is a blog by Brendan
I’m glad I have a reason to talk about NewsBruiser again, because I’m on the front page! No, actually I want to talk about NewsBruiser because Leonard’s had version 2.0 (“Master Planarian”) out for weeks and I need to install it. Except I don’t want to install it, because a) NewsBruiser installations have traditionally been nightmarish for me (this is due to my hosts and my own incompetence, not NewsBruiser), and b) it has comments. NewsBruiser with comments! It’ll be anarchy!
Sumana and I had a conversation this morning about said comments, and about Leonard’s implementation of Bayesian heuristics in NewsBruiser. We agree that it’s capable of preventing comment spam, but I argued that it can’t entirely prevent tar pit syndrome, because it can’t filter out stupid. Sumana argued that it can. And then we jousted. No, actually we exchanged spam jokes.
(Yes, I know you can just turn off comments, I’m just whining. And yes, I do have a forum and am thus technically already sinking into a tar pit. However, you’ll note that the definition of the tar pit theory clearly states that “as long as no one actually uses the discussion forum, you are safe.” The only people who actually post there came from AZWP anyway, so I’m totally slopy.)
I do need to install 2.0, actually, so I can do trackbacks. I really don’t understand trackbacks, but they sound like they have something to do with RSS feeds or referrer logs, so I must consume them! Speaking of RSS feeds, I’m turning into an RSS evangelist like all the RSS early adopters, and I should be shot. And speaking of referrer logs, Cody Powell responded just as I planned to my goulash bait, and proceeded to write an entry about Cracked vs. MAD, which is a topic I was thinking about just this morning, during my pseudobreakfast. CODY POWELL CAN SEE INTO MY BRAIN.
I stood in the bathroom and I had to snap my fingers to get the automatic soap dispenser to ejaculate into my hand, and I was thinking about how the other people in the room all paid a thousand dollars to see this show, and I got in for free, and there we all were together, peeing.
I sat in row H of the lower balcony and watched the Gala Premier of The Lion King tour in Louisville, and it was really actually as good as it’s made out to be, even on tour. It’s stylistically and technically excellent, with the kind of transparency of production that I really admire and want to be able to do, someday.
I need to explain now how I got into this black-tie-only red-carpet Kentucky Center 20th Anniversary show, which is that I have Connections. And now I need to explain how I have said Connections, which is that I’ve been rehearsing for a few weeks with the Project Improv apprentices company (my life is filled with improv). I haven’t talked about it in here because I wasn’t really sure how far I wanted to go with it–acting’s not something in which I’m really interested at this point in my life, and I’ve never actually been very good at improv. Yet I keep coming back to rehearsals. I guess I’m kind of in.
The PI troupe proper, by and large, works in the Kentucky Center; their kindness and their comp tickets extend to their adopted apprentices, and so we ended up standing nervously and giggling in the middle of people with free food and champagne. I could have hit the mayor of Louisville (who currently wields considerably more power than, say, our governor) with a rock. I have no reason to hit him with anything, I’m just saying.
It was a good show, anyway, and I got to try out my fancy new black blazer for the first time. I didn’t really want to walk up the red carpet, lined with photographers and drummers and giant puppets, on the way in. But I did on the way out.
I want the Cubs to win the pennant an awful lot. I think I’m becoming a Cubs fan, and it’s all my grandmother’s fault! Plus I tend to like things that lose.
Yeah, I got nothing. Boring weekend.
Update 2337 hrs: No! Not boring! I forgot about seeing Lisa yesterday, and comic shopping, and picking up my first Powers collection, and finding it one of my favorite things ever. Permit me to dork out for a moment, but Brian Michael Bendis is fast becoming my favorite comics writer. Okay, out-dorking complete.
Also finally got a couple of secret projects up to date. One of these you may well already know about, as it’s not terribly hard to find. The other you probably don’t!
And I have health insurance now. Just in case you were wondering.
I’ve decided that my pocket notebook counts as NFD Canon, so entries that are properly dated in there (eg during class) are now going into the blog at that date and time, just like regular entries. Some would say this is cheating. I would reply: you’re right! Get your own!
Also I just did a couple of those, from yesterday. You might notice.
Oh no! We have to live the same year all over again!
Could’ve saved a line if he’d written it in C++.
Update 1636 hrs: Or five lines, in PHP.
Update 10.5.03 1745 hrs: And Leonard points out that unless he puts a newline character in at the end there, it won’t look right at all.
Yeah, this didn’t actually turn out all that terse.
Also! Webcomics are maybe the one source of content with the biggest conflict between proposed and actual posting schedule, which makes them PERFECT for RSS feeds… except nobody has one. Okay, Penny Arcade does, but they never miss a day anyway. Even Keenspot and Keenspace, the people who get probably half of all webcomic traffic in the world (and write the software that implements probably 80% of all webcomics), don’t have any kind of update feed.
So they should, basically, is what I’m saying. It’s called Really Simple Syndication, you know, it can’t be that hard to add in.
(Yes, I realize that my comic probably needs it more than anyone’s. I do plan to add one, once I have the time to rewrite my entire site apparatus. But again: I’m lazy.)
My RSS aggregator is now officially aggregating 39 blogs. Granted, a lot of those are dormant, but that’s still not bad for something that started as an experiment while I was bored at work.
Things I want to change about it:
I know thirty-nine isn’t actually a particularly large field for an aggregator, but it works nicely for me. It was pretty boring when I started out, but now there’s a good chance that any hour I hit it will yield at least one new post.
Seriously, why not just add two more dots to Braille and make it match ASCII? Somebody should have been thinking about that.
I guess you could just have one abstract class binaryAlphabet and Braille and ASCII could both extend it, and fill the remaining abstract spaces with their own oh no my brain went object-oriented.