mishima666's Open Salon Blog

We're Working On It

Tue, 6 Dec 2011 22:12:47 -0500

When asked about last weekend's crippling spam attack, our favorite OS editor replied that "we're working on it."

I take great comfort in the fact that they are working on it. If the spam is this bad when they are working on it, just imagine how bad it would be if they weren't working on it.

And so, I offer the following as a small tribute to all those who are "working on" our multi-year spam problem.

Famous Quotations:

"We're working on it."-- General George Custer, when asked how the battle at the Little Big Horn was going.

"We're working on it." -- Michael Brown, when asked how the Hurricane Katrina relief effort was going.

"We're working on it." -- President Obama, when asked about how all of that hope and change is going.

"We're working on it."-- Emily Holleman, when asked what OS management is doing about the spam problem.

Famous Song: Working On It, by Chris Rea:

Oh how I'd love it girl, just you and me
Take the day and fly
But oh this job, it's got the best of me
Tell you why, tell you why

Somebody above is in a desperate state
Some kind of urgency, the kind that won't wait
I say tomorrow, he say today
And the man in my head well he tell me no way
Keep working
I got eight little fingers and only two thumbs
Will you leave me in peace while I get the job done
Can't you see I'm working
Oh, oh I'm working on it
Oh, oh I'm working on it

Well they're coming from above me
And they're coming from below
Yea they're in there right behind me
Everywhere that I go
And my buddy, he's screaming down the telephone line
He say gimme, gimme, gimme
I say I ain't got the time
Oh, oh can't you see I'm working on it
Oh, oh I'm working on it
Yea, yea, oh tell 'em

How I'd love it girl, just you and me
Take the day and fly
But oh, this job it's got the best of me
Tell you why

Well they're coming from above me
And they're coming from below
Yea they're in there right behind me
Everywhere that I go
My buddy, he's screaming down the telephone line
He say gimme, gimme, gimme
I say I ain't got the time
Oh, oh can't you see I'm working on it
Oh, oh I'm working on it
Oh, oh I'm working
Oh, oh can't you see I'm working on it

And here's a music video featuring Chris Rea's Working On It. I think this would be a great anthem and motto for Open Salon. Instead of Open Salon: You Make the Headlines, we could have Open Salon: We're Working On It

Medical Marijuana and the New Obama

Thu, 6 Oct 2011 19:10:00 -0400

Obama in 2008:

"What I'm not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue, simply because I want folks to be investigating violent crimes and potential terrorism. We've got a lot of things for our law enforcement officers to deal with." (see the above linked video at 2:11)

Obama in 2011:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)— Federal prosecutors have launched a crackdown on pot dispensaries in California, warning the stores that they must shut down in 45 days or face criminal charges and confiscation of their property even if they are operating legally under the state's 15-year-old medical marijuana law.

iPhone Editing Apps

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 17:06:53 -0400

One of the nice things about the iPhone is the number of photo editing programs available. As I see it, there are three kinds of iPhone photo editing applications:

1) those that provide basic editing tools such as changing exposure and contrast, cropping, and so on.

2) those that provide "filters" that change the whole look of a photo (for example, giving a photo a "golden glow").

3) those that actually change the photo into what appears to be a drawing or painting. It is this third category that I will discuss in this post.

Grungetastic turns photos into a kind of "grungy" drawing or painting.

The original - a photo of downtown Portland, Oregon:

Now, a Grungetastic version:

Photo ArtistaOil starts with this photo of a flower sale:

and gives it an impressionistic look:

PhotoArtista Haiku starts with this picture of a bike path:

and makes it look like a Japanese drawing:

Toon Paint takes this photo of Yours Truly:

and turns it into a line drawing. Then, using Juxtaposer, I superimpose the original over the line drawing, and "paint in" the amount of the original that I want. The result looks kind of like a watercolor:

With Mobile Monet I can take these flowers:

and turn them into a painting:

There are a number of other applications that do similar things, and it seems that every month new applications become available. So if you are tired of the same old photos and editing tools, you might consider an application that will give your photos an entirely different look.

