Housekeeping

Just a quick post about Blogger's annoying new approach to comments.

As anyone who has commented on any Blogspot blogs in the last week has likely noticed, Blogger, in all their infinite wisdom, recently rolled out an unannounced change to the comments page of all its blogs, in which the page now has an odd layout and is ugly. More frustratingly, they have removed the ability for readers to subscribe to comments by email, unless the blog uses embedded comments.

Not surprisingly, this makes the back and forth dialogue generated on many blogs, including this one, much more difficult. Anyone wanting to follow/participate in a discussion must now go out of their way to keep track of comments on a particular post, rather than having new comments handily emailed to them. As a blogger, I understand our readers are already giving us their time to read these posts, and even more time to comment on them. Now, Blogger is forcing those readers to spend even more of their time to continue following any discussions sparked by our posts. It is, to put it mildly, horseshit.

For what it's worth, I have expressed my displeasure about this situation to Blogger, and I know several fellow bloggers who have done the same thing. I'm not naive enough to think that will make a difference, but it's all we can do. For now, I'm reluctant to switch to embedded comments on this blog. I'm not a huge fan of that layout either, and I know they cause problems for some people's browsers. In time, though, that may be the way we have to go (and even if we switched to embedded comments here, it wouldn't make it any easier to keep up with comments on any of the other blogs that don't).

Needless to say, if we had the time and money, we'd move off Blogger entirely, something I'd like to see us do at some point in the future. But for now, we're sticking around here, for better or worse.

Sorry for the hassle, and know that it's nothing we have any control over.

On Vacation

I will be on vacation all of next week, boozing it up, reading, and watching movies at the cabin in that catch-all place we Minnesotans call "up north" (no, not Canada). More importantly, I will be offline for the next week or so (barring occasional checks of my fantasy baseball team on my phone).

But never fear! I have a Simpsons Retro Reviews post scheduled for Monday (the final episode of season three) and an X-aminations post scheduled for Wednesday (the conclusion of the X-Men's dust-up with Alpha Flight). I just won't be around to respond to comments until the week after next.

Hope everyone has a great week/couple weekends! 

Find more Dinosaur Comics here

Gentlemen of Leisure v3.0

Check out our new banner up top, compliments (after much cajoling...) of my uber-talented brother. You can see more of his work here.

Pretty awesome, huh?

Housekeeping

First of all, my next Last Week in TV post should be up sometime tomorrow. Due to the new Harry Potter movie, the Thanksgiving holiday, and my desperately futile attempts to keep my head above NaNo's waters last week, I didn't watch much TV and had even less time to write about it, so the post'll be delayed until tomorrow.

And then, on Wednesday, in addition to another X-aminations post, I'll be starting something that will probably quicken my descent into madness: daily content.

They're dogs...and they're playing poker!!

Starting December 1st and running until Christmas, I will countdown (in no particular order) 25 (mostly secular) things I love about Christmas and the holiday season, everything from movies to songs to TV episodes to traditions. Every day, in addition to whatever other craziness is happening on the blog, there will a Countdown to Christmas post. I hope you enjoy them.

It's Not Just Spiced Ham!

A couple of quick housekeeping items.

First of all, fellow blogger, frequent GoL reader/commenter and all around good egg Falen recently hosted a writing contest in which entrants were tasked with crafting a 750 word fiction piece using one of six prompts she provided. And, if I may toot my own horn, yours truly placed second, and now a gaggle of writerly goodies is winging its way to my house! Check out my piece here, and read the other winning pieces on her blog.