Update on site design

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A few months ago, I posted some musings about the state of web design and about the potential for changing how my site looks. That prospect just got a lot more urgent, because this week, as I was preparing for the start of the new season of the Flex Schedule Watch, I found out that comments aren’t displaying properly. The line indicating how many comments there were would show up, and even the start of the bullet point for the first comment, but not the actual comments – and neither would the comment form, nor even either sidebar. For some reason, everything after the start of the first comment would be gone. I have no idea when this started, whether it has to do with the move to the new host or adding Google ads or something else, only that turning off Google’s “auto ads” feature didn’t work, updating WordPress and my theme didn’t work, and copying over relevant files from more modern WordPress themes didn’t work when they didn’t make things worse.

Since I didn’t get any help from the WordPress support forum, I may not have much choice but to update my theme. But as if to reinforce the point from my earlier post, I’m not impressed by the themes available in the WordPress gallery; it seems like most themes I can find there, or at least the most popular themes, are geared towards full-fledged web sites, often for businesses or outfits that fancy themselves professional publishing operations. There are vanishingly few themes for old-fashioned, reverse-chronological blogs like mine, and what ones exist often present their posts as a few lines of unformatted text (many of them even display shortcodes that aren’t supposed to be publicly visible in WordPress’ official theme preview) leading up to a read-more, at least by default. (The irony of course being that when I started the site, I intended for it to eventually become a full-fledged web site rather than just a host for Da Blog, but the way I use formatting and read-mores, especially for my Steven Universe posts, is at this point something I’m unwilling to sacrifice.)

The Sandbox theme that I used as the base for the theme I use now stopped being actively updated around 2009 or so, because the functions the creator saw as the “heart and soul” of the theme were integrated into the core WordPress code. The problem is that what appealed to me about the Sandbox was the ability to greatly customize the look and feel of the site with little more than some relatively simple CSS, or at least simple enough that a novice coder like me could pull it off. I don’t know what theme out there would offer that level of flexibility that would allow me to recreate the site as something even close to what it is now, and chances are I’d have to do a considerable amount of re-coding no matter what. This is especially the case since most of the customization tools that may once have required meddling in CSS now have a dedicated area in the WordPress theme manager, and it feels like there’s less support for using CSS to achieve the same result; it may well be that I find myself having to work within the constraints of whatever theme I settle upon, with less ability to customize beyond that (especially with the emphasis on mobile design that wasn’t a priority for me back c. 2008, and especially since the way I use my header image and graphically integrate it with the left sidebar is arguably decidedly nonstandard as it is). I may well end up deciding to “fix” the problem by installing something like Disqus to handle my comments, which would leave all past comments to fall into the ether, accessible only by me through the site backend – assuming I stay with WordPress at all.

For the time being, until I can bring myself to dedicate a considerable amount of time and mental energy to bear on finding a permanent solution, I’m leaving things as they are and comments will remain borked on most of the site. However, since the Flex Schedule Watch is about to start up again, and it’s not only the most (i.e., only) popular part of the site but attracts a considerable number of comments, the Sports section of the site (only) will be using a different theme until further notice, which may or may not become the base for whatever theme I end up adopting for the rest of the site. This is likely to make navigation more difficult there (as the customization I applied seemed to disappear once I turned off its being the theme for the site as a whole, aside from a bunch of duplicated elements on the left sidebar on the main site left over from my attempt to make the two-column format work for my purposes), but it should at least allow the discussion surrounding the flex schedule watch to continue. (I’ve also turned “auto ads” back on so the sports section has any ads at all.) Any advice on how to resolve the situation can be tweeted to me or left on the Flex Schedule Watch introductory post that should be up sometime on Monday.

Well, I’m learning some things about myself, at least.

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When I started my Steven Universe project back in June, I intended to have the first four seasons of the series finished within that month, allowing me to finish it within the span of Hulu’s free trial without having to actually pay for it; I even laid out a schedule of what episodes I’d watch each day. The hope was that devoting that much energy towards a project like that could help me refocus my energies on other projects I’ve been procrastinating on for the past few years. That quickly fell by the wayside once I started writing actual posts about the series on top of tweeting while I was watching, as each post usually took multiple days to complete, holding up my progress on the series, and the Season 1 recap post took an especially long time to complete. Part of the problem was that I so rarely could muster enough brainpower to work on the posts and bring them up to the standard I set for myself, to the point I started loading up on protein bars when I was about to work on a post. Basically, there was a good reason I spent so little time on posts over the last few years.

