AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: catspaw49
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 06:59 PM

...except the pickle.

Spaw

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Áine
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 07:08 PM

All right now y'all --- If you're in the mood for a little bit of songwriting, why don't you take it over to the SONG CHALLENGE! thread and try to top Amos' winning entry?

Come on, one of you cucumber admirers could give us some kind of musical tribute (watch it, Spaw!) to the incandescent pickle, surely!

The gauntlet has been thrown!! I double dog dare ya!!

-- Áine

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Jo Taylor
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 07:16 PM

Amos -
You can trace a thread - click on 'add thread to tracer' at the foot of the thread, or click on 'trace' at the end of the title on the main page. Used to be able to 'view new messages since last visit' too, but I can't see that now, where's it gone?
Jo

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: catspaw49
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 07:25 PM

Its in the "Quick Links" Jo.

Spaw

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Midchuck
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 07:48 PM

Things that bug Michael K.:

"Things that bug me : Real estate agents, bankers, lawyers, traffic cops, chevrons, auto insurance companies, politicians, shirts and ties, dental checkups, bad drag comics, Oshawa-Ontario, watery eggs, extremely attractive men, suggestions of, descriptions of, and braggarts of vasectomies, and single sheet toilet paper.

....oh and bad guitar players with really expensive guitars...."

Since I am a lawyer, for my day job; and a not-very-good guitar player with two or three fairly expensive, if not really expensive, guitars, I think my feelings are hurt.

Maybe I'll call up Harry Fox Agency and complain about what the people here are getting away with...naw, they might check on what I might be getting away with...maybe I'll ask M. K. if he is bugged by all lawyers...that would imply he knows all of the million or so of us well enough to judge each one....naw...if he's the kind of person who's more comfortable thinking in broad categories without regard to the sufficiency of his data, he'd just miss the point...maybe I'll start posting long, pompous, incomprehensible lawyerly rants on all the threads until the whole forum bogs down under the weight of the verbiage...naw, that's been tried...Anyone else have any good ideas?

Peter.

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Áine
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 08:10 PM

Dear Peter,

As a former legal secretary, I can testify that not ALL lawyers are the pompous, verbose, incomprehensibly ranting doo-dahs they are thought to be. However, and you, of all people, know that this is true, very many of them are. And I'll even add egotistical and overly self-centered to their curriculae vitae.

Peter, pick up one of your not overly expensive guitars, and strum some soothing chords for yourself. You know what kind of person you are, and that you are not defined by your profession. You're a Mudcatter, aren't you? Well, that proves to me that you are miles above most of the lawyers I ever worked with!

While you're playing, I'll be writing songs and cooking some wonderful Guinness Chili, and know that I was not one of the legal secretaries about whom stories are told in the conference room during a partners' meeting.

Best wishes with your music *and* your career, Áine

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Little Neophyte
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 08:15 PM

Don't worry Peter, I have an expensive car and I am a bad driver.

Now that you mention it, there are some postings that get bogged down under a weight of verbiage. Maybe people should write a synopsis for posting longer than 6 inches.

By the way guys, are these pickles Kosher?

BB

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: catspaw49
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 08:22 PM

Check the stem Bonnie.

Spaw

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Little Neophyte
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 08:29 PM

Thanks Catspaw, I can only eat circumsized pickles.

BB

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 08:31 PM

Oh, no, Bonnie, I'm afraid you just handed Spaw a great line...."synopsis....for longer than 6 inches". wiht just a little twsist, I can just hear it:

"Any of ya with pickles six inches or longer....line up over here and start writing your synopses!" **BG**

Peter/Midchuck, it was a generalisation that I hope we don't make a habit of here. If one wants to generalise, it could be said of just about any profession. (Though Michael did say he speaking with his tongue in cheek.)

Personally, I think posting what bugs us might accentuate the negative a bit much.

Does the glow-in-the-dark pickle remind anyone else of the dueling fluorescent *donned* condoms in that movie which had John Ritter in it, sometime in the 1980's?

All the best,

katlaughing

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Little Neophyte
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 08:35 PM

Kat I am not sure if Michael speaks with tong in cheek or foot in mouth?

BB

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 08:57 PM

Well, Bon, he said it was his tongue but not being there, one never knows.*BG*

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 09:41 PM

"Come on, one of you cucumber admirers could give us some kind of musical tribute (watch it, Spaw!) to the incandescent pickle, surely!

The gauntlet has been thrown!! I double dog dare ya!! "

Can't turn down a double fog dar. I'm an ol' double dog from years back.

See the Song Challenge thread for a submission on an incandescent pickle tune.

But just remember, it was a double dog dare.

A>

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Sorcha
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 09:45 PM

All I can come up with is several different first lines:
What's That Pickle Doing Where My Pickle Oughta BE?
I"m a little pickle, short and stout
Walking at night, along the Burger Way,
Oh, I wish I were a pickle on a bun
etc. etc. etc. Can't get any farther. Brain too clogged with green stuff that is NOT pickles.

