Well, it would make going to one place for everything Nielsen Hayden easier. Would the right sidebar with all the fabulous quotes be imported as well?

Whatever you do, you'll probably stay in my browser as the first page that comes up. Just sayin'.

Well, whatever works, I guess...

Don't do it!

Seriously, after nearly six years of doing a joint blog with my husband, I have to say if I knew then what I know now, I'd have gone with two separate blogs. There's no upside to having one single blog, and there are negatives:
- People who only link to "women's blogs" won't link to you any more.
- People who you'd think would know better will assume that everything on the blog was written by Patrick.
as just two.

If it's not too late, reconsider.

As is my wont, all I see here are disadvantages of the kind that Dori points out. If you don't mind me asking, what is it about the merged blog that appeals to you both?

(I have no dog in this what ain't a fight: I'll link and read you both wherever you are. I'm just curious.)

- People who only link to "women's blogs" won't link to you any more.

That's a negative? I'd call it more of a filter. Anyway, I doubt either Nielsen Hayden is starved for links.

- People who you'd think would know better will assume that everything on the blog was written by Patrick.

Local custom is to use those people as piñatas. *anticipatory grin*

My feeling is that you should do whatever keeps the two of you enthused about blogging.

It's hard work, after all. And sometimes there is a dispiriting pressure when you feel you haven't been "posting enough". If combining the blogs helps ease some of that, and if that helps keep the spirit willing, I'd say go for it.

Both of your blogs are invaluable, so if we get something like both blogs together with one URL, that's fine with me. It would be good if the little sidebar things are kept separate, if you can manage that. I don't really know why I say that. I just want them to remain separate, is all.

I think if the way you set it up makes it clear that "This is Patrick's post regarding his particular thing" and "This is Teresa's post regarding her particular thing", I don't see a problem with it all. I mean, there is an impusle to do it coming from somewhere, and I think you ought to give in to that impulse if it really feels like the right thing for you to do.

Is all I'm saying.

What Michael Weholt said.

I think it's a fabulous idea. I can't imagine confusing the two of you in terms of your writing, you have distinctive voices, but I'm sure you'll set it up so that we know who posted what.

I'm all for the combined power it gives you, links and hits and pings and comments and community. It seems completely natural to me. But then, I remember Telos and Izzard.

Dori, Patrick and I put out our first issue of Telos twenty-five years ago, and have co-edited a great many publications since then.

Mimeography has given way to Moveable Type, but some truths remain. There will always be people who think there's one writer named Patricia Nielsen Hayden; ditto people who credit my writing to Patrick; ditto people who think I'm the charming one but Patrick's the political writer; ditto people who ... oh, lord, I'm not going to run through the whole list. Folly is fractal: the closer you look at it, the more of it there is.

There are people who only link to women's weblogs. Forgive me if I'm mistaken about this, but as far as I'm aware, most of them don't link to me as it is. And what if they don't? I'm sorry, but to my mind, if they drop me for having a male co-editor, they're just making their world stupider. I thought the same thing decades ago, when a prominent feminist apa kicked out all its male members. Either men and women are part of the same discourse, or they aren't; and separate has a poor record of being equal.

If they're willing to link to a weblog written by one feminist, why shouldn't they link to a weblog written by two?

Here's the upside of combining our weblogs: we thought it would be better this way.

I won't even try to describe the months of intricate negotiations that went into this decision. If you're old enough to remember the brangle over square vs. round conference tables, you may understand two-column vs. three-column format. Arriving at the combination of my typography plus Patrick's color scheme was more like the Missouri Compromise.

Michael Weholt has unerringly identified a core issue: the Particles and Sidelights lists will remain separate.

Keith, Patrick's commonplaces will remain, but as of the last mockup, they're on the left side.

Lucy: Exactly! Just so.

I won't even try to describe the months of intricate negotiations that went into this decision. If you're old enough to remember the brangle over square vs. round conference tables, you may understand two-column vs. three-column format. Arriving at the combination of my typography plus Patrick's color scheme was more like the Missouri Compromise.

