Burrowowl

Last night I upgraded to the latest, purportedly-greatest version of the WordPress software for burrowowl.net. I run a few other sites, but generally use this one as my test-bed for drastic changes. Turns out that the much-touted redesign of the administrative interface is leaving me dissatisfied.

On the dashboard, attention was paid to making sure that it can better serve as a quick portal to commonly-required tasks. I’m not seeing much indication that this actually happened, though.

I see a big tomato-red bar that points out where I can write a new page (this site has precisely two pages, not a button I use much) and where I can write a new post. For a first-time user, calling attention to where the “write a post” link is may be a good idea. In the previous version, this was handled by placing a navigation tab named “Write” up near the top of the page. It’s present throughout the administrative interface and its purpose is reasonably self-evident. On the dashboard specifically, there is a “Use these links to get started” section with a list of links. The first one is “Write a post.” Once I’ve used either of these mechanisms a few times, I’m unlikely to spend a lot of time fumbling around looking for it. The red bar is garish and insulting.

Right under the gaudy red bar of shame, the new dashboard informs me of the number of posts, pages, drafts, and categories on my blog. Each number is a link to an interface that allows me to manage my posts, pages, drafts, or categories. For the most part, the only management I do of my categories is to occasionally introduce a new level of granularity (hence there is a DnD category with Iron Kingdoms and Rules subcategories). I am then presented with how many widgets I’m using and given a means of changing my blog’s theme. All of this before my Akismet spam info.

To be fair, Akismet was tucked away too far for my liking in the old interface. Often I open a WordPress admin interface purely for the purpose of reviewing comments, trackbacks, and trapped spam, so these (along with the enigmatic “write a post” tool) are my basic priorities. Getting a quick breakdown of how many messages are awaiting review in Akismet purgatory is a plus.

Back to the negative, though. Like I said, I review comments and trackbacks. In the old interface, a comment would be summarized something like the following: “Joe Blow on Article Title (Edit)” with the commenter’s name being a link to whatever his URL was, the article title being a link to the article, and Edit being a link to the interface that lets me edit that specific comment. This is how I’d get rid of comment spam that wasn’t caught by my other countermeasures. The new interface summarizes thusly: “from Joe Blow on Article Title #” (with the most recent comment showing a brief excerpt before the “from”). The commenter’s name isn’t a link. This obstructs the simple pleasure I find in tracking down what kind of site the commenter runs. It doesn’t totally prevent it, of course, but it’s a minor change that I don’t quite get. The name is there, it’s free real estate in the interface, put a link around the sucker already! The article title is a link to the article, then the hash-mark is a link specifically to that comment (to the anchor WordPress sets for it when the post is displayed). What in the holy heck I’d want that for, I don’t know. Now if I see a comment as being likely spam from the dashboard, I have to take an extra step to get rid of the damned thing. Great.

I suppose I’ll be upgrading my other sites to version 2.5 also, but more from a general aversion to update reminders than from any enthusiasm for the new setup.

The second major overhaul of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise is hitting mid-year, but the grand old flagship roleplaying game is far from immune to competition.

Like a woman scorned, Paizo has decided to push on with 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons, recently publishing a playtest version for what amounts to version 3.75 of the system. Paizo used to publish Dragon and Dungeon magazines, was a spin-off company of the D&D franchise really, and didn’t get special consideration for early exposure to the new hotness. Clearly there were some sour grapes going on here. That said, the Pathfinder RPG looks pretty good.

With an anticipated release date of August 2009, it looks like it’ll be about a year late. That’s fourteen months after 4th edition hits the shelves, and a full year after 3rd party early-adopters will start peddling their supplements and campaign materials for it. The success of the Pathfinder adventure path series and revenue from their online store may help pad the shock a bit, but I’m rather pessimistic about this endeavor.

