General Wesc
Registered: Mar 4, 2003 10:35 PM

ID: 28
Title: Mighty Plot Writer
Name: Luca Kaceem Butler Masters
Gender: Male
Email: [email protected]
Eem: 2,997,407,391
Pet choice: Liberate
eeMail: Send eeMail
Forum posts: Forum posts
Achievements: Member, Plot Contributor, Art Contributor, Eponymous Pet, Gloryhole Occupant, I missed the reunion
Pets: Enteka, Rochluinion, Lagustream Secg, Trelane, Mantellus, Doppler, Bernhardt , Radical, Ampere, 194, Saavik, Keine, Square, Devnull, Germain, Martok, Symole, Homm, Eiffel, Calvin , Poincare, Pascal, Levi-Strauss, Laplace, Lagrange, Descartes, Cauchy, Mendel, Dahl, Dali, Oz, Whitmire, Brill, Saada, Malda, Sed, Awk, Grep, Vi, Emacs, Chmod, Eminescu, Capital Gain, Jasper, Jabberwock, Zaphod, Kor, Koloth, Lang, Kang, Lag, Skold, Huitzilopochtli, Axayacatl, Typhus, Vlad, Killbuck, Ed Tudor, Leadbeater, Klemens, Brentano, Biham, Kartoffle, Vice, Bob the Tomato, Tom, Greg, Jeff, Snark, Bashkirtseff, Boojum, Jawa, Vyz, Jormungand, Gnome, KDE, Vim, Grendel, Trident, Orwell, Curzon, Daria, Huan Ti, Juiblex, Veber, Siberia, Larry the Cucumber, Bier, Quenton, Martin, Jezebel, Houdini, Beowulf, Con, Voltaire, Attila, Judas, Lenin, Stalin, Pythagoras, Nadia, Napoleon, Montezuma, Pras, Tutankhamun, Twiggy, Stendhal, Vangelis, Yastrzemski, Zoroaster, Petlyura, Chikatilo, Lysenko, Paxinou, Mercouri, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Empedocles, Eudoxus, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Castro, Fidel, Tum, Tecumseh, Thorpe, Bareil, Fibonacci, Cork, Burke, Oscar, usr, Gimp, Envy, Cardinal, Pig, Ezekiel, Eddy, Quin, Query, Deft, Fickle, Chap, Blimey, Dak, Gagh, Borne, Brighton, Root, Pwd, etc, Bin, mnt, Kaczor, Rotem, Sock, Blu, Ra, Compton, Breath, Maggot, Mag, Malloc, Mandrake, Burp, Kid, Cough, Gothmog, Onion, Ecthelion, Bing, Scatha, Glaurung, Ancalagon, Fafnir, Malen Amlugiel, Reload, Vibber, Venom, Knudsen, Beam, Play, Necko, Flork, NIC, Vacuum, Dom, Real Estate, Drift, Daft, Stanford, Snigger, Skine, Sol, Jones, Idle, Chapman, Palin, Gilliam, Cleese, Natalia, Derkholm, Tax, Relax, Eldred, Jim Crow, Zenzic, Knuth, Venn, Sue, Leopold, Phlegm, Zugzug, Pod, Forte, Ambiguous, Sinful Caesar, Teufel