Still Missing Google Reader. Threaded Tweets Still Awful.

The blogosphere died with Google Reader. We limp along with substandard alternatives. Viva capitalism. https://t.co/eSJZRfCxlX

— Daniel Harper (@danieleharper) August 29, 2017

Blogged with IFTTT

And yet, here I am. *whistles into the wind*

The Launch of Eruditorum Press

Eruditorum Press: A Manifesto | Eruditorum Press: 

One of the most absolutely satisfying things about my blogging career over the past few years has been the fellow travelers I’ve met and befriended. I’ve become a part of an intellectual circle of critics, not through any active attempt to create a critical empire, but just because I’ve had the honor of meeting cool and brilliant people doing cool and brilliant work. Which, now that I think of the implications under late capitalism, is appalling. I should absolutely have a critical empire, dammit, and so now I’m making one.

Many of us on the left are fuming about MSNBC's gradual conversion into Fox News Lite, kneeling to shine the shoes of fascist buffoon Donald Trump, so this comes as great news. It's not answer to that problem, but it is the answer to a host of others. If ever a website could brandish a "This url kills fascists" sticker, what we've got now with Phil, Jane, and Jack under one roof, ought to be it.

Add them to your sidebars, RSS feeds, whatever you do to keep up with your favorite websites.

New ☆ Tweet from @PhilSandifer

Upside of switching from Google Ads to Project Wonderful: I'm now advertising people like @cdogzilla and @idsharman instead of weird tricks.

— Phil Sandifer (@PhilSandifer) August 15, 2015

Blogged with IFTTT

Recently reminded of a forgotten treasure: The Devil’s Dictionary (2.0)

The Devil’s Dictionary (2.0)

↬ kottke.org

#DoctorWho Blog Them All Progress Check - Summer 2015

It's been about a year since I checked my progress on blogging about all the televised Doctor Who stories. August of 2014, I was 68% complete after "Deep Breath" had aired.

The blogger's tools of the trade.
(Not pictured: hundreds of DVDs, the About Time books, all the Sandifer books on the kindle ...)

Scorecard By Doctor:

Hartnell - 23 of 29 complete - 79%

Troughton - 11 of 21 complete - 52%

Pertwee - 23 of 24 complete - 96%

T. Baker - 28 of 32 complete - 88%

Davision - 18 of 20 complete - 90%

C. Baker - 5 of 11 complete - 45%

McCoy - 4 of 12 complete - 33%

McGann - 1 of 1 complete - 100%

Eccleston - 13 of 13 complete - 100%

Tennant - 35 of 47 complete - 74%

Smith - 34 of 44 complete - 77%

Capaldi - 13 of 13 complete - 100%

Overall, 208 of 265 complete, so currently at 78% complete. Not too shabby. Of course, come September there'll be new episodes coming in to keep up with while chipping away at the older ones, so I've got my work cut out for me. Had hoped I'd be through all the old episodes by now and ready to just blog as they come out. Hah! This time next summer feels like a more realistic goal to up-to-date by.

Have a few Tom Baker, Davison, and Tennant story write-ups in draft though. The wheel of progress continues to turn. The arrival of Aurora and a change at Amazon (Doctor Who longer free to download on Prime) cut into my blogging time a bit recently. I'd have knocked a bunch more out, if I hadn't decided to give The Wire another chance. Since I could download those without additional charge, they filled up the kindle for my recent trip to New Hampshire; once I got hooked, I had to keep going ... 

Doesn't help that Who is on TV so often now either, ironically. Public TV is showing Pertwee stories as "The Pertwee Movies" Saturdays late afternoon, then Tennant stories at night. DisneyXD, which my kids frequently have on, shows Tennant stories all the time. So I'm watching DW, quite a bit, but lately I'm seeing a bunch that I've already blogged! (And my PBS station won't be showing "Planet of the Spiders," the one Pertwee I need, for months and months. Netflix tells me they don't know when they'll have it back in stock, so they moved out of my queue. Sigh.)

Je Suis Ananta Bijoy Das Aussi

Bangladesh blogger Ananta Bijoy Das hacked to death - BBC News:

Ananta Bijoy Das, image via British Humanist Association

Ananta Bijoy Das was attacked by masked men with machetes in Sylhet, police say. He is said to have received death threats from Islamist extremists. 