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 11:15 PM

You can't fool me, Bill D. That picture is NOT of an incandescent pickle. It has been cleverly distorted by the use of state-of-the-art digital photodistortion techniques to LOOK like an incandescent pickle. In fact, as anybody can plainly see, it is really nothing more than an incandescent ocarina.

Dammit, guys, I've been happily hanging out at the Mudcat for a year, ignoring all the links people put in their posts. Now 'Spaw and Bill D. have gone and spoiled it all -- now I gotta look at every one to see if they're as brilliant as these!

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Áine
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 11:29 PM

*** CALLING ALL INCANDESCENT PICKLE LOVERS ***

We have two fabulous entries in the SONG CHALLENGE! thread for the best incandescent pickle song and we need your votes!! Please hurry over and cast your ballot in the Great Pickle-Off now -- your Mudcat Song Challenge need YOU!

-- Áine (ain't it amazing what a double dog dare can do?)

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: GUEST,OF HONOR
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 11:35 PM

.......re:Midchuck..........

...you have presented an equisite paradox......................................a sensitive? lawyer..............................................................with a thin skin.

I'm calling the Smithsonian right now.

I'm sure they won't be able to wait to get their hands on you!...................

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 11:51 PM

Banish THE infediles

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: sophocleese
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 11:55 PM

Inphidells? Wear?

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Metchosin
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 11:59 PM

infurance, obviously.

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Caitrin
Date: 29 Jan 00 - 08:47 PM

Wut infiddles?

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Mbo
Date: 29 Jan 00 - 09:47 PM

Wut in fiddles? I heard of some folks who use dry oatmeal to clean the dust out o' your violin!

--Mbo

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Art Thieme
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 12:03 PM

Nothing I say here is going to change a damn thing. As Utah Phillips said, "If elections could actually change anything, they'd be illegal !" I'm left feeling like one of the "NEW INDIANS".

Where did our garden go??? It went to the lowest common denomenator.

Chief Red Cloud (Art)

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 12:34 PM

OK, here's a serious suggestion for improvement.

Would it be possible to make all posts HTML format, so web addresses would automatically become clickable links? My mail browser does this as an option, and I wonder if it would be possible here. This would save a lot of churn when people attempt HTML but make mistakes.

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Max
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 12:51 PM

When I was a young lad, I was shopping for a car stereo. I looked at simple ones and complicated ones with all the bells a wistles. A salesman said to me at one point, that the more features you have, the more there is to break.

I can add automatic blue clicky things, but that is one more thing that could break, or confuse someone. And the song "blue clicky thing" may have never been written. And who would have learned how to do the HTML? You all may be old, but your not too old to learn some new things. Here's a chance to impress those wiseass kids of yours.

Not just break, but CONFUSE people. The more time I spend answering questions and helping people, the less I have to enjoy my creation, and do things that really make this place better. Everything I do here, I have to ask myself how many people will it confuse.

The next things we do to the mudcat will be slight. We have a list of 20 little bugs to fix, need a system to add new Folk Legacy and Camsco Albums, etc, and these we probably won't get to till April at best. Oh, and I forgot about the CHAT. Hang in there folks, we're working on it all the time.

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Amos
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 12:57 PM

Max, sir Max:

We'll hang as long and as low as you need, mate; you da Man!!

Many thanks for all the fine work on this premiere creation of yours. I only hope you get to enjoy it a great deal.

A.

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: GUEST,Mbo
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 01:24 PM

Thanks, Max! if it weren't for you, I wouldn't have learned HTML. Now I'm reveling in it! Another great inspiration from Mudcat!

--Mbo

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Peter T.
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 01:25 PM

Apart from more courtesy all round, the only thing I would change would be to have a "magazine" section linked to the main page, an adaptation of what already is happening with the Songbook, etc., where some of the major musical themes here that recur -- voice, chord theory, how to deal with an audience, guitar playing -- and things like record reviews contributed by Mudcatters could be formally "boxed" a bit more permanently than the threads, but linked to the ongoing thread space.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: annamill
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 01:29 PM

I'm glad, Max, that you're in the frame of mind that will keep Mudcat going. I was so afraid, with all the stuff that's been going on around here, that you'd just want to hang it up. It must be quite a drain. All the problem makers, they don't care. If Mudcat crashes, so what. They'll just go somewhere else and cause problems. Those of us who do care about Mudcat and each other, would be badly hurt. I've been waiting for that other show to drop. I'm glad it's not. Yet. Maybe this would have been better in a personal message, but I wanted all my fellow Mudcatter/Mudcateers to know how I was feeling. I wish us all luck.

Love, annap

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Max
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 01:40 PM

annap: Its not a drain, its a challenge. I have a BA in Philosophy, so I always ponder about the nature of this virtual community. I also am obviously interested in technology, so it is an interesting marriage of things. I can sit on top of my Mt. Olympus and wield my powers (programming) to make sure things run smoothly in my little universe. (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain)

Been thinking about much of the controversy as of late, and have been thinking of technical aids to try to chill things out.

