The Flatlanders' Community

Posted by: manifold

Not sure how many who read us are Catholics (we are, uh, front-wise at least Culturally Catholic—like a Secular Jew—but we have some practicing Catholic members), but this is news for everyone, I'm sure:

Pope Benedict XVI Says He Will Resign - NYTimes.com

For those of you keeping score, which Cardinal are you hoping to win this time? No need to be a Catholic—the Pope's an international leader, so this is more like weighing on who you hope the next British PM or US President will be. The current favorite by numbers is Peter Turkson. On the plus side, first black pope! On the minus side (for us), conservative as fuck. Same goes for Francis Arinze, unfortunately.

We're hoping for someone much more moderate, which in fantasyland means suddenly a pope who is cool with gay rights and women's ordination… and in reality means crossing our fingers and hoping for Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga.

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Posted by: manifold

Not sure how many people who follow this blog are Mac OS X users, but the current version of the icon customizing application CandyBar is free.

Panic Blog releases free CandyBar into the wilds

In OS X versions before Mountain Lion, it can customize the dock. It can't customize the icons of programs bought through the Mac App Store (due to the sandboxing), but any programs you installed or downloaded by another means should be fair game, not to mention folders and (for now) system icons.

And, heck, just to make sure this is more than just a link to CandyBar, here are some of our favorite icons. (They're also available for Windows, of course.)

• Agua Onyx Folders, by David Lanham.
These were technically alternative folder designs to go with Agua, a full icon set replacement for OS X, but damn if they aren't some of the most beautiful dark folders we've ever seen.

• Amora, by David Lanham.
Amora's icons and its dock replacement were our full set of choice for literally years. It's just gorgeous.

• Cute as a Button Cats, Part 1 and Part 2, by Kate England.
Adorable cat icons are a must for replacing iChat. (Also, yes, that's a very bad multilingual pun. We like those.)

• Planets of the Solar System, by Parthiban Mohanraj.
Super shiny planet icons. You can get them one by one from his DeviantArt gallery, or download the whole set in a zip file from the Goodies page on his Portfolio site.

• Waritsuki Drive Icons, by Kenichi Yoshida.
Combining two of our favorite things—Japanese cloth patterns, and wood-style icons. There's even one using our favorite traditional pattern, seigaiha (青海波, blue ocean waves).

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Posted by: manifold

Slowly working through the backlog in our "to icon" folder.

Total Icon Count: 12 + 7 alternates

Categories:
Robert Montgomery
Animated
Alternates

Teasers:

Once again, no alt-text due to lack of spoons. But if you want to volunteer alt text for any icon, we will gladly edit it in.

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Posted by: manifold

Total Icon Count: 17 + 5 alts

Teasers:

No alt text on these, sadly, because it's the hardest part of making icons, and it's been months since we made a proper post. But if you want to, you can leave any suggested alt text in the comments and we'll see if we can edit it in.

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Posted by: manifold

Since we use a CSS killfile, we view all journals in our own journal style. We're never fully satisfied with the default arrangement of anything, of course, so we're always tweaking it for functionality, and lately we've been playing around with putting altered/custom versions of layout functions into theme layers.

One use we've been trying to fudge together is placement of a Private Messaging link in the standard set of Entry Interaction Links, alongside the Comment Reply link and so on. The ability to private message a post's author with one click instead of two—one click to the user profile, a second to the actual private message composition page—would be such a timesaver, with how often we private message people instead of leaving comments.

We were able to get a PM link to work on entry pages with a very slightly changed function in a theme layer:

function Entry::print_interaction_links(string target) "Prints entry interaction links, aka # comments/leave a comment, with standardized CSS." { var Page p = get_page(); var int count; $count = 0; if ($p isa EntryPage) { """<ul class="entry-interaction-links">"""; var EntryPage ep = $p as EntryPage; if ($.comments.enabled and $ep.comment_pages.total_subitems > 0) { $count ++; """<li class="entry-readlink first-item">"""; $this.comments->print_readlink(); "</li>\n"; } if ($.comments.enabled) { if ($.comments.maxcomments) { print safe "$*text_max_comments"; } else { $count ++; """<li class="entry-replylink""" + ( $count == 1 ? " first-item" : "" ) + """">"""; $ep->print_reply_link({ "linktext" => $*text_post_comment, "target" => $target }); "</li>\n"; """<li class="entry-replylink pee-emm"><a href="$*SITEROOT/inbox/compose?user=$this.poster.username">"""; ### $p.journal.username will not work in communities "Private Message </a></li>\n"; } } "</ul>"; } else { $this.comments->print(); } }

