Morgan Wick

Still here, just getting the next 50+ years of my life set up

by

I feel like apologising to myself for not updating Da Blog more often. The comic strip, of course, has been updating every day come hell or high water, but it hasn’t grown at all. Not only do I not have any regular readers who don’t click on a link to arrive, but the ones I do have, who click on links? Most of them don’t look at any other strips. (Maybe that’s typical, and I just feel it more acutely because my strip is so small. I don’t know.)

There has been quite a bit going on in my life, though nothing earth-shaking. I haven’t been able to get any real job on-campus, which is a little distressing when you consider that, from what I’ve been told, I won’t be eligible for federal work-study funds for an on-campus job unless I get one by the end of this year. I’m sort of cursing myself for not being more aggressive and less procrastinating at the beginning of the year. Another part of the problem is that I’m not eligible for many if not most of the jobs I see listed on the primary on-campus job listing service, sometimes because I don’t have prerequisite courses, sometimes because I don’t have a driver’s licence (my own contribution to slowing global warming and probably the one most people should take instead of just getting a car that pollutes less, assuming they have good mass transit), sometimes because I don’t have “experience” even if I would do well once I had the job, and sometimes because I’m not a freak of a student. (And sometimes in the past I would disqualify myself because my interpersonal skills – not to mention my handwriting – are… iffy, to understate tremendously. Then there are the two jobs I applied for, was told I would be contacted to set up an interview, and never heard from again.) I’m a little skeered that my life is going to devolve into me becoming the stereotypical geek living in his parents’ basement with no job and spending his entire life playing video games and surfing the net.

I like to think I’m too smart for that, which brings me to my other point: my quest to determine what I will spend my college experience studying. I applied for college with a history major, because that was the academic field I already had the most experience and interest in. But now I’m interested in everything but history. Here’s a list – possibly incomplete – of other majors I’m considering or have considered: economics, English (Creative Writing), psychology, communication (or journalism or a variant), public affairs, math, anthropology, sociology, business economics, finance, and computer science. (This last one I started considering after how quickly I picked up CSS and PHP on my own time for my web site and comic strip respectively, which gives me a pretty spiffy-looking web site for an amateur effort. Compare the home page – link at top right of Da Blog’s sidebar – with my intentionally-retro-looking street sign gallery. In fact, at some point I need to try converting my sidebar to PHP so it can be dynamically updated.) As I write this I just got done meeting with an advisor who suggested “liberal studies” – an anti-major that can be oversimplified to “take whatever you want”.

Oh, and my computer has fallen all to pieces again. This happened rather suddenly over the weekend, and wasn’t even really caused by me banging on my laptop this time. First the sound card failed for no reason, and now all of a sudden the computer won’t boot all the way and the CD-ROM drive isn’t working so I can’t go into the Windows Recovery Console and fix what I figure is probably a comparatively minor problem.

I’m still hoping to get someone to help on writing up movies for my 100 Greatest Movies Project, although between Da Blog’s sluggish readership and the fact I don’t intend to pay anyone for it, I’m skeptical about the prospects of getting anyone anytime soon. I’m actually starting to consider a system where I would start putting up the list first and the write-ups later, except for the ones I think are perfectly ready as-is. But even if you aren’t up for the challenge, if you can lead me to someone who is I would greatly appreciate it.

So that’s basically it, although I would like to see if you have any advice. Look over what I already have on Da Blog and the web site, as well as the list of majors above, and tell me if anything leaps out at you.

Okay, I’m pissed now.

by

Can I rant for a bit on Microsoft? (Which will probably cause a flock of nerds to come here and follow suit on the basis of that phrase alone, but whatever.)

Occasionally Windows will download updates, and some of these will require a reboot. Most of the time, I’m told that I have updates, I can start the process of installing them, and when they’re installed I’m told I have to reboot to complete the process. Often I’m nagged on this point every five to ten minutes or so. However, when the updates are more critical than critical, Windows downloads and installs it itself, then just up and spontaneously reboots at 3 AM with no warning. (No word if the phone rings at Hillary Clinton’s house when that happens.)

Now, I routinely leave my computer running for days, weeks, even months on end, often with several files open. It’s not a big deal that my computer will spontaneously reboot with Office programs, since they have AutoRecover (although Publisher 2003’s is iffy at best), but Notepad files are not so lucky. And while many of you might say that it’s unwise to leave my computer running for so long with files open and unsaved for so long, that doesn’t justify Microsoft discriminating against people like me in such a… pissing-off manner. Especially when laptops encourage the practice by allowing you to simply close them instead of actually shutting down. I don’t like finding myself comparing Microsoft to someone hacking into my system and controlling it from afar, and I doubt Microsoft does either.

Windows’ “I’m sorry” message after rebooting reads as follows: “Windows recently downloaded and installed an automatic security update to help protect your computer. This update required an automatic restart of your computer.” If this update is so important, shouldn’t I get some sort of warning that my computer is going to reboot itself without an opportunity to save my files? I don’t even have a clue about it unless I happen to catch the little “downloading updates” indicator appear in the systray, and then don’t dismiss it since nothing else comes of it. Shouldn’t I at least get a notification when the installation is complete telling me my computer is going to reboot at 3 AM? One that isn’t tucked underneath the arrow to open the whole systray, but that actually pops up while I’m working? I understand that some people like me might decide to try to push back the reboot, but can’t you just tell them that the computer is going to reboot and to start saving files? Better yet, be as obnoxious about it as for your less critical updates?

