Alright. Website update.
As you can see, we are still tweaking things. We got rid of the recent posts on top, because I couldn’t see that it added any value. It would be useful if we had a different theme, but for this, it didn’t work.
Second, we have also removed the default image function. If people want to use images, they know how to do it. The default thing sounded great in concept but it just turned out to be a bigger pain in the ass than I thought it would be. So it is no mas.
Third, over the weekend the tech people at Hosting Matters are doing some sort of upgrade that is supposed to do something that makes things go faster. I’d post there letter to you, but then I would probably open myself up to you all offering your unsolicited technical advice to them, pissing them off and alienating another group of people who will never want to work with me. I trust them, though, so deal with it. And again, what they said to me was in incomprehensible gibberish/tech speak, so my entire response was “I don’t understand a word of this past the opening sentence. Do I need to do anything?” They said no and Mistermix seems cool with what they are doing, so that is good enough for me and will have to be good enough for you.
Fourth, there are a lot of other little tweaks that Alain is working on.
Fifth, the facebook and twitter auto-publish to the BJ site will take place tomorrow. I’m involved in this operation so it will probably be a clusterfuck, so cross your fingers.,
Sixth, the comments are going to pretty much stay as is for now until we get the new commenting system in place. Alain may do some tweaks here and there, but you are going to have to find a way to suffer through and carry on until Decemberish.
And since that will not be enough for you, let me explain why the comments are such an issue. The volume of comments we get puts a serious load on the server for reasons Mistermix can explain. This could all easily be dealt with if I installed a third party thingamabob like Facebook comments (fuck that), google comments (fuck that too), or disqus (nope, not happening), or other similar types of things. Alain and Tommy both stated that would be the easiest fix. But I opted out of that for one main reason- I want the comments to be under my control, and the reason for that is not because I like taking a kick to the nuts every day or am some sort of control freak, but because I value your privacy and am intent on protecting the users of this site.
As you know, we have a fairly open and unrestricted comments section. In order to get banned or a time out, you basically have to start yelling racial or sexist slurs or start making threats. I want to keep it that way. I also want people to feel free to speak their mind. I think it is the best policy, and I think it actually brings out not only the worst at times in a community like this (see the last couple of weeks on site upgrade threads), but it also fosters an environment that can bring out the best in people. As we’ve seen, a lot of you have become friends with each other through this website and that has extended into real life. A lot of good things can and do come out of that sort of openness in a community.
I additionally value everyone’s privacy, and I am not willing to cede that to an outside party like FB or google or disqus or whatever. If you want to be known only as Mr. Fartknocker or something equally stupid, like, say JustSomeFuckhead, you are free to do so. What people know about you will only be what you tell them. I think that’s a good policy and I intend to keep it that way.
The most important reason to me may be something you all haven’t thought about, but maintaining the comment structure on my end also means that should the feds or any law enforcement try to gain access to information or IP addresses or anything of the like without a reason I deem valid (someone threatening suicide, etc.), I can kindly tell them to fuck right off and then lawyer up, because they aren’t getting shit from me willingly. I’ll burn everything down before I get it. It’s something I feel very strongly about. That is something that is very serious to me, even for those of you who mock me about the surveillance state.
Which is why it was so unfortunate that Tommy, in a fit of rage because you all were relentlessly after him in the comments, made some unfortunate comments that are basically anathema to my stated beliefs. This all happened while I was sleeping 18 hours a day and drinking water the other six, so I only found out a few days later. That’s why Tommy agreed to finish up as soon as he could and give up access.
And a thing about Tommy- I didn’t know him from Adam, but I’ve spent a lot of time emailing back and forth and talking with him, and I can tell you, like everyone, he has some quirks, but unlike everyone, he’s actually a pretty good guy who I’ve grown to like. That’s why this whole thing was so unfortunate. He feels terribly about it, and has apologized profusely to the point that I had to tell him if he apologizes again I am going to drive to his house and Tunch punch him in the neck. He and I both think part of the problem is that he was a member of the community, and then to see so much negativity directed at him (intentionally or unintentionally, real or perceived), is what made him blow his stack. I’m hoping after a cooldown period he’ll come back and continue to be a valued commenter, because I know for a fact he would never have done anything malicious. I’ve talked to the guy multiple times and I’m a pretty decent judge of character.
So that is where we stand now. I’m back in the saddle again, and this is how things are going to happen. I’m going to try to create a page and place it up with the glossary for you all to add suggestions to things you like, so we don’t have people starting these vicious feedback loops in every god damned comment thread. Until then, if you have something to offer or want to volunteer your services, email me. And no, the Amazon link is not going. I understand some of you have problems with the company, and that’s great. It’s your right to boycott them. I boycott all sorts of businesses- chic-fila, Papa John’s, anything Trump related, Koch products, and I do my damndest to avoid Wal-Mart, but given where I live that is not always possible. But I have to buy my shit somewhere, and living in the middle of nowhere, I use Amazon. Such is life. And it’s an easy way to pay the server bills- people who are going to buy things at Amazon anyway can just click on the link, and we get a small percentage. So that’s that.
As you can see, there was actually a lot of thought put into the site rebuild. I personally spent hours thinking about what I wanted and talking with the guys. Some things just didn’t work out, and a lot of people just aren’t used to a deluge of negativity and don’t handle it as gracefully as I do. If you have anything that needs to be added to the list, do it in this thread. Let’s get it all out of our system and then move the fuck on. I promise to not even call you assholes in this comment thread.
HumboldtBlue
The fucking comments section is a fucking disaster akin to a Holgersen defense. Just fix that shit the rest will be as it will be.
Who the fuck is Tommy?
Who am I kidding? I don’t give a shit, just make the comments easy to read and on one continuous page.
And yeah I’m a fucking hypocrite for Amazon as well but I bought a fucking kindle and it’s the best fucking decision I’ve made in quite a while.
Bookstores? What fucking bookstores?
John Cole
@HumboldtBlue: Asshole.
kc
Don’t you love us anymore?
redshirt
Thanks John. The changes today have been great.
I’d suggest the next time your brave an upgrade you come out right from the start with a comprehensive summary post like this one, explaining your aims. It would have cleared up a bunch of issues with this upgrade.
Good luck with the future work.
Any chance we’re getting poster recent comments back?
eemom
@HumboldtBlue:
Now you’ve done it. This is gonna go on all night.
chopper
fuck the new system! this blog needs a political revolution! who’s with me??
dedc79
The Pittsburgh Penguins are mediocre at best. [Just testing your claim about what it takes to get blocked from this site].
chopper
@HumboldtBlue:
i dunno, but that deaf dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball.
kc
Seriously, thanks for the explanation. Though it sounds like the new comment system is gonna be fugly as hell, I appreciate your telling us why you’re doing it.
BGinCHI
Who the fuck doesn’t get that Tommy is a sweet guy who occasionally has a lapse in judgment? Lapses in judgement are what holds this tenuous, damaged, brilliant commentariat together.
I did not see what Tommy did, because Norway, but I hope it doesn’t mean he won’t come back here. His labor was mostly valued, from what I read.
And Cole, you sweet, sweet man, thanks for all of your gruff persistence. If more Americans were like you there would be less violence and more accidents in the home.
Cheers to all who are working to make this place better. And fuck you to all who aren’t.
redshirt
The other BIG piece of advice I could give for your next upgrade would be to wait until everything is ready before rolling out. Unless you know something I don’t, there was no deadline for this upgrade, so why rush it out before it’s ready? That opens you up to all sorts of critiques, whereas if you just worked on it in the background no one would know or care.
Swiss
I love this blogsite!
Ruviana
Lol!
I commented here that Atrios justifies the Amazon contribution button as taking Jeff Bezos’s moniez and that could work for Cole as well and the site crashed and lost my comment. Yay!
EBT
As someone who stopped reading Balloon Juice totally because of the absolutely terrible new design (try looking at the site on a mobile device once and a while guys) I am happy to see that you are fixing some of the awful.
Elizabelle
@BGinCHI: I like this comment. In full.
Missed the Tommy drama, and a lot of other things, but I appreciate how much he tried with the upgrade. I think he’s a well meaning guy, and hope he comes back (if gone) and remains part of the commentariat.
Am happy we have our numbered comments back. That’s huge.
Germy
@Ruviana: I just made a comment that got lost, too.
I wrote it out very carefully, clicked “post comment” and my screen went blank.
Baud
It’s beautiful.
Besides the server error, the only must on my list is fixing the mobile site on Android. It’s a pain to have to refresh twice all the time.
HumboldtBlue
@John Cole: True, but at least I’ll use your fucking Amazon portal so you can buy some goddamn kibble.
@eemom: Uh-oh. Umm … Sorry? I have no clue
@chopper: Please don’t tell me Uncle Ernie is coming over.
RaflW
Thanks John, Mistermix, Tommy, and all the invisible nerds who make all this piss and vinegar possible.
BJ helps me stay sane, learn things, and has in ways that still amaze me, offered medical information (not Richard’s insurance stuff, though that’s good too). I’ve posed vague comments a few times that folks have then said “It might be TMI, bu tif this is happening, you might look up ___” and damn if that hasn’t turned on lightbulbs. It’s been creepy music uncanny.
And for all that and the occasional recipe idea, I am grateful.
Germy
@BGinCHI:
I always do my part.
Germy
I’m done.
Three comments got eaten.
Adios
redshirt
FYI Tommy never left. I don’t think he can.
Cephalus Max
Cole, I’m only an occasional commenter but I’m a multiple-times-daily reader and I endorse all your decision-making on this.
I’m not surprised to hear that Tommy is also occasionally quirky in direct communication, but as you point out, aren’t we all?
Personally I can’t imagine the balls involved with taking on a site rebuild with this crowd of bitchers.
Hugs to both of you. (And Alain, etc.)
Mike J
Thank you thank you thank you.
BR
Just wanted to mention that the front page still is having some sort of caching issue. When I load it, it shows old posts and old comment counts on posts. Only after reloading (sometimes repeatedly) does it show the latest posts and comment counts.
Fred
Thank you John. All is right with the world now and I feel better.
No really. You adressed all the things that bothered me. Now I can sleep.
No really.
I mean it!
Thanks
p.s. You get some rest too. I’m sure you need it.
dexwood
Thanks, Cole, and thank you Tommy, Alain and Mistermix. I always learn something here and always find something to laugh about.
Feudalism Now!
