An open thread where, at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
First! (There’s a first time for everything.)
I’m off to a strawbale building workshop for the weekend.
Re the GFC.
Where did all the money go.
The rich seem just as rich and the banks are doing well.
So why is the whole world paying? (Well at least the lower classes anyway)
Simple question but, I suspect, not a simple or palatable answer.
Marisan,
Like it or not, because that’s the way the world works. And even when you have a revolution overthrowing the ruling class, most of the time all you get is a new ruling class that behaves exactly like the old ruling class with a few ideological tweaks.
Anyone notice that the “R” word is coming up a lot more often, even before the Arab Spring?
Very good question, Marisan. Where DID the money go?
The post, and comments, at Pharyngula on chaplains in schools is worth a read.
If you want to help push the ABC to return to its charter, please vote and comment on the petition.
http://suggest.getup.org.au/forums/60819-campaign-ideas/suggestions/1684971-petition-for-abc-to-return-to-its-charter
I see the media has reflected heavily on Tanner’s thesis. This week a broken glass on radio overshadowed serious budget coverage.
which was probably sortunately, since the entire coverage has to be called deliberate misinformation:
ie, not household income.
Id be ashamed to be a practising Australian journalist today.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/business/federal-budget/tax-benefit-anger-wasted-on-those-earning-150000-20110513-1emg2.html#ixzz1MI61p0rZ
I just got a Mozilla update which found me my missing task bar, (i think).
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/14/3216888.htm?site=sydney
Oh, Silkworm, I had a huge dummy spit about this on last week’s Saturday Salon, I think. There was an article in The Punch about it, quite good, too, about the kind of mindless questions the kids had to fill in. Something along the lines of “A Child who prays to God is Good.” “A Child who does not pray to God is Bad.” Absolutely disgusting stuff.
And Garrett has just woken up to it.
Last week I opined that the uber-skinny looks of Ms Middleton lent themselves to CGI or Disney animation. One one count, at least, I’ve been proved right.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.140189172690963.22072.134592746583939#!/photo.php?fbid=197875203589026&set=a.140189172690963.22072.134592746583939&type=1&theater
Garrett won’t do anything about it unless he’s pushed. He’s a Christian, CofE I think, and probably supports scripture classes. He’s not a fit person to have as Education Minister, IMO. When he was Environment Minister, he gave a talk to a group of evangelical protestants, telling them he supported environmental action because it was what evangelicals call “creation care.”
Garrett at least knows the benefits of appearing to be secular, so maybe he will act, but he will probably wait till the high court challenge is heard later in the year. There is a mention of this challenge at the end of the article I linked to @ 10.
Hanging out in the “old aussie rock” thread over in Public Address
http://publicaddress.net/hardnews/and-we-may-never-meet-again/ Lots of songs from when I was a youf.
Much preferred the old look of LP – it was easier to see recent activity at a glance – that’s been replaced by blank space.
And where have those examples of how to make a link etc gone – they were just above the comments box
I’m in the process of configuring the new template, Russell. Have a little patience.
I agree with Russell.
Ah Eurovision – so many wonderful costumes, so many long legs, so many Europeans…so, thank goodness for Ireland. There were Royal wedding parties, there are Melbourne Cup parties, St Patrick’s Day celebrations, the State of Origin. But there is nothing like the Eurovision vote count for sheer unabridged silliness (and the Bach rappers for class). Drink!
It’s good that Bob Carr has his moments when he’s worth listening to.
Sexay new template, TT!
Wow. Tweet from @brainpicker: Invisible Cities – a transmedia mapping project geomapping social web activity http://j.mp/f4YqcB
Good work with the template, TT.
Helen @ 12 – !!! I’ve heard of life imitating art but who would have thought?
The new template looks promising – it seems to be clearer on the eyes, while keeping the old Imperial Purple colour scheme.
There seems to be one little niggling thing (isn’t there always) with the coding in the author info box at the end of posts – it worked fine on my test site, but not here. Pout.
Access Ministry’s abuse of the chaplaincy programme was the subject of Friday night’s Lateline.
I’m sure our mods welcome feedback but I just want to remind people that LP and the people who maintain the back end of it work for nothing. So when giving feedback, polite suggestions / questions would be appropriate rather than barking peremptory complaints. (Of course, giving polite feedback works better in the paid situation, too, but it goes double for people who are giving their skills for free so you can have a fun place to hang out and talk for no charge.)
Morning! TT @25 just a observation but the greeting text
is self referencing, ie the address of the home page is “http://larvatusprodeo.net” and the first link “magazine-style front-page” takes you to the same.
I guess the entry probably covers both style options but it’s a bit redundant. For example you could code links to the alternative layout in each respective style sheet.
And I guess I will die before LP provides a preview option on commenting.
Hiya Dave. That info box sits on top of every page on the site at the moment, so it needs to contain a link to the home page for when folks are on other pages. Once people have had time to get accustomed to the new look, that info box will be removed.
As for the preview option, the one we used to have years ago is obsolete – the plugin author stopped updating it for new versions of WordPress. Jacques does not, AFAIK, have a plugin currently installed on ozblogistan that will provide a comments preview function for the current version of WordPress.
