fun_like_that: (Default)
2008-09-27 09:26 am

Things that are annoying

01) Fic banners. Sorry, but I adblock just about every single one of them. Especially if they're crossposted to five communities in a row. Or if they're bigger than like- 200x100. Cut them or save them for big fics or something.

02) That Blake Lively and Penn Bagwhatever feel the need to damn-near grope each other in every magazine shoot or promo for GG. WE GET IT. YOU'RE TOGETHER. Can you please stop touching each other now?

03) Wtf, Paul Newman? It's been coming for awhile, but STILL. 2008 is the year of deaths or something.

04) LJ's need to overhaul our user info. It's fine the way it is. Leave shit alone that doesn't need to be "fixed" and work on stuff that does. Like that I've seen 4 billion people post about their icons that have been changed to someone else's lately. Might want to fix that, eh?

06) That someone on LJ did something, I think, that has made the top of my pages look like this -- cut to save flists )

What's up with that? All my comment pages look like that.

Today I've got to go to the laundromat (see: firemen at our house this week because the washer was on fire or something), go to look at desks, maybe shop, get groceries and check out how to volunteer at the SPCA! Whee!
fun_like_that: (Default)
2008-05-27 01:58 pm

*insert informative subject line here*

One good thing about having satellite in my room now is that I can watch stuff I'd never be able to watch before because I'd have to be downstairs and competing for the TV.

I just finished watching the Dixie Chicks documentary Shut Up and Sing and it was pretty damn good. Natalie Maines (Pasdar?) has always kind of bugged me, but she grew on me with the whole controversy on the eve of the war and now, after seeing this, I really like all of them. It was a funny, interesting look at how they dealt with the situation and it was SUPER interesting to see the behind-the-scenes going-ons on the PR side of dealing with, basically, a nightmare issue like that.

I also noticed in the credits that it was produced by David Cassidy. A little Six Degrees of Katie Cassidy for me, LOL. And yes, I know he's her dad. I don't know if it was THAT David Cassidy, but still.

On another note, if you haven't voted in the LJ Advisory Board elections yet, you still have time. Two days, as a matter of fact. If you don't know what's going on with the situation or who's running there are posts abound about the whole thing. One good post to get you up to speed is this one by [livejournal.com profile] moonilicious and this one by [livejournal.com profile] oxoniensis at [livejournal.com profile] spnroundtable with links to other posts for more info. The advisory board might turn out to be a crock of shit, we don't know. But if you don't vote you really can't complain about LJ when bad juju goes down.

Now I'm off to pick up a few groceries and decide what the hell to have for dinner. I might have some One Tree Hill s1 caps to post later. I broke down and bought the first season a couple days ago because they're on sale here for 30$. I might have to break down and buy them all. :( Damn you, CMM! *shakes fist*
fun_like_that: (Default)
2008-05-25 09:49 pm
Entry tags:

LJ-iversary

For the second year in a row I've missed my LJ birthday by a day. I've had this sucker for five years now. And been in fandom for five and a half years. Wow.

Number of journal entries: 1698
Number of people of flist: 148
Person who introduced you to LJ: Someone no longer on my flist.
Still friends with this person? see above
How many people have you introduced to LJ? Still only one.
List everyone on your flist that you have met in person: OMG. I don't think I can name everyone because I'll never remember but- [livejournal.com profile] torturemysoul, [livejournal.com profile] lostt1, [livejournal.com profile] txtequilanights, [livejournal.com profile] mrscutedean, [livejournal.com profile] caithream, [livejournal.com profile] spazzbot, UM UMUM, oh, jesus christ. PEOPLE I MET AT WINCON.
Anyone on LJ you can't stand? It depends on the day but yeah, there's a few.
Name one person on your flist who you'd most like to meet: Anyone I didn't meet at Wincon and some I did!
Number of comments: Posted: Posted: 14,648 - Received: 21,914 Last year- Posted: 10,934 - Received: 15,654 -- Only four thousand in a year? Isn't that low? Man, I suck.
Biggest pet peeve about LJ: Again, it depends on the day. People who don't read the user info for a comm before posting and then say, "I don't know if this is allowed, but..." OR OR those people that say, "Mods are free to delete..." Well, yes. If I'M the mod then I AM allowed to delete your post. Read the user info and you wouldn't have to fucking say that.
Do you feel close to most of the people on your flist? Some people, yes.
How many journals on LJ do you have? Just this one for regular posting but a couple others for layout testing and whatnot.
fun_like_that: (Default)
2008-05-21 10:53 pm
Entry tags:

All hands on deck!

How many people are aware of what the LiveJournal Advisory board is? You probably have a vague recollection of it from the Strikethrough debacle from a year ago or whenever LJ skirmishes pop up now and then. It's made up of non-user members (along with Brad, the founder of LJ) and now, user-representatives. The current board non-users and the mandate can be found here.

I've heard NO ONE on my flist talk about the elections for the user-rep positions aside from [livejournal.com profile] vichan, who is running. She got the required 100 supporting nominations to make it to the voting along with 16 other people. In case you don't know who she is, she's in SPN fandom and, among other things, she created [livejournal.com profile] fandom_counts last year as a way of showing LiveJournal that people involved in ALL fandoms matter, too; that we have a voice that should be noticed.

Her whole platform, which is laid out VERY well, can be read here. I haven't read any of the other platforms, if any of the other candidates have them up yet, but [livejournal.com profile] vichan has been talking about this opportunity since the idea of it came about months and months ago. She's dedicated to LJ, she's dedicated to making sure LJ is accountable to the users and she's dedicated to doing a good job.

Voting will open on May 22 for two elections--one for the Cyrillic-language users and one for everyone else, which is us. The community that has all the people running, the details and, tomorrow, the voting will be posted at is [livejournal.com profile] lj_election_en.

