The funky html gizmos don't seem to be working at the jawa report. Stop me if I'm getting too technical
. They look like they work until you press 'post'. Then they all disappear. Even if you type in the (i)(/i)-type html code yourself.
Italics Bold strike
(just seeing if they work here)
It just occurred to me that it may be because I chose the black background for mypetjawa and there may just be something wrong with that setup. But I've already typed this much...
Posted by: Kevin at Thursday, January 30 2014 11:18 AM (guvk8)
2
Hmmm. They work here like a charm. Oh well. Keep up the good work, my Australian friend!
Posted by: Kevin at Thursday, January 30 2014 11:18 AM (guvk8)
3
Oh. I think I know why - people were abusing them at Ace's site and you're running the same comment engine as Ace (an earlier version than here).
I think I can fix that for you.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, January 30 2014 12:35 PM (PiXy!)
Your front page is time travelling. Seems to have lost a year and a half worth of posts. (Oddly enough the "recent comments" column is normal, which is how I found this post so I could comment on it.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, January 31 2014 10:38 AM (+rSRq)
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Ah, nown it's back to normal. A moment ago when I loaded it, the top post was from September 2012.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, January 31 2014 10:39 AM (+rSRq)
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I will second Steven's bug report, only mine occurred a day or two ago, and in my case the TARDIS landed in early May, 2011. It resolved itself a few minutes later.
Posted by: benzeen at Friday, January 31 2014 05:46 PM (w1Fue)
7
Thanks. Not entirely sure how that happens, but I'll look into it.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, January 31 2014 11:41 PM (PiXy!)
Strange happenings with the post editor, too. The "B" and "I" buttons formerly inserted "span style=..." tags, but now add inline "b" and "i", unless you open the html window and hit "apply." That will change the tags to "span". Also the "Indent" button, which formerly added 'span style="margin-left:20px" ' (incrementing by 20 each time you pushed it), now adds a layer of 'blockquote' tags instead. "Apply" doesn't fix this.
There's also a focus problem: When I do a block paste (CTRL-V) into the text window, focus jumps to the surrounding page, and I have to click back into the text to resume. (I see this same thing happens with the comment editor.)
And the old problem with curly left-double-quotes """ being saved as straight double-quotes is still present. Since I like to use double quotes in my TITLEs, this produces all sort of HTML confusion. (Workaround: use two singles "‘‘".)
(All Firefox 21 on Windows XP)
Posted by: Old Grouch at Monday, February 03 2014 07:50 AM (BxWBG)
9
Weird as it may sound, the editor hasn't changed. I'll test it with the latest version of Firefox and see if I can find out what's going on.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, February 03 2014 09:54 AM (PiXy!)
I could have sworn I wrote this in my review of Neal Stephenson's Anathem, but I can't find it or my review of Neal Stephenson's Anathem, so here goes.
Pixy's Law of Neuroscience: The intersection of consciousness and quantum mechanics is bullshit.
Oh, and since I seem to have lost my review of Neal Stephenson's Anathem, here's a capsule version.
Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
Tedious and interminable story populated by dishwater characters rises to a climax spectacular only in the disappointment it brings. The individual sentences are well-crafted - and some of the paragraphs too - but as a novel it fails in every other possible way.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, January 18 2014 03:44 AM (+rSRq)
2
So I'm good if I continue to not read Neal Stephenson, got it.
I completed my second read-through of Iain M Banks' "Consider Phlebas," and am tempted to write a capsule review not entirely unlike what you've done here, by the way. ("Train cars fall, everybody dies.")
Posted by: GreyDuck at Saturday, January 18 2014 04:30 AM (3m7pZ)
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I did not enjoy it on the same level as his other works. Cryptonomicon was fantastic, and the Baroque series had a good mix of "rollicking hijinks" and "Renaissance-era economic theory" that worked particularly well for me, even if it had some slow periods. Anathem was all right, but yeah, I mostly enjoyed it for the prose, not the story.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Saturday, January 18 2014 05:49 AM (IopVv)
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I love Neal Stephenson's writing; I just don't like his books.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, January 18 2014 11:58 AM (PiXy!)
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So, pretty much like any other Stephenson book then?
Posted by: Wonderduck at Tuesday, January 21 2014 03:14 PM (eYYyy)
6Zodiac was good. Snow Crash was pretty good too. After that... Yeah.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, January 21 2014 09:38 PM (2yngH)
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02:44 AM
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Thursday, January 16
Simon and Simoner
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
07:16 PM
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Wednesday, January 08
It's Been 25 Years Already?
Big Finish celebrated the 50th Anniversay of Doctor Who by dropping the price on their first 50 recordings to 5 squid a piece. (Each is a two-disk set, approximately 2 hours of content plus commentary and other bonus items.)
