last of 2016 30 day challenge- Day Twelve

moment of silence for a special RIP

2 more days left until The Pinky Press Review goes *poof*. Every possible tweak shutting it down has been tweaked except the public archives. I won't be saving them. The paid part was a nice 18 month run, with 12 subscribers and nearly 2600 views. I imagine if those had been higher I would probably think a little longer about letting it all go, but honestly, even with all the blogging I do I'm surprised I let it go on as long as I did. The pro account is now cancelled, which means I can no longer manually rank and super tweak my content, including widgets and other coding, which is what made my paper unique, so I see no reason to hang onto it. I'm not going to keep relaying the same rubbish other free papers shuttle into their content curation off twitter.

In the meantime I have all the Gaston lyrics in my head, thank you so much, Disney. "No one hits like Gaston, matches wits like Gaston, in a spitting match nobody spits like Gason- I'm especially good at expectorating..." You can see all the lyrics here. You're welcome.

I got even, though. I have successfully brainwashed Bunny to Crayon Pop. And then we promptly had to listen to 10 more versions of the same song, so I'm dizzy with lyrics crashing around my head this morning.


It was so cute listening to Bunny trying to tell me she does that in 'gynassix' (dance moves), and she had to show us all the balance moves she's already being taught. On a chair. We quickly moved to spotter position, but that kid is pretty good, didn't bump or slip once.

Srsly need to pink it up a bit.



Was so wiped out after our 24 hour Bunnython that I totally fell asleep about 30 min into the Walking Dead. Woke up just in time to see Daryl crying in Rick's arms o_o so I'll hafta rewatch that sometime today. Can't tell you how many people I'm running into irl that are #TeamNegan. The show veered into an almost intellectual slant on philosophizing apocalyptic scenarios, and I'm enjoying the bigger picture puzzle. I thought about live tweeting, and actually nearly did, but my right arm and hand were hissing so loud at me last night I could barely even get a jacket on and off taking Bunny home, almost couldn't buckle my own seat belt, so I knew I'd better not push it. Seems to be a little better this morning.

Along with the rest of 2016, I'm throwing out social obligations and pressures. Aspienado stumbled a lot through most of that stuff, and I can see that intensely downsizing my interaction level over the last 10 days hasn't hurt any of my numbers at all. In fact, I've been extremely surprised that some of the numbers have actually jumped a little. Part of sellsellsell tactics that are pushed on social media are interaction techniques. Well, 4 1/2 years later, I can give you a solid thumbs down on drowning your feed out in chatter. From what I can tell, it all boils down to hubbing well (ease of accessibility is key), which most people still don't even know is a thing or how to do right (and they still smash it into a networking plan, which is self defeating) and acknowledging. It's important not to look like a bot running scheduled updates, which a lot of accounts do in between the chatter.

Honestly, I think what gives me the most incredible boost is that I have real friends, and I love them. I don't think I'd have learned all the good things I did without them. Aspienado might suck at small talk, but I'm the one who remembers your tweets and can find them again, even years later. When I say throwing out social obligations and pressures, I mean added self inflicted guilt over not clicking 'like' on every single thing I'm tagged in, or (and this is a funny way of looking at it) responding to a stray text from an outlying family member who otherwise never ever speaks to or contacts me. If it's not life or death, tossing a random hello at me is probably like tossing a leaf in the wind.

The real me is somewhere no one can find. No one ever asks me where I am when I time out. One way I keep Bunny asleep through the night at my house (very mobile sleeper) is with the Spa channel from Sirius Radio on Dish. That kind of music is super awesome for sleeping. I was looking for the instrumental version on youtube and ran into this version. THIS is my head when I time out. Years ago I used to attempt to describe my 'light on water' experience. My experience staring at light on water is instant nirvana. No one else exists. I don't miss anyone, don't think about anyone, don't question anything, don't even remember anything. I don't *think*. I just exist, and it's the most peaceful thing you can't even imagine. That people spend thousands of dollars trying to achieve this in a variety of ways (I laugh at meditation) tells me this is a valuable trait in autism.



Here is where the song itself comes from, the saddest success story ever told. If you don't know the entire Karen Carpenter story and how it broke through a mountain of solid ice, leading the way for millions trapped in depression, then you need to.