Jeez, now I'm way psyched for the idea and can hardly wait for the unveiling. I don't want to put any pressure on you or anything but I think I should tell you that if it doesn't outdo the best of Christo, I'm afraid I shall perish.

Teresa's Folly Formula: "Folly is fractal."

This is highly quotable! Very clever indeed. As corollaries: Every great folly is built from a set of very similar smaller follies. Power Corrupts, and absolute power corrupts according to a power law generating a fractal folly. Don't call the President either "square" or a "blockhead." His folly is not 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional, but of an irrational fractal dimension. In the case of the current President, his folly is transcendental.

I expect that the merged blog will not retain Electrolite's full-text RSS feed.

If so, I will miss it.

The advance notice is very much appreciated in this corner; I would have been surprised.

They're your blogs, so you get to do as you will with them. I'm just glad to be part of the audience.

Michael, we'll send round some minions with sustaining broths and cordials.

JVP: Very good, Jonathan.

Christopher Davis: Full-text RSS feed...?

Uh-oh. Must sort this out.

(*cough*)

I am informed that we shall have a full-text RSS feed.

An Atom feed, specifically.

I feel strongly about this.

When will the combined blog then incorporate Worlds of If?

Why not keep _some_ style differences between your two postings?

Michael Turyn: The authorship of our postings will be clearly identified. Besides, we couldn't write exactly like each other if you paid us and held a gun to our heads.

Teresa, Tom and I have been successfully writing together since 1997. While that's not as long as the two of you, we've also had the same experience of people confusing which of us has done what. Especially as, contrary to most people's assumptions, I'm the geekier of us two.

I just figured that I'd pass along my own less-than-wonderful experiences. But just the thought of a full text feed of Making Light makes me happy all over, so I've got nothing to gripe about.

Ah, and now if we could only get a full feed of the comments? Oooh, oooh, please? Pretty please? All your comments showing up in NNW, without me having to reload your site to see what's new. sigh...

I'm for it. Makes my daily browsing easier.

Dori, believe me, I know where that shoe pinches. Thing is, I enjoy co-editing with Patrick.

I think you're about to get his answer on RSS feeds and comments.

An RSS/Atom feed of the comments is something I fully intend to implement. Indeed, Teresa's old reluctance to have a full-text feed for Making Light was a vestige of the time when it wasn't practical to do that; she feels strongly that the comments are part of the essence of the blog, not an "extra."

One of the Electrolite features that I really like is the blogroll. Patrick organizes it in a way that makes it a useful portal into a number of blogging microcosms. There are a bunch of political blogs that I now read on a regular basis, primarily because I became aware of them through Electrolite links. (Instead of using an RSS reader, I often click down the Electrolite blogroll to see "what's new.")

Like Lucy, I remember Telos and Izzard. But I also remember Flash Point. I hope you'll manage to keep some of that ambiance in the mix.

An RSS/Atom feed of the comments is something I fully intend to implement.

Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! I had no idea such a thing was even possible. I think I have to lie down now.

I trust you will fix thee bug in Teresa's CSS (but not in Patrick's CSS) that makes it impossible to link to threads in this web log without including instructions on what to do if you get a blank screen with nothing but ads on it.

I have noticed that Patrick has not been doing much blogging of late and I have to say I have missed his quite distinctive voice. If this encourages more activity I'm all for it. I cannot imagine any of your regular readers possibly being unable to distinguish between your entries even if you don't make it obvious. Also, I was vastly amused by T's description of the negotiations. Ah, to have been a fly on the wall.

MKK

I have to admit, I'm looking at this from the technical side and getting bemused. First and foremost: I don't find full-text RSS useful; far from it. If there's just the beginning, I click on the link and read the full-text, and the comments (the best part of the experience, naturally).

(Actually, I've found this to be the area where Livejournal has the advantage over the others...the threading of comments, and the automatic emailing of responses, means I can keep track of conversations I'm having without needing to continually reload a page...but that's another argument.)

So, feel free to merge the blogs, or not. I'll keep reading this, and electrolite until it closes, through the makinglight .rdf feed on LJ.