Another attempt to horn in on 4th edition FUD is the Graduate Your Game initiative by White Wolf. Maybe they just have a lot of 2nd edition Exalted rulebooks lying around, or maybe they’ve done some serious market research, but they’ve made a bold offer: give them your v3.5 Player’s Handbook and they’ll give you a shiny new copy of the Exalted core rules. A lot of long-time D&D players are upset that their beloved basement-dweller pastime of choice is getting a major overhaul, and I’ve seen a lot of talk about switching to Savage Worlds or True 20, or keeping on with 3.5 indefinitely. Hanging on to 3.5 sounds reasonable, as these gamers already have their books and can run them forever without having to spend a dime on new rules. The problem them becomes new players: how do you get a new player up to speed on the system when the rules are no longer in print? Ask anybody who has looked for the Iron Kingdoms Campaign Guide on Amazon lately, and you’ll find that out-of-print RPG titles can fetch a pretty penny. I wonder if White Wolf intends to open up an eBay shop in a year or two? Hmm…

Anyhow, to a lot of folks, their v3.5 players handbooks are full-color glossy toilet paper once 4th edition comes out. They’ll be adopting the new system or otherwise abandoning the old. Unless you’re chronically-nostalgic, it may be a good chance to pick up a pretty good fantasy RPG.

The other night my wife and I settled down to watch a classic, one which I hadn’t seen since, frankly, I was too young to really understand what it was about: Network. It’s surreal how topical this thirty-two year-old film is. Network tells the story of the later days of a fictional news anchor’s career. Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) is a respectable old journalist whose ratings have slipped as he has personally slid into alcoholism. Beale’s story is a trapping for a larger allegory about the encroachment of entertainment programming into the news cycle, though. Most of the real action takes place between Diana Christensen (played by Faye Dunaway) and Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), two ambitious executives seeking to turn Beale’s network around into a profit-center. When Beale announces on live television that he’s going to commit suicide during his final broadcast, the tensions between corporate greed, personal ambition, pride, and tradition all come to a head.

Journalism is expensive, and airtime during a news broadcast is a hard sell. Historically we’ve seen the real-world broadcast networks put on their news programming as what amounts to a pro-bono basis. The costs of maintaining a pool of reporters in areas of interest around the world are high, so corners have to be cut to stay on budget, to keep the ship afloat. In Network, Hackett it looking to subsume the news division into programming, under the same people that handle soap operas, sitcoms, and made-for-TV movies. Christensen sees great entertainment potential in current events, inspired by footage of a terrorist group’s bank robbery. She looks to start up a weekly drama series based on authentic footage of terrorist acts acquired through contacts with the terrorists themselves. When Beale has a breakdown, she sees a great opportunity and jumps for it.

As somebody that habitually leaves CNN or MSNBC on in the background at home, Network strikes me as prophetic. The news cycle is dominated by a perpetual drive for scandal, for a train wreck, for a horse race. Barack Obama started pulling ahead in the polls, the news media promptly starts digging up anything they can to make the Democratic race look competitive again. Wow. The president is trying to gin up a flimsy case for going to war with some third-world country? Sounds like a great chance to draw some eyeballs to the boob-tube; the news media brews up exciting graphics and dramatic music instead of looking into the facts behind the government’s claims. John McCain looked like he was the obvious candidate in 2000 during the Republican primaries, so the news media starts propping up some incompetent southern governor as some kind of contender. The same buffoon somehow beats McCain (with the complicity of newscasters that were looking for a horse race to cover), and the process began over again trying to knock the clearly-more-capable incumbent vice president to make things look competitive. Nobody sticks around to watch a blowout, and the news directors know this. They’ll stick around for months to hear about some blonde that’s missing in the Caribbean, though.

The dialogue was excellent, the casting just about perfect. The production values were what you’d expect from a 1970′s drama, so the camera work and sound levels will probably grate on the delicate sensibilities of folks raised on THX. This certainly isn’t the kind of movie you can just wander in and out of the room for, it’s a serious movie made for people that have an attention span. Highly recommended.

