Your New Regular Saturday Night Thing
It’s official. I’m not good enough for you any more. At least, not the old timey nite shift cappers. Tired of being under my public domain thumb for their once a week gatherings, and not getting to cap the infomercials they used to sit through endlessly, Jazppie and Hizsoda have built the new captioning site Hipsoda’s Caption Crack. Starting 1 AM eastern, March 18th, they’ll apparently be running it every Saturday overnight, offering grabs more to the discerning tastes of the people who used to sit through night after night of Thriller and Lapre.
The new site has been advertised as having “Gerson’s Seal of Approval”, which I guess is sort of true. When they asked for my blessing or permission or whatever, I didn’t withhold it, because, well, what skin is it off my nose if you all hate me and would rather caption somewhere else, and even if it was, am I supposed to stop them somehow? Am I from Krypton? Sure I did give them some friendly advice on how to actually make it work and had previoulsy sent them some of my grabber code for another project, but it’s not like I applied any of my professional software testing skills to the site and gave it my seal of monkey safety. Of course, my erstwhile blesing is granted on the understanding that they won’t be killing any monkeys during their first month of operations.
So, there you have it, the year long era of the Caption This! nite shift relocating to Inventing Situations is apparently over. You won’t have GersonK to kick around anymore. Unless of course, their site breaks down under the traffic or they get sued by the Insurance Guy, in which case you’ll all come back to me with their heads between their tails. Mwahahaha!
And unless somebody admits that they were actually coming to these sessions just for Dick, the weekend showings of Dick Tracy are canceled after tonight.
While avoiding any door/ass contact on your way to Caption Crack, feel free to vote in our new poll:
March 18th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
I stand by IS and you, Gerson.
March 19th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Since I’ve been told that I’m not a suck up, let me just put my $.02 in here and say that I will always love IS. It’s the friend that’s always there when you’re at the end of your rope. Wow, that’s incredibly depressing. Ok, look — I like IS and thank you Gerson, for making it happen and for keeping it running.
March 19th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Gerson, you have my eternal thanks for keeping the capping going and doing a great job of it. I might wax and wane with the appearances (I plan on being more steady now), but I’ll always be here to cap with the best. I’ll be one of the rocks you can throw through Caption Crack’s window and then run away :) Don Lapre and his inviting smile are tough to resist, but I’ll try!
March 19th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Just the facts, sir: I visited “Caption Crack” just now, at time-of-writing-this. I posted this caption:
“UpSky2?
this is very uninteresting without graphics!”
- it was the only caption in an empty gallery!
- there were no graphics to be interested in!
- and, I’m almost never awake&capping past 11 p.m.!!!!!!!!!!!!! (how many exclamation points you want? eh?!)
The facts, as they stand, dryly dictate that I couldn’t help sticking to IS & GersonK, even if I really tried. So: back to The Amazing Transparent Man, which I will rate as three-star, at least… jolly good show!
March 19th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Thanks for all your support but Caption Crack is mainly aimed, like my post, at the night shift cappers who descend in a swarm here in the early hours of each Sunday. They are a funny, if whiny, bunch. My snarky tone was mostly a put on. If I really wanted it to fail, I’d have ignored it.
March 19th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
I for one loved capping Don LaPre back in the Caption This! days. I’ll check out Caption Crack, but I’ll still be around IS most of the time. Can’t we all just cap along?
March 19th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
I’m not sure if I want to dive into any cracks just yet. For now, as long as the esteemed gersonK tolerates hosers like me, I’d prefer to control my destiny by inventing situations.
yer pal,
screaming_fist
March 19th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Haven’t heard of this new thing. Don’t have a clue what it is. Have always felt welcome at IS, despite not being the wittiest wisecracker out there. (Say that 5 times fast…..nearly impossible.)
IS is my friend, and GK, you are Wicked Cool!
SFS
March 20th, 2007 at 10:44 am
We don’t need another hero. We don’t need to know the way home. All we want is life beyond the Thunderdome.
But seriously, GersonK and GlitterRock fulfill my capping needs so completely I’m skeptical another site is even necessary, however if I’m home when it’s operational I will check it out before making final judgement. But I really don’t need a THIRD site to obsessively save caps from! I’m a big enough loser as it is.
-Zee
ps. Have always felt welcome at IS, despite not being the wittiest wisecracker out there. Have always felt welcome at IS, despite not being the wittiest wisecracker out there. Have always felt welcome at IS, despite not being the wittiest wisecracker out there. Have always felt welcome at IS, despite not being the wittiest wisecracker out there. Have always felt welcome at IS, despite not being the wittiest wisecracker out there.