If I'm correct (I think I am) this would make you eligible as a source site for Google News.

As long as you're adding functionalities, I have a small if-it's-easy-otherwise-don't-bother request: would it be difficult to display a time-stamp on the comment links in the "Previous 400 comments" page? I don't post every time I come here, and it's sometimes difficult to figure out where I left off. That just means I end up re-reading some comments, and scrolling. I'm pretty likely to remember when I was last here, though, and a timestamp would make my life that tiny bit easier. But as I say, it's not a biggie.

I assume you already considered and rejected a name along the lines of The United Blogdom of Light Making and P's Electrolite?

Lenny Bailes: "Instead of using an RSS reader, I often click down the
Electrolite blogroll to see 'what's new.'"

That's what I *usually* do. I don't know why I've been embarrassed to
admit it, up until now.

I'm trying to imagine a merging of the design of Making Light and Electrolite. Will both your photos be displayed? Where will everything go? I am both eager to see it and wistful for the Way Things Are Right Now.

As long as you both keep writing, I have no complaints.

I was kinda hoping for "Electromake". Or maybe "Making Electrons".

I think it's a good idea; co-blogging means always having someone else to blame for lack of updates. And you can always untangle and revert if it doesn't work out.

I was kinda hoping for "Electromake". Or maybe "Making Electrons".

"Welcome to the Occupation".

Before it's lost in the endless stream of comments, I'd like to thank Michael Turyn for

"When will the combined blog then incorporate Worlds of If?"

which made me laugh out loud, immediately before it made me feel really old.

Teresa, Patrick: It's your party - - as one of the guests, I'll be glad to visit, however the furniture is arranged.

Re the "some women won't link". Who cares? As you say Teresa, they are making their world stupider. There are even sf "critics" out there who think they can construct the genre through women only books.

My only concern is that there are two distinct voices here, and I like those two distinct voices. If they remain distinct, fine. I wouldn't want a composite.

I've avidly read both Making Light and Electrolite for quite a while, though I seldom post.

I'll continue to read avidly.

You'll retain the archives of each? It would be really terrible to lose them.

But...but what about Patricia Nielsen Hayden? Where will SHE post?

I'm just happy that the two of you have stood as the core of what is probably the most interesting community I've seen on the web. Whatever you choose to will be fine, especially if it keeps you and your blog fresh and fun.

By the way, I'd like to share something. Back during a rather bleak period of under and unemployment, Making Light and Electrolite gave me a small but vital sense of belonging, even as a newbie. This made a real difference and helped me keep my bats safely in my belfry. Thanks to both of you, and to the exceptional group of regular commenters that you've attracted.

Oh, and one small thing. Perhaps you can create some small visual device that calls out authorship of a post. Even though your voices are different, nothing beats a visual marker.

I think it's a great idea. I look forward to the new, joint blog.

I'm curious to see how you'll implement RSS feeds of the comments without making things vurra vurra confusing. I'm sure you have it figure out though, you guys have done superior things with the blogging user interface.

Tom W.: What I do is, just before I leave ML for the day, click on the link in the "recent comments" column for the newest post. Since followed links are a different color than unfollowed ones, when I come back the next day the last comment I've read is marked and I know that everything after that is new, even without a timestamp.

A full feed of Teresa's posts, *and* a combined comments feed of both of your blogs?

There's only one thing left to ask for: may I please have a pony? You've just given me everything else I wanted.

<big grin>

Did I really say, "I look forward"?

Crimony, I've been reading marketing literature for 16 years and it has finally rotted my brain.

How to -- compact Making Light:
How to -- preserve all the choices;
How to -- talk left, ragged right,
How to -- maintain separate voices;
How to prepare a trimmed blogroll on rye;
How to redact
With a semblance of tact
And a cool editorial eye
One blog is all that we need
And it will have RSS feed!

