administrivia

ADMIN: New “Look” Coming

June 6, 2015 by John Leave a Comment

Sooner rather than later, I’m going to be changing over to a new look for Running After My Hat. The changes will possibly be quite startling, and I don’t expect the dust to settle for a while; raggedy loose ends will probably be hanging out here and there for a while.

The last time I changed the look was August, 2011. Here’s how a test page from back then looks (for now!) with the proposed new theme — click to enlarge:

The theme currently in use here, as of this moment, is just a temporary stopgap — meant as an emergency fix to some problems introduced a couple weeks ago. Among other issues, this current theme is trimming on the right any images wider than 575 or so pixels, which is why the screen capture above looks abruptly chopped off. (If you click it to enlarge it, you’ll see the full width.)

By contrast, here’s how a post from a few days before the last change looked:

And finally, here’s how that same “Long, Languorous Tomorrows” post looked before I changed to the theme you’re currently seeing — this is the “look” most RAMH old-timers are most familiar with:

Obviously, the differences are many. And again, the new look is not “final.” (For one thing, I hope to return the “Hats Recently Chased” list of recent posts to the right-hand sidebar, along with the categories list and maybe — maybe — a calendar. Right now the recent posts and categories are all crowded together in the page footer.) I will be trying to retain the color scheme and some other elements which I (even if you) have gotten used to. I want people to continue to know they’re at Running After My Hat, and not lost.

Still, I wanted to give you a heads-up. Feedback, as always, greatly appreciated. Thanks!

ADMIN: Broken Comments on RAMH

May 23, 2015 by John 2 Comments

One of my regular site visitors reported a problem to me yesterday, via email: (1) he could compose a comment, and (2) he could check the little “I am not a robot” checkbox confirming to reCaptcha that he is indeed a human; but (3) he could not actually submit a comment.

Why not? Because there was no “Submit” button. (Current partial screen capture shown at top right.)

(As an aside, this is broken for me, too. And it appears to be broken for all three major browsers, as well.)

Edit to add: For the time being, I’ve disabled the “reCaptcha” mechanism, on the off-chance that the problem was with it rather than with WordPress’s generic verification process. So you won’t see the “I am not a robot” device for a while.

This will remain broken for — I hope — only a little while. But it will be a while.

In the meantime, if you’d like to comment to me about a post and have no other email address, you can always reach me at this one: runningaftermyhat AT johnesimpson DOT com. If you’d like your comment to be publicly posted, let me know that and I’ll be sure it gets added to the thread of comments below the corresponding post.

Sigh… just what I wanted to be fretting about at the start of a long weekend!

ADMIN: Temporary Site Funkiness

April 24, 2014 by John 5 Comments

The good folks who support the popular WordPress software — used by a bazillion sites, including Running After My Hat — recently introduced a new version. It’s not the first time they’ve done so, not by a long shot, and it’s not even a “major” upgrade.

But it has played holy hell with working on blog posts, for me and many others.

One reason for WP’s popularity is the huge variety of plugins and extensions which independent developers have built for it over the years, to add features to the way blogs run and are built. Another reason is the proliferation of easily installable (and then customizable) themes; think of these as design templates. Put these two reasons together and you’ve got a single big reason why WordPress support can’t identify, in the new version, anything in particular which might be causing problems for bloggers. It seems to work just fine for many… and for many others, it seems to work just catastrophically badly.

I’m somewhere in the middle.But what doesn’t work is driving me crazy.

WP support offers to bloggers the only solution possible under the circumstances: turn off all plugins and extensions, and set aside whatever theme you’re using — falling back on the default theme for the new version. Then add back into the mix each feature you want or need, one at a time, testing how things go before trying the next. When it breaks again, voilà! — you’ve found the source of the offending glitch(es).

IMPORTANT: Note that none of this applies to site visitors. You don’t have to do anything. These instructions apply just to the people who blog with WordPress (create and update posts, design sites, and so on) and are experiencing problems.

As I said, it may be — is — the only solution possible. But it also has the potential to become one tedious slog, during which one familiar feature or another of the site stops working. (Just for starters, as long as the custom theme is disabled, everything will look different — very, very different.) Please bear with me during this time. I will probably start tinkering with this sometime over the weekend. (And — who knows? — maybe the problem will turn out to be something easily fixable.)

—

I do have a couple of advantages in the fight:

First, RAMH certainly doesn’t carry a lot of user traffic. So it’s not like many, many people are going to be inconvenienced.

And second, I’ve been working with software a looooong time. (Just this past March was 35 years.) I’ve got some ideas about how to test and diagnose the problems a little bit at a time, based on the nature of the problems I’m having.

(For example, none of my problems seem to be with the site interface as viewed by visitors/readers — “only” with the admin/behind-the-scenes elements. So it’s unlikely that, say, the little audio-player thingum I use for playing music here needs to be disabled.)

Still, it’s going to be a pain in the rear. I’ll probably create tomorrow’s whiskey river post using some other software, then just copy-and-paste it into the editor here, all at one go. After that, even before, don’t be surprised if something you’re used to seeing at the top right here suddenly disappears, or moves to the bottom of the page, or whatever.