Of course, there are Greasemonkey scripts that will do it on any WordPress site you like if you are using Firefox as your browser…
Russell #15, Terangeree #17, I hope that the sidebar now has enough links to recent content to satisfy you.
As for the comment box descriptions of how to create links etc, so many people misunderstood them that it made more work for moderators to fix them. So they are gone.
I think that is it unfortunate that there is no longer available a copy/paste option for the html of an embedded link. The result will be a thicket of ugly vanilla URLs.
Where are we going in education?
When I rolled up to the U of Q in 59 there were ab0ut 7,000 students enrolled and we saw ourselves as the elite of Qld. Now U of Q has an enrollment of over 38,000 and it is only one of over a dozen churning through grad and post-grads, the total for Aussie now being over 6 figures. Admittedly many are from overseas who will bugger off once they have their PhD.s or whatever, but do we have suitable job positions for the stream of grads and post-grad’s that are now pouring out into our community? Will we come to the stage were you will need a Bachelor of Butchery just to get a job cutting up meat, or a PhD in truck driving?
Clearly are universities are now just money making concerns where the VC’s are paid to get bums on seats. Any comments?
Tigtog, perhaps a link to an external site like HTML Goodies or some other free tutorial would satisfy the need for people to learn about linking?
Personally, I find the new template pleasing and uncluttered. I suspect that it will also be more readable when using the android to view LP.
It would be nice to be able to have blockquotes/anchor tags available for insertion as at the cat, but one can’t have everything.
According to all the papers today, it seems that Julia and Tim might be tieing the knot. Our own royal wedding!
Silkworm.
Guess that Xtan evangelist is a liar. They’ve been caught with their pants down.
LP Collective.
Absolutely love the new format. especially the large print in the comments box. Much thanks and much appreciated. Hopefully I won’t make as many typos now that it is so easy to see. I luv youse for it.
Cripes ‘insiders’ today was enlightening. Is this the first mainstream backlash to the appalling journalism of Noes Ltd?
I found Mathieson’s comments impolitic and undignified. He ought to have avoided speculation altogether. Anyone seriously entertaining e nuptial proposition ought to address that in the first instance to the other person rather than think out loud to third parties.
This rule is especially pertinent with celebrities.
No, Zorronsky.
Just Laura Tingle, who is considerably brighter than the majority of the media pack.
LP Collective,
This is a query, not a criticism and I’m quite willing to wait patiently till you find time to tweak it. Presumably you’re working on the recent comments column so it lists comments as they’re made, so one can follow other commenters’ contributions easily? I’m not sure if this was answered earlier as I can’t quite follow the jargon.
@Paul,
The recent comments widget in the sidebar currently lists the most recent 15 comments on the blog as a whole. It can be configured to list more if people want.
The old form of widget where the latest 6 comments per post were listed breaks ozblogistan, so we can’t have it.
I don’t understand why the comment numbering system seems only to work sometimes now??
Incisive and refreshing analysis by both Laura Tingle and Lenore Taylor on today’s Insiders but swimming against a massive tsunami of spin and misinformation from News and the jocks.
John Michelmore #41,
Where/when is the comment numbering not working for you?
On Climate Clippings 26 , there are no numbers that I can “see”
Above your comment is 43, but my comment 41 has no number that I “see”
Others I can “see” the number or part of it beneath the individuals “logo”; Fran’s comment above I see no number. Maybe its my computer?
I love the new template – somehow seems more purple than before, yay!
I hope you blog about the straw bale workshop David I(NR), I’d love to do one in the future, though I’m not sure how straw bale would go down where I live, it’s such a wet climate.
I always dislike the new layouts when they first appear, which means I always became fond of the one I previously started off not liking.
I think this makes me a grumpy old man. Keep up the good work, LP Hivemind!
@ TT
All looking good through Firefox. Nice clean lines.
… but I just noticed that, for me at least, the “recent comments” widget works within posts but not on the homepage. That is, when I refreshed the homepage my comment at 46 was not visible (the list ended at su); I came back here to check if it had disappeared (because everything I say is soooo important), and it was still here and the recent comments widget was showing it (within this post). Then I went back to the main page and it still wasn’t there.
I can’t imagine what kind of complex mess of coding could reproduce that effect, but there you go.
On both chrome and my ipad the comment numbers appear on the avatar for non logged in users rather than to the left. Whilst having numbers printed on the forehead of avatars is amusing it does make it a bit hard to read sometimes
I’m not a number! I’m a free man!
@sg #48
Yeah, just noticed that too. Your comment before mine didn’t show up when mine first went up, and when I came back just now the homepage was still showing su’s comment @ 45 as the latest on the blog, but opening up the post shows much more recent comments.
Hope that little bug isn’t too difficult to track down and squash.
It appears sg, that you are many numbers. I like the clean lines.
Caching. Ozblogistan is very aggressively cached on the server side, but Wordpress can’t, by design, support a write-driven cache update policy.
What this means is that you will see pages get out of sync because they were cached at different points in time.
