Because the Esteemed Proprietor is off watching football and the Lexicon is still un-editable, I will share with y’all the Michael Gass Memorial Multi-Paragraph Blockquoting Fix:
Three Dots. Also known as “an ellipsis”. Used between every paragraph you want to link together in your blockquote, like so:
The ellipsis is a most useful tool, when properly applied.
…
As long as the commentor remembers to add those three dots to the cut’n’paste quotations.
…
Also: FYWP!
No jokes yet about Tunch luring Lily into the hot-air balloon yet?
MikeJ
Tunch is in the helicopter and he’s not laughing.
Chad N Freude
And the Nobel Prize for Computer Science goes to Anne Laurie. For something she actually accomplished.
Who would have thought that Michael Gass held the secret key? Robert Langdon has nothin’ on our Anne.
arguingwithsignposts
But we demand … to …see …those… credenzas! Why is … Cole … so … silent.
Was … he … laughing … in … his … condensation?
jrg
There is no Nobel Prize in Computer Science. The closest thing to a Nobel is the Turing Award. Anne Laurie will have to settle for that.
dmsilev
Hmm, let’s give this toy a spin shall we?
EDIT: Wow, it works! Thanks!
-dms
arguingwithsignposts
@jrg:
but is it tax deductible? is she given the prize for past performance, or what we expect from her in the future? Do we need to get out a chalkboard and cry?
Because we’re prepared to do that, because America is such an awesome place /glennbeck
superluminar
@MikeJ
And…the Helicopter…cannot…move.
Also.
asiangrrlMN
@Chad N Freude:
Can this actually work?
Not on the first try.
Yes! On the second try, except, it bolded the quote. Oh well. I can live with that.
Jean
Tunch inside the balloon would have kept it grounded, and no hoax would have been possible.
General Winfield Stuck
Tunch would have barfed, lily would have eaten it while Cole looked on sipping pepperfied coffaaa/
Chad N Freude
@jrg:
Thank you for clarifying that.
The Nobel Prize for failing to see a sarcastic reference to a recent right-wing pearl-clutch goes to jrg.
monkeyboy
Ummm… “an ellipsis” is supposed to convey meaning, like maybe some text in a quote has been removed. I think it would be better to use a single character like “+” or “¶” or “§” as a paragraph mark.
Lets test that out:
Did they all work?
Jean
@General Winfield Stuck: V. Funny! All the morning news in one sentence tied to Balloon. A kind of tether all by itself.
Chad N Freude
@asiangrrlMN: I am truly honored that you chose my posting to test the theory. Which is only a theory, not a fact.
JenJen
Next question… how do you get rid of the boldface?
Jay S
No jokes yet about Tunch luring Lily into the hot-air balloon yet?
How about a yeti (plural of yet) joke?
monkeyboy
test the symbols tripled:
Did they all work?
Chad N Freude
@monkeyboy: No. But perhaps we could replace the ellipsis with a catch-phrase like “Next Paragraph”.
And I thought I was pedantic. I yield the crown.
Chad N Freude
@monkeyboy: Yes. That certainly makes things clearer.
And I thought I was pedantic!
monkeyboy
test the symbols doubled:
Did they all work?
dmsilev
@JenJen: The boldface seems to go away if there’s some text before the blockquote. If that theory is correct, the following blockquote should be bold-free:
OK: The magic trick is that there has to be text before the blockquote, but no blank line between the text and the quote. Blank lines apparently anger the HTML gods.
-dms
Chad N Freude
@dmsilev: OK, another scientific experiment. Does embedding bold in an unbold blockquote screw things up:
noncarborundum
@monkeyboy: What did you use between paragraphs 4 and 5? It looks like plain old whitespace in my browser.
superluminar
Ellipscopter (n): pointless pauses in one’s post to make the insane appear meaningful.
monkeyboy
Hmmm…. The symbols in my above test between P4 and P5 were two underscore characters – it appears they work but don’t print. Lets make sure that case works:
Did they all work?
RedKitten
Or, instead of all of this fuckery, John could just ask the tech goddess to fix the blockquoting problem in the programming.
monkeyboy
YOWZA. Two underscore characters on a separate line will give a blank line between paragraphs.
Chad N Freude
@superluminar: I like gassellipsis.
noncarborundum
@monkeyboy:
dmsilev
@monkeyboy: Looks good. Now all we need to do is figure out what causes the bolding.
Some tests:
Blockquote on same line as preceding text (no space between colon and the bq tag:
Blockquote on line following text; no additional blank lines:
Blank line between text and beginning of blockquote:
-dms
Chad N Freude
@RedKitten: You would deprive us of our geekismo?
dmsilev
@RedKitten: Where’s the fun in that?
-dms
Chad N Freude
This thread should be made the official XML, HTML, WHATEVERML tag testing thread.
