Morgan Wick

Important Webcomic Post Update

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I was going to post on Robert Howard’s Tangents on Tuesday, but its current host is shutting down, and Howard’s plans to move it to an independent host were not far enough along yet for him to implement. So it is currently being hosted on LiveJournal and is archivefree. That last bit, plus my reluctance to link to a temporary site, means you get something completely different (as in, an actual webcomic) on Tuesday.

I will make a post on Tangents when it moves to a permanent host in “a couple of weeks”, though I may have a week delay to actually read the archives and write the post. I have at least three comics which I’ve read enough of to make it through any delays, plus a second post on Order of the Stick, so I’m good through August 19. Now I need to get to actually writing them. Throw in another webcomic blog, a fourth comic I have some things to say about even though I’ve actually read none of it, and a third OOTS post and I’m good through September 9. I can probably throw together something on Penny Arcade or User Friendly if I need to after that.

In other blog news, I made a change to this week’s Sports Watcher upon being reminded of something.

The first in a series of Me Go Crazy posts.

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I’m trying to write a post and all the yakking in the library becomes absolutely insane. Well, at least, it’s driving me absolutely insane. And I complain about it, and I get handed a “code of conduct” flyer because of complaints about, among other things, me talking loud. I’m showing my frustration in a number of ways but talking loud isn’t one of them! Where’s the person (other than me) to tell, among others, the librarians to shut up?

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 7/19-20 (UPDATED)

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All times PDT.

Saurday
11:30-1 PM: AVP Crocs Tour, AVP Crocs Slam Brooklyn, men’s final (NBC). Yes, despite the British Open we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel this week.

1-4 PM: MLB Baseball, regional action (FOX). Tune in immediately upon the end of volleyball. Because it didn’t end in a tie I originally wasn’t going to comment on the All-Star Game, until people on TV started commenting on it anyway. The “this time it counts” era was supposed to prevent this sort of thing, and it’s obvious that it didn’t. Now there’s a lot of hand-wringing about adding more pitchers to the roster, but how about tackling the problem at its source? Here are the problems with the ASG and their sources:

  • The players and managers treat it like an exhibition, instead of as a source of pride for their league. “This time it counts” was supposed to fix that problem, and strangely, it’s being credited for fixing that problem. We may be able to attribute to “this time it counts” the fact we could have gone into the 16th whereas 2002 ended after 12, and the managers were prepared to use position players to pitch instead of ending the game in a tie.
  • The managers feel obligated to use every player that’s willing, to mollify them but even more to mollify their fans. In the old days, it wasn’t uncommon for position players to play the whole game.
  • Teams’ concerns about overworking pitchers.
  • The rise of middle relievers and closers. Have a look at the 1968 All Star Game, the year before saves became an official stat. You see the same pitching carousel we see now, with a few more multi-inning pitchers – but every last pitcher was a starter, in an age where it was rare for pitchers to fail to go seven innings. The 1967 All-Star Game went 15 innings with no problem; Catfish Hunter pitched the final five innings for the AL (and ultimately lost), a feat that seems inconceivable today. Now teams protect pitchers more and gobble up large chunks of their rosters with relievers. Now pitching is not a position where players are interchangable at will – replacement pitchers have specific roles in theory – and thus is not a position well suited for all-star games. The NBA All-Star Game may well be the best all-star game, followed by the NHL, because their games actually feel like real games, unusually strong offense notwithstanding.

I’m not sure if anything can be done about any of that at this point, but if anything can, it’s worth thinking about.

6:30-9:30 PM: NASCAR Nationwide Series racing, Gateway (ESPN2). Because I rarely get a chance to put up a Nationwide Series race and there’s no Sprint Cup action this week.

UPDATED 7/19: ALTERNATE: 6-9 PM: Ultimate Fighting Championship, Fight Night (Spike TV). Not sure how highly to rate this since it’s not what would normally be considered a PPV, but I don’t want it to go unmentioned. Live on both coasts, so 9-12 on the East Coast.

Sunday
5-10:30 AM: PGA Golf, British Open, final round (ABC). If there’s a golf tournament, and Tiger isn’t playing in it, does it make a sound?

10:30-1 PM: IndyCar Racing, Honda Grand Prix at Mid-Ohio (ABC). Last year ratings were inflated by the British Open. Look for history to repeat itself.

12-2 PM: LPGA Golf, State Farm Classic, final round (ESPN2). Girl Power Sunday again!

2-4 PM: US Open Series, Bank of the West Classic, women’s singles final (ESPN2). Girl Power Sunday and Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel Weekend again!

6-8 PM: The ESPY Awards (ESPN). Because there can exist nothing for which there is not an awards show of some kind. And no network should have to go without an awards show.

Rant. Rant. Rant.

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Every day I walk down here to the library because it’s the nearest place where I can use the Internet for any lengthy period of time.

There are two places where I can plug in my laptop, and one of them is merely a corner that happens to have a table near some plugs. Generally I try to avoid that area because it’s near the picture and other kids’ books and the kids are often not old enough to know to shut up.

Sometimes I’m driven to that corner anyway. Groups come by and start yakking. People are loud at the library front desk. Cell phones go off. Today one of the reserved computers had some sort of music playing loud enough to hear. Sometimes people cough or otherwise show their illnesses.

Isn’t the library supposed to be a place where people are quiet?

