Leaving You (Briefly), Play Nice

Astute readers of Scalzi's blog will know by now: I'm leaving town tomorrow. I'll be jumping on a flight to Los Angeles from Dulles tomorrow afternoon, returning to the East Coast Sunday night. I'm meeting up with a buddy out there to work on a writing project, one that I don't want to curse by talking about too much ahead of time.

Do you guys do that? Fear that you're going to curse things? Man, I sure do.

I'll be in the office and online tomorrow morning, and telecommuting from somewhere in Venice Beach all day Friday -- you'll barely notice I'm gone.

However, if I happen to look out the plane window here in Dulles and see people repairing the plane with duct tape like they are in this video, I'll be staying right here for the rest of my LIFE.

Journals Outages 11/28/06: Blame Kid and Pam

Many of you e-mailed today, alerting me
to the total system-wide Journals outages we had
this afternoon. You know what caused it? Seriously?

Guess. Just
GUESS. It's almost funny.

Give up?

Okay: Pam Anderson and Kid Rock's divorce. Seriously. Check
out Stephanie's
post for more.

Viral Learning Center -- Open Enrollment

There's this article on the BBC's website claiming that the infamous "Star Wars Kid" video is the most popular viral video online. Maybe it is.

What's really funny, though, is the mild "uh, whatever" expressed by the BBC newscaster in the video --- click the link marked "WATCH The Star Wars Kid" to see for yourself. It's not so much the clip itself that's so hilarious, as what other people have done with it. Like this, for example.

Viral videos are huge right now. They're free advertising for the company whose product strikes viral gold. These little videos reverberate throughout the blogosphere and the world of forwarded email, launching careers or just killing their subjects. The Star Wars Kid (real name Ghyslain Raza) may have had a tough time finding a prom date before this video hit the web, but now? According to the article,

Mr Raza never intended the video to be made public, and later took legal action against the classmates he claimed had posted it on the internet.

People are breaking their necks to understand the weird alchemy that happens when you mash boredom, humor and titanic amounts of schadenfreude. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if more schools like this one started popping up:

I mean, yeah, this is a joke. A good one. Look at the shelf over the blond guy's shoulder at 2:00 for a nice little Easter Egg. They're brilliantly satirizing how badly advertisers, artists and major media companies want to cash in on the viral craze.

 We talk a lot here at AOL about creating viral content, asking if things are viral or not. What we are basically saying is: "Have we made something that's gonna hit like caffeinated pixie sticks or not?" Usually, the answer is no.

True viral stuff is almost impossible to manufacture. Its authenticity is what makes it so forwardable, and what makes it so funny. The best thing the Star Wars Kid could have done for himself would have been to say that he'd trained for six months to make that clip and this Web fame was all part of his audition reel.

But you better believe that advertising schools are going to offer classes like this one soon -- if they don't already. Do you think that a school like this would be worth the tuition?

What makes a video -- or web page -- forwardable for you? You all see plenty of stuff online that makes you smile and snort, sure. But what makes you copy a link and send something to all your friends?

Tags: viral learning center, viral video, Star Wars Kid, BBC

File Manager: Some Answers

Product Manager Stephanie BamBam! has
been hard at work getting to the bottom of our problems with File
Manager. She's just posted her findings, a status
report and some temporary workaround
advice. It
almost goes without saying that I highly suggest
checking this post out.

We'll keep you updated, and thanks again for your patience.

Weekend Picks 11/22/06

Hey there, people -- it's like, too late before the Thanksgiving holiday. Everyone on the entire East Coast is competing for a position on I-95, myself included ... so I'm putting up my Weekend picks a little early, with a holiday theme.

 I drink cranberry juice all year, but I only think about those hard little berries as a solid twice a year: Christmas and Thanksgiving. J-Land regular Monponsett has a pretty cool post on her blog High Above Courtside documenting a trip to an actual cranberry bog. The phrase "cranberry bog" sounds like an unfortunate intestinal condition, but it's actually quite picturesque!

Princess Aurora's response to Scalzi's last Weekend Assignment absolutely cracked me up. She details the struggle between those who love dark turkey meat and white meat really well, but she coins and uses the "Battle of the Meat Shades" so much that I honestly cannot get it out of my head.

Don't ask me how I found it, but I found a blog post that has unearthed the crappiest, weirdest Christmas song ever: 'Dominic, the Italian Christmas Donkey'. The sick thing is, the song's sorta catchy -- so it may replace the phrase "battle of the eat shades" in my brain eventually.

Syd Barrett was the founder of Pink Floyd -- he created a type of psychedelic rock that had never been seen before and has never been heard since he left the band after desceneding into schozophrenia triggered by constant heavy drug abuse. The album 'Wish You Were Here' is actually a tribute to Floyd's lost band member. Why am I telling you this? Because for some reason, Barrett's Christmas tree is for sale. Check it out on Tech Digest.

Our very own John Scalzi put together a hilarious parody post a while back entitled The Ten Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time. This also cracked me up. A mild content warning applies here, just so you know.

At the year's end, we are inundated with lists chronicling the best/worst of (blank) in the last year. It's easy content for harried editorial staff (like me) to crank out before hustling off for our own holidays. Fimoculous aggregates these best-of lists into one tidy place. Right now the list is thin, but then again, there aren't that many lists out. As they're released, this post will update -- so check back in, and share any lists you find with the blog's editor.