General Winfield Stuck
I missed the cutoff day for getting a free windows 7 upgrade by 2 weeks in June when I bought my Dell Vista Os. The Browns lose, again. If it weren’t for a safe Balloon Boy, It all might have been too much.:)
RedKitten
@Chad N Freude: @dmsilev:
Apologies…I’m on a bit of an efficiency kick lately. :)
Davex99
Phew. Then it wasn’t just me. I kept trying to blockquote people yesterday and failed miserably.
Which is of course extra embarrassing while claiming to be a
.
…did I mention Ubuntu?
-dave.
asiangrrlMN
@Chad N Freude: I did it because yours was the only one without ellipses already in it. Now, to try the new toy.
I hope this works.
Chad N Freude
@RedKitten: Efficiency? Why would you be concerned about efficiency with a cute new baby to care for?
Chad N Freude
@asiangrrlMN:
Thanks for the ego boost.
SiubhanDuinne
@Superluminar
F… T… W…
JenJen
@dmsilev: Thank you!
Now if only I can remember all of this next time I have something deeply profound to paste.
monkeyboy
Final test (with the blockquote starting on a new line below):
and that
OK? Got Me?
RedKitten
@Chad N Freude: No kidding — my new philosophy can be summarized thusly: “Chop-chop, motherfuckers!”
monkeyboy
Well,
Got Me?
Chad N Freude
@RedKitten:
I didn’t think your baby was old enough to eat chopped veggies yet. I find your post somewhat cryptic.
RedKitten
@Chad N Freude:
Efficiency, my friend. Since becoming a parent, I have become adept at performing a multitude of tasks in a very short period of time, and find myself lacking patience for other adults who are not capable of doing the same.
Anyway, I’m off to bed to try to get some rest before my 4am wake-up call.
Bad Horse's Filly
I’m still shaking my head at what exactly Balloon-Boy’s dad was planning. How did he think this would turn out?
Let’s see how that turns out.
Edit: Bold fail
Chad N Freude
@RedKitten: Good night. Sweet dreams. [pause] Waaaaaaaaaaaaah! Mmmph! It’s your turn.
I have been there and I have done that. But it works out well.
asiangrrlMN
@Chad N Freude: And because yours had more than one line. Feel better?
Chad N Freude
@asiangrrlMN: Oh, yeah. Makes me feel godlike. I can now make the world a better place.
asiangrrlMN
@Chad N Freude: Cool. I aim to please.
monkeyboy
Encoding test:
Chad N Freude
@monkeyboy: And I thought I was obsessive! Are you going to publish a How-To-Blockquote guide? (Seriously, it would be helpful.)
jeffreyw
@asiangrrlMN:
Bruschetta! You go, girl.
monkeyboy
I appears that the front end comment parsing stuff is rather screwed up. In my above test I wanted to see if I could encode a [blockquote] tag (with angle rather than square brackets). It appears to work for individual characters, however when I construct the complete tag with ampersand encoding, the parser goes the extra step and converts the string into a real blockquote.
asiangrrlMN
@jeffreyw: So it was bruschetta? Awesome! Does that mean you’ll send me some?
monkeyboy
sup test: “fuckery”.
monkeyboy
[ maybe something like this summary could be appended to the main post ]
How to use HTML fuckery[1] to fool the front end into making blockquotes work.
The front-end comment parser to this blog is rather screwed up, such that one can’t just paste some text between blockquote tags and expect it to behave in the conventional fashion, especially if the pasted text contains blank lines because they will turn off the blockquoting.
However through experimental HTML fuckery a work-around hack has been discovered and will be described here. (Note the front end also defeats some ampersand encoding which prevents showing the hack in terms of the actual characters used which means that in the description when you see something like “[blockquote]” it really means that string with angle rather than square brackets).
To insert a blockquote it is best to put the opening [blockquote] and closing [/blockquote] tags on separate lines with no blank lines adjacent. Failing to do this may cause the quoted text to be bolded. A correct input text is:
When the pasted text contains an internal blank line, it should be replaced with two underscore characters (“_”). I’m pretty sure the front-end won’t let me display an example of this, so just accept my word.
[1] Red Kitten
Or, instead of all of this fuckery, John could just ask the tech goddess to fix the blockquoting problem in the programming.
Comrade Kevin
@arguingwithsignposts:
Are they moss-covered? How many handles do they have?
Steeplejack
This is a faux fix. It makes it look like material has been elided between paragraphs. Or, if this becomes accepted, how do I then denote when material has actually been elided.
I’m sticking with italics until blockquote is truly fixed. FYWP
asiangrrlMN
@Steeplejack: Read the comments. monkeyboy really truly fixed the problem.
Steeplejack
Blockquote test based on info above:
Outside of blockquote again.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Holy shnikeys! It worked. Fucking stupid, but it worked. FYWP.
asiangrrlMN
@Steeplejack: Yeah, isn’t it stupid? But, hell! It’s a real solution.
