason that feeds of Wikipedia aren't getting overwhelmed is because of the volume of edits there. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Changed it to include the link-url as a guid - it should be genuinely unique to a specific page revision. Lets see if this fixes the problem... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Okay - I give up (for now) - because that last edit showed up with a massive number of others and the added <guid> tag doesn't seem to have helped any. Unless, of course, those <guid/> tags need a bit to start showing up... I really don't know. Might be time for me to look into cleaning out the cache table of the database. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:20, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: And that looks like it did do it after all. Bug report being marked CLOSED/RESOLVED. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Bug not completely resolved. On restart my RSS client has shown a singularly massive flood of repeated messages. This does not make sense to me, as it was not doing this during the testing yesterday - and I am willing to bet it will not show such action today. However it might be that the text I am using to generate the data for the GUID tag is not as stable as I once thought - this bothers me and makes me think I might have to go much deeper into the code for changes. Perhaps as deep as altering the 'feed item' class so that it requires the actual ID of the revision so that said ID can be used for the GUID. --[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:39, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
::::: Sadly... It looks like utilizing the Date of the edit might be the only way to uniquely identify them - in combination with the page title, that is. However, I shall not be making those changes at this time. What I shall be doing is finding a way to interact with another developer so that I can be certain this will permanently and fully squash this bug. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

: Not sure what's going on, but the problem seems to be cropping up again. I've gotten RSS feeds telling me of changes that I've already gotten before (and before and before)... --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:52, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

::Has to do with how the URL's are generated. Since I'm using the URL as the GUID, it looks like there is a periodic shift in them. I have zero clue how to fix it, because I'd have to come up with something that is genuinely unique as an identifier, and I can't think of anything that would work there. (at least, nothing that is actually available to the feed generator) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:15, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

== ShiftiMin-related stuff ==

I expect to be poking at the new theme with sharp sticks during the [[TSA-Bash]] anyways, but in the meantime I discovered (largely by happenstance) that if you're not logged in, there's no "log in / create account" link in ShiftiMin! I'd say that's a bug - unless we want to become a really exclusive club. ;) 
Looking pretty decent otherwise; we just need to figure out how to handle the menu organization. (Plus about eleventy billion other pet peeves with which I intend to drive you TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE. Mua ha ha.) --[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] 15:30, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

:I thought I'd gotten that bug (GAH! Must be related to me changing the user-options bits to a drop-down from the long list it was)
:Since Shiftimin does not work on versions of IE prior to 8 without a massive javascript hack it is not meant to be used as the primary skin for Shifti. This means that the 'missing login/create link' is a very low priority bug.
:I am currently poking at ideas for another design that is as (or more) minimalistic but is also designed to take full advantage of modern browsers CSS3 support and HTML5. That redesign is not public yet, since it is currently little more than an image in the GIMP.
:Oh, and I already am 'TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE' - I just hide it well. So driving me there is a very short trip... And... If you have any ideas at all for changes, just dump them here. I'll get on top of the ones that are fast/easy to implement immediately.
:And if you have Fx3.5 available, look at Shifti using the Shiftimin skin. All kinds of nifty little hacks I've added that target it. (Okay, so they could probably target Safari/WebKit and Konqueror/KHTML as well... but I'm not going to try and support all the alternative browsers until they agree on the format for the CSS. And Opera '''STILL''' does not support even the 'border-radius' property or the 'box-shadow' or 'text-shadow' properties)
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:02, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Hey there, ShadowWolf. Just poking in here to point out what seems to be a bug. The SiteSearch function isn't working; I believe it has something to do with the server crash and tech replacement the other day. If I click the Search button it shows

:A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:
::SELECT page_id, page_namespace, page_title FROM `shifti_page`,`shifti_searchindex` WHERE page_id=si_page AND MATCH(si_title) AGAINST('' IN BOOLEAN MODE) AND page_is_redirect=0 AND page_namespace IN ('0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','12','13','14','15') LIMIT 20
:from within function "". MySQL returned error "145: Table './shifti/shifti_searchindex' is marked as crashed and should be repaired (malfoy)".
I guess this isn't normal, but I'm also guessing that you might have already noticed. Anyway, sorry that I can't donate. I don't have PayPal or MasterCard or anything. —[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 13:15, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

::Thought I'd run the "check and repair" before bringing the new server live. Guess it didn't actually do the repair... It's fixed now - sorry for not spotting it myself :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:03, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