Anyway, we’re coming up on two full months since I finished Season 2, and I haven’t finished its recap post yet, though I’ve reached the point where the only work I have left involves rewatching selected episodes. Right now that post isn’t even that much longer than the Season 1 post, though it may still end up being split into two posts. I do want to get back into the swing of things if only to have a chance to catch up before the start of any sixth season. And I definitely intend to have at least one post in the next week, namely an introductory post for the new season of the SNF Flex Scheduling Watch introducing some significant changes for how it’ll work this year. But in terms of having a consistent posting schedule, to work on all the projects I hoped to or even get back to the posting frequency of years past? That prospect looks a lot darker than it looked before June.

Morgan Watches Steven Universe In-Depth: The Answer

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2018-07-02 (17)Or: Why I’m not impressed with Ruby and Sapphire’s story.

(Note: Although I’ve been spoiled about most of the plot to the series right up through A Single Pale Rose, this post attempts to approximate, as best as I can, the perspective of someone watching on January 4, 2016, the day this episode aired. To aid in maintaining this perspective in future posts any discussion of this post in places I would be privy to should avoid any events depicted or things revealed past this point. You can also read my original tweets while watching this episode.)

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Morgan Watches Steven Universe In-Depth: Too Far

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2018-07-01 (5)Or: The slow, painful, conversion of Peridot.

(Note: Although I’ve been spoiled about most of the plot to the series right up to the most recent episodes, this post attempts to approximate, as best as I can, the perspective of someone watching on October 15, 2015, the day this episode aired. To aid in maintaining this perspective in future posts any discussion of this post in places I would be privy to should avoid any events depicted or things revealed past this point. You can also read my original tweets while watching this episode.)

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Morgan Watches Steven Universe In-Depth: Nightmare Hospital

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2018-06-26 (4)Or: Why Connie Maheswaran might be the best, most fascinating love interest in the history of children’s television.

(Note: Although I’ve been spoiled about most of the plot to the series right up to the most recent episodes, this post attempts to approximate, as best as I can, the perspective of someone watching on September 10, 2015, the day this episode aired. To aid in maintaining this perspective in future posts any discussion of this post in places I would be privy to should avoid any events depicted or things revealed past this point. You can also read my original tweets while watching this episode.)

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Morgan Watches Steven Universe: Season 1

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I won’t have too much to say about the season as a whole, because I have a lot of character analysis to get to (this post is nearly seven thousand words as it is), and a few other things besides, and I already gave some of my thoughts on the season in my post about the finale.

The early part of this (half-)season, as already chronicled, frustrated me because of its refusal to address the unanswered questions Mirror Gem and Ocean Gem left behind, and even without that seven of the first eight episodes were rather milquetoast one-offs (though that’s not to say that episodes like Island Adventure, Garnet’s Universe, or Watermelon Steven were complete wastes). As the season picked up steam, though, it picked up a level of quality and complexity unseen in the first half of the season, hitting long strings of high-quality episodes that built up the plot, delivered emotional moments, developed and rounded out characters, or some combination of the above. Even Horror Club, the episode in this stretch that delivered on these things the least, gave us insight into Ronaldo and Lars. Episodes like Rose’s Scabbard, On the Run, Lion 3: Straight to Video, and Alone Together managed to transcend the limitations of being merely a “kids’ show” and addressed complex topics while giving Pearl and Amethyst emotional depth and fleshing out the background of the characters. Meanwhile, the moment of solemnity at the end of Ocean Gem was compounded in Warp Tour with the prospect of Homeworld discovering the Gems on Earth, built up further with every episode filling out the past of the Gems and their history with Homeworld, and eventually built to a crescendo with Marble Madness and the string of season-ending episodes starting with The Message.

It really is a shame that Jailbreak was such a disappointing ending that failed to live up to the build-up. While I might disagree with the message of The Test, if you accept that message there’s no doubt that the way it delivers it is well-done, but Jailbreak is so structurally deficient that I’m honestly amazed it seems to be so universally beloved. Maybe I’d feel differently if I hadn’t been spoiled about Garnet’s nature, or if I were LGBT and was just celebrating the show’s first clear depiction of an intra-gem romance that wasn’t depicted as dysfunctional and unhealthy. But as I said, Jailbreak is not a bad episode by any stretch of the imagination; if it weren’t being asked to serve so many masters and let its role as season finale take second fiddle to focusing on Garnet and fusion, or conversely if it were able to focus on Garnet without worrying about also living up to the build-up, it’d be perfectly fine, even great.