->lyrics<-



This is one of the best articles I've read about the retelling of this story in the continuing layers and intricacies of Karen's life in the public eye and how viewers judge what they can't see going on and how that has impacted the entire world. Karen died alone, but definitely not in vain.
Todd Haynes Deconstructs An Ideal Tragedy In SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY

One of the reasons this story has stuck with me ever since it happened is because my daughter was born shortly after Karen died. I don't like venturing too much into personal things that aren't mine, but at the time I was watching one sister slip through high school with a regular sized bandana cinched through the belt loops in her jeans in lieu of a belt after another sister had been pulled out of school before graduating for not eating. There is a short span of time I can snapshot in my mind that beautifully reveals the unexpressed stress going on in my family, including my brother, mother, and father. For all of us to be so messed up (my words) and still survive- all us kids are still here with our own kids. We came through something together that no one else will ever know or understand, something we ourselves never really talk about together, just an incredibly sad spot buried in anorexia, alcohol (me and my brother), religious and political obsession (my dad) and depression on the verge of exploding (my mom). Thank goodness we all grew up and started having kids.

Thank goodness we are still here. I am probably the only one who has thought this every single day without fail. Ever since my car accident (yes, the one where my dad pulled me out of emergency rescue without so much as a sign of relief that I was even still alive and walked off after mom deposited me on a couch to keep internal bleeding), I have never taken my family for granted. We are a sad story, and we love each other very much, even if we couldn't say it when we needed to. Thank goodness our own children have taught us how.

Mom went on ahead, and it was hard, but it didn't undo us. We are not estranged from each other like some families do, even though I am the oddball that holds the rest at arm's length. Sometimes I feel sad about that, but though the fates are cruel and make it nearly impossible for me to handle venturing forth (living with multiple allergies and epipens means I don't casually visit where people own dogs, plus other factors), I like twisting fate into my own devices and bending them to my own will. As long as I am still here, Pinky will continue to find ways to say the things that matter.

The Pinky Press Review was clutter in my closet. Part of this month's 30 day challenge is clearing out the clutter so I can get to the real work.

last of 2016 30 day challenge- Day Eight

I feel like annoying people...

So, stupid day yesterday with internet out most of the day meant getting some major paperwork processing done, yay! I don't know how it happens, kinda like an inverse proportional thing where the grodier I feel, the easier it is to do the most mundane drag chores in the world.

I also went through a lot of kleenex and looked up things like neuromyelitis optica because the pain that shoots around one side of my head when my eyes look up that direction is ridiculous. Nothing says 'meh' to Walking Dead and any other emotional crisis chain yank like looking up Mayo Clinic stuff and scaring yourself silly. I'm still #TeamNegan, by the way. Hate me all you want, the guy is rebuilding 'Murica and dang if he's gonna let a few zombies get in his way. I can't help wondering if the Saviors using Daryl to help them execute a plan will be totally screwed by our main gang splitting up into their own little plans without telling each other and Negan will come back and just laugh at all of them.

You know that strange phenomenon of really old tweets popping back up in notifications?
This was kinda funny to wake up to.

By the way (skip this paragraph if you get grossed out easily), when you burn real skin with a red hot iron, you get a lot of really white stuff over super red stuff, not to mention a really nasty smell, so that little gooey spot sticking to the iron didn't bother me. I also think that guy woulda screamed really high and passed out way sooner, and his hair anywhere near that iron would've smoked and singed. Details. Pretty sure, as long as Negan held that iron to his face, he had fourth degree burns. Holding metal that hot for that long on his face would've cooked everything under it instantly and then some (I'm pretty expert with heat), and likely nearly (if not actually) kill him just from pain shock. I'm not a burn unit expert, but I've had a couple of serious burns, a friend nearly lost her hands, and branding is still a thing.

Yes, I'm worse than Negan. I see what he's doing there and I'm still on board.

Scott was gone a week (per Facebook), so we're catching up on loads of stuff that piled up on the DVR while he was gone. I'm sure we'll be behind in everything the rest of the holiday season. We were cracking up so hard during last week's Flash the other night. Caught up on Arrow last night, looooove the Dominators spaceship, reminds me of the way ocean monuments are set up in minecraft. Wouldn't it be cool to have decorative lighting like that? And then Thea arrives on the Legends ship going cooool and I'm like wow, that is so dull compared to the alien ship, it's like coming back to a locker room or something.