By the way, using PhotoSync you can transfer photos both ways between your computer and the iPhone wirelessly using your wifi home network. This makes editing very easy and faster, since you don't have to mess with a cable and wait for the devices to synchronize. I have Aperture on my Macbook, but most of my editing apps are on the iPhone. PhotoSync for the iPhone is $1.99, and the desktop client is free.

And as always, I have no interest in any of the above-mentioned applications except as a satisfied customer.

A Meta-Post About Meta-Posts

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 14:04:14 -0400

Everyone who has been a member of Open Salon for more than five minutes knows that the most popular posts are the "meta-posts," basically posts about posts and the activity of posting. Though some denounce such posts as a waste of time, energy, and space, few among us have been able to resist the temptation of publishing a meta-post.

Equally popular are the "meta-comments" -- comments about other comments, and it is not uncommon for a meta-comment to inspire many more meta-comments in response.

In my experience, my meta-posts are always my most popular posts. My little photography posts are lucky if they get 12 "thumbs up," but on any day of the week a meta-post will get me 40, 50, 60 ratings. One of my meta-posts, Getting Unread on Open Salon, was once the second-highest rated post in the history of OS; it may still be. With 138 "thumbs up," it is as far as I know the only meta-post ever to receive the coveted "Editor's Pick" designation from OS management.

Thinking about the popularity of meta-posts on Open Salon made me realize that we humans engage in all sorts of other meta-activities, many of which are the most popular things that we do. Such meta-activities run from the trivial to the monumental, but regardless of importance are almost always popular.

Back before there was an Internet and blogs, ham radio was the way that strangers around the world would connect with each other. When I was young I was fascinated by the idea of ham radio, the idea that with a little electronic box and an antenna one could communicate with someone in another state, another country, another continent.

When I was 13 my father bought me a shortwave radio, an inexpensive Zenith, to which I connected a long wire antenna and attached the other end to a tall black walnut tree in the front yard.

I tuned to one of the "ham bands," frequency ranges reserved specifically for ham radio operators based on international agreements governed by the International Telecommunications Union. Finally, now I could listen in on what must be fascinating ham radio conversations around the world! What I heard went something like this:

"Yeah, I'm running a kilowatt from a Hallicrafters X15 to an MJF yagi antenna, and next year I'm gonna buy . . . "

Alas! It turned out that ham radio operators connected with other ham radio operators around the world in order to talk about ham radio. They spent thousands of dollars on ham radio equipment in order to talk about -- ham radio equipment. To my surprise I came to understand that much of ham radio was a meta-activity -- radio people talking to each other about radios. And once in a while, about the weather.

But there are many other meta-activities in which we humans engage. Some of the most popular rock and roll songs are about "rock and roll." Bands such as Led Zepplin, AC/DC, Bad Company, Kiss, Moody Blues, and countless others have written meta-rock-and-roll songs about rock and roll.

And then we have TV shows about TV shows. Movies about movies and movie-making. Books about other books and book-writing. Poems about poems. Even Shakespeare "went meta"with Hamlet's "play within a play," a device he also used in several other plays.

In fact, the "story within a story," is a common literary device, and a Wiki article lists various subtypes including play within a play, play within a film, show within a film, film within a film, and video game within a video game. While not strictly "meta," they are at least a type of meta-activity.

We waited 100 years for Mark Twain's autobiography, and when it arrived the first 200 pages were in effect a book about Mark Twain trying to write a book.

Perhaps the most famous theorem in logic is a theorem about logic -- Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. Few people understand it, but almost everyone has heard of it. (I once spent a summer studying Benson Mates' book Elementary Logic, and I can honestly say that for twenty minutes I understood Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. And then poof! -- it was gone.) It's fascinating to think that people who know nothing about formal logic have heard of this theorem in meta-logic.

The list could go on and on. Suffice it to say that we humans love meta-things. We talk about talking, think about thinking, and write about writing. So we should not be surprised by the popularity of meta-posts, and perhaps we can dispense with the idea that they are a waste of time, energy and space. Long live meta-posts, and I say bring 'em on! And perhaps OS management should start featuring meta-posts on the cover, in the same way that other posts are featured on the cover.

