The Octobee Is Pleased: Announcing Ectoplasmosis 3.0
Posted by John Brownlee
Fired from Wired last year for the evacuation of various mucousy Eldritch discharges upon the beard of a paralyzed and supine Lore Sjoberg — not to mention ancillary transgressions such as making an executive decision to rename Table of Malcontents to “Conde Nast = Cunt” for the first week of May 2007 — Eliza and I founded Ectoplasmosis. Nine months later, the tag line’s still pretty good: “Technically, the viscous progeny of material ectoplasm and the mind-controlling brain parasite toxoplasmosis, aborted from the belly of an octobee.” But the scrambled-embryonic aftermath of that abortion was always our template.
Consider this a violent flushing. We’re all tickled pink to unveil the new template in all its mewling, slimy glory. Designed by none other than the Gypsy CSS King, Mr. Rob Beschizza, we’re aping the style of the broadside for a smart layout designed to look pretty swank and force an endless parade of advertisements in front of your squirming eyeballs.
It’s not entirely finished yet. There will be bugs, and we would encourage you to report them in the comments here. Ectotweet is currently missing, but coming back shortly (and we’ll still read Ectotweets). The site looks best in a modern browser: IE6 users, it should look okay, but be warned that it’s not perfect. Also, although the site should look fine without installing them, Ectomo looks best when using the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society font pack. It’s a free download for both Mac and PCs. Shortly, you shouldn’t even need to have those fonts installed to see the site as intended, but if you want the 100% experience in the meantime, it’s worth the small download.
We’ve also shifted hosts. Though for the last nine months, we’ve been hosted with aplomb (and dirt cheap prices) by POE Hosting, ultimately they couldn’t keep up with our traffic. We would still heartily recommend them to anyone looking to start up a blog: they would respond to summonings at belief-defying hours of the AM and put up with us long after we had become more of a liability to them than anything else. Plus, it’s run by Chet of Old Man Murray fame, one of the guys who wrote Portal. Give these guys your business if you’re just starting a blog. We’re now hosted by the equally awesome Wing Six and you should notice a huge speed and stability increase.
And that’s about it! Please drop problems, bugs, criticisms, compliments and anti-consumerist outrage in the comments! The Octobee is pleased
Categories: Internet, Redesign, Rail, Announcements
Posted at 8:21 am on March 12, 2008
40 Comments -
Looks hot to me, even without your Web 101-insisted downloadable font.
Comment by Joel Johnson — March 12, 2008 @ 9:26 am
We’ll be pushing headlines soon in the proper font automagically with some incredible Flash/CSS/Javascript solution. Until then, we’re an abomination in the eyes of W3C!
Comment by John Brownlee — March 12, 2008 @ 9:36 am
Excellent design. Bravo!
Comment by Nicolas — March 12, 2008 @ 9:37 am
Good christ, I love that font pack. Glad I’m not the only one who totally abuses it.
Comment by Libby Bulloff — March 12, 2008 @ 9:46 am
The new layout gets my vote. (I always throw my votes away anyhow.) I dig the writhing tentacles in the background. But where is the large, conspicuous Octobee? Has he been banished to some dark place??
Why are the ads for ‘blood bowel movement’, ‘irregular stool’, and ‘cat constipation help’? Does Google know something I don’t??
Comment by flikx — March 12, 2008 @ 9:52 am
The Octobee’s coming back in the form of the new, improved Ectotweet. Basically, we’re going to randomly cycle user colored Octobees, and those Octobees will word balloon the latest Ectotweet. But that’s not quite done yet.
Also, Google ads suck until they’ve spent a good amount of time figuring out what your site is about. We’re probably not going to keep Google Ads there anyway… it’s just temporary.
Comment by John Brownlee — March 12, 2008 @ 10:08 am
tentacles make me squirm…..
geez, you weren’t kidding about those ads……yuck.
Comment by el moco — March 12, 2008 @ 10:23 am
I just want you to know that the top google ad in the smaller of the two boxes is entitled “Blood Bowel Movement”… I love contextual advertising sometimes, truly.
The headline font renders slightly jagged for me, but I’ve heard rumors that Opera’s font rendering isn’t always super smooth. (Opera 9.26 for the record.)
Comment by Giania — March 12, 2008 @ 10:41 am
Noice.
Even jives with my current 1024×768 abomination.
Comment by Narkalant — March 12, 2008 @ 10:42 am
The title font looks fine, but the slightly smaller (Posted by, and author list on the side) are jaggy as all hell.
That said, I continue to love it.
Comment by chesh — March 12, 2008 @ 11:31 am
This is excellent. A very nice re-animation of one of my favourite sites. Just 2 questions:-
1) how do I get these fonts to work in firefox?
2) there should be free pipes and monocles for this site. Not to mention ties…
you are wearing a tie, aren’t you?
Comment by Thumpsquid — March 12, 2008 @ 11:40 am
People getting jaggies on
subheadlines
… Tell us your browser and system
Comment by admin — March 12, 2008 @ 11:52 am
John, here’s a screen of what I’m getting. #ectomites suggest that it’s my fonts, as you can see I don’t have font pack installed.