I doubt I'll be live tweeting much this month, if any. I've been mentioning weird eye pain for a couple of months to ophthalmologist, my doctor, and physical therapist, so far so good, but I'm going back to the eye clinic today, and if this doesn't settle down, I may be saying howdy to my neurologist sometime over the winter, and he might want another MRI, so I'm trying not to think about things like anxiety attacks. I remind myself it would be all the same if I were sitting home here or being looked at there, unless something shows up they probably won't do anything, and I ***definitely*** do NOT want anything to show up, and for everyone to all agree this is just a referred fake thing and maybe take something for a migraine, even though this isn't a migraine. The last time I felt pain like this coming on I wound up unable to read or watch TV for a long time (which they'll probably command me to stop doing just to calm the nerve back down), but I still walk the earth and I know I can do this. Just hafta stay on track and stay healthy so I can handle it, hopefully better than last time. Everybody positive vibe me and help me think this is nothing, it's just a jumpy nerve with a bad spark plug causing a misfire. Of course, having a stupid head cold isn't making it feel any better. I'm hoping the ophthalmologist reassures me about sinus pressure can totes cause that and it's a thing sometimes...

Professionals are getting after me again for powering through pain. It is really hard not to ignore pain and keep doing what I want to do in spite of it when I spent my whole adulthood learning to do that as a psychological survival mechanism. I was always expected to handle unimaginable amounts of pain in my family growing up, and I feel like I'm racing to get my stuff done before I can't any more. How many times have I said that? But it really does feel like that from the inside.

Those of you who've noticed Pinky Press Review is looking scanty (not that saying this matters if those of you who did notice don't read Pinky blog), yes, it's fading out. It's on a countdown, the list member content is being chopped down a little each day, the widgets and gadgets are folding up, and pretty soon it'll look bare. I'm visualizing it being sucked into a pandimensional nethersphere. I can already tell the creators installed triggers warning staff someone is doing that, because as soon as I turned off one of the ad plug-ins, a pop up to a live person was asking me if I needed any help. So, um, Big Brother time... (from France).... *wow*. I just closed the pop up chat without responding.

Anyway, no more powering through pain to live tweet. We're venturing into noncompliant patient stuff. Yes, I will miss it. Yes, it blows watching my interaction stats go down. Back to keyboarding behind the scenes, and who knows what 2017 will bring.

turkey bird week, GO!

I've decided this boinging awake in the 2 a.m.s now instead of the 3 a.m.s must be me flying through some kind of super euphoria and I can't feel it that much because of the gabapentin. I'm still eating, thank goodness. The first super euphoria I went through without any meds lasted 12 days and I practically stopped eating and sleeping the ~entire time~. It. was. awesome. but the crashing back down kinda sucked, and my psychiatrist seemed relieved this fall when I said I'm on gabapentin now.

Watch me wind up sleeping through Macy's parade...

Stuff from yesterday-

• Amy talked me into keeping Pinky Press Review, and that felt good
• Pat and Myke got the movie gang rocking again on SyfyDesigns and that felt good
• I polished off a big load of pan roasted parmed brussels sprouts with a splash of aged balsamic, and while that felt really good at first, later I  had a tummy ache, so maybe don't eat a quart of brussels sprouts in one go next time.

I JUST NOTICED BLOGGER HAS ADDED EMOJIS.

🌝😋⛄😍

HOW LONG HAS THAT BEEN THERE.
I can even search by drawing one to look for a match.

All righty, then, I am go for emojis. Wow. 🦃 Happy Turkey Bird!

Photobucket has not yet gotten back to me on not being able to upload anything for several days, but I'm too floaty to care right now. I've had a pro account forever, but they're ridiculously difficult to get hold of, so I dunno. If I had staff I'd just toss this problem at someone else, so I tossed it to Yablo, who was tunneling deep under an extreme biome yesterday and didn't care. I angled a beautiful 45 degree angle tunnel up through the highest point and emerged over a breathtaking view, which is pretty much Happy Land for me. I really dig dwarf mines on LOTR. Get it? Dig. Nvrmnd.

Random Batman pix. Someone has discovered the joys of button pushing, aka doorbell.

And popcorn!

And that Santa is an ok dude.

