Special Blog Post:
The Second Year
For a time, I considered quietly and without ceremony shutting down the blog at the end of the day yesterday. It has for years been my way to slip out a back door when my task is complete, my purpose has been served, or my work is unproductive and more of a detriment than a contribution. A few days ago, I decided I wouldn't be ending this project—not now, not for some time to come. I'm not finished, not just yet, anyway. This blog will not win awards, and it will not be hailed by the mainstream media or the giant blogs; and that's all to the good: rabble-rousers and street preachers are terrible guests at dinner.
Coming up in the second year will be many things I cannot predict. Unfortunately, most of those will be disasters, but that's why humans were equipped with the ability to have unmitigated hissy-fits. As far as things predictable are concerned, here are a few of the plans:
The Dark Wraith Forums will launch an Internet radio station. It will begin as a modest effort, with little more than short news and commentary segments interspersed among long, daily feeds of really bad music that will offend the sensibilities of even the most tone-deaf listeners.
The first book based upon articles from this blog will be published. It won't be just a reprint of posts, although that will be the main meat of the thing. When you read it, you'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll walk away saying to yourself, "People actually paid money for this drivel?" If it's any comfort, no legitimate publisher would come within a mile of a blog book like mine, so the publication will go through a vanity publisher. That will spare me the degrading experience of seeing the book ranked behind The Nude Karl Rove.
The Dark Wraith Forums will remain a one-person affair. Team blogs are powerful draws because they offer readers more posts, more variety, and more content. It's just not my way to be much of a team player. However, readers will be treated to guest authors. As much as I'm a writer, I'm also a publisher. Talent merits exposure.
Other things will come, some I have in mind now, some I can't imagine. This much is certain: if you stop by here from time to time, you'll find something to read. Tonight, just a little poetry.
Comes soon the time, blacken th' sky;
the Horsemen ride—many shall die.
Slips in the thief, blind be our eye;
hold shut the door, hear not the cry.
Anon we pay, in blood for hate:
to Judgment soon, no more to wait.
An age of war, no use for faith;
'Bring forth the dark!'... so bids the Wraith.
And now begins the second year of The Dark Wraith Forums.
Published 12/14/2005 12:45:00 AM
<< 67 Comments Total
So that's why you've evaporated. I had begun to suspect you were thinking of moving on. That, or evolution is what eventually happens to all blogs in the end, isn't it? Those that don't fade away, that is. I’m guessing the current interpersonal connections that characterize blogging are about to undergo a sea change. Nothing ever remains static, does it? So you have decided to move up and over as opposed to out - interesting. What are your plans for the index? Open, with another guiding hand; or as is? It has been drifting of late - but then the Holidays are a very busy time. I would be sad to see it go. At any rate - good luck. I hope everything works out as you have planned.
Good Morning Dark Wraith,
I'm so relieved that you have decided to stay. To loose a friend, especially at this time of year, would be too sad.
Can't wait to see the new functionalities.
Good morning, Dark Wraith.
Happy Blogiversary. I read the line that you considered shutting down the blog with no fanfare...
Damn! That would have been a real shocker. I think a lot of us would have been quite puzzled...and saddened... but, it looks as though you've decided to continue and that's the good thing! YAY! It sounds like the future holds some things to look forward to.
Question: Is the bumpersticker about Choice going to be available, or has it and I missed it?
I would have been thunderstruck with the sudden absence!
Happy blogiversary! I didn't realize you shared the same blogbirthdate as Green Knight.
- oddjob
Good morning, Fat Lady Sings.
Actually, I have no plans for material change, other than to add some features and be a little more active on the front end. Although I love enhancements, I'm not at all fond of abandoning an old frame for something new and fangled.
['New and fangled'?!]
On the back end, I'm facing a rather odd crisis of storage space, and I'm still trying to figure out what's wrong. I have as much server space as some commercial operations, and yet something is producing a growing mountain of spurious files. It's happening from both the message board and the blogScream, and I have a bad feeing something in my SQL architecture is the culprit.
I have to work that out before the Internet radio station can be launched since the audio files for that, temporary though each will be, are behemoths.
Naw, I'm not into change that's too radical. You'll notice, for example, that the general appearance of the blog has never really changed. Decorative enhancements, new features, and all of that are the way I prefer to make things nicer.
Once, I owned a house, and I never wanted to move. It was so much fun to make something very old just the way I wanted without ever having to give up what was already there and essential to its character. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep that place, and holding on too long ended me up quite literally on the streets, vowing never again to have what I cannot hold.
The Dark Wraith Forums will remain.
And the Dark Wraith will, as well.
