Category: Hey y’all, watch this!

News about CF specifically, or about Mike or Joe. Another catchall category, really

GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

Publick Notice

Posted on      by      4 Comments

Since the native WP posting editor has begun to suck so horribly, and my reliable third-party standby for years, Ecto, doesn’t work at all with the new/old iMac’s decrepit operating system, I’ve been casting desperately about for months now in search of another blog-posting alternative that will run on this infernal machine. This casting about led me to download MarsEdit for a test run to see how it might suit.

I’m thrilled to find that it does indeed support custom macros, which is one of the primary things I loved about Ecto and have been missing most. Unfortunately, after a 14 day trial run I’m required to buy the damned software at a hefty 60 bucks, which after having shelled out 39.99 for Ecto already sticks in my craw pretty badly. If I understand things correctly, I can still use ME to write posts and store them locally, I just can’t actually upload ’em to the ol’ websty without purchasing a license first.

We’ll see what transpires on all that hoo-ha, I reckon, but for the moment I gotta say I’m thoroughly loving MarsEdit. In addition to downloading all my posts, categories, and pages from WP on CF’s server, it also grabbed all the media files I’ve embedded in past posts as well, something Ecto didn’t do. That means I’ll have a complete archive of everything but the actual database files ready to hand in case those Russian hackers get frisky and make another run at Ye Humble Blogge again.

Lots of new-to-me features with this ME thing too, some of which look likely to be right handy. Maybe I need to consider holding another fundraiser hereabouts when my 14-day trial period is about to expire…

Update!  Aw yeah, this thing rocks for sure. SOOOO much better than that never-to-be-sufficiently-damned WP posting editor. Need to find some kind of YT embed next, see how that goes. Stand by…

KNOCKED OUT update! Man oh MAN, is this MarsEdit software amazing! Had I known about it before tonight, I woulda switched off from Ecto years ago.

See, in both the Ecto and ME main window, the main window shows a list of previous posts up top, below which is a preview of whatever post you click on and highlight. Well sir, I just learned that, with ME, you can download your blog’s theme template to be used for the preview. With Ecto, you could customize your preview template, but it was a right pain in the arse to do, so I never did bother with it.

This handy-dandy feature could well mitigate the need for me to hold off doing all the proofreading and editing until after the post has gone live, which is a good thing. Screen grab:

CF ME grab

Brilliant, no? Turns out, MarsEdit’s built-in Upload Utility allows you to resize the image, reformat it, &c before you even upload it, bypassing the need to further fool around as is required by the infernal WP editor. Yeah, it’s definitely looking more and more as if I need to come up with the sixty simoleons for this little gem.

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A real find

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So I’ve found my new nomenclature for the criminal organization masquerading as a political party, the DemonRats, which I swiped from a comment I ran across someplace or other, can’t recall where:

D卐M☭CRAT.

Says it all, don’tcha think?

Upon finding the thing, I immediately tried command-C to copy, not really expecting it to transfer correctly. But lo, when I command-P’ed it into a plain-text doc, it worked like I charm. Don’t know what the hex code might be for the swastika/hammer and sickle characters, and I don’t care either; I love it! Expect to see a lot more of this one from here on out, y’all.

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Publick Notice

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Another step along the long, tortuous road to dumping PayPal: you can now arrange a recurring monthly donation, at the low, low bargain-basement (do they still have those?) price of only a paltry 7 simoleons per month, through Stripe.

I began rasslin’ with Stripe a while back, eventually giving up when I couldn’t find the verification-code text messages they had allegedly sent to my phone. Turns out, the third-party texting app I use had automagically dumped ’em into the “blacklist” bin, unbeknownst to me. I changed the blacklist settings and tried again just now, and lo, what to my wondering eyes did appear but the eleventy-hundredth verification message from Stripe. So that little problem is now behind me.

