And here's a test comment!

Second!

I hope that this works.

H'mm. I'm the author of the 'second' comment. I signed in using Google Groups (I signed up for that only because of the storm problems on antipope). Yet it gives a long string of characters for my name, instead of 'JReynolds'.

There are blog comment system experts?

I'm trusting that I don't have the same problem. But then I have an account here, so I'm not using the Google ID

I think the Google account breakage is something we had previously.(I'll add fixing it to the "to-do" list for the paid gun ...)

An expert is someone who apparently knows more about something than one does. So yes, there are experts in just about everything.

Signing in with my google account appears to have correctly identified me, if the preview is to be trusted.

I've generally found the comments here very interesting, so I'm glad they're back.

Works for me.

And email notifications of new posts is still too resource-intensive at this point, right?

I am not sure why Google is assigning me that name, but it is unique, and it has been associated with me since I signed up with Demon: it'll be old enough to vote in the next election.

Hm, I wonder how I can get MT to show some sort of avatar for my google account.

Well, it seems I can sign in from google, but my site-specific MT login has never worked here. I try to sign in, get told I have to authenticate my email address, then I never get the email. I can get a password reset email just fine, otoh.

Weird. I'd prefer to use a site-specific login, but if I have to link in my Google account, I guess I can trust Our Benevolent Host.

If U cn C this, login via Google account works...

Google signin works (with caveats). LJ signin is broken.

Looks like I'm getting identified as a weird string as well. I wonder if it's something to do with not having a public profile? Don't have time to try that right now, will play tomorrow.

Test comment using Google login. Hello!

logging in via OpenID seems to work as well

Blah blah test test.

And my own test too. I'd do more testing, but I am covered in cats.

Well, I'm in. So that's good.

I think it is the Google people without a public profile who get the strange string - it's so you can't tie together one authentication via Google with one on another site unless you have a public profile.

hmmm. thinking this long-string-id-thing to be to do with g+ profiles.. mine isn't very publicly searchable etc. so maybe it's down to that?

I don't have a g+ account/profile, so let's see how signing-in with google does in that case...

OG.

Testing Testing!! TApTap, is This Thinge Working???

Well I can sign on via my Yahoo Account which gives me this Identity or google which gives a string of gibberish as an identity but my old " ARCHEOPTERYX " ' Charlies Diary ' identity looks to be gone forever - sniff, sob - thus no continuity from previous posts.Its no Big Thinge but some people of ancient and honorable Repute may wish to preserve their old sobriquet. Any way people can sign on with their approved identity and then use their old sobriquet?

I just read the FaceBook bit in Rapture of the Nerds last night. Coincidence? It will be interesting to see if some of the other auth systems support self-chosen aliases or pictures.

-- AaronB

Google sign in seems to be working. Wordpress sign in claimed I needed to sign in and then that I didn't own that ID. The Moveabletype email hasn't arrived (a few hours).

Hello, test...

I did a quick sign-in test with Yahoo and got one of those long-URL things as a name. So I think I shall stick with this. It works and can be traced.

Hurrah - I much prefer to have comments inline with the post on the website.

The Storm Refuge was alright I suppose, but my browser (Chrome) kept pinging back to the top of the thread whenever the page refreshed; which was a right pain for my use case of having it open in the background and dipping in whenever I was waiting for something else to finish.

Regards Luke

Here's a test from a Livejournal account (no, don't go look at it, I haven't updated it since about 2006 - if you're wanting to see my stuff, look at megpie71.dreamwidth.org; only reason I keep the LJ account these days is because it's convenient for all these other things which use it as a sign-in proxy.)

Just testing - signing in from my LJ account. Which I post in about once a year, so it's not very interesting.

Interesting. Google also giving me a garbage name.

And trying to log in via OpenID gave me:

An error occurred

Can't call method "name" without a package or object reference at lib/MT/App/Comments.pm line 1460.

Checking with new account generated by the 'Sign Up' link.

Yes, that works too (though it does insist on a somewhat longer password than is probably necessary).

Just a string of gibberish for my Google ID. Do I need to change anything on my end to fix it?

Praise th' lord!

Testing testing 3 2 1 Go Giants!

