Month: May 2011

Disqus Sucks Dick

~ Clarissa ~ 19 Comments

I am beyond frustrated with this stupid Disqus commenting system, people. It either prevents me from commenting at all or attempts to reveal my real name. Which I never in a million years authorized it to do or entered into any boxes connected with Disqus. It simply accessed my private data without my permission and is now attempting to make it known to the world.

Recently, it has become fashionable among bloggers to adopt the stupid sucky Disqus as their commenting system. I, for one, have not been able to find a way to publish comments with Disqus in the format I prefer (one which would link to my blog, so that people know who I am and the blog gets promoted.) This means that I will not be commenting on blogs that have adopted this policy any more.

My advice is: if you thinking about adopting Disqus, think again. I can promise that you will lose commenters. One has to be really desperate to post a comment to subject oneself to the aggravation of this nasty system.

Blogger Still Malfunctioning

~ Clarissa ~ 1 Comment

It sounds like Blogger is still unable to recover from its recent malfunction. Bigger sites that are hosted by Blogger have been having issues with posting and editing today and yesterday. Here is, for example, what the folks at College Misery report:

It is still impossible for most of us to edit posts. Commenting seems to be working for everyone. These problems are widespread. Many readers have asked me this, and I have tested WordPress as a possible location for this blog. But I do not like the formatting options available there. So I ask your patience as Blogger continues to recover from their major meltdown of last week.
This makes me feel glad that I moved to WordPress and saved myself the aggravation of waking up to yet another bout of issues with Blogger. In the aftermath of the meltdown, it never felt like Blogger achieved any degree of stability. I’m afraid their issues are too major to be repaired any time soon.
I wish the people who blog with Blogger a very fast resolution to these blogging troubles.

Blog’s Appearance

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

What’s weird is that my blog looks a lot better on my work computer than on my home computer. When I look at it at home, the template is not aesthetically pleasing to me. When I looked at it at work today, it was much better. Of course, I can’t spend any time in the office right now because it still stinks of dead bird. And there is a huge gaping hole in the ceiling right above my computer chair. Who knows what’s going to fall out of it next time? People said that deer can come out at you unexpectedly in this area. I wouldn’t want a deer falling on my head while I write. You’ll say that’s unlikely, but then I also thought it wasn’t likely that a bird would get into a windowless office that is located on the second floor of a three-story building.

Moving from Blogger to WordPress: Pros and Cons

~ Clarissa ~ 12 Comments

Pros:

– WordPress is faster and has fewer glitches, especially now that Blogger’s programmers have tried to overhaul the entire system and failed miserably.

– WordPress remembers trusted commenters and doesn’t make you approve their comments every single time they post. This eliminates unnecessary delays in commenting which become especially annoying when a lively discussion is taking place and the blog owner can’t moderate because she is at work, asleep, eating, etc. The blog author is still in control and can easily unapprove comments but, in general, her work is cut in half.

– In WordPress you can answer specific comments in a way that makes it clear whom you are responding to. You can also quote other people’s comments without having to copy-paste them. In Blogger, all comments are placed underneath the last one, which makes it very hard to keep track of who said what to whom in long discussions. (Try participating in a discussion that had between 200 and 350 comments, like I had to several times on Blogger and you’ll see what I mean).

– Inserting quotes is a lot more difficult in Blogger. I quote a lot, so it matters to me that it is easier in WordPress to insert quotes and they don’t mess up the post aesthetically.

-WordPress doesn’t insert huge unnecessary spaces between paragraphs that in Blogger you have to remove manually by editing the HTML code.

– WordPress has an app for BlackBerry.

– The “Most Recent Posts” widget on Word Press does, indeed, show the most recent comments. On Blogger it took up to several hours for the widget to update.

Cons:

– It’s easier to moderate comments by email in Blogger. In WordPress it takes an extra step.

– Widgets are more numerous and more fun in Blogger (when you manage to get them to work). Some templates in WordPress offer better widgets than the one I chose but those templates had many characteristics that made them unsuitable for the purposes of my blog.