I missed the Great Comment Test of Ought Fifteen. Happy to be able to see the comments loading quick and all together.
Cole, way to bigfoot over the Bernie/FIFA post. Glad we are keeping that BJ tradition. :)
Schlemazel
I do agree with JC on one thing – the commenters here are assholes. I caught some of the bullshit aimed at tommy & it was ridiculous, Those jerks should have been given a time out there was no excuse – he had every right to go off on them.
I am always amazed at how quickly people can get all bent out of shape about changes here. Its not like Cole is making bank here and its not like we are paying to enjoy each others company. Relax and be grateful that we have this place instead of endlessly bitch about frigging comment numbers.
Thanks to tommy I am sure he put in tons of effort.
BGinCHI
Is Kay going to start posting about OH politics and the 2016 election??
I miss her posts.
Tommy
@BGinCHI: I’ve not gone away which is why it is so painful at times. I read threads so I see all the comments about the design of the site. Not looking to/for them, it would be like picking at a scab again and again, but I am a user of this site. I just wish we could talk about and your disagree with me about politics and not this darn site. That would make me very happy.
Bill Arnold
John, thank you for outlining your comment policies and reasons for them, which are exactly what I hoped they were.
Francis
A. Thanks. I get a lot more out of this blog than I put into it.
B. When I click on a blogroll entry in firefox, it opens a new tab. Click on a second blogroll entry and it converts the new tab to the next entry. Can we have it so that clicking on a blogroll entry doesn’t capture the adjacent tab.
C. When I click on a blogroll entry in Ipad, I get a checkmark against the entry but nothing else happens.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Since it seems as though the site changes are appearing differently on various platforms, we should probably all try to me mindful to post our device/platform combo when commenting on site issues. Right now, it seems like Android and Kindle devices are having more issues than iDevices or computers (I’ve seen a few complaints about IE and was a little surprised people still use IE).
Also, I don’t think the Tommy thing would have blown up so big if he had exploded at one of the known assholes here (like myself). I think there was some friendly fire that those people didn’t necessarily expect to get. Add in the fact that women tend to be wary on the internet anyway for very valid reasons, and it got weird fast.
Mike J
If I may make a suggestion for the next time the site changes: set up a beta version of the site, apart from the current version. It will give you a chance to play with it before it goes live. You could then let the users play with it for a week or two. Make note of suggestions/complaints, publicly post them, and mark them as something that will be worked on or won’t be worked on. Make the changes, get it right, then switch it over to the live site.
srv
I don’t care about Tommy, he’s just a hapless tool of the real oppressor.
Only the resignation of the Ombudsman or John Cole himself will suffice at this point.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Who are you and what have you done with Cole? Are Lily, Rosie, Shawn and Thurston safe?
Whoever you are, please tell Cole thank you. I understand how much easier a third party comment system would be, and also how much privacy we’d give up. So I get how much you’re protecting your commenters by not installing one. Up to and including from the whims of law enforcement. Thank you.
BGinCHI
@Tommy: Dude, it’s hard as hell, but you just have to ignore the haters who do fuck all but bitch about everything. You did a lot of work and you should own that you did your best.
Let’s just agree that Bruce Rauner is a gigantic piece of shit and call it a day. This at least is not controversial.
Good night all. It’s late in the land of the North.
BGinCHI
@srv: I accept your resignation.
Adios.
hamletta
Thanks, Tommy! Site redesign is hard work, and anybody who was mean to you should be beaten about the head and ears.
Pogonip
@chopper: Aux armes, blogoyennes!
lurker dean
@Tommy: Hang in there, Tommy. Seems like a lot of folks are happy with the site, and eventually when the new commenting system rolls out, there will be more to bitch about that won’t involve you, lol.
Amir Khalid
I really don’t care what the future comment system is made of, as long as it looks and feels like this one. I do appreciate that you value our privacy so much.
kdaug
Missed the Tommy blowup thing. Seemed like an earnest guy, though. Hope he comes back.
No problems to report. The site seems to be getting better every day since the switch, which is about what is to be expected. Keep it up.
mai naem mobile
People here are so fvcking demanding amd impatient. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Jeebus this is a fvcking blog not an artificial heart or something.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Just to save everybody the trouble, as a public service, I’m putting in an all-purpose bitchmoan so nobody else has to. I’ll do my best to hit all the important themes, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I overlook a few. You’re welcome. Bitchmoan follows:
I can’t believe this new look. It’s awful. It’s a disaster. It’s worse than when the Hindenburg bombed Pearl Harbor and sank the Titanic. I’m offended, and this clearly stems from President Obama’s spiteful refusal to do everything I wanted him to do, which is why I’m going to vote third party this year. The new design is ugly, and it’s hard to use, and I was used to the old one, and I was happy with it, but then you went and redid it just to spite me, and I’ve been commenting on this site since before this was a site. I can’t believe you hired that awful, awful “Tommy” person to personally ruin this site just so I would be sad. I guess you never changed your ways from when you were an evil wingnut. I always suspected this, but this debacle proves it. That’s it. That’s it. I’m done. I’m out of here. You can count me as gone, officially gone. I’ll never be back. I only hope you’re happy for doing this. Believe me, you’ll all be sorry soon enough, and you’ll be weeping over the loss of my pithy and witty banter, but it’s too late. You had your shot, and you blew it. You’ll never see me here again, at least not for a month or so, and then, in a few years, when you do the site over again, I’ll run this whole screed over, word for word, and you’ll all laugh at me, but, believe me, you’ll be sorry then, too. So, there!
Ryan
tl; dr. Things are fine, don’t sweat it. For one, I haven’t seen anything negative. Sure, I have to get used to unthreaded comments, but one has to do that to be here. Worry about content, and you really don’t have to worry about content.
redshirt
@BGinCHI: Might it be possible that there were no “haters” but rather experienced IT people offering pretty common sense recommendations and they were told repeatedly they were wrong, even though they were not.
Amir Khalid
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Bravo.
Pogonip
It’s all very well to promise not to call us assholes, Cole–but will you still hate us all in the morning?
I think Tunch should be the default picture.
Ryan
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Seriously?
Tommy
@BGinCHI: Oh Bruce Rauner.
I like I live in a mostly blue state. Hard to watch the CNN graphics and Illinois is a state that says they won’t take in Syrians. That is not the state I live in. Or want to live in.
p.a.
Why can’t we have nice things like pop up ads with the ‘x’ offscreen like other web pages do. And auto play car insurance commercials. And banner ads that ask if the banner is to big. It’s a shock to the system coming here.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
It all got way out of hand, but I’ll be sure to wear long pants and a turtleneck next time so nobody blows his stack.
Waysel
‘I’m going to try to create a page and place it up with the glossary for you all to add suggestions to things you like, so we don’t have people starting these vicious feedback loops in every god damned comment thread.’ A tremendous idea-sooner the better. Thanks, John Cole.
p.a.
@srv: goddamnit where’s the ombudsPERSON link!!?
Mike J
I think the easiest thing all around would be if we all agreed to just meet up in the youtube comments for Bobby Goldsboro’s song Honey.
GregB
This is an ISIS plot.
kdaug
@Tommy:
Roger that, mate. #43 is my first and last comment re: site.
I much prefer focusing on you jackals.
“I’m not locked in here with you, you’re locked in here with ME”
piratedan
ty everyone… bitchers, haters, trolls and commentariat for making this a good place to be overall… it helps me stay sane, stay informed and stay, sit, rollover and play dead…
JC ty for persevering
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I don’t recall Tommy’s fire necessarily being all that friendly.
Hungry Joe
I wonder how small a minority I’m in — or if I’m actually in that fabled Silent Majority — when I react this way to the site changes and all the give-and-take-and-take-THAT!-you-swine:
1) Oh, look — a design change.
2) I hate it because I automatically hate all design changes, be they in newspapers, magazines, websites, whatever.
3) I neither know nor care the first thing about HTML or anything else in that universe. I’m the ultimate User: use, not understand. I don’t get internal combustion engines, either — I just want to (and can) drive.
4) Even I was able to notice that the site change had problems, but I shrugged and figured they’d be fixed. And most of them have been.
5) All the bitching reads to me like philatelists arguing over the 1907 distribution of a rare Austrian stamp: Man, is it weird to see people getting so heated about stuff that’s outside your realm.
6) I’m already getting used to the new look, and I’m fine with it. It’s Balloon Juice, my favorite site, the only site I’ve ever commented on … and it’s working. So:
7) Keep this back-and-forth up as long as y’all like — far be it from me to tell people what to talk about. Me, I’m exercising the simple option of not reading anymore about it.
8) Thanks again, John Cole. Love this place.
Tommy
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Cole is a rock star. I got off the phone with him a few minutes ago. I said I wouldn’t ever put that conversation here. I don’t think I am going aginst this. He locked me out of the backend of WordPress because he got a ton of emails saying I’d track you down. I am totally sad I said this. But I did say this, if only joking. Cole is looking our for you all.
SRW1
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Thanks a ton! This clearly is an all-service blog.
Dave
I, for one, would be interested in hearing Mistermix’s technical explanation for why the volume of comments strains the server. Is it a software issue that could be addressed? Is it fixable?
Ruviana
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Golf clap.
jayboat
@Tommy:
It’s all good, dude. Think of it as trial by fire. 8-]]]
Obviously, you guys put yourselves under some unnecessary pressure by not having everything in place before rollout. (character-building experience)
Thanks to you, Cole and everyone behind the curtain who helped make it happen.
Also, fuck the feds.
eemom
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
awesome sauce.
sneezy
You’re a mensch and a stand-up guy. Thanks.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Amir Khalid:
There’s no such thing as a friendly bomb, and it’s not like people get injured less if they get hit by a bomb from their own side. That’s why one needs to be very, very careful about where one decides to drop bombs.
Bill E Pilgrim
What John Cole writes:
“Alright. Website update. As you can see, we are still tweaking things. We got the …(etc)”
What readers see:
“Blah blah blah assholes”
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
For those who celebrate gift gioving holidays, please let me recommend Anyway*, Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m a Supervillain, and Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon as delightful youth books (and fun for adults too). They are available through the Balloon Juice Amazon link. Also Skinluvvers on Etsy has cool soap/skin stuff.
All by folks who comment here.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Tommy:
Having grown up with four older brothers, I realize that death and injury threats are often just another level of communication between guys, but in general women tend to get freaked out by it and take it seriously, especially online. Unfortunately, we kind of have to.
