MuseBlog

Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one,
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours’ eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.

–“To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats
(Image: “The Fallen Caryatid” by Auguste Rodin)

Since the responses on the Random thread seemed positive, I decided to reboot these threads.

Shiny new rule: No nesties! The conversation will meander from topic to topic anyhow. Also, it adds to the retro vibe.

The last October Incredible Morphing Chameleon thread I found was from 2008. So I purloined the image and the first topic from that month’s random thread. Incidentally, this was also the month I first stumbled upon MuseBlog.

Unlike the random thread, this discussion thread stays on topic until the topic changes or the month ends.

Newcomers should read The Rules and The Guide before plunging in.

Current topic:
Online media: Post-truth cesspit or literal hellhole?
The election and its aftermath
Halloween

Suggested topics: 

Have fun!

An idea from KaiYves: a thread for discussing what we think are some of the most memorable moments that have happened here on the ‘blog and in the magazine, to celebrate a decade of all things Muse!

I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that MuseBlog has been a hugely positive formative influence on me. But, as I am a scientist at heart, it wasn’t enough for me to just say “I’m sure I’m not alone.” So I asked some of my friends how they felt about having had MuseBlog in their life for ten years.

Also, I (Dodecahedron) baked an honorary cake with Fern. Julia also baked a cake. Then, with the cake-baking fervor going around, Jadestone made some cupcakes. Pics below the fold.

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Hello MB! Oxlin here. I was watching some Nerdfighter videos on the internet, which made me think how it is really cool that the Green brothers have all these projects, tangible things they have created. I would like to make some projects, but sometimes I have a hard time keeping track of them, or having ideas of what to create. I thought it would make sense to have a thread for that. Feel free to use this for collaboration, posting ideas of what to make, track your progress in a large project, etc.

As you know, MuseBlog likes to do something special to celebrate April 1. Last year, we Administrators have been crunched for time, so we reopened the popular SquidBlog. That’s what we’re planning to do again this year unless enterprising MBers intervene.

Here’s what we’re thinking: As Millennials, you all are famously computer-literate, and some of you even have degrees in computer science. So if you were to collaborate, you could probably cook up a pretty amazing April Fools’ Day website. On the big day, we could redirect MuseBlog traffic to the new site, and at the end of the day we could switch it back. Sound like fun?

Or we could all be space squids again. That option has much to recommend it, too. The way we see it, we really can’t lose. Thoughts?

ATTENTION, MBers! Your favorite story, series, or saga can grace a monthly random thread this year. All you have to do is describe it briefly and suggest a pretty image to accompany it. Better yet, upload the picture yourself and create a draft of the thread (as a post saved as “Status: Draft”), and we’ll schedule it for a month this year.

Nine years — how is that possible? We are uncharacteristically speechless. Say something, somebody!

So, who is involved? KaiYVes, Agent Lightning, Randomosity, fireh, Catwings, ibcf — anyone else?

Our Web provider, Dreamhost, says we’re okay:

As soon as we learned of the “Heartbleed” OpenSSL vulnerability, we began to patch any and all systems that it may have affected. Fortunately this was a very small subset of our systems and was mostly isolated to a small group of mail machines. As of early yesterday, all of our systems are patched. As a preventative measure, we are also re-keying the certificates on any systems with that bug. We have no reason to believe that any of those machines have been compromised, but in the interest of proactive security, we feel that changing SSL certificates is the best option.

DreamHost.com was not vulnerable, but the machines that redirected traffic to our actual site were. This was corrected quickly and those machines will also have their certificates re-keyed.

We can confidently say that our shared servers, VPS guests, and dedicated machines are NOT vulnerable to this issue because they run Debian “Lenny” and/or “Squeeze”. The most common version of OpenSSL on our network is 0.9.8o-4squeeze14, and the “HeartBleed” vulnerability in OpenSSL’s heartbeat module exists in versions 1.0.1 and 1.0.2-beta.

Robert speaketh:

Attention, all cephalo-fans! The domain name www.squidfanpage.com, which I’ve owned for a few years but never used, has just expired. I bought it for Squidblog but wound up using www.squidblog.org instead. So if you’d like it for your very own, any domain registrar will be happy to turn it over to you for $10 to $20 a year.

Speaking of which, April Fools’ Day is coming up. I haven’t had time to cook up anything for MuseBlog this year, so I’m planning to rev up SquidBlog again unless some of you newly empowered Authors can hatch something else between now and then.

Known Muser birthdays and “K Days” this month*:

02-01 Keiffer’s birthday (1997)
02-02 Groundhog22’s birthday (1989)
02-06 Choklit Orange’s 6K Day
02-08 Birthday of Cerulean Pyros (1996)
02-09 Drama Llama’s 5K Day
02-16 cromwell’s birthday (1996)
02-19 Castle’s 6K Day
02-26 KaiYves’s birthday (1993)
02-26 Kai D.’s birthday (2001)
02-26 Zinc’s 6K Day

You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between May 26 and June 22, 2000.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between August 30 and September 26, 1997.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between December 4 and December 31, 1994.
You turn 8,000 days old this month if you were born between March 9 and April 5, 1992.

