Posty Posty

I'm busy for a couple of weeks, and everything goes and changes on me. At least it seems we finally have cuts in Blogger.

What have I done?!

Adiós old NASA headers, hello brand new Blogger template. I probably wouldn't have gotten around to this if Google didn't seem to be on a quest to prettify everything up. These new templates are pretty cool, although a lot of the background images suffer from the same issues as the ones available for the Google homepage - they're gorgeous images by themselves, but they don't fit so nicely around the content.

Still, this image of Earth is rather nice, although if I can figure out how to upload my own background image I'll probably change it to something from Cassini...

Let me know if you have any issues with functionality/readability/accessibility etc.

Post 1000

So this is my 1000th post at Space Cat Rocket Ship, the blog with the slightly erroneous four word title that no-one knows quite how to space out or hyphenate.

The popular portrayal of a blog (at least by the newspapers that have so much to fear from them) is of a soapbox from which to try and inflict your views on the world; a sea of monologues readily available to all, but completely drowning one another out. I'm sure there are some people who have important things to say in particular niches who succeed in using their blog in just that way. I'm sure many more try, wonder why no-one reads their posts, and then give up.

Because I don't see a blog as a monologue. Even the most authoritative and well known blogs are clearly dialogues - their authors, commenters and communities all blurring together.

Space Cat Rocket Ship has kind of barrelled through the intertubes like the aimless rocket referred to in the header above. I first started reading blogs when my friend Disillusioned Kid began one of his own, and I clicked a few of the links in his sidebar. When leaving comments, I decided I wanted to be able to provide a space which would act as a kind of dynamic profile page, letting people know what kind of a person was visiting. I guess that's still the ethos behind this blog even now, as most of my posts here are fuelled by the desire to share something I think is cool and articulate why, or to post something creative that I've worked on.

I know some of you are interested in generating traffic to and/or monetising your blogs, but I'm quite happy knowing that a visitor coming to this blog for any one thing is probably going to leave disappointed after a while. Because, like I said, I see this place as a two way dialogue, and I like the fact that I'm just as, if not more interested in what you guys have to say.

So thank you to all my regular and irregular commenters, whether I first saw you commenting on Pinko Feminist Hellcat, read your Sunday Scribblings, found you through Blogging Against Disablism Day, grabbed your interest with one of my little freeware games, or just happened to be the landing pad for a random link clicking. Let's have another reunion at post 2000...

Saturn, I

I seem to have hit a run of coherent captcha images on Blogger. The one above appeared when I logged in to comment on this very blog...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...

Colour me Vista. I'm back.

Right, so...

Just a quick note that my computer died, and with it my ability to blog securely and privately. On the plus side, I've written the first two parts of the upcoming serial, so you have that to look forward to when I get a new PC. Which should be some time... well, in the future...

Commenting for All

I complained enough about Blogger removing the 'other' commenting option, so I think it's only fair that I thank them for listening to their users and reimplementing it (specifically, the 'nickname' option now allows you to enter a URL).

Not that they'll read this, but still.

Blogger Eats Humble Pie

Then says: Actually, I don't like the taste, I think I'll stick to my do-what-I-say sandwich.

Right now, the only way to add a URL to your name when commenting is to sign your comment with OpenID. We apologize for removing the URL field from the comments form prematurely two weeks ago. That was a mistake on our part that came from launching OpenID support on Blogger in draft.

Ironically, our testing of OpenID, a feature that lets you use accounts from all over the web to comment on Blogger, made it appear that we were trying to force you into getting a Google Account. We regret this appearance, since we're strong supporters of OpenID and open web standards in general.

If you haven't set up OpenID, you can still link to your blog - or any webpage, for that matter - by using the standard [a] tag inside the comment form.

Because adding hurdles to commenting isn't a problem. Just expect your commenters to jump over them.

Grrr

Blogger have now changed so that commenters from other blog hosts can no longer leave a URL, something I consider to be pretty basic functionality. Coupled with their simply broken support for .gif and .png images, the only reason I'm still with Blogger at the moment is because of their huge image allowance (of which I am using only 1%) and because I'm a stubborn bastard.

Until Google reinstate the 'other' commenter option (don't hold your breath, they're Google, they don't have to listen to anyone), please feel free to sign off your comments with something like:

-Pacian
http://spacecatrocketship.blogspot.com/

Synthetic Facts and Mild Illness

It's always the same when I get a cold. First I have a ticklish throat, just a little. Then I start to get a headache. Then my stomach starts to get grouchy, often conspiring with my throat to make me nauseous. And then all the symptoms explode at once and all that is left of me is a pair of smoking slip-on shoes.