Tommy
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): The women angle is noted. I was wrong there. I learned a number of women were really scared I noted I could find you. I so didn’t mean it that way. Lashing out, mad. Not something I would remotely wish. But it worried ladies and I can’t tell you how much that pains me. I’d never want that. That I remotely said things that would make people think that pains me greatly.
Randy P
There are only a few things bugging me to the argle-bargle-spit-nails point about the design. Mostly my reaction is, eh, what are you gonna do, redesigns happen, they’re part of life on the internet.
As for the interaction with Tommy, it wasn’t The Unfortunate Comment that really got to me, it was Arrogant Designer stuff along the lines of “I like it, therefore it’s a good idea even if every single user hates it”. To me that’s someone who doesn’t quite get the concept of the user/designer relationship.
(I think the specific issue was whitespace, which is still on my argle-bargle list. But I said I won’t bring those things up).
Anyway Tommy now that the dust has mostly settled, I am glad to see you’re still here and reading. Am I correct that this is the first time you’ve had to interact with general users in a retail-software kind of way? You’re not used to having your work judged directly by the general public?
Not that I’d be any better. As my wife frequently points out when I toss out one of my crackpot business ideas, “but you hate the public”. There are people cut out for retail, and other people just as happy to be in the back room. I’m definitely a back-roomer.
gogol's wife
@Elizabelle:
I think I saw Tommy comment just earlier today.
lamh36
Meh…
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Tommy:
I have no power to accept any apologies since I wasn’t involved, but it’s something to keep in mind for the future when you’re in mixed company like we are here.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Tommy: It’s cool with me now.
I was just blowing off some steam with that comment. It was a superfluous dig at his explanation, and wasn’t directed at you. I expect Cole will get it, and perhaps even just roll his eyes and drive on by. He takes care of his entire community, including you.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
As long as the pet pics continue.
Mike J
@Dave:
WordPress wasn’t designed for high performance. It is extremely customizable. It was meant to be all things to all people. The trade off for this design is that it is a pig. If balloon-juice ran on custom software you could throw away 90% of worpress. It would run faster, it would use less memory, it wouldn’t have stupid bloated database tables. It would also cost far, far, far more than it would be worth to do.
Mary G
Thanks for not inflicting those systems on us, John. I reluctantly use Disqus on a few sites, but I refuse to log in with Facebook AKA Big Brother. Tommy was insane to take on this pack of jackals and like most of us have, lost it and said some bad things, but he has apologized and has been demoted from the god position on the site and that should be that. Of course, it won’t be, but it wouldn’t be Balloon Juice if someone wasn’t creating a tempest in a teapot on a regular basis.
I am on a five-year-old PC running Win7, using Firefox v. 42 and there is a bunch of code at the top of the page that I think is trying to call the rotating tagline, to wit:
I prefer it to the overlarge balloon man, though.
Patricia Kayden
@Tommy: Glad to see that you’re still here. And thanks for tackling the remodeling of BJ. There are only two commenters who I cannot stand (srv, A guy) so I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had so much negativity here that you felt beseiged.
Hang in there!!
gogol's wife
@gogol’s wife:
Okay, read the whole thread first.
Corner Stone
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): People keep trying to ole the fact that the situation wasn’t spurred by anger or vitriol. The initial comment was an, “Oh, by the way. Guess what?”
There’s a determined effort to put it on other people but that is simply not the case. It’s not factual, accurate or true.
Time Travelin'
@Baud: Looks and works pretty good on my Android.
Just One More Canuck
We are all JustSomeFuckhead now
Randy P
Re: Amazon. I don’t deal a lot with them, but they are pretty much my sole source when I want to locate European books. So amazon.com, not very often, but it’s not unusual for me to order from amazon.fr (or this year, amazon.it) at Christmas time for certain family members. I haven’t found any other way to get this stuff.
Strange quirk of international retail that I don’t understand. I love multi-lingual European calendars, and try to pick some up as gifts when I’m over there. In fact I had some, but left them at Heathrow airport (long story). So I was back online at Amazon replacing them. Here’s the quirk: Virtually all of the really nice calendars at French Amazon, the ones with the really nice artwork in the format I like best, say “this seller does not ship to the United States”. But nobody on Italian Amazon says that. For pretty much the same calendars, coming from multiple countries.
I haven’t had the same issue with books. Just calendars.
Luther M. Siler
My two gripes, and one of them is much more minor than the other: 1) the text buttons (Bold, Italic, Link, Quote) are white text on light gray background and are very hard to read. Not a big deal as obviously I could figure out what they are. 2) If I even look at a graphic crosseyed, it whites it out and puts a blue expand button smack in the middle. I know how to click on an image and open it in a new tab manually if I want to; this does not need to be an automatic feature and it happens way too fast and way too often and it takes much longer to go away than it does to show up. It’s terribly annoying. Using Safari on a Mac, newest versions of everything.
sacrablue
I haven’t made a single comment about the redesign until now. I waited because I always get in trouble when I nag. Most of the issues I had have been debated to death and many of my gripes have been resolved. However, the one thing that I would really like to have return to the old style is the back button. I don’t have a laptop or a tablet. I don’t know what the problems are on the mobile site, but can we please have the back button restored to the comments once the new system is ready. I often have a cat or three between me and my keyboard, meaning I can’t find the tab key through all the hair, but I can always right click on my mouse to access the back button. Please, may I have it back, sir?
Cacti
White male apprehended attempting to bring an explosive device into the Salt Lake City, UT Federal Building.
SLC building houses 24 agencies with 600 employees.
But we can all rest easier knowing it wasn’t a Syrian refugee.
Tommy
@Randy P:
Ugh. I am not that guy. Before I started working for myself I worked with creative people that told me I should sell this or that. I didn’t sell that. Hard for me to think I’d sell something because it was fancy or neat looking. That is so not me.
Quaker in a Basement
Thanks for that, JC.
satby
@redshirt: thank you.
Corner Stone
@Just One More Canuck:
Hey, listen. I may not mind an enema, a little playful Bronie action or if someone brings a monster dildo to a college soccer game, but I am not into the kind of freaky shit that freakshow on wheels is down with.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
OT, I started listening to my “Hamilton” soundtrack today. I LOOOOOVE IT!
J R in WV
@Tommy:
Tommy, the only problem with disagreeing about politics is that most of us agree with most of what you say about politics, except for some 3 am weirdness sometimes.
You’re a good guy, and have done good work on the site. Most people don’t have a clue about software. I did software development starting with IBM COBOL and IMS database back in the 1980s, and at the end of my career we were building Windows apps and Internet apps for both internal users (government shop) and external users (the general public).
Tommy YOU ROCK, DUDE!!! Thanks for the site work. I once went over to a friend’s house, her grandkids set the password for her new laptop, months ago, and no one remembered anything about it. My IT genius buddy from college was visiting, and he showed me a windows utility CD that could fix anything, and we downloaded it.
I was so hesitant, nothing could be worse than offering to help a friend and it winding up a cluster FK, but the utilities worked as advertised, and Patty got her laptop back!
And we got our Balloon-Juice back!! Thanks for the hard work, and for putting up with all the assholes who bitched about things that didn’t work for them without any information what-so-ever to help you debug their SNAFUs!!
Take it easy, and keep on rockin’
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Corner Stone: Fair enough. I was there, as you may recall. I get why people were unnerved; I was just pissed and concerned about how an ISP lockout would affect my work. And I was extremely vocal about it, repeatedly, and at length. (I hope you were siting down for that, since you might otherwise have fallen from the shock.)
But there’s nothing to be gained by relitigating any of it – unless I can bill someone. Bad behavior has been acknowledged to Cole’s satisfaction, Cole responded and advised us and he’s keeping the site up. Also, too, dark days in the fall still suck. I’m sure they suck more in Texas where everything is bigger. Cheerio, man.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I don’t care in the least about website problems. I’d sit on cold rocks in the rain for the kind of conversation that happens here.
We love you, John Cole.
Citizen_X
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): 8.5. A good first try, but lacks a reference to the Holocaust. Or the Obamacare website, same thing.
And good on Tommy for taking on the job.
Amir Khalid
@Tommy:
Is that a denial?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Just One More Canuck: But are we Thought Leaders? That was my favorite version of JSF.
jmh
@BR:
I have this same issue. It’s funny because i open the site on my phone and it’s a couple day sold and my first thought is: has no one really posted anything in the last two days?
Corner Stone
Reagan, Kemp, GWB, Michael D., Fred DB, EDK, Chris Christie…need I go on?
Mandalay
@Tommy: Understood, and well said. Hopefully everyone here is adult enough to now let the whole thing go and move on.
And anyone who is still aggrieved that they didn’t get their pound of flesh can fuck right off.
satby
@jmh: Android issue. Clearing cache works for some but not others.
eemom
@Corner Stone:
This thread has the potential to be a total kumbaya, we all get along, smile on your brother let us love one another right now type thing that would be unprecedented in the history of the blog. IF you don’t fuck it up.
Comrade Luke
I don’t know if this has already been brought up, but for whatever reason, the post title text always says “Balloon Juice”. That means that if I have a post (or posts) in a tab, every tab says “Balloon Juice”, so I don’t know which is which.
I had a Web site a while back, and I know it was an easy fix back then, but I don’t know if this site overlooked it, or it’s harder due to the backend. Either way, I thought I’d let you know.
redshirt
@satby: What did I do to be thanked?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@gogol’s wife:
You will find yourself singing snippets from every damn song. Because they’re all that good.
And watch out if you’re listening to the second half of Act 2 in public — that’s where all of the major tearjerkers are. I told G that I have to stop listening to that half in the car, because it’s embarrassing to be crying on the freeway. ?
Corner Stone
@eemom: If you want to indulge in The Myth of Tommy then that is up to you.
As I recall, you don’t do kumbaya and are a thoroughly nasty piece of work. So, BQ.
satby
For the comment you made?
redshirt
@J R in WV:
But it never went anywhere. Everything was fine prior to the upgrade. I know you’re being super positive but it kind if skips over the issue that nothing was wrong, and then lots was.
The Other Chuck
@Mary G: That JSON garbage up top was the doing of Even Betterer Balloon Juice (EBBJ), which tried to move the quote from the side up top where I like it better. However, the new quote rotator (which actually works, unlike the last one) is trickier, and EBBJ is incompatible with it, thus the code garbage.
