Educational rambling is welcomed 
Some people ramble and what you come away with from reading their posts is not a whole lot of anything interesting. But I don’t recall that ever happening with your posts. Maybe for someone with zero interest in linux or programing. But they’ll live! Some of the best stuff I’ve read on BLF has been completely off-topic. Off-topic is not evil here. Don’t feel the need to avoid “rambling”.
forum search ???
Elaborate?
As far as I can see the little google search box is up in the corner where it has always been.
There’s a site-wide search widget at the top left of each page, a per-thread one at the top of each thread page, and two per-user ones on each user profile. How many more are needed?
If you don’t see a search box in the top left bar above the “Main Menu” it’s probably because you have an ad blocker running. BTW that’s not a trick of mine to force people to disable their ad blockers, it’s just an element that happens to get blocked by many of the default ad blocker lists due to its Google origins.
LOL, interesting.
this may sound incredibly simplistic, but is there a way to make links automatically become
http://www.banggood.com/BLF-A6-CREE-XPL-3D-74modes-Flashlight-Nitecore-UM20-2x18650-p-998532.html
That’s what SB is diligently working on in the posts right above yours! 
Weren’t we just over this, like a couple posts up? Bort is losing his memory. I think it’s from too much coke.
Its the aspartame in coke zero i tell you (once mouseover is fixed coke zero will appear in my signature)
It looks like SB pasted a link, while i pasted a link as a link with the text being the link
Nope, sorry, but I really can’t find a way to work around the broken links with many-dashes-in-them. Please just make the text and the link the same for those troublesome links, as Bort did above:
"http://www.banggood.com/BLF-A6-CREE-XPL-3D-74modes-Flashlight-Nitecore-UM20-2x18650-p-998532.html":http://www.banggood.com/BLF-A6-CREE-XPL-3D-74modes-Flashlight-Nitecore-UM20-2x18650-p-998532.html
…becomes…
http://www.banggood.com/BLF-A6-CREE-XPL-3D-74modes-Flashlight-Nitecore-UM20-2x18650-p-998532.html
But with Advanced Post Editor, just pasting the link results in:
http://www.banggood.com/BLF-A6-CREE-XPL-3D-74modes-Flashlight-Nitecore-UM20-2x18650-p-998532.html
The Advanced Post Editor IMHO is consistently better, so everyone should be using it by default. 
SB, what do you think about this suggestion?
Best Regards,
George
Unfortunately it’s not good for mobile / touch device users, of which we have a large percentage, so not a good default.
I would strongly encourage everyone to use the “Simple Post Editor” for everything except posts and reviews that need very complex formatting.
And sorry I didn’t answer your previous post yet about selecting the default editor in the user preferences. I’ve researched it extensively, and there is definitely not an easy or straightforward way to do that.
But we know that your magic is MOST POWERFUL
Best Regards,
George
Update: 07-MAR-2016
- Added user account settings for “Use the Advanced Post Editor for new threads” and “Use the Advanced Post Editor in existing threads”. This preference is served by a janky Javascript call, so please let me know if you run into any oddities.
As mentioned previously, I would strongly recommend using the Simple Post Editor for everything except highly complex posts that need a lot of formatting, so this option to use the Advanced Post Editor by default is not recommended.
WOW SB, Thank you VERY MUCH. GREATLY APPRECIATED.
Btw, I set my preferences to use the Advanced Post Editor, But when I quoted your post my reply switched to the Simple Post Editor. :-((
I suspect that if the quoted post was generated with the Simple Editor, it switches to it, Or?
Best Regards,
George
Edit:
Tested again, & now it uses the Advanced Editor, but the quoted post is mangled. 
Oops, should be fixed now.
Tested again, & now it uses the Advanced Editor, but the quoted post is mangled. 