Hund, Pferd, Kayvozcavavy, Naainn, Siot Wald, Lagoona, Giiec, Filou, Tofu, Braga, Berman, Jolf, Greedo, Tucan, Qudd Liia, Guy Fawkes, Sod, Wumpus, Robert Catesby, Flagger, Agar agar, Karl, Niklaus, Paw, Keyponte, Camaxtli, Huhetotl, Phi, Theta, Brok, Erbok, Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, Kordiroy, Ximil, Meta, McAfee, Norton, Symantec, FedEx, Splarkus, Spleen, Wiki, Boid, Peeg, Stain, Noot, Gharry-wallah, Red Male Snarth, Female Green Snarth, Armistice, Naur, Ursula, Flask, Lymph, Poot, Magpie, Urine, Rug, Slurg, Trope, Yap, Oral Roberts, KOU KU, Mulligan, Lawyer, Laywer, Mouth, Loxodonta, Teste, Rancor, Flash Gordon, Nader, Che, Teenager, Sitting Duck, Electricity, Betterness, Propagandhi, Picasso, Toilet Bowl Cleaner, Euthyphro, Glaucon, Wittgenstein, Mutt, Fourth Estate, Orson Welles, Label, Visor, Trowser, Trouser, Bikini, Three-cornered Rat, Fugly, Straightjacket, No Need For a Name, The Amazing Mumford, Joke Name, Joke Pet, Porridge, Tinky-Winky, Eggsucker, Centrifuge, Centriped, Playdough, Heebie Jeebie, Mozambique, Mood, Talk, Goauld, Tonsil, Church, Korman, Kyle Montrose, Simon Irving, Cyril Irving, Pablo Ruiz Picasso, Pol Pot, Knobzrool, Peer Pressure, Pilate, Grue, Prestige, Blinkenlights, John Searle, xyzzy, Boog, ABEND, Smoot, Nubian, Filbert, Debian, Unique Name, Original, Badly Drawn Bigot, Scherzo, Paspy, Passepied, Fullstop, Hyphen, Inverted Comma, Semicolon, Comma, Apostrophe, Ursula Underscore, Quincy Question Mark, Terri Tilde, Alan Apostrophe, Frank Fullstop, Astrid Asterisk, Carol Colon, Colin Colon, Darryl Dash, Sally Slash, Peter Parenthesis, Archie Andrews, Airune, Knotted wrack, Red Male Chumpy, Eshka, Plinchet, Tawra, Strodeer, Dioipula, Apu's Trophy, Lucky Bastard, Rubik, Verst, Right-Handed Strength, Atahensic, other pet, Intelligent Pet, RedTestSpecies1, RedTestSpecies2, Reformed Criminal, TestSpecies1, Second Fehu, TestSpecies2, Original Fehu, Neightmare, Initial Lamfret, Encruss, Fidmar
Shops:The Rotten Lemon, The Burnt Tomato, The Broken Rubble, The Smelly Cheese, The Greasy Wheel, The Mouldy Peach, The Melted Chocolate, The Crumbled Cookie, The Dirty Strawhert
Last seen: 1 week, 3 days, 14 hours, 15 minutes ago