Good morning, Trailer Trash.
Yes, the Choice bumper sticker will be put up next Monday, and I'll give it a good run. The one that's up now kept generating a smattering of sales, and I hated to take it down before those revenues petered out. They pretty much have for now, so I can move to the next one. What I'll probably do some time in the early months of the new year is move the bumper sticker production out of CaféPress so I can inventory all of my bumper stickers for sale at the same time. I have the e-commerce facilities to run a store of my own, but I just haven't been able to secure inventory and fulfillment services. That should change in the not too distant future... I think.
I hope.
The Dark Wraith is too darned optimistic this morning for his own good.
Good morning to you, SB Gypsy.
I have to tell you that you and a number of other people were quite the inspirational folks this past year. I saw all of these new blogs coming along, and it seemed to me that this was the great hope for a better future: all the voices shaking the trees simply have to make a few weasels fall out.
I'm weary of the myth I've seen promoted lately that the Right-wing Blogosphere is so much bigger than Blogosphere Left. No one could possibly know that: there is simply too much activity for any comprehensive understanding of the composition of the political landscape in cyberspace.
More importantly, though, I am vitally interested in seeing new blogs come up. The virtual monopoly the giant, soufflé, graffiti blogs have on the media's perception of what constitutes Blogosphere Left is just as annoying to me as are Right-wing blogs. The mainstream media simply cannot grasp the revolution in information conveyance that's happening, so they latch on to the thing that looks closest to what they are, complete as it is with over-weening pomposity and auto-pilot oversight at the top.
Blogosphere Left version 2.0 will be the motive force of cyberspace information; and like most revolutions, the happy leaders of the ruling clique and the reputable opposition will be the last to know that their time has come to an end.
That's how the Dark Wraith sees it, anyway.
Good morning Dark Wraith,
Congrats on your second year! I, too, am glad that you decided to not close up shop and will be around longer. Now there is no need to smack you. Unless, of course, you enjoy that sort of thing. ;-)
Good morning, OddJob.
Actually, neither did I; but once I knew yesterday, it seemed somewhat appropriate to say nothing over here about The Dark Wraith Forums. I wrote a comment in praise of the Green Knight over at his blog because it's such good work he does there. It would have been a bit on the tacky side, it seems to me, were I to have done something to take attention off a much-deserved and praise-worthy effort he's carried on for the past year.
There's plenty of time for everyone to get some recognition. I sneaked my note in late last night to keep the crowd-control issues to a minimum.
The Dark Wraith likes to avoid stirring up the pitchforks and torches crowd too early in the evening, y'know.
Not without dinner and dancing, first, Misty.
The Dark Wraith still believes in engaging the courtly and culinary arts before the nuances of authentic Medievalism can be appreciated.
I too, am glad that you're not closing down the blog - too many great articles and comments to give up easily without that hollow feeling of something significant missing from the daily reading. And for what it is worth I look forward to reading the book.
I suspect you did however, slip out the back door on the Message Board...
Good afternoon, Dark Wraith.
Congratulations on reaching this new milestone. There haven't been many days in the past year when I've not swung by this blog and I am glad that I won't have to break the habit (one of my very few good habits) for some time to come.
It would have been an especial shame had you chosen to up-sticks right now, just when the comments threads are reassuming the liveliness that characterized them so uniquely during the early days of this blog. Your recent post "I am Become Battle," and the comments thread that ensued set my mind tearing off down several new avenues of thought all at once; a reaction obviously shared by many other readers, and so I think we're all very happy that you've decided to continue sharing your thoughts and experiences with us.
So, to summarize: thank you. Oh, and I'm looking forward to the new radio station very much. Will the DJ be taking requests? I'm thinking you should come on air with Orff's Carmina Burana blasting through the speakers, or maybe The Ride of The Valkyries?
LOL!
- oddjob
(PS: Carmina Burana is a BLAST to sing! ;-) )
lol - if I attempted to sing it then it certainly would be a blast. I may request it for my next perfomrance at the Draft House's karaoke night.
It is a thumping good piece of music - really gets those animal spirits roaring.
Do you know the themes of the songs, or anything about who wrote them? ;-)
- oddjob
Good afternoon, Mr. Shakes.
Believe it or not, the Valkyries is on my short list. Unfortunately, ever since the movie Apocalypse Now, I cannot help but fight the urge whenever I hear that music to check the sky for inbound helicopters on a mission of mayhem.
It's sort of like certain classical pieces I now and permanently associate with 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I had toyed with an opening from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, but I'm already using that as the musical overlay in the introduction and conclusion of my economics telecourses. (And yes, it's quite dramatic, that first, opening scene, with a blackened starry background, the sudden, loud strike of the violins, and then the two-beat drum pound as Economics 101 bursts into the screen.)
