So, this is the brand new Fanatical Apathy. And it’s not ready yet. There’s an interesting story there…
A ridiculous series of dire coincidences has forced us to launch early, before the bugs have been worked out. No, I’m not trying emulate my big brothers in the software publishing industry. Let me explain with a timeline of sorts:
Last week, I contacted the amazing Jennifer in response to her kind offer to help me get things fixed around here. I didn’t know she was Amazing at the time, but I suspected. She is. Visit her site, buy her things from her Amazon wishlist, name your children after her (even if they’re boys). I know I’m going to.
We were making great strides in making the site look good and importing the old entries (and when I say “we,” I mean “Jennifer”), when, by bizarre happenstance, Fanatical Apathy endured a massive worm attack. The attack struck in the wee hours of last night, and it resulted in the automatic shutdown of my domain. According to my host, the attacks seemed to originate from Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, and Texas. It’s hard to be sure. Weirdly, it happened at the exact moment that Jennifer was working on the site, making her briefly think that she’d blown up the Internet and that NSA agents were on their way to offer her an exciting weekend getaway to Club Guantanamo.
If it’d happened last week, I’d be lost. If it’d happened next week, it wouldn’t have happened. The attacks, you see, were directed at my ancient blogging system, an old version of Movable Type. This new, hot blog you see here is a WordPress thingie, which is apparently less easy for spammers and hackers to diddle with the widgety thingamabobs and frummle up my whatchamacallits.
I know, I’m losing you all with my hi-tech talk. Suffice to say that we’re here in the new digs a bit early, but by necessity. Welcome! Over the next day or two most of the old stuff - the posts, the links, the comments - will be brought over here. For now, just ooh and aah at the snazzy new pad with its numbered comments, smart fashion sense, and central air conditioning.
Oh, and you need to enable “javascript” in order to comment. It’s one of those browser whosimawhatsits that lets you fring with various argfargles, I think.
Fanny Roborat
61 comments
jerry
May 10, 2005 at 5:45 pm
1Adam, I have to say that this new layout looks very promising.
jerry
the conserva-troll
dee
May 10, 2005 at 6:01 pm
2Wow. Two whole months have disappeared! This reminds me of second semester sophomore year, but I digress…
It’s quite…subtle. I like it.
Mojo
May 10, 2005 at 6:32 pm
3Links that you can actually see, functionality, clean layout? I don’t trust it!
Allison in Santa Cruz
May 10, 2005 at 6:34 pm
4Hmm, it looks good. Yep, I think we’ll take it!
Ken
May 10, 2005 at 6:58 pm
5Hmmm, the attack came from Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, and Texas? Can someone double check where Bush, Cheney, and Rice have been in the last week or so? I think I see a pattern!
Katie
May 10, 2005 at 7:15 pm
6oooooooooohhhhhhhhhh!!!!
aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
katie
Jerry
May 10, 2005 at 7:22 pm
7My money is on Texas. Just a hunch.
Emmarie
May 10, 2005 at 8:05 pm
8But…but…
I looked here during history (yes, yes, awful I know, another reason why students shouldn’t use laptops, I agree with you entirely), saw the post before this one, and thought “Oh, this looks long and there are a lot of comments. I’ll read it later.”
*curls up in a ball and sniffles over her lost chance*
Abner Cadaver
May 10, 2005 at 8:07 pm
9It’s so…..uh….. new and ……clean! The fridge still has the operating manual in the freezer!
Bob
May 10, 2005 at 8:20 pm
10Wow, this place looks minty fresh! Very nice.
Leslie
May 10, 2005 at 8:50 pm
11I know this sounds suspiciously timed, but I was just about to click on the PayPal link, and… it’s not there. I assume the Amazing Jennifer will be putting a PayPal link on the site once she gets a chance? I’d like to make a gift to our host for his new “home”.
David
May 10, 2005 at 9:10 pm
12Clean mind, clean website - take your pick. Glad to see Adam opted for the clean website.
David
May 10, 2005 at 9:11 pm
13Damn, it worked!
Scott McClellan
May 10, 2005 at 9:36 pm
14It was me. Fuck off.
Bob
May 10, 2005 at 9:43 pm
15Thank goodness you’re back, Scott. We were going to send someone out looking for you in three or four years.
Murray
May 10, 2005 at 11:01 pm
16Uhh,,, my system’s not comfortable with new things. It took all these years just to get used to the old one.