How to -- maintain message flow,
With joint opinions residing;
How to -- keep Sidelights aglow
And Particles from colliding:
How to -- mark hotlinks in text
So when you scroll down the page now
One century turns to the next
And Izzard’s one guy on stage now

How to recall how their fanac was spent
Toward this task -- and if NESFA should ask --
I’ll draw the Pete Framish descent.
This union’s all that we need;
Now then, hold on -- where’s my screed?

(with the sincerest apologies to Frank Loesser, who holds too many of my markers already)

And since people have sometimes lost their train of thought after one of those, uh, things, some suggestions:

This country outsources people for lesser things

You're no Matthew Broderick, you know

You should only run into John Lahr in Shubert Alley late some dark night, and may the Sherwood Schwartz be with him

Look, the Winged Victory of Samo...no, wait.

Yes, of course the combined blog will link to Electrolite's old archives; that's easy to implement, and the prototype-in-progress already does so.

As Mitch Wagner notes, syndicating the comments is likely to be more of a challenge, so we may not have that ready to go when the rest of the merged site goes "live." It'll happen, though.

I was kinda hoping for "Electromake". Or maybe "Making Electrons".

I was thinking "Making Electrolite". I'm boring that way.

I visit your house and you tell me you are repainting and rearranging the furniture. I do NOT have the right to complain. I'll bring chocolates at the unveiling and compliment your taste.

And if it makes things easier for me, what luck.
If it doesn't--I shut up and learn to like it.

Jane

Larry Brennan: Gracious! One never does know what one's writing is going to do, out there loose in the world after one lets go of it. Glad to have been useful.

As to "some small visual device that calls out authorship of a post," we were thinking of the arcane glyphs "Posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden" and "Posted by Patrick Nielsen Hayden." Would those do?

The byline is a fine technology.

As to "some small visual device that calls out authorship of a post," we were thinking of the arcane glyphs "Posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden" and "Posted by Patrick Nielsen Hayden." Would those do?

Will it be at the top of the post? Not that I wouldn't be able to detect the author's identity almost immediately after beginning to read, but I like knowing before I start. It's like getting a phone call where the caller starts off: "Hi, it's me." For those times when I'm not quite sure of the voice, I hate having to think: "um, which me is this?" It's a brief but generally unnecessary moment of distress.

I should think "by Patrick" or "by Teresa" will suffice unless of course you prefer the entire name.

Also, will there continue to be a free coffee with every post, and the weekly book of shopping coupons?

I'd be happy to provide individual comment timestamps on the "previous 400 comments" page--as requested by Tom Whitmore, and others have asked for it too--but I'm running into a quirk of Movable Type that I can't quite fathom.

The existing page is generated with this code:

<MTComments lastn="400" sort_order="descend">
<MTCommentEntry>
<a href="<$MTEntryLink$>#<$MTCommentID$>"><$MTCommentAuthor$>
on “<$MTEntryTitle$>”</a><br>
</MTCommentEntry>
</MTComments>

There is in fact a Movable Type tag for comment timestamps; it's MTCommentDate, and it takes the usual timestamp flags -- "%B %d, %Y, %I:%M %p", etc. However, as far as I can tell, adding <$MTCommentDate format="%B %d, %Y, %I:%M %p"$> anywhere to the above yields, not the individual comment timestamps, but the timestamp of the weblog post to which the comments are attached. So, for instance, all the comments in this thread wind up being identically tagged "May 22, 2005 07:33 PM."

Anyone whose MT fu can divine the solution is encouraged, yea implored to clue us in.

Michael, yes, it would be at the top of the post. I've actually been known to pester other multiple-author weblogs about this--like you, I want to know who's writing when I start reading.

The free coffee will continue, along with mandatory attendance at Nielsen Hayden Opinion Reformation Camp. (I always thought one of the best weblog titles EVAH was Opinions You Should Have.)

There you have it in a nutshell: Patrick's favorite other weblog title is "Opinions You Should Have," whereas mine is "Die Puny Humans."

Concerning Patrick's blogroll: Will anyone be surprised if I say that that was another source of thrash? I wound up caving completely on that one, though, around the time I realized that it's the links-list equivalent of his precisely arranged and endlessly fussed-over desktop.