My Despicable Low Behavior: An Explanation

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:03:24 -0400

Though the cover page of Open Salon assures me that "YOU MAKE THE HEADLINES," I never suspected that "top rated" item this morning would be a post accusing me of "despicable low behavior," written by well-respected and long-time OS member Catherine Forsythe.

The despicable low behavior described in this post apparently refers to a post that I published last week: The Current State of Spam on Open Salon. I suspect that anyone who wanted to read the post already has, but if you have not, feel free to click on the link.

But for those who have already read the post, or don't want to spend the time, I'll give you a quick summary. The post describes my experience as an OS "spam cop," one of the people who volunteer to delete spam accounts on OS. Based on that experience, I then discuss the volume of spam on OS, talking in particular about the large volume of spam accounts that might not be readily visible to most OS members. I then offered suggestions for ways to do a better job of controlling spam, and suggested that those who are concerned about spam might want to contact OS management to voice their support for better spam control.

Out of a fairly long post, the portion devoted to my description of my experience consists of two short paragraphs, for a total of four sentences.

This, apparently, is what Catherine interprets as "self aggrandizement." even though I use the plural "spam cops," as well as phrases such as "When a spam cop observes a spam post, comment, or link account, he or she can delete the account using a special utility." So the post clearly acknowledges both the existence and work of other spam cops.

But this obviously was not enough for Catherine. She takes umbrage over the fact that I have talked about my experience as a spam cop with others:

"Nevertheless, he makes it well known that he is among those managing the spam problem and stresses his prominent contribution. He had made in known in a comment on one of my articles; he has made in known in his own article; and he makes it known in private messages."

Yes, the horror! The horror! What a terrible person I must be to mention my spam cop experience in a single comment, and in private messages! And then to write about it in a post! To Catherine this is like Clark Kent letting everyone know that he is Superman. But for me, this was simply a matter of talking about my experience on OS, and part of my experience is, in fact, being a spam cop and deleting spam. No one ever told me it was supposed to be a secret.

Concerning the contributions of other spam cops, as Catherine well knows, there is no way that I can know how much spam other people are deleting. All I know is that someone is deleting spam, but I don't know who or how much. All I know is that whenever I logged in, there was more to delete.

And that was the problem I described in my post. I mean, you could recruit Einstein, Jesus Christ, and President Obama to be spam cops, and they could delete spam day and night, and you still would not be controlling the spam in any significant sense.

And I don't necessarily even know who all the spam cops are. Nobody ever sent me a list, and for all I know there could be ten spam cops. Stated in terms of popular culture, I don't know who the spam cops are any more than the inhabitants of Battlestar Galactica know who the Final Five Cylons are.

So the bottom line is that what she calls "stressing my own contribution" comes from the fact that there's no way for me to know what anyone else's contribution is. Spam is either deleted or not, and if it's deleted there's no way to know who deleted it. Unlike in the movie Apocalypse Now, there is no "spam death card" that we place on deleted spam in order to identify our "kills."

The sad thing about this little controversy -- a controversy that Catherine has manufactured for reasons known only to her -- is that it is so unnecessary. After my "spam post" was published, I heard through the grapevine that Catherine was upset with it. I was sorry about that, because it was not my intent to offend anyone. And I told a couple of people in private messages to tell her that I would be happy to discuss the post with her. Whether those messages got to her I don't know.

I do know that she never contacted me. Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but when a person is in a mind to accuse someone else of "despicable low behavior," that person should at least make an attempt to resolve the issue privately. This was not done. And if someone is going to accuse another OS member of despicable low behavior in a post, the polite thing would be to let the target know that the post is coming. That was not done, and instead I ended up finding out about the post through private messages written by other people. And then Catherine closes comments on her post, and I am unable to respond to the accusations in a comment on her post.

As I mentioned at the start, Catherine is a well-respected member of OS. But in this one case, I feel that she has handled the situation poorly, creating an unnecessary controversy that could have been handled with private communication.

And I guess the lesson for me is not to offend a popular person on OS, or you'll get torn a new orifice in public on the front page. The last time I looked at her post there were 59 "thumbs up." And to those who rated that post and thus kept it on the front page, I would only ask "rated for what?"