– Moving a blog to another url makes you lose visitors. Many regular readers will be understandably annoyed with the change. All of the backlinks that you have accumulated in the years of blogging will be lost.

– There is no way to make Blogger redirect individual posts to the same posts you have imported into WordPress. I scoured the Internet for a working code that would be able to do that. I tried many different bits of code. None of them work.

I’m sure I will have more observations as the time progresses, so keep checking in.

How to Become a Member of Amazon Vine?

~ Clarissa ~ 7 Comments

Amazon provides the following definition of its Amazon Vine program:

Amazon Vine™ is a program that enables a select group of Amazon customers to post opinions about new and pre-release items to help their fellow customers make educated purchase decisions. Customers are invited to become Amazon Vine™ Voices based on the trust they have earned in the Amazon community for writing accurate and insightful reviews. Amazon provides Amazon Vine™ members with free copies of products that have been submitted to the program by vendors. Amazon does not influence the opinions of Amazon Vine™ members, nor do we modify or edit their reviews.

As you can see, the only way to join the program is to be invited personally by Amazon. There is, however, a number of things you can do to maximize your chances of being invited. When I first heard about the program, I realized that, since I obviously write really great reviews (as witnessed by their popularity on this blog), there is no reason for me not to be in the program. People keep saying that the way Amazon selects its Vine Voices is completely arbitrary. I don’t know whether that’s true. I do know, however, that several months after I started working actively towards being included into the program, I got an invitation to it. The opportunity to get books by some of my favorite authors months before they appear in print is priceless. It is also pretty good to get the free products (sometimes, extremely expensive ones) through the program.

Sitting down and writing a huge bunch of reviews, though, is not going to help you get invited into the program. You need a strategy. The strategy should be aimed at giving you a very high Amazon reviewer ranking within a short period of time. This means that you need to get many positive votes on your Amazon reviews. In order to do that, you have to be the first or the second person to publish a review of a book that is going to be hugely popular. Reviews of such books appear extremely fast, and it will not help you in any way to be stuck at review #237. Nobody is likely to notice it and you will get no votes. So if the book already has over 20 reviews, don’t waste your time posting yours. Unless, of course, you are dying to express your opinion and don’t care about whether this will help your ratings or not.

After you have chosen a bestselling author who is planning to release a new book soon, you need to be among the first people who will get the book, read it and post a review. What I did was pre-order such books on my Kindle. New Kindle releases appear on your device at 3 am Eastern Time (or 2 am Central Time, which is my time zone.) The second you get the book, you need to read it. Reading in such a hurry and staying up all night, kind of spoils the enjoyment of reading. But everything in life comes at a price, and so does Amazon Vine membership. As soon as you get through the book, you need to force yourself to stay awake and write a review of it for Amazon. The good news is that if you choose your books right, you won’t need to go through this complex process more than a few times.

In order to receive good ratings, your reviews need to be fairly long and offer something of value to the readers. (Retelling the plot is obviously not one of such things.) Ask yourself what you would want to know if you were to consult a review before making a purchase.

It is a good idea to review a variety of products in many different categories. An object doesn’t have to be bought at Amazon to be reviewed there. Is there a particular piece of clothing or jewelry that you bought recently and can discuss in an interesting way in a review? A special gadget or a computer game? A favorite brand of cereal or raisins? All this stuff is sold on Amazon and can be reviewed.

The goal is to become one of the top 300-400 reviewers, and then you just have to sit tight and wait for your invitation. Of course, you have to be a resident of the US and it looks like it also helps if you don’t live in a huge city. Nobody is going to need thousands of Vine Voices from the same geographical area. This is where it finally becomes a good thing to live in a God-forsaken little town.

And once you get on Amazon Vine, the best piece of advice I can offer you is to keep as far away as possible from the community forum. It is populated by some really strange people who construct their entire identity around being a member of the program. There are, of course, many perfectly normal people there but the scary ones are too scary for the forum to make sense.

Have fun reviewing!

Should I Back the Blog Up on WordPress? Or Move Altogether?