March 21st, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Okay, the IS loyalists have had their say. Now it’s a defecting nightshifter’s turn.
Comparison time, bitches!
THE NAME:
INVENTING SITUATIONS: Not derivative of Caption This. Regular users can be referred to by such nifty titles as “inventors” or “situationists.”
CAPTION CRACK: Derivative of Caption This. Regular users can be referred to as “crackers,” which is not only decidedly un-nifty but also vaguely racist.
ADVANTAGE: IS.
THE HOSTS:
INVENTING SITUATIONS: I first ran into Gerson near the end of my time at Caption This.
CAPTION CRACK: Jazz and Hippie were the very first cappers I befriended at Caption This.
ADVANTAGE: HCC. Gerson’s a good guy, but I’ve known Jazzpie much longer.
THE IMAGES:
INVENTING SITUATIONS: Strictly public domain, with good quality. A fair amount of repetition, but Gerson’s been working on that. His images are less likely to make me go “Oh, crap, I like that movie/TV show and don’t want to cap it,” and have an old-fashioned wholesomeness to them that strikes me as ripe for cap fodder.
CAPTION CRACK: Copyright-shattering, with good quality. A pledge of no repeats unless they’re requested. Hipsoda’s images have the nostalgic advantage of replicating the type of fare we used to see at CT!, although it may veer dangerously close to GlitterCap if they’re not careful. On the other hand, they’ve got the infomercial hosts so dear to this nightshifter’s heart. The threat of being sued is ever-present (Brad Richdale, represent!), but again, GlitterCap hasn’t been hit by wallet-busting lawsuits, has it?
ADVANTAGE: Call it a draw.
THE TIME:
INVENTING SITUATIONS: On all the time.
CAPTION CRACK: On a strict schedule.
ADVANTAGE: HCC. When it’s on, that means IT’S ON.
THE CAPTIONS:
INVENTING SITUATIONS: Replicates Caption This exactly.
CAPTION CRACK: Allows for line breaks, bold and italic type, and special characters. Gives us nightshifters the fancy-fonted handles we’ve grown used to at Jazz’s gallery. Arranges the caption gallery in order of most recent CAPTION, rather than most recent GRAB. Forces cappers to make due with reading caps in Georgia font unless they download the snazzy Berlin Sans.
ADVANTAGE: HCC. Really, how much memory does it take to store Berlin Sans in your computer? Answer: NOT A HELL OF A LOT. And the gallery sequencing is a monster improvement. Even though I’m structuring this as a competition, it really isn’t, and I’d love to see Gerson nick some of Hipsoda’s innovations for IS. (Dude, the gallery sequencing, dude.)
THE SEAL OF MONKEY SAFETY:
INVENTING SITUATIONS: Monkey-friendly.
CAPTION CRACK: Will not harm monkeys for the first month. After that, though, we’re talking NONSTOP MONKEY DEATH.
ADVANTAGE: Clearly HCC, unless you’re some kind of monkey-loving pussy.
SUMMARY:
INVENTING SITUATIONS: Arguably superior to the original CT. Certainly has a better host.
CAPTION CRACK: Where all my friends hang out.
ADVANTAGE: Let’s say you and your buddies started hanging around at this fantastic bar. It’s way better than the bar you all used to hang out at, which was initially the only game in town but eventually got so run-down that everyone abandoned it and it closed up shop. But a year later, two of your friends decide they want to start their own bar. Naturally, the gang wants to stick together, so they all flock to the new bar. What do you do? Hang out at the old bar with a bunch of folks you don’t know that well, just because you like the owner? Or hang out with all your friends? It ain’t nothing personal, GK, and I/we may even drop by the old IS on occasion to say hey to the guy without whom we would have never gotten back together in the first place. But hey, my gang’s over there. So, alas, it’s advantage HCC.
Of course, if it does crash-n-burn, I’ll come crawling back to IS. But NOT WITH MY TAIL BETWEEN MY LEGS, as you would have it. I would crawl with DIGNITY.
March 21st, 2007 at 7:27 pm
I’ll admit, my original post probably made this out as more of a competition than it is, so I won’t address it as such any more. Just want to answer a few points & open questions Q raised:
IS does ‘improve’ on CT! in a few ways - captions and handles can be a little longer. Don’t remember what the limits were at CT, I know they’re 200 and 30 here, as oposed to 220 and 20 at HCC. I’m pretty sure the CT! gallery was fixed at 12 captions. IS auto-expands from a minimum of 18 to a maximum of 36 depending on activity levels.
