Tangotiger Blog

I’m still working on some stuff, like archives, search, etc.  But, at this point, we obviously don’t need any of that…

Testing as regular user.

Neither the RSS feed nor the Atom feed linked in head tag of each page work. They both redirect to the home page. Could you fix them, for those of us who use feed readers?

Thanks, I’ll get to that in the coming weeks.  I’ll remove it from the head tag for now.

Welcome back!

Looks like half of you have been able to activate your registration, while the other half are in limbo.  I have done an automatic activation for you guys, and you should have received an email.

I think there’s some blockage from either your webhost or mine, in terms of email.

It took me a while to figure out that you can change your profile (eg. password) by clicking on your name in the comment header ... so in case anyone was wondering.

If you need to logout, click your name, and in the top right corner it shows “logout”.

I’ll make that more intuitive too.

Feel free to post suggestions here.

Right, after you click your name, at the top it says “control panel”, and that’ll let you change your password.

Anyway, I’ll make that page more intuitive… eventually.

I also got the Discussion forum software, so that you guys can start your own threads.  I haven’t installed that yet.

And all this is also linked to a wiki, which I haven’t worked on yet either.

Good to be back—was expecting some fancy new format!! But I’m glad it is as you were.

For those on gmail the activation email goes into the junk folder

Is there any chance you could use an @media query to strip out the sidebar for mobile users?

Also, the The Book banner’s href is still set to insidethebook.com, don’t know if that’s intentional or not.

Confirmation email went to spam folder. But then I got an email saying I was confirmed, probably by Tango manually. Thanks!

New place feels like home.

You may also want to update the URL in your Twitter profile.

Yes, good to be back!

Hello, everyone!  I also had to find my confirmation email in my Gmail spam folder.

I also had to look in my Gmail spam folder.  Regardless, I’m glad this is back!

Quick and easy registration. No problems here.

No problems when I saw the comments on gmail spam folder.

The banner link is intentional.

Good point about the Twitter feed.

I have no idea about the @media query, but I’ll add it to my pile.

I activated a bunch more.  I guess I’ll take a look to see if I can fool the spam blockers.

After the spam folder head’s up, registration was a breeze. Was pretty surprised (in a good way) that the format was identical to The Book Blog. Sky’s right, feels like home.

Not a priority, but the search box up top has no option for searching this site. From a usability angle, I think it would be better if the default can be set to this site instead of the web.

Right, I disabled search, because I have to create a template for it.  I figured that for the next few weeks, no one’s really going to need to search this blog.

I was also thinking of changing the color scheme of the InsideTheBook blog so that it looks a bit different than this one.

Ok, I changed the color scheme to the old blog to blue.  This way, if you are unsure where you are, the color scheme will tell you.

Big Thanks: I appreciate the streamlining of the site, like no more blogroll, elimination of the blogging categories above the threads, and even the simplified “Email Me” at the top. I’m very much a less-is-more type when it comes to visual elements.

Minor Potential Adjustments:

1) The “Email Me” still has the option to have Andy or MGL answer a question, and I assume they’re not actively doing that on this site.

2) The Latest Comments and Threads sidebar items are pushed down a pinch. Using Safari on a Mac, they were down maybe a quarter inch on the old site, and now it looks about four times that.

3) Is it worth keeping the “by TangoTiger” author line under each post? This is the TangoTiger blog, you’re presumably the only author in these main-site threads, and eliminating that will save 14 characters from the automated post-to-Twitter system.

Anyone else having trouble getting the RSS feed to work in Firefox? This is a must for me and the button is not available to create a feed…

RSS is on my todo.

Good point about the byline.  I’ll take care of that.

And yeah, my bad on the side comments.  I put in a paragraph tag when I shouldn’t have.  I’ll fix that too.

Mailbag: hmmm… all my sites use the same one page.  I don’t really want to have multiple pages.  If someone writes to Andy or MGL, I’ll forward it.

Something seems to have cropped up with the sidebar. Both the “Predicting wOBA” and “Flight distance of a batted ball” threads appear under Latest Comments even though they have none. The Latest Threads section is gone, but I’m not certain that’s a bad thing since you nicely keep a lot of content on the front page.