(The sometimes inconsistent at inopportune times Internet connection doesn’t help either.)

Hmm. Here’s another feature I’m stumbling on.

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Well, it turns out that part of the reason the StumbleUpon Demo draws from such a small pool of sites is because, once the Toolbar is installed, it requires me to select several interests before I can do any stumbling.

So either I select a long list of “interests” that don’t interest me at all, or the Random Internet Discovery turns out not to be so “random” after all.

I’ll think this over over the weekend.

Shit.

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Can you believe I had my entire announcement of Truth Court all written up and ready to go, and I click to have my post get published, and my connection HAS to drop at THAT INSTANT, and it turns out that Blogger NOT ONCE saved a copy of my post, and I had to be a dumbass and not give it a current saved draft – WHY did my brain choose THAT MOMENT to brainfart on me?@ lj !!!!!!!!!

If it doesn’t come up in the next few moments I’m waiting until next Thursday to announce Truth Court, if I don’t wait a few months, if I end up doing it ever.
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(And this isn’t just a loss for me. This could end up being a loss for all of America. Because of a stupid screwy library Internet connection and how badly Blogger’s autosave function sometimes deals with not having an Internet connection anymore. Shiiiiiit.)

Hey, it’s a part of the site not named Sandsday getting updated!

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Street Sign Gallery is updated with a new batch of signs, all in the Seattle area. Redmond, Bellevue, and Tukwila (okay, okay, Shoreline and the University of Washington too) all get their moments in the sun, as well as a couple new Seattle pictures.

I mentioned when I started the project that I didn’t know if anyone else was doing this. Well, as it turns out, I did not know the terminology at all. Apparently the standard sign is known as a street blade, and one Samuel Klein has kept up a Street Blade Gallery on his (otherwise rather diverse) blog. Both of us are on the West Coast, so most of our signs are from around here, but both of us are interested in seeing what blades you have around your community. In my case, you can send it to mwmailsea at yahoo dot com.

Warning, Around the Horn geekery ahead:

I think we’re all losers in the mustache contest between Cowlishaw and Blackistone. Cowlishaw should never have shaved the goatee because he really does look like a porn star, while Blackistone just looked ridiculous yesterday, especially with those coke-bottle glasses.

The Drinking Game is updated to reflect the fact Michael Smith has not been on the show in ages and the new “Deal… (long pause) …or no deal?” kick Reali has picked up recently (and which should have been on the list a long time ago).

Random Internet Discovery of the Week

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Okay, I need to actually install the Stumbleupon Toolbar now. Once again, the first time I looked for a Random Internet Discovery I was taken to last week’s RID. Then I was taken to a page that I had encountered the first time I tried to write a RID, but which I was too tired (and worn out from fighting for an Internet connection) to write about. So it looks like the demo page just cycles through a small number of select pages.

I still don’t have much to say about it, in part because I don’t know how to interpret it, so I’ll just keep whining.

Part of the reason I didn’t install the actual Stumbleupon Toolbar is that it is influenced by what you rave and what you downgrade. I want my Random Internet Discoveries to be random internet discoveries, so I may be tempted not to register my opinions. But if I keep getting sites that don’t affect/effect my sensibilities at all, I may have to change my tune on that front.

So. I’m getting the Toolbar on my computer. Eventually. When I have a moment when I can close my IE windows. Sometime before next Wednesday.

Truth Court is being announced tomorrow, but the last time I mentioned it I promised something in the title that is looking more and more distant.

Whoops, I forgot to include a title for this post!

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized golem considerations.)

Skip this post if you’re not any more familiar with OOTS than what I wrote in my initial post, for both spoilers and geekiness.

There are only two reasons I’m writing this post; if either weren’t in place, I wouldn’t write it. The first is that the forums are down as Giant in the Playground moves to a new server. The second is Celia’s line in the third panel.

Two strips ago, a discussion broke out in the GiantITP.com forums over whether or not Celia knew Belkar was in the cart or not. The general consensus, and my personal opinion, was that she did. Belkar’s last line – “If we make any noise, the magical Cart Fairy might not take us on the enchanted trip to Happy Fun Sunshine Land” – was interpreted as meaning “Celia wants us on our best behavior”, not “Celia doesn’t know we’re here”. In fact I think some people hadn’t even considered that Celia might not know Belkar was in there, despite it being consistent with her sometimes-ditzy and naive personality and hatred of Belkar.

The main reason was that Belkar appears to be so sick it’s hard to believe he’d be able to make it into the cart under his own power. More to the point, so far as the three of them know, Belkar still has to stay within the bounds of the Mark of Justice, which means he still has to stay within a mile of Roy’s body (and in that context, the sign in 573’s penultimate panel, “Greysky City one mile”, takes on a certain importance in hindsight). Also, Celia mentions finding “clerics”, which are only strictly necessary (so far as they are concerned) for curing Belkar (although raising Roy would require a cleric of some sort; so far as they know, they can conceivably cure Belkar without a cleric). Keep in mind the original point of the expedition was to find someone capable of contacting the other half of the Order, and only secondarily to bring Roy back to life.

Well, now we know that Celia didn’t know Belkar was there after all.

I’m saying this now so I can plausibly avoid the self-flaggelation the rest of the forums will undergo once they come back up. And if this sounds weak, well, it’s partly because I don’t have the forums to look up what the strongest reasons really were. Not that I would want to go there, of course.