For those who might be feeling particularly generous, I set things up so’s a body can do up to 5 (five) iterations of that $7 payment should one so desire, seeing as how several of you told me back when I set up the PayPal “Subscribe” link that I had set that particular bar WAY lower than I should have. Everything should be working as of now, I think. I THINK. As always, do let me know if/when you run into any issues.

Update! Okay, I have now removed all the PayPal links from the sidebar, although if you’re already a subscriber your subscription will still be active. I haven’t dumped my own PP account as of yet, and ain’t gonna until I get a few Stripe subs in the pipeline to replace the old PP ones. When that happens, I’ll definitely let y’all know out here on the main page.

I also installed a new “Recent Posts” widget in the left sidebar, and tweaked the “Recent Comments” one to show excerpts as well, and just make things more interesting generally. Sure wish they’d update that great old blogroll plugin that included excerpts there, but far as I can discern it just ain’t happening, which is a damned shame.

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Publick Notice

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Yep, it’s a sad, sad day around these parts: no more Scrooge Picard nor Santa Bettie Page, either one. After much thrashing and flailing about, accompanied by some light screaming and pulling out of the hair by the roots, I finally got Angry Guy back up top, and all the colors reset the way I wanted ’em.

Tell your friends, wake the neighbors, send the word far and wide that Christmas is now officially over, as dead as…umm, Marley’s ghost, shall we say. Yes, it’s a bit earlier than I would usually take the CF Xmas theme-makeover down, but I figured it was the least I could do for CF Lifers with bossheads and/or angry wives and/or girlfriends who inexplicably felt nekkid Santa Bettie might have been just a wee bit much, having done the annual holiday rearranging around this here hogwallow earlier than usual this year.

Frankly, I’ve always found this to be the most depressing time of the whole year: the dead of winter; no more cheerful, merry lights and decorations all over the place; nothing to look forward to until early February, when my birthday comes along. And I gotta say, the more I pile up of them, the less there is to look forward to there too. Ah well, I do sincerely hope you all had a wonderful holiday anyhow. If not, here’s a little something to cheer ya up.


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Publick Notice

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As the more eagle-eyed among you may have noticed already, I reworked the image for the Gab Pay link up top there. One of our most esteemed CF Lifers went to dump a generous donation into the thing recently, only to run into a bit of hassle trying to ascertain what my username might be. So I took that as a sign from God that something needed to be done most ricky-tick, with the result you now see before you. It’s still far from perfect, but hey, it’ll do for now.

And considering the pitiful pittance I receive from Social Security as my sole income now—a very nice staffer-lady from the Brian Rehab Center set it all up for me unsolicited during my nightmarishly extended sojourn there after last year’s near-death experience, bless her kindly heart—anyone who might be tempted to give the revamped linky-doo up there a whirl is heartily encouraged to do so. Thanks, y’all!

Oh yeah, almost forgot: I’ve been thinking of doing as full a write-up as I can manage of that whole experience here, maybe. That is, the parts of it I actually DO remember, some of which memories have been sorta re-injecting themselves into my battered brain of late for whatever damnable reason. It creeps me out, frankly; my mom, brother, and a few others have started in to recount the events for me, and each time I’ve stopped them with a quickness, desperately wanting not to hear any of it. My last trip into the MRI, when I had a full-bore screaming freakout and tried to scratch and claw my one-legged ass out of the infernal machine, was particularly brutal.

On the other hand, maybe getting that stuff out there could turn out to be therapeutic for me, possibly? Exorcise some seriously scary demons by bringing them out of the darkness and into the cold, clear light of day, perhaps? Eh, I dunno. I just figgered I’d put the idea out there, and if y’all are at all interested, I could give it the old college try.

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Publick Notice

Posted on      by     

Even though I had originally declared my intention to test this header-image-swapping hoopajoob for a cpl-three days and then, once I’d confirmed everything worked as it ought to, reverting to the usual Angry Guy blue CF theme for the remainder of November, I am now thinking of reneging on that. I’d forgotten just what a tedious, time-consuming pain in the ass this whole business was. Plus, as I said before, ol’ Scrooge Picard and now the lovely SantaBettie make me smile. So, well, I dunno; give me another couple days and we’ll see what develops, aiiight?

