by CIDU Bill

The Page Formerly Known as Random Comments

This is an archived page, and cannot accept any new comments. The latest Random Comments page (2020) is here:

random comments imge

Please note that this was intended for public comic comments only: if you want to send me a CIDU, or a comic for some specific folder (Ewww, Oy, etc), or you want to inform me of a typo, please e-mail me at cidu email.

Also: A list of the site’s most recent comments can be found in the left sidebar. A database of all the comments, compiled by larK, is here; and the site’s FAQ is here:

faq image

473 Comments

  1. Unknown's avatar

    This is a test comment. This is only a test comment. If this had been a real comment, it would have had typos.

    Like

  7. Unknown's avatar

    Heh, I spend a fair amount of time in 1963. I’m a regular at the Journey. If you like old SF, the space race, or the middle Cold War, it’s worth a visit

    Like

  10. Unknown's avatar

    Here’s a random comment:
    I would like to see more CIDUers personalize their avatar (little picture thingie).

    Like

  12. Unknown's avatar

    I don’t really care for the ALLCAPS styling (even if it’s actually small caps) I’m the latest Theme.

    (Is there in fact a new theme today, or am I just late in noticing its phone appearance as I’ve been at the desktop during the weekend?)

    Like

  13. Unknown's avatar

    Mona, How do you personalize an avatar? Not that my choice will do you much good – I usually use the Cat’s Eye nebula. :-)

    Like

  14. Unknown's avatar

    One way is via Gravatar.com . As somebody remarked earlier, they make it a whole fussy sign-up experience :( . But WP is not the only site that thereafter can use your gravatar.

    Like

  15. Unknown's avatar

    chakolate, I used Gravatar.com as Mitch4 pointed out. All you have to do is click on the circle next to your name and it will take you there. I think it was easy to sign up and upload my chosen photo. (Is that the right term? See I don’t even know what I’m doing but I was able to do it.)

    Like

  16. Unknown's avatar

    Thanks, everybody. I went to Gravatar and uploaded the pic, and now it shows up here. I didn’t have to sign up much because I used my WordPress id.

    Like

  18. Unknown's avatar

    I’ll second Mona’s “Well done” ; and also point out that it has retroactively put your new avatar in comments you previously posted!

    Like

  20. Unknown's avatar

    While my initials are good enough for WordPress, Gravatar won’t allow me to use a picture unless I give them a longer name.

    Like

  21. Unknown's avatar

    B.A. I think I had to give them a full name, but I was able to choose what would be displayed. Of course, they may not allow you to display “B.A.”. Maybe Bee A? Your purple and white circle is nice, though.

    Like

  22. Unknown's avatar

    That’s what it is, Mona: They insist on at least four letters, and periods don’t count. So I might have to be happy with my stylish purple and white circle.

    Like

  23. Unknown's avatar

    @ B.A. – Perhaps you could try replacing the periods with an elevated dot, like this: “B·A·” – I have no idea whether Gravatar/Wordpress will count that as a character, but it’s worth a shot.

    Like

  24. Unknown's avatar

    “I would like to see more CIDUers personalize their avatar (little picture thingie).”
    I’d prefer not to have one at all. You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes . . .

    Like

  26. Unknown's avatar

    While the A-Team reference is obvious, I’m reminded of the classic M*A*S*H episode where the characters try to find out BJ Honeycutt’s real name, since they’ve only known him as “BJ”. Eventually, he reveals that his real name is… BJ. (He’s named after his parents, Bea and Jay.)

    Like

  27. Unknown's avatar

    GoComics just revamped their layout (yet again). The new format is cleaner, but one detail the removed is the number of “followers”. I hope Bill doesn’t mind a small bit of shameless advertising: last week I noticed that “Cul de Sac” still has over 47000 followers. On the other hand, “Wallace the Brave” is (or was) still limping along with just over 2700 followers. This is an intolerable injustice that needs to be corrected. Go ahead, click on the link!

    Like

  29. Unknown's avatar

    When GoComics first made the change, there was a way to show the followers. Now, either I can’t find it or they made another change to remove that.

    Like

  30. Unknown's avatar

    Before the theme change, it seems like I remember Bill saying that the light gray print couldn’t be changed. Is that still true? It’s very hard to read the lighter shades of gray. I have the same trouble on a lot of websites, even in some comics speech bubbles. I think it’s a conspiracy against those of us who can’t see perfectly. Zooming the page helps, but not a lot. Is there any hope here?

    Like

  31. Unknown's avatar

    Bookworm, there’s a workaround if you’re interested. I put a bookmarklet on my bookmarks toolbar, and when I can’t read a page, I hit it and it zaps all colors, turning the background white and the text black. Instant readability.

    You can find it here:
    https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html
    it’s the one called ‘zap colors’. Just drag it to your bookmarks toolbar.

    Like

  34. Unknown's avatar

    Or as I said somewhere in another thread, just drag your cursor over the block of text to highlight it. It creats more contrast.

    Like

  35. Unknown's avatar

    Is there a vestigial “Like” mechanism, even with the overt buttons turned off? I got an email notification today that someone “liked your comment on Saturday Morning Oy – March 3, 2018” which I think was long after the Like buttons were turned off.

    Like

  41. Unknown's avatar

    Yes, mine was from Squid also.
    I don’t see a Like button on my page, I’m using my tablet. I’ll have to look on my phone and laptop later.

    Like

  42. Unknown's avatar

    Oh, I see. I have to “view post in Reader” and then the Like button is there. Thanks, Mitch4. I don’t know if I like this “reader” thing.

    Like

  43. Unknown's avatar

    Observation: While in Reader mode I “replied” to Terry’s comment on Pizza. It shows up below the comment, indented, as you might expect to see a reply. However, if I go to that post while not in Reader mode, my reply shows up at the bottom of the page like any other comment, it is not associated with the comment I replied to.

    Liked by 1 person

  45. Unknown's avatar

    Mona above

    While in Reader mode I “replied” to Terry’s comment on Pizza. It shows up below the comment, indented, as you might expect to see a reply.

    [but doesn’t look that way on main site]

    Very briefly and very soon after this new site was activated, the setting for nested reply threads was ON, and went to level 3 of nesting! This was quite confusing, especially for users seeing it on a phone, where the indenting might leave not even the width of a whole word.

    Bill then turned it off (in customizations) which was surely the right decision since the alternative seemed to be illegibility. But I have noticed in email “[New Comment]” notifications that the generated notification sometimes says “in response to CIDU Bill” and quotes the posting top note, before presenting the text of the new reply; but sometimes says “in response to Mark in Boston” (or whoever) and quotes from a comment withing the thread.

    There seem to be a variety of circumstances for this, but maybe one is a person actually replying to a comment via Reader mode?

    Anyway, usually it’s not too hard to track who is talking back to whom, even in the absence of numbering. But perhaps it could be aided in the occasional trickier cases by re-implementing nested comments to a single level only on a test basis. Anyone else interested in seeing this tried out?

    Like

  48. Unknown's avatar

    I thought I’d point out some interesting results when doing a simple Google search using the term “comicsidontunderstand.com”. Either the first or second result is an old address: https://cidutest.wordpress.com/

    Oddly enough there’s text stating that the site had moved…to comicsidontunderstand.com.

    Might cause a little confusion?

    Like

  50. Unknown's avatar

    Well, my point had been that it pointed to comicsidontunderstand.com, but since that seems to simply redirect here it isn’t really a problem.

    Never mind then…

    Like

  51. Unknown's avatar

    Bill, at one point early on, you were deferring doing the settings change that would have people’s browser location bars show “comicsidontunderstand.com” whichever they got here (instead of “godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com” whichever way they got here). You didn’t want to do it at a potentially busy time for viewers and give them some sort of caught-in-midstream problem.

    Has that just faded from your to-do plans, or have you actively decided that showing “godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com” is fine after all?

    Like

  52. Unknown's avatar

    Bill, at one point early on, you were deferring doing the settings change
    that would have people’s browser location bars show “comicsidontunderstand”
    whichever they got here (instead of “godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie” whichever way they got here). You didn’t want to do it at a potentially busy time for viewers and give them some sort of caught-in-midstream problem.