(George William Herbert - if my name doesn't come through clearly)

Ok, for the record, I used my google ID for that and it picked up my email (george.herbert) accurately and displayed it properly, so seems working better now.

Testing with google login. Hello, World! Hello, Charlie!

Well, if I can manage it I might be able to drop into FP and say hello amidst the crows, or just give you a wave. I'll be wearing a ZS tshirt!

"crows"? I seem to be developing a kind of dropped letter dyslexia, or maybe my keyboard is fucked.

Rubber baby buggy bumpers . .

Trial comment...that id string looks like one level of indirection being omitted somewhere.

-- Andrew

Some quick notes.

A local account means signing in with Movable Type.

It's not obvious at first where to go to sign up with a local account. (At least to me.)

If you will be sending out many emails you might want to list your static IP somewhere. I haven't looked at my logs in detail but you attempted to send me 8 emails with one connection which all failed due to gray listing. I got suspicious when nothing showed up and guessed that accelerando.dh.bytemark.co.uk must be you and flagged it as OK.

yes?

Let's see if this works...

3-2-1 aaaaand you're back in the room. Certainly less unwieldy than the google groups page.

Score another one for successful login from Google account.. Glad this blog is back.. The google groups interface is very unwieldy for this old fart.

Trying again.

Fascinating. I can post anonymously as poster google-junk, yet I can't set up a second account under my normal handle on this system. Oh well. I never did get that active on 4Chan/B/....

Testing 1 2 3

Hope this works out, i was sorta put off by the google groups thing and quite frankly stayed mostly away since the comments are as much the content here as the bloggy stuff.

Hm. Seems I can sign in with the local MT account now. Disregard my comments in #13.

Though I tried making this comment much earlier this afternoon and kept getting errors of "you've commented too much too quickly" or something like that...

Yay! After the craptastic last month, it's good to see another sign of normality returning.

Not entirely sure how you create a throwaway username for use on this site. Does that mean the creating of a Movable Type account that I just did, and will that only work here? If so, then nevermind.

I'm glad comments are back up; I find Google Groups to be fantastically ugly and difficult to work with.

Hello. Any chance your blog comment expert can enable a "reply with quote" button on the comments?

Also, nice to see the preview feature.

hmm, the MT verification mail doesn't arrive here either (and trying to create a new account with the old settings tells me the account already exists, so apparently I've forgotten my password, else I'd not have needed to test the verification mail) but the login via big G seems to work; glad to have the comments back too, mainly reading this on my oversized smartphone at work (driving a taxi) and G groups is not a fun place to be using a 5" display...

Same issue with Wordpress, but Livejournal worked ok.

Very nice! Running a lot smother then before.

the MT verification mail doesn't arrive here either

If you have any way of white listing it seems the emails come from 89.16.179.174 with a host name of accelerando.dh.bytemark.co.uk

Is there some requirement that all liberal economics bloggers read Charlie Stross? :-)

D'oh. Now why didn't I think of that myself? Yes, MT login works.

Trying with Google.

I like this better than the Google groups - great that this now seems to work!

Testing this now before having to use it in anger later.

Well, signing up for an account works. If my website was working at the moment I would have tried OpenID, but it's not :( (stupid file permissions).

Gargle lets me in .... just NO IDEA what my sig wil look like. Moveable type gave me a "wrong password" Wordpress didn't recognise me, which is wrong (I regularly read/comment on a WP blog) I can't remember if I have an Yahoo a/c ......

Can we have "trusted" log-ins from regulars - i.e. you jump through hoops ONCE, then you are in, under your own name/password from your own IP address?

Pretyy please?

Greg Tingey ... in case it labels me as something else, struggling towards midnight.

Ah, it did label me as something alphameric, rich & strange, though pearls are not my eyes, nor are my bones of coral made.

Greg T.

Ok, test.

Commenting from Wordpress

Commenting from Google again, but with a different account

Commenting from Yahoo!

Good to be back in a sane commenting format. The last few weeks has remonded me why I gave up on newsgroups after I was forced to go in via google instead of my old offline reader.

This should work.

Welcome back.

I have followed the threads on Google+, but I have an aversion that that type of personal data syphon - so I won't have an account.