Mr Das wrote blogs for Mukto-Mona, a website once moderated by Avijit Roy, himself hacked to death in February. 

Dear All Countries Of The World,

When a secularist blogger from Bangladesh -- or any country (e.g., Saudi Arabia) where religious extremists run amok and secularists are threatened, routinely butchered, or otherwise oppressed -- asks for a visa, could you please grant it?

If their embassy suggests you deny their visa request because they "might not return," that should be a red flag -- one that prompts you to wonder why they think a reasonable person wouldn't want to go back.

Regards,
Chris

Je Suis Avijit Roy. Je Suis Raif Badawi. Je suis ...

Save Bangladesh’s Bloggers - NYTimes.com: 

Roy's widow beside his corpse. Image via the Daily Mail.

Blogging has become a dangerous profession in Bangladesh. In February, a Bangladeshi-American computer engineer and founder of the secularist website Mukto-Mona, Avijit Roy, was hacked to death in a Dhaka street. Then this week, an atheist blogger named Washiqur Rahman was murdered in a similarly bloody attack. Both were killed for their views on religion.

We roll our eyes at the barbarism of fundamentalist societies around the world but it's a thin, impermanent line between the Sauid government that lashes Raif Badawi, the assailants that hacked Mr. Roy to death in Bangladesh, and the theocrats here in the U.S. that would make church-going mandatory, if they could get away with it.

And they're perilously close to being able to get away with it. Not one domino fall away, but maybe only two or three. Imagine: Hillary Clinton drops the ball, does something stupid at the wrong time, and it opens the door to a Ted Cruz, or a Mike Pence, winning the Presidency. RBG's health fails a year later and we get Ted Cruz nominee on the Supreme Court with Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts. How safe is secular government then?

Fifteen Years a Cryptonaut

c-i-e celebrates its Pedroia Anniversary

Today marks fifteen years since Triptych Cryptic launched into the blogosphere. Like a shambling zombie, cryptonaut-in-exile (now just a tych, I suppose) continues to lunge at your grey matter. Not to chomp; only to tickle.

As always, in case I don't say it enough, I appreciate more than is, strictly speaking, reasonable or healthy when you take a moment to argue, agree, or just set me straight when I go off-the-rails. It's a big internet and c-i-e is about as backwater a string of 1s and 0s as you'll find on it. That anyone stops by at all, is a mystery and delight. Thanks for that.

What am I up to off the internet these days? Let's time capsule a few tidbits:

• Reading Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty
• Last read (well, listened to the audiobook of) A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren
• Watching iZombie (but not The Walking Dead), Arrow, The Flash, Archer, Doctor Who (of course), Gotham, and my that's a lot of comic book-inspired fare for a fella who was never all that much into comic books
• Recently attended Wizard's Raleigh Comic Con
• Recently promoted to the fancier-sounding-than-it-is title of Principal Systems Analyst at the day job
• Waiting to hear if youngest brother lands a promotion that'll move him to California soon
• Not discovering much in terms of new music or catching new movies lately, but want to see: Boyhood, John Wick, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Top Five, and Only Lovers Left Alive

Things c-i-e / TC Is Older Than / Has Outlasted

America's participation an any war -- yes, even Afghanistan.
The iPod
friendfeed (also twitter & facebook)
The CW
My Chemical Romance, among other notables.
The MLB careers of Don Mattingly, Juan Pierre, & John Lackey. (The names of some 14-year NBA players are flashier: Rip Hamilton, Dennis Rodman, David Robinson.)
America's Test Kitchen & Smallville both debuted in 2001.
Shanghai Noon & The Way of the Gun debuted later in 2000.

Other Things in History That Happened on a March the 26th

Doctor Who relaunched under Russell T. Davies (2005)
The Book of Mormon first published (1830)
The Battle of Iwo Jima ends (1945)
Bangladesh breaks away from Pakistan (1971)
Dr. Kevorkian convicted (1999)
Leonard Nimoy was born (1931)
Sandra Day O'Connor was born (1930)
John Stockton was born (1962)
Keira Knightley was born (1985)
Beethoven died (1827)
Walt Whitman died (1892)
Eazy-E died (1995)
Camp David peace treaty was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at the White House (1979)

cdogzilla.net is go

Not since the Triptych Cryptic days has this blog been on its own domain; but, since google integrated blogger into their hosting service, I took the plunge and bought cdogzilla.net today.