Better than Hawking

"Hi, I'm General Wesc, and you're not. Neener, neener!"

I visit here occasionally. The below text is retained for historical purposes, but should not be considered reliable:

A Brief FAQ

Why are you ignoring me?
I'm probably not online right now. I have a computer program that gives out items. Also, when I use the forums, I go through my own script that strips out event notices, so I don't always see that someone has eeMailed me even when I am on. I'll probably get to you eventually.

Did you make eCritters?
No. LeifKB made the site. I'm simply a lowly staff member.

Want to chat/cyber/anything at all?
No, you're a dull person and a terrible writer. It would be trivial for me to write a computer program that speaks more coherently than you, and it could come up with more original lines than you ever could, in addition to using proper spelling and grammar. If I ever want to partake in mindless prattle, I'll do it with my computer.

Will you give me some eem?
No.

May I have an item?
Possibly. If you want a particular one, you could try asking. You might get it, you might not. It depends largely on how expensive the item is and whether you're polite and literate. Also, if you just want a random item, Estrella would love to give you one. Read her profile. Also consider visiting the Rock Fountain.

Why did you attack my pets?
Good question. General Wesc usually only attacks pets whose owners have pelted him and failed to give an adequate apology. If you're wondering, though, please eeMail him to ask.

May I attack your pets?
No. General Wesc has it set up to automatically heal them, but he still has to record that you pelted him for future reference, and that takes several seconds. Also, a significant proportion of the people who decide to pelt him later beg him for help. Fire and Flare rocks aren't the only things that can burn bridges, and he's quite happy to not give you whatever items you decide to beg for.

Why did he call me a moron?
Because he's mean. Horribly mean. He's utterly despicable. However, most likely you said something stupid, or something that he didn't consider entirely correct. He would like to apologise for it right here. He probably doesn't consider you a moron. Sorry.

May I have a title?
Are you staff?

But foobar has a title and it's not staff!
Blame CJ. I use my powers for good.

Can you freeze foobar?
Can you provide evidence that they broke a rule?

Yes, my testimony.
You're a dirty stinking liar.

History

Born 1982 May 20 in Greenville, NC to the name Luca Kaceem Butler Masters, the Good General moved into his parents house in Washington, NC within a week of his birth. He was then home-schooled--primarily using the unschooling method--along with his older brother.

When our protagonist was eleven years old, his parents opted to move to a larger house. They found one sufficient for their needs and after about a year of fixing-up they moved, taking him and his brother with them, as well as dragging along his younger brother and still younger sister who had joined the cast unannounced a number of years ago.

Eventually, our hero turned eighteen and had to find a college. Rather than going the traditional path of similarly super-intelligent ex-youth of selecting a decent college, he opted to attend the nearby East Carolina University--a detestable party school--whilst staying comfortably in the rent-free dwelling of his parents.

The wisdom of this move was questionable at best, yet the heroic General was not to be dissuaded. Choosing to major in Computer Science, he began his bold journey. After some time he discovered that philosophy was easy, important, and considered desirable by employers, and so he chose to become a dual-major.

During his sophomore year at ECU, Wesc discovered a fledgeling website called eCritters and immediately became attached. He quickly became an important member, especially on the forums where he is known to be dangerously sesquipedalian.

Beliefs

Although General Wesc now serves as a noble defender of all that is good, he was not always quite so perfit. For twenty years he ate meat regularly, and so is now determined not to die until he has completely atoned for his sin. This may require his living for several thousand years, but that's a small sacrifice in his eyes.

In addition to joining the moral ranks of vegetarianism, he has become an Electronic Frontier Foundation member and is a self-designated eco-nut.

The Good General supports the GNU philosophy and runs Debian GNU/Linux at home. His preferred web browsers are Galeon, Elinks, and Firefox, though he feels vanilla Mozilla is a bang-up product in its own right. Naturally, open standards are a vital part of his philosophy, and he is an ardent promoter of standard-based web design, as well as being a Jabber user.

In the realm of philosophy, in the classical western sense, the General has abandoned a number of concepts that most people would consider common sense in favour of ones that are actually consistent and defensible. He holds Materialism/Physicalism to be--minimally--the best guess and is a very strong Scepticist, largely based on his acceptance of Internalism. Free Will he has rejected right out as incoherent.

Religiously, he was raised by Unitarian Universalists and is essentially a nontheist, though he obviously has leanings towards Agnosticism.

Contact

The General can be contacted in a number of ways. His email address, as provided above, is [email protected] for plaintext messages and [email protected] for encrypted messages. His public key is available below, albeit probably out-of-date. Encrypted email is preferred as the US Government has admitted to routinely scanning private email.
For those with an Instant Messenger client, the General can be reached on most of the major networks.
* AIM: genwesc
* ICQ: 704690
* YIM: genwesc
* Jabber: [email protected]
* Another Jabber: [email protected]
* GTalk (yet another Jabber): [email protected]

Additionally, he can be frequently found on the FreeNode and Efnet IRC networks under the nick 'LKBM'.

The General would also like to provide you with his street address:
Permanent address:
2309 2500 Nueces St.
Austin, Tx 78705


He welcomes you to drop by for a brief visit.

Physical Account

The Good General is approximately 182cm (6ft/18,300,000,000 angstroms) tall and 68kg (150lb) in weight. He has long brown hair in a braid. Numerous photos are available.