That about sums it up. I'm sure to be doing more holiday-themed blog picks in the future, so if you have a post you'd like to share, please either mail it to me or leave it in my comments. I definitley am planning to do an all J-Land blog holiday, so keep it in mind as you're sitting down to write this winter. Have a great Thanksgiving ...

Michael Richards Eats It and Other Blog News

You've probably heard about Michael Richards' career immolation via mucho self-administered N-bombs by now. Man, that guy just needs to to sit back and shut up for the rest of his life, saying only, "Can I get a deposit slip?" when he takes his Seinfeld royalty checks to the bank.

The news outlets are all referring to TMZ.com as the principal conduit for video of Richards' racist rant, and you may recall that TMZ also steadied Mel Gibson's sword for him when he performed his anti-Semitic swan dive onto it a while back.

"What is TMZ," you may be asking, "and where did it come from?"

According to a story in today's New York Times:

TMZ.com is a happy collaboration of Warner Brothers and AOL, a Web site with the kind of numbers (6.8 million unique visitors last month, according to comScore Media Metrix) that could give synergy a good name. The site is a gritty, some would say grimy, Web site that publishes celebrity news in real time. (The name stands for the Thirty Mile Zone that defines the site’s celebrity hunting ground in and around Los Angeles.)

It's a big day for blog news, actually. Here's a roundup of some other interesting items ...

From CNet, a landmark decision protecting bloggers and other Web publishers.

In a victory for bloggers, newsgroup participants and other Web publishers, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday that individual Internet users cannot be held liable for republishing defamatory statements written by others.

While it is great to have some legal precedent on the books that protects bloggers, I have to wonder how great this is for human culture in general. Is it so bad to think twice about what you repeat on your blog? Defamation is bad, but spreading it isn't too attractive either. Have you ever blogged something you shouldn't have? What happened?

From the BBC, Egypt arrests another blogger critic:

Police in Cairo have detained a blogger whose posts have been critical of the Egyptian government.

Rami Siyam, who blogs under the name of Ayyoub, was detained along with three friends after leaving the house of a fellow blogger late at night.

This is like attacking hill of fire ants with a sword. Obviously, Egypt doesn't have the same belief in free speech that we have (or used to have) in the U.S. But by arresting this blogger, the issues the blogger was talking about are elevated, drawing more fire and more attention to the Egyptian government.

It happens all the time in the blogosphere: People retaliate against a critical blogger and the whole thing simultaneously snowballs and explodes. Have you ever made a big deal out of something on someone's blog, only to have it blow up in your face? What happened, and what did you learn?

Finally, I just like this story ... it turns out the blogger behind TvNewser is a 21-year-old college student. Brian Stelter's had a passion for TV news his entire life, and created a blog that tracks gossip, news and opinion within the field. It's grown in prominence to the point where TV execs not only visit his blog multiple time daily, but leak stories to him. An excerpt:

“I’ve heard people joke that when TVNewser is dormant, the kid had a final or a big family dinner that he couldn’t get out of,” said Brian Williams, the NBC news anchor and a TVNewser devotee. “People from entry level to high and mighty check in on it.”

It is read religiously by network presidents, media executives, producers and publicists, not for any stinging commentary from Mr. Stelter, whose style is usually described as earnest, but because it provides aquick snapshot of the industry onany given day. Habitués include Mr. Williams and Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN’s domestic operations, who long ago offered up his cellphone number to Mr. Stelter.

The network publicists generally know his class schedule — afternoons on Tuesdays and Thursdays — and barrage him with material, which they often expect him to post within minutes. While recording a radio segment for one of his classes — Mass Communication 381 — he turned his cellphone off for 15 minutes, then turned it back on to find one nagging voice mail message from an ABC publicist and another from CNN.

I find this fascinating and incredibly empowering. This kid's just blogging away about his arcane passion -- and he sure didn't start doing it because he thought it would make him cool. He's become a powerhouse completely by accident, sort of. I've long suspected that prominence is a byproduct of passion and hard work, and this story is living proof.

Got any other blogosphere news? Any thoughts on the articles, or general criticisms? I'd tell you where to cram 'em, but you already know: in the comments section.

File Manager Problems, Possible Solution

Just a quick update, folks: I've received your
emails, comments, and complaints regarding problems with File
Manager. I passed them on to Stephanie BamBam!, who is
working on a solution right now and posting about the issue on her blog.


Take a look here for the complete solution, but here's an
excerpt:

It appears that the keyword for File Manager has expired -
who knew Keywords could expire?? ... Until the keyword is back up - keyword:
Hometown does still work, and there is a link to File Manager down at the bottom
of that screen. Just click on the link, and all should be
peachy.

As always,
please let me or Steph know in our comments or e-mail if you keep having
problems.

Thanksgiving: Behind a Dumpster, Under the Stars

Thanksgiving is peeking its savory-smelling head
right around the corner, and I'm really excited. I haven't seen my family in a
long time, and I'm really looking forward to just getting propped up on the
couch with them and catching up. Some people have stressful Thanksgiving dinners
-- I've never had one, and I can honestly say that having the sort of family
that I do is the one thing in my life that I am the most thankful for.


Not that I am taking that for granted, but that spans across
the thirty years that I've been on Earth. One year, I had a Thanksgiving that
was so simultaneously unpleasant and incredible that it sledgehammered the
concept of gratitude into my starving brain.


If you're
thinking that I'm about to tell you about it, you're right. And if you're
thinking that I'm trying to inspire you to share your own similar stories: blue
ribbon for you.