It's been a very long year, but also a very good year. Nonstop allergies, viruses, and the big dentist thing, but autie finally eating some finger foods, venturing into verbal, and even hamming for a camera is amazing. I am extremely proud of his mommy and daddy for being cool with making it ok to be himself, and thrilled that his doctor is into nutrition boosting early development. I didn't get any of that at his age (I was punished and fussed at a LOT on a daily basis for years), and I wasn't the greatest interactive mommy (although I did turn the corner on let's cut the crap with this punishment thing), but generational autism spectrum isn't the big bad doom and gloom it used to be, and I'm pretty sure Batman has got a lot of surprises for us in future.

My mother never knew I was one of the smartest people in my entire school. She didn't understand that stuff, and she couldn't get past me being a behavioral problem. She never knew her granddaughter was one of the kindest people I've ever met in my life because she was too busy trying to fix her with health food store stuff, like she tried to fix me. And my mother never lived long enough to see her great grandson, even though she could have if she had complied with doctors taking care of the diabetes ravaging her. I don't want to miss the opportunities to see how beautiful my children are.

My other kiddos were over yesterday, and I enjoyed them so much. Bunny and Spiderman are a blast together, and the hot chocolate after this was really fun. Bunny wound up with a tiny little Doctor Strange goatee around her mouth, should have gotten a picture.

gimme

Ah-HA! My scales are lying to me! Thought I'd step off and step back on, totes got a whole different number. Guess it's time to cave and get a new one. Maybe we're in battery death or something.

I remember when I brought this one home, everyone was ticked that it added 5 pounds.

Not saying it's boring now, but I fell asleep during The Walking Dead last night and missed the live tweet. ~sorrynotsorry~ We'd had such a big day, between @bonenado finally getting a deer, putting the first of the lights up, and getting a bunch of vacuuming and other cleaning done. Here, I'll toss a couple of pix here, heads up for the deer pic.

Ok, keep scrolling so it's off your screen.

K
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P

S
C
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WE'RE CLEAR NOW.

Missouri has been back and forth on button bucks (partly in response to some kind of deer disease that periodically sweeps across the U.S. and affects hunting regulations because population controls), but it's still legal and hard to tell from a doe in this level of bracken, even through a scope.

I've about decided I've got a very sophisticated pingback bot looking for a way into Pinky blog. This particular country is very unusual for bot patrols on my blogs, and the last time I had a bot like this was from the Ukraine and it turned out to be an app probing for a hack entry. The only thing I can think of that connects me to France, in a rather strong way actually, is my paper.li newspaper (Pinky Press Review on twitter, auto payments go to a corporate street address in France). They made a big change a few weeks back, restructured how manual controls over content works (I don't like it), and for some reason that change obliterated the embed coding for my blog here, so I just took it out. SO. I'm this close to concluding that they've picked up internet VD of some kind since this big change that is probably ping swarming all their clients now. It started within the last 2 weeks, the same posts keep getting hit over and over like rote every so many hours, and I'm wondering if it's activating in sync with a staff member logging in. The time zone kind of corroborates.

I've been thinking about dropping paper.li for awhile. Maybe it's time to just let it go. I had a good run with it, it was fun to a point, but I can't say I'll look back that fondly on all the content wrangling I kept having to drag through. Maybe I'll let the Pinky Press Review run up through the holidays, and then start 2017 fresh without it.

I just wanna say I have NEVER been bot swarmed in any fashion by SyfyDesigns, and I have links back to Pinky blog and Lexxperience all over that place. Myke has been really tight with his spam controls, and I sincerely appreciate it.

TODAY. Continue the excavation I started in my kitchen yesterday, money and calendar sync, finish up laundry, catch up the dishes, and hopefully keep working on my list thingy. I've been scattered off and on, but haven't been THIS scattered since I went public again. Srsly need to get on the scattered thing with the list thing.

TOMORROW. Physical therapy, psyche guy, and Hy-Vee for CHEESE. I have looked high and low for several different reserve aged cheeses I enjoy, not finding them *anywhere*. The only place left to look now is Hy-Vee. I live in a strange area, between a super church and lots of other churches and a gathering of wealthy families in our touristy-manufacturing-giant retail metro spread and several big feeding the homeless type operations, stores get wiped out very quickly and regularly for upcoming par-tays and soirees, and this is not the first major hunt I've gone on before holidays. And if Hy-Vee is also wiped out, I'll be looking into an actual cheese store, but I know from experience that doesn't always get me the cheese I want. Had a long talk with a cheese guy one year about how this area really isn't into the finer cheeses, and I was like dude, you run a cheese store, get this cheese in and FIND OUT. A good imported aged cheese lasts awhile, it's not like he's going to lose perishable inventory right away.

