“Akismet has protected your site from 1,180,714 spam comments already.”
More Kind Than Deserved
Dennis Prager, in excessively kind and gentle fashion, takes Charles Johnson, of Little Green Nutballs (which I will not link) to the woodshed (kindly, gently) with, An Open Letter to Charles Johnson.
For those of y’all who may have missed the blogospheric kerfuffle, Charles Johnson once ran Little Green Footballs (still not linking it), which, once upon a time, long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, used to be a place where he fought against the evils he today defends. No, not just defends; virulently, slanderously–in many folks’ opinions–attacks those with whom he once allied himself.
Prager reiterates Johnson’s list of “justifications” for his switch and rebuts them all. Here’s #9, a typical example,
9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.). [Johnson]
I saw Pamela Geller’s site (The New York Times Magazine article about you cited it — Atlas Shrugs — and mentioned nothing remotely approaching your charges against her or her site) and I’ve interviewed Robert Spencer. Your charges against them only cheapen the words “fascism,” violence” and “genocide.” [Prager]
As I said, Prager takes Johnson to the woodshed most convincingly (read it for yourself) and, IMO, all too gently, especially given the fact that I have read the positions and assertions of all the parties Johnson condemns and have a good idea of their place in “the right”. Johnson’s place? IMO, Little Green Nutballs is juuuust the place for him… until someone can get commitment papers in order, for his own good. Then, of course, if a physical etiology for his psychological issues can be diagnosed, perhaps medical treatment could return him to sanity.
Of course, if there’s no one in his family who cares enough about him to begin commitment proceedings, he’ll likely spend the rest of his life frothing at the mouth and baying at the moon.
Using Windows Live Writer
We’ll just see how well Windows Live Writer does in writing blogposts. Hmm, seems all right, now how about publishing the thing?
Inserting pics is easy-peasy. Once more requirement met.
Some really messy code that I cleaned up in “source” mode. But then, I got used to that sort of thing when I used FrontPage for a while.
Blogeeky Traffic Stuff
Since I dropped TTLB, Technorati, a bunch of “you blogroll me, I’ll blogroll you” and other such links from my template, I have had a precipitous drop in traffic, now standing at 1/10 the traffic that was normal just a year ago.
So? Of course, I also have dropped from 1,000s of spam comments a day to deal with to somewhere in the low hundreds, as well. *heh*
Those who now visit and comment (interestingly, more via email than in the comments form. I wonder why, but I don’t ask. Because I don’t wonder why all that much–and some of the email comments are from RSS feeds, I notice, so that makes some sense) are of a generally higher caliber than at many times in the past (a notable exception on the previous post).
Still, in recent days, I’ve had visitors from all over the U.S. and Canada, and some from Venezuela, Chile, Ghana, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, India, Thailand, Australia, Japan and a whole lotta lumps from places in Europe (very interestingly NOT Russia).
Sadly, fewer easily mocked Moose-limb boyz are finding me nowadays via “Mohammed in a Pink Dress”. Oh, well. How fleeting is fame. *heh* It was fun while it lasted.
I seem to have returned to my blogging roots: simply blogging to mollify the voices in my head. And that’s a Good Thing, IMO.
Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Political Byline, Democrat=Socialist, The World According to Carl, and DragonLady’s World, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
WordPress 2.7
So, I Upgraded to 2.7 in just a few clicks. Why? Mostly, I guess to get rid of the nag notice. *sigh* I’m sure I’ll get used to the new admin interface eventually, but right now, all it really seems to do is make it difficult to navigate to different admin tasks. Easy to write posts, but manage other aspects of the blog? Notso.
Ahh, found the issue. Was using Ozh’s Admin Drop-Down Menu plugin. Great plugin… for 2.6. Wiped out the left sidebar that is new in 2.7 (replacing the top nav bar). Still going to take some retraining, but now don’t have to type management pages into my browser’s addressbar by memory. *heh* With my memory, you might imagine some of the pages I tried to access…
Update: A new Ozh’s Admin Drop-Down Menu plugin was just made available, obviously to fix compatibility issues with WP2.7. “Obviously” because the upgraded version works fine, replaces the left sidebar in WP Admin with drop-downs–making this edit screen easier to work with, for one thing. When I buy the lil 22″ LCD screen I have my eye on, I may go back to using the sidebar, but on this lil ole 19″-er, I can use the screen real estate and pump my browser up to 150% enlargement for my tired old eyes.
Q For WP Users: What Are Your Fav Plugins?
I list my top five six (because two are tied :-)) favorites just to get the ball rolling:
- Askimet I used to use SpamKarma, but frankly it was just too much hassle, and the number of false positives with the latest Askimet is low enough for me to live with.
- Content with show/hide javascript for “more” Just too handy. Instead of opening to a post-only page, with the “more” tag, it just does what it says. Slick.
