Bent Corner

Today I noticed there is a comic book related column over at Pop Syndicate called Bent Corner. It’s written by an individual named Isaac Magaña. There is even a The Bent Corner forum dedicated to the column.

How original.

I had this blog a lot longer then the Pop Syndicate column has been in existence. The first column under the name “Bent Corner” was posted in February 2007. I first registered this domain back in 2005. I had a blog with the same name over at BlogSpot long before that. I also blog quite a bit about comic books.

Didn’t anyone over at Pop Syndicate do a quick Google search of the name before using it? I’m guessing not.

Fellow blogger Jesse Jace of Chorus, Isolate, Confirm recently had a similar experience. Jesse regularly writes a feature entitled Portrait of a Badass where he points to someone from the world of fiction who he believes is truly a bad ass. He’s been writing these features for years.  The blog We Are Not Journalists then came up with their own “Portrait of a Badass” feature. Jesse called them on it and I think they changed the title.

What struck me odd about the Portrait of a Badass controversy was that nobody over at We Are Not Journalists bothered to Google the term before attempting to make it their own. I couldn’t imagine creating a name for something without first checking to see if anyone else already created that name.

Like the name Bent Corner.

Not that I really know how intense 1,000 suns are, but I can imagine. I’m just getting tired of dicking with WordPress.

Yesterday I had a problem that resulted with nothing but the header image loading. I ended up fixing it be reloading WordPress 2.5. So far, so good. I would like to upgrade to the latest build of WordPress, version 2.5.1, but when I do just that, the RSS feed to my blog dies. Why? Who knows. I’ve read on the WordPress forums about other people having the same problem, but I haven’t read anything that solves the problem. It’s just another one of those WordPress “mysteries”.

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I read on the Internets that marvel_b0y — the low level Marvel Comics staffer and anonymous whistle blower type blogger — is no more. His account on LiveJournal is history.

They killed marvel_b0y. The bastards.

First they killed Black Goliath. Then they killed Captain America. Now they’ve killed marvel_b0y.

Who’s next?

I enjoyed reading his posts about what goes on in the bowels of Marvel Comics. Not only were they interesting, it was obvious the muckety mucks at Marvel were not too happy with his posts. Marvel lawyers sent marvel_b0y a cease and desist letter on letterhead decorated with goofy looking Marvel superheroes. If the goal of a cease and desist letter is to intimidate, I’m not sure including the likeness of Iron Man or Captain America is a good idea. Iron Man has become a dick and Captain America is dead.

My hope is that marvel_b0y will return. Normally when Marvel Comics kills someone off, it doesn’t last very long.

I hate blogs that moderate comments. I hate blogs that only allow readers to post comments after they have been approved by the blog’s owner. Nothing demonstrates just why I hate comment moderation more then a recent post on Occasional Superheroine. Valerie D’Orazio, the blog’s owner, must first approve a comment before it appears on her blog.

She wrote a post that asked if comic book creators and other funny book professionals should have private security with them when they attend comic book conventions. What would prompt such a question? She pointed to a recent discussion that took place on Newsarama between TV producer and comic book writer Marc Guggenheim and comic book reviewer and blogger Kevin Huxford. The discussion spiraled into the recent WGA writers strike and Marc Guggenheim’s comment that there was nothing wrong with a non-WGA member crossing a WGA picket line. Huxford rightfully pointed out that no good union member approves of or encourages any person to cross a union picket line. Guggenheim responded that since Huxford didn’t work in Hollywood and wasn’t a member of the WGA, he lacked the ability to understand the “nuances” pertaining to the WGA strike. Huxford responded to this snarky comment by stating that since his knowledge of the particulars was being called into question, he was turning the matter over to the WGA so they could decide if Guggenheim actions were indeed improper or not.

Of course some people freaked out over this.

Valerie D’Orazio tried to make the asinine assertion that Kevin Huxford posed some type of threat to Marc Guggenheim’s physical well being. As if reporting someone to their union for encouraging or condoning people to cross a picket line means that next they will obtain a high powered sniper rifle and try to take them out from 500 yards away at the next Wizard World.

That’s just dumb.

What does this have to do with comment moderation? She wont allow Kevin Huxford to defend himself. Over 45 comments have been left on Valerie D’Orazio’s post. None of them have been from Kevin Huxford. She evidently is not allowing them to get through. Who else is she not allowing to comment? I left two comments. One she approved, the other one she did not. Why not? Because my opinion didn’t mesh with her opinion? So what? I just don’t get that. Click here to read my second comment, the one that she didn’t “approve”.

Allowing a free flow of ideas is an important part of the blog equation. When a blogger employs comment moderation and uses it to filter out opinions that differ with their own, they might as well ditch the blogging platform and just write Word documents. It’s dishonest. It gives the false impression that everyone reading and commenting agrees with the author. That very well might not be the case. Bloggers shouldn’t be afraid of people not agreeing with them. Bloggers shouldn’t be afraid of someone pointing out that they are wrong. They shouldn’t use comment moderation to discourage dissenting opinions. In fact, they should be encouraging people to weigh in with contrary opinions.

If there is one thing I hope 2008 brings is an end to comment moderation. You read an interesting blog post and you decide to leave a comment. You put your thoughts down in the most coherent way that you can, making sure your grammar is correct and your spelling is right. You then type in the series of fuzzy letters and numbers appearing on the screen to prove that you are not a robot. Why is it that a robot can be programed to drive around on the surface of Mars and send back photos but it can’t be programed to type “er57z” when it appears on the screen?

You then press Enter and wait for your comment to appear. Instead of seeing the comment you just posted, you see a message that says something like this:

Your comment has been submitted and will be viewable once it is approved

Why must my comment be approved? I typed in the short string of fuzzy numbers and letters proving that I was not a robot. Why then do I have to have my comment approved?

I just don’t see the point. Why do some bloggers do this? What are they afraid people are going to say? Are they worried that they are going to be called a derogatory name or that a disparaging thing is going to be said about their blog? If so, it’s time to grow up. Stop being such a pussy. Either let people leave comments or don’t. Don’t insist on micromanaging each little thing someone has to say. It’s pathetic.

The thing I hate the most about bloggers that insist on approving comments is that they never inform you ahead of time that they will need to approve your comment. They could save everyone a whole bunch of time by letting that fact be known ahead of time. Not only do I not what to leave a comment if it must first be approved, I don’t want to read comments left by other readers. If the comment section doesn’t truly reflect what other readers are thinking, I don’t want to waste my time reading it.

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.

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%.

Not all fonts are recognized or supported by all operating systems. The following fonts are good for Windows, Mac, and Linux/UNIX.

• Andale Mono
• Arial
• Arial Black
• Comic Sans MS
• Courier New
• Georgia
• Impact
• Times New Roman
• Trebuchet MS
• Verdana

If you incorporate any of these fonts into the CSS style sheet of your website, it will have the same look across all platforms. Windows, Mac OS, UNIX, and fake UNIX (Linux). At least it will look more similar then if you called for a font only used by one platform.