In more interesting news: the BBC, along with several leading British newspapers, recently published a piece of nonsense in an obituary which obviously resulted from using Wikipedia as a primary source. The Register wrote about it here.

As every smart-arse in the Western Hemisphere has been pointing out, Wikipedia does now have a reason to tell us that composer Ronnie Hazlehurst, at the age of 72, wrote a tune for a manufactured teen pop group. The open content encyclopaedia, as we are told ceaselessly, does not care if things are true or not.

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source.

Reliable sources such as Reuters, the BBC, the Times, the Guardian and the Independent. It seems that Wikipedia has lead to the invention of the synthetic fact.

Wow, I'm grouchy today.

Poll on Polls

How many times have you voted on this poll?

Once	5 (50%)
Twice	2 (20%)
Thrice	1 (10%)
I have lost count now	2 (20%)

Well, I voted four times, for each possible answer.

Assuming the additional votes for 'twice' and 'I have lost count now' are separate people, that leaves a grand total of 2 people, or 40% of respondents who only voted once, hopefully because they were unable to vote more times. (If they just chose not to vote more times, they weren't really getting into the spirit of things.)

I look forward to the day when general elections are resolved using a blogspot poll widget.

Polled

So my poll is now over:

What is your favourite kind of poll?

Gentle	3 (75%)
Acerbic	0 (0%)
Stern	0 (0%)
Mellifluous	1 (25%)

If I make any further polls, I will be sure to make them gentle ones. However, I am not convinced about this whole polling malarkey in general. Every time I came to my blog it gave me the chance to vote on my poll a second time. Many people on the Internet need to learn that 1 I.P. address does not equal 1 person. Whatever layabouts are beta testing blogger in draft, probably while drunk, need to learn it too.

If I do make another poll I think I will make one where I encourage everyone to vote on it loads of times. Actually...

My Head is Random

Wait, no, that should be my header is random. I now have randomised header images. (If they're not working for you, comment and let me know!)

Thanks go to here for the necessary code.

If you're interested, the images in question are:

Io and Jupiter
Original image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Martian Sunrise Sunset
Original Image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Texas A&M;/Cornell

Triton
Original Image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Rhea and Saturn
Original Image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Mimas and Saturn

Original image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Earthrise
Original Image. Image Credit: NASA.

I Blog Therefore I Am... Aren't I?

Hmm. I signed up to Technorati, assuming that the reason it doesn't show me as having any links or posts at all is because I wasn't a member. But it still claims I haven't updated in 345 days - which must be the entire age of my blog. And I notice that some bloggers I know who aren't members have up-to-date Technorati pages for their blogs.

Perhaps in posting this, Blogger will ping it properly and I will see a change...

EDIT: Nup. Support form it is. On the plus side, Space Cat Rocket Ship is not long from its first birthday!

EDITx2: Uh, but this obviously doesn't matter much anyway, since I will be shaving goats in Azerbaijan for the foreseeable future.

EDITx3: New header image - of Rhea and Saturn. Full version here. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

Update: Technorati have resolved the issue in a timely manner. Thanks!

Typepad Really Does Hate Me

I was always under the impression that Typepad was an excellent blog host, but I just keep encountering problems.

We're sorry...

Your comment has not been posted because we think it may be comment spam. We routinely monitor comment activity and block comments that exhibit patterns of abuse. We apologize if you believe you've reached this message in error.

Nous sommes désolés...

Votre commentaire n'a pas été posté car nous pensons qu'il puisse être du spam. Nous surveillons continuellement l'activité des commentaires et nous bloquons les commentaires qui nous semblent abusifs. Nous vous présentons nos excuses si vous pensez que vous avez atteint ce message par erreur.

Lo sentimos...

Su comentario no se ha publicado porque creemos que podría tratarse de spam. Monitorizamos la actividad de los comentarios de forma rutinaria para bloquear los comentarios que muestran signos de abuso. Lo sentimos si cree que ha llegado a este mensaje por error.

It seems that Typepad has banned one or more of the IP Addresses used by people with my dial-up ISP. I got this message when submitting a comment on one Typepad blog, disconnected, re-connected and then re-submitted the exact same comment - and it went through. Presumably because I had been assigned a different IP number. Then, after disconnecting and re-connecting again, I encountered the same problem on another blog.

