PDD Shop Talk Posts

Save the Date — June 29 — PDDX

Trampled by Turtles and Atmosphere play Bayfront Park on June 29. If you are nerdy enough, you also know that is the date Perfect Duluth Day will be ten years old, and we always have a snappy little PDD b-day shindig. So we’re tying them together.

Announcing …

PDDX: Perfect Duluth Day’s Tenth Birthday / Trampled by Turtles & Atmosphere Pre-Concert Party

The ongoing recent comments issue

For about two months PDD has been having problems with its “Recent Comments” feature — the menu item that highlights which posts have new comments you might not have read.

This week we installed a new plugin for Recent Comments that we hoped would be better, but unfortunately it isn’t.

PDD Banners

On June 29 PDD will be awarding $100 to the person who submits the best new banner. Everyone who has submitted one since Jan. 1 will be eligible. Pre-2013 banners will be pulled from rotation on June 29, but will be kept in archival storage and maintained by nice librarians with white cotton gloves at Google Plus. Banners from 2005-2009 can be found here.

We’re also looking for new Homegrown banners. Those submissions will be eligible for the same $100 prize. For full details on banner submissions, click here. The basic info is the image must be 960 pixels wide by 167 pixels high. The Perfect Duluth Day logo will be added by PDD’s art department. Send them to banners @ perfectduluthday.com

Recent comments feature maybe sort of fixed, we hope; PDD mobile version turned off temporarily

The little spot over in the left column that highlights which posts have new comments should be working properly now. Let us know if it’s doing anything funky for you.

We broke it three weeks ago while fixing something else. Now that it’s fixed, the new problem is that it leaves an ugly gap in the left column if you’ve read all the recent comments. We’ll fix that soon and then watch what breaks the minute we do.

Also, as those of you who read PDD on your phones or tablets may have noticed, we turned off PDD’s mobile version. This is a temporary measure. The mobile version was whacking out our regular site … yadda yadda … we’ll get the geeks on it eventually, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

Recent comments feature klunky right now

You may have noticed the little section on the left column that highlights which posts have new comments you haven’t read has been malfunctioning. We know this, and we are working on it. (And when I say “working on it,” I mean going skiing and thinking about it occasionally.)

The problem started over the weekend, when a new plugin was installed to speed up the time it takes to load the homepage. Fix one thing, another one breaks. That’s how it goes.

Calendar Videos

The mad scientists in the Perfect Duluth Day Calendar Labs are continually applying their impressive craniums to just one question, “How can we make our calendar that much cooler?”

Well, pop up videos, that’s how! Starting now, if there’s a video linked to the event, just click on the “Watch Video” link and it will pop up in your browser window. Movie trailers, music videos, game tutorials and more are just a click away! Then you can click away the video and keep browsing events.

Another chance to win $100 by appeasing the PDD marketing weasel

PDDMarketingWeasel89457Every other year or so, Perfect Duluth Day conducts a survey of its readers in an effort to figure out who they are and what their deal is. To make up for the privacy invasion, we offer the chance to win $100 in a drawing, which convinces everyone to proceed without reservation or contempt.

To participate in the survey, you do not need to be logged in or have an account with PDD at all; you just have to be a human being with the ability to click things on the Internet.

This survey has closed; thanks to everyone who participated.

It’s getting drafty around here

Right now there are 47 posts in PDD’s “drafts” folder. Items in the drafts folder are, presumably, posts that people started composing and saved with the intent of finishing later.

But maybe some of you thought you were supposed to create a draft and then the moderators publish it. That’s not how it works. We would have no way of knowing which drafts were ready to post and which were not, except to guess based on how complete we think they look.

So help us out with some almost-Spring cleaning. If you have an old draft for a post, finish it and click the blue “publish” button, or give up on it and click the red “move to trash” option.

Does anyone else miss…

the good old days when you could run the gauntlet on PDD?

We’re feeling used

Perfect Duluth Day hit a seemingly significant, though maybe not legitimately significant, milestone recently when it crossed the threshold of having 2,000 registered users.

Registered users, of course, are the people who have created an account on this site and are able to create posts and comment on posts. (Anyone can read PDD, but in order to be involved in discussions here you must create an account and log in.)

In recognition of 2,000+ users, we present a bunch of yammering, er, useful information, about PDD user accounts. Call it answers to frequently or not-so-frequently asked questions.

So long, Google AdSense … and other thoughts about objectionable advertising

It’s not likely you noticed it, but on Oct. 1 Perfect Duluth Day stopped mixing in Google-generated advertisements with the other ads that rotate over there on the right side of the page. It’s also not likely you care why, but we will explain nonetheless.

PDD on your TV

You might start seeing two ads for the Perfect Duluth Day Calendar on the teevee. Thanks to the people and businesses around town that helped us out.

Happy ninth birthday to us

amy-abts august-rowley badger beer2astill BlackEyedSusans BobKaraoke brushstrokes christas-ass DaCrib dog-on-ice fitgers-beer-can FredTyson OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Geek GeekProm GoDuluth hazelsunglasses hotrod-heartthrob jerree-in-wig jjohnson louis-fire main-club-bob MrNice mvplvp pagan_cork pearl Psycho-Capone Ruvelplace ryan-van-slooten shaky-ray SHT Skateboarding borgbaci2 best ThankYouWilco BervLindsey

Perfect Duluth Day is nine years old today – Friday, June 29, 2012. We’ll be celebrating tonight at Tycoons Alehouse and Eatery (in the board room upstairs) starting at 8 p.m. There will be cake and an array of door prizes. Come on out and share in the merriment.

PDD Calendar entry | Facebook invite

What started as a fun little experiment for Barrett Chase and Scott “Starfire” Lunt in 2003 has grown into a hideous beast containing well over 10,000 posts about everything from wood ticks to roller derby. Thanks for all the support, whether you are a PDD user, lurker or just someone searching Google for karaoke photos.

PDD Tee

Perfect Duluth Day T-Shirts are available at the Laughingstock/Happyspace store, 324 W. Superior St. Shirts are $15, $17 for XXL.

Get yours today to wear to the PDD 9th Anniversary Party at Tycoons Friday night. Or you can wait and hope to be one of the lucky few that might win a PDD shirt or another fabulous prize Friday. Prizemaster Lundgren is still compiling the list of fabulous prizes, but rest assured, it’s a fabulous list of prizes.

Duluth’s job growth continues as Perfect Duluth Day adds half a position

As if recent news about AAR and Cirrus creating hundreds of jobs in Duluth’s aviation sector wasn’t enough, Perfect Duluth Day has announced the creation of one-half of a job in the important selling-square-boxes-on-the-right-column-of-websites sector. Yes, the Internet giant has launched a search for a part-time media sales representative.

Mayor Don Ness’ press conference regarding this major development is apparently still in the planning stages.

PDD Corporate President Paul Lundgren said the addition of this half job should put to rest any rumors that the popular website is considering leaving Duluth to take advantage of incentives offered by Hermantown and Esko.

“After months of working with city leaders, DEDA, APEX, the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce, the West Duluth Business Club and for some reason the Duluth Amateur Hockey Association, we feel confident Duluth is the place to grow our business and add one half of a job,” Lundgren said, noting also that “interested candidates for the position can read a serious job description through the link embedded in this very sentence.”

The general public had no comment on the matter, because comments to this post are closed.

Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!