Blogger Preview and Safari

I’ve tried the new Blogger interface and switched back. To my eyes, it’s terrible. But I just switched again to see if I would run up against a problem a fellow blogger and Safari user encountered: no Preview view for a draft post. I did. And I noticed that every time I chose Preview, the words "Pop-up window blocked" flashed by in the address bar. So it appears that Safari identifies the Preview view — which should open in a new tab — as a pop-up window. Apple’s fault? Google’s fault? Who knows. But everything works properly in Chrome.

Here’s how to get Preview view back in Safari:

Click on Safari in the menu bar.

Click on Settings for This Website.

For Pop-up Windows, click on whatever setting is displayed and change it to Allow. There won’t appear to be other options, but click and they’ll appear.

Google plans to switch all Blogger accounts to the new interface, so this fix is worth knowing about. For me it'll be one more reason to write posts in MarsEdit. One downside: because of Google rules, MarsEdit can’t upload images to Blogger. And the app’s developer Daniel Jalkut is honest enough to no longer list Blogger as compatible with MarsEdit. But the app does still work with Blogger for writing.

My only connection to MarsEdit is that of a happy user.

“Look!”

[Zippy, July 26, 2020.]

Dingburgers dig Nancy.

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy : Nancy and Zippy : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Hadelich and Weiss, streaming

Before it gets any later in the day: Augustin Hadelich, violin, and Orion Weiss, piano, may be heard tonight, 8:00 EDT, in a recital from Tanglewood. Music by John Adams, Johannes Brahms, and Claude Debussy. Admission: $12. The performance will remain available through August 1.

Related reading
Three more posts about Augustin Hadelich

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Greg Johnson, is a solid Stumper. Personally, I found it challenging — I needed half an hour to finish. I remember a student who prefaced every comment in class with “Personally,” which I’ve capitalized here because it began sentences. Not the sentence I just wrote but sentences spoken in class.

And personally, I found the southwest corner particularly difficult.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

1-A, five letters, “Play with puddles” and 1-D, six letters, “Gaudy entrance.” This pairing made for a delightful start.

4-D, six letters, “Prepares to take tea.” I am always prepared to take tea.

6-A, nine letters, “Posts behind another user's back.” I can’t recall seeing the answer in a crossword before.

11-D, four letters, “Homeric work.” I was surprised to see this answer and not the more familiar one.

23-A, eleven letters, “With 46 Across, modern ‘Pay attention!’” and 46-A, eleven letters, “See 23 Across.” I imagine that the constructor was delighted to think of this sentence and find that it splits into two eleven-letter halves.

34-D, eight letters, “Requirement for clear reception.” The first four letters are easy; the last four might lead a solver astray.

37-A, six letters, “Bento box lacquerware.” I learned something.

38-A, four letters, “They make waiters angry.” Indeed.

41-A, four letters, “Door stop, essentially.” Personally, I think it’s a good idea to have a nice supply of these stashed in a kitchen drawer. You never know when you might need one.

53-A, nine letters, “Troubadour, for instance.” I was thinking SONGWRIT — ER, no, that doesn’t work.

55-D, three letters, “Impressive back yards.” Corny, but in a good way.

One clue-and-answer pair that feels forced: 43-D, six letters, “Use a space vehicle.” A vehicle? Really?

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

“If you have to write”

[Stranger on the Third Floor (dir. Boris Ingster, 1940). Click for an angrier view.]

Albert Meng (Charles Halton) is angry. The landlady (Jane Keckley) is angry too. It’s a rooming house, not an office building, and Mr. Meng is a good tenant. Why, he’s been living here for nearly fourteen years, and he’s always paid his rent promptly. And now Mr. Ward (John McGuire) is typing at all hours, making it impossible for Mr. Meng to sleep. “Stop using that thing!” says the landlady. And Mr. Meng:


[“If you have to write, write with a pencil!” That’s what he says, honest. Click for a louder view.]

In my student days, I too typed on a manual typewriter at all hours. Didn’t everyone?

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

[Charles Halton is probably best known as the bank examiner in It’s a Wonderful Life.]

Domestic comedy

“I’m so tired of seeing ODE in crosswords. And ODIST. No one calls John Keats an ODIST. He’s from Andy of Mayberry.”

“Isn’t he the one who’s in the jail?”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[Wikipedia explains: Andy of Mayberry was the title for episodes of The Andy Griffith Show rerun on daytime television.]

Antigone in Ferguson

Theater of War presents a streaming performance of Antigone in Ferguson:

Antigone in Ferguson fuses a dramatic reading by leading actors of Sophocles’s Antigone with live choral music performed by a choir of activists, police officers, youth, and concerned citizens from Ferguson and New York City. The performance is the catalyst for panel and audience-driven discussions about racialized violence, structural oppression, misogyny, gender violence, and social justice.

Free to watch, August 9, 7:30 CDT. Zoom required. Register here.

Related reading
All OCA Sophocles posts (Pinboard)

“I am someone’s daughter too”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) responds to Representative Ted Yoho (R-FL), who called her, on the steps of the United States Capitol, a “fucking bitch.”

I think of the many times I heard students leaving a college classroom speak of one instructor or another as a “fucking bitch.” “Don’t use language like that about your instructor,” I would say, whenever I had the chance. I wish now I had taken the chance to say more.

“A substitute for home and hearth”

Anna Seghers, Transit. 1951. Trans. from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo (New York: New York Review Books, 2013).

Everything’s a substitute. But hospitality lives on. And it’s not only coffee, sugar, and alcohol that have their substitutes: substitution governs human relations in the novel.

A related post
“Have been and will always be”

Five words

Jesus. Mary. And. Joseph. I’m from Brooklyn — it’s just four words.