Here's hoping that doesn't break anything apart from the g+ comments. (Which were already broken in terms of the counter not working anyways.) Old comments are lost. And I'm a bit sad about that. Still, it's a new age and you can leave new comments.

No need to update your bookmarks, the old blogspot address will redirect here. Allegedly.

#DoctorWho Blog Them All Progress Check

Heading into the holiday weekend, it feels like a good time to check what progress I've made to date in my quest to blog about all the televised Doctor Who stories (plus "Shada" and maybe a few other things).

"Into the Dalek" hasn't broadcast yet, as I write this, so up through "Deep Breath," I make it 246 total stories, of which I've blogged 171 for 69.5% coverage. There are at least four of those I only blurbed and am going give proper write-ups when I get to re-watching them, so the number's a bit overstated. Let's call it 68%.

I'm well on my way! The goalpost keeps moving, but I expect I'll keep on top of the new ones as they come out.

What have I got left by Doctor?

For the Hartnell stories, I've done all the ones that survive in full, and several that were wholly or partly reconstructed. Where I've relied on reconstructions up 'til now, with so many Hartnells and Troughtons missing, I'm going to lean on the Target novelisations a bit to help get through those gaps. I'll watch the reconstructions/listen to the audio as well, but the reviews may end up being more properly thought of as reviews of the books than of what survives of the broadcasts.

For the Troughton era I've got 12 left to cover. "The Mind Robber" is just about go live, so that'll leave me with 11. Almost all reconstructions and novelisations to lean on there; very little left to actually watch as it was broadcast. The discover of a several lost episodes since I started this project leaves me hopeful maybe something else will turn up, but the odds look awful long.

I've got 11 Pertwee stories left, and I started re-watching "Inferno" last night, so that one could be ready to publish by end of the long weekend.

15 Tom Baker stories left. I re-watched "Genesis of the Daleks" a few months ago, fully intending to write about it as soon as I was done, but I got busy, put it off, and then I felt like I waited to long. So, it's gone back into the viewing rotation. Not that I mind watching it again, but I can't afford to double the hours or I'll never finish this!  Well, since DW will probably outlast me, I hope, I'll never get to the point where I'm only writing about the new stuff as it comes out if I let that happen too many times.

6 Peter Davison stories left to cover. So close!

6 Colin Baker stories left as well. I'm dreading a few of them, frankly, so expect the return of the Drunken Blogger when it comes time to do those. "Vengeance on Varos" suffered a fate similar to "Genesis," watched it work/life got in the way and I couldn't make the time strike while the iron was hot. Hmm, "Twin Dilemma" is getting near the top of the Netflix queue ... better make sure the liquor cabinet is stocked.

So far I've only done 4 McCoy stories. The 8 left include "The Curse of Fenric," so which I'm eager to see if I'll come around on, after loathing it on previous watches. It's still sitting with an F grade in my master list, but the internet says I'm nuts and it's brilliant; so, maybe after reading all the Sandifer, Graham, and Wood & Miles I've been plowing through, my grey matter will finally be ready for it?

McGann is all set. That includes "The Night of the Doctor". You know, McGann still looks to be in fine form and now that he's been back once for the web, I wonder if it's a stretch to imagine he might one day appear on TV again in a multi-Doctor story?

Hurt's War Doctor doesn't have a story of his own, but the episodes he's in are all covered.

Eccleston is done. This makes me a little sad. Loved Eccleston's Doctor and wanted years more of him.

Tennant has 15 left, plus the bulk of the rewriting for the xmas specials I glossed over in one post. This is largely going to be smooth sailing.

Smith has 14 left. Some of those are going to be a bit of a drag, but with the the new series stories being about 45 minutes long, as opposed to the longer classic series stories, still expect to make relatively short work of those. Since I started this project during his era, and didn't really settle on a post format at first, and made some crazy guesses about what might be going on, there's probably some rewriting in my future for a few more of those posts as well.