Say, where’s the spell check? And the intelligent check? and the humor enhancer? Don’t make me have to do this on my own.
hedera
May 10, 2005 at 11:38 pm
17If you were that vulnerable to hackers, it was well past time you made the move. Actually I like the new look, it just took a minute to get used to. Here’s to Jennifer, may her bits never flip. And Of Course I have javascript enabled…
In fact, the only one of your attacking areas I don’t think I believe is Texas, but that may just be ingrained prejudice about the Yellow Rose; I work with some very competent techies from Texas, all of whom have real jobs and are Much Too Busy to have been involved with this mess…
When you get it finished, will you show links to people’s email addresses again? You say “will not be published” but I’ve met some very interesting people through the email links.
bri
May 11, 2005 at 12:10 am
18Hello?
Am I in the right blog?
Oh gosh. Would ya look at that Mabel.
It’s one of those new fangled blogs!
Auros
May 11, 2005 at 12:35 am
19Hmm. I can’t seem to get an RSS feed. Once somebody tells me where one is, I’ll syndicate it to LiveJournal, so I’ll start seeing you from there again…
David
May 11, 2005 at 1:42 am
20Scottie Mac,
You’re not paying attention. It’s Cheney off, Cheney you, KIJ is a Cheneywad, the Bush administration is truly Cheneyed up. Please, for the sake of gentler souls who might chance upon this website, it’s golly gosh, goldarned, and Cheney you.
tess
May 11, 2005 at 3:34 am
21So Scotty took time out of boffing his favorite fake journalist to launch an attack? Never! This looks more like the work of Karl Rove, that evil bastard! Except he’s even more likely to be boffing a fake journalist.
Um, wait, lemme try to erase that last image from my head.
littlebit
May 11, 2005 at 4:43 am
22A clean, well-lighted place, pencil and paper on the table. Looking forward to a long walk around the perimeter of good sense and good humor.
Mary Kay
May 11, 2005 at 5:22 am
23This place makes me feel almost as good as having all new supplies and clothes on the first day of school. Pretty sharpened crayons, unscuffed saddle shoes, new socks, organized white papaer and notebooks, the smell of glue…the smell of glue…the smell of glue.
Murray
May 11, 2005 at 8:34 am
24Hey jerry-the-ct
Welcome back.
Charles Sommers
May 11, 2005 at 8:48 am
25I get you in gigantic font which I can’t make smaller. Is it just my computer, or is it
intended to be that way?
It’s very hard to read as it requires constant scrolling.
Mary
May 11, 2005 at 9:22 am
26Wow!! This is nice. Way to go, Jennifer. You Rock!
Guess we’ll have to start cleaning up our act. Put the beer back, Murray. This looks more like a “white wine” establishment. ;-D
Harold
May 11, 2005 at 11:03 am
27Ummm, quick tech note here. I went back to November 2004 to see if the comments for “Concession Speech” and “Group Activity: Headlines From The Second Term” had been restored. Both of them showed comments, but clicking on the comments revealed that they were actually the Trackbacks. Is this some conversion thingie that replaced comments with trackbacks? Or did it just happen for posts where the comments were corrupted?
jerry
May 11, 2005 at 11:52 am
28Thanks Murray.
I never really left. I just decided to let things settle down for a little bit. Emotions were running kind of high across the ‘net in general so I thought it might be a good idea to not press. I still visit every day.
jerry
the conserva-troll
Monty Zoom
May 11, 2005 at 12:32 pm
29So, nice place you got here. I really like what Jennifer has done to the place. She does good work. I’ll try not to track mud all over the place. Should I take my shoes off??? Anyway, it looks nice…
Tiffany
May 11, 2005 at 12:52 pm
30Jennifer, from one web designer to another, nice work.
Adam, enjoy your new digs. I’m sure I will.
Aaron
May 11, 2005 at 12:56 pm
31Good to see you back, Adam!
Allison in Santa Cruz
May 11, 2005 at 1:23 pm
32I’m really liking the new digs, but is it possible to have the comments’ authors’ names in a bigger font? It’s kinda hard to read who said what.
Or is it just my computer and browser?
madbard
May 11, 2005 at 5:41 pm
33Rock on JYW for bringing Adam into the second half of the first decade of the current century!
Chris B
May 11, 2005 at 5:50 pm
34SEXY LIKE TRACTOR!