And I have to love the way they tell me. First of all, no way to contact them and argue my case. Second of all, "We apologize if you believe you've reached this message in error." They apologise if I think it's an error, but of course, Typepad would never really make an error - I just think they have.

I can't even comment if I sign into my Typekey account.

Apparently Typepad has been having problems with spam lately. Well, whether they intended to or not, they've also put an end to their space cat 'problem'. Fuck off Typepad.

---

Update 13/12
I got a more informative and less rude comment from Typepad this time:

Your comment has not been posted because the computer you are using appears on a list of machines exploitable by spammers. You can fix the problem by consulting the following results:

sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org - http://www.spamhaus.org/query/bl?ip=[ip address deleted]

Not a spammer? You can post your comment by proving that you're a human below.

It's not 'my computer' though, it's one of many ip addresses used by people on my ISP. It seems that some of the people on my ISP are part of a botnet sending spam. This has had some of our collective ip addresses listed on CBL, which seems to be an automated means of tracking which ip addresses are used by spammers. However, as CBL themselves put it (emphasis added):

The CBL is specifically intended to be used to filter email coming into a mail server from the Internet.

In "tech-jargon", it's intended to be used on email going to your MX, NOT your user's "outbound SMTP server", nor for anything other than email.

As this is not a supported use of the CBL, please do not contact us about these problems (unless this is a static IP address that belongs to you only, in which case you should treat this is a virus/proxy infection - see: scanning your machine).

Instead, you should be contacting the provider of the service you're trying to use.

A.k.a. Typepad. The chief reason not to use this for anything other than email is, as CBL put it here, because if you have a dynamically allocated ip address (as I do), it's possible to avoid unwarranted CBL listings with emails - but not with, say, blog comments.

I am seriously, seriously annoyed at a service that would do this. I.P. banning is a notoriously useless and unfair means of controlling those who abuse the internet.

O Typepad, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me? et al.

Typepad seems to have decided it hates me all of a sudden. On the rare occasion that the comments box actually loads, it then times out when I try to submit it. I get the same thing happening when I try to comment with my old computer so it must either be a problem with Typepad or my ISP. Given that other people are clearly able to comment on the same blogs that I'm trying to, I strongly suspect that Typepad really must hate me all of a sudden. I wonder what I did?

Perhaps I should try and email some flowers to the Typepad server?

EDIT: As mysteriously as the problem began, it has now ended.

Pink Moon

So I'm finally changing from the default templates towards something a little more personal. My webcomics links have taken a bit of a beating - I'll sort them out later. I'm sure you all recognise the world in the header image - it's certainly one of my own favourite moons. If I've never blogged about it before, it's simply because no-one has been there in about 17 years.

Triton is Neptune's largest moon - the third body in the solar system discovered to be volcanically active (after Earth and Io), and the second moon (after Titan) discovered to have an atmosphere (albeit a very thin one). One of the really intriguing things about Triton (aside from the fact that it's pink) is that it's very clear that it didn't form in its present neighbourhood, but instead was captured by Neptune after they had both formed. Add to that the fact that Triton seems very similar to Pluto (taking into account that we know relatively very little about Pluto at the moment) and that Pluto's eccentric orbit crosses Neptune's, and you have two worlds that are apparently siblings somehow.

Triton is the larger of the two, by the way. Just sayin'.

It may turn out, once we know more (for example, after New Horizons reaches Pluto), that Triton was the first Kuiper Belt Object we ever got a good look at. If you're interested in getting a good look at it yourself, the full version of the image I used can be found here.

Okie-Dokey

There's a lot left to do. I want to change the template a little - I think I'll need to, actually, to get some of these nifty new features to work. I also need to do a lot of work on categories. As it is, the two main focuses of this blog fall into the categories: Stories and Space.

There doesn't seem to be any real navigation within the categories - it just lumps everything on the same page, so I'll have to try and come up with some suitable sub-categories. I've already got a category for Saturn and its moons, for example.

Finally, my NaNoWriMo blog is up:

The Skeleton God in Oil Paint

There's not really anything there yet, and I need to work on the template for that as well. Good thing I abound with energy!

I'm going to take a nap now.

Yay!

I'm well Beta Bloggered up, it would seem.

Taking the Plunge Shortly

I'm about to upgrade to Beta Blogger. If you don't hear from me again, or if this site disappears or becomes unreadable (I'm not sure what might happen), you may find me ranting and raving at:

http://spacecatrocketship.wordpress.com/

I think that Wordpress isn't as good as Beta Blogger potentially is. How the reality of them both measures up, I shall soon find out.