Capaldi, I'm 1-for-1 and rarin' for more.

When I'm all caught up on the classic series, I'm going to go back through, review my grading, and play a little flickchart-style story vs. story to make sure I'm comfortable where I landed on those ones where I wavered on the line between grades.

Thanks again to those of you who have taken the time leave comments and helped share the posts around. I'm always open to criticism and appreciate the opportunity correct mistakes, but am not above wagging my tail for the occasional pat on the head either.

French blogger fined over restaurant review's Google search placing

BBC News - French blogger fined over review's Google search placing

Image via Khushbu Shah: Google Maps/Google+

Wrong on so many levels:

The judge ordered that the post's title be amended and told the blogger Caroline Doudet to pay damages. 

Ms Doudet said the decision made it a crime to be highly ranked on search engines. 

The restaurant owners said the article's prominence was unfairly hurting their business. 

Ms Doudet was sued by the owner of Il Giardino restaurant in the Aquitaine region of southwestern France after she wrote a blogpost entitled "the place to avoid in Cap-Ferret: Il Giardino". 

According to court documents, the review appeared fourth in the results of a Google search for the restaurant. The judge decided that the blog's title should be changed, so that the phrase: "the place to avoid" was less prominent in the results.

Wrong to sue. Beyond that, wrong to sue the blogger if you're going to sue. Beyond that, wrong ruling despite the first two wrongs.

Hope the SCOTUS isn't getting any ideas from this about how they can defend religious corporations from bloggers here ...

Blogger/G+ commenting bug?

It'll probably turn out to be a problem with the template I'm using or something, but I could've sworn this was working when the feature was activated. The moral of the story is, just because my post may say it has no comments, that may not be the case. Witness:

Please don't be shy, join the conversation.

Cool integration or the next step in G+ swallowing Blogger whole?

Comments are GPlusified. Trying it out now because I'm assuming Google will eventually make it mandatory anyways.

So, yakkity-yak, feel free to talk back.

The c-i-e Thirteenth Blogiversary Extravaganza!

Thirteen years in, I'm no less eager to keep pressing keys and sharing the resultant output when I think about the things I read, hear, and watch that engage my interest. If the last year of blogging was heavy on the politics and gun control, there's likely to be a greater emphasis around here on Doctor Who in its 50th Anniversary year. Building out the Episode Index has been fun and I've got a long way to go on that front. Not to say I won't continue the political and secularist postings, I certainly will, but I've got a feeling geekier content will dominate for a while as my disappointment with the Obama administration continues to smolder.

A couple of other big events are also on the horizon: Kim Stanley Robinson's next book is due later this year; and, I've got it in my head that *this* is the year I finally go to the annual Yo La Tengo run at Maxwell's -- at least some of it, the timing of the holidays this year is problematic. Between the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, a new KSR book, and Maxwell's looking a Bucket List tick off in the making, my personal triptych of arts and pop culture fandom looms large in my imagination -- each section likely to get more pixels devoted to it in the months ahead.

If you're new here, lured by the chance of chance of winning a kindle (more on that just a bit further down), you might be wondering, "If I'm not into Doctor Who, Kim Stanley Robinson, or Yo La Tengo, what reason might I have for coming back?" It's a fair question. Below are links a few posts, which have dropped off the front page, that I hope are illustrative of the mix of things I'm inclined to post about outside those topics:

• Words fascinate me. New words, old words, whatever the word there are few things as satisfying as finding the exact right word when you really need it. For example, I was using cyberpragmatics all the time without knowing there was a word for them.

• You don't have to be a foodie to post every so often about food. My food truck reviews probably are much use to anyone outside the Raleigh/Durham area, but they might inspire you to get adventurous with the options in your city? Or, I can teach you the proper way to eat Cheetos.

• Interested in video games and philosophy at all? Then you will feel like a genius when you solve the occasional riddle.

• Sure, everybody does movie reviews, but not everybody writes them while drinking dubious cocktails. 

• Yo La Tengo isn't the only band I follow. All the Fugazi news you didn't know you were missing, I'm on the lookout for it for you. 

