Slobber And Spittle (Archive)

Caption: For future reference, this is not my happy face.

The old backup Slobber and Spittle site at Wordpress.com is no longer the backup site. There's an explanation there for anyone who is interested, but the short version is that it's pretty clear that Google/Blogspot wants my data more than it wants me to use this site.

When that changes, perhaps I'll be back. Meanwhile, just remove the blogspot from this blog's URL, and substitute wordpress. See how easy that is?

UPDATE: Corrected the link to "an explanation".

Blogger and Google have finally managed to screw their interface up to such an extent that I can no longer load image files into articles here. Until either I figure out how to get around that, or they figure how to fix it, I'll be referring any articles that require graphics to an alternate site at Wordpress. We'll see how long that's necessary.

Looks like it's my turn now. Last time Blogger screwed with the editor interface, they mostly messed with the visual editor, which I don't use. A few weeks ago, though, they changed the image upload interface so that it was no longer possible to tell it how to format an image file. I just started cutting and pasting the style information from other articles, so clearly that wasn't good enough for them. Now, they make you upload everything to Google Docs, and, naturally, introduced Javascript code that NoScript interprets as a cross-site script attack.

So, at least for now, I'll be blogging mostly at the Wordpress site, but linking to the articles from here. We'll see what the next move is.

Image credit: Kristian D.

I've never written about this subject, and am frankly amazed that I feel the need now. Nevertheless, I received what I suspect is one of those cleverly written spam e-mails saying that this is a follow-up to a request to do a guest blog post.

So, let me make things clear...

I'm glad to host guest posts, given the caveats that I'll get to in a moment. There are people out there, I'm sure, who don't want start their own blogs, or who want and deserve additional exposure. Occasionally, I've even offered people the chance to post guest articles here if they want. The fact is, though, I was familiar with their work already, and I invited them. So, if I don't know who you are, the first thing you need to do is introduce yourself, at least as your Internet persona, so that I can know what to expect.

Caveats:

• I reserve the right to not use what you send me. I don't really need to explain why, either.
• It can't be something you've posted other places. I will look.
• There is no money involved. I don't make any money from this blog, and neither will you.

Personally, I think that if you are going to go to the trouble of doing all that, you'd be better off posting a guest diary at FireDogLake, or another big blog that is roughly aligned with your own political or ideological predispositions.

Still, if despite all that, you still want to guest blog here, go ahead and send an e-mail to my nom de ordinateur (don't capitalize the 'c') at the mail server earthlink.net, and I'm happy to help if I can.

If you're the person who was supposedly following up, by the way, please pretend I never received that initial e-mail, because as far as I can tell, I didn't.

I've been hit with a DMCA complaint about an article I wrote last year. For those not familiar, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) has provisions that are supposed to protect the copyright and trademark rights of content producers from infringement by other online content producers.

I have only a couple of things to say about this at the moment. First, if you see something either here or at another blog that you think is your intellectual property, and you object to its use there, it's probably going to be more quickly resolved if you try to contact the blog's author(s) first. Blogger/Blogspot's notice is an e-mail with a bunch of boiler plate, followed by the URL of the article in question. That's it. I don't know who objected to the article or why. Supposedly, I'll know more later, but no more information is available at this point.

Second, I don't see this as being about what I wrote in that article. There are no particularly controversial points there, and empires will not rise and fall based on any of the content of it. It's simply some sort of dispute, the nature of which is, at this moment, beyond me.

Blogspot handles these things now by putting the article back into "draft" status, which means that it still exists, but it's no longer readable from the Internet. This part of the procedure seems right to me. What I wish they would do a better job of, though, is explaining just what the heck the problem is. It's hard to fix or dispute until I know.

I was trying to find where I'd written about this issue before, and can't find it, so I'll write this here: Whatever the copyright status of what content I use here, if I'm not parodying, criticizing, or analyzing it, then if it's yours and you object to its being here all you have to do is comment or e-mail (and possibly prove that it's your stuff), and I'll remove it. If you produced it, you have that right. If that process fails, there's always the DMCA complaint route.

Image credit: Emilian Robert Vicor/Flickr

There's a new links list at Slobber And Spittle called "Blogs Emeriti". It's a list of blogs that I didn't have the heart to remove from the blog roll for various sentimental reasons, but are now inactive or defunct.

If your blog happens to be on that list, and it's either still a going concern, or it's been replaced by a new blog, please let me know via comments or e-mail.

Otherwise, don't expect much if you click on those links.