== Redirects ==

Just a heads-up, I noticed that [[PAW General TimeLine]] was linked to from [[Talk:Rebuilding]]. I didn't check all the redirects so there might be others. In general I think it's best not to delete redirects left behind by page moves, especially not when the redirect's name still accurately reflects the content it's redirecting to - even if you fix all the internal links there's still the possibility that other pages out on the web point there. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

== Links on archived pages ==

Hi ShadowWolf! Thanks for the welcome. :-)

I made the edits to the archived page because, well . . . posterity is nice, but if you don't actually get to the site intended, that's not very useful to readers! At WikiFur we either update outdated links, replace them with a link to archive.org, or remove them altogether; leaving them broken tends to results in linking to spam sites sooner or later. And WikiFur's old site is going down imminently. [[User:GreenReaper|GreenReaper]] 01:58, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

:Ah, well... I've added a new section to the front-page. For that set of archived pages we really should keep the links up-to-date. We have a larger problem right now that is in the process of being worked out - I'm sure you've seen the site-notice banner... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:21, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

== Spam Flood ==

What can we do about this? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 04:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

:So far there's only about a half dozen spam postings showing up per day, which is IMO quite manageable in terms of manual deletion. I'd recommend avoiding anything that might slow down legitimate posting. Maybe tweak the account creation captcha, if that's easy to do (I'd bet that spending more than a few hours working on it will probably be more time than is taken doing manual cleanup for the next month :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

:Right now I have a lot to do - including fixing the donation button. But a better captcha system than what we have is a good idea and I've been wondering if maybe using ReCaptcha would be a good idea. Very few spam-bots have cracked that one so far. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:18, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Seems to be coming in just brief surges. After that page of spam last night I went to bed expecting to have dozens more to delete in the morning, but no more came in. This one, too, may pass. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:35, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm moderating another Wiki, and it's been hit as hard, if not harder. It's annoying to say the least, and we're trying to figure out better options ourselves, but there isn't much that can be done. Damn spammers. --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 12:07, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

:I'm not going to try and fight the losing battle of who can outwit who. The only winner in that game is the spammers and everyone else loses big. The trick here is going to be finding a better way to secure the account creation and, at this point, file uploads. I have thought about an oversight system for monitoring uploads/page creation by new accounts, but it seems too draconian to me. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:24, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

This is getting worse than it was before. Looking at the Recent Changes page is very discouraging. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 08:18, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

:Looks like we'll have to change Captcha systems (there might be a way to use ReCaptcha, which is a "proven hard to break" system) and I am going to change the upload permissions so that you need to have "author" status. Give me a bit to look at things - the problem is that any system we go with has to be both easy on humans and tough on bots... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 11:42, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

::Sounds like a reasonable step to me, Shifti is not very image-oriented anyway and only a few stories have them. Shouldn't be any need for non-authors to upload them. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 23:20, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

:::Uploads locked to Authors and above and it turns out the Captcha system was disabled entirely for some reason. I've re-enabled it and told it to use a question/response type of Captcha instead of the images. I'd have gone with ReCaptcha, but that is not part of the modern code, apparently. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:38, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

The Curse of Sajhelkunem's Tomb

2011-10-27T20:12:17Z

ClydesdaleTF: Archeologists find a tomb, with a life changing curse!

[[Category:Equine|Curse of Sajhelkunem's Tomb, The]]
'''The Curse of Sajhelkunem’s Tomb'''

Author: ClydesdaleTF

Samuel Ingram surveyed the sand dunes with his binoculars, knowing the sandy wilderness could contain more than his research team. He knew there were surely bandits camping out here, even under the blazing hot sun, ready to assault an Egyptologist team traveling to an excavation site. The year was 1924, only a few years after the Great War, and Ingram left his position as a flyboy for the Royal Air Corps and found a career in archeology, a career he had only a couple of years dreamt about.

It was midday by the time Samuel’s team made it to the excavation site. It was there he met a familiar face. “Smith? Jacob Smith from London?” Samuel questioned in surprise, “I thought you were going to settle in America!” “I did, for a while,” replied Jacob, who then took a swig from his water canteen, “It’s a great country,” he continued, “plenty of opportunity. But, it is here where my true talent is. Why, I found the location of this tomb all by myself without the aid of the famed Howard Carter, who, if you’ve been living under a rock, discovered the tomb of King Tut!” Jacob brought a handkerchief to his forehead, wiping the sweat off his brow and went on, “I could unearth this tomb without a licensed Egyptologist team, but, it’s only proper procedure. . .” Jacob had changed a lot since Samuel last saw him college back in England. And at his colleague’s last remarks, he felt like a great trouble to him.