And I agree with you that the comments here at The Dark Wraith Forums are right back to form. This semester, to be honest with you, took its toll upon me more than I would admit. The flurry of online classes turned into a ridiculous maelstrom. Instead of dealing with 25 to 30 students in a classroom and in office hours, I had 30 students times three classes, where there was no centralized face-to-face communication nexus: each communication occurred via the WebCT interface or via campus e-mail. That meant 82 voices, each of which was owned by a person more or less disconnected from a broader, group experience; and most of those voices speaking to me simultaneously via electronic channels, having no idea that others were doing the same thing at the same time with the same level of urgency.
A couple of nights, I almost lost it; and I eventually simply stopped looking at messages for a while. That proved catastrophic.
I am now convinced that this online education is turning into a nightmare of professorial professional ghettoism. I have no ability whatsoever to use my classroom teaching skills: all that matters is my technical proficiency.
The upshot was that I couldn't do nearly as much here and on the Message Board. Sometimes, I'd have these windows open, but I was spending the night trying to field one message after another popping in from students; and as you might have noticed, I'm not one for brief answers.
Lordy.
This semester is coming to a close, now, so I'm back in form... or at least I will be after a bit of vegetative recuperation at leisure. The problem is that my version of leisure is putting the final touches on the radio station and doing the editing and additions for the book.
The Dark Wraith sometimes wonders if there might not be other ways of being at leisure.
[Naw.]
Sadly, no. My appreciation of classical music is very superficial. I do enjoy it a great deal, though. It's one of my ambitions to learn more about music, and Shakes Sis has been painfully attempting to teach me piano these past few years(poor girl).
Why, did I just make some enormous goof, lol?
The payoff, Mr. Shakes, will come when you teach your wife how to play the bagpipes.
The Dark Wraith might consider using Mr. Shakes' Ode to Maelstrom (for 20 bagpipes and five kettle drums) as the opening.
LOL!
Now THAT would be quite a piece of music.
Mr. Shakes is proud to have been included on the short list.
Good afternoon, Mr. Goat.
Naw, I didn't exactly slip out from the Message Board. In fact, I just did something really, really painful over there. As it turned out—and as I had suspected—the Message Board was the culprit in overwhelming my server. The architecture I am using has a terrible problem: it creates massive entries in the SQL database I have for it. My long-winded stuff over there was gobbling server space exponentially (and I mean that quite literally: the growth path was an exponential curve).
I had to stop what was happening. Even though I wasn't posting, it was still growing, and part of that was because of the old stuff I'd put in over there. My solution was rotten, but there wasn't anything else I could do: I just sunsetted everything that was older than 30 days.
I just hated doing that.
I'm working on a solution to the underlying flaw in the way archiving is done, and you'll be seeing me posting again soon, if for no other reason than to see if my work-outs can withstanding the blow-hard winds I conjure when I get really worked up.
The Dark Wraith never did learn the gentle and high art of brevity.
I was wondering how long you could keep things going without removing something from the mix. Are there things users can do to reduce the size build up, like using fewer smilies, posting a link instead of a cartoon, copying a bit of text for a quote rather than using the quote feature, etc.?
Actually, Mr. Goat, the problem wasn't with any of that at all. It was just the way the SQL database was handling (or mishandling) input in general. Worse, it looks to me like the database architecture I'm using thinks it needs to keep back-ups, which is great, except that it's been backing up the back-ups! That's where the exponentiation seems to have been occurring in disk usage.
God! do I suck as a Webmaster.
The Dark Wraith would do well to offer his services to the Defense Department.
[They'd never get anything done with that database they're building of anti-war protesters.]
Not an uncommon problem I suppose. Makes you think there has got to be a back up copy of Able Danger floating around out there somewhere...
Oh, but there is, my good Goat.
There is.
The Dark Wraith would probably trade two Spam sandwiches for just ten minutes in the archives at a certain Congressman's office.
Only two sandwiches? I would think that's worth two whole cans. Of course maybe you make hugh sandwiches.
It's really not so much the amount of meat, Mr. Goat, as it is the quality: each sandwich is a meal in itself, and two is worth more than enough for ten minutes of cracking time on that archive, which is no doubt just begging for someone to use it to good purpose... like finding out why Condoleeza Rice ended up in a threat matrix that involved other Republican stuffed suits and a certain Asian country called China, which I won't mention here.
Yes, Mr. Goat, I'll probably throw in a thick slice of Cheddar cheese on each of the sandwiches, but I'm not going to offer the extra-thick sourdough bread slices.