So, let's see if this works. (For the record: I used my wordpress login.)

Testing a local MT account...

Greg,

The relevant wordpress account here is one that is associated with a wordpress.com blog of your creation - not a login to comment on the wordpress blogs of other people.

Will I be down as another weird string or a decent monicker?

The site looks good!

Testing, testing 5 4 3 2 1

tp 1024 @ 77 But I DO NOT HAVE A BLOG - at all .... So how is your explanation supposed to work?

Err, um......

Should be me, as usual, via wordpress, this time...

Tasting, tasting salt, pepper, vinegar...

Well, that worked ok.

If anyone cares/noticed, my absence from the Google refuge was due to being unable to create a workable Google Id! I did miss you guys.

OK, I've got myself a Google+ account which appears to be the only way to get a profile, it shows antipope.org has access, but I still appear to be named by a cat walking on the keyboard. Can someone who uses Google to sign in and gets their real name shown give me a clue what settings I need.

sea, cayenne and apple

It wasn't an explanation that was supposed to work, but an explanation of why it doesn't seem to work for you.

Sorry for not being more helpful.

It is not a requirement, but it may be after "Neptune's Brood" is published. I think that comes out next summer.

Google and other Signins:

1: I mainly use Gmail, and I don't have Google+ set up. I do use the Google Play store and Google Drive.

2: The Name assigned by Google is my UserID at Gmail

3: When I tried using Yahoo, with whom I have an account based on use of several older mailing lists from a provider they took over, I get one of those long-URL identifiers.

4: For sundry reasons, I am not going to mess around with other possible sign-in options.

Just a test

I'm just glad that you have maintained your eminently clean and readable format.

Bravo!

"Neptune's Brood" is provisionally scheduled for the first Tuesday in July 2013 (from Ace, hardcover, in the US). In the UK it's due out either the same day or a week later -- I don't know yet.

I guess I'll be using my real name here instead of bjacques. I can live with that.

Testing the my account that didn't let me post last night... fingers crossed...

Commenting via another identity. Oh well, if this protects us from the terror of the spambots, as an American, I'm all for it.

Testing...

Signed in with my Google account to see if it worked. Looks positive. Now if only I ever had anything interesting to say...

Testing

Its now listed for pre-order on both Amazon.co and Amazon.com which later has won my order on account of the US of A ian Hardback will have the subtle and understated cover with Mermaid Boobies and Sharks firing Laser Canon at Alien Bankers ...and probably Pirates.

" Neptune's Brood - Charles Stross $17.13 - Quantity: 1 - This title will be released on July 2, 2013. Condition: New Sold by: Amazon Export Sales, Inc. "

The Preview facility works as does - Oh Joy! - my spelling checker.

After 2 failed attempts to use LJ to comment, I'm testing Google crosses fingers and toes

The spambots are nowhere. I mean, there is no spam in the spam folder as of the past 24 hours! (On the other hand the TypePad anti-spam plugin claims to have blocked over half a million in the past six months on this blog, and about 700K across all the blogs on this server. Which should give you an idea about the shit-storm I was dealing with.)

Cost so far: about 3-4 hours work at roughly $100/hour. Worth every penny in my opinion. (I'm pretty sure I can run it through my accounts as a business expense -- maintaining my web presence.)

Right. Let's give this a shot -- with a random comment for spice.

"If you can't change your mind, are you sure you still have one?" -- Unknown

The LiveJournal sign-up seems to be sensitive to case at some point in the process. I don't know if that's an LJ thing or what.

For the LJ login, some characters differ between the actual userID and the form used in URLs. No, I'm not going to use the ID routinely here.

Testing, via LJ. (It'll be interesting to see how my name shows up...)

testing :)

Testing from Google. Looks fine in preview.

Hm... preview looks fine.

Amusingly, I couldn't log in via 'livejournal', but when I entered my livejournal openid, that worked. shrug

I like using my livejournal account for logins anyway.

Glad to hear comments are going to work better now, although I worry about folks autogenerating livejournal accounts and using them to spam, but we'll see.

Welcome back! Google+ just wasn't the same.

Livejournal was giving me trouble until I opened LJ in one tab and tried to sign into this on another, suddenly all was well.

testing

LJ login works.