It's been almost two weeks since my last article on the subject of captchas, those annoying scribbles that many comment forms insist you interpret properly so that you can prove you're not a computer. So, it's probably time for another one.

The best way I've found to deal with them is with my web browser's zoom feature. Here, reprinted from previous articles, is the short course on how to use them:

• Zoom in (enlarge): Ctrl-+
• Zoom out (reduce): Ctrl--
• Reset to normal size: Ctrl-0

Where Ctrl- followed by a symbol means hold down that key in the lower corner of the keyboard marked Ctrl, and then hit the key represented by the symbol. For those using Apple computers, substitute the Command key for the Ctrl key.

What I didn't explicitly mention before is that you can hit the Ctrl-+ key multiple times to make what you want to see (captchas, in this case) as big as you want. Here's a sample image I took today of a Google comment form at normal size:

then after hitting the zoom in key three times, it's something that's large enough to interpret:


Maybe. It also might be helpful to note that Google's captchas are distorted versions of the font that most modern browsers use to display text. If what you type doesn't resemble the letters in the captcha, then you're probably not typing the right thing.

Anyway, your comments are important, so let me know if this isn't enough help, and we'll see what else I can do without increasing my workload too much.

What follows is a slight rewrite of an article I posted two months ago on captchas. I value comments from readers. It's part of what makes doing this worthwhile. Unfortunately, doing without captchas in comments means there will be spam comments to clean out, which is something I will not deal with, as I explained in that article. Unfortunately, Google has since found a way to make the comments captchas even more unreadable. I am reposting this article to remind readers of some ways of making the blasted things easier to deal with.

Because this subject came up on another blog, I thought I'd add a point about how I manage comments here.

The first thing I should say is that, thanks to the way I have things set up, I don't have to manage them all that much. I like it that way. I don't have to spend a lot of time, as I do for another blog I associate with in a different persona, cleaning out spam comments that people from around the world feel obliged to leave there.

I've written before about how I have comment moderation set up, and none of that has changed. What I have not done is noted that I also use captchas, which is that annoying graphic that looks vaguely like Roman alphabet letters that you have to type in so that you can comment here. Compared to that link in the last sentence, I think that the Blogspot captchas used to be easier to read. Sadly, they no longer are. They are deliberately made more difficult to read than standard print. That is supposed to make them more difficult to interpret using software, which in turn makes them more difficult to fool to put spam into blog comments and online forums.

Still, if someone has a bit of difficulty reading anyway, captchas can be an obstacle to posting. I suspect that people who are dyslexic, for instance, would have more trouble. People who have trouble reading the screen to begin with, of course, are also going to find it harder to interpret captchas.

I don't intend to change this policy. I'm sorry that it's harder to comment because of them, but the only alternative I see is either to put every comment into moderation, which can take time and (at least theoretically) limits commenters' ability to interact with each other, or to spend a lot more time watching comments. I don't want to do either.

So, what I will do is offer some advice on how to make them a little less irritating.

Most modern browsers, Firefox being the one I'm most familiar with, have had a way of enlarging whatever is on the web page the user is looking at for several years now. That feature, normally referred to as "zoom", enlarges both graphics and text. Using Firefox, a page can be zoomed larger by using the Ctrl-+ key, which means holding down that key in the lower corner of the keyboard marked Ctrl, and then hitting the plus (+) key (of course, you'll have to hold down the Shift key at the same time, if you're using a standard U.S. keyboard). The Ctrl-- key (the minus key with Ctrl) will zoom the page smaller. If you can't remember how many times you enlarged or reduced the screen, then just hit Ctrl-0 to reset it to what it would be normally.

It looks as though Google's Chrome works this way, as does Internet Explorer.

Go ahead and try it by scrolling to the top of this page and using those keys. Note that both the image of the Stooges and the type get larger or smaller. That's what will happen to captcha images as well.

To sum up:

• Zoom in (enlarge): Ctrl-+
• Zoom out (reduce): Ctrl--
• Reset to normal size: Ctrl-0

That should be true for just about any modern web browser on just about any operating system that doesn't include the syllable "Mac". For those afflicted with that particular OS, substitute the Command key (that key to the lower left of the keyboard that looks like a splat) anywhere you see Ctrl, and things should work the same.

Give it a try. It's possible that this won't be enough. In that case, please let me know, but it's something to try. It's also possible to comment via e-mail. I promise I'll read your comments, provided they aren't caught in the spam filter of my e-mail account.