I ran this piece on AOL's
People Connection a year ago, and on a under-read and forgotten blog as well. I
doubt many of you read it, so I'm re-running it here as an
example.

_____________________________

My Thanksgiving dinner 2003 was a sub-fresh piece of
swordfish, roasted squash and lukewarm pasta, served next to an overripe
restaurant dumpster and eaten with my bare filthy hands so fast that I literally
bit my own fingers.

I had to get back to work washing dishes
and mopping toilets before my less-than-sympathetic boss caught me missing.
Ordinarily I wouldn't have been so passionate about cleaning up after the
wealthy, but I'd been penniless and homeless for a month. As an illegal alien in
Australia, washing dishes at a beachside cafe was the top of the career ladder.


Most people think that homelessness means sleeping on the
street in broad daylight, spare-changing from strangers. That's a vicious
stereotype kept alive by the very few with the aforementioned habits. Most of
the homeless either work too hard or want to very badly. They sleep in shelters,
cars, or in my case, at the home of a girlfriend's friend.


We were dead broke after a very poor financial decision and
a few unlucky breaks.That's how it happens for most people,excluding natural
disaster. I was almost totally unemployable for visa reasons, and she was
job-hunting with all her might. My girlfriend's friend had a 2 year old son, an
estranged husband, a symbiotic marijuana and anger-management problem, and a
spare bedroom. It was either the spare room, a shelter or a secluded place
between some sand dunes. We didn't think twice.

The kitchen
was open to us any time of day or night. I'm a large guy with an appetite to
match, and that couldn't have been cheap for a single mom with a single income.
It always smelled like pot and air freshener, before breakfast, after dinner and
right before the kid's bedtime.

The TV was on nonstop from
7AM to 10PM. The kid smiled and hopped up and down when 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg
came on, which was cute at first. The way he shrieked and ran at the TV to hug
it whenever I turned it off was more than a little upsetting.


More disturbing than the TV hugging was the kid's habit of
calling me 'daddy.' For better or for worse, I was the only male figure he dealt
with most days, and it made sense to him.

We ate dinner
together every night, family-style (with the television on) and talked about our
days, unless 'Australian Idol' was on. My days rarely varied.


After waking up realizing my family and friends were on the
other side of the planet, I'd catch the train to the city and wander in and out
of allthe hostels, cafes and construction sites I could find, looking for cash
work. When I needed a break, I'd duck into a public library and pitch stories to
all the publications I could imagine. I saved dollars I didn't have by waiting
to eat until I was dizzy from hunger, then shoplifting pies and pasties from
bakeries by the train station.

Once you're weak from hunger, the smallest bit of food
brings you right back. After a week of this, I was able to shrink my appetite,
saving precious dollars at lunch and priceless pride at breakfast and dinner by
eating less from our host's pantry.

Our host's temper
detonated without warning over incredibly trivial stuff. Any normal person's
would if they were raising a child in his terrible twos and supporting two able
adults. It is also a fact that I once spent 45 minutes apologizing for not
arranging items in the refrigerator largest in the back to smallest in the front
so that you could see everything in there.

Lightning struck
one week. I got a long-awaited check from an American magazine and we could put
a deposit down on a place of our own. Then I got my job as a dishwasher at the
cafe. It paid AU $200 a week, cash, for a nine-hour shift of mopping, scrubbing,
prepping and lugging.

Although it wasn't in the job description, I also taught pidgin
English to the other dishwasher, a Czech chemical scientist who was nevertheless
functionally illiterate in my language. I drew cartoons for him in the grease on
our counter, illustrating the tricky differences between the words 'mop' and
'map.' We bonded over stolen beers pounded by the dumpster. Not only did I have
a job, I had a new friend.

That Thanksgiving dinner by the
dumpster gave me serious intestinal distress but I loved every bite. I'd earned
it myself, and nothing tastes better than that. One night soon afterwards, while
I was at work, our host accused me and my girlfriend of taking a kitchen knife
and worrying the phone cord so that it would sever sometime in the near future.
This accusation was carried out at maximum volume and carried a number of
accurate character assassinations along with it. I clocked out one night and
crashed somewhere else, moving into our place a few days later.


As crazy and furious as she was, I might owe my life to that
woman. She had every reason in the world to turn us down, and took us in anyway.
If it hadn't been for her, I couldn't have gotten a job or an apartment. I
wouldn't have had a house to write from or a room to sleep in, and my poverty
and desperation could have only spiraled further downward.

On
this Thanksgiving and every one for the rest of my life, I will remember that
wonderful, kindhearted psychopath who screamed and ranted as she fed and housed
me. She sacrificed her questionable sanity so a total stranger could live like
an adult again, and for that I am eternally
grateful.  
______________

Have
you ever been incredibly, overwhelmingly grateful in a totally unexpected way,
Thanksgiving or not? What was the most unusual Thanksgiving you've ever had?

In
the interest of full disclosure, I am doing the editors' picks this weekend, and
it's going to be holiday themed. If any of you have a post like this under your
blogs' belts, please send it to me (or leave a link in my comments) for
consideration in the weekend picks.