Steeplejack
Another test to check putting {blockquote} on separate line. (I put it on the same line as the first paragraph before.)
If this works, I can live with it. But, still, FYWP. Really.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Yeah, it does work. Yee-fucking-haw. And did I mention FYWP?
Okay, having said all that, I have nothing to blockquote or add to this thread at this time. I’ll just piss off, then, shall I?
kormgar
Bah
And I thought this was gonna be about Herb Caen
kommrade reproductive vigor
@dmsilev: And don’t forget to sacrifice a can of tuna so Tunch will smile upon the formatting of your comment.
This. Also:
At one point deleting to get rid of the old formatting and then hitting return to create a new paragraph worked.
If this doesn’t work I can just edit it. Oh no I can’t because this platform h8s FF.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Nope, that no longer works. And apparently a link before a blockquote undoes the deboldification magic.
Or it is an evil racist plot to single out FF users!
But dms’s point still stands. The ellipsis makes it look like … text has been removed.
Chuck
The HTML tag is a most useful tool when properly applied. WordPress can’t apply it properly. It just needs to auto-close tags at the end of a post, not the end of a paragraph. Knowing the way WP is designed, it’s probably the theme breaking it or something.
Anyway, instead of ellipsis, I recommend [FYWP]
Michael Gass
As many of you have read, I created quite a stir on John Cole’s Balloon-Juice Blog.
While people thought the whole “balloon boy” situation funny, I, on the other hand, did not. Reasoned arguments failed and as the comments went on, it got confrontational. I ended up sending my copies of my credentials to John Cole and Dougj.
In addition, Balloon-Juice decided to take a poke at me about html formatting. If your biggest bitch is format, you are in trouble.
And this leads me to get indepth on exactly why this entire situation isn’t funny…
1) Let’s make up a publicity stunt with a balloon and a 6 year-old kid in danger.
It grabs headlines. We’ll be in the news. The nations focus will be on OUR family. Can’t you just see the hollywood deals on the horizon?
Here’s the reality. Filing a false police report is a crime. The person just isn’t charged and jailed, their family becomes responsible for charges generated in the rescue effort. I heard it off-hand, so I don’t know how accurate it is, but, I’m hearing as much as a million dollars in damages and restitution plus around 6-8 years in prison.
One action will bankrupt a family. One action will put the father in prison for years. The mother will now, for all intents and purposes, be acting as a single mother trying to raise three kids.
Worse, this family, having done reality shows, have started raising their kids that you can lie, generate a false emergency, and its ok because you are simply trying to get those big bucks and a show.
This is a family tragedy based on stupidity. But, it’s a tragedy none-the-less, because there is a chance that this will break up the entire family.
2) This publicity stunt pulled state-wide resources and National Guard resources.
Once the balloon went up, law enforcement went on the information given — boy in a balloon. They then used every available asset to try and track the balloon. They had to get numerous county agencies involved. They had to get the state agencies involved. It took someone in the Governors mansion giving the OK for the National Guard to mobilize a helicopter. And you have every one of these individuals for two and a half hours hoping for the best while trying to steel themselves for the worst.
3) Ah, it was a scam… let’s laugh…
Yes, it was a scam. The cops didn’t know it. The EMT’s that were coordinated to be on scene didn’t know it. The National Guard didn’t know it. So, for these folks, there was no joke.
Let me ram this home…
Our shift worked off-duty providing security at the football stadium. I was Sergeant of the shift. An elderly man went into cardiac arrest. One of my officers got there in seconds and had started CPR within minutes. EMT’s arrived withing minutes and took over doing CPR. He was called “DOA” enroute to the hospital. I was devastated for two weeks.
When I was on the road, our motto was “everyone goes home”. Civilian, cop, didn’t matter. We didn’t lose anyone. But, that day, we did. It wasn’t due to anyone’s fault. It didn’t matter. We lost one. I was pulled from the road for a week because I was so devastated.
Now, put that mentality into all of the cops chasing the balloon. Put that mentality into the EMT’s. The helicopter pilots. All who were steeling themselves for the possibility that a kid could be dead.
Well, this doesn’t penetrate into some peoples minds. Instead, lets mock people who simply aren’t part of our little cadre or clique. Let’s put their name up as an example to others; if you don’t “go along to get along”, you will be the brunt of our hammer.
This was a situation DESIGNED to be bad. A situation that held a lot of risk, for the kid, for the family. And when it backfired, they are now figuring that out.
I’ve yet to see anything funny about it.
licensed to kill time
I’m just over here in an old thread checking to see if the edit function has miraculously returned.
Also, Michael Gass is a gas, gas, gas! But I’ve yet to see anything funny about it.
licensed to kill time
Testing, testing, 1 2 3
Will it work? And where the hell did the edit function go?
licensed to kill time
@licensed to kill time:
licensed to kill time
licensed to kill time
licensed to kill time said