So, welcome to my new place. What do you like about it? What do you hate? I’m still tweaking the CSS, trying to get it to feel like home rather than just a generic WordPress blog. Suggestions are welcome, though I may not be able to implement them with my current level of techie skill.
It’s not usual, of course, to have the “welcome” post come in the midst of content already posted on a blog. But then, this isn’t a usual blog. It’s not the entire beginning of a conversation; it’s (partly) an ongoing conversation taking place in a new venue. I hope and trust that new threads and new voices will crop up as well as the place shakes down.
It’s also a particularly rich and interesting irony that I’m launching the blog after a Babylon 5 post about vocations followed and corners turned. Setting up my own place is a kind of vocation-following, even if it doesn’t leave me wired into a planet-sized machine of unimaginable power. That I’m aware of. Yet.
Noise2Signal 
Individual comments need visible permalinks, so that one can click the last comment read and find it again in the recent comments list. Also, if you get any kind of traffic, the recent comments list will need to be much longer.
Hi, abi! I expect to be mostly lurking for now, since I never watched B5 and my current schedule doesn’t permit it now – maybe over the summer. But I’ll stop by now and then.
Hurray!
If you could do a comment list, as at ML, I’d be pleased, but it’s your place, unless something really gets up my nose, I am not likely to be put out.
Ok… the Rush link is scary. If I were to grow my mustache out that much, I’d look a lot like that.
Glad to see this, and I’ll be following it in my RSS reader.
Using Opera 11.
Click on the RSS – Posts link and receive a ‘XML parsing failed’ error. Receive the same error when clicking the RSS icon in the address box.
The RSS – Comments link works as expected.
My collection of thoughts:
I love the tag-line.
RSS-posts goes to https://noise2sig.nl/feed/ which has the feed and seems to work fine.
I’ve never watched Babylon 5.
IE 8 gives the same error when clicking on the link.
When using Opera, if I click the ‘Reparse document as HTML’ link on the error page, it takes me to the expected ‘Subscribe to this feed’ page.
Re: my complaint in the first comment: Nevermind. Clicking on the date/time under the name works.
Comment numbers would be nice, for back-references.
The “recent comments” list shows up on all the pages! There are little cartoon hearts in my eyes now.
I tried to start watching “B5” on my laptop last night, but, even with my having earphones on, that was nearly drowned by what my wife was watching something on TV that apparently required the volume to be cranked up. 🙂 So I stopped. Thus, my ability to make informed comments on N2S has been delayed. Not that it’ll stop me from making uninformed comments.
Congrats on the new site!
Does it need to place cookies? It’s your site, I understand…just don’t like sites wanting to place multiple cookies on my computer.
Happy blogging! 🙂
Felicitations!
I have long held that the WWW is our modern Library of Alexandria, and as such, it is a planet-wide machine of unimaginable power. However, most users still opt to connect via analog interfaces, leveraging the visual A2D in common usage by wetware in other situations. (Some wetware use an aural A2D in combination with, or in place of, the visual.)
In light of the subconscious visual cortex processing used by wetware to transform numerous black blotches into information, Noise2Signal seems a highly appropriate name for a WWW home.
Live long and prosper.
When Ivanova found herself standing inside the big planetwide machine, didn’t she say “I’ve got to go to the bathroom”?
OK, I sorted out the XML in the RSS link. I’ll try to avoid having that happen again.
The two things I would like that I don’t have are comment numbering and comment preview.
It would be a substantial effort to get them working, which does kinda bug me. Basically, this is a hosted WordPress blog, so I’m somewhat limited in how much I can change of it. I’ll look into other themes I could use, and possibly start fiddling with the CSS templates myself if nothing else works. But it’ll be a longer process than I was prepared to engage in when I was trying to get this started.
I’ve boosted the Recent Comments widget up as far as it will go (15). Beyond that, I think I might have to do something cute and fanciful. I have a few ideas.
I’ve also removed shading from my comments. It was unnecessarily self-centered; this isn’t meant to be a place about me me me meeeeee.
Oh, yay! I’m not a TV watcher, but I do love your writing. Adding to my RSS.
Hi, Abi. I found you!
Gefeliciteerd met je nieuwe blog!
I’ve syndicated the RSS feed on Livejournal as http://syndicated.livejournal.com/noise2sig/, because that’s how I generally keep up with blog feeds. I hope this is okay with you.
You can do the comment numberings with a plug-in, I used to have it on Fear of Landing. For example, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gregs-threaded-comment-numbering/ looks good, can you add that in at WordPress.com ? I don’t know how restrictive they are or if they have all the plug-ins available.
A somewhat random offer: If you want to run it as as a WordPress blog but off the WordPress.com (which I’m thinking would give you a little bit more flexibility but I’ve not used their hosting so I don’t know), then I could host it. If you are interested, drop me an email and we can set it up for you to play with and swing the domain across later if that lets you do what you want.
Is it possible to have the date link under people’s name be the default link color rather than grey (or gray)? My strategy at ML is to click on the most recent post in a thread (from the sidebar) and then scroll up until the date link changes color, so I know i’ve clicked on (and hence read) it, then read down from there to the end. The grey date links don’t change the way default colored ones do, so this trick doesn’t work.