Guest Editor 11/17/06

Hi everybody... as posted to the
AOL Journals main page and the Message
Boards, here are the Guest Editor's Picks for November 17th, 2006:

Robin blogs about her life as a single
mother with ADD and a penchant for Irish folk dancing at Random
Threads. She's this week's Guest Editor, and man, did she ever pick a
bunch of blogs. Here's six, but make sure you visit
her blog to see the rest:

* Zebadiah and Beauregard's Front
Porch

* CarnivAOL

* Mending the
Dream

* Confessions
of a Madman: Insights into Living and Coping With
ADHD

* Life
& Faith in
Caneyhead

* Assisted
Living Center Activity

* Bonus picks
galore!

Check
out Robin's blog to see these picks and many more with her unique
description. Don't forget, if you want your own chance at being a Guest Editor,
or if you have a blog you want us to see for a possible feature, send me an
e-mail at JournalsEditor@aol.com.
Please don't forget to include a link to your blog.

Have a
great weekend, everyone.

Thanks --
Jeff

Brief Outage 11/16/06

Many of you reported a brief outage within Journals just a little while ago. We had a problem with our SNS/VL systems that has now been fixed. Journals should work fine both inside and outside the AOL client.

If you experience problems, clear your cache and cookies (instructions linked here.)

And as usual, please report any further problems to me.

Thanks ...

 

Web Addiction: Where's the Line for You?

We may have a problem. "We" as in bloggers, web-geeks, computer users of all sizes and age. We're diving head first into Tron-world and we don't even know it. I came across this article in the Washington Post the other day, and it really hit home for me:

Concern about excessive Internet use -- variously termed problematic Internet use, Internet addiction, pathological Internet use, compulsive Internet use and computer addiction in some quarters, and vigorously dismissed as a fad illness in others -- isn't new. As far back as 1995, articles in medical journals and the establishment of a Pennsylvania treatment center for overusers generated interest in the subject. There's still no consensus on how much time online constitutes too much or whether addiction is possible.

But as reliance on the Web grows -- Internet users average about 3 1/2 hours online each day, according to a 2005 survey by Stanford University researchers -- there are signs that the question is getting more serious attention: Last month, a study published in CNS Spectrums, an international neuropsychiatric medicine journal, claimed to be the first large-scale look at excessive Internet use. The American Psychiatric Association may consider listing Internet addiction in the next edition of its diagnostic manual. And scores of online discussion boards have popped up on which people discuss negative experiences tied to too much time on the Web.

It's really hard for me to determine if I have a Web addiction or not. Prolonged, heavy Web use is my livelihood, after all. I am financially and professionally dependent on my interactions and contributions to cyberspace -- but I'll definitely come home after a ten-hour day and eat a sandwich with one hand while clicking through YouTube with the other. What about you guys?

You wouldn't be here in J-Land, reading my blog and writing one of your own if youdidn't a derive a sense of pleasureand well-being from being behind a computer. For many of you, your primary creative outlets and social interactions have occurred online -- or your online lives have positively influenced your real lives.

I'm not asking you all to out yourselves as Internet addicts, but I'm positive that there's more than one of you reading this. Instead, tell me this: how do you establish limits? What do you do to insure that you participate in real life, and where do you draw your lines?

Im In Yr (Blank)

This meme's been bobbing around the Web for a year or so, and it finally hit BoingBoing this week -- which is where I heard about it.

Much like the O RLY thing, it's pretty simple: just text on a photo follwing a standard format: The photo is a wacky shot of a cat, and the text is usually (but not always) "Im in/on yr (noun), (verbing) yr (noun)." It's supposed to be spelt in l33t-speak, you're not reading it wrong.

Explaining a meme or any joke always kills it, though -- and something tells me that high-level promotion at the world's biggest media company will do to this what hitting the top 40 did to the Chili Peppers.

Here's a few hilarious examples of the thing, all of which I

A) discovered via BoingBoing and

B) still e-mail to my friends:

Shadowdane.Shackspace

Knitemare.org

for some reason, the Ridemonkey.com forums

Minor content warning there for the more sensitive among you. You should know who you are by now. I've made two samples myself -- bilingually, no less:

Recognize that top one? That's Scalzi's cat from his infamous bacon-taping post.

This is really, really fun, and I don't even LIKE cats -- you guys want to try?

Let's give it a shot. You can do it a few different ways -- the more adventurous among you can shoot and title your own cat photos. Or, just post a cat photo on your blog for other folks to grab and re-title. Leave links to your creations -- or ones that you find -- in my comments, and I'll post a roundup later in the week.

Journals Outage, Alerts Problems, Happy Monday

As many of you may be aware, we
had a Journals outage this afternoon. As
of this writing -- 6 PM, EST -- it should be fixed.
"Fixed being a relative term," you are probably thinking. Please know that you
are not the only people frustrated with these frequent outages. It's hard on us,
too.

Stephanie
BamBam! will have a more detailed post explaining today's
outage up soon -- check that out if you like.

Many of you
have reported problems with your Alerts as well --
that you've received multiple Alerts for the same post, or that your posts are
sending out multiple Alerts. I've passed these reports on the the Alerts team,
who are investigating everything.

For future reference: when you have a problem with your
Alerts, please send me as much information as
possible. A link to post that spawned multiple Alerts is
incredibly helpful, for example.

Again, I'll let you know what I can when I
can.

Thanks --
Jeff

Journals Outage Friday 11/13/06

There was an outage in AOL
Journals last Friday from 6:49 pm
EST until 11:32 pm EST. All I know right now is
that:

A) I am
told it was caused by a "choke in the backend causing slowness in the
system."

B)
Things should be okay now. Please let me know if they are not.