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

After the Blogger collapse last week, Blogger is still not functioning properly. Several widgets on my blog are not working and it takes longer than usual to load. The Dashboard has been working poorly for several weeks now. Other people who blog with Blogger report continued issues with posting and commenting. After the unpleasant experience of Blogger being down for 23 hours last week, I have realized that I don’t want to remain without my blog. I love blogging with a passion and want to continue doing it for a very long time to come. I’m only just getting started here, and I’ve got a lot more things to say. A real lot.

So I’ve started thinking that maybe Blogger should not be relied on. I read that there is an option to export one’s blog to WordPress and leave it there as a back-up option. In this case, if Blogger goes down again, readers will simply go to the WordPress version and continue reading there. Or is it a stupid idea?
Or maybe I should move the blog to WordPress altogether? Are there any distinctive advantages that WordPress has over Blogger? Or is it an even more stupid idea?
Does it make sense to buy one’s own domain name? What are the benefits of doing that?
Please help, people, I’m torn and confused. I’m placing a poll in the top right-hand corner and will also be grateful if you elaborate in the comments.

Clarissa’s Frog Legs Soup: A Recipe

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

I love making soups because you can be as inventive as you want and use up all the stuff you have floating around the refrigerator. Today, I decided to make a soup of frog legs and fish. Once again, a Google search didn’t offer any interesting recipes, so I decided to improvise. It turned out so good that I have already devoured two big bowls.

Here is what you will need:
3-4 pairs of frog legs
3-4 fish of any kind you like. The fish should be skinless but it is very important not to remove either the backbone or the tail. They are needed to make the broth less watery.
3 potatoes
2-3 carrots
salt, herbs, spices
some fresh sage
Here are the frog legs and the fish all ready for cooking. Separate frog leg pairs in two so that you have to separate legs. There is no need to chop them up onto smaller pieces.
You can use either fish stock or simply water if you have no stock handy. Place the chopped carrots and the frog legs into the broth (or water) and place the pan on high. You will need to bring it to the boiling point and then reduce the heat immediately.
Add a bay leaf, salt and pepper, and any herbs and spices you like. I added dry oregano, cumin seeds, several cloves, mustard seeds, and when the soup was almost ready, some fresh sage. Peel, cube and add potatoes to the soup. After 10 minutes or so, cut the fish into chunks of the same size and add them to the pot. Let the soup simmer on slow until the potatoes taste ready but not mushy. Here is how the soup ended up looking:
If you let it stand for a few hours after making it, the soup will taste even better.

Ernesto Laclau’s On Populist Reason: A Review

~ Clarissa ~ 3 Comments

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I have to confess that I’m extremely disappointed by Laclau’s 2005 book On Populist Reason. One thing you need to figure out before you start writing is what your audience will be like. Are you trying to address the specialists in your field or do you want the book to be accessible to any reasonably educated person? Once you have decided who it is that you are writing for, then you need to make sure that both the ideas you express and the language you use to transmit them are on the same level.

In On Populist Reason, Laclau seems to have forgotten how important it is to know your audience. He uses extremely complex, jargon-ridden writing style to transmit ideas that are beyond basic. If I am to struggle through the author’s convoluted sentences and displays of erudition, I expect his argument to lead me to something better than the kind of trivialities that Laclau offers in this book.

Laclau begins his study of populism with an overview of the existing definitions of this concept. He points out that  the perception of populism as something that is a priori negative is the only reason why such definitions only succeed in demonizing populism in terms that are as negative as they are vague. Instead of analyzing populism, political theorists attempt to demonstrate how much they condemn it and then allow this condemnation to taint every conclusion they make. Laclau attempts to move away from such facile definitions and offer a more profound analysis of populism. However, he fails at that task quite spectacularly.

More often than not, it felt to me that Laclau was talking to people he considers to be deeply unintelligent and unaware of the most basic tenets of political theory. He does it in the kind of language, though, that would prevent these ignoramuses from following his line of reasoning. Here is one of the many examples:

The complexes which we call ‘discursive or hegemonic formations’, which articulate differential and equivalential logics, would be unintelligible without the affective component. . . We can conclude that any social whole results froman indissociable articulation between signifying and affective dimensions.

