Who's online?
 

Did I miss an announcement about the reasoning behind the "whose online" facility being disabled?

I used to find it quite interesting to see what guests were reading and to follow the trail to things I wouldn't have otherwise searched for.

Philip

Philip,

No worries. It's just down for a little while. Some tinkering is happening behind the scenes. Life will be good again in a week or two. In the meantime, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain... but watch out for flying monkeys! ;)

Thanks,

Bill

And here I thought this was going to be an Abbott and Costello sendup: "Who's online? What's on the cell phone? I-don't-know-who's on Twitter."

A poem about flying monkeys, please.

Oh, geez, do I have to? Hang on a minute, let me whip something up... ;)

Thanks,

Bill

36 minutes flat - a bit more than a minute a line, and a bit faster than I can type - what took you so long? :)

He had to drink a cup of coffee first, he was tired.

Extrapulous. You are truly Highly Magnified and Thoroughly Educated, just as was in Oz the Woggle-Bug.

Flying Monkeys

Of course you know that witches lie,
the monkey cannot really fly.
He seems to fly, but jumps and climbs.
All the same you might sometimes
mistake a monkey for a man as
he sits around and eats bananas,
or hops from bar to bar with friends;
but that’s where the resemblance ends.
For monkeys like to live in trees,
always groom themselves for fleas,
don’t get bigger than their britches,
and fear to fly or work for witches.

Flying Monkeys

They fly.
But why?

Your call is important to us. The waiting time on this queue is calculated to be approximately three minutes. All of our service technicians at present are taking other calls. Please continue to hold until a technician can respond to you.

Monkeys see and do like men.
They love to ape their ways, but then
even more the monkeys savor
how often men return the favor.

A Graphic Problem We All Face On This Thread
 

Carnivorous Pig Bats !!

I had to work in a little allusion to Meredith for you. Takes time, you know? Did you catch that "mere fancy?" Ah, the open sea. It was especially delicious referenced from the middle of the forest... ;)

Thanks,

Bill

Jackanapes!

You ask a simple question and all this monkey business ensues.

Ed - yours is a howler.

P

Bill, I will never look at geese flying south for the winter in quite the same way again. I missed the Meredith reference completely -- who knew he was big in Oz?

Ed


PS - Allen, that's it -- I'm re-subscribing to the New Yorker.

Birds can fly, and as you know,
at times they drop a gift below
that makes a most unwelcome splat
upon your windshield or your hat,

but when that happens, do not fret,
it's not as bad as things could get.
It may be foul, but it's not chunky.
Thank goodness there's no flying monkey!

Enters, Shakes Spear at Monkeys, Exits

Birds gotta fly
Fish gotta swim
But monkeys gotta type
All the plays of him.

If a flying monkey lost a wing,
would it be content to merely swing?

Dear Gentlemen, this monkey-talk is dandy
and while, sometimes, the 'Who's Online' is handy,
I have to say that, since it disappeared
(initially I did think it was weird),
I now prefer not knowing WHO is WHERE.
You write a post and see whoever's there,
because their name has got its small green ball
but do we need the whereabouts of ALL? :rolleyes:

Half an hour, and Ed receives his answer.
(Next time, Ed, request a cure for cancer.)

Very good, Edmund, but travel it further
 

Birds gotta fly,
Fish gotta swim,
But monkeys, my dear,
Gotta render Shakespeare.

I've written four nonsense poems since my maladroit suggestion hijacked this thread, and I can't stop talking in a jouncy iambic tetrameter with rhyming couplets. Flying monkeys are scary, especially typing flying monkeys. :) But monkeyshines aside, I find myself in agreement with Jayne's charming verse -- all things being equal, I'd just as soon not know who's online except for the green dots.

Ed

That information (who) is available anyway at the bottom of the Eratosphere first page. But it doesn't gossip about what they are doing. :p Actually, I don't miss it either.

As I mentioned in a note to Alex Pepple, I have found it a very useful feature for finding what others consider to be important or useful threads. The identity of the readers in interesting in a way but not essential. I like the standard setup, but if there were to be any change, I would vote strongly to retain the feature minus the indentities. That is, a guide to just "What Is Being Read At this Moment."

I would hate very much to loose that. It's a valuable resource to look at every now and then.

I'm glad my post #21 has brought us back to a sensible discussion of 'Who's Online' (though the monkey business was fun :)).