... blinks & looks around...

And suddenly all is well with the world: the flowers are blooming again, nuclear fusion is but a heartbeat away, the UK coalition is but a far-distant memory, and Charlie's Diary accepts my login for the first-ever time.

Test to see if a link works, and ..wot the hell .. Winter is near and you know that you want one of these ..

" Thermosaurus is a heat exchanger with a Tyrannosaurus as a backbone. The item is highly efficient and energy-savvy, thanks to its complex structure that includes a skull, spine, ribs, legs, and tail bones. "

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/04/t-rex-radiator-is-simultaneously-the-coolest-and-hottest-product-ever/

For some reason the typepad login doesn't seem to be working. I can login to the typepad site itself using my facebook account as an identifier but when I try the same thing to this site I get an error message as follows:

Unknown action handlesigninrememberkey=TypeKeyrememberstatic=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.antipope.org%2Fcharlie%2Fblog-static%2F2012%2F10%2Fstatus-update.htmlrememberblog_id=1rememberts=1351198610rememberemail=brett@dimetrodon.me.ukremembername=6p01310ff7fc05970cremembernick=Brett Dunbar

I had to sign in using Yahoo, which only gives my forename while the typepad gives my full name.

First post!

Sent from my fast new Windows 8 machine :-)

Good to have comments back

Well, glad there's some good news out of this.

All is well!

Just checking

Testing via google

testing

That was strange: using a Nexus One I had to open LJ in another window to log in. Otherwise I got an OpenID error.

This is a test, this is only a test - glad to see comments come home.

Testing, and...

To expand on what David L said in #43. The local signup option is indeed local to Antipope (you can see it in the URL) but in order to set up or sign in with a local account, you are presented with a box labeled "Moveable Type" in large letters and you then have to select "Movable Type" from the drop-down list of log-in methods. If David L hadn't figured it out, I wouldn't have either; it's not obvious that this blog runs on Moveable Type or that that's the local option.

It's been many many years since I managed a MT installation (abandoned it for, heh, spam) but I'm pretty sure the hired gun could really-fast tweak that login/signup template so it says "AntiPope" and "local login" (or some better descriptive words) so that folks will know where they are.

I hope this works as my LJ didn't.

Testing, tasting... it works!

Registered locally...

Most open IDs do seem to want you logged in to the mother site simultaneously.

This is the 'Hired gun' speaking... I have looked into the issue with the usernames consisting of long strings of gibberish. From what I have found it appears that if you try to log in with an external service like Google, Yahoo! etc. and the username that this external service reports already exists as a username for an account on this Movable Type installation, it falls back on the link to the external profile (i.e. the string of gibberish).

Could the people who experienced weird user names let me know if they perhaps already have an account on this site? If not, I'll have to look into this some more to find out what is going on...

I wanted to sign in from Wordpress, but apparently I don't own that Identity? It's nice to be back here. I missed not being able to comment over at gaggle…, but I didn't want to dip a toe in that water.

Might see you later this afternoon Charlie, but keep up the excellent work anyway.

maggie aka lowercasemaggie (I understand there are upper case Maggies out there as well.)

It verkz. Cool, now it's super easy to comment. Expect more comments!

Not sure if you will be around Sat (tomorrow). If so you and others might like to go to a free lecture at Birkbeck:

http://www.meetup.com/London-Futurists/events/85536602/

Saturday, November 24, 2012 2:00 PM To 4:00 PM

Birkbeck College Torrington Square WC1E 7HX LONDON (map)

People in the 'Golden Age of Technology' with Nick Price. Integrating human values into futures thinking. The third talk in the series, The Next Golden Age Of Technology 2030-45.

I dimly remember creating a movable type account in the dim and distant past although I'm not sure. Certainly if I try and login in with usual user name and password (bad practise I know) on the movable account it shows as being disabled. I don't think I've done aynthing to annoy OGOH so I don't know why this is.

Testing with TypePad

Could it be that someone tried logging in with that account too many times and got locked out or something? Anyway, if you mail me (hiredgun at yesitcan dot be) with your username I could take a look...

Sorry, flying home before 10am. (Got various family crises to fire-fight.)