The Latest Threads section is gone…

Cancel that.

Tom, thank you for all of the work you do maintaining this community.

The new site looks great, but count me as a user who really appreciates RSS functionality.

Just checkin’ in.  I appreciate your efforts, Tom, in providing a forum for reasoned and intelligent debate.  Looking forward to starting back up again.

Nice space here, Tango.

NaOH: no, I agree, something inconsistent did happen.  I’ll check it out at the office tomorrow.

And thanks to everyone for their well-wishes and coming along for yet another ride!

I’ll be pysched once I finally install forums.  I’m hoping the magic of the old Baseball Boards can be replicated once more.

No problem getting password and logging in.
At first was worried with 3 letter user name required, as I wanted to keep screen name the same so people who I have annoyed over the years would know it’s the same guy. (and maybe one or two who have liked me)

Thanks for this great site. I’ve learned a lot over the years, and find most of it very interesting.

I setup the atom and rss, but it says it’s empty.  The only thing I can think of is that there’s a time zone issue.  We’ll see by tomorrow morning if the feed comes through.

One thing that happens to me (Firefox, but not in IE), is that the font size changes.

I start here:
http://www.tangotiger.com/index.php

And it’s pretty tiny.  Then I click on “Welcome” thread, and it blows up to normal size.

Anyone else?

On the main page, the Latest Comments sidebar item doesn’t reflect a time zone change and shows EST. If I open a thread, the same listing respects my time zone setting.

The font issue described in Firefox isn’t present in Safari/Mac.

As of now, adding the site to Google Reader for RSS simply says the feed can’t be found.

I am seeing the same font size on the home page as on the thread pages using Firefox on a Mac.

Same with me:  using Firefox on a Mac, I am not having problems with tiny font sizes, nor blowing up issues.

Glad to see the new site up and running!

No Firefox issues for me on a Mac either. Site loads fine in Chrome and Safari too. Looks about right in my phone as well.

Just testing and saying welcome…

Interesting about the sidebar.  For threads that have no comments, they end up at the bottom.

And I think the reason we never saw that before is because I only show the 10 or 15 latest commented threads.  And so, once I have that many threads with comments, we’ll never come across that situation again.

This explains why threads that have a sticky will appear in the sidebar at the top, even though it may not have a comment.

I activated a bunch more accounts.  Most were gmail and aol.  Yesterday, I had hotmail also that were blocked.

For those interested in numbers, out of 86 members so far:
49 gmail
9 yahoo
5 hotmail
4 aol
4 cable/phone company
15 others

I never use my gmail account for email, just to get into my reader account, etc.  For some reason, I’ve never liked gmail for email, preferring yahoo.

I have no idea about the @media query, but I’ll add it to my pile.

More hassle than they’re worth in my opinion. Most mobile users these days have smartphones and it’s easy enough to zoom on the content. The @media query changes the layout based on the size of the device being used. In other words, it puts the responsibility on you to change it so one aspect of the site is a tiny bit more user friendly even though the site is more than user friendly on smaller devices as it is.

There are times when it could be handy, but I’d prefer the sidebar be present where it is as it’s something I use on the site. It’s also something that others use because once an older thread gets a comment, there are often additional comments. If you move it to the bottom or eliminate it altogether on small devices, you’ll get less traffic to those links, which are valuable parts of the blog. It will likely reduce participation in older threads. If you moved it to the bottom, a user would have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find most recent commented threads and that would be a much bigger pain that zooming in on the content. Not to mention, new visitors would have no idea that the sidebar is at the bottom.

Consider it this way. On my phone I can double tap on the content to zoom. It takes a split second. If you get rid of the sidebar, I won’t see the most recent commented articles and will have no idea what article contains new comments and whether or not I’ve even read them all. If you move it to the bottom of the page, I’d have to scroll, scroll, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to get that info. Which is more acceptable: a double tap, losing participation in older threads or forcing the mobile user to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to find that information?

Some tricks aren’t worth the hassle and some of them make the site less user friendly than they were before.

I’m still unable to find an rss feed in Firefox Mac. Can someone post a link to the rss feed for me? Thanks.

Respect for time zone settings in the sidebar is now reversed from what I said before. On the main page they’re correct, but opening a thread switches them to EST.