And as always,
please check in with Stephanie BamBam! for more details.

A Fix for Journals/Comments Issues

The tech guys are investigating
whether some changes made 2 nights ago may have caused
problems leaving comments; another, more likely possibility involves your
TopSpeed cache (where the AOL client stores some Web files on your computer so
Web pages come in faster).

One of the
devs was able to reproduce the problem where she couldn't post comments; she was
able to fix the problem by clearing her browser cache and topspeed
cache (procedure listed here: How To: Clear Your AOL Browser's
Cache & Footprint)
and restarting her AOL
software.

 

So, we suggest you try clearing your browser
cache and topspeed
cache.

 

Generally speaking, if you ever have any browser problems, the first
thing you should always try is clearing your browser cache; clearing your
TopSpeed cache is a little more involved and you shouldn't need to do it on a
regular basis, but if you're having persistant problems when you use the AOL
software, you can try clearing your TopSpeed
cache.

 

(If you're able to do stuff from an external Web browser, but you
can't do it from inside the AOL software, it's a good sign that you should try
clearing your TopSpeed cache. Remember, with AOL Journals, you can do just about
everything when you're signed in to an external Web browser, as you can when
you're using the AOL software. See How To: Use a Standalone Browser
With Your Journal)

 

Please give this a try and let me know how it works.

Guest Editor Picks 11/10/06

Hi everybody... as posted to the
AOL Journals main page and the Message
Boards, here are the Guest Editor's
Picks for
November 10th, 2006:

Bam
blogs about her life as an at-home care-giver at Reconciling
Life. She's this week's Guest Editor.
Check out her
weekend picks:

* Comments
On the Events Of My Life


*
Dribble by
Chuck Ferris

* Jumping
Off the Deep End

* Gina's
Space

* In Quest
Of

* Caregivingly
Yours

Check out Bam's
blog to see these picks with her unique description. Don't forget, if
you want your own chance at being a Guest Editor, or if you have a blog you want
us to see for a possible feature, send me an e-mail at JournalsEditor@aol.com.
Please don't forget to include a link to your blog.

Have a
great weekend, everyone.

Thanks --
Jeff

Journals Problems: One Down, More to Go

We've achieved a tiny
victory in the ongoing battle against Journals issues. It seems
that we were having trouble with rostering for private
Journals. Rostering is, essentially, a way of defining who has
the rights to see what online. The issue **should** be resolved now.

If you have
had trouble in the recent past reading or commenting on private
Journals, please try it again now and let us
know how it goes in the comments section.

The other
Journals issues -- we're still working on that.

Observations About Photos in Alerts

The results are in and they're
overwhelming -- for the most part, you guys love photos appearing
in your Alerts. I am well aware that some of you don't like this,
too -- but the majority of the responses have been very positive.

I have to
admit that that feature caught us by surprise, too. We in Journals weren't
planning on it happening, but it seems like a happy accident.


I have to offer this word of
caution, though: We have not spoken to the Alerts team yet to see
if their servers can handle the additional load that comes from transmitting
photos with each Alert. If that becomes a problem, unfortunately, we'll have to
pull the feature.

I hate to rain on the parade, but I just
want to manage your expectations here.

I've been playing
with the photos in Alerts in my test Journal, and observed a few things. Check
this out:

Many of you like your photos to appear in your
Alerts. To guarantee that, make your photo the very first thing in
your Journal entry. When your photo is the very first thing in
your entry, your IM alert looks like this:

Some of you like the excerpted text of your journal entry
to appear in the alert, enticing readers with the power of your words and saving
photos for later. That's fine, too. There is a finite amount of space in each
Alert, see, so any text pushes the photo down further and
further. If you want to tease readers with words and part of a
photo, you could try an approach similar to this one:

Please note that an emailed Alert allows for
much more space than an IM Alert, so it will take much more text
to make a photo completely vanish. The screen cap below is the email version of
the above screen cap -- notice how much more space there is to work
with.

If you have any other issues or observations, please let me
know.

Journals Problems 11/09/06

We've heard that you are having a
number of different problems with Journals, as well as different sorts of
problems with
AOL.

 

The Journals folks have been checking all day for problems on our
side; there have been no major system changes since the R9 install last week,
and there aren't any database problems we're aware of. Also, the front-end
servers looked okay, but just to be safe, they bounced them (rebooted them)
anyway.

 

This doesn't mean that you're not experiencing problems, but that
it may be outside of areas that we control. For
example, there may be problems with your AOL software or Web browser, or network
problems somewhere between your machine and the Journals boxes, or in the case
of UK client authentication problems, a problem somewhere across the Atlantic.
There just doesn't seem to be a major, system-wide problem with Journals that we
can find right now.

 

Regardless, we'll keep looking, so if you're still experiencing
Journals problems, please let us know. The more detail you can provide, the better. For
example, for Comment Alert non-delivery, please links to specific entries'
comments that you didn't receive Alerts for.

 

Also, whenever you are reporting a problem, please tell
us

 

a) the browser that you are using when
you experience the problem

b) if other AOL pages are
responding normally

c) if other pages outside of AOL are
behaving normally or not.

 

Again, we apologize for any problems you are experiencing,
and are endeavoring to identify and fix them as soon as we can.

 

Weekend Assignment: Favorite Children's Books

So I got this phone call from Blogger John Scalzi just now. And you know, it was the first time I'd ever heard his voice. For those of you who are wondering, it's high and sweet, like if harp music could be squeezed out of a bottle and onto your pancakes.

