The last couple of days have been strange at NN. First, we were told that the site would be taken down at noon GMT. It wasn’t so some of us spent the afternoon waiting to see when it would happen, which lead to some strange conversations. The whole thing felt a bit like this:
After 2½ hours, the site finally went down, with me wondering if Richard Grant was going to be spirited away to Sb (he wasn’t. I suspect he’s going to become A Scientist instead).
The following morning, I got up bright and shiny, to discover that … I couldn’t log in. And I wasn’t the only one. I had another nature account, so I was using that to wander the blogs like a wraith sucking sustenance from other blogs, and bumping into other members of the Damned, using their ghost accounts to keep at least a part of their essence attached to the Nature Network blogs.
During the course of this, I somehow managed to do something remarkable. Having two accounts, both recognised by Nature Network, means that one account could befriend the other. So naturally, I did that (as well as befriending some other wraiths). But then somehow, I managed to do this:
My contacts, yesterday
Not only had I befriended the “other” me (as well as the other Richard), I also befriended myself – the same account. This makes me so proud, but is probably going to create the sort of problem that rivals the LHC for universe-destroying capabilities. I hope so, anyway: at least I would be memorable.
I keep trying to comment, but the server times out. Maybe this one will make it through.
“Please sign in to add your comment”.
[clicks “sign in” button]
“Thanks for signing in, Richard Wintle.”
[Thinks – I didn’t sign in. I just clicked a “sign in” button.]
This is all too meta for me. But I do like the idea of befriending yourself, as well as your other self. I have encountered someone on Flickr who at one time had at least half a dozen aliases, all with the same screen name. Maybe you should add a few more on NN?
Welcome to the other side, Bob! And thanks for the cartoon – it made my (otherwise very busy) Thursday afternoon. Cookie anyone?
Richard – I’ve noted the “meta” issue you’ve flagged up above. Thanks.
COOKIE!!!
I’m going grocery shopping now. I foresee me coming home with only COOOKIIEESSSS!
It got through, Ken.
Ian Mulvany explained some of the inside workings to me. it all sounds horribly complicated: they have several databases talking to each other. I was getting the same thing Richard was getting, I suspect it’s something to do with multiple accounts and the utter confusion I was having. Cookies may be involved too.
My cookies are enabled, thankyewverymuch.
I’m really, really tempted to try posting an “excessively long or offensively phrased entry”, just to see what happens.
Ah, I see that it made it. The lag time was just long enough that it was beyond my normal, excessively short attention span.
Yes, database migration of any kind can be a b*tch. Been there, done that. Never want to do it again.
I thought they were mince pies! I feel robbed 🙁
I’ve spent most of the past couple of days struggling with similar issues elsewhere so I have missed all the
wrathwraithness. What’s the URL of the alternative Bob’s blog, Bob?Ok, old-fashioned strikeouts don’t work…..
MT5 should fix that. Naturally.
Two-man Bob!
Bold, italics and
work.
Hyperlinks work, too.
Underline (both by HTML and by CSS) doesn’t work.
Strikethroughs/line-throughs do not work in any way, whether by HTML, by CSS or by the new ‘del’ tags…
Sigh!
Bummer: sub- and super-scripts don’t work either.
I hope they’re looking at this stuff, but there are other things that need sorting too.
I thought I had found the strikethrough via RPG’s hairy story… (the <strike> tag)
Sadly, it doesn’t seem to work for comments! 🙁
This is the reply I got from the MT forum: This provides the solution to the problem of not being able to use all the HTML tags in the comments. Will the overlords kindly look into this?
We’re not allowed to go into Preferences, unfortunately: the techs restricted what we could do, I guess to reduce their headaches. Hopefully in the near future they’ll let us customize like this.
I know, Bob. I was kinda hoping that the said ‘techs’ would glance at my message and do the needful… Sigh!
Hi Bob and Kausik – thanks for highlighting the solution to the formatting issues. We’ll get onto it tomorrow.
Why, thank you, Lou! That will be great! 🙂