RSS: see Tango/39.  I’m still trying to figure out why it’s empty.

***

Mobile: ah.  Well, I agree with you.  I’ve used iPod Touch a few times to access my blog, and I definitely prefer the sidebar.  That’s really my gateway to everything into the blog.  Out of all the things I wouldn’t change, it would be the “recent comments” sidebar on the right side.  I MIGHT consider moving it to the left side, but, really, I find it less cluttered on the right, and just as easily accessible.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t move it anywhere else.

Time settings: I’ll have to put that on my pile too then.  For whatever reason, I’ve never really gotten the hang of EE’s localization system.

Ignore my last comment about the time zones, but my original still applies.

While I feel similarly about the sidebar items being the gateway, given a choice on left or right, I’d vote right, especially if doing so will push everything more toward the horizontal center of the page.

I agree about right-side.  Furthermore, as you page down in the comments or article, I’d rather see white-space on the right side than the left-side.

I think for something like Amazon or Ebay, putting navigational elements on the left side makes more sense.

And I think left-side works better here too:
http://raines30.com/c23.shtml

Anyway…

I said right but I meant left. Our eyes most immediately go up and to the left. To me, this would be perfect for quickly seeing what’s new if the sidebar is on the left. Then, it would push my primary reading of a thread or comments more toward the center of the screen, especially helpful since screens are wider than they are tall.

The sidebar should be on the side that extends furthest down the page. The sidebar looks great on the left on the Raines site and Amazon because of the content in the center of the page.

Also, we read left to right. A person first focuses on the left side of the page and since content is king that’s where it should be. Google and other search bots will also recognize your content over your sidebar.

There are reasons for the placement of a sidebar, but in the end it’s entirely up to you.

The one reason that I prefer for the sidebar on the right is that it gives me room to expand the main article, without having to worry about scrolling.

For example, this thread that you are in, and the “article” version of this thread:

http://tangotiger.com/index.php/site/article/welcome

Have the same anchoring on the left.

Gmail is sending activation emails to spam…FYI for anyone who thinks they did not get the email.

I must not be understanding what you mean about expanding the main article. The linked page has no sidebar content, and this page would be the same except the post and comments would be more toward the center of the screen.

What I was trying to say is that the starting point of the “comment” version of the thread and the “article” version of the thread is the same (top left corner after you page down).

But if I put in a sidebar on the left side for the comments, then there’s a shift to the thread in the “comment” version.

It may not be obvious to everyone, but the “article” version purposely removes the sidebar and remove the comments of that thread.  It’s pure article format.  And that starts at the left.

Plus, there’s no scrolling required horizontally in either format in reading the thread/article.  Potential scrolling is limited to navigation to the sidebar.

Anyway, just to explain why I chose it as I did.

The link for “Read Excerpts & Customer Reviews” of The Book at the top of the page links to:

http://www.tangotiger.com/reviews.shtml

which doesn’t exist, instead of:

http://www.insidethebook.com/reviews.shtml

Thanks, looks like I did a global search/replace that I shouldn’t have.

If you changed the subject line of the registration email to include Tango Tiger that would help catch the eye and distinguish it from real spam. But if you know to look for it, it’s easy enough to find.

And not that you need another person harping on the RSS feed, but I also tried and failed to add the new site to my feed before reading the comments in this thread.

Ok, I changed the membership registration from “email activation” to CAPTCHA.  Hopefully, that’ll help everyone else out, and I won’t get robots registering as well.

Add me to the list of those waiting for the RSS. That’s the main way I keep up with your copious posting 😊.

I spent another half-hour testing it.  I’m getting nowhere fast.

What’s weird is that my RSS/Atom for InsideTheBook works, and there’s very little changes required.

So, there must be something small that I’m missing…

Testing to see if I can log in and post comments.

Excellent…

I’ll work on the RSS feed tomorrow at the office.

Ah, didn’t know you were back, as got out of the habit of checking in every day.

Glad things are up and running again.

I’m in (late because I was on vacation.)

Looks like CAPTCHA-based registration is the winner.  Sorry to the early adopters in making you go through the email-activation and spam-finder.