(What you have to understand is that Patrick's work areas are a manifestation of what Will Shetterly calls "altar-building behavior." There's encoded meaning in the placement of every object, and it all has to be just so. Somewhere around here we have a picture of ten-year-old Patrick working at his desk. That photo spooks me. If Patrick weren't in the picture, I'd still know whose desk that was.)

So Patrick's blogroll will carry over, even though it means we'll just list the weblog titles, instead of author-and-title the way I do it now. A possible project for the future would be to reinstate the authors' names as mouse-over title tags. (In our copious spare time, that is.)

Mike, I was reduced to delighted giggles by your lyrics, as I'm sure you knew I would be.

I predict people will be no more confused by your conjoined weblog than they have been by your conjoined last name.

Seriously, though, I think it'll be cool. The next open thread should be parcticularly interesting.

"Making Electrolite" is clearly the only acceptable mash-up name.

I personally also like "Neilsen Hayden Overdrive."

"I personally also like "Neilsen Hayden Overdrive." "

Then they'd have to go to many government agencies and change their name to that particular spelling!

Jane

And after that, "Making Light Orchestra."

We'll stop now.

I can't believe nobody seems to have pointed this out yet (did I miss it?), but surely there's only possible name for the merged blog:

"Making Lite"

*ducks*

I'm slow today. Unfortunately not slow enough, and I did eventually get Patrick's comment, and now I'm going to have the Time album as an earworm all day. I can tell...

As has been said - your party, your furniture, and thank you for considering suggestions. Full comment feed will be nice if it happens. :-)

You could call it "NH," short for "NO HYPHEN!".

Altar-building behavior, huh? That's exactly what I'm going to spend the next two days doing at Rites of Spring, before the altar-using public arrives...

And Patrick, I think your arcane glyphs are lovely, but I was hoping for a New Yorkerish (and by that I mean New Yorkerish) "Patrick writes:" and "Teresa writes:"

Then you could have anonymous guest posts labeled "A young friend writes:" or "An elderly friend writes:" or "A friend in Iraq writes:". Or, of course, nonymous ones by, say "Christopher writes:"

Nahhhh. Not that sort of blog. But your "glyphs" seem slightly too formal for the style of either of your current blogs. To me. Whose electronically-expressed opinion on the matter is worth the paper it's printed on.

Ooo, my last two non-sentences. I listen for the frogs.

Kathryn Cramer: Or “NO-HYPHEN!” just to be recursive.

a.p. "Making Lite"

I thought it would be Lightolite.

E-Lite. Pronounced Elite.
Makelite. Rhymes with Bakelite.
Elektron Poesis, to be corrected by someone who knows Ancient Greek.

Okay, leaving now for airport, on way to Dad's funeral [see Open Thread 40 for how important he was as a Science Fiction Editor].

I know quite well that mixing English and Latin would have ticked Housman off even more than interfacing Latin and Greek, but, well, he's not around, and thus never encountered homosexual television. Probably wouldn't have altered his views in any direction, though.

That said:

"Lightsapor."

(Pity please line up on this side of the aisle; terror over there, thank you.)

Sorry to hear about your dad, JvP.

I now have Folly is fractal: the closer you look at it, the more of it there is. scrolling across the screen as my screen-saver. Thank you!

On the who links to who issue, one of the reasons I ultimately stayed on LiveJournal for my bloglike activities was as a very, very effective filter against readers who Have Standards in venue shopping.

Julia, that's an intriguing statement. Can you expand on that, please?

I think this sounds great--(it sure will cut down on the number of mouseclicks, too!)

As I said to Patrick at dinner last Thursday, I think this is a wonderful idea. Just give us all the official heads-up so I can move you into my "Dynamic Duos" section. :)

Telos and Izzard, huh? I don't remember it, but twenty-five years ago, hmmm... It must have come out shortly after you were writing "Getting To Know Your Rabbit", or maybe it was concurrent with "Simple Tootsie From The Country?"

BTW - giving a heads-up when a site is being redesigned is just plain best-practice.