• TV junkies, we can help each other out.

• If you're interested in history, especially those people and events that bend the arc of justice, we almost certainly have something in common.

Now that you newbies have got the lay of the land ...

Let's get to the fun stuff!

I gave away a kindle-sized gift card last year to one lucky reader and it felt so good I'm bringing the contest back. I'm going to use rafflecopter again; this went pretty smoothly last time and nobody complained about it so, hopefully, it'll be a painless experience.

Please note, the prize is a $69 Amazon gift card that you may use towards a kindle and I encourage you to do so because I love mine; however, you are free to use the Amazon gift card towards whatever you like.

+Joseph Riker, as last year's winner, you're disqualified from this year's drawing; but, I'll only make winners sit out one year after winning, so you'll be able to enter again in 2014.

Thanks for visiting. Good luck!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Readlists - Gather and share some of your favorite longer reads ...

Cryptonautical - Readlists

An intriguing way to share a group of themed articles.

Here's how the embed looks:


If you make one after seeing this, please share.

FTR, before using my own posts as an example, I tried doing this for some of Mr. Murphy's posts over at the GitM, but I guess it didn't like his WordPress theme. Which is a shame, because they're much better reading.


↬ The Morning News

Google+, please don't eat Blogger whole!

So I read that Google+ mentions will work in Blogger posts now. Since I use Blogger, I wanted to try it out, but needed a subject for a post to give substance to what is basically a "I want to see what happens when I do that," post.

Here's the fake meat: I have a vague fear that Blogger will eventually disappear inside Google+ and I will be sad because of it. Also, Google Reader. Google, you have better things than +, please don't ruin them.

OK, so now that's out of the way, I'm going to mention a person (+Jeremy Simmons, congratulations, you were mentioned in a blogger post as part of an experiment and probably just received a notification you didn't particularly want!), a page (+Atheist Blogmap), and a community (+Yo La Tengo) and later I will go to + and see what I can see. ~Imagine me making the 'blows a kazoo' sound here, with a confetti toss.~

Edit: Hmm. Doesn't seem to have done the things I thought it would do. No links or integration to g+ that I can see. Back to tinkering ...

Thanks, @BloggersDotCom, for the feature this morning!

Was a little surprised when my inbox filled up and @mentions started popping up one after another this morning. Welcome to all who are checking in here for the first time. If I'd know you were coming, I'd have tidied up a bit and had a pot of coffee ready.

Since you're here, please make yourself comfortable, feel free to poke around, and let me know if I there's anything I can do for you. You'll see my blogroll over on the right, lots of other pleasant (by which I mean bombastic, argumentative) folks you might want to visit as well. But don't rush off! They're not going anywhere. Sit, have a cuppa, let's get to know one another. 

Cdogzilla from United States has been featured, his profile bit.ly/Ky2zjQ and Blog bit.ly/KfezKf #blogger #blog
— Bloggers (@BloggersDotCom) June 12, 2012

We gonna rock down to Empire Avenue / And then we'll take it higher ...

It seems to be an unwritten rule of Empire Avenue that, if you're going to play, after a while you need to write a How To WIN At Empire Avenue post. So, this is mine. Except, I can't tell you how to win, only how I enjoy playing.

If you're trying to be King or Queen of SEO and drive massive traffic around, there are folks there who can help you, but I'm not one of them. If you want to make a few quality connections, play a game that doesn't require a huge amount of time to derive satisfaction from, and is only as social as you want it to be, then EAv may, just may, be for you.

If you haven't seen it, you are probably wondering what it is. It styles itself as a virtual stock market for people who do social media of one form or another, and generally more than one form. It's really not a stock market though, even if it looks a lot like one in spots. Sure, you buy and sell (but I don't recommend selling, we'll come to that later) and earn dividends on your holdings like you would on equities but the pricing isn't really market driven.

Buys increase and sells decrease your stock's price, but your price is also influenced by your holdings and activity. I read somewhere early on that you shouldn't let EA automatically release more shares of your stock due to dilutive effect and that sounded reasonable, more of something means each unit will cost less, right? Supply and demand is Econ 100 ... but that's not at all how EAv works. You want to keep selling and let EAv release more and more for other players to buy, that will only help you. If people can't buy you because all your shares are held, that will hinder your growth.