On other hand, pages load as fast as the clappers for non-logged-in users (ie, almost everyone).
You can check this yourself using the “view source” function of most browsers. Open the pages and scroll down to the bottom. You’ll see some comments inserted by the caching plugin telling you when the page was cached and in what format.
“I’m not a number! I’m a free man!”
HA-hahahahahahahahaha!!!!
Looks like a few browsers other than Firefox are playing silly-buggers with the comments numbering. Obviously the folks still suffering with the standards-noncompliant Internet Exploder should just upgrade to Firefox immediately, but I’ll see what I can work out for those using Chrome etc.
The caching issue I can’t do anything about, but I think it’s livable.
Here’s something to focus our minds as we look forward to the anti-carbon rally in Windsor’s electorate this afternoon with the usual Tory suspects manically pounding the angry buttons. I’m pretty sure this has not had much publicity but the drunken nutter who tried to burn down Premier Mike Ranns electoral office this week was inside and out front of the Salisbury Hotel just up the road ranting about the carbon tax (a social worker spent quite a bit of time trying to calm him down) prior to going down the road and spreading petrol around the office and threatening to burn the place down. He is now being held under the mental health act. As the likes of Barnaby Joyce rise for another of his purple vein-popping rants I wonder if he ever reflects upon the effect he might be having on people such as this. Worst comes to the worst I’m sure he’s got a good condolence speech on rote (..unAustralian…nothing to do with us etc.) which he’d be able to recite before rushing off to prepare for a by-election.
The alarmingly neon-esque highlight around the ‘Larvatus Prodeo’ headline seems somehow fitting to its Brisvegas origins!
Can we get a flashing **Open 24 Hours** to go with it?
The header font seems particularly apt for the larva rodeo *cracks whip*. I would link to Kenny Everett’s set em up bartender sketches, but I can’t find one on Youtube, how crap is that?
Very clean and neat and large. S’pose ‘comment preview’ is out of the question?
Since today might be a day when comment on the look of this blog is appropriate, I would prefer the banner at the top to be shallower (though I do like the pic). I read this on Safari on a lap top. I find I have to scroll to get to even the first couple of lines of an article. I’d rather see some of the meaty stuff at first glance. Maybe, next time round, you could throw that thought into the mix.
In the meantime, thank you all very much for this blog, which makes the world a better place.
I see at least one person got my Iron Maiden reference.
goccediacqua, I get the impression that the LP crew contains some fairly committed nerds. I reckon they’ve probably made LP compatible with some kind of text-only browser (is it “lyx”? I can’t remember such archaic things). Maybe you should try installing one (subject to appropriate medical advice from an LP expert).
On a further bug-ironing-out note, I’m pretty sure I italicized Iron Maiden but it didn’t show up. The on in this comment definitely is italicized correctly. So this is a test. Maybe Ozblogistan doesn’t like the NWOBHM, so I should try writing Lady Gaga too.
FDB @54
Sorry dude,ya still a number, ya can’t see it coz it’s on ya forehead
Why should LP be the first blog to experiment with new formats? Why risk everything when the rest of the blogosphere isn’t doing anything new? The blogosphere hasn’t warmed since 1996, or 1998, or maybe 2004, and in any case any change in the environment is going to be good for us all… no need to do anything. Anyhow, must dash – the VisiCalc on my Apple II is about to tell me the secret of life, the universe and everything…
@sg re italics, get with the 21st century and XHTML markup, dude! “em” tags, not “i” tags.
Jacques uploaded a comment preview plugin, which I’ve activated. As you type your comment, the preview will appear below the “Post Comment” button.
Nice one Hal9000. Very nice. We should all agree on a single blog format before we do anything.
Nice preview function.
Hal9000, that is ridiculous, blogs change all the time, it is a natural phenomena It is caused by natural fluctuations in webospheric interactional guidance facilitators, it is watching the associated panic that is simultaneously so amusing and concerning. After all our entire future blogosphere is at stake here.
Looks like Channel 7 may have been a bit naughty with astroturf Tweets.
@68…It’s Dancegate! Right, that settles it. I’m never again going to watch Dancing with Manatees or When Buskers Attack or Australia’s Funniest Home Depillations or Border Insecurity Oversized Shampoo Bottle Patrol or Ill-Thought-Out Small Business Disasters…oh, wait
I’m just typing this so I can look at the preview.
tigtog, somehow I knew you were going to say that. I did consider using some variant of “em” in my second post but the only version I know is from latex (that’s right, I’m still faffing around in sgml (he says, slightly timorously, as he’s not sure that’s what latex is based on)). In any case…
I don’t think we need to introduce “alternative” tags and this whole xhtml framework when the system we had was working so well. Sure, you say the old tags were slowly wrecking the blogosphere, but you’re probably in the pay of the government and its html researchers, like Berners-Lee. We should be certain about the importance of deprecation before we introduce a Great Big New Tag, especially if the rest of the world aren’t going to move first. How much effect would a Great Big New Tag have on the blogosphere as a whole, when the Americans and Europeans aren’t willing to act?
sg;
I feel that after 16 years, the em tag has come of age.
