Category: Technology

Recycling?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
The DBR Axis TT and I went for a spin in the Elena Gallegos Open Space on Tuesday as the temps inched back into the low 40s.

Naw. That ain’t trash, waiting to be packed out. It’s just old, like its operator.

So don’t pack us out, for pity’s sake. Ain’t neither of us ready for the scrap heap yet.

Speaking of old trash and scrap heaps, I finally heard from the WordPress people about the comments issue, which seemed to have resolved itself to some degree after my last complaint on Nov. 22. Quoth WP:

The comment reply box has changed to the new box that adds the options of styling or layout changes using blocks. It cannot be disabled, it is the new default.

Fear not, your visitors don’t have to use the blocks, they can simply click into the box, and start typing.

This is the new “Reply” box as I have been seeing it lately.

A limited inspection of the process indicates that leaving a comment is once again fairly straightforward:

1. Place your cursor (or, depending upon your mood at the moment, “curser”) in the “Leave a Reply” box and start typing.

2. You will then be presented with the option of logging in using a WordPress account, Facebutt, or email (the latter method wants your email addy and a name; providing a website is optional). Select a login method.

3. You also are prompted to have posts/comments emailed to you. The buttons are off by default. Make another selection.

4. Hit the “Reply” button at lower right.

I switched laptops and launched Chrome to try commenting using an old email address. But I was not logged into the Gmail account I wanted to use and got a prompt saying so (O, buggah, etc.).

Rather than dive down that rabbit hole (usernames, passwords, and shit, O my!) I switched to Firefox to post my comment and saw it had me already logged in using my WP info.

I don’t have a Facebutt account so I couldn’t evaluate that option.

Anyway, that seems to be where we are at the moment. We don’t have to face that quadruple-decker “Reply” box with all the arcane symbols belonging to WP’s Block Editor (curse its name, yes). Just start typing and let ’er buck, cowpersons.

Anyone still having issues? Leave a note in commaaaaaaaaah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Sorry, couldn’t help myself.

No comment (yes, again)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
This way to the Egress?

We seem to have been detoured off the Infobahn and onto yet another long and winding washboard gravel road to Hell as regards what should be the simple process of posting a comment on the DogS(h)ite.

I first noticed the latest WordPress “enhancement” the other day while trying to comment on the Better Burque blog. Being logged into WP, I assumed — wrongly, as it turned out — that I could write my comment and post it under my nom de blog.

But when I wrote my little piece, then clicked the “Reply” button, nothing happened. Or so it seemed. There was no visual cue that the button had been clicked. My comment just sat there, like a fresh turd on a flat rock.

So I clicked the “Reply” button again and immediately got a popup that said something like, “Oops! Looks like you’ve already said that!”

And so I had. The comment had been posted, but not as me — as Anonymous, who seems to be everywhere these days, and mostly up to no good, too.

Anyway, I forgot all about it because I comment on the DogS(h)ite from the Comments tab in WP and never actually see the preposterous clusterfuckery that appears at the bottom of each post, the way you Little People do.

Nevertheless, there it squats, like a poison toad, a probe from the WP Block Editor that has infiltrated my Classic Editor environment, bent on mischief.

Now, I just viewed the blog using my backup MacBook and a different browser (Chrome) that was not logged into WordPress. So I got the full nickel tour of Whatthefuckopolis.

And what an ugly neighborhood it is, too. Frank Lloyd Wrong on the brown acid designing the Hotel California for a Wes Anderson movie.

It seems navigable, but I didn’t go through the entire process of logging in with an email address or my Google, Apple, or WP deets because I don’t want to get caught in some digital Doom Loop that drops me onto the Event Horizon just before everything goes sideways in orbit around Neptune.

I will ping the Happiness Engineers about it. There must be a way to return to the simpler days of commenting, before some engineer decided to go all carbon-fiber, hydraulic-disc and electronic-shifting on us.

Shine on, Harvest Moon

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

I wish I could tell you that I’ve been enjoying all the decades-overdue dope-slaps Cheeto Benito has been getting from judges lately. Incidentally, you wanna wash those hands afterward, Your Honors. You don’t know where this mook has parked that fat orange mug of his.

Or that the GOP pestilential “debates” featuring the also-rans — a junior-varsity rogues’ gallery that Batman would hand off to Robin (“Here, kid, take care of my light work. …”) — have been must-see TV. I haven’t watched a nanosecond of them, preferring to let Charles Pierce (“doomed and useless”) and Kevin Drum (“shitshow”) handle that thankless bit of heavy lifting.

No, I’ve mostly been riding my bikes, awaiting tonight’s Harvest Moon — the last supermoon of the year — and fiddling idly with the WordPress Block Editor.

I’ve had several back-and-forths with a WP “Happiness Engineer” name of Liz about the Strange Case of the Spastic Comments, and she’s been very patient with this senile old fool, who basically wants to keep driving his 1954 Studebaker Conestoga of a blog editor until the wheels come off.

