OK, since we moved everything from custom code over to a standard WordPress install, life has gotten easier, but aside from the comments, it’s a lot harder to build the kinds of community like we used to have here back in the day.  In the meantime, I’m having a blast with the TasteBetter Facebook page.

So now we have one for VP.  That you can join.  And then the mayhem will be in your news feed. Which may or may not be better for you at work.  Because Facebook is what workplace internet is for, apparently.

And yes, the dots connected a while ago, but Facebook was all clever with detecting the “P” word.  It wasn’t until tonight that I realized they can’t detect it if I say it like a wrestling announcer.

Now now join us now.  S’gonna be fun, and you’ll freak out your friends every time you comment on something.

This would be the post that says “test post” but wait! There’s more!

So we’ve upgraded VP to use WordPress, ending a 9 year tradition of custom code and letting me focus on doing actual stuff that matters.  Unfortunately, in the process all the comments have been lost – I hope temporarily.

(Minor technobabble:) We’ve been using Disqus on most of our sites, and while I enjoyed the extra functionality it brought to the table, migrating platforms causes all of the comments to disappear.  They’re still out there, but the “glue” that connects them to the site gets lost somehow.  I actually spent a few hours yesterday on code to (I hoped) link everything back up, but it didn’t work, so for now we’re sticking with stock WordPress comments and I’ll hopefully have the old comments reimported sometime next week.

In the meantime, it’s business as usual, and if you notice anything weird (I’ve done less testing on this site than anything I’ve ever done!) please let me know through our spiffy new contact form!

Just a quick note to subscribers of our RSS feed: we are very sorry. Things should be better now. That is all.

We’ve got a bit of a situation brewing with the Emily Deschanel and tofu haiku challenge – if you’ll recall, late last week I suggested that people should enter the Tofu Haiku contest with poems that reference both tofu and Bones star Emily Deschanel, because I thought it would be funny. And it was! The problem is, this is hands down the best entry, in my opinion:

Spring tofu sizzles!
O Emily Deschanel
your soft skin warms bones.

See how it mentions tofu, Emily Deschanel, and season (that’s apparently something proper haiku does)? Does that last line rule or what? The problem is, it was submitted by one of the Tofu Haiku organizers. I never said anyone was inelegible, but since the guy lives and breathes haiku as part of his job, he’s got a bit of an edge. So, I’m extending the contest a few more days to level the playing field. Submit your entries and then post them in the comments so we can see them.

No stories today, what with being scooped a few times recently, but the lull in submissions managed to free some time for the good ol’ Vegan Booze Directory, our list of vegan friendly alcohol, which now has almost 150 entries in it! That thing really needs reformatting (150 is a lot more than the dozen or so entries we had back in the day), but it also needs to be portable! What would work best for you in the liquor store? A wallet card? A version on your iPod/PDA/phone? A telephone hotline? Let me know! I won’t promise a timeline, but patio season is starting soon up here, and I’ve got a thirsty mind…

After the various outages of the past few weeks, I decided to move VP to a new server. Everything seems to be working, but if you notice anything weird, please post a comment here as well as email me… Regular frontpage posting resumes tomorrow morning, as per usual.

Sorry for the outage last night! It looks like our web host only did half of a database migration last night, and while I think I’ve fixed the problem, I’m waiting for confirmation before I do anything else on VP today (plus I’m late for work now). Thanks for all the emails regarding the problem, and sorry once again for the disruption in your porn-tacular lives.

Next year we’re going to make actual trophies, but this year, JuxtaposedPink needs to contact me with a mailing address and a pick of a shirt so I can get her prize out to her for winning Sexonator 2007! In previous years there was a margin of one or two votes between the top 3, but things really picked up in the last few days of the contest and JP’s photo was the clear favourite. As always, I was amazed by the entries – we’ve got ourselves some sexy neighbours here in Veganpornolia (the next contest should be to name our fictional country). Thanks to all who entered for making it another fun event, and congratulations again, JuxtaposedPink!

Sexonator! Sexonator! Sexonator! Sexonator! and did I mention Sexonator! – it’s not too late to post your picture and vote for the sexiest pornstar of 2007! There’s no clear breakaway winner yet, and still lots of time, so vote early and vote often, and if you don’t have a pic in the thread yet, get going! Link

It’s that most wonderful time of the year where everyone’s going nuts, and I only know one cure, and lo, we shall call it Sexonator – the semi-annual search for the sexiest VP user! Post your photo in the comments (instructions below), vote on as many as you like, and the distribution of prizey goodness will occur on, oh, what the hey, Valentine’s Day. Rules (such as they are) below.Official rules and regulations:
1) One entry per profile. We won’t necessarily delete multiple entries, but historically this leads to a splitting of the vote between your pics and you lose.
2) KEEP THE PICS SAFE FOR WORK.
3) Vote for as many photos as you like (the system will ignore it if you from voting more than once for the same picture)
4) Prizes will be announced closer to the closing date, depending on what we’ve got kicking around.
5) Yes, the picture has to be of you.
6) To help page load times and prevent layout issues, keep the pics under 500 pixels wide if at all possible.
7) We reserve the right to locally host and/or edit pictures for size if item 6 gets ignored too much… You maintain ownership of the entries, but by posting a pictue in this contest, you grant Thrust Labs license to use the images for various vegan propaganda projects.

Also, for people who have trouble posting pictures, here’s how to do it:
1) Get a free Flickr account, log into it and upload a pic.
2) View the photo. Click on the icon above it that says “all sizes”
3) Select the “Medium” picture.
4) Scroll to the bottom where it says “To link to this photo on other websites you can either:”
5) Copy the HTML in step 1 to your VP comment.
6) Use the VP preview feature to make sure it worked!

That’s it for now! Please keep this thread as free from non-entry comments as possible – questions and comments can go here.

Good luck!