It’s a pretty simple fix that I’m too lazy to do, so in the meantime I just removed that bit of code from EBBJ.
redshirt
@satby: Which one? I wish – just a wish – that there was a default way of linking a reply to the original post. Like including the post number by default in the response. Because as is this place can be confusing to know who’s referring to what unless they fully quote the relevant post.
Corner Stone
This promises to be a highly entertaining TNF game.
Titans at Jags
#ToeDragSwag
satby
@The Other Chuck: You’ve done great work with that, and thank you too! I know I speak for many.
jl
I kind of like periodic chaos and mayhem. Site redesign is an exciting time!
I love the complaints, since I don’t have to do anything about them, and fascinating invective usually accompanies the constructive criticisms
Who wants to see the dame damn design every day? What color will the blog be tomorrow? I have no life, and that kind of suspense adds some spice and excitement.
Carry on, John Cole, and your intrepid redesign team. I salute you.
Cacti
CNN has suspended reporter Elise Labott for Tweeting:
“House passes bill that could limit Syrian refugees. Statue of Liberty bows head in anguish.”
Looks like the librul media is back to censoring voices that are insufficiently bellicose, xenophobic, and jingoistic.
It’s 2003 all over again!
Steeplejack
* DVR Alert! – Special for Brachiator *
I’m going out to dinner, and I’m three hours behind EST, so I’m throwing this in this post.
I believe Brachiator was the one who wanted to see a good print of Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn. (Apologies if I’ve got that wrong.) TCM will be showing it at 6:00 a.m. EST tomorrow (Friday), and I’m sure their print is among the best.
Note: This is part of TCM’s day-long tribute to Maureen O’Hara. Personal favorite: The Quiet Man at 10:00 p.m. EST Friday.
That is all.
jl
Except, I thought Cole promised to figure out how we could reach through the screen and get the food in the recipe posts. I want that. What is the hold up?
max
They said no and Mistermix seems cool with what they are doing, so that is good enough for me and will have to be good enough for you.
That’s fine. (In practice you should not really broadcast that in public, because you’re advertising your vulnerabilities. Obvs, this is not a big deal, but every little bit, etc….) Whatever they did fixed the bug with the webserver not reporting an updated paged, which meant the page never refreshed, which was an annoying pain. Worst problem *I’ve* had but it has gone away. Thanks.
Fifth, the facebook and twitter auto-publish to the BJ site will take place tomorrow. I’m involved in this operation so it will probably be a clusterfuck, so cross your fingers.,
?
The volume of comments we get puts a serious load on the server for reasons Mistermix can explain. This could all easily be dealt with if I installed a third party thingamabob like Facebook comments (fuck that), google comments (fuck that too), or disqus (nope, not happening)
Because the database has to be incessantly written to and reread. Always a heavy load. Facebook is monstrous (and I don’t have it), I didn’t know Google comments were a thing, and Disqus is the other tolerable third-party commenting system. But if you want local comments, that’s fine by me.
I additionally value everyone’s privacy, and I am not willing to cede that to an outside party like FB or google or disqus or whatever.
Thank you. Appreciate it greatly.
That is something that is very serious to me, even for those of you who mock me about the surveillance state.
Since I agree with you about the surveillance state, I merely say thanks again. *I* appreciate it.
made some unfortunate comments that are basically anathema to my stated beliefs.
I react badly to comments like that**, but I haven’t been incessantly flaming Tommy beforehand either. Since he is stopped, presumably not to repeat the practice, that’s fine.
And it’s an easy way to pay the server bills- people who are going to buy things at Amazon anyway can just click on the link, and we get a small percentage.
Where do I send the crate of mustard in jars? (You think I’m kidding, don’t you?)
If you have anything that needs to be added to the list, do it in this thread.
Text size in comments is fixed (yay!) and that’s just peachy. All my readability issues fixed. The header image needs the background color changed, obvs. I don’t care about the buttons so that’s all good. I’m still down on the blockquote change – the colored text box (or a non-shaded but four-sided text box) makes picking out blockquotes much easier when reading. It doesn’t have to be shaded blue – shaded a light yellow actually looks better than blue. Gray works OK too.
It’s a blog, full of text, not a Sylvia Ji painting. Medieval books were illuminated but you aren’t going to hitting that level no matter what you do. Looks are secondary so long as thous hath not achieved Perfect Ugly. (See: Breitbart, World Net Daily, Washington Post)
max
[‘That is all. Thanks John et al.’]
** ‘Where’s my wrecking bar?’
slag
@Corner Stone: Ha! EDK and Fred DB. Forgot about them. However, in these situations, you gotta think more in percentages than in real numbers. Though I would probably weight GWB as at least three assholes in one.
Corner Stone
@Cacti:
Guess she gave up her US citizenship when she accepted employment at CNN.
satby
@redshirt: Well, on my Kindle I can click on your name and it hops back up to what I’m replying to. But it was this one:
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: You’re going for the Senior Special at IHOP in Vegas?
Steeplejack
Dredging up a comment I put in an earlier thread, about auto-refreshing comments:
The Other Chuck
@redshirt: The “reply” button creates such a link in the editor. You can even hit it in the middle of a post and it’ll just insert the link and keep the rest of your text intact. And if you can install userscripts (i.e. you’re not on a mobile browser) then you can install EBBJ which makes those links actually behave normally.
The new comment system is supposed to be threaded, so it’ll just show up indented under the previous one. I actually saw that feature sneak in a few days ago, though it’s probably since been taken back out.
Baud
@jayboat:
Worse. Trial by BJ!
Or is that better? ::shrugs::
J R in WV
@redshirt:
But there were things wrong; not visible so much as back door things. The WordPress database is evidently a monster, and the servers John rents to run the B-J system were having problems. He mentioned new servers? That could be a big shock at first! Hoping not!
None of this matters to commenters or readers, until it doesn’t work any more. Fixing those problems led to things looking way different, and behaving different. Now things are lots closer to working the way they did a month ago. Not exactly, but not as different as when the changes were first turned on.
And it was a pain, more for people who aren’t used to other web sites which are all different. if you’re mostly a B-J person, with some shopping and major news sites, then a change is a big deal. How do I post a comment, find that comment I was at, etc.
I too hope the back button eventually allows us to rocket around a thread, and then hit back>back>back to be where we started out. But if not, remember that comment number, and get over it.
And I confess, I am a glass is half full kind of guy. Except that right now it’s quite full of gin and tonic, with a big squeeze of fresh lime juice in!! Ummmmm! Just what you need to keep the wobblies of the Republican party from scaring you off your feed!!
Take care, all !!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@redshirt:
There was a lot broken for me after the previous upgrade about 2 years ago that was a pain in the ass. I actually think this upgrade has gone more smoothly and fixed more stuff. YMMV, of course.
John Cole
@redshirt:
This is the kind of pseudo-authoritative comment that just drives me insane. Everything WAS NOT fine. There were a number of things on the back-end that were dated and we were no longer going to get developer support on, a lot of code and other things that if they were not already an issue, would be soon. We didn’t just upgrade the fucking site for shits and giggles. I hate change, too.
Maybe you didn’t see anything that was wrong, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t issues that needed to be addressed. What it means is that Mistermix was doing a great job keeping things patched together with 100 mile an hour tape and bubblegum- good enough, it seems, that you feel confident offering up post hoc bullshit like this.
The Other Chuck
@Cacti: CNN would have canned Edward R. Murrow in a heartbeat. I haven’t bothered watching CNN in ages. I don’t even have to actively and pointedly boycott CNN — the stupid chases me away in seconds every time I wander across it.
Corner Stone
@The Other Chuck:
…ummmm…whut?
jl
@Baud:
“Think of it as trial by fire.”
‘Worse. Trial by BJ!’
That doesn’t make any sense.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
FYWP! Did my forbidden-word trick, but it didn’t work. Trying again.
@Corner Stone:
Ha! Already hit that for brunch this morning with my elderly mother, followed by some intense action on the 5¢ poker machines at Red Rock, her local casino. Nothing today, but Monday I hit four aces with a kicker and won $200 on a 25¢ bet. So I’m well up for week. Plus I may have found my true calling in life—low-stakes gambler.
Dinner tonight will probably be at Penn’s Thai, which is not quite as good as Lotus of Siam but is far easier to get into, plus the waitress is a ringer for a youngish Yoko Ono. And 80% of Lotus of Siam is still damn good.
The Other Chuck
@Steeplejack: Auto-refresh that triggers on a scroll to the bottom uses less bandwidth, because it only has to retrieve the last few comments, not even the markup to render them. Does tend to result in quite a few more requests to the server though, and I’m not exactly singing the praises of the server infrastructure lately (ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE anyone?)
MazeDancer
Yay, privacy!
Thank you, John Cole, for guarding privacy.
FaceBook is evil. Using people’s personal lives to make money. And continually looking for ways to get more and more very detailed, deep, and intricate data about your personal life. If you are not in advertising, you have no idea.
@Mike J:
Yes, please. There is practically an armada of pro’s who love this site. Techies. Designers. Readability and type nerds. They could have hashed this out.
The internet has long suffered from the idea that great code is greatness enough. Without considering the way it looks. The visual design. How it reads. All those eons of print research on how people read things. BJ can beta test both function and form.
Did my rant on the misery of ugly, non-readability of the front page in the last “Site maintenance” post. Pretty sure no one wants to hear it again. But am volunteering to preview, comment, chime in, consider, suggest, review, anything you want about readability.
Tommy, so hoping you are reminding yourself “never do business with friends”. We all learn that a thousand times. The exception is if your friends are in the business and actually understand how things best work. (Or they run a non-profit, and you’re their only hope, and you know it’s going to be misery, but they’re your friends, and what are you going to do, say no, and not be able to live with yourself. Even though you know it will be a disaster.) And hoping you will often add your excellent comments. You have an interesting perspective that adds much to the mix.
Next site upgrade, let’s go with custom build, mega beta, we all chip in as much as we can, and we never have to deal with WordPress again.
Frankensteinbeck
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Uh… thank you? Book three is almost finished writing! It’s the ‘back to school’ volume. Bull goes back to his wife and daughter! Marcia has a nervous breakdown! That girl with the lightning wisp? You see her again! Also, I think there are dates. Okay, that’s enough spoilers.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
FYWP! Repeating:
Ha! Already hit that for brunch this morning with my elderly mother, followed by some intense action on the 5¢ poker machines at Red Rock, her local casino. Nothing today, but Monday I hit four aces with a kicker and won $200 on a 25¢ bet. So I’m well up for week. Plus I may have found my true calling in life—low-stakes gambler.