On the negative side: if you guys try to email each other through the control panel, that might disappear into spam and you won’t even know.

Tom is right that private messages are likely to go to spam. For Gmail users, you can create a filter with one of these criteria to prevent that from happening:

Subject: Someone has sent you a Private Message

or

From: help~tangotiger~net

[Editor’s note: change ~ appropriately to the at sign and dot]

Set that to Never Send It To Spam and the private messages should go to your inbox. Yahoo has essentially identical options under its Mail Options for creating a Filter. I don’t know the details for other email providers, but they should be similar.

NaOH: thanks, useful info!

Testing.

Looks good and familiar. I don’t notice any fundamental change to the insidethebook site, other than commenter registration. But I liked the layout and function so that’s a good thing, I guess.
Anyway, I look forward to many more years of discussion.

(PS: At the old site, I was “VJ” but registration here requires at least three letters).

I don’t think there’s a screen name limit, is there?  So, you can still be screen name as VJ, but your username is whatever.

***

Software tech has is working on the RSS ticket as we speak.  Hopefully, we’ll get that working in short order.

After that gets working, I’ll install the discussion forum, where you guys can start your own threads.

From my vantage point, posts on the front page only have a date associated with them if there is a comment. A posting date (perhaps in the byline) could be useful.

For example, right now, the posts titled “Yuniesky Betancourt” and “Scouting Justin Upton by the numbers” have 0 comments, and neither one has a date shown.

http://www.tangotiger.com/index.php/site/atom

http://www.tangotiger.com/index.php/site/rss

***

I’ll have links on the footer for these.

Right, the date next to the word “comments” is the date of the last comment.

The thread date only shows for the most recent thread for that date.

At the bottom of the page, in a few days, you won’t see the “most recent comments” have threads with no dates, because this will queue out as new commented threads come in.

I think the date issue on the posts on the home page is that it lists the date only once. So if you have 5 posts in a day, only the last one (the one highest on the page) will have a date shown.

Ignore my previous comment.

I figured this was a reasonably safe thread with which to test if I registered correctly or not.

Yup, perfect thread for that.

I setup TwitterFeed as well.

Thank you for the RSS link!

Great to see the new site is up! And it looks like there’s already a lot for me to catch up on!! (that’s a good thing. very good.)

I’m not a big fan of links now opening in a new tab or window. I find it user-unfriendly to take away browser control. And it’s annoying on mobile devices. I hope you’ll reconsider this (if it was intentional).

In my case as a reader, I always do right-click, open new tab.

I don’t use mobile devices, so that’s a good point you are making.  I can change the process back to the way it was (meaning left-click will open in same window/tab), if that’s what you guys like.  First five people to respond will decide our fate!  NaOH has already voted for “old way / same window”.  Four more to go…

old way/same window

There’s an easy method to open in a new window if you do it that way, whereas there isn’t an easy way to open in the same window if you automatically open in a new window.

I’d agree about old way - the browsers I use support middle mouse click to open in a new tab, so I don’t even need to right-click and select from a menu. Regular click opening in the same tab, but middle click to open in a new tab gives the user more control.

So if it’s first 5 people, then this makes 3 votes for old way, which would be a majority. But I’m patient enough to hear out other opinions!

Ok, I updated all the threads, so the user has more control.  Thanks…

Thanks for changing the link behavior. I figured the least I could do in return is place a big order through your Amazon affiliate link.

This may be my first time ever I comment on your blog. Thanks Tango, I appreciate your great work.

As to a tag attached to each thread in the old blog, aren’t you going to add the feature in some weeks? Or did you completely disable it? Since I read only baseball-related threads and use tags as a clue (I don’t even know who Gretzky is, so the title of each thread isn’t necessarily sufficient at times), it is very helpful for me that you continue to append some tags (blogging, other_sports, etc…) to each thread. Thanks in advance.

The category link will definitely be added.  I just have to find the time to do it, that’s all.

Glad to see the new site is up! Thanks for keeping it going!

I don’t even know who Gretzky is

I’m fascinated by this statement.  If I were to list athletes who transcend their sport, and actually have name recognition, I’d go with Pele first, then Ali, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and then Wayne Gretzky. 

