Bent Corner

I’ve already written about my frustrations with the newest upgrade to WordPress, Version 2.3. I haven’t really changed my mind. If anything my level of frustration has only increased.

Most of my frustrations center around how the new version handles tagging. It heavily incorporates the use of tags. In the process, it makes many popular tagging plugins incompatible. Tagging plugins such as Ultimate Tag Warrior. I used that particular plugin for my tagging and I really loved it. Now it doesn’t work. Not only can I not tag new posts with the plugin, none of the existing posts that were tagged with Ultimate Tag Warrior have tags now.

They are now tag-free. Now if I want these posts to have tags, I must go and edit each and every post and ad tags.

Not only are most of these older posts tag-free, They don’t have categories either. While upgrading WordPress, I had an option of converting existing categories to tags. This is what I read Convert Categories to Tags screen:

Howdy! This converter allows you to selectively convert existing categories to tags. To get started, check the checkboxes of the categories you wish to be converted, then click the Convert button.

Keep in mind that if you convert a category with child categories, those child categories get their parent setting removed, so they’re in the root.

I screwed up and pressed the button. It didn’t occur to me that when I converted categories to tags, I would be deleting the categories from existing. That’s precisely what happened. All of my existing posts (over 300) were left without an assigned category. Why couldn’t WordPress convert categories to tags and leave categories intact? I now have over 300 posts labeled as “Posted in Uncategorized”. I now have to go and manually edit each and every post if I want to change this.

Upgrading sucks.

I got an email from my draft-dodging nutball of a representative Roscoe Bartlett last night. Evidently Roscoe wanted to explain to me why he voted against the State Children’s Health Insurance Programs bill. Not that I needed any explanation. Of course Roscoe would vote against a law providing better health care for children.

What cracked me up were some of the reasons he came up with. Check out reason #8:

Dramatically Increases Taxes on Working Families. The Democrats’ bill hikes tobacco taxes by 61 cents per pack, once again proving that Democrats are harming low-income families they claim to want to help. In April, 15 Democrats acknowledged this fact when they sent a letter to Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-SC) encouraging him not to raise the tobacco taxes in the budget resolution because they were not only regressive but a declining source of revenue. (Section 701)

Smoking is a disgusting and a severely unhealthy habit. I think everyone that smokes should quit, especially people in low-income families. The only thing wrong with a 61 cent per pack tax is that it’s far too low.

It ought to be at least $10 a pack.

I used to smoke. Quiting was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The high price of cigarettes was one of the main reasons I didn’t take the habit back up. I thought cigarettes were expensive when I was addicted, but I was addicted. Once I was no longer addicted to nicotine, the high price of cigarettes seemed absolutely ridiculous. It really made me stop and think.

The truth is that if cigarettes were cheap, I probably would have started up again.

If Roscoe Bartlett is going to vote against a bill that helps provide health care for children, it shouldn’t be because it would make it harder for poor families to buy smokes. Once again Roscoe Bartlett uses the power of his office to vote against the best interests of the people in his district.

The WordPress folks have released the newest version of the popular blogging platform, Version 2.3 “Dexter”. They named it after saxophonist Dexter Gordon. How appropriate that they would name it after a man that blew for a living.

Version 2.3 blows.

The new version does away with Categories and instead incorporates the use of “Tags”. Too bad these royally farks up just about every plugin and every theme available for WordPress. My normal theme will no longer work. Most of my favorite plugins now produce database errors. Even the default WordPress theme was producing errors.

If I didn’t know any better, I would guess that the people of MovableType helped with the development of this new version of WordPress. This new version makes changing over to MovableType look like a good idea. Granted, none of my favorite plugins work with MovableType, but they aren’t working with WordPress now either.

Supposedly the Democratically-controlled Congress and President Bush are heading to a showdown over the future of health insurance for more than 10 million children. Not that I doubt for a nanosecond that Bush is against the idea of health insurance for poor children. I just don’t know if I’m ready to believe congress is willing to actually fight for anything unless it’s a worthless non-binding resolution.

This from the New York Times:

The president says the measure, which would renew and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, costs too much and would be “an incremental step toward the goal of government-run health care for every American.”

An incremental step toward the goal of government-run health care for every American? The government already runs health care in America. They control everything related to our health care. They control who can become a doctor. They control what drugs or procedures a doctor can administer to a patient.

There is a reason doctors in this country cannot prescribe marijuana to their patients suffering from glaucoma. It’s not because marijuana has not proven to be highly effective in treating glaucoma. It’s because the government wont allow doctors to prescribe it.

Americans are already used to having their health care micromanaged for them. The difference is that health care in this country is run by corporations interested in profit, not in the health and well being of the insured.

There is a reason every other country in the industrialized world has national health care.

In a surprising move, comic book retailer and Pittsburgh Comic-Con organizer Michael George is waiving his extradition hearing and will go to Michigan where he will stand trial for for the 1990 slaying of his wife.

George had been fighting the extradition from Pennsylvania. No word yet why he is waiving the right to a hearing that would force the Michigan prosecutor to present the evidence they have connecting him to his wife’s murder.

This whole story just gets weirder and weirder.

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I bought a new 22″ widescreen LCD PC monitor yesterday. It’s a Samsung SyncMaster 226BW. I really like it. I had to do some stuff on Sheri’s PC yesterday and it took me about 90 seconds before I got completely fed up with her clunky 19″ CRT monitor. I decided to get myself the new 22″ monitor and replace her 19″ CRT beast with my 19″ LCD monitor.

This widescreen monitor makes it feel like I have twice the screen size. The difference is really remarkable.