Contests

The General is usually running at least one contest on eCritters. These can be found on the Contests Forum, but for your convenience they are also listed on his other profile, GenWesc. Some are easy. Some are a little hard. Some have been sitting around for over a year because no one can figure out the answer.
If you have an idea for a cool contest, you may wish to eeMail the General. Sure, you could run it yourself, but then you wouldn't be able to win great prizes. If Wesc runs it, you can enter, and maybe win some rare items.

Public Utilities

* eeMail Link Generator (You click the link and it sends you eeMail).
* Desmiley (Use eeCode to avoid smileys appearing in your eeMail or forum replies.)
* HTML->eeCode Translator (Very incomplete; designed specifically for some weird adoptables and later redesigned some some Glitter thingy.)
Feel free to request other utilities. Some I'll refuse on principle (public autopelter), some will be infeasible, and some I'll happily do.
* Forum Post Preview Button for Greasemonkey.
* eCritters Double-Post Preventatron for Greasemonkey.
* Recently Online Converter for Greasemonkey.
* Simple Forum Tools (partially obsolete) for Greasemonkey.
* Settlement Map Chooser for Greasemonkey.
* eCritters Forum Viewer
* eCritters Topic Search
* eCritters Topics Posted On Search
* Name Colour Thingy so you can see what colour a name would be before you create it.
There may be more listed on Wescysite, as I update it more often than I update my profile.

Open Bugs
eCritters has bugs, and the bugs forum is not a good bugtracker. So I'll list them here, even if I don't intend to ever fix them.

Sticky (Red) Topics go back to page one
This bug presents itself only when you have more than one page of sticky topics on a forum. Created by the following code in forums.php: if($topicinfo['staffanc'])
$topicpagenum = 1;

FIXED: Leif fixed some related stuff, then I fixed it more. I think.

Pet name limit is basename, not formatted name--cannot pelt
If someone creates a pet with basename of 65535 characters, but formatted name of >65535 characters, people can't find the full name in order to pelt the pet.
Workaround: Attack '@IDx' for pet id x.

