I’m really impressed with the new version of WordPress Mobile Edition. It handles both the low-end and high-end (iPhone, Android) devices cleanly and efficiently. I was using a three-tiered setup with WP-Mobile for basic phones, WPTouch for iPhone and Android devices, and of course the regular theme for desktops, but it seems simpler to drop WPTouch for now.
Category: Site Updates
Banner Update
Finally updated the blog banner to something that was actually taken in the same state! (The old one was in Hawaii.)
Twittering
I’ve been using Twitter for a couple of weeks as an additional update channel and sort of an adjunct to my blog, Speed Force (you can follow it at @SpeedForceOrg), and I’ve actually realized that yes, there is a point to it. It’s good for the random thought that only takes a sentence or two, but seems like it doesn’t quite warrant a full blog post.
So I’ve added a second account for general stuff, (i.e. not just comics & Flash) as an experiment, at @KelsonV, and I’m tying it to this blog using Alex King’s Twitter Tools. Let’s see how this works out…
Update: Okay, so I’ve got K2R announcing posts to Twitter. I’ve got Twitter feeding to Facebook using the Twitter app on Facebook. And I’m building daily digests on K2R using Twitter Tools (which is supposed to handle loops) and to LiveJournal using LoudTwitter (thanks, andrea_wot).
I looked at ping.fm per rialtus’s suggestion, but from what little I can see without signing up, it only does instant updates, and it looks like it’s push only — i.e., I’d post to ping.fm and it would go out to Twitter, LJ, Myspace, Facebook, etc., but I’d still need something else to pull blog headlines.
So, if I’ve got all this set up right:
Twitter → Facebook
Twitter → LJ Daily Digest
Twitter → K2R Daily Digest (except for stuff that came from K2R)
K2R Headlines → Twitter
K2R Headlines → Twitter → Facebook
K2R Headlines → Twitter → LJ Daily Digest
Six Years
I was just commenting on The Comic Treadmill’s 5-year anniversary, and I realized: K-Squared Ramblings turned six last month. (September 14, to be exact.) I’ve been so busy with Speed Force that I haven’t posted much here, and didn’t even notice the milestone.
Let’s run the numbers:
- 6 years and not-quite 1 month
- 1708 posts including this one
- 2,863 comments including pingbacks and replies
- 52 categories
- 9 convention reports (6 San Diego Comic Cons, 2 Wizard World LA, 1 WonderCon)
Top-viewed posts for the year:
- Comic Con! (2003) – thanks to Google Image search and the Joker and Harley Quinn pictures.
- Songs Not to Play at a Wedding – thanks people looking for recommended wedding songs and the occasional StumbleUpon round.
- Creative Computer Names – for some reason people like to search for the phrase “computer names” a lot.
- Philosophy of Time Travel – It seems like everyone who sees Donnie Darko decides to look up the book title, and they all seem to land here.
- Victimized Hero – mostly people looking for the Flash/Wonder Woman bondage cover (or just “wonder woman tied up”). Never underestimate the power of Rule 36.
Announcing SpeedForce.org!
I’ve just launched SpeedForce.org, a companion blog to the website, Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning.
Since I started adding news items to the front page of Ride the Lightning, it’s started to get a bit crowded. I thought about converting it to a Delicious feed, but then I realized it really ought to be a blog. There hasn’t been a major Flash-focused blog out there since Crimson Lightning shut down, so I figured I’d step in and fill the gap. And I could use the domain I picked up last year!
I’ll be posting Flash-related news there, including a weekly round-up of Flash comics, as well as articles that might not fit into the existing site structure, and (eventually) reviews as well. Some stuff that I would have posted here will end up on the new site. Certainly Flash news, but I may start shifting more comics-related commentary over there as well.
I’ll be refining the look and features over the next couple of weeks, and cross-linking it more into Ride the Lightning. I might keep the current theme with a few tweaks, or I might try to match Ride the Lightning, or I might build something else entirely.
So please, check it out and let me know what you think! I’m open to suggestions as to content, design, etc. And of course bug reports.
Avatars!
Since Gravatar was bought by Automattic, the service has been a lot more stable. I had already re-enabled them on this blog before WordPress 2.5 came out with built-in Gravatar* support.
Not everyone has a Gravatar, though, so many comment threads just show the default icon, over and over. Not only does this look boring, but it misses out on the whole point of using an avatar: providing an easy at-a-glance visual distinction between each author.
When I first used Gravatars on this site, I set it up to use a giant first initial as a fallback. Now, I’ve been trying out two plugins that will automatically generate avatars for people who don’t have their own:
- Wavatars builds up cartoony faces using geometric shapes. Interestingly, it’s by Shamus Young, author of the screencap-based webcomic DM of the Rings and writer of Chainmail Bikini.
- WP_Identicon sounds like a Transformers faction, but produces a geometric pattern as inspired by Don Park’s Identicon, which built a similar image based on a visitor’s IP address. The same author also has one that generates cartoon monsters, which appears to be one of the earliest implementations of this concept.
These plugins will use a Gravatar if available, or else generate an image based on the commenter’s email address (if supplied). That means each comment by the same person should use the same image. Other blogs using the same plugins at default settings will come up with the same avatar for each commenter, as well. The images are stored in a cache, so each only has to be generated once.
Once I made sure both plugins worked, I showed the results to Katie. We ended up settling on Wavatars, since faces are easier to recognize than patterns. (Though the patterns are really cool!)
You can try out the automatic avatar by leaving a (relevant, please!) comment on any post. Or you can run over to Gravatar and set up an icon of your choice!
*What’s a Gravatar? The intent is to be a Globally Recognized Avatar. You upload an image to Gravatar and associate it with your email address. Then any site with Gravatar support will be able to display your image next to your posts. Right now it’s mostly used in blog comments, but it could easily be worked into forums, wikis, etc. The Gravatar Blog mentions other uses they’ve seen people apply it to, such as plugins for Thunderbird and the Mac OS X Address Book
Note: I did notice one important drawback to the WP_Identicon plugin: it’s very inefficient at generating the images. When I first visited posts with long comment threads, like Another One Bites the Dust (174 comments) and Songs Not to Play at a Wedding (87 comments), WP_Identicon took over a minute to generate all the icons and maxed out the server’s CPU. Sure, the images are cached, so it’s only really an issue when you first install the plugin (unless you get a lot more people commenting at once than we do here), but to compare, Wavatar on an empty cache finished the same posts in just 4 seconds and 2 seconds, respectively.
Spam Switch
With the recent rash of Trackback spam, I finally bit the bullet and am now experimenting with Akismet in addition to Spam Karma. I’m not sure how well they work together, or, at this point, which plugin processes the comment first. Update: I’m trying Akismet on its own for now. Or, more precisely, Akismet as the sole second line of defense. Bad Behavior is still holding the front line.
Update (Feb 14): I’m now back to using Spam Karma 2, but with a plugin that uses Akismet as one of the score components. This seems to be working well, as SK is able to block the ridiculous stuff (100 porn links in one comment, etc.), and Akismet is able to catch the trackback spam that’s been passing SK2 by temporarily including an inbound link.
The big problem I had with Akismet was that aside from the age of the target post, the blocked comments weren’t sorted or filtered in the admin interface. I was having to look through ~30 comments a day for false positives. Spam Karma will show only the borderline comments by default, and uses a table structure that makes it easier to skim.
This way, though, I get the proverbial best of both worlds.