Lawsuits probably aren’t a huge risk, but I just sleep easier this way and want to keep the site as safe as possible. My excess of caution is the safety net that allows CC to operate with such abandon. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
The next time I go on an improvement spree here (posting on that subject coming soon), I’ll probably add the caption countdown at the very least. The caption ordering, I can kind of see your point on, but my brain’s sort of wired for this way after all these years. On the font front, if you really want that headachey monstrosity a la CC, go ahead and make it your browser’s default font. IS has always respected your choice of default font, instead of wasting time letting you pick from our narrow range of fonts, we just let you pick from what you’ve got on your machine.
March 21st, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Just to clarify–I’m not saying that having another site is a bad idea. It just seems to be so “exclusive” that those of us who AREN’T a part of the original nightshift crew would kinda be intruding on a party. Which sucks, ’cause I really like quite a few of the old school cappers, and love being in the gallery with them.
March 21st, 2007 at 10:04 pm
I would hope the false dichotomy between Inventing Situations and Caption Crack is not being taken too seriously. I for one am contemplating creating my own cap page consisting entirely of Don LaPre screengrabs. Unfortunately, the Don LaPre cap page will only be available from 1:00am to 1:01am during February 30th of every odd year. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you ask Don LaPre to tell you all about his wonderful package.
While we’re reminiscing about ‘Caption This!’, I’d like to add my two cents worth. Yes, Caption This got a lot of us cappers started, but let’s not forget how LAME the scifi.com tech staff were and how the screengrabber was constantly broken for days on end. Talk of creating an Inventing Situations-type website started before Caption This! went defunct, and IS has been an oasis of peace for the cappers compared to the slave pits of Caption This!. While I had lots of fun at CT, IS is vastly superior, though I guess it could use a deadlyringer or a Miranda Ramsey… not.
March 21st, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Actually, IS and CT co-existed for about 2 years. Always wondered if I didn’t help kill it by drawing people away until it was mostly hoodlums left, and always regreted not actively advertising there to make sure all of the non-hoodlums heard.
Oh, and I just stole my first feature from HCC - you can cap any image in the gallery by clicking it. Some of you sneaky folks might’ve figured out how to do that already and of course without changing the order of captions, that feature’s not super useful. Of course, that ability to caption any image was always there under the hood as a result of the way we handle errors like super long words and automatically send you back to the image you were capping with what you’ve typed instead of making you fish for the image and retype your cap like some other sites.
March 21st, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Responding to a few points:
E_the_E: “I would hope the false dichotomy between Inventing Situations and Caption Crack is not being taken too seriously.”
It is about as false as dichotomies get, and is absolutely not being taken seriously. At least, not by me, anyway. I don’t know what kinda crazy thoughts go through other people’s heads.
E_the_E: “While I had lots of fun at CT, IS is vastly superior, though I guess it could use a deadlyringer or a Miranda Ramsey… not.”
Morbid curiosity-seekers who want to see a meta-gag crash and burn go here: http://www.hipsoda.com/jazz/gallery/sirfartsalot.html
GersonK: “On the font front, if you really want that headachey monstrosity a la CC, go ahead and make it your browser’s default font. IS has always respected your choice of default font, instead of wasting time letting you pick from our narrow range of fonts”
I hereby award you five (5) zing points, redeemable at any snark outlet. You’re going to turn this into The Brian Jonestown Massacre vs. The Dandy Warhols, aren’t you? Do we have enough cocaine to go around?
Jazz has this weird bug up his ass about Times New Roman. I believe the bug has a violet-hued carapace and mad pincers. He must be very uncomfortable. So, he’s on some kinda font trip. I don’t care; I let him have his fun. “Berlin Sans is the greatest font since Malgun Gothic!” He hasn’t said that, but he might as well have. In fact, I’m gonna lie outright and insist that he has said it, and I heard him do so, and he’s said it more than once.
SilentFilmStar: “It just seems to be so “exclusive” that those of us who AREN’T a part of the original nightshift crew would kinda be intruding on a party.”
It wouldn’t be any different than when non-old-school-nightshifters — like, say, SilentFilmStar — showed up during IS’s Saturday Nightshift get-togethers over the past year. I’d like to think we’re gracious and welcoming toward newcomers, although the high volume of threads — erm, “running gags” — flying around can perhaps be a bit disorienting at first. But then again, isn’t that the case at ANY capping venue with its own crew of regulars?
Besides, every one of us had to crash the party at some point. I crashed the party when it was just Jazz, Hip, Gulo, JoeCrow and a few others. Many more crashed the party after me. Gerson, for instance (although I think he *still* feels like he’s crashing. DUDE YOU’VE BEEN ONE OF US FOR YEARS). Still more crashed the party when we started up on IS. It’s capping. The only way to join the party IS TO CRASH.
