Have you ever had times in your life when you didn't know quite enough about something to make it work? And you had to depend on others? But the
it you were trying to make work was very important to you?
That is what has happened at Silky Venom. The site owner and administrator, Oloh, has an ideal, and he has started inviting others to explore that ideal and make it grow if possible. It's like being told to play Quidditch and get the Golden Snitch. You know it's an eminently worthy goal (if you'll pardon the expression) but you have no idea what Quidditch is and no clue what or where the Golden Snitch is.
Okay, I won't carry the analogy any further in case you aren't dyed-in-the-wool Harry Potter fans. The point is--we have Silky Venom but what do we do with it? We build it of course…into the best doggoned Vanguard fansite ever. But to do that you need your Quidditch tools…pardon me, your fansite building tools…and more, you need people who know how to use the tools. And here's where the fun begins.
Oloh and I looked at each other and didn't exactly go AHHHHHHHHHH but, for me at least, there was that feeling. Then both of us went out and found people who wanted to play Quidditch…pardon me, build a fansite. So we got a super PR person (Pariath, the PR guy formerly known as Aatlaar), a brilliant artist (the brilliant artist currently known as Feyshtey); adding other members of the team as we went along (Kheldon - part time Vanguard watcher and reporter; Nepenthia – editor and columnist; Fozzik – hardware expert and staff writer). But who was going to make the playing field…I mean website look like the way we wanted. Feyshtey has made a beautiful design, but who would, you know, make it all hang together and work?
In came Nólaquen. Honestly, this guy is a genius. So far he has saved me pulling out hair that I can ill afford to lose, because he has fixed up the beautiful gallery that Oloh bought the software for, and Oloh and Pariath filled with screenshots and concept art. So what was driving me to drink? The fact that I couldn't insert graphics into my stories and align them. That's what news people do—they write stories and insert graphics to illustrate their stories.
I mentioned this sadly to Nólaquen. Next thing you know, this man has rewritten the code, not once, but twice (the second time eliminating 8 of the 9 steps that were required the first time he rewrote the code). And this is just one of the tricks of magic that Nola has done. I am easily impressed because all I know is basic
HTML. Strings of code and terms that sound like Greek but are really coding lingo scare me…that's because so many things can
GO WRONG when you mess with code. Did you know that? I'm not saying you will blow up your computer, but you can make people's computers go crashing down in most unpleasant ways if you don't code right.
But it's not just the coding genius of Nólaquen…it's the drive and the motives behind it. This is a man with a mission…and to him it's fun to be helping in this way.
Okay, I couldn't stop myself…I interviewed Nólaquen…and if you want to know more about him, read on.
Nólaquen began working on web pages from his local library in 1996 when Netscape Navigator was at version 2.
"
HTML was simple and making web pages intrigued me," he said.
Over the next several years, he kept up with design guides and the technical advancements of
SGML and the like. Eventually, because he wanted to do dynamic pages, he learned about
Perl and its capabilities in handling
CGI. About a year later,
php was introduced.
"With it being very Perl-like, yet much cleaner and more integrated directly with
HTML and web pages," Nólaquen said, "I immediately fell in love with it and have been developing all of my web pages in
php ever since."
Before
vBulletin or
phpBB even existed, Nólaquen explored the possibilities of
php for message board software. He found it feature-rich for its time and pioneered the use of it on one of the sites he managed. He modeled his project after the Ultimate bulletin board in style, but, unlike
UBB, his message board was created entirely in
php--
phpBB and
vBulletin entered the foray later on, and, according to Nólaquen, with much more steam, utilizing the relatively new
MySQL database software.
Eventually, Nólaquen came to learn
MySQL. He loved the power it had in combination with
php and began to incorporate it into aspects of the websites he managed.
Nólaquen has even more impressive credentials in software and I am going to ask him to add a post to this article/editorial outlining them, since I am sure my head will explode if I try to put it all down here.
What originally pulled Nólaquen into the arena of online gaming were Nintendo Entertainment System games, specifically
The Legend of Zelda and
Dragon Warrior. He played other games of a similar nature until he was shanghaied into
EverQuest.
"My brother convinced me to try
EverQuest back around the time that Velious was being worked on," Nólaquen said. "At first, I wasn't that interested in trying it because, for one, my impression of 'online gaming' wasn't that great, and two, the name '
EverQuest' seemed kind of cheesy. (Sorry guys!)"
However, he eventually bought
EQ and was "immediately hooked." He spent the next couple of years playing EQ "until the wee hours of the night." When Nólaquen learned that the creators had split off from Sony and formed their own company, he was interested. That is when he first came across the Sigil Games site.
"There was no message board or even much info at all on the site," Nólaquen reminisced, "so I lost track of it for a while. When I ran across another mention of it a year or so later, I came back to see how things were going and realized there were message boards (this was about six months after they were opened up)! I joined up and have been following the progress of SigilQuest...err...Vanguard ever since."
Yes, he has played other MMOs, such as
Earth and Beyond (beta),
Shadowbane,
Star Wars Galaxies, and even
EQ2, but not even
SWG held his interest like
EQ had.
"Now I am waiting patiently for
Vanguard," he said with a smile.
Nólaquen had started working on his own Vanguard fan site, which was meant to be class-specific once classes were publicly announced. After some work on the site, he realized that he wouldn't be able to keep it up on his own.
"I saw that
Silky Venom was gaining ground and had made stances that I agreed with. They also had a cast of team members that was incredible," Nólaquen explained. "So, I offered to help in any way that I could to Oloh. It turns out he was looking for someone with my skills, so I happened to fill a need. I am very fortunate and honored that he accepted my offer."
I asked Nólaquen what plans he and the Silky Venom team had for the database.
"The plans are still being worked out, so there really isn't much detail I can give," he said. "We are interested in harboring as much information as possible, though, and in a manner that is easy for everyone. But that is pretty generic to any fan site of this caliber. I will say that we have a few tricks up our sleeves that may be very interesting, but I can't give any details at this time."
After a moment's thought he added, "I think you'll like our databases."
For the final part of the interview, I asked the burning question everyone probably wants to know. Where did his name come from?
"I was stumbling to try and come up with an original name that I liked. One day I was investigating
Quenya, one of the elven languages Tolkien invented. I was curious what the translation of my real name would be. Based on the etymology of my real name, the translation turns out to be Nólaquen, or wise one."
At 25, this man is part coder, part database expert and part…um…Quidditch forward. I wouldn't be surprised to see him leap on a wizard's broomstick, snatch up the Golden Snitch and head for the goal post. Or am I mixing my metaphors? In any event, welcome to the team, Nólaquen, new Database Manager of Silky Venom.
wiki
Meet Nólaquen – An editorial by Raya
Can't I have just a little bit of public exposure? I'm wearing pants, I promise!