Dinner tonight will probably be at Penn’s Thai, which is not quite as good as Lotus of Siam but is far easier to get into, plus the waitress is a ringer for a youngish Yoko Ono. And 80% of Lotus of Siam is still damn good.
The Other Chuck
@Corner Stone: I seem to remember “threaded” being in the buzzword soup concerning the new comment system. Considering the backlinks already have all the information, it could even be done entirely in JS. I actually don’t look forward to threaded comments, since it scatters new comments all over the page, but hopefully there’s a way to switch to flat view.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
I can take the abuse if you need a diversion from your shitty blog redesign. Good call on prioritizing the comments section lowest. Atrios’ awful comments section is more enlightening than what you find here these days.
RaflW
@Pogonip:
I vote for a Tunch punch GIF
redshirt
@John Cole:
Heh. And it’s this kind of response which gets people fired up. I specifically mentioned I had no knowledge of what was going on behind the scenes, nor did you mention anything.
But your response illustrates why this was such a cluster fuck. I do feel very confident in recommending things because I’ve made a career of it and done very well by it, and so to see just basic errors in nothing else but simple communication has shown me – over and over again – that you’re flying by the seat of the pants. As such, maybe you should holster the venom.
Bobby Thomson
Well that sucks.
MomSense
I was having real problems with the site before the change but it is working much better for me now. Aside from the server glitches, it has been faster and easier to read. Thanks, John and the rest of the team.
We are listening to the Dylan “Cutting Edge” cd tonight and eating burritos. Kids made all the food and it is delicious.
David Koch
@Cacti: Is this the same CNN who employs Don Lemon and allows Trump to say female reporters who ask embarrassing questions must be menstruating?
Must be a different CNN. Surely they wouldn’t have a double standard.
Corner Stone
@MomSense:
Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln…
SatanicPanic
I want to get upset by the new blog because lard knows I love Balloon Juice drama, but I dunno, it seems OK
MomSense
@Frankensteinbeck:
No spoilers! Going to give the second book to the house for Christmas. My son is going to read it to me, like he did your first book. That was such a great experience.
Steeplejack
@The Other Chuck:
I thought Cole himself said that threaded comments were of the Devil and would never darken his door. I, too, would hate to see them here.
Mike E
I’ll say it again:
I come here for the Titanic deckchair brawls; I stay for the shrieking bonobo makeup sex.
SatanicPanic
Why not just switch to Disqus?
Just kidding
Baud
@Mike E:
Sarah P&T is posting again?
Corner Stone
@The Other Chuck:
Huh. I just remember promises of wanting to stand up and clap, 3:50 minute hard ons and virgins of various bustitude.
Because if shit gets threaded…well I’m not going to threaten people like others are wont to do, but I think you get me.
goblue72
Don’t ask me. I’m still pissed since the WWW stopped being neutral gray and it only came in like 2 or 3 fonts.
Baud
@goblue72:
I miss telnet.
Eclare
@Hungry Joe: What he said.
opiejeanne
@Tommy: The design right now looks great. Sorry that people were being jerks and assholes.
I missed the whole thing, probably due to being too busy and then being without power for 22 hours. Washington state is officially a disaster area, the entire state, every county has flooding and trees down. Thank goodness the power came back because we didn’t even have cell phone service so I couldn’t have called in an emergency, and I don’t live way out in the woods, only a little way out in the woods.
Mike E
@Baud: You may insinuate yourself into any part of my statement, it’s universal that way!
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack:
Wow. $200. Can’t wait for the extensive remodel upcoming at Threadkill Manor.
The Other Chuck
@goblue72: Wonder how the site looks in NCSA Mosaic.
Hungry Joe
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Thank you for (yet another) mention! As you know, ANYWAY* is out in paperback now, so it’s a pretty inexpensive gift.
redshirt
And as a pseudo-authoritative asshole, here’s a few bullet points for your next upgrade:
1. Do the vast majority of the work on a development site, and test it. Repeatedly.
2. Communicate clearly and well ahead of time what’s going to happen with the upgrade and what people can expect.
3. Don’t hire controversial users to be in charge of the upgrade, and don’t make them the voice/face of the upgrade.
4. Do hire people competent in the programming languages/database skills necessary for the upgrade.
5. Listen to the users.
6. Be nice.
By reading this list Cole I’m billing you $150. You’ll get my invoice in an all caps email.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: You’re a failed and phony thought leader and we all know it. Refute to the extent that you can.
Steeplejack
@Mike J:
“See the tree, how big it’s grown . . .”
RSA
@Randy P:
Are you thinking of this exchange?
NotMax says:
Arrogant Designer says:
For most people this is just inside baseball, but it’s like building a town with green stop signs and telling the locals that if they get in an accident they shouldn’t be driving.
Randy P
@The Other Chuck:
I think we actually had that for a couple of hours one night. There was comment-threading, but it would only go three comments deep and then new comments would be down below, and I think there was actually a button for about five minutes that would flat-ify the comment thread.
But then it all went away and I figured I dreamed it.
@RSA: No, my recollection was that it was a discussion of all the whitespace, which as I said is something that still irritates me. But your exchange illustrates the dynamic.
rikyrah
They wanna party like it’s 1948.
They don’t want to accept the responsibility for if they roll upon the ‘wrong one’…
and your teeth turn into Chicklets on the floor…
The question should be…..
Why the phuck do you think YOU SHOULD say something offensive to minorities.
Pew Research CenterVerified account
@pewresearch
67% of Americans say people should have freedom to say things in public that are offensive to minorities http://pewrsr.ch/1kEtGlp
Nate Dawg
So can anyone tell me what Tommy did? :-/
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Nate Dawg: That’s not even funny. Let’s abuse JSF, TL as a diversion; he volunteered.
Ripley
I’ll thank yout to leave me out of this.
Sincerely, Mr. Fartknocker
P.S. Racial slurs, sexism, threats. All the best, ta for now.
redshirt
@RSA: My favorite Tommyism was when he was telling us that having all the categories at the top of each new post was the best and that’s how the internet worked and that’s how he navigated websites. I literally put in an effort to understand where he was coming from and still, no idea. Just glad he got overruled on that one.
sharl
@Cacti:
Ah, Ashleigh Banfield all over again. But Ashley ultimately recognized the error of her ways, and has been welcomed to the Dark Side for services rendered; journalistic professionalism and standards are so overrated, and worse yet, rarely pay well. Enjoy your perks, Ashleigh!
Ms. Labott still has not taken that tweet down. Tsk, tsk, tsk, how will you ever get anywhere in this business with THAT attitude, hmmmm?
WaterGirl
I really appreciate this message from our fearless leader, which is 90% everything I could have hoped for and 10% which is not.
@Corner Stone: I agree with you on this and I’m glad to have that out in the open in this thread.
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I picked up on your reference immediately, and I think it’s a fair one.
@Randy P: I completely agree with your arrogant designer comment.
Between the three of you, you covered the things that bothered me in the 10% of this message that is not exactly what I could have hoped for. It’s like Festivus! But 90% is pretty damn good, and I’ll take that. So, Cole, I really appreciate you writing this post. It has helped clear the air for me, and I am ready to move on. I’m really grateful for Balloon Juice and I’m ready to get back to our previously scheduled programming. After the past two weeks, I could go for some smile on your brother and let us love one another right now.
P.S. Alain, thank you so much for all your hard work! Your changes have made the site useable again. And Cole, a single thread dedicated to website issues/changes is a great idea.
Myiq2xu
This is the funniest thing ever posted at Buffoon Juice.
Corner Stone
@Randy P:
Nightmare fuel…nightmare…
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Thought Leading can’t fail. The zeitgeist may fail to keep up with Thought Leading but that is a failure of zeitgeist.
Mary G
@The Other Chuck: So I need to reinstall EBBJ? Remind me again where to get it?
PS Thanks for doing that, I love having the back button work again.
Nate Dawg
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Yeah, and I’m just too lazy to go find out. Anyway, loving the new look of the site. And I discovered flu.x out of it, so good all around.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
I just read this post to my mom and dad and they said, “Who the fuck is Tommy?”
Mike E
@Myiq2xu:
You are a perfect fit!
Corner Stone
@Nate Dawg:
That depends. Do you want to know what actually happened, or would you prefer the sanitized much more (potentially reachable if you believe some version of the BS cover) excusable version being pushed by others here who want to mysteriously propagate The Myth of Tommy?
guachi
Recent posts and image were good ideas that didn’t work with the website design. Too bad, as they might have been fun if they could have worked. Seeing the balloon guy was fun.
I hope the Facebook and Twitter thing works. I guess I’m really old school as my idea of social media is a Usenet group. But if it expands the comments and reach, so be it.
I don’t get the Tommy hate. He worked hard and many of the changes made things better. I appreciate his work.
Please get comments right, though! Bad commenting systems make me not even bother to read, let alone comment!
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Corner Stone:
Don’t listen to this she-wolf, Steep. You are gold and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise. Hell, I’ll track ’em down and fight ’em.
redshirt
@Myiq2xu:
One of my first agrees! with Myiq2xu ever, which is funny. Strange bedfellows and all that.
Do you know that saying – “Strange bedfellows” – refers to earlier hotel practices of sleeping multiple unrelated guests in the same oversized bed? In lieu of heat it was the best way to keep people warm.
srv
@Myiq2xu:
Yeah, that just screamed to me to go archival on John, but then I worried it would break all these rewired intertubes so I let it stand as ironical.
@Nate Dawg:
Let’s just let sleeping dogs lie. While I really enjoy hippies punching hippies, at some point even I start feeling sorry for you people.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@srv: We’re still cool tho, right?
Wyliecoat
Thank you, thank you. One last fix. Could you move the comment box to the top so I don’t have to swipe a gazillion pages before I get to it? Thanks a bunch.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
I think the housecat may have a (modest) cat tree in her future!
Corner Stone
@srv:
I agree. We should all just silently contemplate any and all info a certain keys having individual may have somehow noted or recorded while in possession. Not that that person ever would make note, mind you! But that person could have, just so you know.
WaterGirl
I loved the pizza kitty!