(I’m actually okay with Windows and Office otherwise. I’m morally opposed to monopolies on principle, but I’ve used Windows for years and I’m not likely to gleefully switch to Mac anytime soon, and I doubt many Office imitators have as many features as Office.)

The 2008 Mid-Major Conference

by

Refer to this post if you don’t know what this is about or to catch up on the rules.

This year, four conferences produced multiple bids to the NCAA Tournament: the MWC, WCC, A-10, and Sun Belt. These conferences are guaranteed one spot each in the Mid-Major Conference.

Four teams reached the Sweet 16, all from different conferences. Of these, Davidson and Memphis did not come from a multi-bid conference, while Western Kentucky and Xavier did. From the Mountain West Conference, one team won its first round game while the other did not; from the West Coast Conference, one team won its first round game while the other two did not.

This leaves two spots in the MMC to be determined by my discretion, with no conference restrictions.

Without further ado, the eight members of the 2008 Mid-Major Conference:

Xavier (Atlantic 10)
Western Kentucky (Sun Belt Conference)
Davidson (Southern Conference)
Memphis (Conference USA)
UNLV (Mountain West Conference)
San Diego (West Coast Conference)
Butler (Horizon League)
Drake (Missouri Valley Conference)
Honorable Mentions: Illinois State, Kent State, Akron

The NIT didn’t really produce much in the way of MMC contenders – the only teams to make the second round from conferences without automatic qualifying procedures were Illinois State, Southern Illinois, Creighton, and Akron. All lost. That’s barely further than any remaining team in the NCAA tournament, all but guaranteeing Butler a spot – but Drake bowed out in the first round of the NCAAs to Western Kentucky. Those NIT teams lost in a round one-fourth the size of the round Drake lost in. After such a strong performance all season, Drake very easily could have been passed over within its own conference. But the only other mid-major team to win in the first round was Siena, which falls under the Northwestern State rule (one lucky win doesn’t get you an MMC ticket). George Mason or Virginia Commonwealth would have made the honorable mention list if VCU wasn’t beaten by another mid-major (UAB) in the NIT first round or if Mason was as strong an at-large contender as Drake.

Kent State came the closest to knocking off Drake. Love it or hate it, teams that make long NIT runs can only compete for MMC bids with teams that were better in the conference tournament if they were robbed of an NCAA bid. Unlike Appalachian “upset-Michigan” State last year, Akron was nowhere near NCAA territory and Illinois was a bubble team when Drake was a lock. And since Drake and Kent State had the same level of tournament success, and Drake was a 5 seed to Kent State’s 9 seed, Drake pretty much has to get the nod (even though you could penalize it for losing to a 12 seed to KSU’s 8 seed, but even then Drake lost close while UNLV blew out Kent State).

"Earth Hour" figures to be a complete fiasco

by

First, there’s the fact that I only just heard about it… and it’s tonight (link courtesy Awful Announcing). That’s especially bad when you consider this is the second year they’re doing this.

Then there’s the fact that it runs right up against the NCAAs in pretty much all the United States, prompting AA to ask, “could they…have picked a worse time of the year to decide to do this?” Um, no… I’m pretty sure Super Bowl Sunday would have been far worse. Still, does the WWF have anyone who lives in the United States? Who would have at least an idea of when the games are on?

Given the subject matter of the current strips, this is a little interesting…

by

Okay, this is huge news. No, HUGE.

Over the past 24 hours, I have received two hundred and seventeen visitors. That is more than my counter had registered in the entire previous history of Sandsday.

What happened? I’m not 100% certain, and I’m trying to learn details. Apparently someone added strip number 59 to StumbleUpon and people have been directed to the site against their will.

(I personally would have preferred if they had “stumbled upon” the front page, but oh well.)

If you happen to have discovered the site from StumbleUpon, I encourage you to check out (and rate, for that matter) the rest of the site. There’s a streetsign gallery, a definitive greatest movies list you can help get off the ground, and more. And don’t forget to give me your feedback on the strip from the Feedback link or by e-mailing me at mwmailsea at blogspot dot com.

Oh, and whether you liked or disliked that particular strip, I’d advise you to come back tomorrow. I’ll have a little easter egg for you in the day’s strip…

A spot of advice for anyone who wants to run a website

by

One of my biggest pet peeves is when the proprietor of a site that I enjoy and check regularly for updates falls off the face of the earth. Usually they give the half-assed explanation that “My schedule has gotten too busy to keep updating.”

Fine.