Kinda reminds me of the year I looked for saffron *everywhere*. We have it now, but a few years back, no one knew what I was even talking about. I was like hellooooo, we live in a high import area, I can find things from Asia many Americans wouldn't even know exist except for food shows, Indian-American professors and doctors abound here, how can you not know what saffron is??? Meanwhile, I could get cactus, tomatillos, and purple cauliflower...

Anyway. Cheese irk. All I ask for is an aged gouda. I was actually able to find it for awhile. It's gone again. Wah and grrrr. Ok, I ask for other cheeses, too, but you know what I mean. No, I don't want your smoked gouda. Who is wiping out all the good cheeeeeeeese???? STOP THAT.



Aged. Gouda. Gimme.

whining like I'm old or something

So what happens when you start an early ragweed season with 7 inches of rain?
Late Summer Ragweed Season Could Be Worst Ever
Why Are Allergies Bad in the Fall?

First 24 hours on Google analytics for my Pinky Press Review. I really had no idea. Plus I have subs. "Play with algorithms and they will come."

I can't express how sad I still feel that Lycos gears are gone. I so miss the old days. I used to find the coolest codes, too, and put them into my sites. It's getting harder and harder to just play nowadays. I had a whirling analog clock/calendar mouse pointer and so many other fun toys, but they're all the old html scripts and won't work on most blogs nowadays, or even if they might still work, half the browsers out there won't acknowledge them, depending on system setup and personalizations. The saddest part was I did all my coolest stuff when nearly everything was still private. Tumblr still allows some of the older code, but my system doesn't like tumblr and it takes for-EV-er to pull pages around. Bleah.

I'm being boring today. Gotta run anyway.

:edit: 8-17-15 Again, youtubers, if you don't want your vids embedded anywhere that no one ever watches anyway till I post them somewhere, stop making them public in the first place. >=l Naturally, I downloaded it with my Torch browser because that's a real thing now, and one day I might actually replace it, since I've taken to writing down the vids I post so I can replace them, but not today.

I know ash! (and killing spydars)

Yesterday's views were so busy that I freaked out and thought Oh, no! Brazil found Pinky blog! but it's not lit up on the map and doesn't show up in the country list, so whew!

Untangling the whole actual Google analytics vs Google webmaster tools thing is a real treat. So far nothing I have as solidly confirmed property in analytics has been touched, so I assumed it was the webmaster tools that was the problemo. Brazil has been pinging once or twice a day on Pinky's Sox since the big July 24th spike, but that page isn't even in webmaster tools so now I have to dig some more (my G+/blogger associations are so java tangled now I can barely understand what they think they're doing). I'm going to leave it alone there and see how high that number pumps up, but I think I stopped Brazil on the dotcom because I haven't seen it show back up. Can't help wondering if too many fingers in the stat cookie jar is the problem there since that page is what verfies pinterest so I can see analytics there, too, plus GWT and WordPress colliding keeps sending me notes about markup items that don't mean anything. Hold your horses, guys, it's just a few links and graphics viewers can click out on, good grief, it's not like everything in there has to be meta adjusted. I'd rather get a heads up from a stat tool about unwanted parasite acquisitions, amIright?

I miss the old days.

What's even more fun is that I personally don't have working java on my laptop, so I can't see what the problems are they're pointing to. Do I care? Not really. Drinking my java.

While I was at it, I put Pinky Press Review into analytics for kicks. That whole experiment is just funny to me.

Looks like the roof made it through several hours of torrential downpour yesterday without leaking, at least so far as we can tell, yay! I need to FOCUS and GET TO WORK! >=l Kinda starting off slow today. I have a pattern, don't I? Thursdays seem to be my noticing I'm starting to get scattered days.

Me and Brazil irl. (Ha, get this song outa your head...) Pinky Robot vs crawler bot.


Tryin' to smash me a spydar.

(Language caution if you're at work.)

a Khan in any other language

Paper.li has invited me to play with a free month of Pro, since the new settings they're working on aren't available to free users, which I'll probably do because I've been considering going Pro anyway. It's a cheap enough toy, who knows, I might really like it once I've upgraded.