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: Ahh, you’re still there for a bit. And if the movie Cah see no taught me anything other than Sharon Stone was amazeballs in 1995, it’s that the longer you’re there, the better chances are that you’ll give it all back.
gogol's wife
@Steeplejack:
Remember the “Honey House” sketch on the Smothers Brothers? I’ve never laughed so much in my life. I hesitate to look it up on YouTube, in case it isn’t as funny as I remember it.
Roger Moore
I don’t think you’re paranoid for worrying about the data a commenting system collects, especially on an outspoken political blog. And I’m a firm believer that data you never record can’t be turned over to the
jackbooted thugsdefamation suit attorneys who come demanding it.gwangung
@redshirt:
Just saying….I’m not part of admin here, and even I was cringing when you first said that.
srv
Let’s change the subject.
When Cucks go Demon:
This is why Trump should be President. He’s running a counter-counter intel operation within Kasich’s PAC. Think of what he could do to ISIS.
dlm
I’m OK with this new look. Also glad I don’t have to log into facebook or any other medium to post a comment.
Thank you all for your hard work!
Corner Stone
@srv:
Make weird faces at them and call them dumb?
The Other Chuck
@Corner Stone: He could have copied the entire database. He could have taken the commenters’ email addresses and IP addresses (the ONLY personal info on commenters even available on a WP site) and handed them to Russian hacker groups to break into. He could have backdoored the server to let himself back in. He could be using the site to distribute malware that is right now h4x0ring your bank accounts.
Know what? He probably ain’t.
Steeplejack
@Randy P:
They’re trying to keep their three-day workweek a secret.
Eric S.
@BGinCHI:
So it is written in stone. I’m not surprised our fellow citizens elected him but damn is he a horrible horrible person.
Corner Stone
@The Other Chuck:
Based on available evidence, I would suggest he doesn’t possess the wherewithal to actually do any of that, either. And certainly he never, ever, ever would. But, he could. Just saying.
The Other Chuck
Speaking as a guy who’s just fine with Disqus and Facebook, I’m damn glad BJ isn’t using either. Joining this place to The Social Borg would just kill that 80’s BBS vibe we have in the comment threads. Heck, those ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE pages FYWP is so fond of generating is a bit like a busy signal!
raven
It took most of the day to get down to the gulf but I still got in a couple of hours fishing and that was enough to land a keeper Redfish and a Whiting so we had fresh fish tacos. I thought about the freakout about how dangerous it was for some folks to drive in Alabama when, south of Eufala we saw a brother just walking down the side of the road with a rifle one his shoulder. Didn’t look very nervous to me but, then again, he was walking and not driving!
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Wyliecoat:
Even better, move the comment box over top of the main post so I don’t have to read the post before commenting.
Corner Stone
Why did I think Eddie George was dead?
Frankensteinbeck
@MomSense:
You people make me so nervous. No two books I write are the same, so in a series, I have no idea if I’m going to go completely off the thread of what mysterious thing people liked! The only thing I can do is write a good book and hope people like it, but I assure you, that thought is cold comfort indeed.
JMG
I don’t seek out controversy, but I kind of like the new site.
Betty Cracker
Thanks for the backstory and update, JC.
ETA: I had to fish my own comment out of moderation, LOL!
Steeplejack
@eemom:
LOL. I was just looking for the (virtual) talking stick.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Corner Stone:
The 2000 AFC playoff game when the Ravens went into Tennessee and beat them 24-10?
gogol's wife
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Golf clap. (I don’t even know what “golf clap” means, but golf clap.)
Eric S.
@Hungry Joe: other than #3 (I understand coding although Web design is foreign to me) THIS! I sure won’t say I’m always successful but I try to take change in stride.
Steeplejack
@redshirt:
Dude, she had a link to your thanks-worthy comment in her original thank-you.
BR
@satby:
It’s not just an Android issue — I’ve had it with both Firefox and Chrome on the Mac.
lurker dean
@sacrablue: i installed the more better balloon juice and even betterer balloon juice add ons in firefox and got back complete functionality of the browser back button. it’s really nice having the back button . er. back. apparently they also work in safari and chrome. here’s what AL posted about them:
https://userstyles.org/styles/120500/more-better-balloon-juice
On Firefox, install GreaseMonkey https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/. On Safari and Chrome, install TamperMonkey.
Then go install Even Betterer Balloon Juice https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/13730-even-betterer-balloon-juice and links will behave normally again. Future versions of this script will add more fun features, but right now it’s just to fix annoyances that plain CSS can’t.
Should probably mention that MBBJ is More Better Balloon Juice, a stylesheet that requires the Stylish add-on.
Steeplejack
@MazeDancer:
Yes. Well said.
redshirt
@Steeplejack: I’ve seen the light.
God bless this redesign. :)
Corner Stone
Those are some seriously ugly unis for JAX. Cole, I think we found your missing mustard.
WereBear
@JMG: I do too. I like the back & forth buttons on the side. I like the way the comments look. I like all the improvements.
Thanks for being your cranky pet-loving self, John Cole. Deeep deep down, we appreciate it :)
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Citizen_X:
Yeah, I know. I just tossed it off, or I might have thought [sic] a little harder about what to throw in there. Clearly, there should have been an ACA website reference in there, and I just missed it.
NobodySpecial
@Corner Stone: It doesn’t really matter now, CS. Tommy has entered the Pantheon of Stuck on this blog. It will just be dropped down the memory hole.
amk
FP looks much cleaner.
So, the silly blue vertical lined blockquote is gonna be shitcanned too?
John Cole
@redshirt:
If you have done for this for years, then you of all people should recognize that the reasons for the upgrade may not have been visible on your end. You’re just being difficult.
John Cole
@NobodySpecial: What does this mean?
Steeplejack
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
Heh, Stuck is still in your head! Go to sleep with that thought tonight.
normal liberal
Thanks to Our Crotchety Host for his efforts, and for keeping this largely sanity-enhancing place up and running. So, how are the four-footed members of the household dealing with the stress of the redesign?
Thanks also to Tommy, Alain, Mistermix and all involved in doing the work. For Tommy, you got targeted with some seriously nasty nonsense, and I’m glad you’ve stuck it out on the project and will stick around. Those of us lamenting under Bruce Rauner should stick together.
I have been amazed by the vitriol and non-stop sniping dished out in the past couple of weeks, coming from people who ordinarily seem interesting, clever and amusing. I hope that’s over.
Looking forward to a fine new era at Balloon Juice, as we watch the republicans in ever-growing disbelief.
Cheers from your rarely-heard-from normal liberal.
raven
@John Cole: Why do you bother engaging all these whiny assholes? Fuck em.
redshirt
@John Cole:
Of course I recognize it. But there are ways to mitigate it, and you avoided all of them, militantly.
If you’d like to hire me as your personal manager it’s $150 am hour with overtime and holidays. You’d probably make triple in return, but that’s a choice you’ll need to make.
Glaukopis
Thanks for your nice words for Tommy, John. And thank you,Tommy, for all your work. I’ve worked in IT including some website work and it is truly thankless.
MomSense
@Frankensteinbeck:
It’s going to be great. I love the characters and will happily go wherever they go in the next stories.
Corner Stone
@Glaukopis:
What does a bum pitching elbow have to do with anything?
Gin & Tonic
@redshirt: I think you’ve shot your load.
kc
@The Other Chuck:
,
Sorry to hear that.
schrodinger's cat
Thank you for not going for not Face Borging the comments.
Also please change the block quote function.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Yeah, I know. I gave back $5 or $10 today. But the only time I gamble when I’m out here is with the aged mater. One of her “get out of the house” routines is to go to Red Rock, eat in one of the many fine restaurants and then hit the 5¢ machines for an hour or two and people-watch.
redshirt
@Gin & Tonic: There’s pills for that.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: Are there a lot of New Joisey or NYC people in Red Rock? What’s the usual people watching population there?
Adam L Silverman
@Tommy: Tommy, thank you again for all that you’ve been working on. I can only imagine the complexity of the coding issues you, and Alain, and others are trying to fix and clean up on the fly while still keeping the site up.
Also, since Cole can’t tell us apart or something, I strongly recommend we both send him a picture and then he’ll be able to know you from me… Just let me know if you want to proceed on this and I’ll email him a pic.
Also, I’ve got a shirt, somewhere in a box in storage, from a shipping/trucking company in Atlanta – Adam’s Trucking, that someone gave me a as a gag when I was an undergrad at Emory. The shirt reads: “You don’t know me from Adam”. I think its a large, which will definitely not fit me after a decade of dedicated (heavy) weight lifting. Let me know if it’ll fit you and you can wear it when interacting with Cole.
Steeplejack
@gogol’s wife:
I vaguely remember it. Did a cursory search on YouTube but didn’t see it. Thoughts converging on Thai food now. Leaving in 15 minutes.
Iowa Old Lady
@Frankensteinbeck: Oh excellent. Series are hard to write and you’re kicking it.
WaterGirl
Cole, if you’re still around… you said:
“Fifth, the facebook and twitter auto-publish to the BJ site will take place tomorrow.”
Your twitter feed already shows up for me on the right-hand side. If all works as planned, what can we expect to see?
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@redshirt: Nice try, but I’m pretty sure Raven is the next up on the redesign committee.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Corner Stone: It’s a surgery joke! And we know that Cole’s needed plenty.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Seems like a lot of locals and people from California. But of course this is middle of the day on a weekday, off the Strip—way off the Strip.
WaterGirl
@John Cole: There’s someone here who feels that the collective memory of General Stuck has been whitewashed and we all remember the good stuff but not the bad.
If that person is nobody special, I think he’s suggesting that we are now seeing the whitewashing of Tommy.
raven
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Raven doesn’t give a fuck. Shit always worked fine for me.
Steeplejack
Steep out. ? Thai food is calling! ??
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: Raven the Honey Badger goes fishing.
@efgoldman: Everybody knows doublemint has twice the sticking power.
redshirt
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: I’d vote Corner Stone, but since he’s got me pied, I’m not sure my vote matters.
John Cole
@WaterGirl: I don’t recall that at all. Stuck could be a world class asshole. Whitewashing that would be tantamount to pretending he never existed.
This is why I never go to funerals. I prefer to remember people as I knew them, not how I am told to remember them.
raven
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): proof
NobodySpecial
@John Cole: I would humbly suggest that what you remember and what the blog remembers may differ.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@redshirt: Do people still pie other people?
SiubhanDuinne
@Cacti:
I happen to agree with her, but would submit that what she said is not a good example of objective journalism.
