There’s also a new numbering scheme, which will be necessary to help support the way in which new subreddits will be added to MegaMegaMonitor in future.
Upgrading
If you’ve already got it installed, it’ll probably update itself within a day or two. Or you can update it sooner by asking Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey to “check for
userscript updates”.
If you’re new to MegaMegaMonitor (or if that didn’t work), instead go to https://danq.me/megamegamonitor/ and click the button to install it
afresh.
New features
Doesn’t throw error messages if you try to use it while not logged-in at all.
Continues to work in your sock puppet accounts with the cached data from your primary account.
New “MMM” text in top-right corner (near your username). Hover over it to see if your data is up-to-date and refresh it if necessary (note that there’s a known bug where new
installations say that it was updated “45 years ago”: probably an epoch problem but purely cosmetic).
Added a feature that will show you an icon next to the usernames of other people who use MegaMegaMonitor.
Improved automatic data updates so that they’ll always be triggered when upgrading to a new version of MegaMegaMonitor, to reduce the future risk of ‘sync errors’.
A new version to support a certain new MegaLounge (thanks, /u/dystopika). Users who update MegaMegaMonitor without getting the most-recent data will
probably see the wrong icons for a few hours. Sorry! If you’re affected, (a) update or reinstall MegaMegaMonitor, then (b) click your GreaseMonkey or TamperMonkey icon and then
“MegaMegaMonitor: manually update user lists now” and you should be fine.
Adding this new feature was a drag, because my architecture’s not set up well to accommodate this kind of “mixed bag” of MegaLounge access. I’ll be revising my architecture to make
this a stronger, more-flexible tool going forwards, but until then there won’t be any “extra” lounges added. I’m talking to you, /r/MegaEarth!
E.g. with subreddits, I can view multiple ones at once with /r/aww+cows (for /r/aww and /r/cows), but I can’t find
a way to do the same for multiple people (I guessed that /u/ketralnis+spez might work, but it didn’t). Adding all of the requested people to my friends list
would work, but isn’t ideal. Any suggestions?
Edit: sorry – I might have just tagged ‘ketralnis’.
Turns out I shouldn’t code after I’ve been drinking. v0.50 will have not-worked for almost everybody, because I forgot what programming language I was writing in about half-way
through it and tried to use a feature that doesn’t exist. And then somehow managed to deploy it and not notice. Sorry.
v0.51 fixes it. It should work again. Sorry, sorry, sorry…
I’ve just made available version 0.50 of MegaMegaMonitor. Thanks to everybody who’s helped test it so far. This version removes the limitation on people who’re listed as approved
contributors to more than a hundred subreddits, like /u/Greypo. Well, it probably does that. Personally, I’m only an approved contributor for like 65
subreddits. Give it a go and let me know how you get on!
Those of you getting automatic updates should “just get” it within the next day or so, not that you care because it probably already works for you!
Your browser should automatically update to the latest version, but if it doesn’t then you can nudge it from your GreaseMonkey/TamperMonkey UserScripts list, or else you can reinstall it from the site.
v0.41 makes the following change:
MegaMegaMonitor icons no longer “disappear” when scrolling with NeverEndingReddit or when posting a new comment (or rather, they disappear but they come back again, now!).
MegaMegaMonitor is distributed as a UserScript: a piece of Javascript code that your web browser runs on a particular website (in this case, Reddit). Here’s what you need to do to
install it:
(note: you need to be part of the MegaLounge chain or a certain other MegaLounge to get any benefit from this tool)
If you manage to make it work on another platform, let us know how!
2. Install MegaMegaMonitor
Go to https://danq.me/megamegamonitor/ and click on the “Install MegaMegaMonitor” button. You’ll be asked for confirmation first – you’re welcome to
inspect the source code if you’re not sure whether or not you should trust it, but it’s pretty self-explanatory.
3. Know your place
As you browse Reddit, you’ll now see icons after people’s names. You can hover over them for a tooltip/more details, but here’s a summary of what they mean:
Black roman numeral on white background – this user has climbed the MegaLounge chain no higher than you have. The number indicates the highest level
they’ve reached; hover over it for the name of the MegaLounge they’ve attained.