This statement concludes over 100 pages of a very convoluted discussion and does nothing more than announce in this extremely technical language that communities are bound together not just by reason but also by emotions. Well, duh. This idea has been studied, discussed and argued ad nauseam for over 100 years now. There is hardly any need to convince those of us who are capable of reading Laclau’s texts of something so banal.

In a similar way, Laclau offers a very plodding discussion that is supposed to lead his readers to the earth-shattering conclusion that – believe it or not – populist movements can exist both on the Left and on the Right of the political spectrum. I am sure that there are people who are unaware of this fact but these are not the same people who can get through 40 pages on floating signifiers.

I have also discovered from On Populist Reason that in the US populism has been hijacked by the Right that, against all reason, managed to convince farmers and blue-collar workers that the Republicans represent the interests of the regular folks as opposed to the Democrats who supposedly only defend the rights of the long-haired East Coast elites. I know that you must have already yawned twice as you have been reading this paragraph. We all know this, we have all heard this said a gazillion times. Why Laclau believes that it needs to be pointed out yet again is beyond me.

The book is filled to the brim with inanities of the most disturbing kind. On page 177 (close to the end of the book), we find out that in order for the populist appeal to be effective, there have to exist some problems in society. A society where institutional stability is complete, will not respond to populism. But, of course, perfect societies do not exist, so this situation is completely hypothetic. “Surprise, surprise!” I wrote on the margins when I read this. For the most part, this was my reaction to the entire book.

Coco Louco Restaurant in St. Louis: A Review

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

Now that I have discovered N. Euclid Ave in St. Louis, I can’t stop going there. It even reminds me of Montreal a little in spite of being as empty as the rest of the city. And that’s the highest compliment I can pay to a city. So yesterday we went to a Brazilian restaurant called Coco Louco. In the reviews I read before going there, people almost unanimously agreed that the food there was fantastic while the service was abysmal. In my experience, however, the food at Coco Louco could be a lot better while service was impeccable. (It’s not like I’m doing this on purpose, people, but I never manage to agree with the popular opinion on anything.)

As you can see, the restaurant was pretty empty.
It was a Sunday, of course, but I
find it impossible to believe that there are
people in this city any day of the week
Our waiter’s name was Benya and he turned out to be a Russian-speaker. That’s one of the things I love about this country. You go to a Brazilian restaurant in the Midwest and get served by a Russian-speaking waiter. How cool is that?
As for the food, one thing that I can recommend highly is the appetizer plate for $14. Here it is:
The appetizer plate contains these great meat and cheese filled pastries that are called “pastel.” The best kind is the beef pastel. It as so good that we ordered several extra ones to take home with us. As for the main courses, I wouldn’t say that the ones we tried are really worth the price. I had the red snapper that you can see on the picture here:
It is quite good but it really didn’t feel like it was worth the $27 the restaurant charges for it.
Then, there was espeto mixto wihich is different kinds of meat grilled on a skewer. Brazilian cuisine is almost as famous for its meat as the Argentinean, but this meat was quite a disappointment. It was simply mediocre and unworthy of the famed name of Brazilian meat. You can see the skewer with some remnants of the espeto mixto on the picture here:
The dessert was really good. It’s a mango mousse and we got it on the house. Here it is:
Overall, we had a splendid time because we always enjoy discovering new restaurants. The food, however, didn’t really do justice to the great Brazilian cuisine. If the weather is nice next weekend, we will probably go back to St. Louis, and I will share with you a review of an Indian restaurant they have on N. Euclid.

>The Ugliest Cake Ever

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

>Is it just me or is it the ugliest cake you have ever seen, too?

I wonder what the cake is supposed to symbolize. A jail for Snickers bars? I’m also curious what a psychoanalyst would say to a person who actually gave this monstrosity to their mother for Mother’s Day. 
I found the picture of the ugly cake here. There are many other repulsive cakes on that blog but this one is the definite winner.