I don't know how many people care about this sort of thing, especially right now since LJ's been quiet with issues lately and there hasn't been much bruhaha. But I DO know that people care about LJ being disrupted and our fandom home being in flux. That's why this is important, at least to me. I'd encourage everyone to vote for [livejournal.com profile] vichan but I think it's important to vote period in this thing. If you don't, the next time LJ goes balls up you really have no right to complain.

I don't know how effective the Advisory board will be. Sad, but honest. However, at least there will be representatives from US, the USERS, there. And how awesome would it be for one of them to be from fandom? Pretty damn, eh?

Please, spread the word. Link back to [livejournal.com profile] vichan's post, link back to this one, whatever. Get the word out to everyone to vote and pick someone they feel will represent the users well. Voting runs from May 22 to the 29th.
fun_like_that: (Default)
2008-03-19 10:12 pm
Entry tags:

More spam, of the LJ variety this time

I wasn't going to comment on the latest LJ thing. In all honesty I don't care and I'm way too easily swayed by both sides of the argument. I can see why people are upset but I also don't think it's all as malicious as some people are/were making everything out to be. To be even more honest, I don't even think I know everything that people were upset about. Even when I go to IJ or see an LJ page with Firefox when I'm logged out I don't see ads, so that doesn't bother me.

I'm not doing the strike because I can't guarantee I won't post/comment and I don't think it'll do anything for the reasons a lot of people have already bandied about. Rock on if you ARE doing it, though.

I read this post by [livejournal.com profile] pat_t about LJ vs IJ and found it really interesting. It seems like every time there's an LJ flare up people tend to bring up the idea of running for the hills to IJ. Eh, whatevs. I'll go where the masses go. Yes, I'm one of those people.

In my opinion, SUP can do whatever the hell they want. They can change all the colours to neon pink and green and the font to comic sans. I can leave. It's their business, it's their choice and nothing I and 20 of my friends can say will stop it. Will it irritate me? You betcha. Will I be annoyed if I have to leave? Sure. But I can find layouts to work around that stuff and as long as there are enough people staying that fandom exists, as close to this form as it can be, I'll be okay.

I just want LJ to be honest with us. If they're looking for money, fine. In this day and age who ISN'T looking for money, you know? I really just can't work up the energy to be angry over this thing that likely won't affect me, as long as I can still do the things here I can do every day. I want them to make statements about what they're doing and stand by them. I want everyone on staff, whether they're the CEOs, administrative staff, coders, business, technical, volunteers--WHOEVER--to be on the same page. Even if I don't agree with what they're doing (ethical issues aside) as long as they stand strong on the decisions they make, I'm okay with them.

Maybe that's all short-sighted and naive, maybe I should be more up in arms. *shrugs* But right now all I can see is a business that wants to make money and because they own LJ they have every right to do that however they see fit. We have every right to leave and set up shop somewhere else, but there's no guarantee it'll be like LJ or won't change into what LJ has started leaning towards. We'll find a way through it, I'm sure. They do have a tendency to put their foot in their mouth a lot, though, don't they?

Tonight [livejournal.com profile] theljstaff posted this entry with an apology for the past few days that is being appreciated by a lot of people. But then at the end they posed two questions about changes that could be implemented. THESE are two things I COULD NOT BE MORE AGAINST.

Revenue sharing - Should users be rewarded for their content and contributions? and Subscriptions – Should moderators be able to charge for access to closed communities?

Good LORD I'm so against those two things. First off- HI COPYRIGHT ISSUES! I can't see any way to reward some content and contributions and not others to avoid potential lawsuits from all sorts of media creators. I don't really want someone coming along and seeing me getting money for my fandom works, based on their creations, and being slapped with a lawsuit. That's how I'm interpreting all that stuff right now. Please feel free to correct me if you can find anything else that could be worked out as from that one question.

The second one... no. Just no. People already get pissed off when they have to join an icon community or a fic community to see the works, you know? Some people are really freaking weird about having people apply to see their shit to curb bandwidth thieves or to get more comments or WHATEVER. But CHARGING people to see their stuff? A) No one's going to join a lot of those which will inspire long sob posts about how no one wants to join their comm and no one likes them and they get no comments. Only this time it's about money. B) Complaints and whining about popularity contests. "Why does person A have 200 people joining their community but I only have 20? WHAA WHAA WHAA."

This would also make me even more wary about people who bring up stories about needing money to pay rent or to buy food or something. I mean, that happens now, I know, but in this case I'd worry about those instances becoming even more prevalent and trust becoming a very, very precious commodity. And then--THEN--what happens when a case of plagiarism or stealing comes up? Will people be able to differentiate between paying for access to a community versus paying for whatever's in the comm? It might seem like the same thing but if someone's got an icon community, in theory (from the way this question is posed) you'd be paying for access to the community and then everything in it is fair game. But some people would likely be more charging for the things in the journal, rather than access. So if they see someone using, say an icon, without joining the community would they get pissed off and try to file a complaint or something? Then the copyright issue comes up AGAIN.

I also fear that being on LJ becomes a job, a CHORE, rather than something fun and a communication tool. If someone pays to join your community and you don't actually post anything, or enough to satisfy the people that have joined, are they going to get pissed off at you?

They're both just potential questions at the moment to get feedback. So far I've seen one person in favour of one of them but the rest are almost violently opposed to at least paying for closed comms, which is good. Some people are tentatively in favour of revenue sharing but I feel as soon as you introduce any kind of monetary (or even monetary-esque) gain into LJ it gets waaaaaaay too hairy.

I'm glad they're just questions at the moment and people have been speaking out VERY against the second one so far. SO glad.

Thoughts?