Samsung SyncMaster 226BW Specs

• Viewable size: 22 inches
• Pixel pitch: 0.282 millimeters
• Brightness (typical): 300 cd/m2
• Contrast ratio (typical): 1000:1 (DCR 3000:1)
• Viewing angle (H/V): 160/160 degrees
• Response time: 2ms
• Horizontal frequency: 30-81 kHz
• Vertical frequency: 56-75 Hz
• Maximum resolution: 1680 x 1050
• Maximum color: 16.7 million
• Input video signal: Analog RGB, DVI
• Sync type: Separate H/V, composite , SOG
• Input connectors: 15pin D-sub, DVI-D
• Plug and play: DDC 2B
• Special features: MagicBright3, DVI (HDCP), Vista Premium certified
• Dimensions (with stand): 20.3 x 16.6 x 8.6 inches (WxHxD)
• Dimensions (without stand): 23.9 x 6.2 x 19.2 inches (WxHxD)
• Weight: 10.8 pounds

If your blog or website uses a css stylesheet, chances are it’s not as neat and tidy and it should be. It’s probably bloated with code it doesn’t need. The larger the css stylesheet, the longer it takes to load and process. Manually editing a css stylesheet for neatness can often times be a real pain. Worse, it’s entirely possible in the name of optimization to accidentally delete needed code. I know this because I have done this.

Not anymore. Clean CSS is a web based tool that cleans your css stylesheet. Simply paste the code from your css style sheet and then select the options you need. Press a button and Clean CSS does all the work for you. It cleans and simplifies your css code making the end result a smaller sized, more efficient file. I was able to compress the size of my css style sheet by 17%.

In Connecticut, Guilford High School English teacher Nate Fisher gave a 13-year old girl a copy of EIGHTBALL #22 as an individual reading assignment. The book contains adult content including references to rape, various sex acts and nudity. Upon learning about the book’s content, the girl’s parents complained to the school. They believed it was inappropriate for a male teacher to give this type of book to their 13-year daughter, especially when she was the only one to receive the book.

The parents felt that they were brushed off by the school. They then took the matter to the police. Upon learning that a male teacher gave a 13-year old female student a comic depicting nudity and various sex acts, the police went directly to the principle. The school’s administration then launched an investigation which resulted in the teacher resigning.

The mother of the girl has weighed in over at The Beat in the comments section with her side of the story including many of the details the newspaper reports lack.

The girl is now the target of harassment from fellow students. Teacher Nate Fisher was popular with the other students and they now blame the girl for Fisher resigning. This from the New Haven Register:

The girl’s mother said her daughter has been “crying every night” and asking not to go to school because students who liked the teacher are blaming her. The mother said that some students set up a group on Facebook, the social networking Web site, calling for Fisher to be reinstated and criticizing the student. The family called the police when, they said, a video was posted on the site with a picture of their daughter and a song with the lyrics “Don’t hesitate to exterminate.” The Facebook page has since been removed.

Nate Fisher doesn’t have a job right now because of the actions of Nate Fisher. It’s not the fault of the girl, her parents, the police, or the school.

The girl and her parents deserve no blame in this whatsoever. The parents acted appropriately. The teacher had a responsibility to know what was and was not appropriate.

He clearly didn’t.

If only Saddam Hussein didn’t have all those weapons of mass destruction mothers wouldn’t have to leave their young children for months at a time and go to Iraq. Terri Gurrola comes back from Iraq and embraces her daughter. Gurrola served in Iraq for 7 months.

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If you are regular reader of this blog, you know that spelling is not one of my strong suits. Chances are if you are in the habit of reading my blog and you have never noticed any misspelled words, it’s probably because my lovely wife has already read what I wrote and corrected my mistakes before you got a chance to see it. She’s really good about that.

That’s why I can’t believe what I did today. I actually criticized the spelling of someone else. Not just anybody, but an actual editor for Marvel Comics. A guy that feeds his family by correcting the mistakes of others. It’s how he makes his living.

I was reading a Blog@Newsarama post that linked to a blog post written by Marvel Comics Tom Brevoort. He was trying to defend the fact that CIVIL WAR #1 actually won a Harvey Award. This is from Tom Brevoort’s blog post:

I know it’s not popular to believe, especially online, but plenty of people really did like CIVIL WAR–both readers and retailers. And while it certainly had no pretentions towards being “art”, it was very much dedicated to being a crackling good super hero story. And people responded to it, in a way they haven’t to anything else the majors have produced in the past few years. That’s the reality–get over it.

Though I found most of the above to be ridiculous, what really got my attention was Brevoort’s use of “super hero”. I thought it was superhero. As in one word. Not two. Tom Brevoort was the editor of Marvel’s CIVIL WAR. In CIVIL WAR, it’s one word - superhero. If it was constantly expressed as one word in CIVIL WAR, why then did Brevoort write it as two words in his blog post? It seemed, I don’t know, inconsistent.

I then remembered what I hated most about CIVIL WAR. It was the inconsistency.

For example, in CIVIL WAR #4 we see Sue Richards leaving her husband Reed Richards in the middle of the night. She didn’t tell him that she was leaving him. She wrote him a note. In FANTASTIC FOUR #540, we see Sue Richards leaving her husband in a much different way. They have a huge knockdown argument that culminates in Sue leaving Reed. There is no note and we don’t see her slinking off into the night.

The two events did not match. They were inconsistent.

I left a comment on the Blog@Newsarama pointing out Brevoort’s use of “super hero” instead of “superhero”. I was taken to task for pointing this out because it seems either “super hero” or “superhero” is correct. In fact, it can even be hyphenated. I guess that is correct. It can be properly conveyed either way.

It was the consistency I was questioning.

Update: I totally forgot about something until DJ Sloofus made mention of it in the comment section. Marvel and DC Comics jointly own the trademark to the word “SUPERHERO”. Not “Super Hero”. Not “Super-Hero”. They actually legally own the word “SUPERHERO”.

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