February 2007
To start off this month, I have news that some french guy has his own Flog. More specifically, he took the Flog source code, made it really french, and is probably going to talk about very smart things. He calls it "système très simple mais pratique et rapide", which I guess means that it's simple, rapid, and subject to pratfalls. More as this story develops.
The French Flog Fairy Flosses Flax Facts on the Fax. Not only this, but he created a map of the "Flogosphere", which makes me feel weird, being part of a sphere and all, but what I do know is that the Gallimaufry of Whits predates The Flog by a fairly hefty margin, and that, well, he missed the wonderfully broken Flog of Christopher Schmidt. So, for those of you keeping score, this makes 4 whitsflogs, all linked together by one horribly constructed run-on sentence.
sbp mainly made a merging of our blogs. It isn't public yet, or even has a name (although I mention that I proposed whitlog because if I publish it he'll probably choose it), but it has a serious problem. For The Flog, I use the Markdown syntax. But sbp uses something weird and sciencefictiony, something he calls "protoävocet". Whereas Markdown has a syntax, protoavocet... doesn't. You type a normal plain text document, and protoavocet guesses as to how best transform it into HTML. Oh, sbp was going to switch to Markdown, but he hates it way too much. On the other hand, I really can't stand anything other than Markdown. Sure, we can make it an option, but what's the default?
We fixed this problem, but it doesn't have a name, either official or not.
Here's a draft on yet another goddamned plain text format:
In the Link
Ok, to tell you the truth, almost all of this draft's development was centered on this link syntax. We've found the best way to perform links {looks like this http://example.org}. I know. It looks a little dorky, but it'll grow on you. Trust me. Also, I'm hoping he lets me add {link seperators - http://heythisisn'tavaliduriwhatthefuck} so I don't get my link text in my link target, and my link target in my link text.
Also, I think we are doing footnotes or something. We didn't exactly work out how to do footnotes in this new syntax. Bite me.
Snorting Lines
Lines are done by filling a line full of one non-space character. Which means
that not only will "------------" produce an <hr>, but so will
"ffffffffffff", which is way cooler looking.
Giving Header
Headers are used by doling out a line of text, then a line. Like this:
HOLY CRAP THIS IS A HEADER
--------------------------
I'm thinking "####" would make H1s, "====" H2s, and "-----" H3s.
Oh yeah, you can also use the # sign to prefix headers, maybe. I don't know we didn't talk about headers really at all.
Slanty Text
Surrounding things with asterisks makes *emphasis*. Underscored and maybe slashes should work too. Also, if you do **double emphasis**, this makes your text be strong emphasis. Which is what I'm using instead of headers here. (Don't hurt me)
Paragraphical
Pretty much everything says "A paragraph is simply one or more consecutive lines of text, separated by one or more blank lines". Well, I've only really checked what Markdown has to say, but I'd bet everyone else said that too. Markdown also says that to do line-breaks, you need to enter in two spaces at the end of your line. This is clearly pretty horrible, but we haven't worked out a better way yet.
Blockquotes are so devoid of humor I can't even fake a joke here
"Markdown uses email-style > characters for blockquoting. If you're familiar with quoting passages of text in an email message, then you know how to create a blockquote in Markdown. It looks best if you hard wrap the text and put a > before every line"
Hey if I'm going to steal from Markdown then I better go all the way.
Double Listing
* Bullet Lists
* Like this
1. Numbered Lists
2. Like this
A pre-formatted post-apocalypse
Ok, this is where it gets downright funky, because protoavocet gets this 100% right. But, it's hard to explain how protoavocet does it, because protoavocet is just so damn weird. Basically, if one of the lines starts with significant whitespace, then the whole thing gets turned into preformatted. Which means that if you just copypaste code without thinking about it, it should work. If it doesn't, then add some whitespace. Maybe.
Splitting Image
Markdown has a way to insert images into a text document. Images. In a text document. Gruber, what the hell are you smoking.
HTML and you
Although this is a text format, we will eventually be turning it into html, so
you should be able to just insert html anywhere you want. Even things like <a href=... We
don't recommend doing this, because it makes our link syntax all jealous.
Character-ature
You should totally be able to write angle brackets and ampersands without the validator yelling nasty things about your mom. Unless, as mentioned before it's actual HTML, then we should just leave it alone. Plus, it'd be cool if it did "fancy quote things" and turned (c) into a copyright symbol, as I am too lazy to do these things.