For the record, I’ve never heard of her.
satby
@John Cole: @NobodySpecial: Stuck could be an asshole, but he could also be very kind. I think that’s what people remember. That, and how much he loved his little Charlie.
redshirt
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Ask Corner Stone. Seriously, pass a message from me to him: Hello, Corner Stone! I, too, like talking about football!
Thanks TL.
WaterGirl
@satby: I miss the photos of Charlie after he had his weekly bath!
raven
@redshirt: I have a message for him too.
Corner Stone
@SiubhanDuinne:
How is what she had to say supposed to be journalism?
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Corner Stone, stop pying these nice people. They want to talk to you about stuff.
redshirt
@raven: He’s blocked you too?
What a wuss. He’s so bad ass and insulting to every one but he’s probably got dozens on his pie list because he can’t deal with shit. Lame-O.
Kay
@BGinCHI:
I probably will sometime after March when there are fewer Republican candidates.
Right now, Ohio newspapers are trying to find proof that Kasich is a religious zealot. I don’t think he is, which makes it great because I don’t think he can say “I’m not that religious!”
“May feed into the recent controversy, if we keep repeating it”
max
@redshirt: I’d vote Corner Stone, but since he’s got me pied, I’m not sure my vote matters.
What’s with the pied thing already?
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Do people still pie other people?
I eat pie.
Why isn’t it now Maximum Fuckhead, Thought Leader?
max
[‘In honor of Cole, of course?’]
Ruckus
Add me to the list of people who hope that Tommy comes back. Good people seem to be spread pretty thin these days, we gain nothing giving up on one. We all say stupid stuff once in a while, he went a bit past that, but really at the end of the day, not something to lose any sleep over.
The site. I think it’s fine. What I’ve seen the last 24 hrs cleaned up some minor issues that makes it more readable. One of the major problems that I had was on my end and I’ve fixed that. (cleek’s pie filter was causing the null article issue-update works fine) I like the update better than what was done to C. Pearce’s place.
John, I applaud your commenting policy. FB comments suck donkey dicks and Google/discus are arguably worse.
redshirt
Can someone please pass this message onto Corner Stone as well? Thanks in advance, or TIA as the kids say!
“Hey fuck nut? Literally no one besides you and a couple of ferals gives a shit about the Houston Texans, or a literal play by play monologue. “
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
He may have me pied too.
WaterGirl
Today was my final “outside cleanup” day before winter, so I am pooped and heading to bed early. The red trailing verbena outside my sliding door are still blooming like it’s the middle of summer. Every time we get a frost I look out in the morning, and every time they look just fine. I know it’s ridiculous, but I am beginning to hope they might make it through the winter.
Corner Stone
@Ruckus:
Do you realize how ridiculous you seem by saying “comes back”? He never went anywhere. Read a thread you old fucking jokehole.
And he’s not “good people”.
WaterGirl
@Ruckus: Not to worry, Tommy has still been commenting.
I’m really glad you solved your problem, though. You are one of the voices that I really value here, and I was worried that the frustration was getting to you and you might just give up and go away. Okay, I really am going to bed now.
raven
@redshirt: I don’t really know or care. Apparently there are people here that think he’s just sooooo interesting so more power to them.
Ruckus
@John Cole:
I agree that Stuck could be an asshole. He also could be a nice person. Really this describes a lot of us. OK some seem to try a lot harder to be assholes but I’ve only met a very few who couldn’t seem to muster up the effort when prodded. And of course we’ve all known of some who have no idea how to be anything but world class assholes.
elftx
My two cents as I seldom post here.
Thanks for keeping the Amazon link as it’s the only way I can contribute to this blog I have been reading for over ten(?) years now.
Tommy has had to put up w some real shit even before this re-design and I commend him for finally blowing his top!! Besides, it seems he has done a pretty decent job on the site, so thanks for that too Tommy!!
Just wonder why the twitter posts only show John’s..don’t the rest of the FP’s want theirs showing too??
Thanks for everything John, this site can be a real education for the many insights from all and I appreciate it.
Corner Stone
Sambal Oelek, you are a friend of mine. I like to drink you with a little salt and lime.
Corner Stone
@elftx:
You commend him for threatening commenters here that he can find them in real life and punish them for their comments?
Kudos to you, good anon commenter.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Ruckus:
I realize that if I got my dream job and had to stop commenting, some people would be sad and others would be like, Jesus fuck, thank god that asshole is finally gone! Different commenters have different relationships with each other. Stuck was always nice to me, so that’s how I remember him.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Kay: I think he’s pretty religious. He helped with some some legislation, and then kneeled, put his hand on my friend’s shoulder and said “Gloria, now we’re gonna pray.” She was pretty surprised (to say the least), but still happy that he helped.
sharl
@SiubhanDuinne: She expressed an opinion on her personal Twitter account, but accepting for the moment that her expressions there should be treated as part of her journalism job, it would appear that CNN alternates between two (or more?) sets of Guidelines & Policies, depending on what is being said.
WaPo’s Eric Wemple thought Elise Labott’s tweet to be inappropriate (I think he’s being waaaay too generous toward CNN), while others note a bit of inconsistency and hypocrisy on the part of CNN:
Anne Laurie
Just testing — can I use bold text again?
ETA: Huzzah! Back in black, as the internet gods intended!
THANK YOU, MR. COLE
Baud
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Why would you accept such a position?
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
More like that crazy lady who always scrambles people’s words into some shit she hears in her fucked up brainpan and then types out what she wants it to be is no longer here? Ok.
You’re not an asshole in that you just keep putting the wrong words in other commenters mouths. More like just a liar.
RSA
@Anne Laurie:
Excellent!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Baud:
I know, seems crazy, but at a minimum I would have to vastly reduce my commenting because I would have a lot more to do at work. We’ll see — I was finally able to connect with the internal recruiter for the jobs I’m interested in but interviews have not yet been forthcoming.
Kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I don’t believe the compassionate conservative act. I think he expanded Medicaid because rural hospitals weren’t getting paid and got tired of suing people and garnishing their wages. We would see person after person after person with emergency room debt, from our one hospital. They would bring in the judgment and we’d have to tell them “they already had the hearing- that’s the decision”. They always think it’s the notice of hearing when it’s the default judgment.
Baud
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Good luck.
gogol's wife
@Steeplejack:
Tommy Smothers in the front yard giving a tour. “There’s the tree. See how big it’s grown?” and so on. I couldn’t find it on YouTube either. Probably just as well.
Here’s a comment I made hours ago but it didn’t post: There’s an article in Vanity Fair that describes Bill Murray addressing a man as “Francis” while trying to get him to stop bothering him on the street in Havana. The author of the article, who purports to be an old friend of Murray’s, concludes the anecdote by saying, “I never did find out who Francis was.” Thanks to BJ, I know who Francis is, and I’ve never even seen Stripes.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Kay: Oh I’ve got no question that your take on expansion is correct – I also know whose interests matter to him. Not to mention the budget assistance with the federal money.
It just totally shocked my friend that a government official would say “we gotta pray.” In a public building no less.
Gvg
@redshirt: There were both haters and possibly experienced website designers in large repetitive numbers piling on at the same time in the infamous Tommy thread and a couple of prior threads. It was also full of people who weren’t reading the threads before commenting so they were complaining about things that had already had explanations etc. it was getting really nasty. Apparently a number of people could not understand from prior comments that everyone seemed to be seeing different things according to what device, browser and operating system they have in combination so the ones with the worst results were not noticing that most of us weren’t having significant problems. Some of what was said to Tommy seemed pretty threatening too. Tommy is not the only one who should reflect on their actions.
One of the reasons the saying has become popular “don’t read the comments” is because the Internet multiplies the numbers so much and any mistake of different opinion can get thousands of angry replies fast so it seems like a rabid mob.
Kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Republicans here are really mad at him. They think he “goes after other Republicans to win”- all pouty faced and out of sorts.
I don’t know why they think he’s winning. Maybe he should have focused on Iowa instead of New Hampshire.
redshirt
Tommy Chong says, what the fuck, man?
Corner Stone
@Gvg:
Links or example, if you please?
redshirt
@Gvg:
Everyone should always reflect on their actions. Maybe even some times before doing the actions.
As for threatening Tommy, I don’t think anyone did any such thing, but feel free to prove me wrong.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Some of us, like me, are not in a position to ever go public and boy do I appreciate this. Thank you.
redshirt
@Corner Stone: Maybe one of these days Corner Stone will know that I exist. I am not a troll.
Corner Stone
Really badly thrown ball by B Bortles.
redshirt
@Corner Stone: Blake Bortles for 300
Kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I hate his school funding contest “Straight A Grants” not because the money goes to religious orgs, but because I don’t know when it became standard practice for schools to “compete” for funding.
It’s always presented as “maybe we’ll give you this money people paid in state taxes that was then allocated to public schools, if you’re really lucky!” It’s not a gift from John Kasich. As far as I’m concerned his only role is to collect it, even it up by district and send it back out. I don’t want to compete for it. I want him to give it back.
Corner Stone
@Gvg: Little hint here. You are not going to be able to find any threats, or threatening commentary against or regarding Tommy. It doesn’t exist. You can look high/low/far/wide but The Myth of Tommy will not cover the bullshit of what you are trying on here.
sharl
@sharl: Correction to my previous comment. This
is wrong. The Twitter account she used – @eliselabottcnn – is clearly her work-related account.
I regret the error… but not the general sentiment.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Kay: I want him to give it back too. But in a competition, the “earn it.” I cannot quite grasp how anyone thinks he’s moderate, though compared to the rest of the klown kar, he probably seems that way. he’ll blow up at somebody – you know he will.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Hey John,
I’m glad you’re feeling better. Thanks for the update, and thanks for spending so much time and energy keeping this place running. I appreciate Tommy and Alain’s efforts as well – it’s very unfortunate that frustrations and statements made in frustration led to so much bad feelings.
Have a good night, everyone.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@Corner Stone:
I disagree — I think the layer of cake inside a Boston Cream Pie disqualifies it from being a true pie.
SG
John, I can’t thank you enough for your stand on using third-party commenting like Facebook or Disqus. I don’t comment often, but I’m completely closed out of participating in certain sites because I utterly refuse to surrender to a corporate remora like Facebook. I know it would be much easier to turn the headache over to a third party, so thank you again for standing up for privacy and free speech.
redshirt
Yeah, Cole. Your stand for freedom is real.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne: Always with the exultant pie commenters. I think it really says something about those people.
grishaxxx
Fuck, you’d think some of the commenters had never been thru a site redesign before – “Hard cheese on you, Tony..,” about sums it up from me to the haters. I think it’s fine, and getting better fast; cheers to Tommy and Alain and the rest of the crew who have worked so mightily on it. In a few short weeks we’ll have to consult a screenshot to remember the Old Style.
