Category: Bloggery

Ghosts in the machine

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

OK, folks, bear with me here — the WordPress install on this site is getting buggier by the moment, like a GI’s skivvies in a Thai whorehouse, and I may have to attempt a software update or a shift to a new hosting provider.

I’ve backed up the database and the entire WP folder, and the automatic update is just sitting there in the admin tool, winking frantically at me like a strumpet with a crack habit. But the thing is, I have a clusterfuck with the VeloFolks tomorrow and a visitation by the mom-in-law on Thursday and a BRAIN deadline on Friday and the Tour de France on Saturday.

So what I’m sayin’ is, don’t be surprised by a bit of weirdness — like comments shutting themselves off without authorization from the Home Office — and a lot of radio silence in the next few days. It ain’t that I don’t love youse, y’crazy bastids, youse.

If the whole shebang should blow up in my face, look for me at Mad Blog Media (The Freeware Edition) until the dust settles. Peace out.

Tour de farce

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
Editor of a new touring magazine? No, just another April fool. Photo: Herself
Editor of a new touring magazine? No, just another April fool. Photo: Herself

It was April Fool’s Day at VeloNews.com yesterday, and as usual we managed to snooker a few people.

My contribution — an entirely bogus item about VeloNews launching a touring magazine, headed by yours truly, with accompanying website and online store — apparently caused a minor stir among some folks in that niche. It was a calculated risk, since I’m writing a piece for Adventure Cyclist magazine about my tour of southern Arizona and really don’t need to piss off anyone holding a checkbook. Happily, editor Michael Deme was a good sport about it, having published his share of April Fool gags over the years.

I can’t remember how long VN’s been pulling these pranks. They date back to the newsprint edition of the magazine, and Charles Pelkey guesstimates the tradition to be 17 years old at least.

My favorite gag remains the time we “fired” me and posted the news online. I still can’t decide whose letters were funnier — the outraged readers who were canceling their subscriptions or the O’Grady-haters who were saying, “About damn’ time!”

On an unrelated note, I stumbled across a Rick Bayless recipe for tacos de papas con chorizo y salsa de aguacate last night and cooked the sumbitch right up. It was both easy and delicious, and that’s no joke.

Hey, Mo’! Nyuk nyuk nyuk

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
Calling all cats ... calling all cats ... be on the lookout for a red-headed NYT columnist hunting hot word count. That is all.
Calling all cats ... calling all cats ... be on the lookout for a red-headed NYT columnist hunting hot word count. That is all.

The Old Gray Lady’s Old Red Lady, Mo’ Dowd, just got busted lifting lines from Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo. For a nice bit of snark on the crime and and a most unrepentant criminal, see Steve Benen at Political Animal. Dowd’s explanation boils down to “it followed me home and I kept it.” So that’s how you get a Pulitzer for commentary. Note to file.

In the meantime, I’ve posted a couple of sentries just in case Mo’ (or Curly, or Larry) comes slinking around here in search of a bon mot. A guy can’t be too careful these days, what with all these journos desperate to hold onto their vanishing jobs.

Hitch in the digital gitalong

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

WordPress decided to rearrange itself while I slept last night, requiring readers to log in and closing comments on the previous post. Sorry ’bout that. I believe I have the bullshit train back on the tracks, but if you discover otherwise, holler.

• Late update: Checking the back-end, some posts still display as “comments closed.” I don’t know what causes this, but I’ve seen it before. I’ve re-enabled comments on a couple of recent posts, but further research will have to wait, as I’m up to my tits in the Giro right now. So holler via e-mail if you feel stifled. I don’t unplug people with whom I disagree, I tell them to get fucked — in the nicest possible way, of course.

BRAIN damage

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments

Ho, ho. My colleagues at Bicycle Retailer & Industry News have finally bitten the new-media bullet and launched a blog, in which they mention the likes of Interbike’s Rich Kelly, Masiguy Tim Jackson and BikePortland’s Jonathan Maus — while saying nary a word about your humble narrator, their very own columnist and cartoonist, who has been blogging about this, that and the other since before the millennium.

Hell, I have archived posts dating back to three years before BRAIN wrote its first story on bike-biz bloggery. I’m on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, Blogger and WordPress and Hostcentric. I’m so Web 2.0, I’m virtually digital. Or digitally virtual. And yet I get no respect. Oh, the humanity.

Late update: BRAIN honchette Megan Tompkins feels my pain and responds to my NastyGram® thusly: “Sorry for failing to mention one of our own in our initial post. I didn’t mean to overlook you; indeed I was hoping that we might be able to collaborate between the two blogs. How can we work together to drive traffic to both our blogs?”

This is exactly what BRAIN needs in order to more tightly wrap its sucker-tipped, Cthulhu-like tentacles around the rocklike thighs of cycling trade journalism: regular congress with a minor-league blog whose proprietor says “Fuck” more often than The Dude in “The Big Lebowski.” Naturally, I am happy to oblige, and insist that all of my readers — yes, all three of you — visit the BRAIN Blog at least thrice daily, clicking this and that until your mouse fingers bleed.