I’m sure I’m biased being Canadian.

Anyway, to not recognize Gretzky, I’d have to think you are not from North America or Europe, and/or you are under 30 years old.

So, I’d be interested to hear more about your environment.

I’m 38 years old and have never been a hockey fan, but even I’d put Gretzky on the same level as Michael Jordan. I grew up when hockey wasn’t nearly as popular in the US as it is now and that name was everywhere.

Yeah, I’m Japanese, and I’m sure 98% Japanese don’t know him, either. Even if you restrict your sample to males who like some sports, still 90%, and probably 95% don’t know.

I can name only two basketball players (Jordan and Bryant) and don’t know any hockey or football players.

The two most popular sports in Japan are baseball and soccer. I‘m not fond of the soccer at all, but I’m sure I can list 20 non-Japanese soccer players.

American Football I get that wouldn’t carry past North America.

Hockey though has huge ties to Europe.  And it’s interesting that you are from Japan, since the 1998 winter Olympics were in Nagano, and Gretzky would have been the player that everyone would have referenced (even if he was a shell of himself at that point).  Other than figure skating, hockey is the marquee event.

Anyway, I find it interesting.  Thanks for sharing.

just registered and subscribed to the RSS feed. Glad to have you back in my blog reader!

I had thought YOnodo might have been Asian - as Tango points out, hockey has a strong presence in both Europe and North America and Gretzky is clearly the the dominant player in the history of the sport.

But how many Americans can name top cricket or rugby players? Or top sumo wrestlers?

If a sport isn’t even on your radar screen, then you might not know even its biggest stars.

This is perhaps not the best list to ask such questions, as there probably are several Americans here who can name big names of foreign sport.

As for Nagano, Gretzky may have been the biggest star, but IIRC, Canada disappointed and didn’t win a medal.

Testing my posting abilities.

Ok, Categories and Archives has been fixed.  I’ll implement that by tomorrow morning.  I’ll let you know once it’s ready.

My final two items are Search and Discussion Forums.  Not sure which I’ll tackle first.

For Discussion Forums, I was thinking of these categories:
- Baseball
- Hockey
- Basketball
- Football
- Other Sports
- Non-Sports

And that’s it.  Something small like that.  I may have to split Baseball into multiple subforums, but I don’t know how much activity I’m going to get.

Anyway, the idea is that you guys are going to start threads.

The RSS feed seems to be a little wonky. I’ve subscribed to it in Google Reader, and several times posts have been duplicated in the RSS.
For instance, it says “Ubermodels” was received (which means the first time google noticed it, I guess) on February 5th at 9:04 AM, and previously had also done so at 7:03 AM.

I guess this is mostly a Google Reader problem, so I don’t know that you can do anything about it. But it’s just weird because I never had this problem with The Book blog, which I accessed the same way. Perhaps some sort of problem with the GUID, causing it to not realize that it’s already read that thread?

The two different links to the Ubermodels thread link to http://tangotiger.com/index.php/site/ubermodels-are#When:12:35:08Z
and http://tangotiger.com/index.php/site/ubermodels-are#When:12:35:12Z .
As you can see, there’s a slight difference in the URL (though both end up on the same page).

Thanks for reporting this.  The fix seems simple enough:

http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/88523/#446417

I’ll go ahead and do that, and hopefully, it clears that up.

If I were to list athletes who transcend their sport, and actually have name recognition, I’d go with Pele first, then Ali, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and then Wayne Gretzky.

Interesting question.  I think there’s a huge drop in fame after Jordan, and it would hard to argue that Gretzky is a clear #5.  Is Gretzky more famous than Federer?  Phelps?  Bolt?  Armstrong?  I think you have to put Gretzky in a second tier with those guys…

Jordan does have more staying power, that’s for sure.  I don’t think Federer would have the staying power.

It really would have to be a soccer player, which at this rate, is going to be Messi.

Pele was with Ali once on some worldwide tour for something.  And when they’d step off the plane, Ali would say that outside of North America, it was Pele that was adored far more than Ali.  For Ali to say that is quite an admission.

I think we simply have to accept that the athlete rock-star around the world is almost certainly a soccer player.

Ok, search is now active.  Play around with it, and see what you get.