Since Jacob didn’t appear that he would stop rambling on his own, Samuel was forced to interrupt, “Excuse me, I would love to sit and chat about this over tea and crumpets, but I don’t happen to have either on me. But, I do have the excavation tools you requested.” “Right then,” Jacob responded in a rather unfazed voice, “start unpacking your gear I the supplies tent. Hold on,” he said, curiously, “that’s an odd looking container for storing excavation equipment.” “It’s nothing,” Samuel vainly attempted to cease his partner’s suspicion.

Kicking up sand as he strode, Samuel approached his colleague who was digging into the huge storage container in awe. “Samuel, my friend, I called for digging tools only, not the Ingram arsenal!” “One has to come prepared to face potential bandits in a foreign country!” Samuel interjected. “Prepared? You are militarized! What have we here? I count at least 20 Le Enfield bolt action rifles, over a dozen M1921 Thompson sub-machine guns, several Browning lever action shot guns, and . . .is that a Lewis gun?” “You know your firearms,” Samuel said jokingly. “Samuel, lad! The war has done strange things to your mind! An archeologist only needs a handgun, contrary to all your—toys! How the blue blazes did you get your hands on these anyway? I mean, legally!?” Their heated conversation in an already heated climate continued to go on while Samuel’s men unloaded the rest of the gear. Only when the Egyptian desert began to cool did the two men cease to argue. The night was a cloudless night; a windy one as well. The breeze carried sand over the excavation team’s tents, while the moon and stars shone brilliantly in the heavens above, casting their glow onto the Sahara sand.

The entire next morning was filled the voices of workers as the tirelessly dug in the spot Jacob marked as this tomb’s location. Most of the workers were native to the country, and wore simple clothing, consisting mainly of a white garment and a white turban or veil, quite appropriate for such a sunlit environment. Samuel wore a white collared shirt, sleeves rolled up, and khaki pants along with knee high working boots, very effective against the desert sand. He carried a Colt .45 semi-automatic in his holster along with an Enfield rifle slung to his back. Jacob wore a similar fashion, but wore a blue shirt instead. He also had a fedora instead of a sun helmet his counterpart wore. He had no rifle, but kept a Mauser “broom handle” automatic in his belt holster.

The digging process took longer than expected; even Jacob was worried his calculations were off, but as the midday sun hung over the eager man, the diggers revealed the entrance of the tomb. It was a stone slab with the markings of Anubis accompanied by two eagles and dozens of other bizarre hieroglyphic shapes. It was midafternoon when the team finally lifted the stone door, revealing what Jacob had hoped to discover, the dark tunnel that was undoubtedly the passage to the prized tomb of Sajhelkunem, a well decorated veteran of one of Egypt’s greatest campaigns. Jacob knew nothing more about this tomb. He did not know about the enchantments and curses set by the priests whose bones now littered the sacred ground of this catacomb.

Down, the stairs took them through the surprisingly wide tunnel with walls adjourned with hieroglyphics. To Samuel and Jacob, these pictures were mere decorations; to Isaac Powell, their highest ranking Egyptologist scholar, these “pictures” served as a clear warning that the whole team should acknowledge. “Gents! If I may?” The two archeologist leaders turned his way. “What is it, Isaac?” Samuel’s voice echoed through the tunnel. The team huddled around his lantern, but it was the hieroglyphics that grew their attention.

“First of all,” Isaac said, pointing towards the blackness of the tunnel ahead, “that tunnel will lead to a dead end. But first a trap, most likely a pit. I’ve been through so many tombs in which the first path is a fake one.” “So we’ll just proceed with caution and watch for another path,” Jacob concluded. Isaac knocked his fist against the stone wall and marveled at the sound. “This wall is hollow; it needs to come down.” At this news Jacob looked at Samuel and said, “Ingram, get your men and have them bring their equipment.” “Will do!” Before he could go, Jacob added, “And bring the right tools; we need to bust this tomb fast. It’s already getting close to dinner.” Right, I have just the hardware you need.” And with that, Samuel hurried to the camp.