Now they've done the same for volumes 51-75, for the next week. That range includes The Natural History of Fear, one of the best stories Big Finish have ever done.
I'll pick them up, though I have to admit that I haven't opened the box with volumes 1-50 yet.*
* If you buy the CD, you get the MP3 version for immediate download as well. So I might never open the box...
1
Pix ol' buddy, I'm experiencing an odd thing. Every night for the past four days, I discover that I'm logged out of both The Pond and Mee/Mu.nu in general... this despite me not actually logging out.
Halp?
Posted by: Wonderduck at Thursday, January 16 2014 02:15 PM (eYYyy)
2
I had to tweak the session timeout setting, because we had 8GB of session records clogging up the system. I'll tweak it some more to prevent the logouts.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, January 16 2014 07:15 PM (2yngH)
Posted by: RickC at Saturday, January 04 2014 10:29 AM (swpgw)
3
Pixy: aside: In IE11 (in edge mode by default) when I commented, after the page reloaded, the top was Brickmuppet's comment; I couldn't scroll above. This seems like some weird version of the bug that used to show up in Wonderduck's anime reviews, where you couldn't scroll all the way down. I don't know if this is something you can fix or not.
Posted by: RickC at Saturday, January 04 2014 10:32 AM (swpgw)
Dell's 24" ultra-HD monitor has arrived in Australia, and the price is about $200 lower than I was expecting. I was planning to wait for the consumer-grade 28" model, but the price is low enough* that I think I'll go for the pro version. I currently have a Dell 27" 2560x1440 display, so this one will be a little smaller but a lot higher resolution.
Then I'll see how Windows 8.1 handles scaling....
Update: A shortcoming: This monitor apparently has no scaler; it only handles its native resolution. So if your graphics card isn't fast enough to drive a 4K screen in your favourite game, you can't shift down; you're simply out of luck.
Which isn't unreasonable for a professional monitor, but is potentially a problem for me. I may pair it with a matching Dell 24" 1080p screen - use the main monitor for work, and the low-res screen for extra real-estate and gaming.
In fact, that's a great idea. I need a retina screen for doing high-resolution site and application design, and I need multiple screens, but I don't need multiple retina screens. Want, yes. Need, no.
* At $1559 it's hardly cheap, but I'll spend about 10,000 hours looking at it, so I'm willing to spend a few extra bucks. The 32" model at $4199 was a few extra bucks too many.
When I clicked the link, it was AUD 1699. I searched for the same monitor on www.dell.com in a new tab, and the USD price was 1299. (bing's converter, operating at 1.12 ratio, says the equivalent amount in USD would be 1520.)
My understanding is that's not just due to the conversion ratio, but that electronics just cost more in Australia. (I remember hearing in years past that stuff there cost twice as much, after price conversion, as the same thing would cost in the US.)
Posted by: RickC at Saturday, January 04 2014 10:29 AM (swpgw)
6
Interesting. I see $1559 for the Australian price. As you say, it's now showing for $1299 on the US site, after being launched at $1399.
The Australian price includes 10% sales tax, which is a national tax here. Typically Australian prices for anything other than commodity computer items also include a 20%-100% "because screw you, that's why" markup; fortunately, Dell haven't done that.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, January 04 2014 11:48 AM (PiXy!)
7
It's a sign! If I buy a UP2414Q with 5-year extended warranty, and a U2414H, the total cost is... $2014.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, January 04 2014 11:57 AM (PiXy!)
I now see the $1559 and $1299 prices, aus and us respectively.
The places I'd particularly heard of the massive Austrailian "screw you" markup was on computer games.
Posted by: RickC at Sunday, January 05 2014 03:32 AM (swpgw)
9
Yes. It's so nice to see a new game on steam, selling for US$50, unless you live in Australia, in which case it's US$90 because screw you. There's no distributor involved, no foreign exchange uncertainty (the price is still in US dollars), no sales tax. It's just major game publishers being major dicks.
Book publishing is even worse, because of the way the English language market was divided up between US and UK publishers back in the 19th century. It's not that unusual to simply be unable to purchase an ebook from Australia, because, again, screw you. Never mind Amazon constantly teasing me with $0.99 ebooks and $1.99 audio books, except that Australians can't have them, because screw you.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, January 05 2014 07:16 PM (PiXy!)
10My resolutions are 1920x1080 on 27", 1440x900 on 19",
and worst of all 1024x768 on 15.5". Planning on getting a 27" 4k
monitor whenever I can afford it. Oh yeah, almost forgot, I'm currently running twin
1gb Sapphire AMD Radeon HD5450 cards. Not the best, but it works and that's what I get for building a system on a budget.
Posted by: Max at Saturday, January 11 2014 03:43 PM (9p6/L)
. They look like they work until you press 'post'. Then they all disappear. Even if you type in the (i)(/i)-type html code yourself.