White roman numeral on black background – the MegaLounge you’re in right now is the highest level attained by the user you’re looking it. They’d probably
appreciate a gilding, so if they’ve said something clever, give them some gold!
White roman numeral on red background with green “plus” sign – this user has climbed the MegaLounge chain higher than you have! The number (and tooltip)
shows the highest level you both have in common.
Other icons? – these should be self-explanatory to you. If you’re supposed to know what they mean, then you probably already know what they mean.
Limitations
Note that certain secret places on the MegaLounge chain are omitted for reasons of security. ‘Nuff said.
Oh, and it won’t work (or won’t work reliably) if you’re a contributor to more than a hundred different private subreddits. Sorry. If there’s demand, I’ll fix it.Fixed in 0.50.
And it’ll sometimes be inaccurate at the very highest echelons of the MegaLounge chain: new MegaLounges only get added to the plugin manually, as soon as I remember to do so.
The tool will only update the details of contributors once every day or two, to minimise the risk of hammering Reddit’s servers. Therefore, it can sometimes be out-of-date (but
usually not by more than 24 hours).
Current Known Bugs
If you add a comment to a page or scroll using NeverEndingReddit, all the icons might disappear until you refresh the page. Fixed in 0.41.
People whose highest lounge is /r/MegaLoungeX see “?” instead of “X+” when looking at people whose highest lounge is higher than that (may affect
others, too). Believed to be fixed: “manually update user lists” or wait 24 hours if you’re affected and it should be fine.
[this post was originally made to a private subreddit]
I love the MegaLounges, and I really love the MegaManLounge. We’re a hugely disparate group of people yet we’ve come together into a wonderful community that I’m proud to be
a part of. And I felt like it’d be nice to give something back. But what?
If you’re like me, you love the experience of bumping into another MMLer elsewhere in the Redditverse (or around the Internet in general). I mean, what’d be really awesome is if we could find one another in the real world, but that’s a project for another day. Anyway: my
point is that I get a thrill when I spot a fellow MMLer wandering around in Redditland. But oftentimes I don’t look closely at people’s usernames, and I’m sure there must be times
that I’ve just overlooked one of you in some long thread in /r/AskReddit or /r/TodayILearned or something. I’d rather know
that you were there, my MML brothers and sisters.
So I spent this afternoon putting together a tool that does just that. Here’s a screenshot to show you what I’m talking about.
I’ve written a basic browser plugin that highlights MMLers (and other MegaLounge-like folks) anywhere on Reddit. So the idea is, if you install this plugin, you’ll always
know if somebody’s an MMLer or a MegaLounger because they’ll get one or two icons next to their name. In the screenshot – taken on /r/MegaLoungeVenus
(the 23rd MegaLounge) you’ll see a snipped of a conversation between our very own /u/love_the_heat and /u/teiu88. /u/love_the_heat has two icons: the first one (obviously) indicates that he’s a MegaMan, and the second one shows that he’s reached MegaLounge level thirty-one
(yes, there are quite a lot of MegaLounge levels now). /u/teiu88 only has one icon (he’s not a MegaMan!), showing that he’s at MegaLounge level twenty-three.
Note that it’s coloured differently to show that this is the level that I’m looking at right now: this helps because I can see whether people are commenting at their highest
lounge level or not, which may factor into my decision about where and when to gild them.
Someday, I’d like to make this available to MegaLoungers in general, but first I’d like to show it off to you, fine MegaMen, and hear what you think. Is this tool useful to anybody?
Should I make a production-grade version to share with you all? Or am I solving a problem that nobody actually has?
Just to add: there are several things I’d like to add and questions I’ve not yet answered before I release it to you; notably:
Right now it identifies members of the Super Secret MegaLounge, which is a violation of the rules of that lounge, so obviously I can’t release it yet. I’d like to find a
way to have it identify such people but only to other members of that lounge, but failing that, I need to have it just “skip” that lounge when showing how high somebody’s ascended.