I got lucky here. I am mere hours away from a BS exclusion script. Check out http://www.mudcat.org/threadsnot.cfm?Title=BS and see the forum as normal, but with no BS threads showing. You can replace the BS with anything you want to filter out. I will be incorporating this into the normal forum soon.

Just like the SuperSearch, this crunches the computer more, so with each neat thing I add, the Mudcat gets a little slower and a little less reliable. Keep using the auction, buying our cd's and shopping at Amazon with this link: http://amazon.mudcat.org. Thanks all.

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Áine
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 01:40 PM

Dear Peter T.,

I think your idea for a 'magazine' is a great one. I'm sure that Max could make room on the Mudcat server for you when you want to start it up. I'm sure that there are many Mudcatters who would love to contribute articles. Good luck on your new Mudcat 'franchise'!

-- Áine

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Peter T.
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 01:47 PM

I should also say that I am with Annap on this one. I am only interested in whatever enhances, not complicates Max's space/time/environment. As I have said many times, we should start every morning with the Mudcat chant and 3 bows in Max's direction.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 02:05 PM

Keep it simple. The more special features and imporovements there are in anything, the more there is to go wrong. "They paved Paradise, and put in a parking lot"

Max the philosopher. Makes sense. There was a cartoon once I saw - this door with a notice on it saying "Department of Philosophy", and a little man was walking out of it, saying "Oh well, that's life - mustn't grumble."

I recommend that approach to life to some permanent house guests.

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Amos
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 02:09 PM

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if we all chipped in, maybe we could get the 'Cat some additional hardware? A dual processor 350 MHz Pentium with spare terabyte of storage?

I have no idea how many 'Catters there are, but a little voluntary action would surely cover an additional server to Max' specs; or has this been tried before?

A

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Bill in Alabama
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 02:54 PM

Hey Art-- If you happen to come back here and see this--I agree completely!

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Amos
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 05:35 PM

Max:

How much of a performance hit would it be to filter a message for being equal to the one just before it, thus preventing duplicate postings due to inadvertant double clicks on the Submit button? You could even trim it to the first hundred or two chars, or maybe the first fifty and the last fifty, as a way of reducing the CPU cycles; but it would save you storage in the long run:>).

A

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Max
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 05:41 PM

We already have the solution for double posting, we just need time to implement it. We have a development version of the Mudcat that you all never see, that in all senses is the future of the mudcat. Changes, upgrades, features and whatnot are all on the other Mudcat (BizarroMudcat) until we make sure it works and are happy with the performance etc. Many obvious things on the Mudcat are already fixed there, like I said, we just need to do it here.

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: GUEST,The Lowest Common Denominator
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 06:06 PM

I was just wondering what Art and Bill from Alabama were doing wearing feathers and warpaint.

LCD

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Little Neophyte
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 06:32 PM

LCD, I heard there was a Drag Queen Folk Festival coming up. Art and Bill were just organizing their costumes.
BB

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: GUEST,ddw
Date: 01 Feb 00 - 09:03 PM

Max has done a great job of organizing this site and most of the time Mudcatters are great company.

Maybe I should just thank Max — which I do, lavishly — and ignore the odd unpleasantness — which I also do as much as possible — but there is one thing I'd suggest as an improvement.

Since I know sweet bugger all about programming, I don't even know if it's possible, but I was wondering if the REPLY TO THREAD box could be enlarged, say stretched across the screen, so we could see our texts in a format closer to the way they'll appear in the post.

Thanx again, Max!

To the rest of ya, cheers *BG*

david

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Art Thieme
Date: 02 Feb 00 - 01:43 AM

By "new Indians" I meant that this was a pretty nice oasis for a while, but now the tribe has been defeated. What we had was unique and friendly here at Mudcat---filled with poetry and intellect.--- RESPECT for each other was natural and simply the way things were. For many of us it was valuable and worth keeping---so much so that I saved many of the older beautiful and info-filled threads on floppys just in case my computer blew up. But it must seem to the new people hanging here now that simplistic and strident talk has always been the norm at Mudcat. I just want to tell you that it wasn't normal then and it should not be normal now. But it is the way things are now. And that's why I, for one, don't hang here much lately. I can only hope that Mudcat is passing through the negative segment of the bell curve and may soon experience an upswing. Truly, folks, I ain't holding my breath.

Affectionately,

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Sorcha
Date: 02 Feb 00 - 01:49 AM

Art, I was guilty, and now I feel guilty. Please don't go away for long, I think we've all learned our lesson, if not well, and things are much better than last week. Please don't go away for long.I've seen you at Winfield, and love your stuff.

Subject: RE: AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT ON MUDCAT
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 02 Feb 00 - 09:29 AM

Hi Max. My kids aren't impressed by HTML, nor am I. (I've been a programmer for a LONG time, being so old). My suggestion about making clickable links had more to do with focussing on music than on fighting with the syntax.

Anyway, thanks for the site, however you do it!