The Dark Wraith thinks they should be happy with the meat he's offering.
Ahem... *in my best Frosty the Snowman voice*...
"Happy Birthday!"
Seriously, although I found you late in your first year, it's been an impressive freshman effort, DW. I don't know of many first-year blogs who've made the impression you have on so many - and so well. I assure you, we're all looking forward to the upcoming year of your posts (even the economics lessons!).
Oh, and I've been a bit busy lately and didn't notice until this morning, but thanks for the mention and the link, in your miscellaneous post, below.
Aw, shucks, Charles.
The Dark Wraith winces at the compliment.
Sadly, no. My appreciation of classical music is very superficial. I do enjoy it a great deal, though. It's one of my ambitions to learn more about music, and Shakes Sis has been painfully attempting to teach me piano these past few years(poor girl).
Why, did I just make some enormous goof, lol?
No, Mr. Shakes, not at all! I just suspected you liked the music to the opening song (which is what most people think of when you say "Carmina Burana") without knowing much about the background.
It's like this:
A series of truly reprobate Medieval songs were discovered in the early 20th Century in a monastery (I think in Germany, IIRC). In the 1930's a German music composer (yes, during the Nazi era) set these to music, making a total of three song cycles for soloists, chorus, and orchestra. Only the first cycle gets much air time and that's C. Burana. (I forget the name of the other two, but I seem to recall the reason this one gets the most playing time is that it's the least explicit.)
Yes, I said explicit!
(Mind you, these songs were copied down by monks........)
The lyrics are all in either Medieval Latin or Medieval German, depending on the song (mostly Latin). The song subjects of C. Burana basically fall into three broad themes:
the fickleness of fortune
the joys of drinking
the glory of sex.
It's about the only piece of classical choral music I can think of that I can say this about...... :-)
It also happens to be extraordinarily "singable" once you get the hang of it. The melodies are truly infectious and remain delightfully in your head for years after!
Here's a link with the words of the song cycle as well as English translations.
Enjoy!
- oddjob (Who hopes Shakes is improving....)
Good Morning Dark Wraith,
My solution was rotten, but there wasn't anything else I could do: I just sunsetted everything that was older than 30 days.
I noticed that, while looking for an old post, but put it down to the natural disappearing of old posts that you warned us of when the 'board opened.
Hope your new semester is more manageable than your last! ...and make sure in all that non-vegging, that you get some extra sleep, fer crumb sakes! (it really helps to clear the mind)
Hapy blogiversary! Looking forward to the radio and the book.
Happy blogiversary, Dark Wraith, and thanks for all your good work.
Hey, oddjob.
Thank you for the info. Despite my lack of understanding when it came to the lyrics, I never did think those songs sounded very Christian, despite the choral orchestra. Christian inspired music can often be uplifting, but usually in a chaste, tasteful way, such as that personified by Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. Carmina Burana is uproarious and chaotic; more likely to evoke images of Zeus fucking than Saints ascending.
And now I know why: it isn't supposed to be Christian at all, so thank you.
Thanks also, for your concern about Shakes, btw. No change yet but we're keeping our fingers crossed.
This post has been removed by the author.
This post has been removed by the author.
Good afternoon, Mr. Shakes.
That was truly weird. That was a cache problem at the Blogger level. You see, the comments exist in the Blogger system (that's the screen you see where you enter comments and see previous comments on the left side), but Blogger didn't hand it off ("publish" it) to my server for several hours.
This is just an extension of Google's latest round of incompetence with the whole Blogger system: you wouldn't believe how many times an update to the template gets "hung" in the middle of publication. The uploads simply stops along the way, and the same percentage of upload completed just keeps repeating and repeating endlessly.
I swear, if the entirety of Google were run like their Blogger nonsense, they'd have been run out of business by other search engines years ago. Of course, it doesn't help any that lazy twits like me continue to use their publishing platform despite how miserable their management of it is.
Oh, well. At least the comments eventually appeared. What happened was that, when you published your last comment, that forced the previous two, which had been parked in cache queued for upload, to suddenly get "pushed" up in front of the last comment, which was having no trouble publishing.
It's all too much for a fellow like me to handle.
The Dark Wraith longs for the days of the cave and club.
[So I could cave in the side of a server with my trusty club!]
Christian inspired music can often be uplifting, but usually in a chaste, tasteful way, such as that personified by Bach's Brandenburg Concertos.
It can also be assertively majestic and bombastic (eg., Beethoven's Missa Solemnis), darkly brooding (Mozart's Requiem), gently contemplative (Durufle's Requiem), mystical (Gregorian Chant), or simply and beautifully (if darkly) plaintive (the Coventry Carol), but it is almost never so assertively animal as Carmina Burana is.