During Sam’s absence, Isaac had time to inspect the hieroglyphics more closely, knowing the wall would most likely be completely demolished. “Mr. Smith?” Isaac called, with a touch of fear in his voice. “What is it?” “I expected to find this—a curse.” “I don’t care about any curses!” Jacob scolded, clearly upset to find out his interpreter was affected by such fantasies. “Tell that to Mr. Carnarvon, sir!” “He is dead,” Jacob said, feeling some remorse for an old competitor. “He died last year.” “I know very well about his death, Mr. Smith. A ‘mosquito bite’, I read it in the newspapers. But what I meant was that he was part of Howard Carter’s team when they pillaged the tomb of King Tut. His death was a result of the curse. And don’t get me started on George Jay Gould! Now this curse here is not necessarily a death curse. It—” “Stand clear of the wall—everyone!” a voiced echoed through the tunnel; It was Samuel’s. The tunnel was dark, but Jacob could see this colleague’s workers were holding their excavation tools—or so he thought.

When it all came together, each worker on the far side from the hieroglyphic wall pointing their “tools” at it, he could not object. “Fire!” With that, the tunnel was filled with the deafening staccato report of the worker’s Thompson sub-machine guns. After each worker had unloaded each of their 50-round drum magazines, the wall was but a memory.

“Mr. Ingram!” Jacob bellowed, hardly hearing his own voice, “You may have just kissed your career goodbye. “You are entirely unprofessional—even for a trigger happy military man! Why couldn’t have you just brought the tools?!” “Sir,” one Samuel’s workers answered, “the equipment tent was gone, along with all the tools! It was pitched in quicksand.” “If you don’t believe us,” Samuel continued, “ask your team who lazily watched it all sink. Jacob accepted this, knowing this was his own mistake. “Alright, Sam, no harm done. But you could’ve told us to cover our ears,” he eyed the ear protection Samuel’s team wore. “Let’s get into this tomb.”

“The air was very muggy and thin, like breathing into a box of dust. The team thought it best to let the room air out a bit, but Jacob pressed them on, always reminding them of no dinner until they at least find Sajhelkunem’s sarcophagus. Since the lanterns Jacob’s group initially brought did little to illuminate the tomb, he was forced to bring the electric lamps used for the camp. It seemed a bit of an overhaul, but it was worth it. The room they were in, and the objects it housed were clearly revealed. It was a square room, with no other passageways. In this tomb was the dead Egyptian’s coffin, death mask; countless clay jars, golden treasure, bones—no one paid much attention to those, and alters. But, the object that drew the most attention was a chariot made of the purest gold.

“Unbelievable,” Jacob muttered, removing his hat. Samuel was quite fond of the chariot himself; he even climbed right into the ancient vehicle. Just then, the silence was broken by the earsplitting crackle of one of the worker’s guns. Everyone was startled out of their euphoria. “Who the Tut did that?!” roared Jacob, in a serious but yet humorous tone. “It was from my gun, sir,” a worker confessed, placing his weapon on the floor. “I did not pull the trigger, sir, it was slung to my back—with the safety on!” he started to stammer now, with a look of terror on his face. He felt something, some strange force in the room. To the rest of the team he looked as if he was losing his mind. Then, he really did snap. Out the door he sped, bolting towards the exit of the tunnel with an inhuman shriek that gave everyone the chills. The electric lamp began to flicker, which added to the tomb’s new eeriness. Just then, Samuel was pushed over the front of the chariot and into a pile of dusty old bones. He quickly recovered and noticed he was standing in a horse’s crumpled skeleton. But what left poor Sam wide eyed was that his assailant was nowhere to be seen.

A great wind enveloped the room, forming a vortex in its center. “Let’s get out of here!” Isaac hollered, bolting for his life. The rest of the team, including Jacob, followed his example, kicking up sand as they sprinted. Samuel, however, was the last to leave. He tripped over one of his men’s Thompsons leaving his biting the dust, literally. He gathered himself in a hurry and picked up the discarded weapon. He spun around and saw what appeared to be a ghostly image of a man hovering inside the dust devil. In a panic, Samuel sprayed the phantom with his Tommy gun, and ran out the tunnel faster than he had ever run before.

