At the prompting of Toast, I’m mucking about with a new, threaded commenting system: Intense Debate. Among other things, Intense Debate allows you to follow someone’s comments across all blogs that have this system installed.
All comments to date have been converted to this system. The most any of y’all should notice is that the comment user interface is slightly different; for instance, it supports Gravatars, something this blog’s theme didn’t do. So far, the only thing I’ve noticed that it adds a little lag time when the page loads.
Feel free to treat this post as a testbed for the new system. Or not, as the fancy strikes you.
[Update @ 31 Jul 2008 2143 PDT - officially, the following tags are supported in comments: <a>, <b>, <i>, <u>, <em>, <p>, <blockquote>, <br>, <strong>, <strike>, and <img>. Some appear to be supported better than others (I'm looking at you, <p>...).]
[Update @ 1 Aug 2008 2032 PDT - I was requiring 'first' comments to be approved; unfortunately, it seems that I.D. doesn't recognize previously approved comments. Sorry, y'all. I'm turning that feature off. The verdict so far? Meh. I don't know that threading and reputation are worth the somewhat lackluster feature set and the performance drag... I'll give this a little while longer, but I'm also going to take a look @ Disqus. I suspect I'll find similar issues there, whereupon I return to the standard, plain vanilla WP comments. It's an interesting idea, but the platforms aren't mature enough - at the very least, this one isn't mature enough - for my liking.]
Posted by protected static as blogging, geek at 9:16 PM UTC
12 Comments »
Welcome to the intertoobz, boys and girls. Web 2.0, and all that bullshit. Let’s step into the Not-So-Way-Back Machine, shall we, Mr. Peabody?
Seven months ago, in my part-time, volunteer role as webmaster for the Seattle Sea Kayak Club, I got an email from a web entrepreneur asking us to join his community. I sent him back a polite email detailing the issues I saw with his site (including pointing out a potential IP/copyright violation that his development team committed), and then wrote a snarky blog post about the experience.
Well, guess who came trolling tonight? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by protected static as asshattery, eCountryLifestyle, eCountryLifestyle.com, geek, kayaking at 9:31 PM UTC
10 Comments »
…looked something like this:
Artist’s conception. Not to scale. No meteorologists were harmed in the posting of this blog entry.
How so? Well…
On Wednesday, after getting a tire fixed (drama!) and tying up loose ends at work (no drama!), I drove down to Portland to pick up The Boy & my wife, who were visiting family there. Upon my arrival, it was strongly implied by many present that I must have ‘made good time.’ At no time during the drive did I observe even a hint of redshift in the road signs, so I’m sticking to ‘not much traffic’ as a quite reasonable alternative explanation.
From Portland, we headed south to Cape Lookout a state park outside of Tillamook for The Boy’s introduction to Camping 101 (101. Get it? Tillamook. Coast. One-oh… Oh never mind.). The tent went up without a hitch, a fire was lit, dinner was cooked, s’mores were consumed, and beaches were combed. After a kinda-sorta-mostly restful night (We’re bringing thicker pads next time. And warmer sleeping bags.), a pleasant morning on the beach, and an entirely uneventful breakdown of the tent, we were on to our true destination: Beachside.
Why Beachside? Because I’m an idiot, that’s why of the Hobbit Trail. We read about it in one of those glossy regional magazines that lurk by the supermarket checkout, and in a moment of ill-considered whimsy (that is, without stopping to consider the driving distances involved), we all agreed that it sounded like a neat place to go, and that we should do it some time this summer.
“Some time” was Thursday.
Thursday ultimately involved stops at the Newport Aquarium, Mo’s for lunch, the Sea Lion Caves and, finally, the Hobbit Trail. Hectic, yes, but overall quite worth the trip. The remainder of the day was uneventful: the tent gave us no trouble, the fire lit easily (if smokily – I let myself get screwed when I bought firewood en route and wound up with a lot of not-quite-seasoned pine), local clams were turned into a reasonable cioppino analog, and more s’mores were constructed and consumed. It was almost enough to prepare one for the hard, unyielding bedtime embrace of Mother Earth.
Almost. Next time, much thicker pads.