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There she is…

Posted on      by     

Took me a while, but my Bettie Page header image xxx-periment is now live, and kickin’. Do let me know if buck-nekkid Bettie works for y’all or not, and don’t be shy about it; at this point, replacing Ms Page with good old Scrooge Picard will be simplicity itself, and will take me all of about three seconds to do. Didn’t get the randomized header-swap thingie implemented yet, but that’s no biggie either.

Update! Aiight, the header-swap dealio should be working as of now.

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Publick Notice

Posted on      by     

Season’s greetings, and Happy Holidays to one and all! A couple of random site notes:

The Substack thang: As a few of you know already, I was recently “recruited” (her word, not mine) by a nice lady from Substack to start writing for them. Now as it happens, when Substack was first launched I went ahead and established an account there, not really knowing for sure what it was or why I would bother with it. It’s not as if I have an abundance of free time to do more writing than I already am doing at CF, but what the hey.

That said, I’ve spent the last cpl-three weeks poking around in the Substack CP, trying to make it look the way I want it to look, which appears to be completely impossible near as I can make out. The nice lady told me I might be able to make up to six figures there, which Lord knows I could use now that my one-legged cripple status has forced me into early retirement, dependent entirely on the paltry 700 simoleons per month SSI is netting me. Gonna be chatting tomorrow with my friend TL Davis about all this Substack stuff, we’ll see what he has to say about it.

What I’m thinking of is putting out fresh, original, Substack-only content twice a week, maybe on Tuesday and Friday, say. During my initial flailing and floundering around trying to suss this infernal Substack machine out, I just left the “Subscribe” option in its default price setting; I can’t even remember now how much it was, honestly. Still a ton of prep work to do yet before I’m ready to launch; I’ll definitely keep you fine folks apprised as things develop.

The “Happy Holidays” Thang: Nope, it’s no coincidence I brought up the imminent Christmas/T-day season in the opening line above. The annual appearance of the universally-beloved Scrooge Picard holiday theme being the big, fat, time-eating pain in the ass it is, I’ve already started mucking about with it. My intention was to try not to jump in quite as prematurely as I usually do this year, I had promised myself I’d wait until Thanksgiving to implement the changes.

Which, being the overgrown Christmas-happy kid at heart I still am and will hopefully always remain, I’m confident you CF Lifers already know just how unlikely it is that I’ll be able to stick to such an unworkable resolution. Fact is, I smile every time I see good ol’ Picard up there on the masthead of the blog; I check in just to look at him MUCH more frequently than I normally do, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

But this year may be a different kettle o’ fish, for a very different reason. See, in the Aulden Thymes before Scrooge Picard was even a twinkle in the remoter corners of my warped imagination, I ginned up a Christmas header image featuring the incomparable Bettie Page trimming a Christmas tree dressed in nothing but a Santa Claus hat and her patented innocent-yet-sexy wink—a photo shot by Bunny Yeager, I believe it was, for Playboy magazine way back in 1954-55 or thereabouts.

What I’m thinking is this: if I recall correctly, the current CF theme’s customization settings have an option which allows for header images that swap out at random, between a pre-selected set of ’em.

The problem being, dear old Bettie Claus is definitely NSFW, at least in most business-office environments. Even though the photo is decidedly pre-porn and innocuous compared to even some TV commercials in this far less blushful age, depending on your boss’s—or your wife’s, or your pastor’s, or your kids’—personal tolerance for light-hearted but naughty classic 50s pinup imagery, it could conceivably make trouble for some of you. Which I am quite loath to do.

Tell ya what, let’s try this: I’ll get to work right away on getting this year’s Xmas theme set up, with Bettie up top instead of Scrooge Picard initially. I’ll leave things like that for a cpl-three days, say. With the weekend nigh upon us, I think it less likely for most office-working types to get busted by a boss-head with Nekkid Bettie on the monitor screen. So have a look over the next few days; if enough of you folks are worried about catching serious flak over it, let me know right quick and we’ll just go with old Scrooge exclusively.