Which is no small part of why it'such fun to sing! :-)
- oddjob
Awright my good friends, I need some help, here.
I have two regulars here at The Dark Wraith Forums who are telling me of problems with this blog. First, I hear that blogScream in the sidebar is misbehaving in some browsers. Second, at least one person can't even load the blog!
I do know that the implementation of AJAX to load sidebar content will cut off access by old versions of browsers. That is unfortunate, and it took me awhile to make the decision to move to the newer standard. However, the problems I'm hearing about are a little more intense than that. For one thing, is anyone using Opera, and is the blog loading properly in it? I've been focusing heavily on making the blog work well in both Internet Explorer and Firefox, and I've given insufficient attention to Opera. In general, Netscape behaves pretty well as long as Firefox does.
Tell me what you're seeing. I know the blog is still loading somewhat slowly, and I need to deal with that soon enough. Most of the remaining problem is with load time for graphics, but a residual is still hanging from an old javascript I have yet to remove because it's still being used in one place. I can deal with that next week, once I've finished with final grades for the current semester.
But this issue of the blog, itself, not behaving is something that requires a firm hand right now. Give me some input, and I shall apply a measure of stern discipline.
Fer cryin' out loud, I just heard that Fat Lady Sings and Kenneth Quinnell (over at T. Rex's Guide to Life) threw this blog into the nominations for something called the Koufax Awards, which seems a little strange because I've never once put up a post about baseball (Sandy Koufax is a baseball legend from many years ago) that I can remember; but if someone's going to come over here and look at this blog for a baseball award, I surely want the blog to load properly.
The Dark Wraith needs to prepare for the home run.
Good Morning, Dark Wraith.
Thanks for the clarification. I felt like a proper tool when I published that last comment only to have the troublesome one suddenly appear. I then deleted those two "help" comments since I thought that might save you the trouble of investigating what happened, but I should have known better than that. ;-)
"The Dark Wraith needs to prepare for the home run".
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
and now the air is shattered by the force of Dark Wraith's blow.
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright.
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light.
And, somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout,
but there is no joy in Mudville --
mighty Dark Wraith has struck out.
For an unedited version of this great American masterpiece, enter:
http://www.onenet.net/~njtdb/casey.html
If I hadn't dropped my stupid reading glasses on the way to the plate, I might have seen the confounded ball.
The Dark Wraith heads back to the dugout while adjusting his cup.
And by the way, Peter of Lone Tree, I've been thinking about offering to help BlondeSense win a Koufax Award by putting you (that's right, you, Mr. January Stud-Muffin Centerfold of Modern Maturity magazine) to this dare: if BlondeSense wins a Koufax, you and I will each provide a torso-only beef-cake picture to post for 24 hours over at BlondeSense.
Now, mind you, I haven't actually made this offer yet, but even if I did, you'd have to stand tall and say, "YES! YES! I want to win, and I'm willing to show my manly man-chest to bring home that bacon!"
Then again... I'll have to think about it for a while.
The Dark Wraith heats up the skillet.
(BTW, my linkage problem has gone away as predicted.)
- oddjob
Evening and Congratulations on your one year anniversary. And here I thought you had been doing it for several!!
I also want to say that reading "I am Become Battle" was simply incredible. Without realizing it, you had me envisioning the experience, and the subtle change you made from boot camp to the battlefield was extraordinary. Bravo!!
I've heard it said, "When it's darkest, stars shine their brightest." The Dark Wraith gifts stars the substance of their sparkle and shine...
Onward Dark Wraith...
M#
Thank you so much for the compliments, elf. I was wondering if you had read that article yet. I should take this opportunity to thank SB Gypsy for actually nominating it at the Koufax Awards as the Best Single Post.
I'll admit that I've been shaken a little bit today because this blog has now been nominated several times in several different categories. I know better than to get worked up about anything having to do with awards, but still...
I should also point out (and this is a big hint to folks) that our own OddJob has been nominated as the Best Commenter. It might be worth our while to see if we can make that one a win for him, since that category looks like it doesn't get a lot of activity, especially from those huge fan clubs some blogs have for their favorite nominees in certain categories.
Oh, and back on point, I have actually been on the Internet for years under other handles. I commented on, managed, and in a couple of cases just about took over bulletin boards and message boards during the 1990s, and I also managed Websites that, in retrospect, were sort of like what eventually came to be known as "Weblogs," or "blogs," for short. It didn't seem to me at the time that it was anything of an innovation: it was just a message board lashed onto a Web page that I updated with new stories every now and then. I called it a "Journal"; but I let it die because I learned that those opposed to one's views include some absolute nutjobs who will take extreme measures against people.