“Iron Maiden”
This is a venus flytrap joke, right? Some unsuspecting fool goes ,”Iron Maiden! Why have you never heard of Patrick McGoohan, whippersnapper?!”
Consider it done, I want to hear the punchline.
Next year marks twenty years since the Melbourne band Frente! – of which my brother Simon Austin was the co-founder and guitarist – released their hit “Accidently Kelly Street”. The D-Generation did a wonderful parody of the music video. I remember watching it with my Dad – I was laughing my arse off while Dad just had a look of stunned shock on his face – he didn’t see the funny side at all!
Of course I’ve heard of McGoohan, su. He wrote a single line of the famous Iron Maiden song “The Prisoner.” They were famous for getting in guest writers for the easier parts of their music, so they could give young writers and poets a break. Their most famous beneficiary was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but I believe GK Chesterton, Alan Stillitoe, and Edgar Allan Poe amongst others got a boost to stardom through the efforts of the Irons.
Ah. And Coleridge thought he was just tripping.
@ tigtog’s forehead
It was worth following the link just to see the phrase “sock puppetry” used in anger.
While I’m here.. No effing way the First Bloke marriage story hit the sunday papers without going past the PM’s office. Looks like the budget polls were REALLY bad.
Looks fabulous, comment box is in nice big font. Great to see some images again. Preview is good for those of us a bit foggy of memory and html-link challenged.
And we’ve got the Smileys back.
[Shuffles away, sorta victorious.]
PS. I can cut loose now.
And out of curiousity, what is Permalink. I clicked on it because it was purple. Nothing happened. Was something supposed to happen or am I just dumb?
su @ 45, I don’t think a wet climate is a problem with strawbale (hedged a fair bit), as long as the walls are properly protected from water.
I’ll put something up about it in a few days, but right now everything hurts, and I’m off to bed soon.
Saw some headline in the paper shop ‘The question Tim is dying to ask- Will You Marry Me?’ and couldn’t believe my ears hearing Barry Cassidy asking JG on Insiders if it were weally twue.
Can I have a shot at being a Feminist and ask: is Tim (aka Waity Tim crying into his pillow every night becoz William I mean Julia hasn’t popped the question) being afforded a stereotypically passive female depiction because the normal power relationships are inverted i.e. JG has the macho job and Tim is therefore custodian of of the microwave ?
And is the US Dollar going to inevitably lose its reserve currency status soon, and considering that should I be buying Gold or more intruigingly, Silver ? Silver has more upside apparently as it is trading below historic value (1/16th that of Gold) as Silver is currently demonetized.
The Gulf States, China, Japan, Brazil, France and Russia met together to discuss dumping the US Dollar for oil trades. I guess France rather than Germany was there to represent Europe as the French are less subservient to the USA.
#82 Paul Burns,
It is the link to that item. If you’re looking at a comment and you click on the permalink, nothing should happen precisely because you’re already looking at it. However, I have used the Permalink to link to your comment above, so that anyone who is curious about what you wrote can just click on it to go and take a look.
Thanks, tigtog. Much appreciated.
Love the new layout TT & Jacques, especially the preview comment box below the comment entry box.
Just to let you know that the numbering is superimposed on users avatars for me too – I’m running the latest version of Safari (v. 5.0.5 [6533.21.1]). Otherwise everything is peaches.
@Jess, a styling question: are you seeing my avatar floating right compared to visitor’s avatars floating left? If so, where is the number sitting?
Hi TT, yep, your avatar is floating right, while mine is on the left. The number is still on the left in your last post.
Sorry, just to clarify, the number is sitting outside the comment box, to the left of the double lines on the left.
Like this:
88. || tigtog [avatar] ||
Excellent, that’s where it’s supposed to be sitting.
I wonder whether just giving the visitor comments a left border will get that number behaving for Safari? Will have to wait for Jacques to wake up to upload a fix.
P.S. If you’re still around Jess (or another Safari user) can you tell me whether the comment at #22 from a logged-in ozblogistan blogger shows the comment number superimposed on the left-floating avatar, or whether it’s floating left of the left-side border?
tigtog, Paul Austin’s comments also have the number under (or over) the avatar. And to clarify, the comment blocks all align, your comment numbers are in the same place to the left of the avatar that all numbers are in firefox, but in safari the visitor numbers are about a cm right
Speaking as someone using IE …
Numbers are only appearing for moderators (at left aligned vertically with the username) and outside the comment box.
It would appear the new layout also has an auto delete setting. I shall try again:
This Federal Government is officially a Dead Parrot.
Thanks, paul of albury: it looks like simply slapping a left border on them won’t be a fix then.
@Paul Austin,
I hung out with some of the Frente members 20 odd years ago, around Fitzroy, Northcote. Anyway, 3 or 4 years later I went to teach English in Central Java. I found somewhere to live for $10 a month in an area where there were no other expats. While jogging(training to go climb a volcano) at 6 am one morning I heard Frente blasting out of a house nearby. I was always impressed by that intercultural penetration, as there was precious little other western influences around.
It was in Yogjakarta, as i’m sure you’re all dying to know.