    Has that just faded from your to-do plans, or have you actively decided that showing “godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie” is fine after all?

    Like

  54. Unknown's avatar

    You are the winner of the spawn-a-new-page comment award, which means your new comment gets dissociated from the thread you’re posting on! Really stupid design here on WordPress’ part.

    Like

  56. Unknown's avatar

    larK, exactly — it didn’t post, and it didn’t give me a moderation message either. Only after the edited 2nd try also disappeared did I notice the “Newer Comments” arrow.

    Bill, your option #3 was pretty much what I meant by “Has that just faded from your to-do plans?”.I don’t see any urgency, but it might settle down some of the “redirection” questions. larK, would that raise any problem at scrape.nowis?

    Like

  57. Unknown's avatar

    I find it particularly incomprehensible that clicking on the comment in the recent comment tab doesn’t take you to the actual comment, but to the first page of the comments for that thread. I guess the thinking is “If we’re going not going to make the ‘recent comments’ discoverable, why bother to have them link to the actual comments”?

    Like

  58. Unknown's avatar

    Chak, some people hated the “like” button, and I managed to compromise by getting rid of it but not completely. Somehow.

    I’m sure nobody would be shocked if I said I was just winging it here…

    Like

  60. Unknown's avatar

    Bill said, “Chak, some people hated the “like” button, and I managed to compromise by getting rid of it but not completely. Somehow.

    I’m sure nobody would be shocked if I said I was just winging it here…”

    I don’t know, Bill, you took a problem that had a yes/no, on/off nature, and found a solution that can make everybody happy. Sounds like you’re doing pretty well to me.

    Like

  61. Unknown's avatar

    Bill: “You do know “Recent Comments” is still there, yes?”

    Are you asking me? (Or maybe it’s for someone else, I don’t even see a I know the “Recent Comments” tab is there, that’s what my comment was about. My complaint (with the template, not you, obviously), is that if I click on, e.g. larK’s comment #54 in that tab, it goes to comments-page-1, which doesn’t have larK’s comment.

    It seems like it’s a bug, rather than by design, because when I click on chakolate’s comment #60 in that tab, it (correctly) goes to comments-page-2

    Like

  62. Unknown's avatar

    Rhetorical.

    Because I was too lazy to explain it in case you already knew.

    Look to the left sidebar. Right above COMICS I DON’T UNDERSTAND, there’s three horizontal lines and to the right of that, an icon that looks like a folder. Click that, and “Recent Comments” and everything else appears.

    I know. It’s ridiculous to semi-hide an entire sidebar. But… clearly nobody asked me for my opinion.

    Like

  64. Unknown's avatar

    Bill, thanks, but I knew where the Recent Comments tab was. (I said that in my last comment, but I confused it up by accidentally pasting in a random stray sentence.) I was pointing out that the links in that tab are buggy. i.e. this thread now has two pages of comments, but some of the comments that are in the second page of comments link to the first page of comments. i.e. larK’s comment above is on the second page of comments, but when you click on it in the sidebar, you get sent to the first page of comments.

    Like

  65. Unknown's avatar

    Mitch, as WW has mentioned, yes, this does mess things up for my scrape, but since it also seems to mess up things for the site itself, it’s not like I can fix it (or at least I haven’t been struck with an obvious solution). I seem to recall that after the second page gets filled with a few comments, the newer ones do start getting tagged with the correct page, and the links start pointing where the comment is. So basically, as I’ve noted before on this, the couple of comments around where it spawns a new page get screwed up, but it’s WordPress, not me, doing the screwing.

    Like

  66. Unknown's avatar

    Mitch: oh, I saw you were actually referring to the domain name and switching the canonical name back to cidu — yes, that would briefly mess up my scrape, until I noticed it had been done, and did a query to fix all the urls. Possibly, if the old url was kept quietly working in the background, it might just work and I’d have to do nothing.

    Like

  67. Unknown's avatar

    That’s correct larK, I was asking about setting the main domain name (though I was interested in your other answer as well).

    At https://wpdemos.blog/2018/03/17/setting-primary-domain/ I’ve posted a couple screenshots of the WP management-UI for domains. I’ve tried out this operation, and it takes place almost immediately, requiring from the visitor to the site only a page refresh to get the primary domain showing in the browser.

    I believe the answer to your ” if the old url was kept quietly working in the background” , if I understand it correctly, is just Yes. All the URLs shown in that Domains list — primary or additional — continue to work if typed in the browser or if appearing in a link. That’s sort of what the green-checked notification in the second screenshot means.

    Like

  68. Unknown's avatar

    I’ve joked about some rather poorly-drawn cars in comics posted here. I have two books collecting cartoons from England’s “Punch” magazine in the ’40s and ’50s era. Most are very well drawn. One artist that caught my eye was Russel Brockbank who included realistic representations of well-known automobiles of the period in his humerous cartoons.

    Here is just a sample of Russell Brockbank’s work:

    https://punch.photoshelter.com/search?I_DSC=brockbank&I_SDATE%5BMM%5D=&I_SDATE%5BDD%5D=DD&I_SDATE%5BYYYY%5D=YYYY&I_EDATE%5BMM%5D=&I_EDATE%5BDD%5D=DD&I_EDATE%5BYYYY%5D=YYYY&I_CITY=&I_STATE=&I_COUNTRY_ISO=&I_ORIENTATION=&I_IS_RELEASED=&I_IS_PRELEASED=&_CB_I_PR=t&_CB_I_PU=t&_CB_I_RF=t&_CB_I_RM=t&I_SORT=RANK&I_DSC_AND=t&V_ID=&G_ID=&C_ID=&_ACT=search

    Much of the general PUNCH artwork can be found here:

    https://www.punch.co.uk/

    Like

  72. Unknown's avatar

    I am so out of touch with the world here on the West Coast. I just learned that Spongebob Squarepants has been a musical on Broadway since June 2016. Thank you, Facebook friends.

    Like

  73. Unknown's avatar

    When is the March for Babies? Did I miss it? Is it coming up soon? We are supposed to help Bill beat his wife.
    Also, Happy Passover and/or Easter.
    And April Fools day.

    Like

  76. Unknown's avatar

    We don’t really help Bill beat his wife. We just send him money so maybe he will beat his wife. The more money we send, the better the chance.

    Like

  77. Unknown's avatar

    I am SHOCKED! SHOCKED, do you hear? Not only is it a TRADITION for this man to beat his wife, but you all PAY him to do it? SHAME!!!

    (Now I’d probably better go chip in, right?)

    Like

  78. Unknown's avatar

    “No man should beat his wife”

    That’s sexist. A modern woman should be free to decide for herself who, if anyone, beats her.

    Like

  81. Unknown's avatar

    Here’s the punchline: they moved the location to eithin a few blocks of where I live this year — except I’ll be in Chicago that weekend, so I’ll be walking there instead.

    Like

  82. Unknown's avatar

    It’s too bad they couldn’t have scheduled it better so you could walk close to home.
    Sorry if I jumped the gun, I wasn’t sure when it was going to be this year, and I’m going out of town and won’t be online much and didn’t want to miss it.

    Like

  83. Unknown's avatar

    And I definitely appreciate it.

    Hopefully, they’ll keep this location for 2019 and beyond: it would be very mean of them to go back to the old place (and to be honest, I can do that one with my eyes closed at this point).

    Like

  84. Unknown's avatar

    GoComics has decided to make their new layout even more annoying than it already was: if you use any link that goes to a particular comic, instead of showing the comic for the current day, it now shows up with a moronic “Today” template, with a random (useless) snippet of the comic, along with a whole bunch of other silly, space-wasting frames. Just like Calvin’s grandpa, I think we should all write in to complain.

    Like

  86. Unknown's avatar

    Kilby, You’re right, that is really annoying.

    I have a slow connection, so I open a dozen or so tabs at once, then go do dishes or laundry or something while they load. This business keeps me tied to the screen.