To this day, I am deeply concerned about that, having learned all too personally just how crazy some people are, especially when large sums of money, religion, or certain political issues are involved. It scares the heck out of me when I see some of my good friends in the Blogosphere revealing or allowing their real names and locations to be known.
A movie based upon true events is instructive. The movie is called Talk Radio, and it gives a telling window into the world of troubled people who want to take issue with public media personalities.
Perhaps I worry too much, though. This blog has been blessedly free of trolls and the like, although it has had more than its share of strange attacks. I now have a pretty decent record of not one, but several packet storms that roared in without my notice over the past couple of weeks. I didn't even see them, myself, but it looks like some adverse effects actually were registered by others.
I should be happy having this blog, and I am. Folks like you, elf, and all the other regulars here and at the Message Board make this a wonderful respite from the meat puppet world where incurious anti-intellectualism is interrupted only by the occasional, self-interested enlightenment that the Bush Administration isn't pleasing them. We'll take what we can get from the American Electorate, but it sure would be nice if there were more people out there who could actually think about how bad a President is before he makes such a mess of everything.
Oh, well. At least here in the Blogosphere, we can see a relatively more intelligent side of the American cultural mix.
The Dark Wraith really likes it better in his own cyberspace all-night diner.
And I need to tell you, my great blogger from One Woman Wrecking Crew, that you're one of the reasons I still do manual news aggregations most of the time for blogScream. Even though I could send a "runner bot" to merely pick up RSS feeds to create an evening's syndication, I wouldn't have the treat of actually getting to read the posts, themselves, in any in-depth manner. When I do the aggregation manually, even though it takes a lot longer, I get to read posts and comments; and yours have given me enjoyment on a number of occasions. That's why I can't give up doing the aggregation blog by blog: I'd never get the laughs, the knowledge, and the insights other bloggers like you have to offer.
Thank you for coming over here.
The Dark Wraith hopes you will do so often.
Ah, DW, so far so good-I cleared out everything non-essential and tried it. I also re-installed Opera, just in case. The only possible setting problem was checking the Java box-AFAIK, though, that setting was always like that(unchecked).[someday I'll learn patience and test betwixt each change so as to actually know which tweak was the fix] Anyway, Opera has not quit responding {yet), so I am off to test BlogScream.
PUHRRR-RAYEZ the Lor'!
The Dark Wraith might get some restful sleep tonight.
And by the way, Wild Clover, Opera has an interesting little feature of being able in at least some situation to make the "correct" settings for Web page environments. Other browsers are just getting around to putting out versions that will be able to do this trick, but Opera is the only one right now that's able, for example, to set the correct "DOCTYPE" statement for a Web page regardless of what the Web page, itself, is indicating (or not indicating) is the right DOCTYPE. This is a subtle issue that the vast majority of Web page writers haven't a clue about, so the DOCTYPE statement at the very top of the code for a page is usually wrong, or it becomes wrong once the code is modified after being started as a template.
The problem is that Opera does these "corrections" only sometimes, and I've heard that it can lose its ability to do some of them. That Java option you're talking about should have been enabled all along. I can't believe you could even see this blog without it, although there might have been other options enabled that did the trick.
Let's keep our fingers crossed that everything's working alright.
Now that OddJob has made it through the denial of service period, all I have to worry about is Missouri Mule's problem that the Web page won't even load for her. That one might be easy to fix, or it could be something quite deep.
The Dark Wraith longs for the ancient times.
[I'll bet Chaucer never had issues with Web page code.]
Mr. Wraith,
You may be able to ignore my message I sent at the BB, since I am finally here. Doing the one thing at a time option, the cuprit seems to be XP webclient/publisher temporary files. At least that's what I trashed last to get here this AM. I've decided I really wish Microsoft had just let well enough alone with Win 3.11 and had never tried for the user friendly, "let's make this easy for idiots" interface of XP. I want to be able to turn off the silly balloons and crap. Sigh. Now the question is, why would those temp files be crashing Opera only on this site? Everything else is fine. (Oh, I had Javascript enabled all along. The one not checked was just labeled Java, and I've never needed it enabled as far as I could tell.) Anyway, I'm here just in time for bed :)
This blog has been blessedly free of trolls and the like
I have the impression that most trolls aren't likely to enjoy the experience of tangling with an econ. professor who could eat their cant & dogma alive and have room for a lot more when he was finished.... Only once in the past year can I recall a "conservative" appearing to take issue with your thoughts, and as you'll recall he left after just a few days.
