Faster planes mean shorter trips.

Quote by TomEccleston
Open source forum software has also traditionally been a pain to customize.

Which is why I use commercial. Xenforo is US$160 upfront and annual maintenance is just US$55 if you self-host. There's an active community of developers, stylists, etc. who can help with add-ons, styling, etc. and a massive library of prebuilt add-ons, including many useful free and cheap ones. Open source is free but you tend to get what you pay for and you can make up for it in hiring developers and such fairly quickly (as happened here when you had it running an OS base and Gav keeping things together). And hosting is required either way so the only difference are the licensing and maintenance fees.

Hosted (ie. in Xenforo's cloud hosting) is a monthly or annual sub of course but for a board the size of (redacted), probably worth the money. You just worry about configuring the board and software, they maintain the servers, databases, backups, etc.

Quote by TomEccleston
And I'm used to markup-based forums that use BBCode (shudders), Textile or Markdown rather than WYSIWYG style.

.

Xenforo kind of split the difference. They license Froala, a third party editor that has pseudo-WYSIWYG but uses BBCode in the background. Hard core BBCode types or admins doing troubleshooting can switch to a mode that turns off the WYSIWYG and lets you edit BBCode directly. I kind of like it because every now and then I hit a formatting glitch that can only be fixed by editing the raw BBCode but my day-to-day users, who are mostly used to email editors, can use it without worrying about that stuff.

I run Wondercafe2 for under US$300 per year and most of that is hosting. The support on XF is only about 1/4 or so of my costs. On a larger board using more expensive hosting, it would be even less on a percentage basis (the support is flat, not tied to site size or anything).

You know things are bad when you spend half a day troubleshooting a problem, only to realize that it was a simple mistake you made that you probably could have found in minutes IF YOUR (expletive deleted) BRAIN WAS WORKING!

(yes, that's me at work yesterday)

Gambling is easier when online.

From Jon & Vangelis, his collaboration with English vocalist Jon Anderson (best known as the co-founder and longtime lead singer for Yes). They did four albums together and there's a couple "Best of" collections out, too.

For frightened cats, cozy chairs, libraries and COOKIES!!!!, we are thankful.

Coffee is brewed. There's some Red Rose and Earl Grey tea in the teapots. Fresh iced tea is in the fridge and there's sugar and lemon to add as needed.

Have a good one!!

Quote by TomEccleston
It'll probably get fixed in time.

My lingering concern is precisely this "get fixed in time". Why did they not use something like the Xenforo software I use (and that I proposed to use for a new version of SS when Nic was looking at dumping it instead of upgrading it) that works right out of the box. They are basically building from scratch stuff that software like that (Xenforo, vBulletin, IPS, etc.) has been capable of for years and that's why we keep waiting for stuff to get fixed. I know they wanted to get away from managing the servers and other infrastructure but XF has a cloud offering that was in beta at the time they did the migration and is now live. So does IPS as I understand it.

This software still feels like a forum from about 20 years ago in terms of functionality (I have been using forums for about that long, maybe a bit longer), even if it is modern-looking. I stay because I love the site and community, but if I was someone new here, the software might just put me off.

(PS. This applies to both sites.)

Sadly, because he passed away yesterday, Vangelis.

Good morning! For tangled family trees, long-gestating novels, and baseball, we give thanks (or consolation as needed).

Coffee is brewed and waiting. Teas are Duke of Earl (Earl Grey w. Vanilla) and Red Rose. Iced tea has been refreshed.

Have a good one!

Quote by TomEccleston

Update on the update. You can partial quote for better focus:

1) find a bit of a post you want to quote.

2) select it.

3) tap Quote beneath that message.

4) the bit you selected will be copied into the Write a Reply box. Type away to reply to that point.

5) rinse and repeat steps 1 to 4. Each time you select stuff and hit Quote, the quoted text and who said it will be appended to the Write a Reply box for you to reply to in context.

Thanks, Tom. Never got around to adding that. I find it's a bit flaky, though. Sometimes if I partial quote a long post and the selected section scrolls off screen when I scroll down to the Quote button, it will sometimes still quote the whole post. So not as reliable as in some other forum software I use but at least it does it.

Kisses are exchanged between lovers.

An ape walks in to a cafe. He looks around, grunts, and puts on a pot of coffee and the kettle. Soon, there's also pots of Assam tea and Red Rose. Hey, this is looking good. He makes up a fresh pot of iced for the fridge. Then he grabs a banana from the fruit bowl on the counter and wanders out peeling it.

Quote by AnnaMayZing

If there was no Tangerine Dream soundtrack, the only saving grace would have been Jon Anderson AND Bryan ferry!

And now I discover that David Gilmour is the guitarist on this track. What an awesome level of talent Ridley Scott used!

I had forgotten Ferry was on it, too. And I hadn't know Gilmour was involved either. Usually I can pick him out. His guitar style is very distinctive, even when he's not with Floyd.

Quote by gillianleeza
Probably because King wrote all the episodes for the teleplay.

I have mixed feelings about Stephen King as a screenwriter. I can't think of a great King movie that he wrote. OTOH, he at least knows the material well enough to know what can be changed and how.

Now, if you want a writer who knows his way around a screenplay as well as he does a book, Neil Gaiman is your man. Maybe because he started in comics, which are similar to a screenplay, Gaiman has been fairly successful at screenplays, both based on his own work and some projects he has done outside his own adaptations (e.g. the Beowulf movie that Robert Zemeckis directed).

Quote by AnnaMayZing
I tore a two-inch gash in my scalp when I caught my head on an old nail.

Eek. I am surprised I've never pulled anything like that. I am terrible for standing up at the wrong moment. Glad it's healing up.

Quote by DenimAngel
Today I went for a short walk .. first time venturing far since the ankle surgery in March .