On which note: what do you think about it identifying MegaMen? If I ever make this tool more-widely available than the MegaManLounge, should the version used by non-MegaManLounge
people identify MegaManLounge members, or not? I can see arguments either way, but I will of course go with the will of you fabulous people on this matter.
I’d like to add tooltips so that people who haven’t got the entire MegaLounge ascension mapped out in their minds can work out what’s what.
Similarly, I’d like to improve the icons so that they e.g. have gemstones next to the gemstone lounges, planets next to the planetary ones, etc.
Oh, and I really ought to make it work in more than just Firefox. I’d like it to work in Chrome, at the very least, too. IE can suck it, mind.
What do you think?
tl;dr: I’ve made a browser plugin that makes Reddit look like this, showing people’s highest MegaLounge and MegaManLounge status. Is
it a good idea?
I had a public “megalounges” multireddit that I made available to anybody in the megalounges who wanted a starting point to make a convenient multireddit list. But if I’d have put
this subreddit into that list, then it could give away the identity of this “final” subreddit, so I’ve made the multireddit private.
If you use a “megalounges” multireddit and you’re putting this lounge into it, don’t forget to make that multireddit private too!
When I was younger, I thought that magic was all about secrets. I’ve since changed my mind. Twice.
That the secret of magic is secrets isn’t an unreasonable assumption. We all know that magicians famously don’t reveal how their tricks work, so it feels like the secrecy
is what makes magic… magical. When as a kid I watched Paul Daniels make an elephant disappear on his (oh-so 1980s) TV show, and I remember being struck by the fact that he must be privy to
some kind of guarded knowledge, and my school friends and I would speculate wildly as to what it was. I saw the same kind of speculation when Derren Brown predicted the lottery a few years back: although the age of
the Internet changed the nature of the discussion, making them more global and perhaps more-cynical (not helped, perhaps, by Derren’s “explanation”).
Given the quality of this VHS-grade recording, you ought to be told that the big blob is the tent, the medium-sized blob is the elephant, and the small blob is a lens flare caused by
reflection off of Paul Daniels’ head.
But as time went on, I came to learn that the key to magic isn’t secrets.
That’s not to say that secrets aren’t important to the enjoyment of magic – they truly are. In the case of 95%+ of all of the magic tricks you’ve ever seen, you’d be considerably
less-impressed if you knew how they were done! And that’s because, most of the time, the principle behind any illusion is something so simple that you just can’t see it for looking. As
my childhood interest in magic grew, I acquired a small collection of props and books (one of which I rediscovered while removing things from my late father’s house, the other year), and my
model changed: in an age when information is as easily-available as your local library, magic isn’t about secrets, I decided, but about practice.
Did anybody else have one of these wonderful, if plasticky, magic sets? I wonder how many contemporary magicians started out this way.
Practice, practice, practice. A magician’s art starts alone, possibly in front of a mirror. And then it stays there for… quite a long time. If they’re interested in doing anything
beyond the most-basic card tricks, a card magician has at least half a dozen different moves and sleights to perfect, from which they’ll be able to derive a multitude of different
effects.
(There’s an anecdote about a young magician who tells her mentor that she’s learned a hundred tricks, and asks how many he knows. He thinks for a moment, and then
he replies, “I would say about nine.” If you feel like you ‘got’ the joke in that story, then you’re probably either a magician or else a Buddhist: there are some
strange similarities between the two.)
If they want to learn how to link rings or rejoin cut ropes or make things levitate, then the same rules apply. But even while that’s true, and practice is absolutely critical… practice
is also not the secret of magic.
“Palming” a card is difficult at the best of times. This particular King of Hearts might require larger hands than mine. Still, you know what they say about a magician with big
hands…
The key to magic – the thing that’s even more important than secrets and practice is… showmanship. I’ll come back to that, but first, let me
tell you how I lost and, later, rediscovered magic.