Known Muser birthdays and “K Days” this month*:

01-01 Jadestone’s birthday (1992)
01-03 Armada’s 6K Day
01-03 Lady Bunniful’s birthday
01-23 Kittymine’s birthday (1993)
01-25 Cinnamoon’s 7K Day
01-26 Glassboro’s birthday (1995)

You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between April 25 and May 25, 2000.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between July 30 and August 29, 1997.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between November 3 and December 3, 1994.
You turn 8,000 days old this month if you were born between February 7 and March 8, 1992.

*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.

The long-dreaded WordPress upgrade went as planned. So far, everything seems to be working normally. Let us know if you notice anything off-kilter.

Robert writes:

It’s no secret that MuseBlog is more leisurely than it used to be. Just for fun, I took our traffic data for 2009 through 2012, pasted it into a spreadsheet, and graphed it to see what story it might tell. Behold the fruits of my labors:

According to the trend line on the second graph, the number of posts here should reach zero any day now. And then what?!

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Jade turns 22 on January 1 — the most memorable birthday of any MuseBlogger. The January birthday thread isn’t up yet, so please feel free to post your felicitations here.

Known Muser birthdays this month*:

12-01 bluefire27’s 6K Day
12-26 SudoRandom’s birthday (1996)
12-28 Areohawk’s birthday (1997)

You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between March 25 and April 24, 2000.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between June 29 and July 29, 1997.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between October 3 and November 2, 1994.
You turn 8,000 days old this month if you were born between January 7 and February 6, 1992.

You have been on the blog for six months if you started posting in June.

*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.

We know, we’re hideous. The latest update to the blog’s theme did strange things to its appearance. We’ll probably look like this for a while, so please bear with us. Everybody has bad-hair days. Or weeks…

–The GAPAs

Known Muser birthdays and “K Days” this month*:

11-04 ZNZ’s 6K Day
11-12 fireandhemlock1996’s birthday (1996)
11-15 muselover’s 6K Day
11-16 Kiwimuncher’s birthday (1992)
11-18 Cello-Playing Mathematician’s birthday (1993)
11-18 Enceladus’s birthday (1996)
11-25 Jadestone’s 8K Day
11-26 starr’s birthday (1996)
11-27 Purple Panda’s birthday (1991)
11-27 Dodecahedron’s birthday (1993)
11-27 Cinnamoon’s birthday (1994)

You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between February 24 and March 24, 2000.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between May 30 and June 28, 1997.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between September 3 and October 2, 1994.
You turn 8,000 days old this month if you were born between December 8, 1991, and January 6, 1992.

You have been on the blog for six months if you started posting in May.

*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.

She’s 18 today (Friday, October 25), so please take a random walk over to the October birthday thread with pies and congratulations.

Known Muser birthdays and “K Days” this month*:

10-01 Kiki the Great’s birthday (1995)
10-12 Ebeth’s birthday (1991)
10-13 Paul Baker’s birthday
10-16 Kagcomix’s birthday (1993)
10-19 LittleBasementKitten’s birthday (1997)
10-21 Purple Panda turns 8,000 days old
10-25 Red-tailed HAWK’s birthday (1994)
10-25 Randomosity 101’s birthday (1995)

You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between January 24 and February 23, 2000.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between April 29 and May 29, 1997.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between August 3 and September 2, 1994.
You turn 8,000 days old this month if you were born between November 7 and December 7, 1991.

You will have been on MuseBlog for six months if you started posting in April.

*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.

A MuseBlogger since March 2006 (when she was known as frankenfaerie), Mel turns 23 years old today.

[This was originally on the August 2013 random thread, but we’ve moved it here because it was too nice to part with. The birthday wishes are still over there, however.]
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Known MBer birthdays and “K Days” this month:*

July 03 Kokonilly’s birthday (1996)
July 05 shadowfire’s birthday (1996)
July 06 Keiffer’s 6K Day
July 09 Lizzie’s birthday (1991)
July 10 Koko’s Apprentice’s birthday (1996)
July 13 Rosebud2’s birthday (1998)
July 16 Bibliophile’s birthday (1998)
July 18 Fortune Cell’s birthday (1992)
July 22 IBCF’s birthday (1993)
July 26 Agrrrfishi’s birthday (1994)
July 29 Tesseract’s 7K Day
July 31 Agent Hippie’s birthday (1997)

You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between October 24 and November 23, 1999.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between January 27 and February 26, 1997.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between May 3 and June 2, 1994.
You turn 8,000 days old this month if you were born between August 7 and September 6, 1991.
And beyond that, we stop counting.

You will have been on MuseBlog for six months if you started posting in January.

*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.