Ahh, Yogjarkata. Very best department store toilet I have ever been to anywhere in the world.
Or maybe it was just in contrast to the very worst museum toilet in the world that I had to visit earlier the same day.
“And is the US Dollar going to inevitably lose its reserve currency status soon, and considering that should I be buying Gold or more intruigingly, Silver ? Silver has more upside apparently as it is trading below historic value (1/16th that of Gold) as Silver is currently demonetized”.
Read several articles over the weekend about the price silver but the recent speculative buyers have all been torn a new one by the sudden 28% price drop last week.
There is no use for silver other than jewellery these days and photographic use has more or less stopped.
Generally commodities have been pushed around by QE2 – losts of dosh sloshing around in the system and ”nowhere to play sort of syndrome” so be wary of what you buy in this area- price corrections may be severe and sudden.
Razor,
My response to you auto-deleted as well.
Suffice to say, I didn’t entirely agree with you.
Then again, I might have put it on another thread somewhere and lost it. At the moment I’m a little confused finding threads with the new format, but I’ve no doubt I’ll work it out.
Mind you, if there is an outbreak of vampires, it might come in handy
this is what happens when you watch too many True Blood episodes
More seriously, silver is a noble metal so perhaps you could use it in low temperature fuel cells, if it ever became cheap enough.
Razor,
You got your threads mixed up. Its on one of the Abboitt threads. So there ain’t no auto-delete. (I never thought there was.)
Or did you actually post the same comment on several threads in an effort to get a bite somewhere? You naughty little troll.
Use the Recent Posts sidebar widget for the last 10 posts, use the Recent Weeks sidebar widget for posts just a bit older than that.
P.S. I’ve also created an archives page with extra helpful options (far-right link on the lower navigation bar under the banner image). Please use it, or I’ll start pouting.
Yes, like the funky new design but as I have wondered in the past how long till the sweet siren call of $$$$$ influences the hive mind to take the plunge and go commercial?
As a long time irritant and contributor I demand all similar contributors be given large share bundles at the IPO.
Thanks, tigtog.
An interestiung example of synchronosity over the past few days that may or may not have escaped peopes’ attention.
LP updates its blog.
Mozilla updates its site.
Adobe Flash updates its site.
Must be something in the stars to do with updating computers.
And, while I think of it, a question I’ve been pondering for ages, but never got around to asking. What iws Adobe Flash for, apart from Adobe Reader? I’ve never been able to work it out because I don’t think I’ve ever had to use it for anything. I gather its got something to do with making videos work on-line.
Murph,
I’m not thinking about Gold/Silver for speculation but for Store Of Value so the risk of severe price corrections doesn’t concern me so much.
Here’s the scenario:
When/if the USA enters hyperinflation and/or the dollar loses its Reserve Currency Status then the USA crashes into a Greatest Depression. All the banks crash along with the stock market crash and therefore all my savings are worth zero.
At least then I have something (hard gold and silver) which is then actually worth something. Silver will recover its value because its has intrinsic value – well not like clean water does, but you know what I mean.
BTW that meeting with China and the Gulf States shows the Chinese are manouevering to have the Yuan included in a future global Reserve Currency ‘basket’ hence enhancing Chinese power, same as the US has power flowing from the US Dollar being the global reserve currency at present.
Not the least of those benefits being effectively free Oil.
Another scenario:
When/if OPEC drops the US Dollar for oil pricing, the US loses the ability to acquire free oil it will then go to war to reacquire that privilege. The concurrent loss of US prestige will push the US to Fascism as their national psyche will demand a restoration of national pride and exceptionalism. They will need to ‘rise again from the ashes’, something that Fascism always promises.
U-S-A! U-S-A!
Paul – simply confusion on my behalf.
Razor,
Confusion is somewthing I understand. especially when it comes to modern technology.
Moderation pour moi? Pourquoi?
FDB, I couldn’t find any comments from you in the mod queue, the spaminator or the trash. Whatever you sent earlier has totally disappeared.
Paul B, you need adobe flash for youtube, TED, Vimeo and the like and to play online flash games, like online tetris or office slaughterhouse 35 or whatever.
Probably for other stuff too. Its also a weak spot in your computers security/integrity.
BTW The site looks great. It took a really short time to get used to the layout, probably the first time I saw it, and its easy on the eye and to read.
The only whine I have is that I can’t see the tags for links, quotes etc anymore. I can only remember one or 2 (blockquotes and the em one, tho I dunno if its bold or italics…)
Interesting reflection on Australian (and Anglophone) anti-intellectualism. As a friend pointed out recently, tradies won the right to be paid a wage while in training years back, when night schools were wound down. Tertiary students have rarely been paid to skill up. Great for tradies, but how has that gap impacted on working class participation in higher ed?
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/working-class-boganism-stealing-our-best-and-brightest-20110515-1eo2a.html
Thanks, Jules re Flash.
I have okay security and run regular bot checks to eliminate whatever nasties still get through. (once a week).
I think the new lay-out is fabulous, thank you to all at LP for doing a bloody great job.
TT – well then I hope I just forgot to submit it then. The preview function may have bamboozled me into thinking I’d already done so.