“One! Two! Three! Heave!” Jacob commanded. Every man close by helped slide the stone slab entrance in place in a speed that revealed the desperation to forget this horrendous moment. After the tomb door was sealed, they went as far as trying to bury it. When the work was finished, Jacob announced dinner and said they would leave at first light tomorrow morning. No one in the camp argued against his word, for they all knew what had transpired that day; some even pleaded to leave tonight. With all being settled, the team sat down to dine. All except Samuel, who felt the most troubled now. He could not forget what he saw and heard. The ghost said things, things in a language Samuel never heard before, but somehow he knew what it meant. “A curse is upon us,” he muttered to himself.

That night, while the men were still dining, Samuel could keep to himself no more. “Doc!” he gasped as he stumbled into the medical tent, “something wrong with me!” “I can see that,” acknowledged Isaac—not only a professional Egyptologist but a doctor as well, “however, be more specific than a ‘something’s wrong,’ please.” “I have no way of explaining, I feel like—,” he was forced to clutch his stomach as he grimaced. It wasn’t a painful sensation in the abdominal area, but in all senses the only word Samuel could use to describe it was, “odd.”

“Well, have a seat now, Mr. Ingram, and I will see what’s going o here. You didn’t try any of the steak did you? Jacob is not a very good chief from personal experience.” “No,” Sam panted, unbuttoning his shirt, “This is not a stomach ache or pain it’s more like—“ While Samuel searched for a word to describe his condition, Isaac’s eyes were drawn to his patient’s torso, now covered with fine white hair; also quite deformed. “I think I see your problem,” Isaac said, shocked at the site. Samuel looked down at himself with a sudden dread, seeing the cause of his discomfort. “Whoa!” he hollered, “What is this?! Is this common in the desert?!” “No—I don’t think so. . .” Isaac was lost in thought of Sam’s appearance. Never before in his medical experience had he seen or even heard of this ailment. He was just about to give an educated guess on his patient’s condition when troubled shouts and groans emitted from the rest of the camp. One man hollered, “Jack! You are a terrible cook!” followed by a few chuckles which soon quickly changed into moans. “Stay right here,” Isaac instructed, “take a few sips of this water. I’ll be right back!” That being said, Isaac grabbed his oil lantern and strode from the tent, glancing back at Samuel as he left.

By now, Samuel had absolutely no doubt that this was a c curse he and the rest of the team had triggered from the tomb. He began thinking about that golden chariot; the horse’s bones that lay in front of it. He was pulled from his thoughts by a new odd feeling, this one from his head. It began as a common headache, but it stretched from his forehead to his ears, from his ears to his nose. Next thing he knew, he was yanking his boots off, for his feet started a unique sensation as well. They seemed to tingle, then go numb. However, once he pulled off the boots, he no longer had feet, but hooves. Samuel was no longer confused; he fully realized this curse was transforming his body. Into what, though? A bull had hooves, but so did a goat. Feeling his face shift, he desperately felt he needed to have a look. He stood up to walk, but fell to his knees, which had just lost all qualities human knees would have. The pants had to go otherwise they would rip. It wasn’t the loss of modesty that had him worried, for what kind of an animal wore pants? What had him worried was the pain it made on his rapidly growing body. It was good he had removed his pants, especially his belt, because after doing so his hands almost instantly began deforming into hooves. His shoulders shifted to a new position; his neck grew thick and long. It was no question to him what he had become, and was yet becoming. Judging by the formation of flanks from where his knees used to connect to his waist, the shape of all four legs and hooves, his equine tail, and his underside, Samuel was now a stallion.

At this moment, Samuel did not know what to think. At the beginning of his transformation, he was filled with horror, but now, he actually felt quite comfortable, as a matter of fact he felt relaxed. Is this really a curse? He asked himself, almost rhetorically. His thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of half screams and whinnies echoing through the night. It must be for some, he thought to himself with a soft nicker. Walking with equine legs felt like a simple task as he strode out of the tent; as if walking on four legs instead of two was the proper way to travel. Of course, he rationalized to himself, with his new form came new instincts; a new way of thinking.

“My hands!” cried one man in terror. “Dr. Powell! What is happening to us?!” “It’s the curse,” replied a very horse-like Isaac, now falling to his newly formed hooves. “Is there anything you can do to stop it?” asked another worker, almost completely transformed. “I’m a doctor! Not a sorcerer,” Isaac answered back through his fully formed muzzle. “Isaac!” Jacob’s voice emerged from behind. “Where is Samuel?” he asked, his transformation finished. “Mr. Ingram? Oh, it’s you!” “Yes… and?” “Uh, I left him in the medical tent. He was the first to show symptoms of this mutation.” “Well, go find him and bring him over here. Meanwhile I’ll try to deal with this chaos.”