Nice digs. I could get used to this. Needs a jacuzzi.
Pete
May 11, 2005 at 7:51 pm
35OOoooooh, pretty! Check it out - the plastic’s still on the seats. And what’s this - shading? Pastels? Clear links? Adam, are you going all metro on us?
OK. I’ll let you and The Amazing Jennifer get back to your eyes of newts and wings of Java… but could I make two itty bitty suggestions while you’re still in creative mode?
1) I second hedera’s suggestion. It would be synergistically pseudoexcellent if we could “publish” our email addresses. Always wanted to do that. Can WordPress offer to remember/publish our otherwise carefully disguised alter egos?
2) It would be wonderful if you allowed the thought to consider the possibility of crossing your mind regarding using the full page width? While the borders are a particularly soothing pastel shade, I don’t want any of my pixels slacking off, thinking “Oh, it’s the FA site, we’ll just do pastel” I want words and fun everywhere, Lobsterdammit! (I know, I know, it’s aesthetics, and I wouldn’t know an aesthetic if it was the President of the Yoonited States, but pretty please with Karl Rove’s head on top???)
BTW, I’ve named my dressing gown after Jennifer. It’s warm, stylish, and very comfortable. (I also have a ceiling fan called Eric, and computers called Hector and Jove, printers called Clarence and Herbert, but let’s not go into that now…)
Keep cracking that whip.
Pete
May 11, 2005 at 8:03 pm
36Oh and another thing… I like the RSS feed! Specially now I’ve got a working RSS reader.
It looks like the RSS links have an extra “feed:” prepended to the URIs. Is this normal? It may explain why Auros’ feed trial didn’t work. When I removed the extra protocol header, it worked. Don’t ask me why, I don’t think I know.
Linkmeister
May 11, 2005 at 8:50 pm
37Jennifer does good work, and that’s coming from someone who, when asked whether I’d like a hard or soft pack of Marlboros, is wont to say “It’s the content, not the packaging.”
In this case, it’s both!
Allison
May 11, 2005 at 11:21 pm
38Welcome to Wordpress! Wahoo!
You’re gonna love the new digs — I know I did when I xfrd from Blogger a couple months ago. Blessings upon Jennifer, oh she who has a blog with archives way predating this Fall’s bloggapalooza when it was so hip to get a new blog.
pellucid
May 11, 2005 at 11:26 pm
39*weeps*
Your command of language is even more stunning than usual.
Jennifer. I bow to your techness. Beautiful.
Adam Felber
May 12, 2005 at 2:55 am
40I have nothing to say here except LOOK! Lookit the cool way that my comments get their own color!
Another reason to thank the almighty Lobster AND Jennifer. though I’ve never seen ‘em together, come to thnk of it…
Murray
May 12, 2005 at 7:02 am
41WOW!
Landis
May 12, 2005 at 11:22 am
42Hey - I want my own color. Would a bright blue be ok? Jennifer, are you taking requests?
Seriously, it’s great to be moving up in the blog world. I used to do web design stuff a long time ago, but concentrated on other things for a year or two and now feel like I’m in the dark ages. In fact this whole ‘blog’ thing that everyone keeps mentioning has me a little confused - you mean there are more ‘blogs’ than Fanatical Apathy?!? Not in my world.
Thanks to Jennifer for helping us out. And thanks to Adam for keeping it going. I need this daily bit of sanity (it’s sad when one’s sanity always takes the form of satire).
music and meaning
May 12, 2005 at 1:48 pm
43Hi everyone…Jennifer here. Wow. Thanks to Adam and to all of you for your very kind words! I certainly didn’t expect such a warm reception. And I’ve definitely never had a nightgown named after me.
I wanted to say something about this whole experience, but rather than write an essay in the comments box here, I wrote an entry on my blog, which I hope you’ll read.
Let me address a few things specifically here, though:
Font-sizes: I’ll experiment with the CSS some more. The font size here should be easy to increase via your browser. Reducing size is another story. It works in IE, but not in FF and Moz (they adhere to the default size as the smallest, and the default here is about 12 pt). I test the site using the latest versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla when I’m coding; I know that Mozilla typically renders font sizes a little larger than Firefox or IE. (BTW, I know that the sidebar looks strange when IE views the home page…it’s on my list of things to do.) If you’re not already using the latest version of your browser, please upgrade.
100% width: I’m actually not done experimenting with how CSS handles margins, so this is something to consider.