    Like

  87. Unknown's avatar

    @ Bill – Here’s a disadvantage in CIDU’s new URL configuration: WordPress insists on a login before it will accept a comment. Is this simply a condition for the privilege of using the wordpress.com address? Or can I avoid this by using an e-mail address that is not connected to a WordPress account? (The old site did not have this condition.)

    Like

  88. Unknown's avatar

    ” can I avoid this by using an e-mail address that is not connected to a WordPress account?”

    This one.

    Like

  90. Unknown's avatar

    (semi-OT) The Arlo and Janis retro and discussion site arloandjanis.com seems to be having Word Press problems currently. Yesterday and today all I get is this error message —


    Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress.

    (That’s the sort of message systems direct to the installer or administrator. A would-be site visitor or end-user can see it, but understand it’s not meant to be informative for us.)

    Like

  92. Unknown's avatar

    I don’t mean it was seen but later was gone. Rather, I posted and it seemed to work, but did not show up, and did not go into moderation.

    I got it in my clipboard, pasted, and again tried to post. Got a “duplicate post” message!

    The content was nothing important, but to summarize without risking a URL in case that was the source of the problem, I was just trying to note a problem at the Arlo and Janis retro site.

    Like

  93. Unknown's avatar

    Okay, I checked and your posts all went directly to Spam. WHY did they go directly to Spam? Not a clue, but that’s extremely rare.

    A comment going directly to Spam, I mean, not me not having a clue.

    Like

  94. Unknown's avatar

    Thanks!

    If anyone is confused, Bill fished out one of my failed postings, and it now appears in what would have been the original position — and then is followed by the question and answer about why it isn’t there!

    I hadn’t looked at the A&J site for over a week, so it could be that the error has been there for longer than yesterday and today. Jimmy had been discussing a redesign, so I guess this is temporary fallout of that work. … Which CIDU participants are sadly familiar with, not too long ago.

    Like

  96. Unknown's avatar

    And the ArloAndJanis site is back, with an “And we’re back” post dated Apr 11th (that would be yesterday).

    Like

  97. Unknown's avatar

    @larK: the scrape thingy doesn’t work any more for me, I’m devastated (not really, but I do miss its convenient features). I wondered if it was my link that was obsolete but googling scrape nowis CIDU doesn’t work either. I hope nothing wrong happened to your chef d’oeuvre, or you.

    Like

  100. Unknown's avatar

    My staging server was down for most of the weekend, sorry for the inconvenience ;-) The bad news is it didn’t archive anything that was posted while it was down, so what happened this weekend is permanently lost in my archives…

    Like

  102. Unknown's avatar

    And here we are on a brand-new page: it appears that this WordPress template subdivides into a second page after 100 comments. Pity that it doesn’t do that for posts.

    P.S. Anyone else notice that http://www.mutts.com is broken? The advertising garbage works perfectly. The only thing that I cannot see is the actual comic.

    P.P.S. McDonnell’s marketing is getting so tiresome that I am seriously considering dropping Mutts from my reading list.

    Like

  103. Unknown's avatar

    P.P.P.S. My mistake, the page breaks are every 50 comments, not 100. But when the new comment is posted, WordPress returns to the previous page. Ooops. I doubt we are ever going to get that bug fixed.

    Like

  104. Unknown's avatar

    Also a little irritating is that the link in Recent Comments list didn’t come here but to a previous page. (Mobile interface, but I don’t think it’s different on desktop.)

    Like

  105. Unknown's avatar

    “Is Soup To Nutz finished? I see they are doing ‘classic’ ones on GoComics.”

    On rec.arts.comics.strips, one person posted:

    I just e-mailed gocomics.com/Andrews McMeel about the gocomics.com no longer carrying Soup to Nutz, and I got this response: “At the request of the creator, that feature has moved to another syndicate.”

    Like

  106. Unknown's avatar

    I realize now that the post I responded to was from a few weeks back. I hope it was still useful. Also, further info from that RACS thread:

    I even got a response from Rick S. himself about this: “There are no plas for Soup to Nutz to be syndicated by another syndicate” And Rick will archie the strip and upload them sometime down the road. He even gave a website: http://www.souptonutzcomic.com

    Like

  109. Unknown's avatar

    Yes, it very well may, but that doesn’t belie the fact that it is right now, in fact, too darn hot…

    Like

  110. Unknown's avatar

    Testing again if it still embeds. If it works here, why didn’t it when Woozy provided this in the current Saturday Morning thread?

    Like

  111. Unknown's avatar

    What the heck happened here? Whenever I try to go to Comics I Don’t Understand, I’m redirected to this website. What’s worse, all archive prior to January 2018 seems to be completely absent. What is going on?

    Like

  112. Unknown's avatar

    This is the comics I don’t understand website.

    In the end of December, GoDaddy screwed up the site so bad that Bill was forced to change web hosts. In changing, all previous archives of the site were lost. In changing, Bill first set up a temporary new domain name to test that everything was working. Once it got going again, rather than disrupt everything by changing the temp name, he just kept it as is, and had the comicsidontunderstand.com domain name redirect here.

    So you see, it all makes sense.

    What doesn’t make sense is that WordPress has this stupid bug that comments on the third page of a posting can’t be directly linked to…

    Like

  114. Unknown's avatar

    I’m glad to see the crowd giving an encouraging welcome-back message to Prodigal Fan Somto Erinne. (Yes, I’m using the popular misunderstanding of that term.)

    I might lodge one small amendment to larK’s summary of the history. After the “comicsidontunderstand.com” name was disconnected from the ghost site and made to point here, both that and “godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com” have been known to the WordPress hosting system and registered as domains associated with this site or “blog”. The “godaddy” one is marked as default, which means visitors see it in our location bar / address bar area on the browsers, regardless of which formulation of the URL we used to get here.

    Changing that so the “comicsidontunderstand” name showed there instead would not really be a matter of “disrupt[ing] everything by changing the temp name” as that name would not have to be cancelled. Rather, it would just be a matter of designating the “comicsidontunderstand” name as the default domain. That is literally just a matter of changing one checkbox on the WP admin panel. (I tried it out on my own WP hosted try-things-out site, and switched between the “native” name and the redirecting name multiple times in a row with no ill consequences.)

    We discussed this in a series of some 5 or 6 posts at the start of the second page of comments in this thread. (O, for those numbered comments!). I think it ended up at a position of — Yes, it would be safe to do, and easy enough, but why bother? .

    But Somto Erinne’s experience may illuminate one good reason. Apparently they were disconcerted by seeing the “godaddy” name as the browser location bar, leading to confusion. Had the “comicsidontunderstand” name been showing instead, they would have stood a better chance of working it out.

    Like

  115. Unknown's avatar

    Mitch4 said, “I’m glad to see the crowd giving an encouraging welcome-back message to Prodigal Fan Somto Erinne.”

    Nicely put.

    Like

  116. Unknown's avatar

    (Further image-embedding tip.)

    At GoComics, if you right-click and choose “copy image address” or whatever the equivalent is in your browser, the URL you copy will be unsuitable for pasting as an embed! It will end in a selection code, for instance http://assets.amuniversal.com/6507987015b801362512005056a9545d which does not conform to the “rules” we were figuring out before. It doesn’t end with a graphics filetype suffix.

    However, perhaps surprisingly, if you just manually type on an additional “.gif” it still points to the right thing, and can be used to embed the image.

    Like

  117. Unknown's avatar

    Is there a way to make the comments sections I subscribe to come to my RSS feed? I’m getting *tons* of emails. Not that I’m complaining! It took a long time to be able to subscribe.

    Like

  118. Unknown's avatar

    Help! Help, help!

    I accidentally deleted a folder of comics tabs. Is anybody willing to send me (export somehow?) a list of the comics they follow? ARGH!

    If you’re willing, I’m at chakolate AT gmail.

    Le sigh.

    Like

  119. Unknown's avatar

    For anyone who might accidentally delete their comics folder, (no, I know you’re not that stupid; it’s just me, right?) try checking your history, and getting the bookmarks from there. Whew!

    Like

  120. Unknown's avatar

    If you haven’t closed the browser, you might be able to “undo close tab” to get it back.