Afterword: In a comment on that earlier post, James Ala explains how things work on Macs:

In OSX the Command key works almost like the control key in Windows. Thus command +/- to zoom in or out. Works in Firefox and in Chrome, plus in Opera. I won't test Safari because I can not stand that browser.

So, to sum up, substitute the Command key anywhere you see Ctrl in the article, and it should work on Macs, too, with the possible exception of Safari.

Thanks, James.

I don't know much about electric power utilities, but I do know that they hate ice storms. Ice storms break power lines that have weakened, and they break trees that are near power lines. What ends up happening is lots of little bits of damage that add up to no power.

All of which is a way of saying that I haven't been anywhere on the Internet the last few days.

Happily, there are some good pictures.

Image credit: All photos by Cujo359



Enjoy your weekend.

Five years, and still proudly obscure:



Image credit: I Has A Hot Dog

Five years ago was the first time I published here. Not much has changed since then. I suppose that's just as well.

Actually, I just loved the cartoon. I've seen that view of a Labrador Retriever many, many times.

Because this subject came up on another blog, I thought I'd add a point about how I manage comments here.

The first thing I should say is that, thanks to the way I have things set up, I don't have to manage them all that much. I like it that way. I don't have to spend a lot of time, as I do for another blog I associate with in a different persona, cleaning out spam comments that people from around the world feel obliged to leave there.

I've written before about how I have comment moderation set up, and none of that has changed. What I have not done is noted that I also use captchas, which is that annoying graphic that looks vaguely like Roman alphabet letters that you have to type in so that you can comment here. Compared to that link in the last sentence, I think that the Blogspot captchas are easier to read. Still, they are deliberately made more difficult to read than standard print. That is supposed to make them more difficult to interpret using software, which in turn makes them more difficult to fool to put spam into blog comments and online forums.

Still, if someone has a bit of difficulty reading anyway, captchas can be an obstacle to posting. I suspect that people who are dyslexic, for instance, would have more trouble. People who have trouble reading the screen to begin with, of course, are also going to find it harder to interpret captchas.

I don't intend to change this policy. I'm sorry that it's harder to comment because of them, but the only alternative I see is either to put every comment into moderation, which can take time and (at least theoretically) limits commenters' ability to interact with each other, or to spend a lot more time watching comments. I don't want to do either.

So, what I will do is offer some advice on how to make them a little less irritating.

Most modern browsers, Firefox being the one I'm most familiar with, have had a way of enlarging whatever is on the web page the user is looking at. That feature, normally referred to as "zoom", enlarges both graphics and text. Using Firefox, a page can be zoomed larger by using the Ctrl-+ key, which means holding down that key in the lower corner of the keyboard marked Ctrl, and then hitting the plus (+) key (of course, you'll have to hold down the Shift key at the same time, if you're using a standard U.S. keyboard). The Ctrl-- key (the minus key with Ctrl) will zoom the page smaller. If you can't remember how many times you enlarged or reduced the screen, then just hit Ctrl-0 to reset it to what it would be normally.

It looks as though Google's Chrome works this way, as does Internet Explorer.

Go ahead and try it by scrolling to the top of this page and using those keys. Note that both the image of the Stooges and the type get larger or smaller. That's what will happen to captcha images as well.

To sum up:

• Zoom in (enlarge): Ctrl-+
• Zoom out (reduce): Ctrl--
• Reset to normal size: Ctrl-0

That should be true for just about any modern web browser on just about any operating system that doesn't include the syllable "Mac". For those afflicted with that particular OS, there are doubtless other ways to zoom in and out. (If someone happens to know how to do that on a Mac, please leave a comment explaining how, or a link to a page that does.)

Give it a try. It's possible that this won't be enough. In that case, please let me know, but it's something to try. It's also possible to comment via e-mail. I promise I'll read your comments, provided they aren't caught in the spam filter of my e-mail account.

UPDATE: In a comment, James Ala explains how things work on Macs:

In OSX the Command key works almost like the control key in Windows. Thus command +/- to zoom in or out. Works in Firefox and in Chrome, plus in Opera. I won't test Safari because I can not stand that browser.

So, to sum up, substitute the Command key anywhere you see Ctrl in the article, and it should work on Macs, too, with the possible exception of Safari.

Thanks, James.

Caption: Believe it or not, my furry mug is now on Twitter.

There's a reason I don't do social media, and it mostly boils down to that it's just another way of reminding me what creepy little shits some people can be. As JT Eberhard reports:

Kenny Flagg, a leader with the Freethinkers of The University of North Dakota put this image on the r/atheism subreddit after 1am this morning. Overnight we get a gaggle of international traffic.

