The Smarmy Carny

The Smarmy Carny has added three new features, and I wanted you to be aware. Normally, I add features and don't bother mentioning them, but these features actually add a small amount of value for readers.

Each post should have a link for printing and e-mailing now. I tested the e-mail feature and had no problems with it. Feel free to e-mail your favorite post to a friend to make sure it works.

The print option obviously provides you with a cleaner version of a post for printing. I particularly like the fact that links are notated at the bottom — a common issue with printing web pages, normally. Here's a sample of the printable output for a post. Keep in mind that the print will be wider on your printed page, of course.

Each post's page now also lists up to five "related posts." The accuracy of this is questionable, but still may give readers someplace to go after reading a post. I opted not to list the related posts on other pages to avoid clutter.

Enjoy. If you like these options or want additional features, feel free to comment here and let me know.

Update: E-mail was not working as well as I had hoped due to limitations on my host's servers, so I have since removed this option. Print away, though!

When I originally created the theme days such as "Movie Monday" and "Thilly Thursday," I thought that Saturday's Simpleton would be fun. Unfortunately, it just hasn't worked out that way. Saturday's Simpleton is the least-used theme.

As a result, I'm doing away with Saturday's Simpleton. Obviously, Saturday needs a new theme, but I'm fresh out of ideas..

If you have any bright ideas, feel free to comment here and let me know what you'd like to see as Saturday's theme. For those that haven't noticed, alliteration is key.

The current themes are:

• Sunday's Site
• Movie Monday
• Television Tuesday (replaced Trailer Tuesday)
• Video Vednesday
• Thilly Thursday
• Foto Friday
• ??? (to replace Saturday's Simpleton)

I look forward to receiving some suggestions!

Inspired by the death today of the Saturday's Simpleton theme, I remembered one of the best resources for simpletons: the Darwin Awards.

By now, most people are familiar with the Darwin Awards. If you're one of the few who are still unfamiliar with the Darwin Awards, here's the official explanation:

In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival.

You can read ::amazon("0452291925", "The Complete Darwin Awards")::, which includes 400 stories of Darwin Award nominees!

Entries include "Chimney-Cleaning Grenade," which teaches us to never weld a hand grenade to a chain . . . and not because the chain is dangerous. About a year before ::wikipedia("Characters_of_Lost#Leslie_Arzt", "everyone learned on Lost that old dynamite sweats nitroglycerin")::, the man in "Do-It-Yourself Landmine" learned it first.

There are plenty more to read on the site, and I suggest you read through some of the many selections if you haven't already.

TSC on SPD

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Celebrated annually in the USA since 1737. St. Patty's Day is bigger in the USA than it is in Ireland.

The most fun SPD event is the dying of the Chicago River. Check out a picture of the green river.

Since I have some Irish ancestry, I decided to give The Smarmy Carny a one-day green makeover. (See the screenshot in this post for a visual of the layout if you are visiting after 3/17/06.) Let me know what you think . . . it's a bit obnoxious, but that's sort of what I was going for.

If you're thirsting for more info on SPD, just head over to Wikipedia's St. Patrick's Day page.

The Smarmy Carny is now running WordPress 2.0.2. As usual, the upgrade was painless and problem-free. The entire upgrade process took about an hour (including backups and other precautionary measures).

Visitors to the site saw disturbances for less than 15 minutes. Good times. If you visited during the maintenance period, I trust you saw the upgrade page and explanation. Sorry about that!

If you do happen to notice any issues or problems, feel free to comment on this post or use the Contact Form to let me know. (Ironically, I found that the contact form was not working while I was entering this post, but it was completely unrelated to the upgrade. The contact form should be working now.)

Thanks again, and keep coming back!

Here at The Smarmy Carny, I like to have theme days such as Movie Monday and Thilly Thursday. Theme days help keep me focused when I'm drooling on myself, trying to figure out what topic to post on.

After some thought, Movie Monday and Trailer Tuesday were just too repetetive and too close together to work out well. Trailers can be posted just as well on Movie Monday, so I'm making room by merging the two. Besides, I don't have a day set aside for television.

While I would prefer to have my television day on Thursday (after Lost has aired), Tuesday was the best choice. Besides, Thursday starts with "th" and Tuesday starts with a hard "t" sound.

I hope the change is amicable to all. If not, you'll just have to deal with it, or pay me $100 to change it back. Your call.

Feel free to comment with your thoughts, suggestions, or $100+ offers.

Ahh, I remember it like it was yesterday . . . or at least, just like it was last year's yesterday tomorrow . . .

Looking back on my first post last year, I see that many of the things I said have changed. Back then, I didn't care to read anyone's blog, but now that I am a blog writer, I have become accustomed to reading other blogs. Of course, feed software makes this much less painless, too. In addition, I had anticipated that Firefox's LiveBookmarks were the place to be for reading RSS feeds, but that just isn't true. So many other programs rule the roost.

One thing hasn't changed is my apathy for my own blog. Nonetheless, I try to make my postings as interesting as possible. Maybe someday, I will be successful.

I was surprised about the number of hits I received on my blog, though. I assumed that I would receive a dozen or so hits a day at most, just like on my previous lame websites. Interestingly, the blogosphere brings with it much traffic. I suppose that regular fresh content makes plenty of difference as well, compared with my endlessly-static content on previous sites.

And, if you'd like to sing Happy Birthday, go ahead . . . or sing it "Weird Al" style!

Well, happy birthday to The Smarmy Carny. Good times.