And in a moment of pseudobrilliance—brought about by realizing that $this.poster.username is beautifully adaptable—we realized a similarly adapted function would put a contextually useful PM link into the comments on entry pages.

function Comment::print_interaction_links() "Prints comment interaction links, aka reply/thread/parent/expand." { """<ul class="comment-interaction-links">"""; print safe """<li class="link commentpermalink"><a href="$this.permalink_url">$*text_comment_link</a></li>\n"""; if ($this.frozen) { print safe """<li class="link frozen first-item">$*text_comment_frozen</li>\n"""; } else { """<li class="link reply first-item">"""; $this->print_reply_link({"linktext" => $*text_comment_reply}); """</li>\n"""; """<li class="entry-replylink pee-emm"><a href="$*SITEROOT/inbox/compose?user=$this.poster.username">"""; ### $p.journal.username will not work in communities "Private Message </a></li>\n"; } if ($this.threadroot_url != "") { print safe """<li class="link threadroot"><a href="$this.threadroot_url">$*text_comment_threadroot</a></li>\n""";} if ($this.parent_url != "") { print safe """<li class="link commentparent"><a href="$this.parent_url">$*text_comment_parent</a></li>\n"""; } if ($this.thread_url != "") { print safe """<li class="link thread"><a href="$this.thread_url">$*text_comment_thread</a></li>\n"""; } var Link expand_link = $this->get_link("expand_comments"); if (defined $expand_link) { """<li class="link expand">"""; $this->print_expand_link(); """</li>\n"""; } var Link hide_link = $this->get_link("hide_comments"); if (defined $hide_link) { var string show_hide = ""; if (not $this.hide_children) { $show_hide = " cmt_show_hide_default"; } """<li class="link cmt_hide$show_hide" style="display:none;" id="cmt${this.talkid}_hide">"""; $this->print_hide_link(); """</li>\n"""; } var Link unhide_link = $this->get_link("unhide_comments"); if (defined $unhide_link) { var string show_hide = ""; """<li class="link cmt_unhide$show_hide" style="display: none;" id="cmt${this.talkid}_unhide">"""; $this->print_unhide_link(); """</li>\n"""; } """</ul>"""; }

So that means we can, while reading a comment thread, also PM a comment author in one click instead of two. Very useful! (There are some obvious bad coding practices, of course—the text for "Private Message" is hardcoded in and can't be customized by an end user without altering the code, because the creation of new properties is limited to S2 Core and layout layers, and this is just a theme layer.)

But we still can't figure out how to implement the morning coffee of useful PM links—a PM link on the entry interaction links of entries on a reading page or recent entries page, which would mean never having to visit entry/comment pages at all. There, sadly, $this.poster.username is an unknown property, and $p.journal.username is useless, because it points the link to ...us. And we don't want to send ourselves a private message, do we?

There has to be a property for the username of an entry's poster on reading pages and recent entries pages. But as much as we comb through the source of S2 Core, we just can't seem to figure out what it is.

The experimental layer we're playing around with is public, of course, for the curious.

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Posted by: manifold

Pe' Sla: Help Save Lakota Sioux Sacred Land has extended their funding deadline to September 8th!

That means if you weren't able to donate because you weren't going to have any funds at the time, or you'll be able to donate a larger amount at the beginning of the month than you would at any other time, here's your chance!

Remember, though, even if you can't give anything at all, you can still help by boosting the signal and making sure other people hear about it. Every bit helps.

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Posted by: manifold

Sorry, Tesla, we already donated what we could afford this month to Save Pe' Sla. The Lakota don't have an Oatmeal-themed famous internet dude backing them up. Also, you're closer to your goal than the Lakota are, and your fundraiser will still be running in September. Theirs won't.

Pe' Sla: Help Save Lakota Sioux Sacred Land! ends in 63 hours.

If you can give anything to the campaign, now's the time. If you can't, spread the word anyway.

