Still Living Out of Boxes . . .

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You are a long-suffering bunch, and this is certainly to be commended. I have been messing around computer-wise for a number of months, and the effects have been clearly visible, some of them mud-fence ugly visible. I wanted to take this moment to praise you, and for not swearing at me in the comments.

I also wanted to explain. So let me explain a little bit. I am a technoramus, and I can only learn my way through computer stuff if I labor heavily, with beads of sweat on my brow, and with my tongue sticking out of the corner of my mouth. In some fields of knowledge, I read or hear something and the datum that I just read or heard has little bits of velcro all over it, as does certain parts of my brain, and — ta-da! — that information will be readily available to me until the day I die. I have control over some of this, and no control at all when it comes to other aspects of it. Why do you build me up, build me up, Buttercup, baby, just to let me down, let me down, mess me around, and then worst of all, worst of all, you never call baby when you say you will, say you will, but I love you still, I need you, I need you, more than anyone . . .

When it comes to other kinds of knowledge, I can do it, but no longer with velcro brains.

Another distant ancestor is not amused at my forays into caricature.
Another distant ancestor is not amused at my forays into caricature.

No, now  it is teflon brains. Nothing sticks. Mechanical knowledge is like that for me. I have done serious engine work on some of our cars before, and have figured it out, but I have a high level of assurance that if I had to do the same thing over again a couple months later, my mind would be the acme of Locke’s tabula rasa, worth preserving in a jar on some philosopher’s desk. Wood isn’t like that. When I learn how to do something in carpentry, I remember how to do it. Which brings us to the painful subject of ones and zeros.

This whole field bewilders me. I am a tyro, an abecedarian, a mere colt, a rookie, a neophyte, a greenhorn. I have been at it for years, and am still regularly flattened by this stuff. This is is not to say there has been absolutely no progress — for I have detected some movement, some unbending of the programmers, in the direction of user friendliness.  In other words, I don’t think I am gaining on it, I think some senior executives in the business world have laid down the law to the programmers, and told them that idiots are a potential customer base as well.

Well, you might say, instead of whining and complaining like some grouchy Israelite in his wilderness tent, why don’t you just hire people to handle that stuff? Well, computer experts for hire come in two basic versions. One version says that every other designer out there is an idiot, but that if you place yourself into his hands, he will scrap everything you have up to this point, introduce some new gee whizzery that will address all difficulties. He will do all this for you, then divorce his wife and run off to the Bahamas with some floozy to become a beachcomber. There are variations on this, but that’s the gist. And there you are, staring at a situation that has fallen significantly short of awesome.

The other kind is honest, competent, on top of his game, and as a consequence finds himself crazy busy.

So I decided — win, lose, or draw — that I am going to have to learn how to do all that stuff I am not naturally good at. I am going to have to tote that barge, lift that bale, and not only so, but will have to remember where I left that bale after lifting it, and where the rope goes next time I have to tote anything. This is a tale of sorrow, and you should really feel my cyber pain.

So a while ago I left Joomla! and moved over to WordPress, and after trying out various themes, I got Michael Hyatt’s  new theme called Get Noticed! It has lots of boxes in the back room that I have not yet opened, but I have been systematically learning WordPress generally, along with the turbo-features of this particular theme. All of which is to say — remember that long-suffering of yours that I mentioned at the beginning? — we are about a third of the way there.

A watercolor app did this to a iPhoto of our sabbath dinner tonight. That's the table at the bottom.
A watercolor app did this to a iPhoto of our sabbath dinner tonight. That’s the table at the bottom.

If you noticed that I have introduced something that strikes you as perfectly foul, please say so. It may not be that I have settled on that particular thing. It may be that I was just in the back room,  flipping switches, seeing what they did. That happened, for example, when are flipped the order of the comments around, so that the most recent ones appeared at the top. After this excited some comment, I flipped the switch back again. And maybe, if you were objecting to the weird colors I was using — “Look at this, Kimberly,” you said to your wife. “All his taste is in his mouth.” Yeah, well. Maybe it was because I hadn’t figured out the color buttons yet. And if you go up to the very top menu bar, and take a gander at the drop down menu that remains to this day, you will see at a glance that I have not found all of them yet. Pesky little things.

I have also been fooling around with the insertion of pictures, and for this post, a cartoon I drew with my very own finger on my iPad.

