A farewell to arm

[Hi and Lois, July 18, 2017. Click for a larger view.]

Forget that Irma looks a lot like Hi. Other women in the strip have looked a lot like Hi. It’s Irma’s arm I see, or what’s missing of it.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Crusty diction

Donald Trump today described John McCain as “a crusty voice in Washington.” And just today Charles Blow was writing about Trump’s diction.

Photobucket fail

[Uh-oh.]

In the late aughts, I began to upload images to Photobucket for use on Orange Crate Art. I recall some sort of problem back then with images uploaded directly to Blogger. When Blogger began working properly again, I forgot all about Photobucket — until yesterday, when I noticed the above image taking the place of a photograph in an old post. And thus I learned about recent doings at Photobucket. Long story short: in late June, Photobucket changed its terms of service. This change came without warning to the service’s users. Third-party hosting (or “3rd Party Hosting,” as Photobucket calls it) now requires that a user sign up for a plan that costs $399.99 a year. In other words, if you’ve uploaded images to Photobucket, embedded them elsewhere, and want the images to keep showing up where they’ve always showed up, it’ll cost you — a lot.

Or it won’t. Yesterday afternoon I spent a couple of hours uploading missing images to Blogger, sixty-odd images in all. Some of the posts that lost their images are still (surprisingly) popular. No matter: things should be right, even if a post never gets read again. When I was done, I deleted my Photobucket account. Good riddance. But if I’d made greater use of Photobucket, I’d really be in the soup now. Just look at what Twitter has to say about #photobucket.

On top of the preposterous “$399.99,” the meter in that placeholder picture is an extra dab of stupid. Have my sixty-odd images really exceeded some measurable limit for “3rd Party Hosting Usage”? Only if the limit for usage is any.

[From the Photobucket website: “Photobucket defines 3rd party hosting as the action of embedding an image or photo onto another website. For example, using the <img> tag to embed or display a JPEG image from your Photobucket account on another website such as a forum, auction listing, blog, etc. is definitively 3rd party hosting.” “Definitively”? Who writes this stuff?]

Disable autoplay videos in Safari

Here’s what works for me:

In Terminal (with Safari closed), type (as one line)

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 1

Open Safari, go to the Debug menu, and choose Video Needs User Action. That prevents the endlessly proliferating videos on news sites and elsewhere from playing on their own. The only downside: it’s now necessary to click twice to play a video.

If you would like to hide the Debug menu: quit Safari, and in Terminal, type (as one line)

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 0

I found this fix (along with what might be less satisfactory Safari fixes) in a post at Kirk McElhearn’s Kirkville. The post also has (much easier) fixes to disable autoplay in Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.

[Note: the Terminal commands include a space after com.apple.Safari. High Sierra, the forthcoming version of macOS, is said to make it much easier to disable autoplay in Safari.]

Martin Landau (1928–2017)

The New York Times obituary describes him as

the tall, intense, sometimes mischievously sinister actor best known for his role in the television series Mission: Impossible and his Oscar-winning portrayal of Bela Lugosi in the film Ed Wood.

Also best known, I’d say, for his portrayal of Leonard in North by Northwest. Don’t leave out Leonard.

Bob Wolff (1920–2017)

The sportscaster Bob Wolff has died at the age of ninety-six. The New York Times has an obituary.

In the 1970s, I watched countless New York Knicks games with Bob Wolff’s play-by-play and Cal Ramsey’s color commentary. The two men were always betting a steak dinner on something or other.

A related post
Bob Wolff’s archive

Hal Fryar (1927–2017)

I just got the sad news that Hal Fryar, Harlow Hickenlooper of Indianapolis children’s television, has died at the age of ninety. In 2012 Elaine and I met him, talked with him, and sang “Mairzy Doats” with him at the Indiana Historical Society, where he was a volunteer guide. Those few minutes were the highlight of our day. It was only after the fact that we learned who it was we’d been singing with.

Here’s a post about our serendipitous meeting. And here’s
the official website for the one and only Harlow Hickenlooper.

Long-distance

[Peanuts, July 15, 1970.]

Related reading
All OCA Peanuts posts (Pinboard)

iOS Dictation fail

It may be unwise to use Dictation when texting about folk music.

Related fails
Boogie-woogie : Curse and bless : Derrida

[“It may be unwise”: at least until you retype. Now Dictation corrects its error.]

Thank you, Judge Watson

Judge Derrick K. Watson of Federal District Court in Honolulu, ruling that the Trump administration’s temporary travel ban ought not to bar grandparents and other close relatives of persons in the United States from entering the country:

In sum, the Government’s definition of “close familial relationship” is not only not compelled by the Supreme Court’s June 26 decision, but contradicts it. Equally problematic, the Government’s definition represents the antithesis of common sense. Common sense, for instance, dictates that close family members be defined to include grandparents. Indeed, grandparents are the epitome of close family members. The Government’s definition excludes them. That simply cannot be.