In the meantime, we're at a stalemate. I've changed my distribution outlets, removed the widget off my blog, and I'm going to have to really get in there and crank down on the settings, which are frustratingly limited for free users, but if I pay $100+ a year JUST to use *a* new setting they're toying with after jacking the algorithm to the point of me turning my paper off (I'm sorry, I don't wanna be known for leading sex shocker stories), then they'd better have some rockin' awesome other stuff I can do, as well. It's one thing to be silly on my own blog or feed about stuff, it's another to jerk the general public around with distasteful shock jock material when my original intent is to entertain with fun, interesting, and positivity. And I need new glasses. >=l I need to stay focused on my actual needs in real life right now. This is a thing today. @bonenado is trying to make it home before they close the road. I've lived in this area since 1976, and I've never seen Springfield this close to being completely cut off from everything south of it. Seriously.

Mostly my day is just silly stuff while I get some work done. Who knows, maybe I really will pick up a little Russian. And I do seriously want to know about the voice overs.

beta testing bot algorithms now, like you do

Click for cool drone fail vid

Learned a new thing yesterday, probably nice of me to share. Kept wondering why my blood sugar level kept rising through the day, nearly tapered off the pred, only nibbling on cheese with no carbs, what gives? Well, turns out proteins break down over several hours into other things, and a percentage of protein metabolism becomes blood glucose, so even 4 hours later on an empty stomach, that teensy amount of digestion was keeping my blood sugar level up around 145ish. Wow. Good to know. Meats will do the same thing. Not sure about fats. Haven't really run into this problem before, hope it's not indicative of my function level changing. Probably more like I just never noticed.

Got that one particular big grunge job done yesterday, finally. Can't believe I already had to spend an hour fixing something in the middle of that. Sure glad I did the grunge work, or it would have been even harder to come back and fix later.

Office Cat cleans up your mess

Oh, yeah, remember the big paper.li disaster? They contacted me back. This was my reply to them before I went to bed last night and their reply back this morning. Wait, I'll just paste the whole convo here. I'm just using initials for the contact person. This is me not being paid to help a company test an epic fail.

Janika Banks, Jun 5, 00:11:

So something porny was surprisingly my leading story and I had to delete it off facebook, and none of my twitter friends were featured and they have the best scifi and gaming content. Settings are there for a REASON. I had my paper exactly like I wanted it, now the content doesn't relate to my readers on twitter at all.

D. S., Jun 5, 17:26:

Hi Janika,

Thank you for the valuable feedback. The new algorithm is a recent change that is currently in a 'live testing' phase, so your thoughts and comments are greatly appreciated. I'm going to pass your message on to our team for discussion.

Kind regards,
D.

D.S, Jun 8, 16:09:

Hi Janika,

Our team is discussing the new algorithm this week, and I have a question for you. In regards to some of your usual content going missing, if you had the ability to 'star' your most important source so that it's always included, would this solve the problem?

Kind regards,
D.

Janika Banks, Jun 10, 02:55:

Hello, thanks for contacting me back.

I'm already back on track with most of my content simply by severely restricting the twitter access down to one out of 20 lists, my favorite hashtags, and my own timeline. My readers are hardcore scifi fans, and your new algorithm knocked Star Wars and Lego right off the map for sex positions and hundreds of cute cats simply because they'd gone viral. Two porny lead stories two days in a row on my facebook was unacceptable, so I tightened the bolts way down.

I can't control what my followers at large retweet. Many of them are grouped by list into things like 'internet magazines' that focus on gaming and comiccons, and I use those lists on paperli. However, with the new logarithm all it takes is one of them to have a cat day to flood my paper with cute cat virals. Instead of spreading out and finding more random content specifically tailored to my paper's core focus, the new algorithm condensed it down to sex and cats. (That does sound funny, I'm kind of laughing.) The whole point of MY paper is sifting out my own kind of random, the kinds of things that fellow scifi fans love. A quick glance through my paper was adequate for picking up the best of a multiplicity of feeds, something I found thrilling and very useful.

I'm really good at juggling bots, have been on social media for years, have beta tested for photobucket, google analytics, twitter, and sumall. Your idea is good in theory but very impractical for anyone whose settings were mowed over with the new algorithm. I have friends who use paper.li but I'm not sure whether they've noticed yet if anything changed, many of them are professional writers and might not have had the time yet. I'm a little more obsessive, check the daily links every single day.