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Publick Notice

Posted on      by     

The more attentive—or anal retentive, perhaps—among you have doubtless noted a new addition to the right sidebar, apart from the recently installed Gab Pay donation button. Nestled just under my friend Claire Wolfe’s deathless words of wisdom kicking off the “Notable Quotes” whoopjamboreehoo is a spanking-new link to Claire’s Cabal, a web forum in the classic style wherein the focus is homed in, laser-like, on discussion of the verymost fundamental issue today in America That Was: freedom. How we lost it, where it went, how we might go about getting it back are all welcome topics at Claire’s joint, which is chock-a-block with erudite, witty, and friendly freedom lovers. It’s a discussion I’m perfectly confident that readers here will be interested in, and are well-equipped to advance. Check it out, you’ll be glad you did. A sample of the multifarious topics:

Administrivia
Announcements, rulz, all the dull necessities
1112 Posts
77 Topics

Let’s Talk
A place for general discussion. BE AWARE: This is the one section of Living Freedom Forums that can be read by the public, even though only members can post.
14477 Posts
2325 Topics

Outlawry
As Mike Vanderboegh used to say, “Defy, resist, evade, smuggle.” Talk about it discreetly, even here. But talk about it if you are so inclined. The place for Freedom Outlaw Moles, Agitators, and Ghosts. Monkeywrenchers, too!
2225 Posts
247 Topics

Freedomista Safe Space
A place to rant, rave, and let your hair down
8686 Posts
1184 Topics

Silver’s Corner
Money, free-market economics, and political threats to them
7497 Posts
570 Topics

Intel & OPSEC
For anybody seeking to increase personal or organizational security. For becoming more wise in action and communication.
3240 Posts
448 Topics

Our Minds, Ourselves
Forget for the moment what “they” are doing to destroy freedom. This board is about changing our own minds and lives to better create freedom for ourselves and our loved ones
2116 Posts
190 Topics

Fire When Ready
Guns, gear and self defense
8932 Posts
1362 Topics

Gimme Shelter
All about land, housing, and shelters for yourself and your possessions.
788 Posts
101 Topics

Food, Family, and Life on Ye Olde Homestead
Food: Growing it, raising it, cooking it, storing it, choosing it. For both emergency and non-emergency use. Family: Kids, pets, elders. And general domesticity and life.
4067 Posts
401 Topics

Take Care of Yourself Out There
All about health and well-being
4441 Posts
470 Topics

As you can readily discern from those impressive Posts/Topics tallies, Claire’s Cabal is a lively, humming internet hangout, covering a variety of well-chosen, interesting, and important subjects. Which, to repeat, is a mere sampling of what’s over there. The esteemed and estimable Ms Wolfe has done one hell of a job putting this thing together, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

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Gab Pay update

Posted on      by     

As of last night, I found out that the new Gab Pay donation link in the right sidebar seems to be functioning as it should. I’ll still leave the old PayPal donation buttons in place a bit longer yet before switching over fully to GP and ditching my PP account, probably in two-three weeks or so. Torba promises to add new geegaws and gimcracks to Gab Pay as time marches relentlessly on, including a credit card option, which would definitely be nice.

HELPFUL HINT: if any of y’all were considering throwing a few shekels my way, now would be a good time for it, so as to help me continue testing the GP thang a bit more. Just sayin’, that’s all. Ahem.

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A bleg

Posted on      by     

For reasons which are abundantly obvious, I’ve been looking into a PayPal replacement of late. I’m going to try AlignPay for a while, I think. Launched by Dan Bongino and a couple other folks, it’s touted as the “free speech,” “Cancel Culture Free” PayPal alternative, one that will never suspend, deplatform, or otherwise hassle anybody on Our Side based solely on their political leanings. So far, Wise also looks pretty good also, being a hell of a lot cheaper on their transfer fees than PayPal is. Overall, Amazon Pay may well come out on top in the PayPal substitute sweepstakes, if for no reasons other than the ubiquitousness of the parent company, and everyone’s familiarity with its interface.