Anyhoo, the gist was that commenters with a website url embedded in their moniker (all mods and many punters) have their name aligned with the bottom of their gravatar (one line below the comment number on the left), and the time/date/permalink on a new line under their gravatar. Except mods have a right-aligned gravatar, obvs.
Those with no URL have their name aligned with the top of their gravatar (and the comment number), and the time/date/permalink with the bottom, meaning their header looks neater and takes up one fewer lines.
Firefox 4, winXP
@ FDB – doesn’t look like that using Explorer. All the same, except for the mods who get a number left of their name.
Mindy – no offence, but I’m happy to say I’ve no idea what it looks like in IE, and have no intention of finding out.
It does sound like the same bit of code is causing my “problem” and yours though, if I’m correct in thinking you aren’t seeing comment numbers for anyone but moderators.
Congrats on the new theme tigtog, ’tis lovely!
Yes, thanks for all the hard work – it looks great.
Hey FDB
In your opinion,( being a gardener) if i wanted to graft a multitude of different capsicum to one rootstock, in the tropics, which would you choose?
I’ve googled and all i can find is tomato rootstock.
That can’t be right, can it?
There’s no problem with comment numbers or nom de blog (with or without URL) in SeaMonkey for those who care.
/smug
I’m not FDB obviously, but are you talking about grafting to a tomato or tree tomato? It might be worth trying to graft capsicums to a tree tomato [ie: tamarillo]. I think I read somewhere about someone grafting eggplants to a tamarillo. Capsicums, eggplants, tomatoes and tamarillos are all in the solanaceae family….so it should work. I wouldn’t bother trying to graft a capsicum to a tomato rootstock since of all of the above, tomatoes are seem the most susceptible to disease.
And since we are on the topic of gardening, I grew sugarcane this year – it was an experiment I didn’t expect to succeed, so now I’m wondering if there is any simple way of extracting the sugar…ie: can you boil it up to make a sugar syrup or something….?
Also, I am in need of recipes for quinces. My tree is going to break if I don’t do something with ‘em. I’ve done quince paste, pickled quince, pot-roasted quince, quince crumble. And I’ve run out of neighbours to give ‘em to.
Other than that, I have been harvesting saffron [another project I didn't expect to succeed!] and I am also about to do some preserved lemons from my first ever crop of lemons.
Furious B
Tamarillo, might be worth a go. thanks.
As for sugar, you need to run the stalks through rollers, like the old fashion washing machine wringer to get the juice, strain that and let it crystallize in a flat container in the sun,like salty water to salt.
Cover it with %90 shade cloth to stop insects.
And brown sugar is yours.
Then use 1kg in a dark ale home brew
TT – if I might make a request? Is it possible to display the number of comments against an entry on the front page with the new design? Saves having to load a page if nothing has been added.
@Chris, just about anything is possible, we are after all working with PHP here.
Some things, however, are less than desirable in terms of increasing load times. Conveniently, the Recent Weeks sidebar widget gives links to each week’s post by post list of excerpts complete with comment counts, for those who want a quick overview.
You could also subscribe to LP comments in your feedreader, or to the comments of individual posts in which you are interested.
BTW, tweaks for the comment numbers and a few other niggles here and there have been sent to Jacques, who will upload them later today when he gets some spare time outside working hours.
This is an interesting article, with some ideas equally true in Australia I think:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/08/britain-public-intellectuals
@ FDB – no offence taken, I wouldn’t be using IE if I had a choice either. Yep, no numbers for anyone except moderators.
I can see the numbers when using Firefox though.
Eric @ 132. Interesting read cheers.
Eric @ 132,
Ditto. though my impression is Oz anti-intellectualism is more prone to be used politically.
Paul B the guy from the IPA on QandA last night was sposed to be a public intellectual. (Thats a fair definition yeah? I mean he’s from an alleged think tank.)
At one point he was going on about the budget and the great big new tax on middle class welfare. WTF????? he was talking about some confusion in the govts budget direction. I spose he is right, lets face it this new tax on middle class welfare is just another example of….
Sorry … my head just exploded and I had to put it back together and clean the keyboard before I could continue typing.
I agree Paul, and right now, more than ever, it seems anti-intellectualism and politics, well a particular side of politics, go hand in hand.
This is useful tho, if the public debate is stupid, and people don’t trust intelligence then anything is possible politically. Hence we still debate whether AGW is even a real thing. People can say that a boat landing on a beach is the same as people banging on your front door, expecting to be able to sleep on your lounge room floor. Thats how someone can say that a policy that particular govt benefits will begin to be reduced once your income hits 150 K is a effectively a tax. A great big one at that.
It reminds me of the first book in the Schroedinger’s Cat trilogy by RA Wilson. When Furbish Lousewort writes a book called “Unsafe wherever you go!” then rides to power on a massive wave of anti intellectualism and technofear.
I used to have a poster on my wall with Murphy’s Law, and about 30 pithy saying along the same lines.
One has been proven right in Australia lately.
