My conversation with PZ Myers

Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers has been interviewing his fellow FreeThought Bloggers, and Sunday afternoon was my turn. It was supposed to be a group chat, but no one else showed up, so I got to ramble about Fierce Roller for a full half hour. Apologies for the vertical format on my end; I’ve been having audio problems with Google Hangouts on my laptop, so I had to use my phone.

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Comment problems

As an unexpected and unintended consequence of FreeThought Blogs kicking our old hosting service to the curb, apparently our commenter whitelists have been lost. Fierce Roller is set that I have to approve your first comment, but after that your comments post automatically.

At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Without the whitelist, though, WordPress thinks everyone is a first-time commenter (I had to approve a comment from Aeravi yesterday!). So I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but even if you’ve commented before, your next comment is likely to be held in moderation until I see it. So far, I’ve never blocked a comment that wasn’t straight-up spam, so comment away!

Relief is in sight

For the past week or so, we (FreeThought Blogs) have been having server troubles. Pages often won’t serve, and here in the WordPress interface I often can’t save drafts or add images. Apparently the problem is with our hosting service, which the powers that be are consequently kicking to the curb. According to PZ Myers,

This’ll be mostly invisible and painless, but there might be a brief lockout tomorrow or the day after as the transition is made. The pattern of glitchy interruptions should end early this week.

The sooner the better.

Counting my millions

Breaking Bad Money

Photo Credit: Lewis Jacobs/AMC

I’m at a net loss from blogging so far. My net income for two years (here and on the old fierceroller.com site) has been $21.54, while I’ve paid around a hundred bucks for domain name registration and stuff like that. That’s fine; I don’t do it for the money. I have a lot of other reasons for doing this, and there have been lots of benefits both intangible and tangible. The blog was partly responsible for me being invited to write the meeting review for the 2015 Volvox meeting, and I’m working on another manuscript inspired by an exchange that played out on Fierce Roller. Still, the main reason I do this is that I like to.

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Sorry about the ads

I use an ad blocker. Two of them, actually. I’m willing to add a website to my whitelist(s) if their ads aren’t obnoxious, but if it’s flashing in my face, popping up new windows, or autoplaying audio, forget it.

So I didn’t know; that’s my only excuse. I had actually never seen the ads on Fierce Roller until a friend messaged me on Twitter [Pg-13 below the fold]:

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