OK, so why even grow? What the point of the whole thing?  Just as in the real world it's all about the benjamins, on EA it's all about the eaves -- the virtual currency of EA. Eaves are what you buy stock with. Eaves let you buy upgrades so you can buy more of the stocks you like and do other neat things every now and again in EA's marketplace. Eaves also allow you to buy missions (but not too soon), and this is where it gets interesting and can have an impact outside the game on your social properties. You can offer missions to ask people to do things like click on a link to your blog and leave a comment, or RT for you, or watch a YouTube video. They have incentive to do these things so they can earn eaves for completing your mission.

Sound a little fishy at this point? Why buy someone's click? Don't people say they'll do something and then not do it?  As for the last, yes, they sometimes do -- but there are ways you can minimize that -- and yes it is a little like bribery. Isn't all advertising though? Your social fortune will still rise or fall based on your content and how much people like or dislike interacting with you. EA is just another way to say, "Hey, did you know I'm here?"

Mission-scammers are one of the things I dislike most about EA. But, if you offer decent missions,  and don't write a laundry list of things for people to do for some pittance, folks are generally going to give you a shot and do something small for healthy dose of eaves.

If you have just gotten started, or about to start (use my referral, if you don't mind!) there are few things I would recommend to help you get going and not get discouraged the first time you're sold and your price starts dropping:

Missions weren't available when I started, I wish they had been. Do them, but don't start running them right away. Use your eaves to invest. Missions to invest in people are great deals. Build your portfolio and set yourself up for future earnings without spending an eave.

Don't take missions you don't have any intention of completing. You can check the link before completing the mission. If somebody is asking you to share something your social network connections aren't going to like, then just skip it. There's plenty of missions. And, obviously, check the best paying missions first.

Invest in a mix of your fellow newbies and in stocks that pay high dividends. Buy and hold. If you sell a stock when it's doubled or tripled since you're initial buy, you'd be a fool to sell it, it's going to keep going up  and you're selling not only it's current value but it's future increased and dividends. (OK, so some people quit and their stocks plummet -- if someone disappears for a month or more and the stock is in a death spiral you're not going to lose anything by selling. Just don't jump the gun and sell a stock because it declined two days in a row. People go on vacations and come back.)

If someone says, "buy me back or I'm going to sell you," your best bet is to ignore them and just look at their dividends. If you should have been holding them, then buy them because it's good for your portfolio. If your eaves are better spent somewhere else, take the hit when they sell and forget about it. Someone who plays that way probably isn't going to be a good connection for you anyways.

Buying back. This is a tough one. I really want to buy back everyone who holds my shares, and I'm working on matching or at least maxing in all my shareholders. However, you're going to slow your growth down in you buy a bunch of .10 avg. daily div shares just be a good buy-backer. Get good value and build your war chest, then circle back and buy back your less valuable shareholders.

Engage. Endorse peoples' blogs. If somebody runs a mission that pays well and was worthy your time, make sure to thank them for it.

Be prepared for the day a bunch of the big timers who bought 200 shares of you when you were new (and cheap) sell them off. It's going to drive your price down and it doesn't mean your stock is going to die. They'll buy you back when you're rising again. You'll see.

Basically, if you play with integrity, and interact with others who are doing so, you'll have fun driving some traffic to your site(s).

The Ghost we don't to want go into the light ...

On Walkabout. - Ghost in the Machine: 

Berk and KcM

I'm not saying the Ghost is dead and buried, but I don't see it coming back online regularly anytime soon ...

The blogosphere is diminished.

Back at the beginning of Triptych Cryptic, we looked around and said (I'm paraphrasing), "This guy is doing it right," as we pointed at the monitor showing the early days of GitM. The cryptonauts I started with having, for the most part, moved on and now Kevin stepping away from the keyboard, it's feeling more than a little lonelier around here.

Waxy turns 10

Waxy.org Turns 10 - Waxy.org:

Carving out a space for yourself online, somewhere where you can express yourself and share your work, is still one of the best possible investments you can make with your time. It's why, after ten years, my first response to anyone just getting started online is to start, and maintain, a blog.