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Posted by: manifold

Hopefully most of you have already seen this going around, but if you haven't, please sign this change.org petition for Paul Corby to get a heart transplant.

Paul Corby is a 23-year-old man diagnosed with PDDNOS, who also has Left Ventricular Noncompaction—i.e., noncompaction cardiomyopathy. The survival rate for a symptomatic patient without a heart transplant is, to put it bluntly, dire. His father had the same condition, and died from a stroke at 27. Between this and the likelihood of heart failure, Paul is unlikely to live past 30 without a heart transplant.

According to the Stollerderby blog post about it, the transplant physician at PennMedicine denied Paul placement on the national heart transplant list. Here's the quote of her explanation for why:

I have recommended against transplant given his psychiatric issues, autism, the complexity of the process, multiple procedures, and the unknown and unpredictable effect of steroids on behavior.

"Psychiatric issues" refers to the fact that, like the majority of autistic people, Paul has anxiety and depression which stem from the sensory and social aspects of autism—so it is basically saying "given his autism and also his autism" right there.

"The complexity of the process" and "multiple procedures" are basically word filler: a heart transplant is a complex process involving multiple procedures for everyone who undergoes one. No physical reason for why his body would not be able to handle the complex process or multiple procedures is given.

And "the unknown and unpredictable effect of steroids on behavior"—steroids are used for antirejection purposes in the context of transplants. There is pretty much no real comparison between the monitored administration of steroids in a medical context and the ROID RAAAAAGE of steroid misuse/abuse. Plus, even if extreme irritability or aggression were to occur, in Paul's case it is much more likely to be caught early because he is autistic and regularly receiving psychiatric treatment for a mood disorder. His mood is already being monitored—even relatively small changes in it will be noticed right away and dealt with.

But given this doctor already citing "psychiatric issues" which basically are the autism again, it seems very likely that "the unknown and unpredictable effect of steroids on behavior" is a discreet way of saying "autistic people are already scary angry dangerous people and steroids will make him into THE INCREDIBLE AUTISTIC HULK".

(The, uh. Incredible Autistic Hulk with... cardiomyopathy. OH BOY, SO DANGEROUS.)

So, in summary, he was not put on the list for reasons that basically boil down to: autism, autism, clouds are in the sky, the sun is in space, autism.

There isn't even a specific heart in question here, or his position on the list, or any questions of comparison to other patients who need heart transplants. This is an outright refusal to even put him on the waiting list in the first place. Because he's autistic.

That is fucking terrifying.

At the time of writing this, the Change.org petition had 199,086 signatures out of 200,000. It's probably (hopefully) going to go over 200,000. Don't take this to mean it's over. Sign the petition if you can, spread the word whether you can or not. The more attention this receives, the better.

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Posted by: manifold

ambersweet has sudden (and expensive) car troubles, so she's offering tarot readings for a time to help raise funds.

We highly recommend her. Seriously. She's damn good.

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Posted by: manifold

Matthew Perpetua's Fluxblog is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month, and right now, he has a survey mix up for music that came out in that first year, 2002. A mix of eight discs worth, because Perpetua does not half-ass anything.

Fluxblog 2002 Survey Mix!

It's worth it alone for the amount of free music, but there's more to it than that. Hawkeye's been following Fluxblog regularly since at least 2005, and it's been the shining source of so much music we never would have heard of otherwise. There have been other mp3 blogs that come and go, but we remember Perpetua reviewing The Sunset Tree, we remember Perpetua posting Sandra Lou's cover of Lio's La Banana Split and getting flack for it in his comments, we remember Perpetua posting Yoko Kanno and apparently blowing the minds of some of his regulars with it.

Fluxblog is eclectic, honest, and simple. It's really just a guy sharing the music he likes with the world—a guy who just also happens to be excellent at capturing the flavor of the music in short reviews when he does it.

Fluxblog: come for the free, stay for the AWESOME.

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Posted by: manifold

dreamwriteremmy's fiancé's cat, Tabby, needs surgery, and they're taking donations on their fiancé's behalf to go towards it. Go see their post about it for details. Donate if you can, and if you can't, you can still pass it on to others!

(Probably it goes without saying, but we signal boost everything to do with cats in need. The cats need it.)

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