Which they may very well be doing. Who knows? My WP theme is retired, and so am I, but at least I remain functional. Most days, anyway.

Anyway, with one eye peeled for that instant when a wheel or two or three passes me and my Studwhacker as we’re getting our kicks on Route 66, I’ve been under the hood of an unused WP blog, banging on greasy bits I don’t recognize with a good hammer and a bad attitude.

Any of yis who are still experiencing technical difficulties with commenting on this blog are cordially invited to visit that one and try to comment, see if its swinging door leads to a jukebox and a barstool instead of the Three Heads of Cerberus (Drunk, Confused, and Angry).

It’s a one-post blog, with a new(er) theme called “Hemingway Rewritten” — yeah, I know, the gall of me — and none of the usual bells, whistles, and aaaooogah horns in the sidebar. Plus, since it’s a free blog, there are ads. Ick.

Frankly, you’d be better served by howling at the moon.

Theme song

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
The Wizards of WordPress deliver unto us from their Celestial Canale.

The Wizards of WordPress finally checked their Palantír and noticed they’d failed to respond to my feeble pleas for succor, or as some jaded customer-service types call it, “Sucker.”

But respond they finally did, yesterday. And thus, as your reigning Prelate of Punditry, I bear their scriptures to you, my congregation.

First, since the comments issue seems to affect different users (Mac, Windows, Firefox, Safari) in different ways, the duty wizard suggested that those of you experiencing technical difficulties “post in our public support forums to get help troubleshooting [your] setups.”

Adding a “modlook” tag to your post on forums.wordpress.com will add it to the staff queue for that team, quoth the wizard via email.

Now, I realize this may be a bridge too far for some of yis who are moved occasionally to rattle-can a little snark onto Your Humble Narrator’s virtual railroad trestle. And in any event, crossing it might not lead you to a brave new commenting world.

Because the duty wizard added that the the blog’s theme, like its operator, “is very old and no longer compatible” with many browser setups.

“There are more modern themes that still stay true to the simplistic aesthetic of Kubrick,” the wizard added, suggesting that I search WP’s theme park for a new one with tags like “blog,” “author,” “technophobe,” “senile old hack,” “gibbering eejit,” “Stone Age scribbler,” “nursing-home newsletter,” or “STFU.”

(Actually, the wizard only pitched the first two tags. But hey, it’s my blog and I’ll lie if I want to, lie if I want to, lie if I want to — you would lie too if it happened to you.)

Ordinarily when someone suggests “It’s not us, it’s you,” I snort and holler, “Boooooooosheeyit!” But I’m inclined to buy what this wizard is selling because I’m rocking some seriously old gear here and have been noticing my own technical difficulties doing bits of this, that, and the other in my journeys throughout the Innertubes.

I mean, c’mon: A 2014 MacBook Pro running macOS Mojave 10.14.6? Sure, 16 GB of memory and plenty of room yet on the old internal drive, but still, we’re talking Safari 14.1.2 here. That dog’s so old it won’t hunt WP’s theme park for some of the newer possibilities. Just staggers around the gate sniffing and pissing on the bars.

So, we may be looking at a prolonged period of “upgrades” here at Ye Olde Dogge Pounde. OS. Browser. WP theme. Etc. Get ’er up there on the lift, Skeeter. Sweet holy motherfuck, what we got here? Git a bucket under that! And fetch my .22 wheelgun, something’s built a nest in there. Do Duck! City woodrats have eight eyes?

My plan, such as it is, is to experiment with new themes using an old blog, rather than risk the Main Attraction, which goes all the way back to November 2008. I keep a couple-three shuttered shops in the old unreal-estate portfolio just in case this sort of nightmare ever reared its ugly head(s).

More as I learn it. Please continue to hold. Your call is important to us. A Misery Engineer will be with you shortly. Your wait time is currently …. beeeeeeeeeep.

Tech-no!-logy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
The 2021 iPhone 13 Mini. Cute little kitty-cat not included.

Anyone queuing up for the new Apple gadgets this morning?

Me neither.

I have this fine 2021 iPhone 13 Mini here, which I had to snap with the 2016 iPad Pro, since I no longer have any actual cameras in the vicinity.

The iPad is practically useless — I was pinching pennies when I bought it and went for the 32GB of storage, which is of course full to overflowing despite my ruthless purging of apps, data, pix, music, etc.

It still works, but to no particular purpose, like the U.S. House of Reprehensibles, and I don’t expect to ever buy another.

Remember, kids: You can never be too rich or too thin, or have too much storage and memory.

Speaking of things that don’t work as they should, no further intel from WordPress. WP was good enough to send me a note proposing that I upgrade to their Business plan to “unlock a set of amazing features,” among them “live chat support for on-demand help from our global team of Happiness Engineers.”

This, like a new iPad — and commenting on the blog without having to buy a postcard, slap a stamp on it, and hand it over to the U.S. Mail — is another non-starter.