Admin: Cleaning Up Some RAMH Clutter

August 27, 2011 by John 9 Comments

Running After My Hat, like certain real-world counterparts, has always had a back room or two into which its proprietor secretly hopes no one will stumble, because they’re filled with old junk, and sometimes even with new junk. Broken knick-knacks and furniture. Tumbled piles of books. Telephone handsets which lack base stations and/or wires. Family photos, fifty-year-old report cards, greeting cards from people who no longer share the faintest remembered connection with you, paintbrushes stiff with dried varnish, board games which have lost their dice or their, um, actual boards.

One such back room has always been the “About” page.

I’ve spent some time sprucing that up. It looks much the same, but the verbiage has been cleaned up. And it’s a little less preciously self-conscious, if you know what I mean. If you’ve been visiting here for a while, I doubt that you’ll find anything new, except new expressions of what you already knew. But for anyone who’s a stranger, or imagines him/herself to be, I’ve added four new and (I hope) not-too-preciously-self-conscious pages about me.

(Aside to those of you who do visit regularly, and expect to continue: this will save you from many tedious first-person-POV posts in the future.)

The new pages are:

We now resume our regular broadcast schedule, such as it is. Until the next interruption.

Which may, or may not, have something to do with how the joint looks. (I’m still terrified to touch it.)

Emerging, Blinking, into the Sunlight

August 6, 2011 by John 7 Comments

If you’ve been visiting RAMH for more than a few months, you probably know I’ve been a bit… distracted recently. And it’s probably going to happen again in a few weeks, when I again take up my rock hammer, rope, and lanterned helmet, wandering back into Seems to Fit for the Nth and final time.*

In the meantime, I’ve got some sprucing up to do — in the real world, for sure:

Heaps of printouts, notes (sticky and otherwise), fruit-and-grain-breakfast-bar wrappers, reference books, recorded but unlabeled CD-ROMs — all of that will vanish from within a dozen feet of my elbows. [Hmm. “Feet of my elbows” — now there’s a phrase I don’t think I’ve even seen before. And probably with good reason.] I’ll add things back into the daily home routine that I’d put aside; maybe I can again watch an occasional movie on a weeknight, and sleep in a little in the morning before getting ready for work. Maybe The Missus and I can play some cards. And maybe I can once again read for more than five minutes before dropping off to sleep.

I’ve also got some dusting and renewal to take care of around Running After My Hat. This won’t necessarily involve changing the look itself — replacing the “theme” — but I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve got a bunch of draft posts in the hopper on favorite but time-sucking topics, posts in the What’s in a Song and Perfect Moments categories especially.

(My erstwhile but long absent co-blogger has even knocked plaintively on my window a couple of times, signing to me through the glass, waggling granite fingers as though manipulating an invisible keyboard. He seems to long for personal expression.)

And finally, I’ll be trying to spend more time and care in visiting other people online. Yes, I know why I’ve been too preoccupied to do more than look through so many windows in passing. It couldn’t have been otherwise, and I won’t say I regret it, exactly. But I’ve missed the back-and-forth at some favorite blogs. It’s past time to go rapping on their windows, too.

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* Er, well, the Nth and final time of my own choosing. After which, others will start to chime in. They may have no suggestions at all, but I don’t count on it.

Woodchips and Sawdust

June 8, 2010 by John 5 Comments

Before getting into anything else: yes, as previously reported (or implied!) I will be trying my damnedest to Write My A** Off this Saturday, June 12.

And wow, I’ve gotta say — it’s way overdue for me. This has been one of the longest dry spells of writing I’ve gone through in almost three years. Blog posts aside (so yes, technically I have been writing…), over the last two months or so I think I’ve written no more than a couple-three hundred words on any single day. And that’s been very scattered, un- or utterly misdirected, fitful. I’m determined to turn that around, though. This morning I did a little over 500 words, simply by forcing myself to start typing, and maybe I’ll be able to get something crankin’ by Saturday. I sure hope so. This has made me miserable — literally, beyond words.

In the meantime, a couple of minor things:

We got back from New Orleans fairly late Sunday night. Although I was able to at least visit my favorite blogs over the weekend, via Blackberry, I’m lamentably behind on reading for real, let alone commenting. I’ll get back into that rhythm soon too, I hope.
In a weekend comment on a post here, Froog reported that Running After My Hat had been loading painfully slowly for him. I’d noticed it too, frankly, although I thought it might have something to do with other network problems. Froog’s comment led me to poke around in a couple of suspiciously soft spots in the infrastructure. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think I’ve traced the problem to that Google Buzz thingumabob I mentioned in an aside a couple of posts ago. So I disabled that thing — I don’t care how cool or interesting a feature is, if it cripples a site’s basic functionality it’s not worth including. Do let me know if any of you are experiencing other (or the same!) problems.

February 22, 2010 by John 3 Comments

I’ve activated a feature here at the site to let you subscribe via email to follow-up comments on a post. To do so, you’ve actually got to leave a comment yourself — including (duh) an email address; then check the little box labeled “Notify me of followup comments…,” which appears just above the reCaptcha form.

Background: Why do this? Because I’m posting less often, I (and other regulars!) are actually visiting RAMH less often. This means that conversations via comments tend to sprawl over the course of days, even weeks.

Also, I’ve been using my “smart phone” more often these days to access blogs blocked (for whatever reason) by my employer. Because the phone loads Web pages much more slowly than a real wired Web browser, constantly returning to a blog just to see if there have been more comments is a constant drain on my patience. Thus, I’ve come to appreciate the “subscribe to comments” feature on other people’s blogs: I need return to an earlier post only when I see a follow-up comment to which I want to reply.

We return you now to our regularly scheduled broadcast.