    Like

  125. Unknown's avatar

    I can’t recall who recommended the book “Cartoon County” but I just wanted to say that it was an interesting read, and that because I read it while on public transit, I randomly met a local graphic artist with whom I had an interesting discussion. Thanks for the recommendation.

    Like

  127. Unknown's avatar

    For those who switched over to using https://www.comicsrss.com/ (instead of GoComics) for daily feed links: have you noticed problems over the past few days? I can’t find anything newer than June 1st, despite reloading the pages and clearing cache.

    Like

  128. Unknown's avatar

    Same here. I didn’t notice it so much because I was behind in reading, but today there’s nothing.

    Like

  129. Unknown's avatar

    Hey, Kilby, Looks like you made lightning strike. I came home to find 138 comics in my feed.

    Thanks!

    Like

  130. Unknown's avatar

    @ Chak (129) – I didn’t do anything ;-) Actually, I think the reason for the temporary outage was a design change. Before, each of the comics in the RSS-list worked as a direct link to GoComics. Now they don’t: instead, there’s a “U”-icon above the upper right corner of the strip.

    Like

  131. Unknown's avatar

    Wow, Kilby, you’re a very observant fellow. Or maybe I’m just oblivious. At any rate, I’m glad it’s working again.

    Like

  132. Unknown's avatar

    @ Chak – I discovered those links only by accident at first, but I remained aware of them because they were very useful for copying the “official” link when submitting a comic to Bill.

    Like

  133. Unknown's avatar

    @ Bill – your recent “E-mail Reminder” listed your address as a (non-harvestable) graphic. You might want to use that in the opening paragraph to this thread, too. Currently ithe address shows up as bot-friendly text.

    Like

  134. Unknown's avatar

    I’m sure as bots struggle towards the Singularity, they’ll need lots of help in understanding some comics — I for one would prefer our new robotic overlords understand that they shouldn’t literally “take my wife”…

    Like

  135. Unknown's avatar

    Do you think there is any truth to the story that hackers (or whoever) are getting transcriptions of supposed-to-be non machine-readable address and number images by using them in Captcha?

    Like

  136. Unknown's avatar

    “Do you think there is any truth to the story that hackers…”

    No. I think they’re developing AI that can resolve blurry text. They’re also developing AI that can tell humans and AI apart. And Google seems to be transitioning CAPTCHA checking to help with sorting out Streetview images, possibly for automatic driving, since it’s all about identifying buses, other vehicles, bridges, and road signs.

    Like

  137. Unknown's avatar

    I read once that some sites, like google books, were using CAPTCHA to clarify the scanned material that machines couldn’t read. So if they’re digitizing a book and the program can’t read something, it becomes a CAPTCHA.

    Like

  138. Unknown's avatar

    Back when CAPTCHA was using fuzzy words as recognition objects, yes, Google Books used crowd-sourced humans (via CAPTCHA) to resolve words that the AI couldn’t parse. I believe there was also a period where the crowd-sourced humans were also put to work on guessing what word was meant for autocorrect (though I don’t recall seeing any CAPTCHA that were obviously for that purpose. Current CAPTCHA involves being offered an image in a grid, with the parts that are (object type) asked to be marked. I’ve seen a lot that asked about road signs, and recently I’ve been asked to identify bridges. Another format in common use is a grid of images, and the user is asked to identify those pictures that contain (object type)… buses, bicycles, and storefronts being the (object type) I keep being asked to identify. I think this information is being put to use to improve visual recognition for self-driving cars… they can identify solid objects like walls fairly well, but are not as good at identifying pedestrians and bicyclists, and that seems an important lack that needs to be corrected before turning over operation of the motor vehicle to automated systems.

    Like

  139. Unknown's avatar

    There is a wildfire near Vantage, Washington that has burned 7,300 acres by the Columbia River.
    “As of Friday morning, the Milepost 22 fire is at 50 percent containment, said incident management team spokesman Randy Shepard.”
    Yes, Randy Shepard. ; )

    Like

  140. Unknown's avatar

    If this is for truly random comments, can I plug my self-published vanity project eBook?

    (If yes: Read “Her Temporary Prince” by Donald Bjorn Benson, 223,000 words of comic romantic adventure in the Roaring Twenties for just $2.99 at Amazon, iTunes, Barnesandnoble;com, and other purveyors of pixelated prose. Contains a reference to Krazy Kat.)

    (If no: Never mind.)

    Like

  142. Unknown's avatar

    MinorAnnoyance: I have tried, but all your purveyors seem to insist on delivering to some type of kobo/nook/kindle app instead of simply delivering a file. I don’t do apps. If you can point me to somewhere where I can just get the file via a download or email (no apps required), I can take it from there.

    (Sorry that you might see that there was a purchase and then a refund on Kobo — it looked like they would deliver an epub file, until I actually purchased it, when the bait and switch was revealed that they will deliver the file — to their kobo app :-\ )

    Like

  143. Unknown's avatar

    @ larK – It’s not possible to distribute paid content without some sort of decoding control provided by the reader hardware and/or software. If the text is ever provided in any free format, it is quite likely that somebody will copy it, making legitimate sales a futile excercise.

    Like

  144. Unknown's avatar

    Kilby — this is simply incorrect. The file that you receive through the app is easily alienated from the app, and it is the file itself which contains — or does not contain — any DRM which (futiley) attempts to prevent copying. All of these methods of course don’t actually prevent copying, and do get in the way of people who want to use the file for its intended purpose, eg: me, who doesn’t want the hassle of picking some app dujour which may or may not run on my preferred hardware, and which I will probably not use again, unless I like it, in which case it will probably be discontinued so I can’t use it again. Give me the underlying epub file, and I’ll run it where I want to, thank you very much.

    Like

  145. Unknown's avatar

    @ larK – I meant things like plain text or .PDF files. I wasn’t aware of any “generic” DRM distribution.

    Like

  146. Unknown's avatar

    Some of the e-books available at the public library are described as DRM-free at the request of the author. Not that it’s difficult to remove DRM (or so I’ve heard).

    Like

  147. Unknown's avatar

    All of the books available from Project Gutenberg are DRM-free, and they support multiple proprietary formats.
    A recent trend has been to drop copy-protection from computer games… the added cost had to be passed on to customers, and the bad guys just cracked the copy-protection anyway. So they use online features, and look for unauthorized copies as they contact the server, instead.

    Like

  151. Unknown's avatar

    Speaking of not being sure how to feel … Bill, I haven’t heard back from you on several emails. It’s fine (I guess) if you just thought they neither needed reply nor provided comics to post to CIDU. But as it’s been consistent silence for a while, I thought I could check if the problem is technical and my emails are getting filtered or something.

    So, a brief list …

    Earlier today, subject “Imperfect synchrony” 2 attachments
    Jul 26, subject “Meta bit from Andertoons”, one attachment
    Jul 11, subject “Very filthy ‘Drabble’? Okay there just has to be an innocent meaning for that word” , one attachment
    Jul 10, subject “Utter CIDU from Harry Bliss” one attachment

    The last one I know you did receive and respond to (and posted! — thanks) was
    Jun 24 “Hello, ball!”

    Like

  152. Unknown's avatar

    If anyone is wondering, the suspect word in a Drabble, mentioned in the Jul 11 mail, was … “cornhole”. He wants to join the cornhole team, and considers getting a private cornhole coach.

    Like

  153. Unknown's avatar

    Hmm… I see a bunch of your mail (and the occasional piece from other people) was being shunted over to the Trash folder. Not Spam: Trash.

    No idea why. This sort of thing has happened in the past, but rarely enough that I don’t generally check the Trash folder (but since it has happened, I thought to check after seeing your message).

    Okay, so I guess now I’m further behind on my e-mail than I thought I was…

    Like

  159. Unknown's avatar

    And yet I’m still perplexed as to what the %$#! Bill is on about — I’ve been waiting for the Ashlee shoe to drop all week!

    Like

  160. Unknown's avatar

    The “Ashlee shoe” is not waiting to drop. Bill already kicked us all in the behind with it. He was simply implying that we are all geezers, about to keel over because of the heat.