Where was I? Oh. So Scalzi's DSL connection is hosed at the moment, to be restored in a few hours' time. The problem with all that is that he can't very well write this week's Weekend Assignment in his blog without an Internet connection. He did leave a phone entry for everyone, but it's not the same as proper pixels, so he called me up to ask me to deliver the message.

Since we're all here to write, it stands to reason that we love to read, too. And back before the Web, there were books. For this week's Weekend Assignment, John Scalzi wants to know: What were your favorite children's books? Tell us in your blog, and either link to the post in my comments section or over in John's audio entry. And have a great weekend!

Comments Issues, Journals Hanging 11:12 AM 11/09/06

I've received emails and comments from a
number of you, reporting that you are having trouble leaving and
receiving comments on your AOL Journals. I also understand that
the Journals product itself is loading slowly or
crashing for many of you.

I have passed your concerns onto the Journals Admin team
for further investigation. Please know that we're aware of the
problem and working on it right now.

As soon as I
hear what's going on I'll be sure and message it here in Magic Smoke. And also,
as always, thanks for letting me know about this -- I appreciate your
vigilance.

Voting Links: Cliffhanger Edition

I'd intended to make this post an apolitical roundup of voting-related links, and I'm going to.

But I thought I'd share this news with you all first: GOP officials: Rumsfeld stepping down

I checked for relevant content in Technorati, but it seems that the blogosphere's short fuse has not yet hit this powder- keg -- the story only broke ten minutes ago. Try checking in a little later to watch the pixels fly.

Now, on to a roundup of voting-related links:

Man smashes voting machine with cat paperweight. My inner anarchist gets a little thrill to read about any political machine getting smashed -- but a metal kitty cat is hardly a molotov cocktail.

The New York Times has a decent blog covering both sides of the midterm elections. Free registration is required to see Times content. Also in the Times: Blogs Take Lead in Reporting Polling Problems, With Supporting Evidence on YouTube.

CNet has its own coverage here, including galleries.

Al Poynter's rounded up roundups of election material.

If you've got an hour and a half or so to spare, the HBO special 'Hacking Democracy' -- which takes a long look at the Diebold voting machines -- is available for free in its entirety on Google video.

And, just for fun: Your favorite superhero's political affiliations. (Content warning)

What do you all think? Seen anything else interesting and voting-related online? Let me know in the comments.

Tags: Rumsfeld, voting, midterm elections, Diebold

'Borat': Cultural Teachings to America

I saw 'Borat' last night, and I tell you what: That guy's got nerves made out of diamond strands. I laughed so hard that I saw little sparklies in the corner of the screen, but now that the comedy endorphins are wearing off, I'm left to wonder -- how is he still even alive? In the movie itself, the guy dodges more titanic beatdowns than a banana-suited man on Kong Island. But there's always more behind the scenes... and now that the people he's duped are communicating online, the legal beatdowns may be coming.

Mahir Cagri bears a striking physical and aesthetic resemblance to Borat. Cagri enjoyed a massive early blast of Internet fame (lots of attention for a short time, no actual money) when his Web site hit the "dude can you believe this guy" nerve center in the brains of a billion dot-commers all at once, all of whom forwarded his site to each other and laughed like hell for weeks. There are some pretty obvious connections between Mahir and Borat, big black lip-caterpillar notwithstanding. And Mahir's pretty irked about it. He contacted 'Wired' looking for a connection to a lawyer to help him sue 'Borat's producers, and ended up giving this interview.

Newsweek contacted a number of Borat's interviewees for this story. From Newsweek:

Given the likelihood that Baron Cohen's movie will make piles of money—and the loose legalese of those release forms—someone is sure to try taking Borat to court. It's one of the few lessons in American life that Borat doesn't learn on screen: in this country, we sue. "I have a lawyer friend who said, 'Let me represent you! This is fraud!'" says Linda Stein, a New York-based sculptor whom Borat interviewed alongside Welch.

Stein herself has published a public response to her appearance in the Borat film, saying:

I don’t know what motivates Borat/Cohen to use his considerable talents to deceive and manipulate: maybe it’s his way of gaining power over the childhood sting of religious animosity or the feelings of inferiority from a woman’s beating him at Scrabble. I only know that afterward, I am left feeling confused and sad.

USA Today does a fantastic job of rounding up commentary from many of the film's participants, including a snippet of commentary from one of the three frat boys who come off looking particularly bad. Ask Metafilter has a pretty interesting ongoing discussion, purportedly started by one of the frat brothers' friends, who says:

John's terrified that everyone's going to see the movie and think he's an awful human being (which he's not). He's very distraught. He feels like he's disgraced his family, he wants to drop out of school, and feels like his life is ruined. How can I help him?

One woman lost her job as a result of Borat's antics. And, of course, many, many representatives of the real Kazakhstan are furious.

Keep in mind that the movie has not even been out in the United States for a full week, and already all this material is surfacing. You can already see deleted scenes andsome guy's Flickr photos from the movie's filming two years ago. By next week, what will have happened? Will a class-action suit against Borat's producers emerge, fueled by Web backlash? Or will Oscar buzz build? I haven't read a single negative review of this film.  

Sacha Baron Cohen recently inked a deal to make a similar film starring Bruno, his gay Austrian alter ego. Will he even be able to pull it off now that the world is wise to his tricks?