I see I'm not the only one who doesn't miss this function - could it even be construed as an invasion of privacy, perhaps? :confused: - though I agree wholeheartedly with Allen that being able to see the threads others are reading is a feature we wouldn't want to lose. I've found many interesting/fascinating ones that way, which I wouldn't have known even existed!

What do you think, Alex? How about Allen's idea of a guide to just "What Is Being Read At this Moment"?
"I would vote strongly to retain the feature minus the identities", says Allen also. So would I.

I agree with Jayne and Allen.

OK, Add my vote to Jayne, Allen and Michael but I'm not unhappy with it as it was so if it takes too much fix time, (time is money, money is important) I am OK with the old version too.

I like the way it was. I never heard anyone complain about it, so I'm assuming that no one really had a serious problem with it before. It's fun to check into "Who's Online" and find that the other ten members online at the moment are all viewing "Who's Online." And it's also useful to see that replies are being prepared for a given thread, which tells you that it might be worth checking the thread in the near future for further developments. Since many of us know many of us fairly well, and have our own opinions about each other's taste and insight, I think that names are indeed important. I never pay much attention to what the "Guests" are looking at.

Friends, I wouldn't spend much time discussing changes to the "Who's Online" feature. I suspect that getting people's hopes up about a change is a waste of energy.

What we are using here is a software package, and not everything about it can be customized. Custom programming may not be the best use of Alex's time.

I personally like the feature the way it has always worked, and I'll be glad when it's up again. But my main point is that the suggested changes may be impossible or impractical.

What Maryann said -- it's a custom software package. Sure, I can roll my sleeves and go under the hood to hack out interesting suggestions, but I'd like to reserve that for when it's not a case of too much effort for little reward.

But, don't let me intrude ... continue on with this lively discussion!

Cheers,
...Alex

Hi Alex,

Heaven forfend! (as my old Mum used to say), none of us would wish to see your workload increase unnecessarily.

It's not a big deal, one way or t'other! It's generally only when things change that people even give a thought to the alternative, which has happened here.
In an ideal world we'd all get what we want, it would be possible to please all of the people all of the time, it wouldn't cost around $100 to fill my petrol tank... and nothing would ever need ironing :D

We have a brilliant site to thank you for... that's all that really matters.

Well, then; back to our irregularly scheduled programming --


Oz

Around the covenantal ark,
a curtain keeps us in the dark,

and those of little faith can't look
behind the curtain or the Book

is thrown at them, weighed down with laws
because because because because –

the translated justification
the Pope gives in pontification

when in perfect Latin he hands us
the plot of a movie from Kansas,

except there's no dog that can bark
at whatever goes on in the dark,

and harped and haloed flunkies
have replaced the flying monkeys.

Guests know all the best threads.

Ooh, Ed Shacklee, nawsty...

« Traiter le peuple avec équité, honorer les esprits, mais s'en tenir à distance, cela peut s'appeler intelligence. »

Analects of Kong Fu, 6;22.

So Maryann and Alex, you're saying...

Monkeys and opinions fly,
but tweaks to "Who's Online"
will not get off the ground--nice try!--
till wings are found on swine.

Thank you, Allen. I had no idea the Chinese were French. Inscrutable.

Ed



PS -- Julie: I think we should all switch to pigs.

It's truly unworthy of me to suggest this! :D but then, why should hypocrites have all the fun? Ahem, I wonder if (mind you it's only an inkling of a wisp of a hugely small probability) that maybe part of Lantry's impressive poem was a reworked serenade to AGNI, the literary orifice of Boston University, whose logo was and is, oops :eek: ... you guessed it : a flying monkey. Just guessing, no harm intended.

Actually, maybe it was just seething in his unconscious for weeks and months as he thought (perhaps) about Boston's AGNI, and then it roared out when it's button was pushed. :rolleyes:

Anyway, 36 minutes of scribbling isn't out of the question either.

Maybe it's a case of parallel evolution? ;)

Allen, you have a point. After all, Bill is the one who brought up the flying monkeys in the first place. I suppose Ed may have then been enlisted to issue the challenge that Bill so conveniently stood prepared to meet in such an impressive fashion. Or perhaps Bill had no knowledge, and the scheme was orchestrated behind the scenes by Kate, who wisely shields her husband from the particulars to allow him to concentrate on his writing. I don't want to pre-judge. Let there be a full investigation.