Test embeds in comments.

Written By: - Date published: 8:04 pm, January 3rd, 2019 - 32 comments
Categories: admin, Media, social media lolz, The Standard, uncategorized - Tags:

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve started testing some embeds in comments in OpenMike today.

This is a test to see what is possible in posts that can worthwhile be carried over to the comments. Previously the only thing that has been allowed has been youtube and audio tracks. Now there are a range of possibilities.

I’ll show some tested ones below, and a list of some others that I will probably enable a click blocks, often more for the authors than commenters.

If you want to add more on this post as ones you’d like to test or try, then feel free. For instance, I’m interested in adding Quora and Stack Overflow – sites that I always find useful and which I could answer questions. Other sites that I am liable to add are NZ Herald, Stuff and some of the other local media. Then of course there is The Economist, a few overseas papers and a few sciences site that I read often.

Just add a URL to the comment, state the usual guff which gives other commenters a reason to read the link and see if it displays. If I’m interested or think that a reasonable number of others will be, then I may exert myself and allow it to work for comments if that is possible.

I’ll probably let this testing to run over the weekend before I start deciding what needs pruning out. As usual because I’m pretty good at detecting complete bullshit, I’ll be personally judging the quality of the links provided to decide what sites are allowed on the commenter areas. Post Authors of course will probably get whatever they want to work with.

The following currently (at the the time of writing) all work in comments in addition to the youtube and some audio..

Facebook

This is Mort, our new kitten, attempting to destroy my sandals. He is already showing his rapacious carnivorous ambush predator nature while only weighing 115g. So about the time we microchip him I’m also going to get him a growth-release prey warning collar.

Twitter

Just because this amuses me.

https://twitter.com/Pahtrisha/status/1052032773651759104

Vimeo

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bq8Y_d0F4Xe/?utm_source=ig_embed

32 comments on “Test embeds in comments. ”

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  1. Robert Guyton 1
    3 January 2019 at 8:08 pm

    “I’m also going to get him a growth-release prey warning collar.”
    Looks like he’s already wearing one.

    • lprent 1.1
      3 January 2019 at 8:21 pm

      Nah he gets out of that one easily at present. And if he grows in it then he won’t be able to get out of them unless he suddenly learns how to unfasten velcro.

  2. Matthew Whitehead 2
    3 January 2019 at 8:15 pm

    Mort is the cutest. <3

    • lprent 2.1
      3 January 2019 at 8:27 pm

      The adopted son of death? Yes he is – unless you happen to be prey. Like my feet under the covers in bed. The fixed stare is somewhat intimidating, especially when you wake up with it looking at you with speculation at 0600. It is feed me or else ummm…

      But he is certainly entertaining and has a powerful battery when he isn’t asleep.

  3. Sacha 3
    3 January 2019 at 8:25 pm

    Let’s try this out. Russell Brown writes on drug testing at music festivals – on the RNZ site:

    https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/379404/no-room-for-vagueness-in-drug-testing-at-music-festivals

    And a single comment from the equivalent post on Public Address (which uses Cactuslab’s rarer Supermodel CMS with a few customised symbols like ** for bold text and for blockquotes):

    https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/hard-news-about-that-rhythm-and-vines-dangerous/?p=381083#post381083

  4. greywarshark 4
    4 January 2019 at 9:25 am

    I would like the old search engine for commenters so I can look up what I said and when and who replied, and read others back stuff to catch up. It may be too demanding on the system but it was useful.

    • Siobhan 4.1
      4 January 2019 at 12:18 pm

      This please. If it’s at all possible. Though its got to be hellishly demanding on the system I guess.

      • lprent 4.1.1
        4 January 2019 at 1:28 pm

        Not really that bad on CPU demand. The only real demand at the web side is a nasty SQL statement that joins the relevant posts and the comments together in a single ordered search. That is only used to present the list on the screen.

        The rest of the search uses a service program called Sphinx for doing full text searches. That effectively pre-indexes the whole database for lookups. However it does it incrementally. So every hour it updates just the things that have changed over the last hour. I get it to do a full refresh every week, but that is mainly because I tend to view computer CPU at 0330 as being free.

        I can’t say how much I like Sphinx. It is an elegant design for a particular problem space. And it works well on a single computer for the type of thing we have here.

        The problem comes on its intersection to the PHP code that drives the web pages. There is a plugin that I have been working with (mostly writing work arounds) since about 2009 that hooks into the Sphinx API. That is rather poorly written for the purpose we use it here and keep failing with major WordPress upgrades.

        In particular it seems to like taking over the indexing of the site and running it from within the web site – which is simply moronic if you have a service based linux system. But it also keeps trying to take over the search visuals – which is where it is currently breaking again. But it also keeps changing the way that it names the comment lookups – which is downright irritating.

        The whole thing seems to be getting unduly complex in its code, and it violates just about every principle of wordpress coding.

        I had a look at it earlier in the week, and I think that I should just bite the bullet and write a new purpose built back-end system that provides hooks for wordpress. Which is going to have to be a longer process for next week after work and over the next weekend.

    • veutoviper 4.2
      4 January 2019 at 1:33 pm

      As a fallback, those of us with strange one-off pseudonyms such as mine can call on that old friend Google to provide some semblance of a memory jolter at least.

      Not much use for people like Siobhan who use actual names etc. but I tried yours (ie greywarshark) as a trial and it also works and brought up your comments at other blogs as well as TS.

