META: (last one I hope) Image fixing done

RSS will be back on in a short while. Have a look around if you like to reassure yourselves the strips are here. Sadly there was no way I could discover for saving the number of post flags (like interesting, funny, weird) and all those counts have reset to zero. At least all your comments have been saved, and no one needs to refollow!

Someone suggested uploading the strips to the blog, but that makes me a bit more nervous from a legal standpoint. Comics.com explicitly makes the strips available via embedding, so I figure I'm safe there. Still, if this happens again I probably will start hosting them locally; they don't seem to have gone after the Comics Curmudgeon.

META: Warning to RSS readers, image fixing about to begin

This is to warn everyone reading via RSS that I'm about to do the image fix. To try to reduce the number of duplicated feed entries, the feed will be off for maybe half an hour or so. If tomorrow night rolls around and you don't get a new comic them Something Went Wrong and you should resubscribe.

In any case, there will be some duplicated feed entries. Unfortunately, I do not know of a way to prevent Blogger from reposting those once the feed is turned back on.

Here we go!

META: More on the Image Break

I have figured out a way to fix all the links in one fell swoop. However, it is fairly drastic mojo. It will likely remove any flags (funny, cool, interesting, etc) that have been set on posts. Trial runs have indicated that it probably will not erase comments, but it might result in some strange feed behavior. I am not doing it immediately, but will probably do it in the next few days.

For those of you interested in what this entails....

A quick Google search didn't turn up many promising avenues. An Ask Metafilter thread from 2005 said it might require hacking the Blogger API to implement changes of this magnitude.

It turns out that it doesn't require going quite that far. It is possible to export all of the posts of a Blogger blog into an XML file, and then import it later either to the same blog or a different one. While it is on the local machine passing it through a quickie Python script easily fixes the links, once I get the old URL format solidly recognized (for the record, Comics.com's new URL system is rather simpler than the old one). It turns out that even comments get exported to the archive file.

The problems arise from the fact that, while I can restore the blog posts to a new blog then change its address to match the old one, not all of the old blog's settings get restored. The kinds of issues this produces ranges from minor (having to reupload the banner) to somewhat harsh (anyone following the blog will have to refollow).

The alternative is to delete all of the posts on the current blog and reimport them from the hacked backup. This should be safe since I have the blog backed up. It will keep all of the settings and followers, but I don't know if it will do something nutty like resend all of the pages as new RSS entries.

Will probably take action on this in a day or two.

January 23, 1952: Schroeder’s first multiword utterance is in German

Schroeder gets way into his playing in this one. His holding out his arms in the last panel is hilarious.

Also, I laughed out loud when I noticed how Schulz signed this one.

META: Comics.com's continuing confounding

A comment on the last post notes that the images have stopped working again. And lo, the reason for this seems to be that Comics.com has changed their image hosting, thus breaking all the links of anyone who uses their old embed code.

I could (and for now, will) just use their new embed code, but this poses a problem. What if Comics.com decides to do this again in the future? And what am I going to do about all the posts that I have already made?

I have found that the new code is the same as the old code, just with a different URL. I have figured out how to change the address from old to new with a simple paste. But the site has almost 250 strips already, and each one of those is its own paste. That is basically a whole afternoon down the tubes, with no guarantee that they won't do this again at some later date.

I am looking into solutions. For now, I have fixed the last two posts and the few that are in the queue. I'll see what I can do about the others later....

January 22, 1952: I bet she has a darkroom too

Overall the early Peanuts strips hold up fairly well. But there will eventually come the day when most people won’t know of the sometimes complicated decisions needed to take a physical photograph.

January 21, 1952: Dogs don’t care about originality

I got another one for you: “It was a dark and stormy night....”

A little kid complaining about the triteness of his world. Slowly, Peanuts is becoming something special.

Sunday, January 20, 1952: I don’t think the Guinness people will consider his achievement

Again note the leadup in the top panels which, again, must be designed considering that some newspapers remove them. One way to allow the strip to survive this is to extend the setup for the story. Another way is to present a self-contained joke in those panels. A third way, used frequently in Peanuts’ later days, is to simply provide some thematic, abstract art in the large title panel, which won’t be missed if the panel is excised.

This strip further develops Snoopy’s personality. In about a year, if memory serves, Lucy will be involved in a sequence involving bouncing a ball for nearly a week.

january 18, 1952: Beethoven!

It is weird to think of the girls pining away for the just-out-of-infanthood Schroeder. Of course, he only has eyes for the big B. This attitude would eventually cause Lucy no end of consternation.

What is such a young kid doing carrying a wallet anyway? One with pictures in it?

January 17, 1952: More wavy lines

Although he still barely speaks, Schroeder is out and about! An important step towards his becoming a full character. Notice his bed in the corner in the third and fourth frames; it is a weird quasi-crib with low rails.

The post title comes from the aura around his head in the third frame, which we also saw used yesterday to denote embarrassment.