Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Monday, April 18, 2011

Change

Commentary By Ron Beasley


I have been missing in action the last couple of weeks.  I have been occupied - I am the care giver for my 88 year old mother and she had some medical issues.  About the time she was improving my computer died (hard drive), fortunately I had not done much of anything since I backed up last time so I didn't lose much but I did have to find the $ for a new one.  I did but the new machine is Windows 7 and god knows I hate change.  I still miss DOS.  There was a Windows 7 driver for my printer but not for my scanner.  Problem 2 - no PS2 connection for my beloved trackball.  There are PS2 to USB adapters available  so that can be resolved but to use my scanner I had to drag out an old Windows 98 machine.  I will scan on it and save the results on a thumb drive and transfer them to my computer for processing.  The one thing I really don't understand is the new wide monitor.  Why would I want this?   I have a 20" widescreen but most things are actually smaller than they were on my old 17" monitor. 


OK, I'm old.  Get off my lawn!!!!



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3 comments:

  1. Colin DayApril 18, 2011 at 5:34 PM

    Have you tried increasing the font size? Perhaps the fonts are a certain number of pixels, and your 20-inch monitor may have smaller pixels (more pixels per inch) than your 17-inch monitor. I'm on a Linux box right now, but I believe that you can enlarge your font by going to view->font.

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  2. Ron BeasleyApril 18, 2011 at 5:49 PM

    Thanks Colin but that's not the problem. I can see everything fine but I have to scroll down more. Silly perhaps. Will I get used to it? Yes again. Am I just a grumpy old man who hates change? Probably!

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  3. BrianApril 21, 2011 at 2:26 AM

    FYI - you could have just replaced the hard drive and reinstalled your OS, then you wouldn't have had to move to Windows 7. It's actually a quite simple process, pretty much just unplugging the old one, plugging in the new one, and then popping in your system disc. I've gotten so good at it I have 4 hard drives in my computer (for storing various things and for backing up). If I can keep from buying something expensive, that's for me.
    Widescreen monitors do display less vertical space than the standard monitors, but you can adjust resolution, or of course just get used to scrolling a bit more. Computers are great, until something goes wrong. Nothing like technology to waste our time and money!

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