I don't think a star is going to fix this problem. I was very happy with the old algorithm. I'm not sure what your goals are with the new algorithm, unless it's to push content that is already maxed out all over the internet ahead of content that was already locked into settings. I'm not sure what kind of answer I can give that doesn't sound a little snippy, because that sounds way too simplistic without more information.

If you do make more changes and would like feedback, I'm happy to try gears and gizmos galore. Kind of my thing.

I wish I'd just left the first two days of change alone so you could compare them to past archives and see how utterly cartoony and porny it suddenly went. I actually thought someone had broken into my paper and changed my settings. I panicked and started changing the content. If I'd left it alone and simply deleted the links off twitter and facebook, you'd be able to see it and fall out of your chairs laughing at how UNrandom that new algorithm was. Sex and cats. Lots and lots of cats... Like an April Fool's joke from hell. I do have to applaud that, it's not often I panic any more.

Janika Banks

D. S., Jun 10, 03:38:

Hi Janika,

First, let me apologize for the content whiplash. Our developers worked very hard on the new algorithm (and they're still working to improve it), and for most papers, it's working out great. That said, sex and lots (and lots) of cats is definitely not an expected or acceptable result. We're keeping track of all of our feedback concerning the new algorithm, so rest assured and know that our developers will be reading your comments here.

We had a team meeting today to discuss the new algorithm, and I'm happy to inform you that we plan to implement the 'star' system I mentioned that will allow you to select one (possibly three) sources that you would like to boost content from. It's similar to our old source priority system and will put more control over your sources, and therefore your content, in your hands. We'll be implementing this feature very soon (possibly as early as next week), so please keep that mind. And I'll be looking forward to your feedback.

If you have any questions or other comments, I'll be happy to hear them.

Kind regards,
D.

:edit: I may as well insert the reply I just made to that, lol.

Hi again.

Question, just a thought popping into my mind.

If I need to use stars to refocus content now, what was the point of installing a new algorithm gathering more randomized content? Now we're layering settings over settings.

 Happy hump day.

Janika Banks

paper.li- how it should have ended... Pretty sure they did NOT get feedback saying most papers thought it was working out great.

I just wanna fix the internet...

Ok, getting on with my morning now. Coffee kicking in.

Time to get all over my day.

gruesome is the new cool

Yesterday.

Click pic for 'Action Ben'

Today.

I spent quality time getting all my settings *perfect* so my COOL FRIENDS and all the things WE LOVE would be picked up by the bots, making for the fastest EVER way to scan awesome scifi news and fun twitter feed. Close to 700 views now, not counting delivery to subscribers. Yes, it actually has subscribers, which I'll probably lose now, thanks to that stupid algorithm change.

The new algorithm is about keeping it more random and scanning for leading stories, meaning anything going viral, basically, which means all the stuff *I* love to check out gets knocked off the bot list almost immediately in favor of sex, politics, and cute cats. Lots and lots of cute cats.

Every time I find a fun new internet toy, I wind up having to rebuild it. Have you noticed that?

Me rebuilding the entire internet.

Anyway, all the cool archives are still there, so I'm not going to delete it. What I'm going to have to do is turn off auto-share to facebook because that's a facepalm and a half, big leading sex position story, next day big leading sex something else story, and yeah, THAT is how I want to world to see how cool I am, let's just draw in all the flies instead of the cool kids who'd rather check out Lego and Star Wars links.

I have an option to go pro. I'm not rich. I will use my powers and my trusty wizard staff to obliterate the stupid web spider bots screwing my paper up until I have purged all the demons of hell without upgrading, so it may be a few days before it gets back to normal.

And what better day to start than one where I'm spiked up on prednisone again because I had a stupid latex dust reaction in a huge Nike outlet store from pilfering through boxes trying to find an acceptable pair of awesome athletic shoes. My fave Nike Air Trackstar 3 black/metallic silver-white is discontinued, but I found a pair in the UK online almost double the cost, but now the order is pending so I'm crossing my fingers while I wait for response to my contact.