    Like

  161. Unknown's avatar

    Aaaaaaaah…! Thanks Kilby! (And I guess it’s a good thing you’re having a heatwave over there as well, so that you can explain this to me.)

    Like

  163. Unknown's avatar

    Based on some disappeared pages, I’m going to reiterate and try to live by, “Don’t feed the trolls.”

    Like

  164. Unknown's avatar

    Is that what’s been going on? My comment indexing page has been acting all weird, which would be explained by previously existing pages suddenly not existing any more… And I’ll never know what precipitated it…
    Arthur, I often wish for an old-fashioned kill file, it would make it so much easier to ignore some trolls…
    https://www.xkcd.com/386/

    Like

  165. Unknown's avatar

    Oh, and “Reply” is suddenly back for individual comments — hadn’t we agreed that that messes up where you have to look for new comments, and we didn’t like it? Is it back because you can’t get comment numbering back? I think I’d still prefer newest comment at the end…

    Like

  170. Unknown's avatar

    While I like that comic, I think it’s easier to ignore someone being wrong than someone trolling. Another site I read has an “ignore” feature that acts pretty much the same as a kill file – it’s a nice feature.

    And yeah, the Reply feature doesn’t seem great to me. (I saw at the same time as I use it.)

    Like

  171. Unknown's avatar

    For a time, when I was running sites for About.com, we had what was called (for some reason) a “Bozo Button”: basically, if somebody was Bozo’ed, he could always see his own comments, but nobody else could.

    Needless to say, the first rule of having a Bozo Button is never… well, you know…

    It astounds me that this existed 20 years ago yet doesn’t seem to exist now.

    (Of course… how would we know?)

    Like

  174. Unknown's avatar

    The newest comment by Andréa was interleaved as a reply, so it’s not down here where it belongs.
    If CIDU Bill can restore whatever setting that got unglued (to eliminate the reply links), that would be very nice.

    Like

  175. Unknown's avatar

    I think that’s an interesting civil liberties shibboleth right there: kill file or bozo button. The difference is subtle, yet telling: kill file, I and I alone decide whom I see and whom I ignore — I only change things, if indeed I really change anything, for me alone; bozo button, someone on high decides that everyone can’t see something, and even worse, the offender is not told (OK, with a kill file the offender isn’t told either, but one person ignoring him is pretty easy to figure out, given every one knows about the kill file capability).

    I guess my bias is clear as to which side I fall on… ;-)

    My favorite solution is the Slashdot moderation system: no comment is censored, but random people get to score a limited number of comments, and you choose at what level to browse; browse at 4 and 5, and it seems like a really erudite place with trenchant comments; browse at 2 and shake your head about all the idiots; browse at -1 and abandon all hope for humanity…

    Like

  176. Unknown's avatar

    Bill, I’m not sure I get the point of the “Bozo button,” or why you like it better than the “ignore” feature. If I’m understanding correctly, the Bozo button is activated editorially. If that’s the case, can’t the editor just ban the person? Why effectively ban them, but without letting them know?

    Like larK, I like the ignore feature better. That way, I can decide that Alice never contributes anything good, and not bother reading her comments, while Bob can decide Alice has some good stuff to say, and keep talking with her.

    Like

  178. Unknown's avatar

    @WW, the reason you Bozo Button someone is that if you let them know you’ve blocked them, they’ll just create a new email and a new account. Reddit calls it ‘shadow banning’.

    Like

  179. Unknown's avatar

    Usenet has had a long history of the “killfile”, blocking posts from people you don’t like. The newsreader I use these days (yes I still read a few usenet groups) has the control labeled “Bozo Author”.

    Like

  180. Unknown's avatar

    1. I agree that things are better single-threaded by date.

    2. Next time Bill changes the page heading people will wonder why I posted this:

    Like

  182. Unknown's avatar

    I suspect the threaded replying is what’s responsible for the emailed comments being handled a little oddly by “conversation grouping” feature in some webmail tools.

    Like

  183. Unknown's avatar

    So, I fiddled with the style-sheet and got numbering to work on my hijack site. Apparently this template’s style-sheet turns off the <li> list-style property in two applied classes. I know I asked once before if there was anywhere you could apply some html (or, more specifically, a style override), but it didn’t seem like it was possible. But for posterity, if you were to do it, it would be like this:
    <style>
    .comment,clear li {list-style:decimal !important}
    </style>

    Like

  184. Unknown's avatar

    larK, on the old site there was a lot more opportunity for me to insert HTML (where is where my expertise ends).

    Even if I understood “.comment,clear li {list-style:decimal !important},” I would have no idea where to insert it. If in fact there IS a place to insert it, since the new templates are basically “We know what you need and want, so don’t worry your pretty little head about other options.”

    I’m pretty sure any attempt I made to override this would not end well.

    Like

  186. Unknown's avatar

    Both killfiles and bans are necessary tools for dealing with bozos. Without killfiles you get people arguing about who should be banned; without bans genuinely disruptive trolls and spammers can destroy the forum. In particular killfiles don’t stop everyone else from responding to trolling, and without threading that’s particularly bad as it destroys the context of any prior conversation.

    (Why in the past twenty years has nobody managed to write a web bulletin board thingy that isn’t a huge functional regression from Usenet? It’s been longer since this became clearly needed than the whole development process of the entire Usenet ecosystem…)

    The reason to not tell people they’ve been banned is not just to keep them from making more accounts but also to keep them from escalating to more disruptive denial-of-service tactics.

    Like

  187. Unknown's avatar

    “Why in the past twenty years has nobody managed to write a web bulletin board thingy that isn’t a huge functional regression from Usenet?”

    Probably no good way to monetize it.

    Like

  188. Unknown's avatar

    “Why in the past twenty years has nobody managed to write a web bulletin board thingy that isn’t a huge functional regression from Usenet? ”

    I don’t know. The kind of standard these days has become PHPBB, style, and I really don’t think it’s great. You have threading only on a sort of top level, not within a topic.

    The monentization isn’t really important. PHPBB is open source.

    I know there are technical challenges with getting the sort of functionality of a newsreader working in a web browser. I did come across a guy who had created a web newsreader that worked pretty well. I have a link somewhere, I’ll try to track it down later and see if the site is still active.

    Like

  189. Unknown's avatar

    The last time I installed something like that (so, ten years ago?), the one we chose was from a company called Simple Machines. I don’t remember what the selling points were, but it might have actually cost something!

    Like

  191. Unknown's avatar

    Besides the fact that any of the technological “solutions” described above would be prohibitively difficult to implement in WordPress, the existing status quo works (here) amazingly well, with just a bit of subtle moderation (thanks, Bill!), and a generous amount of communal personal restraint:

    Like

  192. Unknown's avatar

    This comment by Pinny offers an excellent potential solution for the lack of numbering in the new WordPress template: simply include a link to the other comment.
    P.S. That same comment also demonstrates an oddity in the template: in a desktop browser, the text with the link appears “normal”. In a “mobile” browser, the link address runs off the end of the page.

    Like

  195. Unknown's avatar

    “Please note that this is intended for public comic comments only: if you want to send me a CIDU, or a comic for some specific folder (Ewww, Oy, etc), or you want to inform me of a typo, please e-mail me at CiduBill@gmx.com“

    Like

  197. Unknown's avatar

    Just wait for it, I already sent that comic to Bill as a CID-Ewww. If Bill does post it, perhaps he will delete this discussion here.
    P.S. @ B.A. – If you want the image to appear directly in the comment, the URL has to be isolated on the last line, and for GoComics “assets” links, you have to add the filename extension at the end (usually “.gif”), like this:

    Like

  198. Unknown's avatar

    It’s a decent pun, as /b/ and /p/ are very closely related sounds.

    Kilby, I’m not sure about the “isolated on the last line” part of the advice. (I’m not at my computer, or would post an experiment / demo.)
    Though you’re absolutely right about it needing to end in an image filename extension, and that in some cases it works to just add one! For the GoComics Asset cases that you mention, I thought it rather amazing that sometimes it doesn’t matter which extension you choose (“.gif” or “.png” or even “.jpg”)!