But when you create a web site, and you give your audience an expectation that you are going to keep adding new, interesting content, you are set for life. If you’re going to stop updating, take down everything that gives the impression you’re going to keep updating except your update records, and even there make clear that you’ve stopped updating quite so regularly. If you announce a scaled-down regular update schedule, hold yourself to it, because the longer the time between updates, the bigger penalty there is for missing it. A daily update schedule tolerates several days’ worth of missed updates. A weekly update schedule can drop off for a week, maybe two. A monthly update schedule causes problems with the first missed month, and there is no excuse for a missed update on a yearly schedule.

Even if you stop completely, you can’t stop completely, especially if you’ve been linked to from elsewhere on the Internet at sites whose proprietors are probably also too lazy to keep their links up to date, and especially if the information you provide is potentially volatile and liable to change with the news. If something goes wrong, or if your host changes everything, or if (as with Freehostia even on their free service) you have to keep renewing your website’s existence, you owe it to your readers that everything goes off without a hitch. Even if your site is fairly automated.

Especially if your website is fairly automated.

I just signed up for buzzComix, which ranks webcomics into a “top 100” based on people’s votes. The primary means of voting, as near as I can tell, is following links from the sites themselves. You have to open up a secondary panel, from a tiny button, which you can still be convinced doesn’t exist if it doesn’t pop up right away or at all, to vote from within buzzComix itself. This means buzzComix pretty much becomes a contest between those sites that are interested in flooding it with votes. Of course, that would probably happen anyway, but bCx doesn’t seem particularly interested in stemming that tide.

Or, in fact, with anything anymore. There are signs of abandonment everywhere – both from the proprietors and from the users. There’s a thread on the bCx forums calling for a fix for “vote/rank images”, referring to some function that is no longer working and whose images have been taken down. The thread dates to March 2006. It’s possible this was an intentional permanent removal, but apparently no one decided to send the word: after the initial post, the original poster bumps it about twice a month as the only posts, eventually making fun of itself by labeling the bumps as “monthly/semi-monthly bump”. After seven and a half months, the original poster laments the lack of “visible means of support”, followed – after ten months! – by the first post from someone that’s not the original poster, seconding the lament. That’s followed by several other calls for the problem to be fixed (including a note that the function in question is “kind of standard” on other similar sites, despite me not knowing what it is even after checking buzzComix’ main competitor, a problem I have with that site since it provides no help whatsoever, not that bCx’s FAQ is much better) and a recognition (by June) that the site is abandoned.

The kicker: Were it not for a recent onslaught of spam, this thread – last post July 2007 – would be very near the top of the bug report forum. That’s before we get into the current news post, which wishes us a “happy summer“… in April 2007. The current news post is nearly a year old!

What’s more, bCx’s ads routinely advertise the ability to advertise on them… indicative of no one actually taking them up on their offer. A look at their ad calendar shows that many of the same comics have spots in the ad rotation day after day. This is especially distressing when you consider that the ads advertising the ads claim that you can buy an ad “for only $1”. You have to buy them in multiples of 5, and most webcomic artists aren’t making money off their webcomics and have to have a life too, but… dude. That’s a bargain.

If only I could be certain that bCx is still “rapidly growing” and still gets “over 10,000 unique visits a day with over 30,000 page views a day” that they claim. That would essentially be buying me an easy onslaught of traffic for a day. If you read today’s strip you’d know why. Instead, I plunge into bCx rather tentatively, wondering if anyone is still listening…

I’d ask you to vote for me here, both for bCx and for Top Web Comics (which doesn’t look to be quite as abandoned as bCx, in part because it doesn’t have much forum support or news at all, but still seems to be running mostly on autopilot), but I think you should see the strip first and decide for yourselves. If you like it, vote for it using the new links on the strip page itself. If you don’t like it, click the Feedback link and let me know why or e-mail me with your reasons why. Heck, even if you like it, let me know what you think of it and how I can improve. (I’d advise you to read some of the strips before this one first, though.)

Might the Greatest Movies be determined differently?

by

I’m considering making a change to my 100 Greatest Movies Project. You may recall that the Greatest Movies Project is an attempt to build the consensus list of 100 Greatest Movies from all the lists that have come before.

Except it’s not.

Simply put, the situation at the start of the list – in the realm of the 90s – is such that a film can make the list with only three, or even two, lists mentioning it. That’s hardly “consensus”. I’ve been considering a 1, 5, or 10 point bonus to the standard Borda count for each list a film appears on, which would also allow me to use parts of lists that go beyond 100, like imdB.

On the other hand, keep this in mind. Under the current system, a film getting rankings of 20, 50 and 80 gets 81, 51 and 21 points, which equals 153 points. That’s the same amount of points as a film getting a 40 and a 9. So one film is beloved by more people but the other has more devoted fans. One would think those would be equivalent, right? Or, even, the film with the more devoted fans should be deserving of a higher spot?

So perhaps I should reconsider looking into the other voting systems I mentioned in my very first post on the Greatest Movies Project, all of which have their various positive aspects. Many of them would probably be more work for me, but they might produce better lists. Of course “better” is in the eye of the beholder… What are your thoughts?

Oh, and I just want to remind you that you can be part of the 100 Greatest Movies Project and get your name in lights! If you want to write about the Greatest Movies for the Project, comment on this post or e-mail me at mwmailsea at yahoo dot com.