Black Dog Blog

Archive for the ‘Profusion2.0’ Category

We've been listening to a radio adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness. As it stands, I've lost interest in proceedings just at the end of the info-dump (more than an episode long, i.e. getting on for a quarter of the programme in one stretch). I may finish listening to find out what happened to the missing dog, but I think I can call my HP Lovecraft curiosity sated.

Definitely needed a more permissive adaptation to be workable as a radio drama, and I speak as someone who's usually a rabid book purist.

The realisation that my fiercely, actively atheist dragons make Great Old Ones look quite soft and vulnerable isn't necessarily conducive to easy sleep. Heh.

Fortunately those don't take an active part in any of our cooperative writing shenanigans, except (potentially/sketched in) for providing a MacGuffin to an already-OP protag.

Speaking of the writing group, Drupal experiments for our next-gen site are continuing with steady success.

Currently percolating in my mind is that I don't know to what extent I can make the edit form present fewer options to J. Average Member. Dumbed-down isn't really Drupal's natural state of affairs, and after all, the alternative solution was unpopular because it too was excessively complicated to use.

I'd like it to auto-fill and perhaps even hide options where it can, on the basis that not every member will be leet or want to get to grips with Drupal's books/blocks/nodes jargon. Indeed, I'd rather play down Drupal's involvement, at least to a casual visitor, in case it'll discourage any hacking attempts.

But the design and theming of Drupal is a whole mad mountain I'll only climb when I come to it.

Anke (who's currently tinkering with PmWiki in a quest to get us an integrated system on which to run Profusion 2.0 – yay Anke!) reminded me of this quotation from Suitov:

If I lived in your era, I'd be – in the chess club. Editor of the school magazine. Head of the drama society. Picked second last for cricket and rugger, just ahead of the asthmatic girl in bottle-end glasses. But I live in my own context, and I'm employing what are essentially Phys Ed teachers to shout my troops into order. If you don't find that boggling, you're stronger-minded than I.

Which I'd completely forgotten writing, but it strikes me that yes, of course he would say "rugger" (a very posh-schoolboy way of saying "rugby").

Anyhow, current Pro members, you may be able to test the working version soonish, whenever Anke's ready.

Turns out you can't create multiple accounts on a Drupal site using the same OpenID identity (including if you stay logged in to your OpenID provider while trying to create/log into another account).

This is a Good Thing for Pro 2.0. We'll be enforcing the "one account, many character sub-accounts" model. You won't need separate accounts¹, and they won't be allowed.

This isn't how it's done among the old Viners who liked to pretend to be different people, but we're more about openness (no secret admin accounts, for example) and ownership of our own work – which is why our copyright rules are as they are. I try to keep those values in mind when making decisions.

¹ This software limitation does mean that I can't easily create a separate superuser account, as would be recommended practice, but I'm used to using messageboard software with the same limitation…