    I’d like to mention another restriction that sometimes matters. The URL apparently ought to be “plain” in some sense, mostly that it should not have a question mark for query lookup.

    Like

  199. Unknown's avatar

    Did I do something bad to have my last two posts deleted? I saw them, my archive archived them, you even responded to one of them, but now they are gone…

    Like

  200. Unknown's avatar

    I didn’t delete them. If they were here and now they aren’t, I have no clue.

    I virtually never delete a comment. Or reject a moderated comment. And only ever for extreme cause. You can assume that at least 99% of all comment deletions are the result of an entire thread being removed (or somebody trying to post the same comment repeatedly in defiance of both the Moderation Gremlins and Albert Einstein).

    Like

  203. Unknown's avatar

    larK is not hallucinating. I read that comment before, too. I didn’t notice it disappearing, but I see that it’s back now.

    Like

  205. Unknown's avatar

    @ larK – Not only did I see that seccond comment, I did replied to it, too, here. Perhaps you missed it because the answer is on the second page? That might also be an explanation for the odd disappearances: WordPress is simply not reliable about keeping track of the particular sub-page to which the link should lead.

    Like

  208. Unknown's avatar

    @ Andréa – We had an exchange (weeks or even months ago) about figuring out in which “Portland” the action was happening. I just wanted to be sure that you had seen a pair of comics in this week’s “Frazz”, on
    Tuesday:

    and Wednesday:

    Like

  210. Unknown's avatar

    Kilby – I sent them to CIDU BILL ’cause I couldn’t remember WHERE we’d had the discussion. I sometimes feel that SOMEone is either reading my emails OR there is a microphone in my house, listening to whatever we discuss ’cause sure enough, there’ll be a comic about it, sooner rather than later!

    Like

  215. Unknown's avatar

    @ Andréa – It doesn’t have to be as creepy as reading e-mails. The discussion was near the end of the Christmas in August thread. It’s entirely possible that any number of syndicated cartoonists (including Mallett) lurk at CIDU, if only to gauge reader reactions. I’ve even sent links to Leigh Rubin (“Rubes”), when one of his strips was being discussed, but I have no idea whether he follows the site in general.

    Like

  217. Unknown's avatar

    @ Andréa – Well, if you own one of those “smart” speakers, I’m sure it has an off switch, or you can remove whatever it uses for power. If you don’t trust that, there’s always the “sledgehammer” option.

    Like

  219. Unknown's avatar

    Many years ago, I went to Portland ME. Bath Iron Works was retrofitting a destroyer (USS Conolly) including new weapon systems built by Megacorp. Some of the test and evaluation engineers were there to check out the installation. This was in September. It was a nice time of the year there. Most of the tourists had gone home but restaurants and such were still open.

    Like

  220. Unknown's avatar

    @ Bill – I believe the comic bandwidth at CIDU has significantly increased as of late. Reviewing a ten-day period, I counted a total of 36 posts. Even discounting a few “OT” items, this seems like much more stuff than we ever saw on the old site, and I think the number of active participants is higher now, too. All good, of course. It’s just nice to see that a grossly negligent provider was not able to sink CIDU forever.

    Like

  221. Unknown's avatar

    Thanks, Kilby. I think the number of posts has remained about the same, but the traffic and participation numbers are up over pre-Disaster levels.

    And of course, thanks to everybody for helping the site recover.

    Like

  223. Unknown's avatar

    I had an epiphany this morning: There is no longer a single character in LuAnn I don’t want to kick in the teeth.

    Like

  226. Unknown's avatar

    I asked my dad to look. It’s supposed to be in the December issue, he said that it’s not on the shelves yet.

    Like

  229. Unknown's avatar

    “H is for Hiro, who needs more than prayers”
    “R is for Reid, valued less than a gun”

    Wow, not treading lightly.

    Like

  232. Unknown's avatar

    I’m happy to let incompetent editors slowly fade into the oblivion of deeply buried CIDU pages, but I’d like to pay tribute to some truly excellent copy editors here in Random Comments.
    Two of my favorite German authors aren’t even German:
    1) Wladimir Kaminer is a Russian disk jockey, who writes very amusing stories about life in Berlin.
    2) Zé do Rock is a Brazilian taxi driver, who has written equally amusing science fiction and autobiographical books.
    Judging from the non-native (and non-academic) background of both authors, I am sure that their German manuscripts are not perfect, but the text in their printed works is truly amazing, and whoever did the copy editing should get an award.
    This is even more impressive for Zé do Rock, who usually starts off in “standard” German, and then begins his very own personal spelling reform, introducing one or two “simplifications” in each chapter, so that by the end of the book, his “Ultradoitsh” looks like an alien tongue, but is still pronounceable German (if the reader has been following along with all the changes).

    Like

  233. Unknown's avatar

    P.S. As good as those two are, the most impressive copy editing that I have ever seen has been in books by Peter Ensikat, a German political commentator and humorist, whose career began in East Germany, long before German unification. Reading his material gave me a much better understanding of how politics in East Germany really worked, since he wrote from the “outside” of both the East and the West German systems, and maintained his independence from the “accepted thought” of both.
    Finding a typographical error in Ensikat’s books is about as hard as finding one in a Bible. I first noticed this about halfway through the first or second book I read, and spent the rest of that book looking for something (anything!) that could be called a “mistake”. I finally found one, but it was so minor that I never would have noticed if I had not been carefully hunting for it: a confusion between a lowercase “L” (l) and the digit “1” (*). In the font in which the book was printed, the shapes were were distinct, but the difference was only barely noticeable.
    P.P.S. (*) For those of non-geezer persuasion: This was once standard practice for anything typed in a Courier font. Older typewriters didn’t even offer a key for “1”, everyone was taught to use the “l” key.

    Like

  234. Unknown's avatar

    Those of you in North America may not have noticed it, but Europe just lurched an hour closer, at least as far as time is concerned. The effect will be temporary, lasting only until mid-November, but it’s anyone’s guess what will happen next year.

    Like

  237. Unknown's avatar

    I’m pretty sure Gasoline Alley’s farewell story line has been going on longer than the entire run of some comic strips.

    Like

  238. Unknown's avatar

    Not every close race involved ballot boxes Tuesday: daily traffic on the CIDU site beat the previous high by a single pageview (clicking in at 11:59 pm).

    Like

  239. Unknown's avatar

    I mentioned to my hubby this a.m. that it seemed a LOT of us were on CIDU last night . . . it’s our ‘safe spot’ during these fraught times. At least for me, it was, is and will continue to be. For which, Bill, I’m grateful!

    Like

  240. Unknown's avatar

    “I’m pretty sure Gasoline Alley’s farewell story line has been going on longer than the entire run of some comic strips.”

    Twice he’s taken week-long, pointless, side-journeys.

    Like

  241. Unknown's avatar

    Comments have really increased over the past few weeks. I opened over 20 this morning. Part of that was a large Meryl flood of course.

    Like

  242. Unknown's avatar

    Seriously, Jef, not all your readers live in Michigan.

    And by the way, we have a storm system coming up from the south.

    Like

  243. Unknown's avatar

    Has anyone else noticed that the update schedule for XKCD has been changed (or has become unreliable) in recent weeks? I used to be able to depend on a new comic every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, but lately I have no idea on which day(s) or when something is going to show up.

    Like

  244. Unknown's avatar

    OK, B.A., even with the hint, I’m stumped. Red Wing is a Minnesota thing as far as I know, a town and a shoe brand. Without that knowledge clouding my understanding, I would have guessed in this strip they were a sports team. Is that the joke? They are a sports team, but the kid got the wrong logo, tattooing the shoe brand instead?

    Like

  245. Unknown's avatar

    @ larK – That’s why comic submissions don’t belong in “Random Comments”. This one should have had its own thread. In any case, the logo was presumably intended to be for the “Detroit Red Wings”, who are currently in 12th place (of 16 teams) in the eastern conference of the NHL. The “tattoo” wasn’t “real”, a “Sharpie” is a kind of indelible felt tip pen. I don’t think the shoe brand (or the town) was part of the joke.

