320 to... 110
On a whim, I started to trim down all the DA follows I had. I started with 320. I followed a basic rule: If the person hasn't posted in over a year, drop 'em. Empty? Drop. Moved? Check the move and drop the old. Known dead? It's time to leave them.
I ended up with 110. Nearly a third left.
The thing that gets me as I was hitting the latest post from the person, the age as I was going through. 10, 15, 20 years I have been watching, and no activity.
Strype in her last post here on DA (yes, before she started to transition IRL) said that the community is gone, that there isn't much left here on DA. Just in sheer numbers, I have to agree. I froze my gallery in 2008 when DA's management changed for the worse. It's now 2022, 14 years later, and things have continued to regress.
Lots of galleries still frozen, and not just with furry art but all types. Lots abandoned to time. Lots removed with a reminder, and lots just wiped away. All that is left are memories.
You won't find me post here. But as the Beatles said: You know my name, look up the number.
Eclipse, but filled with locusts
Ugh. It's been some time... and here's a list of major User Interface/eXperience (UI/UX) bugs:
Notifications of posted content, there are three major issues:
WHERE IS THE UNIFIED, EXPLODED VIEW? Everything is split out and there is ZERO indication that there is new stuff. There is a unified view but it's truncated, grouped, or otherwise made more difficult to one-shot manage from ONE PAGE. ONE PAGE! No, I have to dig through everything or miss 90% of it.
WHERE ARE THE SELECTION CONTROLS? It is not obvious on how to "select all and remove". No, you have hover your mouse over one, select, and THERE'S THE CONTROLS. WHY ARE YOU HIDING THEM?!? I CAN *SCROLL* YOU KNOW!
And of course, I'M USING MY IPAD! WHY CAN'T I SELECT THIS STUFF FROM SAFARI/FIREFOX/CHROME/ETC?!? "Your fingers are too fat" and "Use our dedicated apps" means you've roused Steve Jobs from his eternal slumber to say "You're holding it wrong."
Then there are journals.
I can't format them. I can't use bold, italics, underlines, etc like I could have. There's no bulleted lists. In fact, it's out of parity from other art sites like FurAffinity, ArtStation, SoFurry, Weasyl, or even WordPress, Drupal, or anything using Markdown for a markup language.
Or even DeviantArt pre-Eclipse.
I'm so tempted to look if DA is publicly traded so I can look at all their investors and take the problems to them, because it's not making them money.
Eclipse...
The new logo
So seriously, WTF is with that? It's a site bug. Fix it.
FYI Helping Atariboy
John's running Debian 7.4 with the XFCE, which John's friend Keith (who passed away recently) was keeping it up to date by logging in over the network via SSH.
For those stuck in Windows, it's like those autoupdates at night, but by a human and not by a program.
This means John can't update or add software. He needs:
- Sudo (a utility that allows John not to remember a second password)
- The drivers to his Epson Perfection V500 scanner (and they come from Epson).
- Skype
- Firefox (he's using Debian's version called Ice Weasel)
- Chrome (with a few extensions so I can remote-support him)
- TeamViewer (if Chrome fails)
John may need the following, but we'll get that once we get his system configured together:
- Gimp
- Wacom driver configuration
- I'm sending John a copy of Knoppix, which is based on Debian. It's a bootable DVD with almost everything on it. We'll use it to get control over John's system.
- Once we get John's setup so I or John can update it, we'll install what we need in it.