Administrative
pharyngula | October 20, 2009Since I posted that open letter to Seed, it's only fair to post the reply I received the other day.
We've just signed off with Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type, to begin Phase I of our registration program. You won't actually see too many changes with this phase - we're essentially just cleaning up technical glitches within the system and making sure it's performing properly.
Included in this phase are:
Commenter Authentication Fixes -- meaning that you should be able to turn on Movable Type's native registration option without commenting errors occurring
Load Balancer fixes
Server…
pharyngula | October 17, 2009The commenting issues here are seriously driving me nuts. I've just written another letter of complaint on the Seed backchannel, which always seems to mean that it will sink into neglect once again, so I've decided to also post it here, publicly. I hate to air dirty laundry like this because I really, really like Seed, I respect all the people running the operation for both their goals and their willingness to work towards them, but they've just fallen down on the job of maintaining the basic nuts and bolts of the blogging system.
Look. Fixing the commenting system has to be a high priority…
pharyngula | October 16, 2009I really hate the buggy comment registration system here, and I know you do, too. However, it's also been a huge help to me — the thousands of spam comments that were flooding in every day were throttled way back.
So I'm going to try something. The registration requirement is off, temporarily, just to let those people held back by the bugs get a word in for a while. It's going back on on Monday, though (or sooner if the spam load becomes intolerable), simply because it eats up too much of my time if it's not. So get your words in now.
pharyngula | October 9, 2009The Molly Award for August 2009 goes to Carlie and strange gods before me. To quote another recipient of some random award out of the blue, "accept this award as a call to action".
Congratulations to both, and now that that's out of the way, you know the drill — leave comments here with your nominations for best commenter of September 2009.
pharyngula | September 20, 2009Too much garbage is coming down the pipeline, so I'm going to have to throttle it. I'm flipping the switch to require registration in order to comment, just for a while. If it locks out too many good people, I'll flip it off again…but I really need to do this to limit some of the spam.
pharyngula | September 18, 2009I got many excellent and informed suggestions on how to handle the death threats a certain deranged spammer has been making here, and I've acted on them. I gathered together all of the crazy posts he made over the course of one evening, and printed them out in very small print — it made for a small 61 page book, which would be impressive if it weren't so repetitive and vapid. I took it down to the local police station, along with what little we know about Markuze's addresses, IP numbers, email, and phone numbers, and plopped it down in front of a police officer.
He was amazed. He said they…
pharyngula | September 14, 2009Really, I frackin' know about the crappy MSNBC poll about having "In god we trust" on our money. I've known about it for months and months. I am currently receiving about 20-30 notifications a day from random people that I should crash that poll.
Please, please STOP.
It's a dead poll. It's been hacked and slashed and butchered and cheated into the most amazing state of pointless stupidity. It's got 16 million votes on it, almost all from a handful of people running scripts on a computer. It is apparently on some wingnut email that is circulating aimlessly in the Sargasso of lies and rumors…
pharyngula | September 6, 2009Well. You know, I mentioned that my contributions here were going to be greatly reduced for a while, while I was busy plugging away at this damnable book. I had a very busy and productive day, pounding away at the keyboard, and didn't even look at the site until this evening…and then what do I discover? Traffic is up!
I get the message. You don't need me at all. Instead, all it takes is a wacky creationist or two yammering away on a random thread to trigger SIWOTI syndrome and get you all refreshing over and over.
Just for that, I'm going to put my head down again tomorrow and hammer out more…
pharyngula | September 4, 2009The new Molly winner for the month of July has been determined: give 'Tis Himself hearty congratulations and many backslaps. Now we need to figure out who the hot commenter for the month of August was — leave your suggestions in the comments.
Now some terrifying news: I'm supposed to talk with a publisher next week, which of course has me staring fixedly at text and seeing all the huge and awful flaws in it. I'm going to be frantically polishing all weekend, so you may not see much of me for a while.
I'm thinking if I go through everything carefully and dot all my 'i's with smiley faces*, and…
pharyngula | September 3, 2009Seed is planning to roll out some big upgrades to the commenting system here, and they're going to potentially add a lot of new features, which is cool. They also want to know what you think, but they've chosen to get user input in a way I find rather uncomfortable. They're doing it with an online poll.
Oh, no. Hoist by my own petard.
You better go vote, before the Rapture-lovin' fundagelicals move in and voice their opinions, and we end up with every comment ending in a honkin' big sig with huge-eyed puppy dogs and pink script with sparkly graphic effects.
laelaps | August 31, 2009
A black bear, photographed at Grand Teton National Park.
I'm back! I have a lot of cleaning up to do (both around the apartment and on this blog, especially the latter because of all the spam that has accumulated during my absence), but I thought I would post something to let you all know that I made it home safely. It was a wonderful trip. I have lots of photos and stories to share, so watch this blog and Dinosaur Tracking during the next few weeks for all the details.
pharyngula | August 14, 2009Here it is, mid-August, and I just let it slide…I noticed the nagging comments back when I was away, but then let them slide until I suddenly remembered today that there was some administrative chore I'd been neglecting. It is now corrected, and the latest Molly Awards for June are now online. My apologies.
There were two winners this month. The first is Jadehawk, and it's about time. You guys have been throwing votes her way for so long, and at last they reached critical mass. The second winner is a bit troubling. You voted for a fundamentalist Christian on my blog, and I almost decided to…
evolvingthoughts | August 7, 2009For those who come here from old links, my new blog address is
evolvingthoughts.net
This blog is no longer active.
pharyngula | July 30, 2009When all the site problems were at their worst, one of the things I did to try and lighten the server's load was to remove the random quotes feature here. It didn't seem to help, and boy, did I get lots of email complaining about their absence — I didn't think you guys would even notice!
Anyway, I've restored them now. Look over to the left, just below the big red A and the Americans United logo.
laelaps | July 23, 2009On August 14 I am going to be leaving on a two week trip to Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho. It will be my first trip out west, and I am really looking forward to seeing places like Fossil Butte, Grand Teton National Park, and Yellowstone. I will have my laptop with me, but obviously I will not be updating this blog every day.
I have no intention of leaving you all high and dry, though. I have been stockpiling a few posts for while I am away, and I would like to know if there is any particular topic you would like me to write about. If you have any suggestions, please let me know in the comments.
laelaps | July 22, 2009Apologies to everyone who has tried to leave comments since last evening. ScienceBlogs was getting a server update to (hopefully) fix all those submission timeouts and other problems. Everything should be working now, but if you are still having problems commenting make sure you hold on to the little pearls of wisdom you wish to share and try again later. Thank you for your patience.
pharyngula | July 21, 2009We just got the very abrupt word that Seed will be doing an upgrade of our servers tonight, like real soon now, and that during this process you won't be able to make comments. Apparently, the little text box will still be there, and you'll be able to type away madly, but nothing will happen. Don't get frustrated, just be patient, and maybe tomorrow we'll see some improvement in performance.
pharyngula | July 13, 2009There are rumors whispering about on the scienceblogs grapevine that there may — I emphasize may — be some brief downtime of the site on Wednesday, while the techies do some magic and switch us to some better performing hardware. We hope. If I were a man of faith, I'd be praying, but as it is, I'm too smart to think that would do any good.
pharyngula | July 7, 2009For the Spanish-speaking readers, this post has been translated into ¿Qué Debe Pensar Un Científico Sobre La Religión?.
laelaps | July 7, 2009I am a little late to the party on this one, but please welcome Eric Michael Johnson of The Primate Diaries to ScienceBlogs. He has already racked up an impressive amount of bloggy-goodness at his new home, and his work is well worth the read. Check it out.