Some Annoyances and Some Improvements

Ditching Yahoo!

I’m really liking some of the changes I’m seeing to FireFox and its addons, to WordPress, and a few related notes.

Sage for Firefox is the feed reader I use, and there’ve been some improvements that I’m really grooving to, like the transparent RSS indicator in the top right corner of whatever page I’m reading.  I don’t usually like that kind of thing, but it’s a nice touch.

WordPress has been making major improvements to the dog of User Interface they put out recently, and I’m liking it much better.  They changed the way the image insertion works, and it took some getting used to, but I’m liking it.  It’s a time saver now that I’m getting the hang of it and they’re working the bugs out of it.  They finally implemented the captions box, and it works for the most part.  My only big bitch left on that?

The fracking thing erases my first paragraph when I insert an image at the beginning of a post.  That. Is. Really. Annoying.  WordPress!  PLEASE FIX THAT SOON!  kthnxbi.  (Crap, I forgot about it AGAIN, and it just dumped my first paragraph.  Crap, crap, crap.)  (Also, I’d like a little more control over color and font of the caption box, if that’s not too much trouble – transparent box should be an option…)

And that brings me to Yahoo!.  Jerks.

(Flames fly below the fold)

Filed under: About, Rants, Testing, WordPress , Frack you and your little dog too, Moving Out Moving Up, Yahoo Blows Goats

Hate it.

I log on. I start Firefox. I see my front page. I love it. I go to my WordPress Dashboard. I turn off the computer.  Every. Single. Day.

In a million years, I could not deliberately design a better example of how to utterly and completely ruin a piece of software.

I’m turning the computer off now. Right after I figure out where the hell they put the publish button.

From whence came the art:

That image is titled Retrete, by Daquella manera @ Flicker

Filed under: About, Rants, WordPress

When They Came For JanieBelle, I Said Nothing

A peek above our garters to Adam (AKA SunburntKamel) at archGFX.

You may recall the de-listing incident last year. The short version is that WP marked this blog and Kate’s (as well as others’ who cried out in protest) as “mature” (even if they weren’t). What that does is deny access to these blogs in the WordPress global category pages to all readers, even ones specifically looking for our content.

Clicking on any of the category links below this very post will take you to a WP.com page listing all the blogs that have recently blogged about something regarding that category. It’s actually a very cool service to find posts about the things for which you are looking, or in which you are interested. It’s very cool that is, unless you’ve been arbitrarily removed from that service. What that amounts to is de-facto censorship.

While WP is a privately owned site and I do not dispute the owners’ right to do as they please, it’s rather disingenuous of them to tout their support of freedom of expression on the one hand but deny access to certain blogs on the other.

Anyway, when all this went down, one WordPress blogger, a blogger who we found helpful and informative, a blogger whose blog we really liked, did not come to our defense. In fact, she came to WordPress’ defense.

In a Bad Karmic twist of fate, TimeThief (UPDATE: whose blog is now missing entirely) has now not only been de-listed, she’s been blocked from the forums where she had spent untold hours assisting new bloggers and answering questions as a volunteer. Dr. Mike, of similar stature and experience, has also been shut out. No explanations, no warning, no nothing. Just locked out.

Apparently, there were others as well, although I’m not familiar with them.

I think I’ll probably have to find a new home soon, so if the blog just disappears you know what happened. In the event that UDoJ is summarily deleted, I’ll leave word on where to find our new home at our old Blogger Blog. I’ve just backed up the blogs in their entirety, so fear not for the history. All the classic stuff will be preserved.

Somehow, a quote from more dire times comes to mind:

When the Nazis arrested the Communists,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a Communist.
When they locked up the Social Democrats,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a Social Democrat.
When they arrested the trade unionists,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a trade unionist.
When they arrested me, there was no longer anyone who could protest.

Martin Niemöller

Fortunately, the WordPress staff is not in charge of a country.

Forgive me if this post is a bit haphazard and lacking in the derision and disgust it deserves, but given The Boy’s family situation I felt it was more important to put a post up than to give it the attention it really needs. Pop on over to Adam’s post and speak up.

Filed under: About, Blogs In Our MonkeySphere, Censorship, Rants, WordPress , WordPress' arbitrary censorship policies

So yeah, it’s snowing.

But not here in Jacksonville, just on my blog.  Thanks to WP for this little touch that will disappear on January 2.

Filed under: About, WordPress , Little doo-dads that make you feel a little warm and fu

WordPress Learns

A little notification might go a long way.

Referring to this morning, Barry from WordPress posted this last night:

Tomorrow around 9AM Pacific time we will performing some back-end code changes that may result in a few spots of weirdness for things relating to categories. This includes categorizing posts and links. The maintenance should only take a few minutes but I have allocated a couple hours just in case. Once the maintenance is complete you should see new functionality in your admin area so keep your eyes peeled. I will update this thread once the maintenance is complete.