XP Pro, Firefox 2, 1440×900.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/99672750@N00/2328488287/
Comment by chesh — March 12, 2008 @ 11:53 am
@ thumpsquid - I just downloaded the new fonts, threw them in the font directory, reloaded the page for proper fonty ectomo loveliness. I don’t think I’d have gone through that rigamarole for any other site :)
Comment by Hawthornery — March 12, 2008 @ 11:56 am
You have some unclosed p tags in your sidebar, as well as li tags floating about without an ul, but hey! looks great!
Comment by Chris Furniss — March 12, 2008 @ 12:11 pm
Looks flippin’ great!
I am seeing the “N have spoken” comment notifications overlapping with embedded video or image in a lot of entries.
Comment by V. Blame — March 12, 2008 @ 12:18 pm
Ah, validation! We’re still a ways off from such niceties. Fonts should be OK now for those experiencing jaggies: turns out Impact looks not good at 1.3em without cleartype.
Comment by admin — March 12, 2008 @ 12:19 pm
It makes me sick, so I guess it worked.
Great job.
Comment by Ultimate Cowboy — March 12, 2008 @ 1:49 pm
it looks amazing!
Comment by iron prudence — March 12, 2008 @ 2:01 pm
I’m not sure if this is your bad or their’s, but the Ectomo links on Destructiod, Japanator, etc. (top of the page) are still broken.
Comment by Upgrayedd — March 12, 2008 @ 3:14 pm
John needs to get his DSN configured for ectoplasmosis.com as well as ectomo.com, that’s what’s up there.
Comment by admin — March 12, 2008 @ 3:42 pm
Needs moar sIFR.
Seriously.. use sIFR for the text as well.
Comment by wedge — March 12, 2008 @ 5:25 pm
sIFR’s not installed yet! Anyway, sIFR can’t be used for entire pages at a a time… it just kills the entire site. You’ll have to settle for headlines and other minor elements when the time comes!
Comment by John Brownlee — March 12, 2008 @ 6:41 pm
An ad for Godtube.com just popped up in the Google Ads! Oh frabjous joy, the Universe has such a wonderful sense of humor*!
*when it isn’t being pointed at me.
Comment by racerabbit — March 12, 2008 @ 6:57 pm
looks good.
Comment by 110rdr33f4 — March 12, 2008 @ 8:28 pm
“I want my Ecto-sIFR”
Actually, I just want to stab the people responsible for me having to use the same set of “web-compatible” fonts for the last ten years.
And yes when I do use sIFR I do so without care for performance or usability.
Then again, I just hate people.
But your site looks good and I am utterly thankful for your lack of care towards standards.
Kisses and diseases from germany.
Comment by wedge — March 12, 2008 @ 11:36 pm
Sweet font pack, nice new layout.
Ah, people are so snobby about ads…I even like a couple of ads…it looks less pretentious that way.
Comment by sharky — March 13, 2008 @ 2:42 am
Mmmmm shiney and new. Like it.
But just so you guys know, the old ectoplasmosis.com site isn’t forwarding to here (or at least it was’nt for me using firefox on a mac). Only reason I found this place was ‘cos I got bored of waiting for it to come back on and googled it…
Comment by Scott — March 13, 2008 @ 5:17 am
Scott, we’re sorry about that. We’re trying to get that sorted out.
Comment by John Brownlee — March 13, 2008 @ 5:22 am
Maybe.. just maybe.. you guys (and gals.. possibly) here at ectomo should put up a seperate wish-list- like.. post.. thing.. thread.
Until then.. add something below the post that links to #comment and we are all happy.
Comment by wedge — March 13, 2008 @ 5:57 am
Here wo go:
Add a “margin:0px” to the style ‘commentlist’, since IE7 puts the commentlist- column 30-something pixels to the right, messing up the middle column containing the ads and the links to the archives (IE-box- model, anyone?)
The
Comment by wedge — March 13, 2008 @ 7:55 am
..hmm.. that got snipped..
The a href=”#postcomment”.. doesn’t link to anything. Either it should link to #commentform or the id of the comment- form should be changed appropriately
The hyperlink mentioned above doesn’t render properly using Opera or IE7, whilst Firefox uses the » of the fonts specified in the css.
Not trying to sound bossy, but I’ve been a webcrafter for a decade and that turns every good-hearted man into a vile bastard.
Comment by wedge — March 13, 2008 @ 7:56 am
And we can all see a “Logout”- link down there ↓
Comment by wedge — March 13, 2008 @ 8:16 am
And the png hack doesn’t work using IE7.05 (although the rendered effect is rather interesting).
Sorry for bugging. Again. Will repeat.
Comment by wedge — March 13, 2008 @ 8:33 am
Odd formatting with IE7- the comments are shifted a few mm to the right.
Screenshots from IE7, FF2 and Flock 1:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b318/dariamayaswell/IE7.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b318/dariamayaswell/FF2.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b318/dariamayaswell/Flock1.jpg
Comment by Daria — March 13, 2008 @ 8:59 am
These various comment sheet bugs should now be gone, cache permitting.
Comment by Rob Beschizza — March 13, 2008 @ 9:52 am
Nope, still messed up background- png of container when viewed with IE7.05.
Everything else looks dandy, as far as I can tell.
Comment by wedge — March 13, 2008 @ 10:06 am
Last thing and then I’ll shut up: the glitch shows up when scrolling, so IE doesn’t render the png right.
Sorry. I really am.
Thank you for the design. I like it. Thumbs up from me.
Comment by wedge — March 13, 2008 @ 10:27 am
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