Minor site-usability note: those Recent Comments links don’t always work, I find — the AJAX is a little screwy or something. When that happens, refresh the page, and hit “Toggle Comment Threads.” Then the links should work.
Tagged: user guide Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Dave Bonta
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Dave Bonta
What this is for and how to use it
Rather than standard forum software, which can be clunky to use, I’m trying a special kind of WordPress theme where logged-in authors can post directly on the front page, and see comments updated in real time as on Twitter. My hope is that it will have the ease of use of Twitter or Tumblr but the power of WordPress, without the hassles attending a full-fledged social networking site. (We’re mostly artists and poets here. How much more sociable can we stand to be?)
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Dave Bonta
How to get an avatar
Whether you’re a contributor or just a commenter here, you can get an avatar by going to Gravatar.com. (If you’ve ever registered for a site at WordPress.com, you already have a gravatar and it should show up if you use the same email to sign in here.)
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Dave Bonta
The electric kool-aid Collins test
This is a test of the auto-embed video posting feature from the front page of the blog. I’m simply posting the URL of a video on YouTube to its own line, separated by spaces before and after, as detailed in the WordPress codex. (I think this will work in all browsers, with the possible exception of mobile devices. Please leave a comment if you are only seeing links and not the videos themselves.)
Sometimes I feel as if Billy Collins is looking down on me, and he’s not even dead yet!
That was the authorized video, an animation by Juan Delcan, part of a series of animated poems produced by JWT New York. It has been viewed 756,604 times on YouTube. But I much preferred the following unauthorized video montage by Lauren Adolfsen:
The Delcan animation is a very fine illustration of the poem, but with Adolfsen’s video, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s not merely a poem video; it’s a videopoem.
Which do you you prefer?
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dave
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qarrtsiluni
Oh, and talking to yourself isn’t creepy?
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renkat
LOL!!
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Suzannah
Let’s see… Juan Delcan had Collins’s permission to use his poem, the person who made the second one did not. Since the second doesn’t quite fit parody (of Collins– it’s parodying McDonald’s, and no doubt violating THAT copyright as well), there is no fair use claim to be had here. The second violates copyrights. And it’s not good, besides.
P.S. And Billy Collins isn’t even dead yet… he won’t be for a long time.
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Dave
I don’t know. Seems like a pretty clear parody of Collins to me, though I wouldn’t want to litigate it. I’m sure McDonald’s would take a dim view of it! As for its value as art, you are of course entitled to your opinion.
Thanks for commenting.
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Dave
Hmm, now the first video no longer appears. Wonder why?
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dave, 
Suzannah, 
Dave, you are utterly full of shit as usual. The second video is creepy and not at all what Collins intended to convey with his poem. Such blatant subversions of authorial intent are a good reason for the existence and enforcement of strict copyright laws. The remix culture of the web is a perversion of true, inspired creativity.