Rolled out the themed Video comment page today along with smileys for a bunch of comment pages.  I have been wanting to add smiley capabilities to the “unified” commenting system for some time now, and I had a few cycles to spend adding them to photo, video, and chatboard comment pages.  I would have rolled it all out last night, but I had a CRAZY glitch with the smileys. The error occurred when using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (update your browsers people!) and only on the video comment page, and not on any of the other smiley enabled pages. 

Special thanks go out to Sean, whose Super Smileys actually provided the key insight on how to fix the problem.  The Super Smileys kept working, even though the normal Smileys were broken.  Since the Super Smileys piggie back off of Xanga’s normal smileys system, it stands to reason that he had to be doing something extra that we weren’t.  Turns out that installing and resizing the flash movie player steals focus from the text editor.  The super smileys have a special line of code that returns focus back to the comment box.  Needless to say, I owe Sean several beers the next time he comes to visit us in Manhattan. 

Alrighty, back to work.  Feel free to message me if you’re noticing any glitches or bugs with the comments or the video page. 

For anyone who hasn’t seen the Haley Joel Osmond movie.  Pay It Forward, is a movement where you do three difficult good deeds to three people who need your help.  The only thing you ask in return is that each person continue the chain by doing three good deeds for three more strangers.  It is a sort of save the world pyramid scheme.  Of course the first thing we wonder is – “what’s the opposite”?  We’ve gotten a couple suggestions, 1) pay back, 2)  pass the buck, 3)  comeuppance – but none of them really have the same strength in the negative direction as pay it forward does in the positive.  Any ideas?

Oooh.. I’m so steamed!  I was on TheXangaTeam page’s chatboard the other day, and I came across the following comment directed at Natalia. 

Staff wise, Xanga is what you’d call a “tightknit” company.  We all share a very tight bond – since we all essentially work in a one big, open-air, no-walls-between-us office – and in general, we spend more time together than we do with our significant-others or spouses.  Even though I’ve only worked at Xanga for little over six months, I consider the folks here to be my second family.  In general, we’re pretty chill about people being rude or obnoxious to us, since we understand that a person’s weblog can be a very important part of someone’s life and that it can be agitating when something goes wrong.  We’re happy to listen to complaints and suggestions, and we totally try our best to follow through with those suggestions given our own limited resources.  (Seven entirely insane, but extremely talented software engineers + me, and three fulltime product designers).  Additionally, knowing the devious nature of my coworkers, it is entirely possible that one or more of us deserve it – though to date, I don’t think we’ve actually pranked a non-Xanga staff user. 

However, the two people who do NOT deserve your flak, insults, self-righteous, or asinine comments are Natalia (and Eugenia).  Here is why. 

1)  Eugenia is probably one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met.  I think she rescues kittens in her spare time.  Think of the kittens. 

2)  Besides being an amazingly cool person, Natalia is a ninja.  She can kill you three times before you hit the ground. 

3)  The two of them work
their tushes off trying to make the Xanga Community a better place.  I’d
estimate that 99.9% of requests for help are answered by them.  If
you’ve had a problem with your Xanga, and you aren’t a close personal friend
of someone else on the Xanga team, then chances are, the person who helped you solve your problem was either Eugenia or Natalia. 

4)  If feature doesn’t work properly, or breaks regularly, then it is the fault of me, or one of my engineering brethren.  (and we’re very sorry!)

5)  If you don’t like a new feature that we added, or think that we’re totally missing an important feature that you need, then it is the fault of one of the people involved in product decisions.  (pssst.  Their user names are Marc, John, Dan, Chris, Ayca, and Ben. )

6)  If you don’t like the ads, then blame capitalism for not allowing us to provide you with Xanga services without some sort of monetary compensation.  (I’ll try and post more about which pages do and do not have advertisements and how premium effects those pages) 

7)  Don’t think that we can’t just fix someone else’s problem instead of yours.  Because we can.  Especially if you’re a jerk. 

Alrighty.  I thinks its out of my system.  Night!

The last half a year, we’ve been steadily working to standardize the whole of Xanga under the “themes” system.  My particular role for the last couple months has been to create a “unified” commenting system, that will allow every “Themed” item type to have a consistent look and feel, as well as a common set of commenting capabilities (equal in richness to the weblog comments), including Rich Text, Comment Replies, and eventually Minis.  The final goal is to, every time we add a new commenting feature, to have ALL Xanga comments acquire that ability all once once, regardless of type (weblog, photo, pulse etc…)   But first we need to update all the items pages to use the system. 

