I'm listening to Orange Juice for the third time, and you know what? They're a lot of fun. For some reason I was merely resisting. OK, not for "some reason," but for this one: Often when I come to an artist late in the game, this years-thick barrier of reverent ink will serve not just to raise my expectations but to lower my tolerance for whimsy. Seriously. I'm expecting to be Blown Away (whatever that means)--not "just" delighted. Maybe there's a critical EQ as well as one for frequencies. It just takes a few passes to get the levels right...

I find that if I don't listen to Orange Juice for a long time, I drift towards mentally overstating the degree to which they sounded like the Wedding Present would a little later. And then when I actually play them I feel impatient. After a bit I relax and remember that they're something different. But I admit that they're one of those bands (the Undertones are another for me) that I probably listen to more out of interest than simple enjoyment, which relies more than a little on my "knowing" that they were important and influential (according to somebody...).

I'm listening to Orange Juice for the second time. I've gotten over certain elements that chafed the first time. And what seemed a landscape of hooklessness is now revealing signs of relief. Hang on.

I'm listening to Orange Juice for the first time. I'm not enjoying it. More than anything, it just sounds half-assed. Can I get a witness?

Thanks for your help, everyone who tried this while it was under contruction. Or more under construction, anyway.

Yes! This is now officially a forum. Join me in the second thread, or create a thread of your own!

I might now have multiple threads working, except without a thread index it's kind of hard to tell. Hold on.

And you can only verify it once... that is good because idiots like me always atttempt to verify everthing twice everything twice.

My job is only now just begining to offer me what the human resources department claimed it would not.  

The only challenge is how should I respond.

You can now use HTML tags for two and only two things: italics and simple HTTP links.

You can now preview your comments before posting them.

Very nice, indeed. ;)

Testing a second comment. Do I need to verify it as well?

Here's to helping out.  

Is this your propsed idea to deal with comment spam in weblogs? It seems like a good idea to me.

Nearly as much fun as ferreting through back issues of TWAS is watching Anthony Lane superkick Darth Vader in his big black plastic head.  

www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/articles/050523crci_cinema

Thanks for the "comprise" ref -- it's less self-flagellatory than I recalled, actually making it more useful for my educational purpose. (Which is showing students that Real Writers actually care about words, and that precise words matter.)

I switched the Contribute page from a CSS float layout back to a table for browser compatibility. And I added an optional Name field you can fill out or not as you like.

I've received so much pleasure from twas that I'm thrilled to be able to do something (however minimal) in return.  

As I'm doing so, I notice a minor formatting glitch that you are probably aware of -- the instruction paragraph overlays the existing comments, making both difficult to read.

The cookie scheme now supports posting from different verified IP addresses, but still doesn't allow you to use different email addresses without re-verifying each time you switch.

Either I felt embarrassed about that "comprise" thing, or I thought it wouldn't make sense after I'd revised history, so I never gave it a permanent link or added it to the search domain. I've done both now, and it's at www.furia.com/twas/twas0365tech.html.  

I'll pretend that question about nested comments never happened.  

-glenn

You can also now see the existing comments as you're writing yours.  

-glenn

OK, after some tedious repeated misfixing of one dopey bug, I think I have the cookie loop working. Once you successfully verify one comment via email, you should then be able to contribute directly.  

-glenn

I was deliberately avoiding cookies in this particular implementation, trying to stick to zero persistent overhead on either the client or server side. But I agree that as a practical matter repeated email verification on every single comment is annoying. Hold on, lemme try something.  

-glenn

I'm not really sure what to contribute, so in case anyone's wondering, the weather in Norwich, UK is overcast and drizzly. It's kind of chilly, but not too bad. At least there isn't much of a wind.

hey glenn--this is dan from zapruder point. your carnival dolphin photo turned out well, and i'll be sending a cd, as promised, quite soon.
oh, and i'm one of those poor people who thought the iTunes customization stuff was real. i was awed and horrified for a good 48 hours there. in other words, you got me. nice one.
take care...

Hunger is not merely a disturbing sensation that can be quelled by eating; it is an attitude toward edible portions of the external world.  

www.uwichill.edu.bb/bnccde/ph19b/nagelonsexualperversion.htm

Pagan's Mind, Dreamtide, Tides

One other thought: could we have nested comments, please?  

-David

I just started my upgrade to Tiger a few minutes ago. Wish me luck!  

An idea about the verification system: I'd really rather not have to verify each and every post by email. I suggest adding cookies into the mix as follows: remember my IP address and email, and the next time I post from that IP address and specify the same email address, give me a cookie that allows me to post from that IP address in the future (for a while, forever, up to you).  

-David

Could I use this to plead for a ref to a lovely paragraph you wrote long ago in relation to TWAS?  

You had somehow discovered that you'd been consistently misusing "comprise" and "compose," and you posted a mea culpa and a note that you'd gone back and fixed every faulty occurrence in all previous issues. I'd love to see that paragraph again, but I've searched and searched for it....

Elegant, simple, clean.  

But why do I want to read someone else's words on your site? Wouldn't I look for that person's own site? Lord, I intend to be ashamed that mine are there solipsistically mumbling that others' words don't belong.  

TWAS was a fantastically inspired one-way conversation; furialog camps up the one-wayness of it by giving readers varied pieces to engage with (like the hilarious iTunes code spoof).  

I dunno -- cool functionality, but I'm not sure I'll read the comments.

Depending on the social dynamic you're looking for here, it might be nice if, while writing on the post screen, the previous 10 or 20 comments were listed below for reference.

Well, I'm considering using it for comments on furialog. That use may or may not merit a verification system in reality, but once I thought of the verification mechanics I wanted to see how hard they would actually be to implement. Not too hard, it turns out. Except that obviously I'd probably want to handle linking a little more fluently than just having URLs in plain text.  

The social dynamics of blog comments are also nontrivial in themselves, and I haven't really thought through how they mesh with the minimalism of my current blog approach.  

-glenn

random commenting ahoy! hmmmm; what to say, what to say. I thought about posting part of my current playlist, just for fun music babble, but then I thought, eh, furia readers will not be interested in the disgustingly lame amount of Get Up Kids mp3s I have on my mini.

It did!  

So what kind of application were you thinking of for this? Or is it just (well, "just") for fun?

Agreed. This is pretty interesting, period.  

(Man, now I hope this goes after the last comment I read, or it's going to get confusing...)

When you say, "there's no reason this should be interesting to anyone but me," I think you're being too modest.

This is an experimental prototype of an anonymous public blog using two-key verification via email and browser.  

There's no real reason this should be interesting to anybody but me, but if you're here, go ahead and say something to help me test it out.  

Thanks!  

-glenn