    Like

  247. Unknown's avatar

    Nope, our DNS server is down; it should still be harvesting comments, but without DNS you can’t get there to see. We’re working on it, obviously, but it is a bad time with the freak snow-storm, and it coming at a stupid time what with pre-scheduled travel (which is now complicated by the snow, making the problem of the DNS server third or fourth in line…)

    Like

  249. Unknown's avatar

    Agreed. I’m reliant on that. I check in now and then and open any updated threads from the last time. Thanks for the service!

    Like

  254. Unknown's avatar

    There seems to be a lot of speculation that Scancarelli plans to end the strip, but he hasn’t said anything like that.

    Like

  257. Unknown's avatar

    I thought ending this after 100 years was a done deal, hence the interminable farewell.

    Something specific you’ve seen?

    Like

  258. Unknown's avatar

    OK, this is just getting ridiculous, having t page through two pages of previous comments to get to the newest comment, which, apparently WordPress has no way to link to — one page, eventually it figures it out and you have direct links, I think maybe even two pages can be done, but apparently more than that, you have this mess….

    Like

  259. Unknown's avatar

    larK, for this page I’ve learned to go to the URL and type “6” over the “4” to get to the right place. It even takes me to the actual update that way, instead of the beginning of the page.

    After another 42 comments, I’ll have to remember to type “7”, though.

    Like

  261. Unknown's avatar

    How about I reboot Your Random Comments on January 1?

    An alternative would be changing the settings so responses will appear in reverse chronological order. However, this would be a site-wide change and I think that’s already been voted down.

    Like

  262. Unknown's avatar

    Nuke and restart seems good to me. You might want to figure on it every time it gets over [some number of] pages.

    I hate reverse-chronological order.

    Like

  265. Unknown's avatar

    Today’s Speed Bump was really a back door pilot: As soon as The Lockhorns ends its run, it’s going to be replaced by The Fuddyduddys.

    Like

  266. Unknown's avatar

    @ Bill – Instead of nuking and rebooting, how about renaming this page to “Comments 2018“, and creating a new “Comments 2019” on January 1st?

    Like

  267. Unknown's avatar

    Kilby, I also generally dislike throwing away any electronic files. But have you read through, or even skimmed, the 200+ comments? I did, before agreeing with Bill about nuking it. Do you really think that in a year or two you’re going to want to refer to any of this?

    Like

  268. Unknown's avatar

    @ Arthur – You have a good point. Out of 268 comments, I can remember three that I would want to preserve (just over 1%), but one of those is at the top of this page, and should be replaced by a permanent link in the left-side menu. The other two I can fish out and save as text for myself.

    Like

  269. Unknown's avatar

    I would prefer a new comments page, rather than deleting the old one. It’s true that most of the comments in this thread I don’t have any particular reason now that I’d want to refer to, but that’s true of virtually all of the comments in all of the threads. You never know what you’re going to want to refer to some day.

    I actually don’t see the point in purging or restarting anyway, since it will soon go past 50 comments, and it doesn’t make a difference whether there are 51 comments or 320 comments.

    (BTW, I dislike reverse-chronological most of all.)

    Like

  276. Unknown's avatar

    That’s not a bad idea, WW: I should be able to set up a new page and connect it to the “Your Random Comments” link on the home page (while keeping the old page accessible).

    But not until the new year, when life slows down a bit.

    I also have a few other tweaks to get around to.

    The problem, of course, is that my IT guy really has no idea what he’s doing.

    Like

  277. Unknown's avatar

    “The problem, of course, is that my IT guy really has no idea what he’s doing.”

    It’s amazing how different that sounds in context, to those of us who’ve followed your travails. It put a smile on my face.

    Like

  279. Unknown's avatar

    Is anybody else having trouble with Bizarro? It hasn’t updated in my browser for several days, and there’s nothing on the blog.

    Like

  280. Unknown's avatar

    So, here’s a grand German tradition for New Year’s Eve. A sketch called Dinner for One which airs multiple times on multiple channels every single December 31. Don’t worry about the guy at the beginning. He’s just explaining that this is Miss Sophie’s birthday and she has outlived her four dearest friends — Sir Toby, Admiral von Schneider, Mr. Pomeroy and Mr. Winterbottom — (the last died a quarter of a century ago) and explains the English phrases “Same procedure as last year?” and “Same procedure as every year.” The rest is in English.

    Like

  283. Unknown's avatar

    Thank you, Andrea. I had the link copied and then forgot to paste it in. The one you posted isn’t available in Germany, so I can’t tell if it’s the best performance, but if the narrator’s English is overdubbed and you can see May Warden adjust her seat for the big chair tilt, that’s the right one.

    Like

  286. Unknown's avatar

    From the article Bill cites:
    Hunter and Caroline from St. Louis, who also arrived at 8:30 am, brought a mini Jenga game to keep them entertained all day. Hunter said, “I’m going to Med School next year, so this is my last chance. It’s iconic!”

    Two things:
    1) I first read that “iconic” as “ironic”, and thought it would fit in well with our other discussion here.
    1a) Actually, vultures surrounding a soon to be dead guy in a comic is kind of iconic, isn’t it?
    2) Someone who can be entertained all day by playing mini Jenga, and who thought it would be a good idea to spend 15.5 hours waiting for a stupid ball to drop is going to become a doctor?! Please don’t let him ever be my doctor…

    (Ok, so 2.5 things…)

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  287. Unknown's avatar

    So, here’s a grand German tradition for New Year’s Eve. A sketch called Dinner for One which airs multiple times on multiple channels every single December 31.

    I’ve heard of that. Possibly on this forum. Did you post that last year?

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  289. Unknown's avatar

    Ironic is that one of the networks still promotes its NYE programming as “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve”, even though Mr. Clark himself is no longer accumulating any new years.

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  290. Unknown's avatar

    Apropos of absolutely nothing: Does anyone understand Russian? I came across some videos of a Russian show that I find fascinating to look at, but I’d sure like to know what they are saying, as I think it may be political satire. Or not.

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  291. Unknown's avatar

    James, that’s simply the name of the show he created, just as Barnum, Bailey and both of the Ringling Brothers were long while their circus was still going strong.

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  293. Unknown's avatar

    If it was a YouTube link, then it wasn’t from me.
    P.S. We watched both “Dinner for One” and “Dinner for Ah!” with our kids yesterday evening. The latter is a parody version composed as a wrapper for a popular children’s documentary series called “Wissen Macht Ah!”.

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  294. Unknown's avatar

    Adréa: try searching for .srt files (subtitles) for the show (copy and paste the russian if you don’t know its name in english and search with srt). If you succeed in finding an english srt file, you can play the russian video in the VLC video player (free software available for all major flavors of OS) and then load in the srt file from the menu for subtitles in VLC.

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  295. Unknown's avatar

    “James, that’s simply the name of the show he created”

    And the show is ironically named, at present.

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  296. Unknown's avatar

    @Brian: I don’t think I posted it last year, though I might have. Or maybe Kilby did.

    Definitely recall a link to the show and the explanation of the significance in Germany. Could have been somewhere else. Possibly Gocomics comments.

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  298. Unknown's avatar

    @ Arthur – I’m more than willing to believe that estimate, but I’d love to know how you calculated it. My school knowledge of factorials stopped at “69!”, which was the largest that could be produced by a calculator with 2-digit exponents.

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  300. Unknown's avatar

    Thanks to Chak for the link, that site is quite impressive. Repeated clicks on “more digits” eventually revealed the entire 5799-digit number (88 lines @ 66 digits/line), the last seven lines being nothing but zeros.

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  303. Unknown's avatar

    “I’m more than willing to believe that estimate, but I’d love to know how you calculated it.”

    A long time back I wrote a programmable calculator in REXX. REXX will handle an indefinite number of digits, but mine is limited to 30. I typed “!(2019)” and the result was, “1.91137104864715283355211760081E+5798”.

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  304. Unknown's avatar

    @ Arthur – The embarrassing thing is that I knew what REXX was without having to look it up. I played with it a very tiny bit, but never actually wrote anything useful in it. I still have an old PC (in the attic) that would boot up OS/2 if I turned it on.