Again, I'm going to point out that this is a mega-hyper draft
Mega-super-hyper draft. In fact, I've added as many bad jokes as I could so that nobody in the entire world would take this at all seriously. This way, when you whine that we changed something drastically, I'll remind you that one of the headers is a pun on "double fisting". Once the syntax is completely complete, sbp will re-write the whole thing using professional words.
Ok, that was the longest post ever. Also, because of The Flog's horrible engineering, I got published Nine and a half hours after the time in the top. Hopefully the new softwarez that sbp is building won't play like that.
So I've been following the development of this whole merging of Whits+Flog. I was really excited to see it would be using Markdown but I've read about today's disappointing discovery with flogging IRC logs.
Somebody mysterious just emailed sbp lamenting about the new default syntax. The keyword there is default, because I love Markdown way too much to switch. Truth be told, I'm probably going to switch anyways, because our goal is to take Markdown, and make it better.
Also, "Flogits" is a really cool name, horray for being #5 in the flogosphere, and i feel sad for being left out ;_;
Ok, this will be the last meta-flog post until the new software sbp is writing is installed. Which is why I've started preparing for The Switch. You might have known from a previous post that the new system will come with a new syntax. Well, the horrible horrible draft spec for it has become an actual thing, and it's name is Avocet. It's currently in super-beta, but nevertheless, it's installed and being used this second. Which is a good thing, as Avocet needs a ton of battle-testing. Which brings me to my second paragraph.
I'm sure all 2 of the regular readers of The Flog have noticed I've been slacking like a madman. So, I figured I should get all my metaposting out of my system by finding out how much stuff I should write to make February be a normal month. So, by counting the number of days and posts in the past couple months, I've found out that on average, I make 1.729 posts a day. So, for February to be an average month, it needs to have 48.412 posts in it. I have 43.412 left to do in 18 days, which means to meet my quota, I need to make 2.412 posts a day. But, as that horrifically long post shows, the number of posts might not be as accurate as the number of words. On average, I've made 52.469 words a day for December and January. So, in order to make February hit the average, it needs to have 1469.132 words in it. So far, I've accomplished 1150 of them, meaning I only have a scant 319.132 words to create. After mathing out that the average post has around 23.346 words in it, this means 13.670 posts need to be made. Which gives me a post dilation of just 0.759 posts a day.
0.759 posts a day when I count the words, and 2.412 posts a day when I just count the posts. Which one should I go by? Ultra-slack, or mega-hyper? When in doubt, average. So, I now have to make 1.586 posts a day, or 28.548 posts before the month is up for this month to be... well, "normal".
And that should be plenty of battle to test in, right?
What? Don't look at me like that. That last post had 376 words. I have way more than enough words. Shut up.
So I was watching Conan, and a commercial for GE's ecoimagination thing starts. I idly watch it, but notice at the end, there's some bizzare subliminal stuff. Pause, skip back, watch each frame, and suddenly a great commercial turns into one of the coolest advertising stunts I've seen in a long time.
On the urinal, there is "i want to suck on that fleshy hunk of meat your holding". This makes me feel kinda warm and fuzzy inside, as, well.. somebody wants to suck my penis! Hell, it's not even a penis, it's a hunk of meat! This is the biggest compliment you can give a man's dick.
At least, until I remember this was scrawled by some horny homosexual who will take any hunk of meat. Doesn't matter if it's prime rib, or in my case, a sea scallop.
"ERIC IS KISSASS AT FAGGING"
This is my favorite vandalism ever. Well, technically, it's more along the lines of
ERIC IS
KISS ASS AT
FAGGING
This makes my brain shoot up and stand at attention. What was the original message? "ASS FAG"? Did it turn into a vauge insult into one aimed directly at Eric? And what about "kiss ass"? I mean, it would obviously be a typo if it weren't carved into steel. Maybe it started as "KISS ASS, FAG". But then why the "at fagging"? Aargh. I can't etymologize this one at all. The only thing I know for sure about it is that "Fagging" makes a great verb.
Yet another French Flog. Only, it's using django and javascript. It also seems extremely polished, probably due to the fact that the person stole all of the goods from Simon and didn't even look at the original Flog, knowing that the suck will permeate via osmosis to whatever he writes.