Just so y’know.

(What the hell do you mean, “we’re out of coffee?”  It’s not even 7 AM, I’m awake, AND THERE’S NO COFFEE?  HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?????)

Filed under: About, WordPress

WordPress = Blogspot?

Geez, seems like the more time that passes the more often WP.com is boogered up.  I came to expect daily crap at Blogspot, and I hope WP isn’t heading down that path.

Free hosting is wonderful, and I understand that there are going to be issues from time to time, but Holy Crap.  The free hosting and awesome software might lessen the blow of the arbitrary moderation/delisting/censorship policies, but if the blog frequently doesn’t operate the way it’s supposed to, that’s sort of antithetical to blogging in the first place, isn’t it?

I assume the images that I currently have on WP.com servers will re-appear at some point in the near future, so bear with me until then.  In the meantime, I’ve been considering finding my own hosting.

Just so y’know.

Filed under: Rants, WordPress

I Didn’t Do It

I don’t know what the Hell is going on, but since I haven’t touched anything,

IT’S NOT MY FAULT.

Just so y’know.

ETA- I just yanked my custom CSS completely, and that didn’t fix the sidebars dropping all the way to the bottom of the page.

WordPress must be messing with the Sandbox Theme. Please be patient.

EATA – I think they’re done messing up my blog for now.

Filed under: About, WordPress

More WP Oddness

Ok, so the resizing thing turns out to be some weird interaction between WP and one of my Firefox Extensions (image zoom).  I’m not sure when ImageZoom last updated, but it was messing with the style tags in both the browser generally, and the text editor specifically.  In the text editor, even if I removed the style tag completely, it was being re-inserted and filled with weird, made-up numbers.

I disabled it, and now everything seems good (I hope).

Except comments.

Apparently some comments are being eaten by the Akismet spam filter now.  I can’t even fish them out, as the filter is claiming it’s empty although I don’t recall having touched it.  There were about 4,000 comments in there when I fished out CJ’s comments before going to bed last night, and I don’t recall emptying it (and even if I did, there should be a hundred spam comments in there by now).

If your comments are being eaten, Email me at the address in the right side bar, so maybe we can figure out what’s triggering that, and avoid having your comments disappear into the void.

Filed under: About, WordPress

Kudos To WordPress

As most of you know, I have an ongoing issue with WordPress’ staff. (You can find most of the dispute chronicled here, along with some other posts I’ve made involving censorship.) It involves their pulling certain blogs from their internal listings, and mine, Kate’s and The Boy’s are among them. (For the record, The Boy had nothing even mildly objectionable on his blog before he got yanked. It was just poetry and stuff about his family. He got censored for bitching about WP’s treatment of us. This blog and Kate’s were at most mildly suggestive before the censorship.)

The process is arbitrary, unfair, without notice, and without appeal. Some fundy doesn’t like what he finds on someone else’s blog, complains, the blog gets pulled.

However, I have always loved the software itself, and until I got silenced in the WordPress community I had nothing but praise for WordPress. In fact, WP’s superiority over Blogger was the whole reason I moved here, and I was extremely vocal about that both before and after the move.

To give credit where credit is due, one thing I and a bunch of other people disliked about the Sandbox theme was the lack of avatars in the comments, and you’ll note that the WP staff addressed that and added them a while back.

Just earlier today you may have noticed one other really big improvement for which I think WP deserves a big ol’ hug. They’ve added avatars to the recent comments box on the right side bar.

Kudos, WP. Good job. I love it already.

Now, about that censorship policy…

[UPDATE: Well it looks like there's a bug in the code. Suddenly new comments aren't showing up in the recent comments box. I'd tell them about it, but I'm pretty sure they're just deleting my email on sight because of the dispute. I can't really blame them, I was pretty unhinged as I tend to get when I'm pissed. I'm sure they'll fix it soon, just keep your thong out of a knot. In fact, take it off and enjoy the breeze if it helps. ]

[SECOND UPDATE: That issue seems to have been resolved, as I was sure it would be.]

Filed under: About, Blogger Sucks, Blogs In Our MonkeySphere, Censorship, Corporal Kate, Fundies, Rants, Religion, Romance, Sex, UDoJ's Other Sites, WordPress

I Guess I Should Swear More

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

• • sex (9x)
  • rape (4x)
  • ass (2x)
  • whore (1x)

Geez. I didn’t even rate an NC-17? I’m so disappointed.

Bob at Hot Dogs, Pretzels, and Perplexing Questions got NC-17. I guess I’ll have to try harder.

Kinda makes you wonder about what it is that WordPress finds so objectionable, doesn’t it?

Filed under: About, Censorship, Erotica, Literature and Literotica, Rants, Sex, WordPress