The first baby step in that direction, was the themed chatboard, which acquired the “unified” commenting system in multiple stages over the last three months.  Starting with its themification, the addition of rich text commenting, it completed with the addition of comment replies.  The next domino in that set is the photos item page, which was themed and linked up to the unified commenting system during these last couple weeks.  (BTW, that page inherited a TON of features from the old Photo page, in addition to the unified comments.  I’m still not sure I actually caught them all.  >_< :massages his poor tired typing hands: ) 

The hardest part was the crazy Ajax filmstrip that it inherited from the original photos item page.  The one currently on the new page works the same way, but it doesn’t have the same smooth scrolling transition that the original one did.  Bleh…  It also only supports a maximum of seven images at a time – because thats what the old one supported.  One of the hardest parts was making the system work for ALL themes, because different themes can fit different quantities of thumbnails at any given moment.  We have to detect that for EACH page, and calculate how many can fit using javascript. 

Anyways, next on the queue is a themed video page.  Hopefully that will roll out with 1) a slightly more polished filmstrip that can support more than seven images at a time and will have smoother transitions and 2) smiley’s capabilities for all pages currently under the unified commenting system.  Theoretically, your custom smileys (if they work on the themed weblog page) should also begin working on those pages as well!…  Well.. at least Sean‘s super smileys will work…  :crossing fingers:

Personally, I’m most excited about comment replies on Pulse!  I get so many comments on my pulse, where I wish I could just reply to the person instead of having to pollute one of their random pages.  Hopefully I’ll get to that soon.  OK, tired now.  Have a good night!  ^_^

It is official.  As of yesterday I removed the limits on credit earning.  Previously, after you’d acquired 1000 credits in your account (5000 for premium) you stopped earning credits for commenting until you’d spent those credits on a Mini.  The purpose of these limits was to prevent people from hording credits.  However, now that you can use credits to buy premium, starting at 4000 credits for one month, and 100,000 credits for Lifetime, those credit limits no longer make sense. 

As a side note, this crazy fellow is trying to be the first to earn 100,000 credits and purchase lifetime.  I think he’s trying to do it in less than a month.  Leave him a comment if you get a chance, and help make his dream come true.  ^_^

[edit: Not really unlimited.  The limit is at 100,000 credits, until we come up with something more awesome than Lifetime] 

[double edit: For those of you who already have Lifetime, you can also give the GIFT of premium to your friends!]

[triple edit: Yes TheTheologiansCafe, Mr. 4072 friends, I'm looking at you.]

Taken from my private IM’s.  Follow the links if you’re confused. 

[Warning: this is a seriously long and boring post, which only kinda sorta expresses my views on the topic.  I take no responsibility if your brain a) explodes, b) atrophies and crawls out your ear, or c) goes into an entirely catatonic state like mine did while writing this. ]

I’ve come to suspect, after reading some of comments on one of TheTheologiansCafe‘s latest posts, that the majority of what we (the human race) actually spend our time debating and discussing, is semantics [the meaning and definition of a given word, phrase, or sentence] rather than the validity of any given or core argument.  In the past, I’ve always thought that these kinds of arguments are silly.  After all, who cares is something is labeled a theory or not?  Everything in science is essentially a theory, verified by more or less evidence.  Even the so called “laws” like Newton’s laws or the laws of gravity are NOT absolutes, (as has been shown by some fairly simple relativity experiments) so much as commonly used predictors for real world phenomenon. 

The importance of arguments about language, and semantics in general finally struck me as I sat coding up some hooks for the Xanga credits system.  I had been using numbers (rather arbitrarily) to designate the various kinds of errors that could occur in the system.  Zero meant no errors, one meant not enough credits, two meant user did not exist etc…  It occurred to me, that if someone were to go into my database and switch those numbers around, they could change the entire way that the credits system worked.  Suddenly, people might be paid to give Minis and charged for leaving eProps.  Or people without credits could purchase a Mini and instead give a random person Premium.  Without changing a line of code, someone could change the entire underlying function of the program.  (Some people might take this as a challenge – please don’t.  Besides, the numbers have been changed to protect the innocent.  ^_^) 