I doubt whether I can make tonight now, I'm still feeling a bit crap from the flu I had last week. However, I do intend to be at Birkbeck tomorrow, wearing my ZS hoodie if anyone fancies a chat.

I'll use this as a test message and to extend my condolences. I'm going through sort of the same thing with my parents right now, though I don't think their health problems are as serious as the ones you're dealing with. One of those things you never quite realize (well, I never quite realized) - even when you read it over and over in books, like how Sis moved back home to take care of Mom, or how Dad moved in with one of the kids so they could look after him - is that one of these days that familial offspring you're reading about is going to be you.[1] And just how that limits your travel and expense options. Just another one of those things you can intellectually acknowledge but have to live through to appreciate, I guess.

And things like getting Dad to go to the doctor when something is clearly off despite his stout and oppositional insistence that everything is just okay? Making sure he takes his meds, that he doesn't 'forget' to refill his various prescriptions? These sort of hijinks are a lot less funny in real life than you'd suppose from reading about them :-(

[1]This also tends to be the time when what parents really think of how their children stack up to each other comes out. Tain't always pretty, especially when parental assessments are confirmed in spades even as those new living arrangements are being made.

Hello, Mr. Gun.

How onerous of a server load would email notifications be? It sure is nice to have new comments appear in email. Our Gracious Host mentioned it would be intensive to do here.

Yes, this is exactly what I meant earlier by a craptastic month, and it ain't over yet. The mother's just been diagnosed with a C. diff infection, meanwhile the post surgical healing is going well, and the kidneys are working again. And apparently all due to sutures left over from a surgery three years ago.

Don't mean to dump or vent (trust me, I could go on). I'd say it's nice to know you're not alone with this sort of thing, but nice is definitely not the proper word.

I suppose the ability to edit (or delete) your own comments would be too much trouble? And, how do you add icons/avatars/whateveryoucall'em in MT, or are they just for the Mods?

Don't mean to dump or vent (trust me, I could go on). I'd say it's nice to know you're not alone with this sort of thing, but nice is definitely not the proper word.

Nice is definitely not the word. It is, however, Real Life, the sort of thing you read about or hear about from friends and relatives but doesn't really register until it hits you square in the eyes.

In my case, my parents don't have any serious illness or injuries they need nursing through or are recovering from; they're just falling to pieces. Mom has been on oxygen for three years now and just recently has had to start toting that little green cylinder on wheels everywhere she goes. She's not senile but she tires easily and can easily become confused, so we have to drop in and look after her, do her big shopping, check that her bills are current, etc., and say, did I mention that she's resistant to toting her oxygen around, the one thing that would really help? She's also drifting into a more severe manifestation of diabetes as old people are prone to do, hurts herself easily, and is slow to heal. Oh, and she can't drive any more (I guess that's the biggest issue, really) because macular degeneration in one eye has left her effectively blind on that side. Ain't getting old grand :-(

So, I consider myself lucky - much luckier than Charlie - in that there's nothing life threatening going on, but otoh, the amount of personal maintenance and monitoring she requires from others (read, her son, who was amazed and astounded at the revelation that he was considered the Reliable One) has vastly increased. Oh, one other thought: it would be really nice if she could afford to have a professional look in on her once a week in her own home. But her insurance doesn't cover that. Ain't medical care in the good old US of A grand :-(

Oh, apologies for the dumping and the venting, I'll stop now. It's just like what the man said, it's nice to know that you're not alone.

testing...

I'm glad this seems to have been sorted, as it's easier (for me) to follow conversations when it's all in one long spooge of text.

So hooray and party hats all round!

I'm pretty sure that my Yahoo ID, which produced the longURL ID here, does not match any ID I have used here.

Ah, interesting....

Yahoo OpenID defaults to a gibberish URL. You can use a URL with a human-readable name, but it would still start with https:/me.yahoo.com/

There's an OpenID section in the account settings

Testing a new login

Yay! I HATED Google groups - I stopped reading comments as too much trouble. Welcome back everyone. thanks Charlie.

I don't get the groups hate. Was nobody subscribing by email? Was nobody replying by email? I used it like a listserv.

Eagerly awaiting new topics for discussion upon your return.