Plus, SFS, you’ve already earned your own snazzy personalized handle logo at Jazz’s gallery, so I doubt you’d feel all THAT excluded, should you pop by.
(If you’ve never dropped by Jazz’s gallery, some examples of your logo can be found here: http://www.hipsoda.com/jazz/gallery/20060520.html)
Christ, I’m being long-winded about all this nonsense.
March 22nd, 2007 at 8:27 am
I remember when IS started and how CT was still running back then. IS was our little capper secret. I mean , I liked CT back in the day , but I rarely ever watched the Sci-Fi Channel unless MST3K was on. I only capped there because of the people , not the original Sci-Fi Channel programming that we capped.
March 22nd, 2007 at 9:06 am
Bravo on the additions to IS, GK. I would suggest making the last-caption-on-top change, too, if you change anything else—getting buried by quicker cappers under rows and rows of captions has been a pain for a lot of us since CT!, and if you try the HCC style, you might find you like it better than the old way of doing it. “Stole” is a harsh, of course—if the “competition” does anything good for all of us, it should inspire each site to adopt the best features of the other.
Maybe “Gerson’s Seal of Approval” isn’t quite correct, but Hipsoda did want to emphasize we appreciate IS and didn’t want our activity to be an alternative to capping there. We wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t be offended by our site, and hopefully, all kidding aside, you aren’t. IS is still the premiere capping site on the web and will draw the most cappers, even if we have about 7 hours of alternative capping on Saturday nights at HCC. Jazzsoda and I extend a big recurring invitation to you, GK, to join us for our night-shift captioning. I thought one of the nicer benefits of HCC would be that you could caption with us worry-free about the quality of the grabs or the network holding up, and give us our fair of shit for unsavory screengrabs or the occasional hunk of chewed meat that makes it into a grab. One great thing about our IS renaissance has been that we’ve welcomed some day-shifters to the night-shift family, including Generik, Moldy, and you, GK, so if you want to caption with us without having to play host, we’d welcome you.
On the other hand, if you really want to stick it to us Old Testament style, heh, come up with a competing site for our news parody feature, the commune. We’re still updating that weekly and could stand to be put in our anonymous places.
And if anyone’s worried about “exclusivity” at HCC, drop by Saturday nights around 1 a.m. when the fun starts and you’ll see everybody’s welcome. Well, not everybody—ringers of a deadly nature, so on, need not apply. Likewise, I’ll still drop in on IS capping occasions if the invitation is open.
March 22nd, 2007 at 2:26 pm
IS is nifty. We love IS. We also love capping Kolchak and Don Lapre. Not happening at IS. We made a site so could cap this stuff. Join us if you like. End of story.
HCC is, like, a week old, and the features and functionality are still evolving. A full comparison wouldn’t be wise until we’re done stomping IS into dogshit and driving Gerson into a cave in the hills. I mean we’re not in competition.
I’ve said it before and the license plate cover on my car states it clearly enough: Anyone who doesn’t like Berlin Sans can kiss my ass. I have, however, recently added several other font options selectable on our FAQ page, so there should be something there to please everyone. Perhaps not fans of Times New Roman or Comic Sans, but those people should take a hint and die anyway.
Some cap-site-runners would have you change your browser’s default font just for the sake of their site. Me, I don’t trust you poking around in there. Stop! Just- just close that menu. Back away slowly. We won’t speak of this again.
Lastly, I keep ballot-box-stuffing votes for my own dreaminess and Gerson keeps deleting them. This is bullshit.
March 22nd, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Hizpoda, you raise a lot of words there. As for why I only swung by for a cap or two on your inagural night, as this thread demonstrates, I’m a notoriously thin skinned paranoid. Or rather, I’m a little thin skinned and paranoid, which translates into believing that I am notrosiously thin skinned and paranoid. So I figured my presence would discourage people from complimenting you folks for fear of insulting me.
ps. Those who can’t be trusted to set their browser’s font settings deserve comic sans. In fact, I think I might just make that the default font for IS right now.
March 24th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
[...] inspired by equal parts competition, thinking about updates, and procrastination, I’ve finally finished the long promised use of [...]
March 25th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
I like the late-night cap sessions, and the cappers who hang out there, but maybe that’s only because by the time it all starts I’m already sleep-deprived and, by the time I leave, I’m running on fumes. I don’t know. To me, the two sites seem a lot like apples and oranges…assuming, of course, that oranges were just another variety of apple that tasted only slightly different. There are some things I’m not terrifically fond of, design-wise, in the new site — and some features I could take or, more likely, leave — but I recognize it’s a work in progress. And do I think there’s plenty of room for both of them — but then again, largely because Caption Crack is such a narrorwer niche.