kaizoku

I struck today but it was hard. I think I probably use livejournal more than any other site at the moment...

Hypothetically there may be a new journalling system run by awesome folks coming - go do the poll. Especially if you're not in fandom. If anyone can do this, it's synecdochic, I think.

Also there is this project: elsejournal which looks to be a similar idea. It's not totally clear what's going on with it but the community maintainer is someone I have a lot of respect for.

Off to go dancing now!

Read this. I think I'm about to be done now. I don't want to leave because hey, convenient, but then I know that's what they're depending on. That we'll all bitch and complain and then sit on our blogs and keep bringing them in the revenue.

Or maybe they're not. It seeming more and more like they're trying to get rid of my queer, bisexual, bondage-loving, fanfiction-writing ass. Fuck you, SUP. This is personal now.

* * *

In "funny yet depressing" we have this quote from The Indypendent's article SXSW vs IVAW: The New York Times “Floods the Zone” (here) constrasting the NYT's coverage of the South by Southwest music festival with its coverage of the Winter Soldier Report, a conference that took place in Wash DC this weekend in which US veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq occupations testified about their experiences...

Description of the special New York Times South By Southwest Blog (SXSW): “We’ll be writing about music, scenes and the strange things that happen when thousands of music fans wander a few blocks of Texas for long days and nights. Check in a few times a day–this is going to be fun.”

Description of the special New York Times Winter Soldier Blog: Oh, wait, there isn’t one.

Number of articles devoted to SXSW over five days: 35

Number of articles covering this weekend’s “Winter Solider” hearings held by the IVAW: 0
[....]
Best Line of SXSW Coverage: “I just missed Santogold, but seeing Spank Rock and 2 Live Crew on the same bill was like watching an apple fall not far from the tree.”

Best Line of “Winter Solider” Coverage: Er …

NYT, I kinda love you for talking about Spank Rock. But seriously. Your priorities, where are they?

No. NO.

And I'd just been thinking that LJ hadn't fucked up in a while and maybe I'd get a paid account.

From here: Basic Account is an option available to accounts which were created before March 12, 2008. No account created after this date can be turned into a Basic Account.

But do they mention it in the latest news post? Naah. That'd be sily.

ETA: ( oh look, i do have thoughts other than F*** S*** F*** )

ETA2: I'm not sure if the change also goes for communities. Anyone have info on this?

ETA3: On who to complain to about this

I was just over in the Nanosystems building and noticed a sign in the hallway:

"These halls carry sound too efficiently. Please keep the amplitude of noises low."

Yes, I will do my best to decrease of height of any sound waves I produce!
Yay.

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So, I've been wondering why pretty much all of bandom uses the | symbol nonstop... and then in writing this post, I found out that actually that is how Firefox run on a Mac displays ♥ (♥, the heart symbol.) There's a fix here (scroll down) but the problem with it is that you have to force all pages to display your chosen fonts to get it to work. So, you have hearts but everything else looks shitty.

If, however, you enclose the heart symbol code in "tt" tags (for typewriter text) like this - <tt>&hearts;</tt> (ETA: but without "amp" in there - it shouldn't be showing up. That's annoying) - anyone will be able to see it.

Though personally, I've gotten kind of fond of the | symbol.

... as in, Pete | Patrick

I think we should all start using it. It looks neat, it's easier to type, and there's a certain stupid fandom-ish pleasure to it. (I also could go off on a tangent here about how it is really cool because the vertical bar aka pipe is used in computing to symbolize inter-process communication, i.e. feeding your output back in as input... *cough* computer programmers, please forgive me...)

It's like the OTHER slash.... only instead of a slash, it's a pipe, which just means (for example) "Pete loves Patrick." (By the way, don't you love how I slipped the Pete/Patrick thing in all subtle-like?)

The pipe/vertical bar ( | ) does not, however, display exactly like the &hearts; symbol does... If you're not using a mac, it looks a little more like this (only slightly thicker):
│ (vs. | )
(Q for windows users: does that first line appear as a broken line for you?)
But sadly, the only way to get that symbol that I can find is to use the ascii code ALT 179, which it seems I can't do on my laptop.

I'm still left wondering why the heart is so popular in bandom, especially without an accompanying " 's" (e.g. Patrick ♥'s Pete.)

we | txtng? grmmr = sux?

Meme: What do you really use LJ for?

If you have your browser set to remember and complete web addresses you type into the address bar (it's AutoComplete on IE and Firefox), then type in http://community.livejournal.com/ and list the first nine addresses that come up. (Don't include any community whose rules state that you should not discuss it in a public forum!) If a specific post comes up, just put the community address not the link to the post. Don't list the same community twice.

( my list )

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The Meme:

After creating the meme, I thought I would try to find out more about AutoComplete. It turns out that, according to Microsoft's help pages it is based on:

• Your Favorites and History folders
• The contents of the folder you specify for files or folders
• The contents of the left pane in Windows Explorer
• A list of your most recently typed addresses, commands, or AutoSearch queries, which are stored in the registry

I also found a more detailed article on AutoComplete, which says that it gets its information from:

* The data store, primarily. The data store draws from previously completed INPUT type=text fields. The contents of the AutoComplete box are retrieved from the values corresponding to the field name.
* The vCard schema. This schema is created from the values specified in the Profile Assistant.
* The Common Name list. This list is generated from commonly used INPUT type=text field names from popular Web sites, and is linked to the respective vCard schema."

From what I can tell (and I'm not a programmer) VCARD_NAME categorizes different types of information (e.g. name, email, phone number, business) and then supplies them in the appropriate place.

I think it's also interesting that it uses a list of a "Common Name list" - which seems to indicate that it's also getting information from somewhere other than just ones own computer.