- oddjob
[I'll bet Chaucer never had issues with Web page code.]
Probably not, although I wonder how well he made out with the church censors regarding his Canterbury Tales. The inquistors back then could be unpleasant to be "interviewed" by, no?
- oddjob
our own OddJob has been nominated as the Best Commenter
Aw shucks.......
- oddjob
Good evening, OddJob.
Chaucer lived a charmed life. His patron was John of Gaunt, who ensured that the great bard not only had plenty of money, but also even a wife, one of John's mistresses with whom he became somewhat less than excited, possibly because he got her pregnant.
England at that time was not exactly fertile ground for the Catholic Church, anyway: there had already been a number of minor and a few major confrontations as the Anglo-Saxons' independence of thought, coupled with their still somewhat unique view of Christianity, clashed with Church ideology. The Norman Conquest only stalled the process that would inevitably lead the English to a full break from the Church several centuries after Chaucer.
Chaucer could be a very pious writer. To some extent, writings of his in this vein were meant to appease the religious sorts, but they also expressed a complex dualism within himself. That is one of the reasons I so deeply identify with him. When he was not being a powerful voice of religious rectitude, he could cut loose with some of the most vulgar writing ever penned in the English language, and his stunning mastery of the language allowed him to play phenomenal word-play games that made writers after him, including Shakespeare, pale in comparison.
I've said this many a time in English classes I've taught. One of the primary reasons Shakespeare became more recognized and revered was because of the closer proximity of his language to modern English, even though, at least to some extent, the similarities of Shakespearean English to our own are terribly misleading.
Students to whom I assigned Shakespeare's plays would protest that they had "read those in high school"; but they were uniformly convinced after making it through them with me that they had been given not a clue as to the incredible richness hiding in semantic drifts, nuances of spoken English of the time, and historical/political context in those plays.
It's even worse with Chaucer, of course, given that Middle English was even further from our own language, and the spoken language of Chaucer was English before the Great Vowel Shift (but of course after the full shift from a synthetic to an analytic language in its creolization under the cultural domination of the Normans).
I need to stop, here. I'm getting nostalgic for my days as an old, doddering English professor taking delight in arcane and useless things like language and literature. These days, I need to stay focused, I suppose, on arcane and useless things like fiscal responsibility and Keynesian economics.
The Dark Wraith wants to stay obsolete in a timely fashion.
:-)
- oddjob
Lawd, I finally made it, Dark One.
Lemme tell ya, it was like climbing the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro and finding the sourse of the Nile just to get here.
Hard to believe really, the things we'll do for love. Even more head-slapping are the things we'll do for lust---or even to "just to get his attention," for that matter.
I claim no personal innocence in these matters---even I, your most ardent fan (and occassional press agent) have been a total igmo on more than one occasion for these very same causes.
This is a major mystery of wonmankind.
What is it that sends me tearing down the sticky, hot asphalt of love, yawling like a monkey after a big domestic-gas-guzzler-with-no-muffler-bald-tires-and-bad-upholstery kind of way?
If I could answer that question, I don't know that I'd be rich, but I'd sure as hell be smart, 'cause nobody's answered that one since the earth cooled off enough for us to walk around on it, as far as I've heard.
My meds, my meds!
Congradulations, Darkest One!
I will continue to sit her gazing with rapt attention, hands clasped in an almost prayerful fashion beneath my quivering little chin, my breath comiing in pant-like, in and out of my mouth, which could be be describes as agape.
One more thing. Will there be dancing along with the music at your new gig?!?!
Cuz, if so, quicker 'n' shit through a goose, I'll have my happy-ass up on that dance floor and show ya what a "dancing fool: looks like up close and in person.
MoMu,
Don't forget to check out the message boards. They're quieter than they were a couple months ago (DW isn't as active there as he once was), but you will still find interesting chit chat there. (Peter of Lone Tree hangs out there a lot & sometimes steals stuff to post over at BlondeSense. :-))
- oddjob
Good morning, Missouri Mule.
Well, I'm glad you finally made it, but the whole situation still gives me fits of concern about how many other people are having difficulties. A lot of it does have to do with browser settings and cacheing quirks of different browsers, but that's more or less the "lay of the land," and Web developers have to accommodate the end users if they want people to visit their sites more than once.
When I look at the server reports, I see that about 5% of the traffic stays for fewer than 10 seconds. Now, a lot of that is bot and other mechanized stuff, especially the really quick-hit sub-set. What bothers me the most is the traffic that stays from about 10 seconds to a half-a-minute: some of those are people just swinging by to see if any new posts are up, but some of that is people who give up on trying to load the site. That whole group constitutes about 10% of the traffic, and there's a slight tendency for such users to have a non-current version of Opera, compared to Internet Explorer and Firefox users in current or nearly-current releases.
