Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

meta

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Senior Project First draft is nearing completion. Ironically, i loaded Blogger.com to see if they were featuring any current articles i could cite in my project only to discover their first complete redesign in Blogger history.

It is terrible. The new Blogger.com interface is completely AOL-ized in its rounded-corner graphics and utter uselessness to the established user. What amuses me the most about this is that, in writing the academic portion of my project, it became increasingly apparent that Blogger’s ubiquity was the main reason it could compete with the simpler and more communal Live Journal and the the more complex high-end Moveable Type. This new template capitalizes on moving towards the LJ model of compartmentalized simplicity rather than the MT one of specified power, and i think it signals the death-knell of serious bloggers using the Blogger service to do anything.


I wouldn’t be surprised to see a mass-exodus of big names in coming weeks. It seems as though Alison agrees.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2004/05/2566/

Questioning My RSS

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I am attempting to learn more about the intricacies of RSS, as Philly Future has picked up the feed that i created as a lark. However, for the moment forget intricacy … this is a Blogger.com nuts’n’bolts question.

My RSS feed currently publishes hyperlinks to where Bloggers thinks my posts live (example [Ed Note: This example no longer works]), but in reality they ought to point to the posts’ home in the archive, where my permalinks point (example [Ed. Note: This example no longer works]). I cannot find anywhere in Blogger’s settings to alter this code. Can it be done? Any helpful comments are greatly appreciated.

In fact, if any knowledgeable bloggers out there would like to point me to your daily neighborhood RSS faq, that would score you major bonus points.

Meme-Tracking: Page 23, Sentence 5

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I am decidedly anti-meme myself, but yesterday Alison featured a quirky one:

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 23.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

I am surrounded by stultifyingly dull school books, which have rendered my answer as: “His seat faced toward the door, and she guessed that he had been perturbed by the approach of an acquaintance, a fact confirmed by the turning of heads and general sense of commotion which her own entrance into a railway-carriage was apt to produce.” (From the stunningly boring House of Mirth.)

Much more intriguing than my answer to the meme is the question of where it came from. And, furthermore, why the twenty-third page? Should i start counting from the first complete sentence? What book started all this? In my quest for knowledge, i backtracked from Alison, who got it
via Dave
via John Biesnecker
via John Hicks
via Greg
via Michael
via Keith
via PeterMe
via Caterina
via David Chess
via Long Story, Short Pier
via Elkins (ah, see, now we’ve crossed over to LiveJournal)
via happy_potterer via sternel, who doesn’t directly attribute the source, but points to PegKerr who was “infected” by
kijjohnson
infected by Mckitterick
infected by Bob Howe who, lamentably, attributes two sources (Silvertide and Curmudgeon), though it seems clear that the former got it from the latter who got it from kricker.

Here, the chain becomes tangled. Kricker attributes two sources: pbsage who got it from cynnerth. The latter indicates that s/he received it via seamusd whose journal is friends-only and cannot be viewed by the public. S/he claims to have seen it first at Kricker’s journal. Kricker confirmed his/her attributions, and points out that seamusd had posted about it first. However, lower in that exchange Seamusd reiterates that it originated from Kricker.

It is increasingly hard to find journals closer to the meme-source via google, as there is a proliferation of hits that occurred after the LJ-to-domain-blog leap in the middle of my chain, especially after being featured on such highly-linked sites such as Bluishorange, PeterMe, and Caterina. Interestingly, on LJ pages the meme is often accompanied by a few other recent memes which do not appear to have made the LJ-to-domain jump (or, at least, not on such a large scale). What does this say about the nature of the LJ community vs. blogdom at large? Where did this meme come from? Can you find a higher, earlier link than Seamusd?

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I have to wonder what i’ve been doing with myself when i look here to see so much empty space. This is supposed to be my one true love, as much as looking in a mirror is. Right?

Ahh, but i am too tangled in this crazy race towards graduation, now a mere eight weeks away, trying so hard to escape. What is there to talk about? Met with Advisor X today, meeting Advisor Y & Z tomorrow, avoiding Advisor Q like the plague. Conducting interviews with people from China and Brazil (know any?) for two classes, designing an entire new domain for a third, and reading lots of books for a fourth. And Senior project, endlessly revising the same damn outline, trying to make my thoughts make sense in a tangible way that can be graded.

Two news songs mixed … a complete Moscow, Idaho as well as a drummed-up Bucket Seat (on which the vocals seem totally out of place).

Forthcoming: new apartment, new job, no more school.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2004/04/108150204608701963/

Coolness

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File under “Coolness” – A daily reading of the superb semi-fictional (i hope) Acerbia lead me to the witty Stiletto Philosphy, whose top link is none other than The Go Fish, who i suspect could be the most read Philly blogger (she was mentioned in the Inquirer article i kvetched about on CK’s birthday). It makes me happy that TGF’s blogger has become known enough that i find my way back to her from blogs in completely other circles, which i suppose isn’t surprising given her mammoth reading list.