I loved magic as a kid, but my interest in it (as a performer, at least) sort-of dwindled in my early-to-mid teens. I can’t explain why; but you’d be forgiven for assuming that perhaps
I was distracted by discovering, like many teenage boys do, a different kind of ‘one-handed shuffle’ that provided far more-instant satisfaction. In any case: aside from a few
basically-self-working card tricks here and there, I didn’t perform any magic at all for almost twenty years.
Until Christmas of 2013.
Is THIS your card? Damn… I probably shouldn’t have got it inked, then, should I?
At Christmas, Ruth‘s little brother Robin visited. And at some point – and I’m not even sure why – he said, “I want to
learn a card trick. Does anybody know any card tricks?”
“I might know a couple,” I said, thinking back and trying to put my mind to one, as I reached for a pack of cards, “Here: give these a shuffle…” I can’t remember what I performed first:
probably a classic like Out Of This World or the Chicago Opener: something lightweight, and easy to learn, and based entirely in muscle-memory
manoeuvres and not in anything as complex as even a basic misdirection.
And somehow that act of teaching Robin a couple of beginner card tricks, and challenging him to take that knowledge and develop them some more… that simple act was enough to flip a
switch in my brain. Suddenly, I wanted to jump headlong back into magic again.
I’ve been performing at whatever opportunity presents itself: at bars, around the office, to passers-by in Oxford’s Covered Market. Basically – anywhere they haven’t thrown me out of,
yet.
Since last time around, there’s not only books (and so many great books) but also DVDs from which to learn (and relearn) magical principles. I’ve been learning new sleights as fast as
my brain – and my hands – can take it, and gradually building a repertoire of effects that fall somewhere between confusing and delighting. Because I’ve for so-long had such a
strong belief in the importance of practice, I’ve been trying to find excuses to perform: to such an extent that I’ll spend some of my lunchtimes in any given week hanging around in
Oxford’s public spaces, performing for random passers-by. Practice in front of a mirror is good and everything, but practice in front of a stranger is so much-more valuable… especially
when you’re forced to think on your feet after a spectator does something that you didn’t anticipate!
I also accidentally ended up starting a local magic club: I joined a thread of people bemoaning the lack of a club in Oxford, on a forum on which I
participate, and after I’d found a couple of other guys who felt them same way, suggested a date, time, and venue, and made it happen. Now it happens every month, and we few are the
closest thing Oxford’s got to a magic society.
I tuned up at the Ashmolean Museum for their magic-themed event, in May. They’d hired some professional magicians, so I parked myself away from the main events and just spent a few
exhausting hours performing for an endlessly-renewing crowd. A few people asked which of the entertainers (named on their brochures) I was, and I had to explain that no, I was
just a guy who liked magic and had turned up. With props. Yes, really.
But yes: showmanship. If there’s a secret to magic, then it’s that. Any fool can find your card in the deck (even if you don’t know a way to do this – the “secret” – then
I can guarantee that at least one of your friends does). Any magician can do it in several different ways (the “practice”), and thus keep you guessing by eliminating the options – how
did he do it blindfolded? But a magic trick is only as enjoyable to watch as it is well-presented: like any entertainer, and perhaps more than many, a magician relies on
their presentation style to make the difference…
This is an opinion that sometimes puts me at odds with some of the other magicians in the club. I’ll demonstrate a new routine I’m working on, and they’ll ask how it was done… and when
I reveal that I used the cheapest, simplest, easiest or plainly cheekiest approach possible, they’ll be instantly less-impressed. There are plenty of magicians more-talented than I, for
whom the artistry comes from the practice, and to see somebody achieve what is – to a layperson – the same result in a way that requires less sleight-of-hand or a
less-subtle misdirection than ‘their’ way is apparently a little grating! They’d rather perform an illusion using their best moves and their most-sophisticated sleights than to simply
do it “well enough” to get the desired effect (and thus, the desired reaction). Certainly, it’s desirable to have several ways to perform the same trick (just in case you end up
performing it twice), but those ways don’t all have to be the most-complicated approaches you know: sometimes the magical equivalent of “look behind you, a three-headed monkey” is more than enough.