This morning it hits the front page of reddit and we start getting domestic traffic. Also, Christians start hammering it with downvotes.

Matching Offer For The SSA

This is creepy and stupid on levels I don't want to explore. Go to the linked article if you want to know more, and/or do something.

How did I learn about this? Via Twitter, of course.

By the way, I'm registered with Twitter now as Cujo359. Mostly, what I do is announce new articles on it, so no one is following. It's just another way for the world to ignore what I have to say, which seems to suit the world just fine, and doesn't bother me as much as it perhaps ought to.

This will be the lead article through Monday. New content, if any, will be below.

Image credit: Emilian Robert Vicor/Flickr

I'm trying out a new template for the blog. The old one wasn't doing any number of things properly, and I was tired of trying to figure out why things weren't working.

It's quite likely this won't be the end of the changes, but it's a step in a better direction.

Let me know in comments or via e-mail if something isn't working for you.

UPDATE (Oct. 15): I've changed the CSS so that blockquotes and tables are set off with slightly different background colors.

Now that the "share this" widget appears at the bottom of articles like it's supposed to, I've removed the "Twitterize Me" widget along the side. Thanks for using it, and now you have even more ways to let the world know about all the fabulous stuff you've found here. ;)

Hopefully, that's all the changes...

Caption: A spam production line. It's been too efficient lately. ;-) Image credit HaYnCaNdi808 (See NOTE here for the standard disclaimer).

I'm away for a couple of days and someone spams my blog. No matter, it's gone now. The only reason I am bringing this up, though, is to make something clear about the comments policy that is perhaps not. A comment with a URL in it that isn't relevant to the discussion, which is an advertisement of some sort, is spam. It doesn't matter whether the comment itself is relevant or not. Like all spam, such comments will simply disappear.

If you have such a link in a signature block or some such that is automatically added to any comment you make, remember to remove it if you comment here.

As with all spam comments, there will be no discussion. My spam policies haven't changed, but I'm even less inclined to discuss things with people who are determined to remain morons than I was a few days ago. If you lost a comment because you forgot to remove the spam, re-submit it without the spam.

Image credit: I Has A Hot Dog

I'll be on the road the rest of the week, so posting will be even sparser than usual.

I re-enabled the "Links To This Article" feature the other day to see if it has been fixed. I think it is now safe to say it hasn't.

The links that people have actually made to my site do not appear, or they only appear for a little while, then disappear. What remains, sometimes, is a long list of completely unrelated links from blogs that "follow" this one. For one article that I wrote a few days ago, there were almost two dozen supposed link backs, some dating from 2008.

Of course, I've left word in the "support" forums, with no acknowledgement or interest expressed by Blogspot. Several other people have reported this problem, with similar results.

I think it's safe to say this feature isn't going to be fixed anytime soon. So I've turned it off. Again.

So, please, if you write something that links back to an article of mine, and your site isn't on the blogroll (in other words, yours isn't a blog I read regularly), then either drop me a line or leave a comment if you want me to notice. I promise I'll see that either way.

Since we haven't had a photo article in a while, I thought I'd put up something that I don't mind losing while Blogger gets over its little owwy. Here's a picture of what's going on at the mighty Cujo Labs (tm). This will also give all the other Blogspot survivors who are checking in a sign that yes, I'm really OK. The rising floodwaters of bad computer karma didn't inundate me.

Image credit: All photos by Cujo359

Why the weird camera angle? Let's just say it's rather difficult to find an angle that doesn't reveal something embarrassing about my domestic hygiene.

Yes, I really do own that coffee cup. For those who are under thirty and might have wandered by here anyway, let me explain what it means. It's a representation of a sheet of old-style tractor feed computer paper. That was what I learned to do programming with, back when I was going to school. Here's a close up of the cup:


This paper was fed into a machine that was roughly the size of a modern computer desk, which would use the little holes in the sides of the paper to pull it through the printing mechanism. If there was enough ink in the mechanism, it would print out your computer program. That's what most first-year computer students used printers for back then. We'd take our printouts, go find a table in the computer center somewhere, and try to figure out which FORTRAN statement we'd misspelled when we created that stack of Hollerith cards.

If you happened to have not misspelled anything, your program would print out something ingenious like this at the bottom of the last page:

2 + 2 = 4.000000000167

Those numbers along the side represented the lines that would be printed out, so you could tell which line was which on that wide paper.