Charles, Allison in Santa Cruz, and Pete, this question is for you: What resolution is your monitor set to, and what browser are you using?
The “feed:” is a newish concept that’s supported by a few RSS readers. The idea is that it designates what links are feeds as opposed to web sites. I know not everyone uses a feed reader that supports feed: so I’ll remove it, eventually.
Publishing e-mail addresses: The main reason for not publishing the addresses is to prevent robots from mining and spamming them. I’d guess that the quickest way to get spam in your inbox is to post an e-mail address on a site. I’ll look into ways of people being able to share their e-mail addresses while avoiding the spam factor, but that sounds more like a forum-type thing.
I’ve subscribed to this feed (that’s a new feature! Each post’s comments have their own RSS feed), so if you have more suggestions or concerns, please come back and add them here, and I’ll read them. I may not reply often or address every single thing, but know that I’m reading and putting everything in the consideration pile.
Thanks again, everyone, and if you get a chance, please check out the post I mentioned earlier.
ginny
May 12, 2005 at 3:07 pm
44Praise be to Lobster! It’s all shiny-like! Congratulations on your return to Blogaria, and welcome to Chicago.
As an MT blogger, I mourn your going over to the Wordpress side, but my hubby will be very happy about it - we’re a mixed bloggage in our house. Nice job, Amazing Jennifer, looks great. My RSS feed looks fine in Bloglines, by the way.
Auros
May 12, 2005 at 3:12 pm
45Hmm. I created a new LJ feed for the alleged RSS feed ( http://www.felbers.net/fa/feed/ ). It’s named felbers_net, since fanaticalapathy was already in use for the old feed. However, it doesn’t look like the new feed is providing any content yet. I’ll give it a few days and complain if nothing shows up…
Auros
May 12, 2005 at 3:14 pm
46Jennifer: It’s simply not true that Mozilla cannot shrink the font from the default. Hit ctrl-minus.
Pete
May 12, 2005 at 5:47 pm
47Oh, this just gets gooder and gooderer. Pastel shades AND Manly Cyan for Adam!
- like the smileys too!
I’ll take the techonogical stuff offline. Adam and The Amazing Jennifer, expect at least one email from PCPete(at)melbourneaudio.com (my alter altered ego).
Hey, does the Lobster get a bright red comment box? Or maybe Scott could have white-on-white (#FFFFFF on #FFFFFF)
Auros
May 12, 2005 at 6:40 pm
48Aha! The new feed has started working.
music and meaning
May 12, 2005 at 7:21 pm
49Good to hear about the RSS feed. I’m not sure why it wasn’t working in LiveJournal, but at least it’s cleared up now.
Font sizes: When I first tried reducing fonts in FF and Moz, I didn’t really think much about it — I did it from the menu, but the default font didn’t get any smaller. I thought, ‘Hm, that’s strange,’ and made a note to look at it again later. Thanks for the prod, Auros, and I’m sorry about giving everyone misinformation. I figured out what the problem was. So, Charles and anyone else who needs to reduce the font size: go into the Options or Preferences of your browser, and make sure that “Minimum font size” is set to a smaller size or to zero. For me, FF was at 12, and Moz was at 14 (hence the larger rendering!).
Harold, you’re correct. I tried to salvage all of the comments from 2002 to 2004 that got lost (i.e. not displayed), but there’s a Comment Void of about four-months (~ July 2004 to December 2004). We only have trackback data during this time period. There are other missing comments outside of The Void, so please keep that in mind if you know you wrote a reply to Post X but it’s not showing up with the the other comments for Post X.
On the bright side, I was able to restore many, many others, including 251 comments for Adam’s famed Save My Marriage post from 2003.
Murray
May 12, 2005 at 9:17 pm
50Ohmylobster! The comments from Save my Marriage! Resurrected from the dead, like an old friend returned.
Thank you thank you thank you!
hedera
May 13, 2005 at 12:03 am
51Jennifer, I appreciate the point you make about robot spam miners; OTOH, I already get so much spam (hundreds a day in BrightMail on Earthlink which I never even look at, plus dozens a day snagged by Norton AntiSpam and the junk rules in Outlook 2003) that I’m not really sure I’d notice. In either case I’ve been posting my email on the old site for months. That’s what the Delete key is for. I do like the new look, although I think (being a Firefox user) that I’ll do Ctrl++ on a regular basis. The larger size is just easier on my bifocals.