- Inline Pingbacks and Trackbacks Slobokan’s implementation of this feature that’s essential for doing Linkfests right (show the trackbacks on the front page “automagically” ) is better than the old one from Simply Kimberly, and works better with WP 2.5+.
- Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu (for WP 2.5+) SLICK! Turn the cluttered WP Admin interface into a clean, very, very slick menu bar with hover-over drop-downs. Oh, very nice!
- WordPress Automatic Upgrade Just click through following the prompts. Backups, plugin deactivations/reactivations, etc. all handled “automagically”. I’ve not had any real problems upgrading WordPress except for finding that something about my old template wasn’t happy with WP 2.5, and upgrading manually is simply backing up, deactivating plugins and uploading the new files, so it’s not as if this plugin is exactly necessary. Sure, I sweated bullets the first time I upgraded WP, but all subsequent upgrades have been no really big deal. Still, just clicking through has its appeal. In fact, it’s so appealing, I’m going to try to “forget” it can be done manually.
There. That’s my top five six fav WP plugins. What’re yours?
“Sitemeter down”? NOT!
A recently linked post from Walls of the City clued me into a misconception making the rounds (yeh, I’ve had emails about it since). Sitemeter is not “down” nor does having the Sitemeter code on ones blog keep folks from viewing your page… unless those folks are using the least standards-compliant browser available, Internet Exploder.
Sitemeter and Sitemeter code on a blog page pose NO PROBLEM for folks using a browser that at least makes a good faith attempt at standards-compliance. I know, because I checked with three other browsers (in two different OSes) and had NO PROBLEMS either with Sitemeter itself or with blogs with active Sitemeter code.
Here’s my remedy for the Sitemeter/blogs-with-Sitemeter-code-not-viewable/loadable-in-Internet Exploder:
For blogs using the Sitemeter code, temporarily disable the code (see the link above), then
Thump the “Stop using a crappy browser (Internet Exploder)!” bone as often and hard as you can. Strongly, and in no uncertain terms encourage ALL readers to standardize their browsing experience on a more standards-compliant browser. I prefer Opera, but FIrefox is not bad, although considerably less elegant (and pretty consistently slower) than Opera. Both are worlds and away better than Internet Exploder.
Just say No! to Internet Exploder!
For those very few sites that refuse to load unless one is using Internet Exploder(even with Opera masking itself as Internet Exploder), because of very aggressive browser sniffing, Internet Exploder still has a limited–extreeeeemely limited–use on twc computers. But except for gag use, it’s completely unused on my main machine.
Kill Me$$y$oft’s Internet Exploder! It’s just tough love.
Use a real browser. Opera, Firefox and Safari* are all more standards-compliant than Me$$y$oft’s Internet Exploder, and NONE of them have any problems with the Sitemeter code.
AND: Note Peri’s remarks in comments. Microsoft’s been aware of this bug in Internet Exploder for years and just doesn’t care. After all, it’s only Microsoft’s customers who suffer, so why should they care?
*IMO, Safari is still not nearly as good a browser as either Opera or Firefox, but it’s still at least an order of magnitude better than Internet Exploder. Yes, I have it installed both using WINE in Linux and in a Windows VM. It’s relatively nimble, moderately powerful, a good browser. And the bundled Bonjour network/printer wizard is not a bad thing for non-techie folks who have trouble sharing network resources between various versions of Windows.
Trackposted to Nuke’s, Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, Adam’s Blog, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Democrat=Socialist, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Bye-Bye, Journalized Theme
I’ve been sticking with the “ancient” Journalized Theme from Mike Little ever since Diane initially set up a WordPress blog for me back in 2005 as an inducement for me to move off Blogger. It’s been through more than a few WP upgrades and has gotten cluttered with all kindsa stuff ove the years, but until my upgrade today, to WP 2.6, it managed to creak along.
No more, though. WP 2.6 welland truly bashed, thrashed and trashed trhe Journalized theme, so now I’m shopping around for something that either suits me or is a quick mod or three away from suiting me. Make my own? Not a profitable use of my time. So, expect twc to look a bit off-color, as it were, for a while as I twiddle with whatever happens to strike me as something I might be able to live with.
Plugin Testing
Here’s one:
WordPress 2.5
Just upgraded to the “latest and greatest” WP, version 2.5/ Many things to like about it. Some things, not so. A couple of my fav plugins just will not even show up on the plugin page. They’re simply not recognized by WP 2.5. *sigh* That means digging around and finding new plugins to do the same thing, if such are available, cos I dimply don’t have the time to dig into learning to write WP plugins.
Oh. Well.
The new management “Dashboard” is nice, clean, easily navigable, which is a darned good thing, cos darned near EVERYTHING is moved around. *heh*
Oh, well, I’ll either live with it and learn how to deal with the changes or not.
😉
Some good things, though, to be sure. I like the media browser. The composition page is much, much cleaner. Had to give it quasi 3D buttons, but I can live with the eye candy, I suppose.