It wasn’t long before Isaac found Samuel, who was quite close to the excitement. “Mr. Ingram! Is that you?” “Powell, it’s good to see you. Somehow, although we’ve changed, I can recognize most of my workers.” He looked around at the camp, seeing horses everywhere he turned. “It’s over,” Samuel muttered, “I can’t see a single human form” “Yes, I know. Now, come quick. Mr. Smith had sent me for you.” “Alright then,” Sam snorted. “Say, any idea how we can still communicate? Isaac took a moment, his ears pricked forward, and then concluded, “We may still be talking, but not in a way a human could understand. Actually, I don’t hear or understand a difference. Come on, he is waiting,” he said impatiently, stamping the sandy ground with his right fore-leg. “Alright, alright, I’m going. Wait, I couldn’t help but wonder,” Samuel asked, curiously, “what breed am I?” “You are an Arabian horse, quite an excellent build I’d say. If we get caught, you’d surely sell for a high price.” Samuel did not find this as amusing as Isaac did. “I certainly hope we don’t get caught.” “I think that’s partially why Mr. Smith wants you, to figure out a plan for what’s next.”

By the time Samuel approached Jacob, all of the newly formed horses were silent. Most were still wide eyed and trembling on their thin legs, but they seemed to be adapting well nevertheless. “How did you do it, sir?” asked Isaac, “I thought it would take an hour to stop the chaotic mess.” “it was quite easy actually,” he answered, “I just stood in place, calm as I could, and somehow just waiting peacefully got their attention. Now, Samuel, my friend,” he paused, eyeing the stallion who stood next to Isaac,” that’s you, right?” Both Isaac and Samuel gave a low chuckle, as if this was inside joke. “Right you are. I can’t blame you for asking as well.” “I won’t be the last, I’m sure. Anyways, I’m thinking that we sleep here tonight, because we’re all obviously a exhausted from what happened here tonight. At first light, we’ll head East towards the Nile, and if we follow it just a few miles south of Cairo, there is rumored to be a place Isaac Powell here says lies a cure to these enchantments. Anything you have in mind, Sam?” “Yes, how do you know these directions?” he asked, quizzically. “Well, surprisingly we can still read the map,” Jacob replied. “Not even Isaac is sure what we have or haven’t lost along with our human forms.” “Okay,” Samuel continued, “also, what if we come across horse merchants willing to catch us?” “I think the answer is quite obvious, Sam. We outrun ‘em! Anything else?” Jacob asked, this time his voice sounding tired and irritated. Pressured by his colleague, Samuel shook his massive head. “All right!” Jacob announced in front of the entire herd, “it is settled. Tonight, we’ll rest. At dawn, we will head to the Nile River on my lead. Anybody still have a watch? Shuteye is still at 10:00.

The night was as silent as the last, however, the stars and the moon were blotted out by the clouds. Samuel had a dream; a nightmare. It was about the day he was shot down by the infamous Red Baron. However, this time it was different. This time he crash landed in a lush green pasture, unlike the forest behind German lines. He tumbled out of the wrecked biplane and took cover behind a haystack, for he heard someone or something come his direction. He drew his Colt .45 automatic and took a pack from his cover and saw a majestic white Arabian mare. This is odd, Samuel thought, Arabian horses aren’t common in France, they are from— at that moment, he remembered what had happened, he knew he was dreaming. He looked down at himself and he was instantly transformed into a horse again. “Come here,” the mare told him, rather affectionately. Samuel was captivated by her beauty and involuntarily galloped towards her. Before he could get any closer, though, this setting faded way and he stood alone in the middle of the Egyptian desert. But where the mare stood hovered the freakish appearance of the phantom he saw in the tomb. The ghost pointed at Samuel, speaking to him in an ancient language Sam did not know. However, the language shifted to commands in a language he did know, as this scene melted away the same way the previous one did. “Get up! We’re leaving!” Jacob shouted. Samuel was wide awake now. The sound of horses whinnying filled his ears; he felt them twitch at every sound that was emitted. “Hurry!” Jacob yelled, “Another excavation team has arrived, and they’re after us!” “Mr. Smith!” Isaac neighed, “I need help!” Jacob turned to face the Egyptologist, now with a lassoed rope around his neck. At the sight of poor Isaac being captured in such a fashion, both Samuel and Jacob made a break for it, kicking up plume of sand as they galloped.