My Contributions
I've done a lot. Lots of moderation, dealing with rule-breakers, dealing with non-rule-breakers, writing/editing plot, working on item descriptions, and so on. What I care about, though, are my code contributions:
* Feature: eeMail Text ('A note from...')
* Feature: Preview on posts
* Feature: Intelligence for pets.
* Feature: Max HP for pets.
* Feature: Admin panel for adding/editing random events.
* Feature: Multi-cheating search on admin panel.
* Feature: Move Shop utility on admin panel.
* Feature: Eem Giving (With log)
* Feature: View Item Types
* Feature: Hide Eem
* Feature: Signature Display Height
* Feature: Transfrudalise (item action)
* Feature: Heal other users pets (item action, user pref)
* Feature: Increase intelligence (item action)
* Feature: Increase max HP (item action)
* Feature: Change item (item action)
* Feature: Confirmation on purchases (user pref)
* Feature: Make all pets sad (random event action)
* Feature: Make all pets happy (random event action)
* Feature: Make all pets full (random event action)
* Feature: Make all pets hungry (random event action)
* Feature: Different maps for day and night.
* Feature: Shop log.
* Feature: Pelting that gives an item.
* Feature: Item giving log.
* Bug fix: Manage Events now lets you delete events from page 2+.
* Bug fix: Random events no longer drop you below 0 eem.
* Bug fix: No longer will people inadvertently block user _.
* Bug fix: SQL injection abilities discovered and destroyed. Whew!
* Bug fix: Red posts now take you to page one, since that's where they'll show up (resulting in the never-presenting bug listed in the above section.)
* Hack: One chain letter is now accompanied by a 'DON'T FORWARD THIS' notice, because people Just Don't Get It. (They still don't.)
* Bug fix: Deleting a post unbumps the topic.
* Bug fix: signatures not stretched by defined height.
* Minor bugs: All over.
* Typos: All over.
* Code clean-up: editprofile.php much better. Adding options requires changes in three spots, but they're less horrendous.
* Code clean-up: The eeMail Leif made fast was done via an ugly, ugly hack. New version of MySQL + Wesc == Beautiful code. Probably faster, too.
* Code clean-up: Some factoring out of code in forums.php for neatness, not reuse.
* Code clean-up: Random Events system changed (event actions abstracted out for re-use).
* Feature: eeMail Outbox.
* Improvement: eeMail made fast after I broke it with the outbox and related changes.
* Bug fix: eeMail page count fixed after I broke it with the outbox and related changes.
* Enhancement: Species page now includes description at the top.
* Feature: Minimum price for purchase confirmation (userpref).
* Feature: Search Outbox for eeMail to a given user.
* Bug fix: Fixed the display for the search Inbox for eeMail from a given user, which I partially broke when I added the outbox.
* Code clean-up: Factored out repeated code; improved old factorisation. all of this was my own messiness, of course.
* Feature: Preview for eeMail.
* Feature: Species can now have distinct appearances for males and females.
* Bug fix: eeMail now displays properly on old layout. editprofile doesn't, because screw people using the old layout.
* Feature: Staff ability to blank profiles.
* Feature: 'Undelete' action and UI for deleted posts.
* Feature: 'Undelete' action for deleted topics.
* Feature: Ability to view deleted pots and topics for staff.
* Improvement: Aforementioned bugfix so that red posts take you to page one modified to make it marginally faster in such situations.
* 'Show post' and 'Show all posts' links for blocked posts.
* Bug fix: Checkbox deleting in your Outbox returns you to your Outbox.
* Feature: Maxlength of 20 characters on formatted usernames. When violated, set to baseusername.
* Feature: 'View deleted posts' feature for moderators.
* Feature: Double post prevention.
* Enhancement: Pets page now links to each individual pet.
* Feature: eeMail-deletion confirmation (userpref)
* Feature: Default items page (userpref)
* Feature: first_topic
* Feature: posted_ordering
* Enhancement/Bug fix: Deleting an individual sent message returns you to your Outbox, unless it was sent to yourself.
* Enhancement: showspecies dropdown sorted alphabetically.
* Feature: Double-giving prevention for eem.
* Feature: user shop purchase log can now be viewed by user, not just by shop.
* Feature: Made Spooky/Winter/Normal maps automatically switch with the dates.
* Feature: Achievements
* Bug fix/workaround: Users with legacy usernames over 15 characters get strlen(baseusername) + 5 characters for their formatted username. (Previously, if your baseusername was longer than 20 characters, you couldn't edit your profile at all [unless you turned off the JavaScritp validation?])
* Feature: Confirmation on giving items to users not seen in six months.
* Feature: Preview for new topics.
* Feature: Freeze log displays for frozen users if you have freezing powers.
* Enhancement: Manage events link only appears when you have multiple events.

TODO:
* Factory.
* Underlined item images is bad, I guess.
* Make Outbox visually different.
* Make Shop Log unugly (and fast, if isn't).
* View Deleted Topics
* Why was I frozen?
* Staff adding species.
* Show who you're quoting.
* In addition to heal other pets, play/feed other pets.
* Wikiwikiweb or something for plot editing.
* Management system for proposed images.
* 'Flag post/topic/profile' so users can easily report badness. Also, 'Report eeMail' thingy so we don't have to use db access to check reports of eeMail badness.
* Topic search should be made official.
* On topics older than one month(?) make it display a little notice pointing out to idiots that gravedigging is something worth avoiding.
* Forum id=0 as originally proposed.
* JS validation of REMOVING items from shops, not just pricing. Otherwise, lose all that work.
* Item action overhaul
* Page listing species by colour
* More achievements
* eeMail reply without loading reply page.