As a side note in this whole side note comment Firefox users were on the rise for quite some time, but that has definitely leveled off, at least here, with about 20% of the visitors running Firefox and about 70% or so using Internet Explorer. This site still has a few stylistic issues in Firefox, but the main problems are pretty much off the table now... I hope.
Screen resolutions are pretty stable, with more than 90% of the users running at 1024x768. The number of 800x600 users is about 5%. Interestingly, a number of those in the latter category are coming from corporate and academic terminals, where still resides a myth among some IT managers that the higher, 1024x768 resolution is "too hard" on a monitor (which is true for the most part only if they're buying their monitors at Ned's Paleolithic Monitors Outlet). Thankfully, only once in a great while does someone running at 640x480 pass through. I am seeing a few 1600x1200 screens these days, and I have two semi-regular visitors who run at an interesting and odd intermediate resolution. All of that is okay: the site looks fine in anything but 640x480.
Connect speed is interesting. I had expected a noticeable upsurge in broadband connectors, but that's not happening: the ratio of telephone modem to DSL/cable modem visitors is staying pretty stable, meaning that there has yet to be a really big movement toward the much faster services, even though the prices are falling dramatically. (Verizon is offering a $14.95-per-month DSL service in some parts of the country; unfortunately, Verizon is "partnering" with Yahoo!, the company that turned over the IP address of the Chinese dissident to the thugs who then put him away for 10 year.)
Anyway, enough rambling.
The Dark Wraith is glad you finally made it.
[And I really need to stop rambling: I have to submit final grades here in about three hours!]
Good morning, OddJob.
Have you ever noticed how some, but not all or even many, blogs have a sort of personality? BlondeSense is like a "place": it's like visiting the local diner, where the regulars create a character and atmosphere.
That's probably a lot easier to do with a group blog, but it also requires the active participation of its contributors and a good set of commenters.
Sometimes, I'll hit BlondeSense a bit more than I should. I know this because I start getting a small, strange headache just behind my left eye. (It might be the music; or it could be the coffee.) I have to leave after a while and stay away, lest folks over there think me a bit of an unhinged sort.
I aspire to some personality here for The Dark Wraith Forums. One fellow who never comments but who comes here quite frequently said this place is like an off-campus coffee shop at some private, liberal arts college: the discussions have the composition of a number of very intelligent scholars hashing out all manner of issues, preparing their thinking and rhetoric for greater things they'll do in their years ahead (but not necessarily engaging for some long-range purpose).
I suppose that's a decent assessment, although I'm not entirely certain The Dark Wraith Forums has as much "personality" as BlondeSense.
Then again, the Dark Wraith is not a blonde.
Every blog site I've been to has a personality. BlondeSense's is a bit livelier than most, but that has to do with its contributors, as you said.
I think the off-campus coffee shop analogy works for yours pretty well, especially for some small New England college town like Amherst, or something (never been there, so I'm speaking of something I imagine rather than know), where the shop is mostly quiet, but when the dons come in the BS sessions get pretty cool (& weren't the BS sessions always the very best part of the college experience anyway?)
- oddjob
good evening dark one,
congrats on the year. about that online ed vs live classroom: if your pieces here on econ and politics, with your participation in the discussions, are a clue to your classroom skills (such a wonderfully expansive term) your classroom students are getting a whopper of an education.
thanks for the year. i'll add my encouragement for you to do what ya want, and count myself rewarded if you continue here.
software glitches, server hiccups, ugh. may i respectfully suggest that you do accept a wide load of challenges?
thanks also for the html post.
happy times.
Good evening, Dread Pirate Roberts.
I have this fantasy of one day touring the country so I can meet some of the people with whom I exchange faceless greetings here in cyberspace. You, of course, are on that itinerary.
I might even invite some agents from the Department of Homeland Security to travel along behind me across the country so I can show them what dangerous radicals they're really facing as they strive to make the world safe for Corporate Freedom's Squirrely Lite™.
Then again, I might not have all that many people thrilled to see me pulling into the driveway followed by a caravan of black Crown Vics.
The Dark Wraith might have to make his arrivals unannounced.
i'm sure we have our own spies. maybe they'll know yours. "bring em on." they can all huddle out in the cold while we party, warm and comfy inside. anyone watching us must be bored to tears.
Until, that is, I do my reading in original Old English of Beowulf.
In the nude.
The Dark Wraith adds texture to literature.
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This post has been removed by the author.