It was mid-afternoon, and the sun blazed over the “abandoned campsite” presumed by the newcomers. Things had turned out very fortunate for them, not the fact that they managed to catch nearly half of the 30 Arabian stallions nearby, but mainly because their work here was half done. The tomb of Sajhelkunem was left mostly exposed by the previous campers, and the term “finders’ keepers” was upheld by the new team.

While Carl Evans, the leader of these newcomers, led his crew down into the tomb, Samuel and Isaac spoke amongst themselves, already having the fate of the new excavation team predicted. “I got to say,” Isaac muttered, “it’s not even fair. The warning was on the wall we destroyed. Now these poor buggers are blindly walking into a trap.” He snorted and gave a strong tug on the rope that tied him to an iron stake. “Even if we weren’t tied to his pole,” Samuel pointed out as he reared and hammered the stake with his hooves, “they still would have no way of understanding our words. Pretty strange, we can understand both human and horse talk.” “I’m pretty sure a normal horse does not understand human language just as they don’t understand horses.” “Aye, but they will very soon… I wonder were Jacob has gone to” Samuel said, changing the subject.” “He abandoned us,” Isaac replied,” he even left you after your fall. Speaking of which, how’s your arm—I mean—leg? Sam lifted his hoof and stomped into the sand, testing the movement of his scraped leg. “It’s fine, the bleeding’s stopped—not too painful now. Despite your firm, not much has changed, you’re still a doctor.” “Yeah, though there is one change I am grateful for. My vision has improved, no need for those glasses, where ever they are.” “Really? Mine isn’t as…” he stopped as he saw the angelic appearance of a white Arabian mare. “Mr. Ingram? Are you alright?” For a moment Samuel just stared at the mare as she strode down the sand dune overlooking the camp. “Isaac, I have a better idea. Do you know how to undo knots?” “I do, sir, I—” he looked down at the knot in the rope around Samuel’s neck. “Why didn’t I think of that?” Isaac whinnied, amused at Sam’s simple but clever solution. “I should be able to get your lasso off in no time, and then you can do the same for me.”

Isaac tugged at the knot with his teeth and eventually Samuel was freed from the rope. Sam did likewise to his companion, and after doing so, he looked back towards the mare. She was closer now, and her beauty increased with their closeness; Isaac saw her as well. “You are new here,” the mare spoke in her soft and friendly voice. “I saw what happened to you all last night. This is a very strange place.” Her ears pricked upward as she looked towards the tomb entrance. “We must leave before the ruckus starts again,” she continued, “I know an oasis not far from here. That is where we took many of your friends. We should be safe there…”

The oasis was a fair sight to see. The vegetation was plentiful; the water reflected the starry clear sky in a quality no mirror Samuel knew could. The mare was right; several of the stallions here were some of his workers. They seemed to be getting along very well with the other residing horses; however, Jacob was nowhere to be seen. His selfish partner went off to end his curse alone. But now, it really didn’t matter. Samuel had grown quite comfortable with his new shape; he didn’t want to change back. Besides, he was in love with the mare of his dreams. Although there would be no wedding, it’s safe to say they were married ‘til death sets them apart. “Isaac, we really don’t need you here; give us some privacy will you?” Sam said impatiently. “I don’t mind him, dear,” his new “wife” replied. Samuel nickered as if he were chuckling, then added, “No, you don’t understand, you see—” silence fell on them both as their eyes met. She was absolutely beautiful tonight. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Ingram. I’ll be on my way now.” “Wait,” Samuel replied, “there’s something I keep wondering about this ‘curse.’ What was it exactly?” he questioned, his eyes never leaving the mare. Isaac answered him in a voice that almost resembled his lecturer, “Here is the curse as follows. ‘To those who disturb this sacred ground, to whosoever intends to loot this holy tomb, they shall be stripped of their humanity and take the form of my chariot bearers.’ And, although others may take it differently,” Isaac turned his face away from the lovers, for “privacy” reasons, “this is the Curse of Sajhelkunem’s Tomb.”

--[[User:ClydesdaleTF|ClydesdaleTF]] 20:12, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

User:ClydesdaleTF

2011-10-27T19:36:59Z

ClydesdaleTF: Created page with 'The Curse of Sajhelkunem's Tomb'

[[The Curse of Sajhelkunem's Tomb]]