- never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference
jules, I had the misfortune of listening to Judith Sloan on the way home last night (although the other guest on whichever show it was was reasonably sensible). I must say though, it was amusing listening to Sloan dancing around the removal of some middle-class welfare which, as a glibertarian, she should have welcomed instead of casting it as some kind of evil socialist plot to redistribute wealth.
jules,
can also be rendered as
which I have plagiarized from some sports writer who invented the above with relation to New Zealand and soccer.
And continuing on the subject of arguing with fools or the deliberately foolish, Tony Abbott’s strategy in the political debate is that of troll . i.e. Deliberate distortion, evasion of facts, taunting, sloganeering, shifting targets, playing the victim, removal of context, pretended offence (e.g. with quivering lip. I am not a nutter I am an ordinary Australian who is merely concerned about Carbon Tax How dare you revile ordinary Australians you horrid elitist.)
So what strategies are effective against trolls ? I would say short factual dignified answers and appeal to their better instincts, with occasional doses of pointing out their idiocy. Must be careful with the latter because trolls go long on seeItoldyouyouareahatefulabusiveleftist
Also Abbott can rely on News Ltd and fellow travellers to paint troll = sensible to their consumers. Makes it a lot harder to effectively apply the troll repellent.
Chess Champion Anatoly Karpov apparently once said of one of his major opponents Kasparov. ‘Playing him is like being in the path of a man on crutches who advances towards you swinging wildly. If you get out of the way you are safe but if you stand where you are you will be battered into submission’.
I wonder if some use of Karpov’s analogy can be made against Abbott ? I would say, in application, engage as little as possible, reframe the debate to your own terms, take your time.
Gillard’s best defence will be accomplishments: NBN, Carbon Tax, Regional Asylum Seekers solution, sound budget. She should also revisit accomplishments such as strategy in avoiding GFC downturn, BER and Pink Batts which despite Coalition sound-bites to the contrary were and are good programmes.
jules @ 136.
Regrettably I do not regard the crew from IPA as intellectuals of any variety. Intellect, among other things = thought. Need I say more?
Important article (from an NT prosecutor) suggesting the NT intervention has in fact undermined effective community controls over alcohol:
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2621614.html
DI(NR) Said:
That’s because the other guest was Frank Stillwell.
Just as a general note, can I point out something for anybody who already knows that all their comments are being sent to the moderation queue?
To keep on displaying that you refuse to abide by the Comments Policy bit about only communicating with the mods by email (by demanding explanations in your submitted comments) is a really, really good way to move onto the “never let out of the moderation filter ever” part of the list. Especially on a day where a great big honking reminder has been posted at the top of the blog.
Just saying.
@ TT
Long day? Wield the banhammer, it’s the only way.
Automod, and even permamod, are not meant to be a banhammer. We wield the real banhammer with extreme reluctance.
The mod queue is a place for people with a hit and miss record regarding staying on topic, breaching content guidelines, disregarding moderator instructions etc. So long as they submit something within the guidelines it will get published once a moderator gets the chance to look at the queue.
That’s the last word on the topic from me today.
Sorry forgot to add the #tongue in cheek.
No worries, it just seemed like a good opportunity to point out that being moderated is not the same as being banned.
The exclusion zone around the Fukushima reactor was extended yesterday (http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3217555.htm) but of course there is still nothing to worry about.
Oooh, I can see comment numbers now, sorta. They are blending in with names once they get into triple digits. Using Internet Explorer (I know, not my system, can’t change it)
So, not entirely fixed then. Bother.
looks good on Safari.
Avatar , number , name
Good enough for IE, working well in Firefox – comment number appearing above the name.
What version of FF Mindy?
I’m running v4, and the numbers are all in their very own column down the left (white background – not even in the grey bit)
For commenters with URL:
23……GRAVATAR…………………………………………………
……….GRAVATAR……Moniker………………………………..
……….Date/time/permalink………………………………….
For commenters without URL:
23……GRAVATAR…..Moniker…………………………………
……….GRAVATAR…..Date/time/permalink…………….
For Mods:
23………………………………………………………..GRAVATAR
……….Moniker……………………………………….GRAVATAR
……….Date/time/permalink
FDB, perhaps you are working off a cached version? The comment numbers should be inside the comment boxes, and to the right of the visitor-comment avatars.
I’m running FF4 and I see what FDB sees.
Hmm suspect FDB is cached, that’s how FF used to be for me – shift reload?
FF and Safari are different still (on a mac at least)
FF:
Avatar number.
Avatar name
date date date | permalink
Safari:
Avatar number. name
Avatar date date date | permalink
and similar for mods – number and name on same line in safari, 2 lines in FF
FF3 at the moment, have just downloaded the upgrade.
Now with FF4
Grav comment no.
Grav Name
Date time permalink
I’m FF4, was seeing what FDB saw, but have reloaded and numbers are now to the right of usernames.
On iPhone I’m seeing numbers for the moderators posts only.
Jumpnmcar, thanks for the advice on sugar cane. I might have to try and improvise something to extract the juice. Good luck with your grafting, and let us know how it goes.
I also note that ‘Recent Comments’ is very sticky – it takes about half an hour to post latest comments, no matter how many times I refresh. FF4, as I said earlier…
Sorry, I meant to the right of the avatar.
