Category: Meta

Past Comments Posted

March 31, 2006 Meta

Because I’ve been getting swamped with with spam posts, I’ve tried setting up MoveableType’s spam filtering. Of course, one such attempt resulted in my deleting all past comments, but those were thankfully recovered.
The setup now is that in order for comments to be posted, I need to approve them (yes I know the post-comment-submit page is horrid, I’ll get to that eventually). The thing is that many loyal readers were somehow flagged as “banned” commenters such that I didn’t even get an e-mail alerting me that these comments needed my approval. This meant that many legitimate and even insightful comments submitted over the past few weeks never got published. This has now been corrected.
I hope things will go a little more smoothly now, and many apologies for the delay.



No Comment

January 17, 2006 Meta

To all remaining loyal readers:
In my attempts at despamming the blog it appears I have deleted all previous comments. This of course, really stinks. Unlike many blogs out there I took pride in having the fewest nonsensical flame wars (the Edah post was a notable exception) and having one of the most articular and/or humerous commenters in the J-Blog world or otherwise.
I have the static pages backed up and I can start putting comments back slowly but believe it or not there were about 860ish in total so it’ll take some time. I could just put back the comments with the more serious discussions or if anyone out there wants to write a script and help me out, that would be great.
At any rate, please don’t be offended since this was completely unintentional.
Josh



Introducing: Reviews

November 7, 2005 Meta

I mentioned last post about starting up some new features on YUTOPIA. While I’ve been too busy as of late to write up my thoughts on the parasha, I am just about ready to break in a new section for reviews.
While I’m open to reviewing most media, I will probably wind up doing more by way of books in whatever genre I happen to be reading at the time. Solicitations are more than welcome, and are in fact encouraged. I can guarentee that anyone who sends over a book for review will not only be bumped to the Top Of The Pile, but will also find me in a less ornery mood than usual. If you’d like your book (or anything else for that matter) reviewed on YUTOPIA, let me know via e-mail.
Obviously the nature of reviews will depend on what I’m reviewing; some will be more serious and academic than others. However, I’m well aware of the limits people have in terms of time, money, and bookshelf space so I will be instituting a completely arbitrary rating system. For books at least the numbers would mean something like this:

    ***** (5/5) – Excellent. Buy it in hardcover and memorize.
    **** (4/5) – Really good. A strong recommendation to read and own.
    *** (3/5) – Pretty good. Worth your time, and perhaps a spot on the bookshelf.
    ** (2/5) – Eh. Only if you’re holding in the topic/genre, otherwise get the gist from someone else.
    * (1/5) – Bad. You can safely ignore this book without missing out on anything.
    No Stars – Labotomy in print. Reading this book will actually lower your I.Q.

You get the idea. Also, I’ll probably give different ratings based on the genre of the book or how it would be used. For example, As a Driven Leaf would have to be rated differently than academic or halakhic books because the latter types presumably aren’t intended to be fiction.1
You’ll see what I mean when we get started, hopefully some time this week.

1. Yes, it’s taking a lot of self-restraint not to name names.



100,000

October 24, 2005 Meta

Today is a special day on YUTOPIA. According to SiteMeter today will be the day we will have received our 100,000th hit. Granted, it took some time to get here, but considering my frequent and often extended absences from writing that’s to be expected. In a way it’s fitting to reach this milestone on Hoshanna Rabba. The meaning and significance of both the holiday and web hits have been greatly exaggerated over time, but both still mean something I suppose.
Sometime after the hag I’ll do a little retrospective and contemplate where this blog will go from here. Despite my inconsistent postings and a general malaise afflicting some fellow bloggers (including my self), I’m not ready to close up shop just yet. The truth is I do miss the writing and there are some topics I’ve been meaning to address. I’m looking for ways to continue in my new schedule while maintaining some semblance of quality. Two new features to look for are weekly parasha related derahsot and book reviews, and we’ll see what else comes up along the way.
In the meantime, to all loyal and accidental readers thanks for reading.
Moadim Lesimha / Hag Sameach
Josh



Up And Running

August 7, 2005 Meta

It looks like the upgrade went off easier than expected. Of the improvements, you should notice faster load times and we now have an atom feed if you’re into that sort of thing.
The downside is that all the links in the archive are changed. I caught most of them and set up a redirect, but it’s likely I missed one or two. If you find any bad links out there or any other bugs, please drop me a line.