The Motorola 2210-02 is an ADSL2+ modem recently distributed by AT&T for its residential customers. It features a handsome form factor and reasonably-useful LED status indicators. As it is most commonly introduced through a PPPoE-based provider, it is sometimes necessary to switch it over to a straight ATM<->Ethernet bridge. Here’s what you do:

1. Connect your computer directly to the Motorola. Browse to http://192.168.1.254/ in the browser of your choice. If your system has assigned itself a 169.mumble address, you will first need to manually assign your computer an IP address like 192.168.1.5, a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, and a default gateway of 192.168.1.254 to do so.
2. You should be challenged for Modem Access Code in order to change anything. This should be a ten-digit number on the bottom of the modem. It should be on a yellow sticker.
3. The Motorola will present a page prompting you for your PPPoE authentication info. You don’t need this any more, as you’re about to disable PPPoE. Click “Advanced” in the left-hand navigation bar instead.
4. Once the Advanced navigation has expanded, select “PPP Location.”
5. You should get a big red warning about the dire consequences of changing PPPoE settings. Ignore the warning and select “Bridged Mode (PPPoE is not used).”
6. Click the “Save Changes” button. Wait 15 seconds or so.
7. Switch your computer back to DHCP, hook your router back up, or whatever makes you happy. That’s none of my business; this document is just supposed to help you turn off PPPoE, not find meaning in life, achieve spiritual fulfillment, or any of the other things you should be working on.

Please note that the default Motorola 2210-02 firmware as detailed in the user’s guide available on Motorola’s site has a significantly different interface, as do the Motorola 2210-02 models distributed through BellSouth. I am located in SBC’s incumbent footprint, so the above instructions only apply to the stuff they distributed. I think the BellSouth one is 2210-02-1006 whereas the SBC version is 2210-02-1002, but don’t bet the rent on it. I mention this just in case you run into something purchased on eBay or trucked over during a interstate move.

A topic I’ve been interested in for a while now is the stampede mentality some people exhibit in regards to subjects framed as frightening. This includes handgun ownership, terrorism, hormones in food, genetically-engineered food, SARS, and a number of other supposed menaces to your personal safety that account for a very small number of actual problems. One that has come up recently at work has been the adverse effects of WiFi signals. A small but highly-motivated culture of electrosensitives and the chronically-afraid has sprung up around the radio frequencies emitted by cellphones and cellphone towers. Many have decided to associate the years-old paranoia about cellphones to wireless networking as well.

My knee-jerk reaction is that such concerns are overblown, a kind of niche-hysteria that just doesn’t make sense. WiFi access points use very little power; 100 milliwatts is typical, KSRO radio broadcasts at 5,000 watts and is just one of dozens of local radio stations. Shouldn’t we have been seeing health effects from generations of radio broadcasts irradiating us day and night without pause? So I did a little reading.

Looks like one of those great convergences where a handful of scientific studies have fallen into the hands of some highly-vocal people with a vested interest in hyping fear of this technology and a receptive media that is willing to fill (ironically enough) broadcast airtime on hyping it further.

The WiFi health scare has now found fertile soil in Sebastopol, California, where fourteen concerned residents converged on the city council to demand that a community wireless network project be shelved. This happened to be a project my employer was set to implement, more for gee-whiz factor than any real prospect of making money off it, hence my interest in the matter. Sebastopol has an interesting reputation for its residents’ collective insistence that it has an independent streak, often manifesting itself in odd ways including the overuse of political bumper stickers.

Now, I’ll concede that most of the folks that have signed onto the “new things are bad” approach to things are sincere in their intentions. Some honestly believe themselves to be affected by radio signals. Some have concerns about cancer that are amplified by family backgrounds and specific personal situations. Some are genuinely concerned about the well-being of children that are being forced to grow up in the future instead of the past. The problem here is that they’re getting played, manipulated, bamboozled, conned. There’s money to be made in RF-screening paint, curtains, gee-gaws, and even underwear. But who’d buy such things if they weren’t afraid of RF? If you’re somebody that follows links, yes, that’s over $459 for a gallon of paint.

Declaration of victory against WiFi
Observations by the guy trying to give a town free WiFi
Some British guy that’s skeptical on the matter

A proper study on the matter (PDF)