The New Interface Disaster

Last night, hoping to do some more Pink Film Archive work, I found that Blogger would not load. Then it dawned on me: They've been threatening for several months to make their atrocious new interface mandatory. And now they have. And now I cannot edit any of my blogs on my old home computer. So, another turning point is reached.

This inability to work on the Archives won't slow down my IMDb work, but it will mean I cannot work on the Pink film poster archives, or link them to IMDb. Fortunately, this disaster comes at about the best possible time that it could. I have just finished identifying all the Picasaweb images by copying the information from the pre-1990 poster blog, and I am in the final stages of submitting the information and the poster links to IMDb. A near-record 19 films entries were fully accepted today. That half of the Pink film project is roaring to a finish. The next step would have been to do the same with the 1990-and-later blog, but that will have to be put on indefinite hold... But I will continue contributing to IMDb, without focusing on the posters now. Straight text data.

Editing this blog has been a lot of fun, but I've always considered it fun & games, mainly done as a break from the real "work" (which is also fun & games, of course), the IMDb/Pink Film Archive projects. I could probably still post entries here at "Hail Hail, through an elaborate system of uploading images/posts through email to myself, then uploading them at other computers, but that would be a lot of bother, and would take time away from the IMDb/Pink Film projects. So unless I find a way of using a compatible version of blogger, or if/until I get a new computer, I will have to stop work here indefinitely. My home online work will be devoted to IMDb, and maybe a (long overdue) return to Boobpedia.

Now for the cranky old man to rant: I find the "improvements" being made to the Internet over the past few years to be grossly incompetent. I am reluctant to upgrade my 15-year-old computer system for the simple reason that-- other than video-- I can do many things on it faster and better than I can do on state-of-the-art systems. For one thing, I can type as fast as I want without waiting for a Java-script-bogged text editor to catch up to my fingers. I tend to type very quickly, in a stream-of-conscious manner, and go back and edit the result into something somewhat coherent. This is not possible, or extremely clumsy, on newer systems, but possible on my old, no-frills, notepad/wordpad. It is absolutely inexcusable that "upgrades" require the USER to slow down for the COMPUTER to catch up. But that is what the "Improvements" are-- all cosmetic flash & dazzle at the expense of real efficiency. Nothing really new is added-- it's still just text editing-- and the basic functions are slowed down and made more difficult to use. Google itself was once praised for its simple, sleek, efficient user interface, but it has been increasingly bogged down with needless crap. In short, I think the new interface, like all recent "upgrades" to be garbage.

Sorry there are no images of lovely ladies in this post, but it is literally impossible for me to upload from home now... Blogger has been "Improved" beyond usability... I hold out hopes that this problem will be overcome at some point in the future, but for now, reluctantly, this blog is stalled...