Just popped into IE – looks the same as FF4. Good job TT.
Following FB’s advice, I’ve reloaded and now the numbers are to the right of the Gravatar. The ‘Recent Comments’ are now also up to date. Maybe a minor problem with FF4…
@Hal9000, the Recent Comments bit is an ozblogistan caching issue, apparently. Jacques has been doing some tweaking of his own lately.
Hal9000 – refer to my comment further up. In general I am reluctant to dial back the caching because it speeds up every Ozblogistan site, not just LP.
Thanks, Jacques. I’ll let you know if it’s a major problem. I’d be reluctant to abandon FF.
It’s not FF doing the caching, in this case.
Here’s how it works.
Your browser requests a page. If it’s not cached, Wordpress gets called on to generate it. A compressed copy of the generated page is sent to you, but a copy is also saved to disk, in compressed form, on the server.
The next time someone requests that page, the web server discovers that it has a copy stored on disk. Rather than generating and compressing it from scratch, it sends you the existing copy. This is substantially faster than the generation process — as in, up to a hundred times faster. Really, I timed it.
Now, the caching system has some smarts to detect when comments are submitted, so that it deletes stale copies of posts where a new comment has been added.
But it doesn’t have the smarts to detect that the front page would have been changed by a third-party plugin such as recent comments. And that’s why comment threads can get out of sync with what the ‘recent comments’ sidebar.
The appearance is perfect on SeaMonkey on a Mac. (Pretty ordinary at work on Internet Exploder, though.)
@ DI(NR) Same here, must be an old version of IE. It is fine on the IE at home on the laptop. So, no surprises there and no need for tweaks TT.
There’s so many workplaces still running on versions of IE that are 5+ years old. Even newer versions of IE still largely thumb their noses at the idea that M$ products should aim for standards-compliance.
Backwards-compatibility in design is a fine idea in principle, but there are limits, and older versions of IE are beyond those limits for this little black duck.
Just saw the How-to FAQ,.
Thanks for putting that up.
I don’t know wtf is happening with Ozblogistan, but it seems some threads won’t open because there are problems with Wordpress.
What threads are you having problems with, Paul?
(It’s possible that your own ISP is the culprit rather than ozblogistan’s server or WordPress)
Tony Abbott talking out of his arse. I’ve checked out all the others since writing comment 171. I had the impression for a couple of hours LP was off-line, til eventually I got the bright idea of clicking on other threads. They all came up – at least the ones I clicked on.
Anyone else seen this behaviour?
Nope.
well, its still happening on that one thread. Not any of the others.
Paul, can you go to the archive page listing the 50 most recent posts ( http://larvatusprodeo.net/archives/list-of-recent-posts/ ) and click on the post title there? Just want to see whether it is the post itself or the route you’re taking to get to it which is causing the problem.
Did that, tigtog and it still comes up Ozblogistan is broken.
Could it be the word arse is causing a problem with my provider? though, so far as I know I have no censoring devices on my computer.
I seem to be able to access all other threads, still.
It’s got me beat, PB. Unless you have inadvertently enabled some net-nanny thing on your computer, or didn’t uncheck a content-filter option when you signed up with your ISP.
Na. Did all that.
Ah, well, its just one of life’s little mysteries, I guess.
Something similar happened to me a few days ago, before the new template, I could access threads via the facebook link or a link from another blog but not from my bookmark, it was fine after I cleared my cache and restarted FF (I don’t know whether there was any issue with Ozblogistan a couple of days ago? – The message was 503(?) error & it mentioned wordpress ).
Similar experience as su. Once I rebooted FF it was ok. Having problems with preview currently garbling text after inserting link. May reboot and see if it settles that too.
Here is the page that the web server is configured to serve up when PHP goes to la-la land.
My best guess is that your browser is caching that one page locally. Try doing a forced reload. Hold down the shift key while clicking the reload button.
Yup, thats the page Jacques. Will do the Shift F5 in future, grazie mille.
Any thoughts on the garbling of text with two links in the preview panel?
tigtog, Jacques,
by pressing F5 and shift got onto the thread on Abbott’s talking arse. (Not that my comment there made a great contribution to the discussion). Anyway, much thanks for all your efforts re this.
This remark by Phil Karlton may give you some comfort, Paul:
I don’t follow you. Could you give an example or restate the problem?
Sorry Jacques, I’ll try.
Yesterday I tried to compose a comment with two paras each with one href link in it. My preview panel never displayed both para at the same time once links were placed. I tried to enter the comment several times from scratch and the html code was copied from instructions on net, several times.
Further problem, I tried to insert a LP comment permalink which always led me to the ToP rather than to the actual comment in preview. This makes it hard to check on my inserted links before I post comment.
This is the link I used and at present again it opens ToP when clicked in preview rather than here
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/07/31/warming-oceans/#comment-148236.
@Jacques. Interestingly the link opens on the relevant comment once posted, but I swear it does not in preview.
You’ve probably all read this, but if you’ve missed it: Another great story (review, actually) from Inside Story: “Private gains and social losses”