So why does it matter whether we label evolution a theory, a scientific theory, or not at all?  This same phenomenon can apply (on an admittedly much more complex level) to the rules and laws of civil society.  Imagine society as a whole as a massive program, defined by its laws and rules.  Now take a “law” and change the meaning of the words used to describe that law.  You’ve just changed  the meaning of that law.  It is a scary thought actually.  How much of the US Constitution is built on words that have changed their meaning over the last 200 years?  Take a phrase, lets say…. oh I dunno “WE THE PEOPLE”.  Seems
innocuous enough right?  Now lets fudge the definition of people to
mean “white male land owners”.  Hey look!  Its pre-civil war America
again!  (btw, I suspect this is why lawyers have such a booming profession) 

Ugh.  Alright.  I’m sick of this topic now.  The next post will be something fun, and silly.  With butterflies or something. 

Religion in schools

One of my most favorite (and least favorite) debates is evolution vs. creationism. It is my favorite because it really is an interesting debate, but it is my least favorite because people on both sides of the argument take themselves waaay too seriously and don’t really think about it. Unfortunately, the Darwinians are as dogmatic as Creationists. There, I said it and I mean it. Too many people come up with the solution they like first, and then spend the rest of their lives trying to find ways to justify their opinions. >_< I've put a lot of thought into this however, and I believe I've found a fairly simple thought exercise that I think flushes out most of the debate. We'll see if you agree.

Ask yourself the following question: Where does electricity come from?

Answer 1) According to Faraday’s law, movement of a magnetic field over a coil of wire induces an electrical current.
Answer 2) Electricity comes from God.

Now ask yourself – which one is going to help you build a light bulb? OK, now replace Farady’s law with Darwin’s Theories and electricity with mankind. Before everyone jumps down my throat I want to emphasize that the point of this exercise is NOT to state that answer #2 is necessarily wrong. Rather it just isn’t that useful. I’ve often felt people on both sides of the evolution vs. creationism debate have missed the point. The argument should NOT be about whether creationism is wrong, rather the debate should be, where is science useful and where is faith useful? I honestly believe there is a place for faith – especially in a world that is increasing volatile, in no small part thanks to science. I also believe trying to substitute one for the other is a recipe for all kinds of disaster.

Of course then there are some of you who say, “what about intelligent design?” its a competing theory and should be given equal time. Well, we can run the same thought experiment again, using intelligent design as the basis.

Answer 3) Movement of a magnetic field over a coil of wire induces an electrical current. This would be impossible without the intervention of a powerful unnamed entity that causes it to be so in a way that is too complex for it to be natural.

Some might, at this point say, this answer also helps you to build a lightbulb. It has all the same information and so is just as useful as the first answer. It should be given equal time. This area is a bit fuzzier, but lets introduce another answer.

Answer 4) Movement of a magnetic field over a coil of wire induces an electrical current. Cortez was a conquistador that invaded South America.

In science we have a rule of thumb called Occam’s razor. In latin it is:

entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

which loosely translates to:

don’t make things harder than you have to

Answers 1,3, and 4 all provide the same critical information about generating electricity. However, knowing that a powerful unnamed entity (a.k.a God, Q, Allah, Shiva, Wayne Brady) with power that transcends natural laws caused this to be so still does NOT help us to understand and utilize those natural laws any more effectively, and in fact actually distracts us from the critical facts. If answer 3 at least NAMED the entity and a way we could communicate reliably with it or convince it to make electricity or change the laws of physics for us, then it might be useful. Otherwise the bit about the entity is relegated to the same level of importance as Cortez, and in a science curriculum where we are packing more and more information in just to keep up with the Jones’ – lets try and stick to the critical information.

….

Alright I have been pretty harsh on religion so lets end with a thought experiment where faith wins. Here is a question science can’t answer and never will. Why? ^_^

We’re not promoting this fact just yet, because its still pretty difficult to get enough credits to do it, but you can now use your Xanga Credits to upgrade your (or a friend’s) Xanga to premium.  You’ll need 4,000 credits to purchase one month, and 100,000 to purchase Lifetime. 

We’re still working on the details, but within the next couple weeks, we’ll have a new survey program that will let you earn 1000+ credits in a single sitting.  We’ll also be including some additional ways of earning credits throughout the year, so this is just the start!  ^_^

Apparently, MySpace has radical Christian hackers who roam around smiting atheist and agnostic users.  O_o