Changing the metaphor yet again, we are in the midst of a shakedown cruise. Thanks for coming along. If you see a glaring problem, just glare back at it. Say something. And after I learn this baby, and I can remember what I have learned, then I am sure I will be perfectly insufferable. Fortunately for all us, that should be a while yet.

 

 

 

 

 

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Rfb
Rfb
9 years ago

One suggestion: make the app iPad centric (versus iPhone centric), for us older folks with fat fingers and weaker eyes.

James Bradshaw
James Bradshaw
9 years ago

I wouldn’t feel too bad. As a software developer, I can tell you that the field has become so complex and convoluted that it’s next to impossible to stay ahead of the game. New languages and “best practices” arise all the time. Platforms and architectures evolve continually. This complexity only seems to increase exponentially every year with new buzz words being required on the resumes of IT professionals every day. There used to be only a couple languages for the web. You can know choose between Java, Ruby, PHP, C# with client side JQuery, Typescript, Knockout, etc etc. Even the… Read more »

Jon Swerens
9 years ago

Count me as one person who’s very interested in hearing how you get along with Hyatt’s theme. The price tag is somewhere between ouch and boing, but I thought it very well may be worth every penny.

Jane Dunsworth
Jane Dunsworth
9 years ago

FWIW, I think you’ve got the basics down pretty well now. Comment functionality is pretty good, things are reasonably good looking, and the navigation buttons from post to post are a real boon.

If I might suggest a couple of things: comment editing ability would be helpful, and nested commenting would be good — ONLY if that is visually obvious, however. The old system where you could reply to a particular comment but it was NOT visually obvious how the comments were nested was, I believe, generally regarded as far worse as not having nested commenting at all.

Tom Brainerd
9 years ago

Until then…imperfectly insufferable???

;-)

Valerie (Kyriosity)
9 years ago

Only thing that often offers olfactory offense is the absence of a comment count on the main page when there’s a “Read more” link. These two ought not be mutually exclusive.

timothy
timothy
9 years ago
Reply to  Douglas Wilson

One deep comment.

Hi Pastor, this programming stuff is one of my crafts and I have to write things down or I will never remember them.

There is a distinction in the craft between principles and techniques. Principles endure and cross wide disciplines, techniques…..oy…gotta get my notes out for that one!

So, don’t be tough on yourself. Managing these software packages (which is what Joomla, WordPress, Drupal etc are) is not something worth remembering (unless you enjoy it) .

Jane Dunsworth
Jane Dunsworth
9 years ago
Reply to  Douglas Wilson

I’m having trouble using the reply button to make replies go where I want, though this might be a user competence thing. Trying to put this one under Doug’s comment about enabling nesting. Did it work?

Jane Dunsworth
Jane Dunsworth
9 years ago
Reply to  Jane Dunsworth

It did!

Jane Dunsworth
Jane Dunsworth
9 years ago
Reply to  Douglas Wilson

I think what Valerie means is that if you hit “continue reading,” and then go to the top of the screen you now have, there is no comment count. It is only there on the main page, not on the individual post page. If I scroll up as I am typing this comment, I see no comment count at the top of the page, only at the top of the comments.

David Douglas
David Douglas
9 years ago

Doug, Great job, in general, for being your own web-guru, if you are implying what I am referring. Still, for all your economic wisdom, which I highly respect, you may not be at the optimum with respect to Ricardo’s Law of Comparative advantage. Perhaps you don’t want to and that’s fine. For those that haven’t heard of it, in truncated form: if you can do two things well (or not even well), you (and everyone else) are better off economically doing one’s best thing (which in this context is Mablogging), than spitting your efforts. Actually the best part of Ricardo’s… Read more »

Jane Dunsworth
Jane Dunsworth
9 years ago
Reply to  David Douglas

Two deep comment — that’s a good principle to remember, thanks for that, timothy.

timothy
timothy
9 years ago
Reply to  Jane Dunsworth

Hi Jane.

LOL.

I meant “deep” in the sense of “deep thoughts” (:

Anyway, glad to be of accidental help.

cheers.

t

David Douglas
David Douglas
9 years ago

Ok, Doug, now you need to provide editing capabilities, since at least one of your readers is an idiot who does not proof read or close his italics….

It’s “…implying what I am inferring.”
It’s “….splitting your efforts.”

Sigh.