Anyway, things are so much better now that we can just read the broken software on a computer screen, aren't they?

Image credit: I Has A Hot Dog

Apparently, Blogger had some issues yesterday:

[D]uring scheduled maintenance work Wednesday night, we experienced some data corruption that impacted Blogger’s behavior. Since then, bloggers and readers may have experienced a variety of anomalies including intermittent outages, disappearing posts, and arriving at unintended blogs or error pages. A small subset of Blogger users (we estimate 0.16%) may have encountered additional problems specific to their accounts. Yesterday we returned Blogger to a pre-maintenance state and placed the service in read-only mode while we worked on restoring all content: that’s why you haven’t been able to publish. We rolled back to a version of Blogger as of Wednesday May 11th, so your posts since then were temporarily removed. Those are the posts that we’re in the progress of restoring.

Blogger Is Back

Having gone through a few of these personally, I can tell you that they are frustrating. It's also frustrating when something you've depended on is not available for a far longer time than normal. They're trying to sort things out, and that's really all I can tell anyone on the matter.

So, Slobber And Spittle, and any other blog that's on the Blogspot system, may be a bit under the weather for the next day or two. That's why readers haven't been able to comment, and why some of their comments may have mysteriously disappeared. That's also why it should not be too surprising to find articles disappearing and reappearing on those blogs. There's one article that I was able to restore, and one that has disappeared that I, quite frankly, don't even remember at this point.

Shows what depending on online services can get you, I guess.

UPDATE: It appears that changes I've made to the blog roll in the last few days have disappeared, as well. If they're not back soon, I'll try to remember what they were and make them again.

UPDATE 2: I finally remembered what that missing article was. It was "2012: Dueling Cults Of Personality?", about Mitt Romney's resemblance to Barack Obama on the question of health care insurance mandates, and Talking Points Memo's characteristic failure to notice that resemblance. If I can't find that article in the next day or two, and it doesn't magically reappear thanks to Blogger's finally loading the right tape, I'll try to resurrect it.

And wouldn't you know it? Google doesn't have a cached copy of the article:
Image credit: Cujo359

Thankfully, though, Yahoo did. I recommend Yahoo as an alternative search engine, by the way.

Blogger/Blogspot deserves every bit of ribbing they get over this, I think.

Having discovered that an article of mine was copied, lock, stock, and HTML tags, from this site to another one, I'd just like to make clear what my position on use of my work by others is.

Caption: A screenshot of the article copied by Today's NJ. As you can see, there is no attribution at the top of the article. The only attribution at the bottom was the "Posted by Cujo359" line that appears at the bottom of the original article.

Image credit: Screenshot of Today's NJ page by Cujo359

I don't pretend that what I write here is the product of genius, or necessarily even intrinsically useful, but it is my work. Any time I use someone else's work, I try to adhere to my understanding of U.S. copyright law, which is that I can quote excerpts without permission, and if I'm writing something that is a criticism or analysis of that work, I can quote more. However, I always ensure in one way or another that the person or organization responsible for that work is credited. If the work is available online, I link back to it.

All I ask is that anyone using my work do the same.

I'm sure that there will be times when people want to republish something I write here, for reasons I can only guess at. As the copyright holder, I only require two things, that you attribute that work to me both with an obvious notation and a link back, and if that work makes up the bulk of a commercial product, that I be compensated accordingly.

And by "the bulk of", I do not mean one little article on a blog that has dozens already.

I don't think any of that is difficult to understand, but if you have any questions, you can either comment here or e-mail me at the address in the "About Me" section.

Caption: A screenshot of the mobile version of my previous article.

Image credit: Screenshot of Blogger mobile preview by Cujo359

If you just can't wait to get home to read my latest rantings, now there's a version of this blog that is sized for an iPhone or other mobile telecomputing device. As I understand it, there's no difference between how you access the blog, it automatically figures out what the device is based on screen size, or something.

So, if you enjoy the heady rush of reading nonsense on a blurry 3 inch by 5 inch screen, give it a try, and let me know how it works.

If you're a blogger who is hosted on Blogspot, you can try this out by going to the draft version of Blogger and trying it out.

(h/t to Dana Hunter for pointing this out to me.)

Speaking of the history of spaceflight, I know someone who was born the day after Yuri Gagarin went into space:
Image credit: found it here

Seems like yesterday...

Happy Birthday.

UPDATE: Looks like blogging friend Suzanne became a grandmother today. Congratulations. Julianna Renee picked an auspicious day to enter the world.