I'm not sure how to feel about 'Borat's' sudden, smashing success. I loved the movie, and I can honestly say that it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Ultimately, Cohen and crew are exposing Americans' racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of ignorance. It's an incredible indictment of a society that claims to be better than any other one wrapped in a thick layer of brilliant lowbrow comedy. 

Some serious jerks were outed in the film, and they're pretty good examples of more rotten apples in our collective barrel. But a few nice, polite folks were trampled, too. Is sending an important message worth the collateral damage?

Alerts: Now With Pictures!

You all may have noticed that two Alerts went out for this post, one of which had a bad link. It's not an AOL problem, I just had to delete and repost the entry. Now on to the original post:

In case you hadn't noticed, the Alerts
are appearing a little differently now -- with
pictures!

I'm investigating why that's happening, exactly. But in the
meantime -- what do you think? Do you like it? Let me know, and I think you know
how ...

Guest Editor 11/03/06

Hi everybody... as posted to the AOL Journals main page and the Message Boards, here are the Guest Editor's Picks for November 3rd, 2006:

Sheria blogs about her life in North Carolina at On My Mind. She's this week's Guest Editor. Check out her weekend picks:

* How Did I Get Here?

* Naked on Roller Skates

* On the Move

* Daughters of the Shadow Men

* My Life Change and Weight Loss Journey

* Kleinschmidt 2005

Check out Sheria's blog to see these picks with her unique description. Don't forget, if you want your own chance at being a Guest Editor, or if you have a blog you want us to see for a possible feature, send me an e-mail at JournalsEditor@aol.com. Please don't forget to include a link to your blog.

Have a great weekend, everyone. Thanks -- Jeff

'Lost': Don't Mistake Coincidence for Fate

'Lost' is loved by millions for
delivering three things: bottomless mysteries, high scary weirdness, and
powerful yanks on the heartstrings.

Last night's episode delivered heaping double buckets full
of all three. The smoke monster is back in fine
form, scary as hell, and seems to be an actual character. That guy with the
eyepatch and Juliet's video-assisted doubletalk dance with Jack's mind delivered
the suspicious mystery groceries for me in spades, and man, I FELT it when Eko
teared up over the photo of he and Yemi as little boys.

Don't know what I'm talking about? Not a problem: you can
read EW's solid recap of last night's
events here, or, if you've
got the bandwidth, just go and watch the first twenty minutes of
the show itself. There's no
telling how long that's going to be up, though.

But enough
about that -- on to the theories, Easter eggs, and total crap:

Theories

Here's a
'Lost' random theory
generator. Careful -- you
may stumble across some spoilers.

There's a number of
theories surrounding Eko's death:

1) Eko
was the last Tail Section survivor. Bernard doesn't
count, because he only happened to be in the tail using the bathroom when the
plane seperated.

2) The island
itself is weeding out those it deems spritually worthy of survival. It tried to
elicit a confession from Eko, and when he refused, killed him.


3) From a story perspective, Eko and Locke are essentially
the same character: both are on a spiritual quest, both have abandonment/family
issues, and both are tougher than the callous on Ted Nugent's trigger finger. If
you look at it more, both Eko and Charlie are troubled men of God who have
serious issues with their brothers. Story-wise, that's getting pretty crowded.
Rather than chase three overlapping characters around the Island, the writers
had the smoke monster bash them a little breathing room.

4)
According to Shawn Schrager of
SBL, every
'Lost'
actor with a
traffic
violation must die on the
island.

5) Perhaps the actor playing Eko wasn't super-easy to work
with.


The Smoke Monster is spawning
its own theories, too:

1) When Eko sees dismembered people
from the past around him on his sojourn through the jungle, is he hallucinating?
I think the Smoke Monster is actually presenting his memories in a physical
form. Think about it -- the Smoke Monster could have taken the form of Jack's
dad, Kate's horse, Hurley's buddy from the mental institution -- any number of
trippy hallucinations our heroes have seen alone in the jungle could well be the
Smoke Monster running psyops missions instead of full-on
attacks.

2) The Smoke Monster is the collective embodiment of
the island's dead
souls.

3) Maybe it's some sort of genie or
djinn.

Ben, Jack, and Juliet's interactions spawn more speculation, too:


1) The more I think about it, the more I think that Ben and
Juliet are siblings. Sure, they fight like jealous exes, but who hasn't had a
sibling hate their significant other? Mysister dislikes my girlfriends on a
matter of priniple, then warms to them -- or doesn't, usually. Whenever Ben
walks in on Juliet flirting with Jack, he gets pretty
cranky.

2) Neither Juliet or Ben can
be trusted. I think they're in cahoots. Think about it: the island has healed
Locke's legs and Rose's cancer. Chances are the Others know about this -- so why
would Ben still have a tumor at all? Ben's played the pathetic kitten before,
and he only does it as long as he has to to get what he wants. Juliet, man ...
you just can't trust anyone who's devious enough to pull something off like that
cue-card move. I'm starting to think that she may be the one who's really
calling the shots on the island.

The man with the eyepatch
is WAY too exciting to neglect, but right now he's a long list of endless
possibilities. We can safely assume that the glass eye found in a hatch during
Season 2 belonged to him, though.

Easter
Eggs

This episode was pretty low on actual Easter
eggs. However, the folks at Lost Easter Eggs
have put together a couple good posts showing Eko's
death, the
Patch
Man, and all of Juliet's
cue cards from her videotaped
mindbender.