Pete
May 14, 2005 at 5:55 pm
52I’m with hedera on the subject of spam. I get between 10 and 300 electric confetti messages every day anyway, so I sure don’t mind having my details published here. (It’s not as sad as it sounds - I don’t need the adulation of all those Hot Russian Sluts…) OTOH, I guess a feature like this needs to be Fanatically Democratic - if there’s an “opt-in” feature for posters who would like others to be able to contact them directly (as opposed to using FA as a bulletin board
), that might be one of the least worst options. Or not.
tess
May 15, 2005 at 9:54 pm
53“manly cyan . . .”
*snicker* bwahahahaha!
music and meaning
May 17, 2005 at 5:38 am
54I’m still looking for some sort of “display e-mail” toggle. Any WP users with suggestions? I’ll probably post a request for help in the WP support forum soon.
Some concerns were brought up in the “The Vast Multilateral Conspiracy” comments. One, if you got a blank page after submitting a comment (sorry Mike Z), the reason is likely because your browser did not have JavaScript enabled. This shouldn’t happen again — now, if JS is disabled in your browser, you’ll see a message advising you to switch it on.
Also, Steve and Jerry wanted a “comment preview” button. This isn’t native to WordPress, so I’ll have to install a preview feature. Give me a little time to implement this.
music and meaning
May 17, 2005 at 9:20 am
55Okay, the live comment preview should now work. To see it in action, check the area below the text box while — or after — you type.
Steve
May 17, 2005 at 9:53 am
56The new live preview feature is great. I love it. My compliments to music and meaning for some fine work.
Jerry
May 17, 2005 at 12:31 pm
57Jennifer - Sorry about whining in a different thread. I didn’t realize this was the place to go about the site. Again, great work here…looks damn snappy.
Live preview is cool…just didn’t notice it was happening. Duh!
Thanks for the work. I haven’t named an article of clothing after you yet, but I’m giving it some thought.
Pete IVDL
May 17, 2005 at 7:16 pm
58G’day TAJ! I couldn’t find your email address anywheres, and my last email to Manly Cyan Adam went and… well, it went.
Two (2) Things:
1) It looks like the CSS has a couple of entries that could be fiddled with to biggenize the usage of the browser fenestration thingy… Not knowing WP, though, I dunno if you can get into the CSS “width” entry for “Wrapper” - it’s currently set to 80%. Like I said, I don’t know if this is the wrapper for the whole page, or just some SPAN/DIV sections, but that might be one place to start. Assuming that WP gives you access to the CSS without having a toggle or checkbox or slider thingummibob. It could also be hard coded in the theme?
2) I would like to chat offline about the possibility of your helping me get my blog up & running… I’ll even name one of my pets/children/house plants after you… If you have the time, bandwidth, tolerance, and inclination, please drop me a line at pnaus(at)access.net.au (my darn melbourneaudio.com mail relay is sulking at the moment…)
Love Your Work. (crawl crawl beg beg grovel grovel).
music and meaning
May 23, 2005 at 2:43 am
59Glad you’re liking the comment preview. I do intend to give credit where credit is due and post something that links to all of the authors who provided these cool blog widgets.
I just read David’s comment in the latest post. David, I’m sorry to hear that you’re having problems posting comments. WP-Hashcash is yet another widget for the blog, but one of the most important ones, as it prevents spam comments (the main reason why Adam needed to upgrade the blog in the first place). I’ll try to figure out why your comments are being eaten selectively — it probably stems from something I did wrong when I installed WP-Hashcash. Can you tell me what browser/version you’re using, and if you used the same computer/browser to send all your comments? And if you encounter the ‘Failed’ message again, could you please copy it and post it in this thread? That would be really helpful in resolving this issue. If I can’t figure out what’s going on, then I’ll ask the author of WP-Hashcash for help.
David
May 24, 2005 at 10:03 pm
60Oh, Lobster, music and meaning, I just read this post. I’m willing to suffer the occasional slings and arrows of cyberdom if it means FA gets protected from f—ing spam.
I always use the same laptop, have Earthlink Total (Totalled?) Access, and beyond that am dumber than a stump about how I’m browsing (I’m even more retro than Leslie and Pete IVDL). Actually, what I do comes closer to grazing. Thanks for doing what you can.
music and meaning
July 29, 2005 at 9:47 pm
61Test message.