My bank, a largish Seattle based institution, literally just put a whole new look and feel on their site with no advance notice. I went to the login page and then spent about 15 minutes reassuring myself that it was indeed my bank and that the site hadn't been hijacked.

Of course, we'd know if nielsenhayden.com had been hijacked; the poorly written post praising self-publishing companies and the revelatory declaration of allegiance to PNAC and the Club for Growth would be good leading indicators.

Oooh, I like that idea. I'll start working on it for next April Fool's Day.

David Goldfarb: Tom W.: What I do is, just before I leave ML for the day, click on the link in the "recent comments" column for the newest post. Since followed links are a different color than unfollowed ones, when I come back the next day the last comment I've read is marked and I know that everything after that is new, even without a timestamp.

On IE 6, I find that \every/ comment is in the read-recently color if I've looked at anything in that thread (unless it has been ~3 days since I last looked in from a given machine, in which case \nothing/ is marked as read). Somebody once posted an arcane solution which I don't recall. Yeah, I know I should be using Firefox, but work doesn't like private installations of software and the home system is shared. I'd love to get this to work; timestamping would help locate the start point but not identify threads with postings I haven't read.

Mike: re your suggestions for invective: around our house, the usual warning is "Mike's slipped his leash again." I keep trying to write "Who Let the Mike Out?" and getting stuck at what sort of noise should follow....

Does anyone here have trouble reading my Particles list?

Julia, do please go on. That's interesting.

Teresa, I don't know if this counts as trouble, but I find I have to click on the individual item on the list on the home page (or, more frequently, in the RSS feed), and then click through to the Particles home page, and then click on the same link AGAIN to get to the actual item.

It's not really a big deal, which is why I have never said anything about it.

Generically across the Internet, it is much more likely that people who would have linked to Electrolite (because it's a man's blog) won't link to Making Light (because it's by a woman, and the generic "everyone" knows women don't blog about serious issues).

I note this not to deny anyone's experience of women only linking to blogs by women, but to point out that, if this behavior exists, I strongly suspect it's a reaction to the much more widespread habit of not linking to (and never acknowledging) blogs by women.

Having said that - I agree with everyone else who said that it's entirely up to Patrick and Teresa how they arrange the furniture in their own blog(s), and that I will keep visiting, no matter what you do, so long as I'm let.

I'm not so sure about the Missouri Compromise metaphor. Didn't that lead to Bleeding Kansas, Franklin Pierce, etc.?

Teresa and Patrick, the ads are now displaying under the "write here" box for the thread. This is nice, because I can now completely ignore them, but is probably not what you want. I'm in IE 6.02 (Yes, I know, all the cool kids use Mozilla, but too many sites seem to load extra-slow in Moz, including ML).

Under Safari 2.0, there is a big blank gap between the top of the page and the start of the comments. Screenshot available on request. Also, the comment text is light gray on white at the moment.

...and now the big blank gap has vanished...

I check both of your blogs daily, and I'm always glad to find a new post on either. If their merged, I'll still check it just as often and be just as glad to read your posts. I'm sure this is an agonizing decision for you two, but as a reader, I'm just looking forward to reading your posts whether they remain separate or consolidated. Your voices will continue to be distinct, of that I have no doubt.

By the way, I'm in Japan for another month if there's anything I can bring you, just shoot me an email.

Patience, my children. Large objects are being hurled around the room.

I'm not too wild about the idea of combining two quite different weblogs. I fear it will dilute their individual flavours, and make it harder for me to read what I'm interested in. I can't see what benefit would come of it.

Still - they're your toys, so should play with them in the way you like - and I certainly won't stop reading.

Weighing in late, I have had both Electrolite and Making Light blogrolled for months, and I admit to a small frisson when I see the asterisk next to either denoting it's been updated.

I guess the combination of the two makes room for another worthy on my linklist, huh?

Nifty.

I miss the purple.

CHip: Funny, I find that Internet Explorer works as I described.