Desmond may be clairvoyant on the island, but in a previous
engagement, he was actually
Jesus.

Man, Juliet and Heather Mills McCartney look a LOT
alike, don't
they?

Total Crap

When
Locke and friends emerge from the hatch to find a dead Mister Eko, they sure
don't seem too concerned about what might have actually killed him. They just
kinda sit there looking at him while Locke shuts his eyes. Don't you think at
least one of them should have charged blindly into the jungle, shouting?


That's all I've got this week, folks. As always, if you've
got more theories, eggs, or crap, leave it in the comments.

R9 Install, Alerts Server Bounce

So, your Journals should be looking a little different this morning, but working just fine. The Journals team installed Journals R9 seemingly without incident in the early morning hours here on the East Coast, USA.

Stephanie BamBam! has more to say about it here.

I do note in the comments on my last post that some of your October 31st entries are not showing up in your archive listings, though your entries are still there. The two of you reporting that are AOL UK members. Any US members having this problem?

There's another minor glitch --- the continuing absence of a 12-point font size. I'll follow up on those and let you know what I find out as soon as I hear something myself.

Also, some of you reported that your Alerts were acting a little squirrelly over the past few days. I reported the issue, the Alerts team reset their servers, and everything should be working okay now.

If something's out of whack or not working the way it should be -- or the way we think it is, please let me know in the comments.

R9 Install, Journals Outage 4-6 AM 11/2/06

The time has come, my Journals comrades. That's right -- while America sleeps, the Journals team will be installing Journals R9 to production.

Please expect a Journals outage from 4-6 AM during the install. Also, the version of Journals that you saw if you happened to use Journals Beta (as mentioned in my earlier post) should be the standard version from this day forward.

For those of you that did not happen to test Journals in Beta today, the most dramatic changes are visual and shouldn't affect you one way or another.

And please, if you have any problems, mail me or leave them in the comments.

Sleep well ...

Get That Journal Slim and Trim

As you may imagine, I get a lot of
e-mails with problems, complaints, and of course -- the occasional bit of
praise. I've noticed a common complaint from you guys out there in J-Land,
though, and it's a relatively easy fix.

Many of you have
written in to say "Help! My journal is too wide and a) I can't see my "edit
entry" buttons, or b) the text goes WAAAY over to the right and you have to
scroll back and forth to read the whole entry." Joe has covered this before, but I wanted to revisit
the topic.

You may have noticed that this only happens on
your main page, not on the individual entries themselves, or in archived
entries. Let me explain what's happening here.

J-Lander
Sassydee50 has
been kind enough to allow me to use her as an example, although this is a very
common problem. Be sure and thank her in her comments.

These
screenshots were taken a while ago, and may not reflect her journal's current
state. So here's her Journal as it appeared to me earlier this week.


If you take a look at the arrow marked
#1, you'll see that the "About Me" column
is wider than usual -- take a look at mine for comparison's sake. The Journaler
has put something in her "About Me" column that is widening it past the default
setting. The usual culprits for this sort of thing include animations, photos,
long URLs pasted in there or changes to the Journals' actual CSS that force the
column to widen. You only have a finite amount of screen space before the scroll
bar appears, so a wider "About Me" Column means less room for text to appear in
individual entries.

This can also look like absolute hell in out-of-client
browsers. Try looking at journals with widened "About Me" columns in Firefox,
Safari, etc., and you'll see what I mean.

But when you view
an entry by itself: no "About Me" column, so no problem.

Now
take a look at arrow #2, above. See there? The text
scrolls waaay off the page, and there's the scroll bar. Something's up here, and
it's not just the "About Me" column. You'l have to take my word for this if
SassyDee50 has fixed it already, but if you were to scroll down the page,you'd
see that all the entries below it have the same problem.

So,
in this case, here's what I'd do to diagnose the problem. Take that scroll bar
and push it all the way to the right. Then just scroll down the page and see
what sticks out furthest. Like this photo:

Sweet fancy Moses, that's a big photo. How big, you ask?

That's big. In this case, I'd advise resizing the photo to
no more than 550 pixels wide. Anything past that is the blog equivalent of
smoking at a gas pump.

Except it's not dangerous to other
people or their property. Please bear in mind that your blog is yours, and you
can do whatever you want with it -- I'm just offering this as a solution to
folks that want one.

Also, please be aware that there are any number of
reasons that your Journal would not display correctly, including CSS problems,
embedded tables, etc. I'll be blogging about those issues in future posts. As
always, please mail me with questions or leave them in the
comments.

Tags: AOL
Journals, tutorial, page
width, image size

R9 in Beta -- Hammer Away

New changes are afoot, my Journals
friends. The R9 release is coming up soon, and
we've already pushed it to Beta so everyone can
play around with it, get used to it, and most importantly, find
bugs BEFORE we release it.

As always, Product
Manager Stephanie
BamBam! has a fuller
update.

The most obvious changes are visual, but we've
changed the way error messages are handled and the Blog This! function a bit,
too.

Here's a
sample look at Journals R9 -- the arrow points out the buttons' new
look:

To join the fun, just place the word
"beta" after the http:// in your URL.


For example: my URL is currently

http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke

 My URL in Beta would be simply

http://beta.journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke.

I bolded the "beta" for sake of emphasis only ... please don't drive
yourselves nuts trying to do that. 

Have fun, hammer
around, and please mail me about any bugs you find, or leave 'em in the
comments.