Friday was Too Much Driving Day. Not being a total idiot, I realized that trying to drive all the way from the Central OR Coast to Seattle would be unpleasant. Very unpleasant. No, we decided to break the drive into two parts, figuring we’d spend the night in a hotel (yay!) in Portland or Astoria, depending upon which route we opted for. Somehow, sticking to 101 and heading for Astoria seemed like the more vacationy thing to do, so Astoria it was. And in Astoria, I thought it would be nice to make up for our poor choice of sleeping pads – which we did. With a vengeance. A sweet, fluffy, king-sized vengeance.
The remaining drive from Astoria was a pretty easy one, allowing for enough time to stop in Olympia and hit the farmer’s market for supper things. Even so, everyone was glad to come home on Saturday. Our neighbors showed how much they missed us by bringing over a plate of homemade cookies. Our dogs showed how much they missed us by excitedly peeing all over the kitchen floor.
After some careful consideration, I have to say that I think I prefer the neighbors’ approach.
But the story doesn’t end there… No, Saturday night was when I got to enjoy my birthday present: Nine Inch Nails tickets. We dropped The Boy off at the Science Center for a sleepover, parked in one of the Seattle Center garages, and ambled on over to Key Arena for an absolutely amazing show (for those of you who don’t know Seattle, the Science Center & Key Arena are all part of the Seattle Center complex where the Space Needle is). The opening band sucked, but Trent & co. were incredible.
So there you go: the whirlwind demi-week of vacation… Recovery time not included.
Posted by protected static as random at 11:24 PM UTC
2 Comments »
Because this made this do-able… Minimal driving required!
(And a most excellent show it was…)
[updated @27-Jul-2008 1503PM PDT because evidently, I can't close tags...]
Posted by protected static as music at 12:38 AM UTC
3 Comments »
If you’re a politically-inclined geek you will probably find this to be full of WIN, even if you aren’t a Democrat. And if you are a geeky Democrat, well… it might contain too much WIN for your WIN containment fields, so power up before you click that link.
[tho' I've seen this link lots of places today, I finally clicked on it from PZ's place]
Posted by protected static as geek, politics at 5:59 PM UTC
10 Comments »
iSuccumbed
Posted by protected static as gadget, geek at 3:59 PM UTC
14 Comments »
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by protected static as politics at 4:38 PM UTC
6 Comments »
At first, I thought it was typical penis-pill spam. You know the type: “Iron rod now!!!!!! 87% OFF FOR MAY! FREE SHIPPING!!!!”
As patterns go, it’s a pretty predictable one: some stupid erection analog with exclamation points (‘Erections!’ he ejaculated. Sorry. Free associating.) followed by some discount that’s never a number you ever see when actually, you know, shopping (94% off! 86% discount! 97%!!! Who discounts stuff at 97%? At that point, why not the age-old favorite “Hey kid, first one’s free.”?) followed by promises of discretion or free shipping or whatever else it takes to get you to click on their links.
Still, this one didn’t quite fit the pattern: “Shofars 60% OFF + FREE Delivery”
Lots of caps, a discount, free shipping, and a reference to a long, hard, pointy thing. But shofars? That’s pretty esoteric for spammers. So I had to open it… How could I not?
And lo! It really was for shofars. So, add to your list of dirty rotten spambags the Israeli company Israel-Catalog.com. Evidently, lots of businesses share their mailing address, so I’m guessing that’s an Israeli version of Mailboxes, Etc.
Hey, since they had to have sent this late Friday night their time, isn’t it forbidden to spam on Shabbat? Or is a bot net for spamming more like the Sabbath elevators, and therefore not really work? Or maybe they’ve contracted with a Shabbat goy to send the spam…
Ah, questions for the ages!
Posted by protected static as asshattery, spam at 9:14 AM UTC
2 Comments »
I don’t often comment on the search strings that bring people here – they certainly aren’t as interesting as the lesbian vampire sex permutations that bring random (and disappointed) browsers to The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire. (See what you have to look forward to, Doug?)
This morning, however, I got a doozy, one that really and truly prompted a “Dude. Wait. What?” moment, complete with mental needle-on-record sound effects. If you aren’t a programmer or otherwise IT-minded, skip this one – I really won’t mind. If you are, however, please join me after the jump…
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by protected static as C#, programming at 5:28 PM UTC
12 Comments »