Jane Dunsworth
Jane Dunsworth
9 years ago
Reply to  David Douglas

Oops, that didn’t go where I wanted but that’s my fault because I misread the location of the reply button.

Jane Dunsworth
Jane Dunsworth
9 years ago
Reply to  David Douglas

More than one of his commenters, to be sure. If you hadn’t quoted yourself I might have thought you meant me. ;-)

Robert
Robert
9 years ago

You forgot the third option: hire the 16 year old geek

Gervase Markham
9 years ago

RSS feeds are wonderful. I get to read what Doug posts, and I hadn’t even noticed any changes to the website :-)

Re: comment nesting: an even number of levels is good if you want the responder to get the last word. After all, the person responding to a root comment can often be you, the proprietor :-) So I’d go for 4 over 3.

David Douglas
David Douglas
9 years ago

On the other hand, Doug’s “last word” can be the point of a whole new post. And I’ve found it often is. If a good deal of back and forth, yeah-buts, and, huhs show up in the comments, a new post often shows up, extending, elaborating, rebutting, etc. etc. Doug is pretty good that way.

Jane Dunsworth
Jane Dunsworth
9 years ago

You have to balance stuff. Four might be nice, but I think at the fourth level you’d get these long, skinny things that are pretty fatiguing to read, if the comments go to much length.

But I could be happy either way.

Joseph Hession
Joseph Hession
9 years ago

As a web guy, let me encourage you by saying you are doing quite a fine job of piecing all this together. Keep at it. The only major suggestion I’d have at this point is to increase the font size of the top menu. Also, if you can freeze the top menu (similar to “freeze top row” in Excel).

Joseph Hession
Joseph Hession
9 years ago
Reply to  Joseph Hession

Oh, and one more thing….I find myself reading through a post on the main page, then having to press “continue reading” to finish because most posts have another half or fourth way to go. That being said, you might consider just a teaser paragraph on the home page which let’s us know whether or not we want to read the article. Once I get half way through I’m going to finish, so now I’ve been interrupted halfway through. Just a teaser is needed on the home page. A couple hundred characters would do. All IMHO.

bethyada
9 years ago

Nested comments? NOOOOO!

It’s like reading a book and after you put it down someone not only removes your bookmark, they shift around the chapters, tear out some pages, and write in all the margins. You have to re-read parts of each comment to see what you have read. Rather than engaging to a conversation among men it is like listening to a bunch of narcissists talking a once only interested in responses to them.

And that lots of people like nested comments I merely state “Western Democracy”.

Gianni
Gianni
9 years ago

Pastor Wilson, you are doing great. I always loved the smell of garage here, and I have loved every single glitch. Right now, the look of Mablog is just great. Having said that, I passionately dislike the nested comments, although they look cute. I believe they are evil, since they force the reader to go through entire conversations multiple times in search of new comments. There is often no way to know where a new comment may be located, except by going through whole discussions. Yes, there is the “Oh Yeah, Sez You” section, which is helpful. But it’s ultimately… Read more »

Jane Dunsworth
Jane Dunsworth
9 years ago

To the nester comment haters, I boldly say:

Y’all make some good points.

Jane Dunsworth
Jane Dunsworth
9 years ago
Reply to  Jane Dunsworth

And to those who wonder what “nester comment haters” are I boldly say:

See why we need editing capability?

Rob Steele
Rob Steele
9 years ago
Reply to  Jane Dunsworth

Yup.

bethyada
9 years ago

Jane, as much as I loathe nested comments there are 2 situations I find barely acceptable. 1. The blog author having right of reply. It is worth re-reading a comment if the blog author thinks it worthy of response. 2. Allowing commenters to respond to their own post which they can do if editing not available. But other than that, everything Gianni said.

Rob Steele
Rob Steele
9 years ago

Not sure this is the best use of your time but I’m grateful for the improvements. Maybe hire some contractors in Mumbai? Yelling at Sanjay might be more fun and you could get a whole team for peanuts.

katecho
katecho
9 years ago

I can see advantages and disadvantages regarding the nested comments question. What I would actually like to request is a blog hyperlink feature that might allow me to share a special and distinct article link with friends that doesn’t include any of the reader comments — just Doug’s post by itself. Often Doug delivers a very provocative post and the detractors are quick to pour their cold water all over it. Sometimes such comments dilute the impression that I would prefer Doug’s post to carry on its own merits, to the mind of the person I would like to share… Read more »