I’ve used google searches to try to find the most well-known player in every sport. There are a bunch of caveats to this.
1. It’s weighted towards more recent players. But that’s part of the advantage recent players have in terms of being well known.
2. I’m not going to provide actual number of hits because for some sports I needed to word the search differently to exclude some names (there are apparently a whole lot of non-basketball Kareem Abdul-Jabbars).
3. I may be missing people. This search was to the best of my recollection of well known people.
4. Famousness may be for non-sports reasons (see Anna Kournikova in the women’s tennis list, who never won a singles title).

Top 5
Soccer - Cristiano Ronaldo, Pele, Kaka, David Beckham, Lionel Messi (the one-name Brazilians may have an unfair advantage in terms of searching)
Basketball - Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Dwyane Wade
Hockey - Wayne Gretzky, Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Martin Brodeur, Henrik Lundqvist
Football - Tom Brady, Ray Lewis, Tim Tebow, Peyton Manning, Reggie Bush
Baseball - Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Babe Ruth, Albert Pujols, Barry Bonds
Golf - Tiger Woods, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson, Greg Norman
Boxing - Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather, George Foreman
Men’s Tennis - Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Andy Roddick, Andre Agassi, Bjorn Borg
Women’s Tennis - Maria Sharapova, Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Anna Kournikova, Billie Jean King
Running - Usain Bolt, Michael Johnson, Carl Lewis, Ben Johnson, Jim Thorpe
Cricket - Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Wasim Akram, Kevin Pietersen, Shahid Afridi

On the rss feed, if I click on an article title, it takes me to the article page. This is OK, but it would be nice if I could click on the article page that has the comments.

Comments are a big part of what makes this (and the old one) a great blog. Is there any specific reason why you choose to link to the page that has just the article rather than the link that has the comments?

I don’t want to make it sound like I’m complaining because clicking on a link is, of course, easy enough. However, I doubt I’m the only one who would much prefer to immediately be taken to the page that includes the comments.

I never use my feed, so, I never paid attention to it.

I see on my old blog, that I linked to the comments page, not the article page.

I can make the change easily enough.

Thank you.

Testing and noting that the RSS feed works perfectly for me, including directing to the appropriate commentable page. I use google reader for RSS.

And thank you, Tango.

A note of thanks for the links to the old sites that you added beneath the banner image. Good to have those readily available and they’re easy to find up there.

Ok, Discussion Forum is now live, as a soft launch:

http://tangotiger.com/index.php/boards/

Don’t distribute this link yet.  If anyone here wants to start their own thread, go ahead.  If you have problems, please report it. 

I’d suggest you write whatever you want in notepad, and then copy/paste, just in case.

If it’s not about a particular sport, just use the Sports forum.

If it’s about non-sports, hold off for a bit, to see how this goes.

I created a post under baseball, and it looked okay to me. Click Tango’s link above to see the main forum page.

I added a “MY ACCOUNT” and “FORUM” nav links at the top.

If you are trying to reset your password, and the email is not getting to you, let me know.

By the way, your post at http://tangotiger.com/index.php/site/comments/evaluate-the-brady-extension sounds like you are asking for discussion, but then at the bottom it says “Commenting is not available in this channel entry.” I’m not sure why that it is.

The post is supposed to link to a thread on the subject in the discussion forum.  For some reason the link shows up on the home page, but not on the individual page for the post.

http://tangotiger.com/index.php/boards/viewthread/52

Hmmm… that’s interesting.  I never noticed that before.

Looks like you switched the sidebar to include a higher number of Recent Comments and Threads. Helpful change, for me, so thanks.

Saw a “better” captcha earlier today.  They were slowly moving easy to read letters.  I thought it was pretty simple from a user standpoint.

No idea how effective it is though.

Random note, not that I think Tom should dig into this.

On the main page, the Latest Comments sidebar item doesn’t reflect a time zone change and shows EST. If I open a thread, the same listing respects my time zone setting.

What’s odd is that on an iPad (Safari), the sidebar comments on the main page and on thread pages respect my time zone settings, even though the quote above is about Safari on a Mac.

Makes me think there may be an issue with Mac Safari vs. Mobile Safari.