Wusses.
“Pizza Kitty” fucked me up, and will have endless shares – thanx <3
Suzanne
Good Lord, such drama.
I mostly like the redesign. The top and bottom of the page still look craptacular in portrait mode on my iPad and iPhone, but everything else looks reasonably good. I don’t have to use the mobile site, so that is a definite plus!
I have to stay up all night. I am drifting off. Shit.
2liberal
@dedc79:
also the steelers are brady’s bitches.
daddyj
As usual with me, I posted a suggestion early in the AM yesterday, I suspect long after the post was quietly put to rest under a shady tree.
I’ll post it again, here, along with one other. Sorry if it’s already on your list:
1. Nix the inline-block on post paragraph anchor tags!
Line 1448 in layout.css:
.content .entry-content-wrapper p a {
display: inline-block;
}
This rule wrecks paragraphs when the link text is really long. Here is a screenshot of the kind of havoc it creates:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1WNfBRZz-udbjRJYTNCcFhhQTg/view?usp=sharing
(Safari/Firefox/Chrome, OS X 10.5)
You should just delete this rule. I don’t know what function it serves. If you are trying to discourage writers from making long text links, good luck with that!
2. Relative font sizes. There is too much line-space for regular post paragraphs, too little for blockquote paragraphs. It sets up a jarring rhythm. I realize you are trying to contrast the two. I would recommend:
.entry-content p {
font-size: 14px;
line-height: 1.4;
}
.entry-content blockquote p {
font-size: 13px;
}
Note that the line-spacing is in the relative suffix-less unit “multiples” instead of ems or pixels. I think part of the problem you have been having with line-spacing is the base template uses ems, but ems can be a percentage of the size of the parent, setting up a hard-to-control cascade of resizing.
Here’s a screenshot of what the above suggestion looks like:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1WNfBRZz-udbXhsNGE5LXhkalk/view?usp=sharing
Again, cheers!
elftx
@Corner Stone: Love you too!!
Omnes Omnibus
@elftx: CS actually offered a fairly serious reply to your comment. Tommy threatened people. He admits it, and he apologized for it. Cole noted it and pulled Tommy’s keys. He didn’t do it for no reason. Flip responses are fun, but yours ends up as a non sequitur.
John Cole
@redshirt: I can’t even tell if this is serious or sarcasm anymore.
bison burgher
The Balloon Juice blog (and I’ve tried all three device-specific variants on PC, iOS, and Android) is completely broken for people like me, who rely on a screen reader and other assistive technology to use the web. The old site wasn’t perfect, but it was at least navigable and I didn’t have to wade through the entire page to find the (unlabeled) search function.
To cite but one problem for screen readers: the main nav menu is generated twice, and the ‘categories’ item has 39 elements, so I have to listen to 90-some-odd links — on every single page — just to get to the main article. No thanks.
Whoever messed with the theme (core WordPress is highly accessible) simply had no concern whatsoever for people with disabilities.
Ked
0. One more day to donate to Desert Bus! Check them out on Twitch.
1. The most-objectionable exchanges aside, I’ve found Tommy’s engagement in comments throughout this process to be some of the most unprofessional and unpleasant developer-community interactions I’ve seen in a while. Yes, commenters here can be abrasive, but when the end-users are pushing back this hard you really have to disengage and get further instructions (or moral support, or negotiating assistance) from whoever is actually paying the bills.
I had to make exactly this choice in my own work two weeks ago. Yes, the users were selfish jerks, but from their perspective (“What new servers? We’re getting new servers?”) I was the one crapping up their tools. Once the headspace was prepared a little more the changes went in and they loved it.
1a. To be fair, John getting punked by flu (probably the same bug I caught about 10 days ago – the damn chills were crazy, still coughing up occasional lumps) meant that direction of interaction might not have been possible. Still should have disengaged.
2. Before whitespace was popular, I was a whitespace advocate. Now that it’s popular, it’s painful to see it done so horribly. White space doesn’t have to invade every single bit of the interface, it should exist to make the denser sections pop out better. What we have here is a mess of varying spacing cues, most of which serve to minimize the impact of the most important text. Is this a design, yes. Is this an attractive and usable design, no. This is not modern design. This is somewhere pre-Drudge, to be generous. The mess that got made of colorizing bold was totally 1994.
2a. The light-grey dashed line separating comments makes the comments look like they’re printed on a roll of teepee. This could be by design.
3. I don’t use the other site-control features nearly as much as other users. I’m not encouraged by the bits I’ve run into, but these parts are the ones that will always be the hardest to fix. They’re also the reason a beta site is absolutely needed.
4. Hey, at least the font color is right.
5. The page not loading thing is getting more frequent for me.
SIA
@Ked: YES
eemom
Late again, but I have this to say: fuck all of you who for God knows what reason are dragging the memory of General Stuck into this bullshit. It is a despicable and ugly thing to do.
Will R
Welp.. I just skimmed through comments here to get caught up on the drama. My advice to anyone spending any amount of time on the internet is to use a VPN. Its very cheap (maybe $30/yr) and gives you a slight bit of anonymity on the net. It works just like any other app on your common internet devices and you can disable it as needed.
NobodySpecial
@eemom: Glad to see you haven’t lost your touch.
Cervantes
@daddyj:
Thanks. I hope your (very detailed) suggestions are taken seriously. I agree that they would help improve the appearance of the site.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@eemom: Word. It upset me as well, but it was past time for me to stfu. Thanks.
Betty
This is a very later comment, but I just want to say thank you to John and his team. I really cannot believe the petty and oft-repeated complaints I have seen about the changes. It is if everyone has to have every aspect exactly to their liking. God bless ’em, what babies.
Cervantes
@bison burgher:
It would appear so.
RSA
@daddyj: Critiques plus solutions! Nice.
satby
@bison burgher: That really miss unfortunate. Sorry to hear that.
satby
@satby: can’t edit, but the above is “is unfortunate”.
Cervantes
John, Tommy, and Alain (and others, if any): Thanks.
(My criticisms, if needed, can be found elsewhere.)
WaterGirl
@bison burgher: Reading this makes me really sad, and what you described would be maddening. It does appear that maybe no one gave it a thought. I don’t know if anything can be done about it at this point, but I surely hope so.
P.S. My bleary eyes this morning read your nym as bison burglar, which I kind of liked.
WaterGirl
@Ked: “2a. The light-grey dashed line separating comments makes the comments look like they’re printed on a roll of teepee. This could be by design.”
Not to diminish the rest of what you said, all of which was quite valid, but this made me laugh.
Cervantes
@Ked:
I appreciate your comments.
0. Thanks.
1. It’s possible I missed the “most unprofessional and unpleasant developer-community interactions” you’re talking about. To my simplistic way of thinking: to the extent the situation was stressful for all sides, all sides could have tried to be nicer. Plus becoming so stressed by something as innocuous as changes to a blog seems … unbalanced. (Like you I am excluding the worst exchanges, which I commented upon elsewhere.)
2. Like many, I personally preferred the whitespace to the greyspace we have now. Other than that I generally agree with your comments. I’d add one small thing: to keep the last line of a comment from running into/over/under the “Reply” button, said button and the separator line after each comment could use a little more (vertical) space above them. (I dissociate myself from your “pre-Drudge” comment!)
3. [I have nothing useful to add …]
4. [… nor here, either.]
5. I assume it’s temporary while so many things are being fiddled with.
6. If the current commenting system is staying put, I hope “back” button functionality is restored somehow. If a new commenting system is coming, well, all bets are off, I suppose.
7. I’d like to know (if anyone knows) what, if anything, is in store for the mobile site.
Cervantes
Two other things:
I have not the faintest inkling what this means but it sounds … ominous.
Thanks (again).
The Other Chuck
@daddyj:
If I were to fix this in MBBJ, what attribute should I use for ‘display’ to override it? CSS’s many different names for the display values really confuses me. (My wish list for CSS4: a way to delete attributes, and a way to reorder elements)
As for #2 (giggling now thinking of the “TP Roll Effect” mentioned elsewhere) I think I’ve fixed it by just adding a font-size attribute to body, and just one more for headers to make ’em bigger. Apparently there’s no base font size set in the theme, so that’s all it took.
Steeplejack
Something to add to the fix list: On my Android cell phone (mobile version of Balloon Juice) I am still occasionally getting the hijack/redirect hack that sends me to GoGardenClub.com or (rarely) to MySpace. A Google search leads me to believe that a FYWP theme or plug-in has been compromised with some fishy JavaScript. Some solutions are offered, but I’m not in a position to know where to apply them.
RSA
@bison burgher: I’m sorry to hear about your difficulties. Do you know if you’ve been looking at the mobile theme on your iOS device? I only ask because I know that some people with vision impairment find mobile sites easier to navigate than their desktop equivalents, and I haven’t noticed huge changes in mobile BJ, though I could be mistaken about that.
JimV
I’ve been thinking about writing a long comment detailing how the new website sucks compared to the good old days for a couple weeks now, but there never seemed to be a good time to post it what with Mr. Cole being ill and other world events. I’ll be darned – several of my complaints have been and are being addressed without me having to make my demands known. Thank you.
steverinoCT
@Baud: “Death by bonga-bonga!”
daddyj
@The Other Chuck:
The default display value for an anchor tag is “inline”, so I’d go with that.
But better for that rule to not be there at all. ;-)
Yup, it’s tricky to overrule a non-numerical property declaration. It would be great to have a “reset” or “null” value to just clean the slate.
Paul in KY
I can understand why comments from some of us hyenas would cause a proverbial Job to blow his/her stack.
Thought Tommy did a fine job.
Paul in KY
@Ked: I don’t think Tommy was getting a payday from all this.
MazeDancer
Can’t edit comment. It loads, as if one can. Type edit. Won’t save.
Using venerable (in computer years) Mac Book Pro. Never upgrade OS from 10.6.8 because just don’t see why. And latest Firefox
(Can’t edit from iPad 1 either, but that never was possible, so didn’t expect. Wouldn’t mind if new BJ didn’t crash iPad1, but expect that’s not gonna happen.)