@Sylivia: WordPress.com doesn’t allow plugins. If I can’t find a satisfactory solution, I may move to .org, in which case I reserve the right to pick your brains about how to do things. Martin, whom I am not just* using for techs, suggested we go for the .com hosted blog, So if I move, I have to pull more of the techie weight than I had.
@Cally: I will sort that out this evening. It’s simply a CSS change. And having them link-colored would also encourage people to use them as links.
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* but I do rely on him technically more than is probably fair.
“…Martin, whom I am not just* using for techs…”
He does carpentry too?
Yay! A new blog to read. I’ve never watched Babylon 5 but I find the discussion interesting from an literary and sociological point of view….
Birth is a privileged time, when we can all breathe in new life and energy. It’s a time for toasts and good wishes, for watching miracles happen. May countless good and blessed things happen here!
Woohoo! I’ve got comment numbering up and running, and the permalink styling is now consistent.
And Dad @26: Thank you.
Hurray! Well done.
Thank you for the numbering and for the link-colored dates. Would that all my pet peeves in life were so quickly and graciously resolved!
Cally @29:
Well, would that all pet peeves were so easily dealt with!
I may tweak the style further, but the comment numbers were the thing that was really bugging me. Well, that and previews, but I don’t appear to have any options for preview that don’t involve moving the entire back end. Which is not inconceivable, but is not a matter for the immediate future.
Because, you know, I want to write more stuff.
Q. Pheever @20:
Thanks for setting up the LJ feed. It was on my “gonna hafta figure that out one of these days” lists, because I know there are people who use such things.
I use the ML feed as an effort-free double-check on the RSS-ability of posts, after the first “funny characters in a B5 post” incident. So now I can do the same with N2S.
Nice new place, Abi! Looking forward to the reading and conversations and interestingness around here. Still haven’t glommed B5 to watch, but recognize in your writings some of the few episodes I have managed to see; will enjoy these writings and musings even more when I do, and I will, get around to watching/listening to them.
It’s worth mentioning that I have more planned for this site than just Babylon 5. In particular, I’m roughing out a couple of article series on how life in the Netherlands and as an expat in general makes me think about writing/showing life in alien societies* and long-term spaceflight†. (That latter is the product of something PNH said a couple of years ago about Flevoland, the newest province of the Netherlands:”This is what a generation ship would look like!”)
Also, I’ll probably natter on about any old thing that strikes my brain. I do that.
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* tentative title of the series: Allochthonia
† probably going to be called Nieuw Batavia, on the conceit that that is the name of the ship in question.
Abi @ 33… I for one welcome any and all writing you wish to reward us with.
abi@33
If you write about life in the Netherlands I shall be just a bit jealous….we’re hoping that OH will have an overseas work opportunity in a few years…even if only for a few years…I’ll be looking forward to you observations…
Terry Karney @5: Ok… the Rush link is scary. If I were to grow my mustache out that much, I’d look a lot like that.
Rush link? I’m missing something…?
Requests: this is probably out of your control, but over at ML, I really like that I can adjust the column width.
So: nice new place ya got here. Decided you needed your own living room to invite friends over for?
me @36: Oh, that Rush. Yes, I do see the resemblance.
Is there a way to make the site header image into a clickable link that leads one back to the site homepage? I keep clicking there on comments pages and wondering why it doesn’t work the way I expect it to.
SteveG @38:
In the site as it is, no there is not. I’d love to add one in, because I do it, too. Yet another reason I’ll probably end up moving to my own WordPress hosting rather than the hosted blog I have right now.
Since my first request went so well, I’m emboldened to make another. Is it possible for some tech-savvy person to make a Greasemonkey script that works in a similar way to the one for Making Light? (I miss Preview; I hope I got that link right!)
Cally @40:
I have not Greasemonkey skills. I do have link-fixing skills, and have fixed your link.
I would advise people not to put too much time into a script like that just yet, because I’ve become exasperated enough with the lack of Preview that Martin and I are going to try to move the whole back end off of WordPress hosting and onto our own installation much sooner than originally planned.
In theory, it’ll be a nearly invisible changeover. It’s going to require some time and attention from me, though, and I’m into my second week of being really quite unwell, which has slowed me down some (note the lack of blog posts, too; I have stuff I’m drafting but I can’t think well enough to finish it).
Jam tomorrow. But a really soon tomorrow.
Boop be dah BWAH bo-bo-de bwe bop, wah wah woo, zee zat….
….oh. That kind of jam. Nevermind.
Actually the jam in question is a Through the Looking-Glass reference and is a pun based on Latin grammar.
I’m aware of the Through the Looking-Glass reference, and in the punning spirit in which jam appeared, made a further pun on jam.
Are there any other jokes you’d like to beat with dead horses?
Oh, hush, guys. The two of you would like each other a lot; give each other a chance.
This latest exchange – if it were a brew – would need some mule-ing.
Here come the ass-sorted puns, then.