IE 5.2.3, to be sure. I use Safari 1.3 as my primary browser. I suspect we're looking at an OS issue. (Hey, if you copy and paste a multi-line URL from a Usenet post, does IE 6 automatically rejoin the lines?)

This is not terribly helpful to you, I know, and I fear that I'm only very slightly sorry.

Clearly, I'm outvoted; but I'd love to see them stay separate.

A short, convenient, and very fannish way to represent NO-HYPHEN would be MINUS-HYPHEN, or --. But I think Patrick & Teresa have already been there and done that.

I share Steve Taylor's worry, but like most, will give it a go & be patient. The narrower central column may make it a bit easier to read most of the text, but it does wear for longer entries (hmmm ... deliberate to discourage waffling, she types loquaciously?) and as my eyesight get worse, the size and colour of body text may also prove a problem.

But note that the blank with link for ads/blank with ads only page takeover problem IS NO LONGER! It became very bad recently, so this is a Very Good Thing.

Also noting the hurled objects, Epacris spp are good at tucking themselves away in the undergrowth inconspicuously.

In re lj and venue-shopping: I was hesitant to get an lj because it seemed less respectable than getting a "real" blog. As it became clear that I'd probably never get around to setting up a blog and that I was writing comments to a fair number of ljs and that those comments were getting a very limited audience because lj isn't that well set up for ongoing discussion, I started Input Junkie.

I really like livejournal, even though I wish discussions were structured more like newsgroups. However, the friends system is a very handy way of keeping up with the ljs I'm interested in.

However, I've since found out that there's prejudice against livejournal which goes beyond the "not a real blog" thing--there seem to be a fair number of people who believe that lj is all boring teenage diaries. To the small extent I've used the "show me a random lj" feature, there do seem to be a lot of boring teenage diaries, but there's also so much good that refusing to read lj at all is mere bigotry. Or trying to avoid yet another timesink, but that's a different issue.

I recommend Brad Hicks' lj as a very good political and social essay lj which has gotten snagged by venue prejudice.

On the template tags issue: perhaps the $MTCommentDate$ is getting confused by being inside $MTCommentEntry$?

(I can't easily test this; I'm not running MT3 yet.)

Though you do say "anywhere", so you may well have already tried that. If so, sounds like an MT bug.

Yes, I did try it outside the container as well.

Well, actually, I realize now my only real objection to all of this is that it should have been set-up as a sort of Apollo 13 Role Playing Game wherein Electrolite is the Lander and Making Light is the Command Module and all of us are clinging to life as some way to survive is desperately searched for then patched together by The Crew as we race toward certain doom only to be rescued at the last minute. One of us could have said "Failure is not an option." And then we could have had a communication blackout briefly as we all waited through a brief time when somebody would be invited to cut the tension with a knife. Then our chute would be sighted, we'd splashdown, the hatch would be popped, and we would all emerge still in one piece.

Okay, all I'm saying is that it could have been set up that way, with a little more planning.

Well, water under the bridge. I guess I'll go make a call on my cell phone and pretend it's my Communicator.

I'm having trouble reading the blue letters on the left. The purple letters are fine, so I don't know if it's the color or the thickness of the blue letters.

I want to know about the good things confederation brought us all in canada like what is the diffreance i dont see any other thatn the joining of diffrent colonies but what help did it give us freedom? no i dont see any at alland besides of woman voting?

I want to know about the good things confederation brought us all in canada like what is the diffreance i dont see any other thatn the joining of diffrent colonies but what help did it give us freedom? no i dont see any at all and besides of woman voting?

Well, you've got to remember that our first Prime Moderator, Sir James A. MacDonald -- you've heard of him, haven't you? -- had only two main priorities: whiskey, and talking with his dog. The Confederation of the Upper ("Electrolite") and Lower ("Making Light") colonies may have had other effects, but they weren't important factors in his work.

Joel Polowin #103: You've also got to note the role of Sir Wilfrid Serge Laurier in the process.

The temptation to be cruel is almost overwhelming, but not, alas, justified in this case. I'll save it for the real trolls.

Xopher (105): They're just participating in the long tradition of Your Homework Done for Free