I’ve once again ripped up the innards of Inventing Situations to make minor changes on the front end. This time the change is a little more noticeable. I’ve modernized the way input is validated so we’re more in keeping with the way the rest of the web has been working since about 1999.

(1) There’s client side validation, so you’ll get a warning alert as soon as you hit submit if you’re trying to do something really silly, like submit an empty post.

(2) If you have some more subtle problem, like a word that’s too long it won’t be picked up until after you post to the sever, but the form will be redrawn with the error message and whatever you’ve already typed, instead of giving you an error message on an essentially blank page forcing you to hit the back button. I ‘inherited’ the unfriendly validation from another capping site that I was aspiring to be like.

(3) I’ve finally done away with the inconsistency of how spaces in handles are handled.

(more…)

Fresh pictures are up at Wasting Precious Time. Our first set features the terrifying and fey Vincent Price and Franca Bettoia in 1964′s The Last Man on Earth. Vince is the Ur-Omega Man and she’s some sort of zombie vampire. Can they share an apartment without driving each other crazy?

The other set is the usual mix of unrelated pictures.

A new round robin is starting soon – it’s a nice way to ease yourself into WPT without having to create an account or write an entire story. Go sign up, and be sure to vote for which of these sets you want to work with.

Stories can be started for either set until 6/11 [Corrected date].

Ok, I’ve gone a got a blog. Not one of those personal blogs, but a promotional blog. Oh joy! I’ve been doing a lot of tinkering with my caption sites lately and wanted a better way to keep everyone updated on the changes and get feedback. So far, they’ve been mainly dull under the hood changes. Rest assured, they’re all building up to some changes that you might actually like or at least notice.
Right now I’m still tinkering with the look of this blog and deciding how strictly I want to police comments to stop spam.

Let me know what you think about the blog, Inventing Situations, and Wasting Precious Time.