I'm probably going to get lynched for this, but here goes anyway: I believe there are certain circumstances where a person, despite being eligible, should not vote.

Now don't get me wrong, I love democracy. And if you have strong opinions on an issue, I'd encourage you to vote – even if you're voting opposite my own views. However, it disturbs me to see people blindly encouraging one another to “just vote.” The media encourages us to vote. College professors encourage us to vote. Books and bloggers and websites and posters all encourage us to vote.

Everybody and their brother holds to this misguided notion that it's your solemn and sacred duty to vote. I challenge that notion here. It is not your responsibility to vote. It is your responsibility to vote responsibly.

Before you vote, stop and ask yourself why you're voting the way you're planning to vote. Then stop and ask yourself again, because your first answer was probably wrong. Why should you bother to ask? Because if you can't explain, in depth, why your opinion is best for the country in the long run, you will honestly do more damage by voting than by abstaining.

I know it's hard to find the time to do research! I know it's hard to cut through all the media garbage and see the issues for what they are. I know I was almost too busy to really find time to dig in and understand all the issues, but I did my best.

But even though I did my best, I simply can't claim to know everything that's at stake. So how many of you can honestly claim to be voting responsibly? Maybe you've got the ‘voting’ part down. Congratulations, you know how to operate a touchscreen. But are you really shouldering the burden of the responsibility?

When asked what kind of government our “new country” would have, Benjamin Franklin said, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Well, sorry Ben, but the republic slipped through our fingers long ago. As for the democracy we've got left, that's not indestructible either. In fact, it's fragile, and careless voting will quickly destroy it.

So, all that said, get out and vote. But only after you've done your homework! (There will be a test.)

ttyl!

--Alex Markley

Remember the old email mailing list we used to have? The one that I was forced to tearfully rip out of the site because it was too expensive to keep around?

Well it's back! Thanks to the incredible services put together by the FeedBurner team, we're able to offer a mailing list again! If you opt in, the new mailing list will send you MalexMedia.Net® updates in a ‘digest’ email which will be sent out no more than once a day. These emails mirror our RSS/Atom feed, which means we don't have to do any extra work to provide this service to you. It doesn't even cost us anything! (Or you for that matter. No ads in feeds!)

Note that we still don't have a mailing list just for Announcements the way we used to. The new Mailing list (and RSS/Atom feed) only shows things from the MalexMedia.Net® front page. I don't think we really need an ‘Announcement’ mailing list anymore, but feel free to let me know if you disagree.

Please also note that, for your privacy, we have not imported any subscribers from our old mailing lists. If you were subscribed to our previous mailing lists and you want to receive further updates, you will need to manually subscribe again!

To subscribe to either our mailing list or our RSS/Atom feed, please see our page about staying in the loop.

ttyl!

--Alex

I've finally gone off the deep end, folks. All comments on the site are now being displayed in a flat, strictly chronological manner.

After much council, deliberation, and thought, we all decided this was the best way to go. The old method of threading comments was far too confusing (it even threw me for a loop at times) and it often caused unexpected problems. (Why is there a 'new' comment halfway up the page? Why are the comment boxes squished against the right side?)

Those problems are gone now. All new comments will be bunched together at the bottom of the page, and all the comment boxes are the same width.

Now, as for comment threads, two things apply:

» Comment threads can still be viewed and explored using the little “View Thread” link beside every comment. (There are still a few minor bugs with this view, but we're working on them, and it's perfectly useful as it is right now.)

» Please remember to click ‘reply’ or ‘quote’ directly on the comment you're planning on replying to or quoting! This will preserve the conversation thread and keep Peter and me from having to tear our hair out. (This is the great responsibility mentioned above. We're really hoping the comment threads don't go “out of mind” just because they're “out of sight.”)

So that's my latest wave of insanity. Let us know what you think in the comments!

ttyl

--Alex

So I got an automated email from Podfeed.net today claiming that not one, but two people had reviewed The Malex Minute. Naturally, I had to check it out.

Have we been getting favorable reviews? See for yourself!

ttyl

--Alex

This thing really defies any sort of satire. It does inspire some questions though.

Who in the world needs a device for inducing a sequence of muscle spasms synchronized to music? And what would they pay for it? Could this thing be a critical feature in an amusement park? In the justice system?

Lots of questions, but I'm quite afraid of the answers…

ttyl!

--Alex

Hey all! Just a quick note to let you know I've updated the chat room again. This is a big update, and should fix all the annoying message duplications and scroll bar problems you were seeing. (The whole thing might be a little snappier too, which is a plus.)

Please note, however, that you will need to refresh the page once or twice to get all the updates to the chat room! (The cached Javascript needs to be reloaded. Most browsers will respect an explicit refresh, but some may need to have the cache cleared manually.)

I've also become aware of a few style problems in Internet Explorer which I am working to fix. (Some have been solved already, others not so much.)

Let me know how the new chat room works for you!

ttyl

--Alex

Still working on the site a lot, just so you know. All those annoying little problems are getting knocked out one-by-one. The newest improvement, which I think is pretty darn cool, is that I've improved the layout of our media pages pretty significantly.

Now, if you go to a Malex Minute or a Splicky Mission page, you'll see the Media Selection box at the top right of the page instead of halfway down near the bottom. The play and download buttons are as small as ever, but at least now you won't have to go hunting for them. (Please note that you might have to hit refresh a time or two before it looks right.)

Also, I've installed some code to show/hide the long transcripts on Malex Minute pages. So now you won't have to scroll through pages of text to find the comments! The transcript is still there, you just have to click for it.

These improvements to the user interface have been a long time coming, and there's still a lot of work to be done. But for now, here's an incremental improvement to get the ball rolling.

ttyl!

--Alex

Well, it was bound to happen. No matter how much development you do in the sandbox, any application is sure to crash and burn as soon as you put it in the hands of the actual users.

Yesterday the chat room got fully loaded up for the first time and it didn't do so well. Aside from minor glitches like displaying messages more than once, the chat room generated such a heavy load it almost crashed my server.

That's the bad news. The good news is that I spent several hours on the chat room since yesterday evening, and I've managed to fix thirteen different problems so far. There are more problems to fix (notably, the message duplication bug is still present) but these fixes should dramatically improve performance on the server.

You might ask why I've been focusing on performance first instead of in-your-face annoyances like message dupes. It's a fair question. The server performance is of critical importance, because if the server cpu is overloaded it can't do more important tasks like serve up Malex Minute episodes for you guys or SermonMP3s for my clients.

The server is not for chatting, it's for the things listed above, among other things.

All that said, please continue using the chat room the way you would normally, so i can keep a close eye on the performance and fix any other problems that arise. (Also, once the performance problems stabilize, I will be fixing the message dupe bug. It really is annoying.)

ttyl

--Alex

Lots of things are still broken, but I think it's solid enough to bring back online. Also, I need sleep.

I'll get right back to work on this thing tomorrow.

ttyl

--Alex

While working on the impending site migration – which is still on track for later today – I got a little nostalgic for some of the other web sites we've had in the past. Like The Doctor, the Malex Media Network® website has seen a lot of incarnations in the past. A different face, a different personality, but always the same where it counted.