      For example, if I google ‘veutoviper’ what I get is:

      https://www.google.com/search?q=veutoviper&rlz=1C1LDJZ_enNZ499&oq=veutoviper&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i65j0l4.7080j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

      This shows 7 pages of results all relating to The Standard as I only use vv here. But it is not all results. If I go to the last page it says
      “If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.”

      If I click on that lots more come up,

      Now none of the links to TS actually work, because the search function here does not work. BUT the short summary under each entry sometimes jogs my memory enough for me to come back to TS and use the Archives to check any reference to posts on a given date or even OM 6/12/2018 etc.

      A convoluted roundabout way to try to search – but it has turned up trumps a few times.

      And you can also filter your searches using that method through the Tools function to search by period, date etc.

      AND if you actually select Images, it gives a wonderful never ending collage of TS posts by the images used for each one! (in my case once I say no to ‘auto viper’ which is lots of pictures of great cars) These seem to include posts where I have never posted anything, but just looking at the image has triggered memory as to whether I commented and if so sometimes what, why, and/or to whom.

      https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1LDJZ_enNZ499&tbm=isch&q=veutoviper&nfpr=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPzoXi7tLfAhXIwLwKHYp0A3IQvgUIYigB&biw=1024&bih=724&dpr=1.25

      ———————————————–

      Actually because out of old work habits, I still use a full page daily diary and usually make a few brief notes as to TS posts of interest, the subjects and any major comments I make (eg the number). I also draft most of my longer comments now in Word, and keep those in a TS folder.

      —————

      Meant to mention that you can also filter the Images view using tools (Time gives you dates, periods etc) and also subject tags at the top of the images.

      • greywarshark 4.2.1
        4 January 2019 at 1:46 pm

        Thanks veutoviper for your continuing care for this blog. You are really good to keep up the standards and enthusiasm for good data and info here.

        I used to be able to get immediate information that I want when I searched TS. In a list without going on the roundabout or swings. I use google a lot but blench at having it be my gatekeeper to useful information that I need personally.

        I actually have copious notes of important things I see online on google and on wikipedia etc etc, but would like to keep my TS dealings within the TS system. Google may have spiders, or crawlers picking up stuff. I can’t help that. But I don’t want to rely on them and when I have searched through them I have found they can’t give me the exact address of any comment, only the post. You say that you have found a way round this. But I am spending far too much time trying to learn, think, read, contribute, support, envision, notify about things that are likely to be helpful to forming better systems than we have and build resilience and informed decisions for the future.

        Behind me is the thought that I’ll be dead in a few years, I haven’t got time to go the long way round. i want to see improvements in society and the way that people treat each other, and practicality mixed with as much kindness as possible, that impress me before i die.

  5. RedLogix 5
    4 January 2019 at 12:55 pm

    Totally off topic venting …. fecking operators who feck with the fecking config settings on the Thin Client boxes … and then fecking whine “it doesn’t work anymore, what have you done?”

    It’s mildly frustrating when they alter just one setting; but when they’ve randomly fecked with all of them ….

    • lprent 5.1
      4 January 2019 at 1:35 pm

      🙂 I tend to avoid thin client systems with the backends accessible to operators. I really can’t stand the aggravation.

      I really only use some development tools that do that – and that is only because these are companies who know that their clients are programmers who will detect the problem, deal harshly with the fumble heads who did it , and will write about the exact fix and if it is worth using the platform on places like StackOverflow.

      But mostly I use thin clients on my own thick backends, usually where the backend is a whole virtual machine that operators can’t get into easily.

      • RedLogix 5.1.1
        4 January 2019 at 2:47 pm

        I wish … but I have a global corporate IT group to placate. Their priorities are authentication, confidentiality and availability in that order; ours is the exact opposite. Sighs …

        • lprent 5.1.1.1
          4 January 2019 at 3:03 pm

          I have the same.

          They recently shifted from a hodge-podge of online and networked services to SAP. Looks like SAP still hasn’t gotten around their inability to design coherent interfaces that weren’t designed for GL experts since I last looked at it decades ago.

          Doing time sheets and expenses takes way too much time. And I can’t really do it without having my cell at hand and spending hours pushing poorly designed and incomprehensible codes around. I understand the process (FFS that was why I went and did a MBA, so I understand the way bookkeepers think). I just think that they should never be allowed near the development of UI systems.

          Corporates – they do tend to get in the way of getting work done. I start thinking longingly about the relative simplicity of underfunded startups

  6. WILD KATIPO 6
    4 January 2019 at 7:37 pm

    I don”t understand what this is all about.

    I am low tech.

    I lack the tech savvy of those who had the fortuitous advantage of either A ) being born at the right time in history or B ) the continuity of a series of events that led them in the right path, and C ) the actual interest in gadgets and gadgetry.

    I do , however, understand animals somewhat and I do have a liking for horses.

    Why can’t we film Bigfoot, again? (ThinkerThunker) – YouTube

    • WILD KATIPO 6.1
      4 January 2019 at 7:49 pm

      Oh… and low tech?

      When I was working in security, and rubbing shoulders with returned servicemen from Afghanistan ,… they informed me of a very clever tactic the Taliban fighters used to evade heat seeking helicopters… they used woolen blankets that not only blended in with the rocks and terrain,… but because of ambient temperatures , gave them a window of time before their body heat made them visible…

      By which time the choppers had gone,… and they could emerge from their grand-moms woolly blankets…

      Clever , huh?

  7. Muttonbird 7
    5 January 2019 at 10:12 pm

    Does this mean we can post photos?