Testing, testing, 1, 2, 1, 2

Hmmm - re: some of the comments above. The neurologist I saw called me a member of "the sandwich generation". Advances in medical care and changes in the economy mean we get to look after both our aging parents and our stay-at-home kids whilst we start to age ourselves.

There must be a book or ten that deal with the effects of technological and economic changes on social groups. (I've actually seen effective forms of polyandry kicking off in the UK for economic reasons).

It's always been a minor background part of a work though than a central theme.

Now I'm free-associating - and this must be enough for a test!

but otoh, the amount of personal maintenance and monitoring she requires from others (read, her son, who was amazed and astounded at the revelation that he was considered the Reliable One) has vastly increased. Oh, one other thought: it would be really nice if she could afford to have a professional look in on her once a week in her own home.

Re: your earlier comment about true feelings coming out. Yep. In spades.

We have similar issues with my MiL but layered on top of it is her minute by minute, hour by hour insistence that she doesn't need any help with any aspect of her life. Ugly insistence at times. Yet it falls down totally around her if we drop out for more than a day.

I had one of the ugly talks with her the other day about we are no longer discussing fantasy options for her. Didn't go well for most of it.

And of course we have 3 daughters involved. All with different ideas of how to do things but only my wife actually doing much of the lifting. The other two want to general but not fight.

In my case it's not so much about reliability, my brother is too, it's that I'm the Local Son, and he has a family. My mother's also been on oxygen for nearly three years, and hates it, she'll take a small bottle when she goes out, and refuses the larger ones on wheels. Living at 6000+ feet, and the occasional smoke from wildfires doesn't help. As I said, I could go on, (and have mentioned other issues here in the past--not that I expect that to be remembered), she blames it all on 5700 years of inbreeding. FWIW she's 64.

Apologies to Charlie, didn't mean to turn this into the Parental Health Issues thread. I hope all is well with yours.

Just another test...

pop Pop pop Is this thing on? Hello? Hello? pop pop

Just testing, I tried creating another account and I never got the confirmation mail, but this should work.

Greg T here - ignore the Google crap!

I trust the signing went well? And (re other messages) that the rest of the weekend is not too stressful - at least you know, in advance, that your mother is in serious medical difficulties. Back in 1965, I didn't, as my father had not warned me of her deterioration, shall we say, whilst I was away at University? It'll probably still be horrible, but being warned in advance is suprisingly strengthening. Good luck, heal well!

Just trying this out.

Seems to work OK. Well done Mr Stross!

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Logging in with my Google ID, which shouldn't collide with the use of my handle anywhere on MT...

A woodchuck would chuck all the wood, if only a woodchuck could.

...and it gives my Google username, not the shortened "karrde" that I've long used. I think I can live with it.

NB: I should be blogging. And I have Deep Thoughts to blog about. But I'm just back from a lightning trip to London on crutches, and I am sufficiently exhausted to be planning an afternoon nap instead.

I'd rather be able to mod the user name back to my name but not an option, it didn't let me pick. With googles tied to so many widgets now, I'm not sure which one will show up.

I found google groups easier to manage than these comment pages, though by no means ideal.

The groups website is pretty shoddy (imho), but just accessing everything through email was more convenient than trying to keep track of things on web pages.

I think an email notification system for these comment pages would be a nice idea.

Well, that was stranger than strange. Tried to use the LJ logon here with my Mac using Chrome and with a LJ window open and got "Could not verify the OpenID provided: The address entered does not appear to be an OpenID endpoint." Logged in with the iPad and suddenly I could log in with the Mac...

Ho Hum, just to say that when I read your " I should be blogging. " I instantly played it back inside the privacy of my own Brain - Pinky: Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight? Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world! " -

to the Background Music of .." You Should Be Dancing .. " by the Bee Gees

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yAkkpbm_8E

A bit difficult to do " You Should Be Blogging " Whilst wearing a Moon Boot but it should be do able by a man of your Multi Talented capability.

Test, using a forwarded OpenID from my own website to DreamWidth. If you see this, it works!

OpenID redirection now seems to be working fine (I was the person that left the stack trace above).

I'm having exactly the same problem as bedii - whether I've got a livejournal window open in another tab or not.