Yay! She's getting back on her game. Ape happy.

And what happened to me? Nothing too exciting or dramatic yet. I had a possible lead on someone to fill my vacancy at work. The manager of our local branch told us her brother is going to apply.

Quote by DenimAngel
Hope everyone is having a great day

I am. Mostly. But I got an application for an IT job that had absolute no IT education or experience. They're a customer service rep in a call centre. And the next resume had like only six lines on it, similarly irrelevant. Do people actually read the ads they are applying to?

5325

Lust - Dust (what there is always more of no matter how hard you clean)

Testing water finds potential hazards.

Quote by verbal
The eclipse last night was mostly too cloudy to see,

Same here in Ontario. Storms started around dinner and then showers overnight and this morning. Clouds are just breaking up now.

Not spending enough time on my new Tana story, partly because of distractions from (redacted) and partly because I'm still having trouble getting it to go somewhere. Still kind of meanders which I absolutely do not want with the finale of a trilogy.

"In dead R'lyeh, Cthulhu waits dreaming"

If you are stuck sleeping off the eons in a tomb under the Pacific Ocean, what better way to wake up and destroy humanity than with some strong black Costa Rican coffee? Or a few cups of English Breakfast tea? Now being served here in Inspirations.

Hides strange book bound in human skin under the counter and walks away whistling

🤣 (interpret that as mad cackling rather than ROTFL)

Oh, and for something that takes the Mythos in more of an sf/f direction, still with some horror, then Brian Lumley's Titus Crowe, Primal Lands, and Dreamlands series (which all tie together in the final novel, Elysia) are a fun read. I am not crazy about them as Mythos, but they are nice, pulpy stories. His Necroscope series is better horror overall, but it is only peripherally related to Lovecraft and the Mythos (Antagonists are extremely nasty vampires that are a fusion of a human with an alien parasite. These guys would eat wimps like the Cullen family for breakfast.).

Quote by verbal
I’m a little scared I will find the 1890s prose a little impenetrable (like I do Lovecraft).

Chambers isn't too bad as late Victorian prose goes. That may be part of why I like Wagner's story so much, though. It uses the basic ideas extremely well but is written a more modern style. And Wagner was a helluva writer who left us way too soon. If you ever get into sword and sorcery, his Kane stories are mandatory reading once you've read Conan. He kind of twisted and deconstructed a lot of S&S tropes.

If you're talking Cthulhu Mythos in general, not just King in Yellow (which actually predates the Mythos but kind of got absorbed into it), Ramsey Campbell is, for my money, one of the best in the business. I'd have to look to see if there's a collection of his Mythos shorts in print. I had one in the eighties called Cold Print but it's probably long OP. He just finished a trilogy of Mythos novels that I have not read yet (The Three Births of Daoloth is the series title). And his older novel Midnight Sun is one of the novels that uses a lot of Mythos tropes and themes but not the names, old books, etc. which makes for a better novel in some ways. And best of all, he's still alive and active on social media.

Laird Barron, a fellow Canuck, apparently did some good Mythos work early in his career (he's mostly doing thrillers these days) but I have not partaken as of yet.

And, believe it or not, Robert Bloch of Psycho fame started out writing Mythos stories with support from Lovecraft himself. Robert Blake in Lovecraft's The Haunter of the Dark is Bloch. However, I am once again unsure of the current availability of his mythos work since I haven't read any since the early nineties. There were several short stories and at least one novel.

I know Katie Melua. Haven't listened to her in a while, though. I like too much music.

Charlotte Wessels, formerly of the band Delain, released a really good video from her recent (2021) solo album last week.

Lisp - List

Good detectives solve difficult crimes.

Quote by AnnaMayZing

I did, along with the 'Set Mood' button. I am also wondering why there is a 'Match' facility here too. They really need to get their heads out of the gutter site.

I think your account is screwed up. All that stuff disappeared from my profile eons ago but I have had issues a couple times where stuff from that place started showing up. All I have right now is a fairly basic "About" section and no "Status" which is where Set Mood appears over there. Have not seen Set Mood or Match on this site since the early days after the migration. I had actually wondered if it happened because of me going back and forth but you only come on this one.

You know things are bad when Anna's account is getting confused about which site she is on. 😲

Quote by AnnaMayZing

Don't mention Jerry Goldsmith. I love the Ridley Scott film, Legend. For some reason, it was only released in the US with the Tangerine Dream soundtrack. The only version available over here has the Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack which totally kills the atmosphere of the whole film. I am amazed that Ridley Scott prefers the Goldsmith version!

I remember hearing that. I've only seen it with the Tangerine Dream score so can't really comment. There was a good Jon Anderson solo song in it, too, IIRC.

I was not that impressed with Legend overall. I expected better from Scott after loving Alien and Blade Runner. Had some good bits, including the score, but did not sit well with me for some reason (that likely had the initials T. C. 😉). Basically, if it hadn't been for Tim Curry as the villain, I probably would have forgotten it pretty quickly. He pretty much salvaged the movie for me.

Quote by verbal
Biggest obsession, post-con, is The King in Yellow, which is a crazy strange set of four stories that sort of invented cosmic horror.

I read Robert Chambers' original stories about The King in Yellow decades ago, long before True Detective referenced it. Actually, the best King in Yellow story I have read is "River of Night's Dreaming" (1981) by the late Karl Edward Wagner. Brilliantly disturbing piece of horror. It first appeared in Whispers 3 edited by Stuart David Schiff, but has been reprinted a few times since. If you like King in Yellow, it is worth hunting it down. Apparently, it was also adapted for the TV series "The Hunger".

Glad to hear you had a good time at StokerCon. I have never been to one of the big cons but should do it someday.

Wise - Wisp