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  306. Unknown's avatar

    ” The embarrassing thing is that I knew what REXX was without having to look it up. ”

    I was familiar with the Commodore implementation, AREXX. Never did anything with it, though.

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  307. Unknown's avatar

    Kilby: If you want to approximate large factorials with just a hand calculator, you can always use the Stirling series. Using just the first term gives 2019! as 1.9113 * 10^5798, as Arthur and Wolfram Alpha said. Adding in just the first correction term gets the first nine digits correct.

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  308. Unknown's avatar

    Kilby: Also, the number of zeroes at the end is Floor(2019/5)+Floor(2019/5^2)+Floor(2019/5^3)+Floor(2019/5^4)=502. The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.

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  309. Unknown's avatar

    @ B.A. – Questions like that should be submitted to CIDU Bill so that they get their own thread and can be discussed by everyone therein.

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  310. Unknown's avatar

    @ WW – At least you had the decency not to use the tiresome adjective “alert” when describing the “reader”. I always hated that word in physics and math textbooks.

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  312. Unknown's avatar

    According to Feynman, that statement is a tautology — he discovered that mathematicians used the word “trivial” to mean “proved”, so he taunted them by saying that mathematicians could only solve trivial problems. And chiming in, it is annoying how all proofs in text books are “trivial”, but I guess I’m not a mathematician — the only interesting things are things not yet proved, I guess.

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  313. Unknown's avatar

    larK: I was once in a math class (for math majors) where we (the students and the professor) were all working through a paper together. One of the students said “the paper says that this step trivially follows, but I don’t see why.” The professor looked at it and couldn’t figure it out, so we spent about 15 minutes in class with everyone coming up with, and shooting down, different explanations for the step. Finally, one of the students figured it out, and said “Oh, it is trivial, here’s why,” and explained it. Everyone (including me), nodded, and said “Oh, right, it is trivial,” and then we went on with the paper. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized (1) it had been silly to call something “trivial” that the whole class had been stumped by for 15 minutes and (2) we had done an approximate recreation of a common joke about mathematicians and “trivial” problems.

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  314. Unknown's avatar

    ‘Trivial’ is in the eye of the beholder, as it were. Once in a 400-level math class the book gave a two-line proof of a theorem, and the professor felt that was inadequate, so he gave us a handout with his proof. Two pages.

    One man’s trivial is another man’s two pages, I guess.

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  316. Unknown's avatar

    How to solve a difficult math assignment in 3 easy steps:
    1) Work down as far as possible from the initial equation.
    2) Work up from the final answer given in the back of the book.
    3) In the unsolvable gap remaining between 1) and 2), insert the magic formula: “It is intuitively obvious that…”
    Q.E.D.

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  317. Unknown's avatar

    P.S. Although it has been claimed that this method has worked with certain professors, I heard of one case in which the paper came back with the comment “It is to me, but I don’t think it is to you!” (and points deducted).

    Like

  325. Unknown's avatar

    I’m not going to mention anybody by name, but if you’re going to reboot a long-running comic strip, and you have months to prepare, I really think you should be able to hit the ground running.

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  330. Unknown's avatar

    THE POLAR VORTEX CAUSED HUNDREDS OF INJURIES ACROSS THE MIDWEST TODAY, AS PEOPLE WHO SAID “SO MUCH FOR GLOBAL WARMING” AND SIMILAR COMMENTS WERE PUNCHED IN THE FACE -Borowitz Report

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  332. Unknown's avatar

    It’s hard to tell these days: When people make “If there’s Global Warming, then how come…?” comments, are they being truly ignorant, or just repeating a long-stale joke?

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  338. Unknown's avatar

    ” reminds me of “The day after tomorrow”(this movie was so bad!).”

    Hollywood doesn’t have any confidence that audiences will watch science fiction movies that are actually science-fictional. But they DO know that disaster movies sell, no matter how ridiculous the disaster actually is.

    OK, but why do they buy perfectly good stories, and then Hollywoodize them. (Compare “Mimsy were the Borogoves”, an all-time great science-fiction story, to what Hollywood did to it, “The Last Mimzy”. Actually, please don’t, because Hollywood interprets that as wanting more movies like “The Last Mimzy”.)

    Paul Verhoeven made a serviceable movie and called it “Starship Troopers”, despite dispensing with almost the entirety of Heinlein’s work. Then they made a sequel, which is a horror movie that uses none of the characters or settings of the first movie, and is a completely different type of movie, besides. People who liked the action-adventure war story of “Starship Troopers” want a horror movie, right?

    Meh. The best-selling movies of the last decade are almost all based on comic-books. That’s a pretty deep mine of good stories, but they’re already wearing thin. It won’t be long until they decide what we really need is the spider-clone saga. They used Starro for a TV show, but they did it KNOWING it was dumb.

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  339. Unknown's avatar

    Just was reading Tim Dorsey’s newest, “No Sunscreen for the Dead”, in which he discusses . . . Mold-A-Rama. Which we were discussing several months ago. Just had to toss that in somewhere.

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  340. Unknown's avatar

    Like someone else mentioned, but I don’t recall where, I’ve started to have to fill in the posting information each time (or they want me to get an avatar but that ain’t happening).

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  341. Unknown's avatar

    Brian, that sounds like a browser glitch: I can’t see how it can be anything on the WordPress end.

    I had the same thing happen to me on my phone’s browser: I have to log into CIDU each time, and I can never remember whether my official login is CIDUBill or CIDU Bill (and I always guess wrong).

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  342. Unknown's avatar

    Brian’s problem might very well be on WordPress’s end. I’ve encountered this in a few places where I’m not actually logged in to an account. It could be a response to the EU-GDPR, which places some responsibilities on companies for setting cookies that hold personal information. Could be WordPress, could be the browser, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s by design.

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  343. Unknown's avatar

    I hadn’t changed anything, in fact it happened between posts. However, a restart of Firefox seems to have cleared the issue.

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  344. Unknown's avatar

    I take it back. When I posted the previous reply, all was in the past. But after posting it’s the “new” empty form. It’s not a big deal filling out the boxes again, because the browser will recall old entries for the form. However, it also looks like all my posts are going to moderation now. Something changed, and I don’t think on my end.

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  345. Unknown's avatar

    Sounds like several people are experiencing this problem. Is anyone NOT?

    As far as moderation, I’ve been using the Firefox saved form data, and I might have used the wrong email address from the pulldown list.

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  347. Unknown's avatar

    “it also looks like all my posts are going to moderation now”

    As we’ve seen in the past, WordPress will occasionally take a dislike to someone for no known (or knowable?) reason and require all posts to be pulled from moderation for some time period. It was my turn a week or so back. I doubt it has anything to do with it forgetting who you are.

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  348. Unknown's avatar

    Way OT: If you saw somebody carrying one of these, would you think she’s a reporter, or somebody who wanted to be a reporter when she grew up (if “ballerina” and “princess” fell through)?

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  349. Unknown's avatar

    @ Brian in StL – I am not having any problems at the moment, but this may be because I had a lot of trouble shortly after GoDaddy torpedoed the old CIDU server. Back then I solved the issue by switching over to using a WordPress account to submit CIDU comments (I already had the account, all I had to do was log into it). I didn’t like it much at first, but since then it’s been working very well, and I’d rather not fiddle with it.

    Like

  354. Unknown's avatar

    Winter, a friend was indeed recently interviewed by a woman using one of those pads. She thought it was weird enough to mention to me, and I thought it was weird enough to mention to all of you.

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  356. Unknown's avatar

    Missed opportunity for word play in that comic: “Valentine performed the banned banns…” (Of course, it doesn’t make much sense if you’re doing it in secret to announce it, but hey…)

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  357. Unknown's avatar

    Come on, Mom, the title’s right there in the list of Oscar nominees you’re looking at.

    Of course, she’s over 60, so…

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  358. Unknown's avatar

    B.A., you got the first-level joke. The second-level joke is that she set them up, they bit, and now she’s having her joke on them.

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