Even with that, Steven Universe has built up enough of a mythology around itself that it can remain engaging on its own momentum. There’s no single pressing question hanging over the heads of Steven Universe the show or Steven Universe the character; even if the two-parter did leave some open-ended dangling threads here and there for the show to answer later, most notably Peridot’s escape and Jasper and Lapis’ mutual imprisonment, none of them really stand out to the degree Lapis’ “don’t trust them” did. The bigger issue is that there’s no reason to expect Homeworld’s interest in our heroes to end with Peridot and Jasper, and every reason to expect even tougher forces to come. The world the show has built and the conflict it’s set up can survive most any bump in the road, and the development our characters have received and continue to receive can carry the show in the meantime. All it needs to do is keep doing what served it so well this season: keep developing the characters while fleshing out the mythology and overarching plot.

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Morgan Watches Steven Universe In-Depth: The Return/Jailbreak

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2018-06-15 (2)Or: Well, that was a bit of a letdown.

(Note: Although I’ve been spoiled about most of the plot to the series right up to the most recent episodes, this post attempts to approximate, as best as I can, the perspective of someone watching on March 12, 2015, the day these episodes aired. To aid in maintaining this perspective in future posts any discussion of this post in places I would be privy to should avoid any events depicted or things revealed past this point. You can also read my original tweets while watching The Return and Jailbreak. Also, apologies in advance for going back and forth with Jasper’s pronouns.)

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Site Migration Alert

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After ten years, I am leaving HostMonster.

The quality of HostMonster’s hosting and support seems to have declined over the years and while things have been mostly fine for me, I still decided I wasn’t satisfied with how things were going with them and wanted to find a cheaper option for hosting, given my problems with getting anywhere with the site and the resulting financial problems (I’ve been renewing my HostMonster hosting on a monthly basis for the past year, which explains some of the periods of downtime the site has had in that time). I found it much more difficult to find a suitable host than I remember it being ten years ago (especially since part of the problem with HostMonster is that it and several other of the biggest and best hosts from back then have apparently been bought out by a faceless mega-corporation), but A2 Hosting seems to be good enough for my purposes. HostMonster served this site fairly well for the past ten years, and it is my hope that A2 can continue to serve it well going forward.

Unfortunately, I procrastinated a little too long to sign up for A2 Hosting, and as a result I’m not comfortable with using their migration service (which has a lead time of 3-5 business days when my HostMonster account expires Monday or Tuesday), so as a result I’m going to be migrating the site over manually. There may be some downtime later today, possibly as long as a few hours, as I transfer everything over, and there may be more than a few hiccups along the way. (This will likely coincide with tonight’s Steven Universe-watching session.)

Somewhat relatedly, Project Wonderful is shutting down. I always liked the fact that I could count on Project Wonderful ads to be static images that didn’t bog down the browser like so many ads on so many other websites, but it sounds like the direction the Internet has taken in the past decade has taken its toll on the ability of non-intrusive (or even non-Google/Facebook) advertising to survive, and I seem to recall the amount of money I was getting from Project Wonderful ads, never particularly strong to begin with, plummeting even before my semi-recent decline in productivity. At some point over the weekend I’ll be replacing Project Wonderful ads with Google ads, and I’ll be trying my hardest to keep them as non-intrusive as the Project Wonderful ads were, but I don’t know how much I can do about that. This also means the Advertising FAQ is now a deprecated page; I’ll keep it online for historical interest but it will not be linked to from anywhere.

Morgan Watches Steven Universe In-Depth: The Test

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2018-06-11 (7)Or: Why I’m not impressed with how the Crystal Gems or Steven treat each other.

(Note: Although I’ve been spoiled about most of the plot to the series right up to the most recent episodes, this post attempts to approximate, as best as I can, the perspective of someone watching on January 22, 2015, the day this episode aired. To aid in maintaining this perspective in future posts any discussion of this post in places I would be privy to should avoid any events depicted or things revealed past this point. You can also read my original tweets while watching this episode.)

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Morgan Watches Steven Universe In-Depth: Mirror Gem/Ocean Gem

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2018-06-07 (9)Or: Suspecting the Crystal Gems.

(Note: This post was excised from the season wrap-up post I did over the weekend, and thus won’t be as consistent at maintaining the unspoiled perspective as future in-depth posts will be. This also means it was written when the episodes in question were the most recent ones I’d seen, and has been left unedited even though I’ve watched several subsequent episodes since then. It picks up from the sentence that was left in the season wrap-up. You can also read my original tweets while watching Mirror Gem and Ocean Gem.)

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