Lost In Transition

August 2, 2005 Meta

Lots of stuff going on in the greater YUTOPIA-land area in the next few weeks. Some of the highlights:

  • Shaya will probably be moving us to MovableType 3 and there may be some glitches as a result.
  • Thesis is finally looking decent.
  • There’s a good chance I’ll actually be employed soon.
  • I’m coming along on some posts I’ve been thinking about, including (partially) explaining my prolonged absences.
  • I’m also planning on toning down the intensity dial a bit from the recent manifestos – looking for a better ballance like in the “old days.”
  • Personal milestone coming up on Thursday.
  • And of course, the niblings and family invading homestead.

Life is…well, busy. Stay tuned for details.



Technical Difficulties

June 1, 2005 Meta

Sorry about the outage for the past two days. Shaya says it was a hard drive problem, which has obviously been fixed. There is no evidence that my last post caused this in any way.
One more thing. If you’re going to be in Washington Heights for shavuot, I’m going to be speaking in Mt. Sinai on “Does Matan Torah Really Matter?” at approximately 12:45 at night. It should be a fun shiur and I’ll probably blog it when it’s done.



Clarifications

December 4, 2004 Meta

Over shabbat, it occurred to me that my last post could be seen as overly critical of the OU. However, my goal was more to point out the inadequacies of its letter rather than criticize the OU itself or its practices in the areas of hashgacha. While I do think the OU needs to issue its own clarification, I also said that they need to get the benefit of the doubt in this case.

  1. Thousands of shehitot are done at this plant. We have no idea if this is a common occurrence or an isolated incident.
  2. We don’t know for certain if the sheita is in fact pasul.
  3. Until the Rabbanut issues a formal pesak halakha – the Jerusalem Post doesn’t count – we’re not sure exactly what their position is.
  4. Even if the shehita doesn’t meet the Rabbanut’s standards, that religious body technically has no authority in America.
  5. Even if the shehita was in fact objectively pasul, we have no idea if the meat was ever distributed or packaged as kosher. For all we know, the mashgichim saw it – and rejected it.
  6. Someone who has actually visited the plant told me that several “runs” are done at the plant. Meaning at the same plant, different mashgichim oversee shehita for different organizations. Thus, the infraction might not have even occurred under the OU’s watch.

As I mentioned in the last post, now is not the time for people who have never opened a Yoreh Deah to start paskening and invalidating the OU. They’ve been doing hashgacha for a long time and aren’t going to do anything to cause the masses to sin.
Again, just sit tight and wait for the OU to formally address the issue.



Crazy Like A Firefox

November 17, 2004 Meta

A few months ago, I switched from Mozilla to Firefox as my primary browser. You might have seen some news coverage about its latest release, and could contemplate the switch. Aside from being secure and stable, there are several useful plugins to make browsing easier. Some of my favorites:

  • Googlebar – Mimics Google’s own equivalent
  • Adblock – Removes image and flash advertisements from web pages – customizable based on URI
  • Sage – A Firefox based RSS Reader
  • Prefbar – Easy Access to preferences
  • IE View – Handy tool to open up IE exclusive pages and links in an IE window.
  • Spellbound – Works like IE Spell – checks spelling in web forms.

And there are loads more from which to chose. Now that I can do blog spell checking1 from Firefox, I officially have no more use for Internet Explorer other than to handle MS’s own websites.
Vive la revolucion revolution!

1. Yes, I do that occasionally.