I dunno, we’ll see. Definitely going to get to work implementing AlignPay here for the nonce, on the principle of lending support for the side of Truth, Justice, and the American Way alone. If anybody out there has any suggestions on all this, please do drop ’em in the comments section, aiiight? Thanks in advance, y’all.

Update! Okay, several of you have suggested Gab Pay, which I’m trying to figure out now. And yes, BCE’s site got nuked, but I haven’t spoken with him in a cpl-three days and so have no new news to impart as to what’s going on, other than that he does have a backup site which he’s working on getting up and running. Soon as I gots more to tell ya, and I’ve verified that he’s okay with me telling it, I will do so. Thanks for asking…

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Foolin’ around

Posted on      by     

SO. Been futzing around a bit with the WP posting interface, which I can’t even begin to describe to you how much I despise, when what to my wondering eyes didst appear in the toolbar above the composition textbox a mysterious icon which, when hovered over, describes its function thusly, and I quote: “Select a part of text and ask readers for feedback (inline commenting).”

WELL. Intriguing, no? I think it is, and very much so. That being the case, if you should see some bizarre icon in a post that you never came across here before, that’s almost certainly what it is. Let me know what y’all think of it.

Update! Well, it seems to work quite nicely. Had to disable several conflicting and/or redundant plugins related to the comments function, which I probably should have done a long time ago anyway.

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Sayonara, sucker

Posted on      by     

So today I had my very first opportunity to give the new user-registration-approval plugin I installed the other day a whirl: some blaggard with a dot-ru email addy attempted to slime his way in here, and I dumped his ass so damned fast it made MY head spin. In my twenty years of doing blog-business here, there has never yet been a living soul attached to a dot-ru address that was ever up to anything but a whole lot of No Good. So you can well imagine the pleasure I derived from flushing this latest example down the crapper and out the damned sewer pipe with all the other smelly turds. Think I’ll celebrate with rerun of a bona fide classic.

 

 

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Comments appear entirely at the whim of the guy who pays the bills for this site and may be deleted, ridiculed, maliciously edited for purposes of mockery, or otherwise pissed over as he in his capricious fancy sees fit. The CF comments section is pretty free-form and rough and tumble; tolerance level for rowdiness and misbehavior is fairly high here, but is NOT without limit. Management is under no obligation whatever to allow the comments section to be taken over and ruined by trolls, Leftists, and/or other oxygen thieves, and will take any measures deemed necessary to prevent such. Conduct yourself with the merest modicum of decorum, courtesy, and respect and you'll be fine. Pick pointless squabbles with other commenters, fling provocative personal insults, issue threats, or annoy the host (me) and...you won't. Should you find yourself sanctioned after running afoul of the CF comments policy as stated and feel you have been wronged, please download and complete the Butthurt Report form below in quadruplicate; retain one copy for your personal records and send the others to the email address posted in the right sidebar. Please refrain from whining, sniveling, and/or bursting into tears and waving your chubby fists around in frustrated rage, lest you suffer an aneurysm or stroke unnecessarily. Your completed form will be reviewed and your complaint addressed whenever management feels like getting around to it. Thank you.

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Notable Quotes

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
—Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution

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FREEDOM!!!

"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
—Daniel Webster

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
—Ezra Pound

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
—Frank Zappa

“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
—John Adams

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
—Bertrand de Jouvenel

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
—GK Chesterton

"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
—Donald Surber

"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
—Etienne de la Boiete

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
—Dwight D. Eisenhower

"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
—Skeptic

"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
—David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar

"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
—John Adams

"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
—Frederick Douglass

"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
—Joseph Goebbels

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
—Ronald Reagan

"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
—NC Reed, from Parno's Peril

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