Entries for February, 2008

poem #55: Schism

(With thanks to Mutt for some word choices.)

I want to think you simply didn't know
The anguish you would cause on your behalf,
The price extracted from an honest man
Who never did a thing to harm yourself.

And yet I cannot help but be ashamed
To keep any acquaintence with a girl
So selfish she could not see the effects
Her accusations feasibly would wreak.

Your youth does not excuse your young misdeeds
Nor shield you from my angry scrutiny.
Unhappy as you were, you could have talked,
Explained yourself without acerbity.

But still my fervent hope is, when you're grown,
That you may fail to reap what you have sown.

unisex vs. binary gender

Does use of the term "unisex" imply binary gender?

The literal meaning seems to imply all sexes (and possibly gender identities) are as one for the purpose at hand, but the definitions I read all mention "both sexes." Is it the definition or the word itself that assumes binary gender?

Discuss. No, really, I want to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Cumberland Road and Westmorland too

Anybody know any good stories or stereotypes about Cumberland or Westmoreland? I'm particularly interested in the 19th century view. It's come up unexpectedly in my reading and I feel unprepared.

If you don't recognise the names, they're counties in the north of England, not far from Scotland.

Also, is there anything notable about Viserum, Sweden, or is it just one of those random backwaters that writers sometimes pick when they need a name most people won't recognise?

No reason. *bweg*

lyric translation

A few days ago: "You like this song? Me too! I wish I knew what it meant though. It's probably about sex or something terrible, even though it sounds so cute and innocent."

Today: "Hey, I bet I could look up a translation online. There's a couple I'm interested in here.... Wait, that means 'naked, shining passion'?!"

Right now: I don't like being right. Or that song, anymore.

pertaining to parlance and perspicacity

Today I reluctantly got partway caught up with my blog reading. Halfway through I wondered why I'd been putting it off, and was promptly reminded with ASCII laughter at my expense.

The internet tells me that because I am not underweight, I am ugly; if I attempt to lose weight, I am caving to vanity and societal demands. Because I use the word "ain't" — never in a formal paper; quelle horreur, but I do use it in casual speech — that marks me as an imbecile. I swear; that means I lack the vocabulary or intelligence to express myself by any other means.

To be prompt, my plumpness, prolixity, and profanity prohibit positive perception of my person, despite proclamations of my potential. Perhaps I panic from this pervasive pressure? Perish the perception! Do you pick up my point?

Probably not. I suppose persuading my provokers would purely pour my pleasant evening down the pisser (and there's that blue language for you), so I'll not continue to try. Pinheads.

Testing Tabulas API: BlogJet and others

In the interests of public knowledge (and curing my boredom), I'll be testing a variety of blogging clients. This means there may be many brief test posts today as I investigate various clients. Once I have gotten bored again or exhausted my list of candidates for testing, I will add each program and its official URL (or nearest equivalent) to the appropriate list on the Tabulas wiki. I am using an older, slower computer to do my testing, in case an installation or uninstallation process decides to defecate on my registry, so this may take awhile. Please bear with me.

First up: BlogJet. I entered my login data for Tabulas manually, selecting "Blogger API" from the end of the list. (When adding your Tabulas to a new blogging program, choose "Custom Blog" if they have that option and then choose whatever says "Blogger" but does NOT have a version of the Blogger.com icon. If the program works with Tabulas at all, that process should get it talking the right computer-language.) Host: api.tabulas.com Path: /blogger/

The interface is too large for my 800x600 resolution, but it looks nice. I can access my previously posted entries through the interface. (Were there changes to Tabulas' support of the API? Last I checked, in w.bloggar, categories weren't listed when accessing old posts but they are now.) There is no option to enter a post title, but typing at the top of the post, followed by a line return, should get the same result (I hope).

Time to publish. After that I'll try editing and republishing to ensure it works as desired. Then it's onto the next client program on my list.

Recieved error upon posting - post did go through but I thought otherwise until I checked my site. Error may be related to the code I attempted to use for title and categories. It crashed BlogJet, though; yuck. Will try editing and republishing now.

Edit the second: I am unable to configure any blog to work in BlogJet now. It keeps giving me a socket error when I try to connect. I cannot recommend software that does this.

Upon installing Zoundry Raven, was unable to autodetect any blog settings and unable to enter them manually, rendering it useless. This program is in beta so hopefully it will be fixed in the future.However, Zoundry's Blog Writer, the precursor to Raven, shows similar problems - the autodiscovery is completely broken and manual settings can be entered, but never accepted. I failed to uninstall Raven before trying Blog Writer, which broke them both. I uninstalled both and reinstalled Blog Writer, and it works beautifully now. Yay!

Qumana works, but I can't edit previous posts unless I made them through Qumana. Is Qumana using the Blogger API v1 and denying me access to Blogger API v2 features?

w.bloggar works fine. I'm getting sick of all my HTML being mashed together when I edit a post, though. If data entered via the API is stored the same as posting with "ignore linebreaks," I would like my linebreaks to be kept so I can tell where I want to edit something. The longer the entry gets, the more irritating this is, but I'm not sure if it's because of w.bloggar, Tabulas' API, or the combination.