And why do I want THESE so badly? Because gruesome is the new cool. (Also, the arch is the most perfect fit for my foot that I've ever found, really wish Nike would stop messing around with that.) From one of my surveys on Surveypalooza-

Do you wear your shoes in the house? My podiatrist wishes I would. He commanded me to BUY GOOD SHOES to wear in my house, so I bought these and thought Cool, I look like a space cadet. Until I discovered about a month later that everyone in the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide was wearing identical shoes… which I first saw on Ancient Aliens: Season 3, Episode 12 “Aliens and Deadly Cults”



:edit: I'd better mention that I later found out the style is Nike Decades. Click this to see suicide scene pix. Someone blogged about it, click to read. Here is an official journalistic look back. If you do the right kinds of searches you can see people scouring for vintage Decades on ebay and stuff. I say what the heck, mine look cooler, but they are post-90s. Close enough. If you want to see more about the Heaven's Gate Decades, click here, you'll see them often enshrined on a purple cloth. I was told when I bought my Trackstar 3s at Lady Footlocker in 2010 that they were the top selling shoe, and I think it's because it was the closest thing people could still get to the Heaven's Gate shoes. I looked around today and didn't see anything else as close as this, so they may be moving away from associating with that image now that color smashing is all the rage. Check out this very interesting Nike problem...

Note- I believe mass suicide is a social disease, where a psychopath feeds on the despairing who very sadly fall through cracks and think they find a cool support network where they feel like part of a family. I'm sorry, family won't kill you. Any belief system requiring your life is erroneous. Why do I love the black Nike death shoe so much? Because when I wear them, they represent living past the despair. I made it. I love that they have become a pop culture symbol and that every time we remember it, we remember those who mistakenly followed a social pervert. When I refer to myself as an 'evil villain', it's not because I'm a psychopath or a social pervert. I'm going to tell you a secret- ok, no I'm not. I'm saving it for the book. You'll find out why I'm an evil villain when it's time.

That's right, boys and girls. Prednisone. We'll see what happens.

Oh wait, they contacted me back, looks like a payment is going through and I'm getting my shoes, with free shipping, yay! Heaven's Gate athletic shoes, haha. If I had more money I'd buy several more pairs right now so I could wear them the rest of my life.

Thank goodness for whoever made this because it's the only thing keeping Alejandro out of my head today. I know, I was dumb and tortured myself Wednesday, my bad.

blow the airlock!

Yesterday's post broke the all-time scare record in one day flat, thanks to #MondayBlogs. I learned everything I know about blogging from Monsters University. Just do what you gotta do and blow the door.


Awesome word 'airlock' in our retweet game last night led to me finding this. Big wave to Holly, her Layla kitty is about to pop.

So I finally jumped on my own media newspaper, tweaked it so my friends show up a lot, cracks me up how geeked out some of the sections are getting. I'm discovering the 'paper' is like a daily super filter, way better than a tweet deck of any kind that shows all your favorite streams. The paper makes it easy to glance through a whole bunch of links my friends thought cool to share, whole page of photos and videos clustered in one place, click-glance-click-glance, way faster than zipping through a twitter list. Best thing of all is it's FREE. I'm not done tweaking it yet, but we're getting there.

Been seeing more people tweeting lately about weird dreams. I know holiday stress has got mine going off the wall again. Last night I dreamed the Doctor's 20 year old son had a twitter account and he was trolling around the fandom like a jerk, and all the parody cat accounts followed him around adoringly, just like cats rubbing on someone's leg. Another bizarre dream had me inside a giant scrabble game on another planet fighting bogeys that were dismantling the words I was trying to spell. Given that Wabble is down, yeah, I'm not surprised.

Yesterday got a little weird. Usually when I hit a wall it's a general brain falling out and dragging around like a limp noodle kind of thing, but yesterday my arms hit the wall way before I did and I dropped, smeared, sloshed, and knocked over things like I had manikin arms. I've never been diagnosed with an actual arthritis, but I did a lot of thinking yesterday about people getting through holidays, probably mostly behind the scenes, with arthritis in their hands and shoulders, shooting pain or sudden numbness that lends all caps to the word 'KLUTZY'. All it took for me was wrapping a stack of boxes and addressing a pile of Christmas cards. All you moms and dads out there who still have kids in the house while you're managing a medical diagnosis or two...

Back to the countdown! I have 6 days till we get Elfnado. This was her on her first merry-go-round at Silver Dollar City this last weekend.

Ok, now I'm just stalling. Time to get my second cup of coffee and get moving!