Any World (That I'm Welcome To)

I think I'm giving up cross-posting to Livejournal.

If you want to keep following me, I am on Dreamwidth as Sunnyskywalker and also on Archive of Our Own as, yes, Sunnyskywalker.

I'm trying a new layout, and I like it so far, except for one thing: the post body text is too light a gray. I'd like to change it to something darker, and I don't have that option in my little customization area for some reason. So I think I have to use a CSS override, but I don't know enough CSS to understand the tutorials. Can anyone help?

So, more people have been banned from LJ in a smaller, slower version of Strikethrough '07. synechdocic points out that LJ isn't doing this just for kicks or even for ad revenue, but because they're rightly afraid of running afoul of US law. I'm in very little danger of getting TOSed (I think), and I don't know anyone involved, but I still don't like this. If the characters look like they might be of age, shouldn't LJ at least ask the artists about it (or ask them to take it down if they still think it's too iffy) before deleting?

This is depressing. If it were just LJ policy, it would be a lot easier to put pressure on LJ to cut that out, or to just move to another site. But it looks like either option would only be a short-term solution. What to do?

But in case LJ does explode, or everyone just leaves in a Great Fannish Migration, I have a GreatestJournal and an InsaneJournal set up for the short-term solution. (IJ says it also uses the Miller Test, and that it won't take anything down without an official takedown notice, for the record. On the other hand, they haven't been pressured like LJ yet as far as I know, either.)

Another benefit to having those journals? Backup. Of course, there is ljArchive, which backs up your LJ (comments included) on your hard drive. (ETA: screecapped tutorial here.) This is good to have. But multiple backups in different places are also good to have, just in case a magnet attacks your computer. I've recently started transferring my LJ entries to my GJ and IJ with LJ-Sec. There's a handy guide on how to do so here. I've also just started using Semagic to post to all three journals at once. Guide on how to do so here.

I recommend backing up things regardless of external events, since you never know when your hard drive or the internet might explode. The backup journals serve as both storage and as a way to find lost friends should something happen to LJ, so they're doubly convenient.

Now that I have backups on the brain, I need to get on backing up some of my personal documents...

Back in April, BBC Science News reported that scientists have discovered real kryptonite. Okay, it's white rather than green, doesn't glow, and seems to be harmless. But check out this quote from Dr. Stanley: "Towards the end of my research I searched the web using the mineral's chemical formula - sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide - and was amazed to discover that same scientific name, written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luthor from a museum in the film Superman Returns.

"The new mineral does not contain fluorine (which it does in the film) and is white rather than green but, in all other respects, the chemistry matches that for the rock containing kryptonite."

I guess all the supervillains have used up most of the green and red kryptonite by now. I wonder what white kryptonite does to Superman?

In other news, Wankers for Ignorance is at it again. This time, they're targeting companies that use Google ads. I'm sure the Google staff heard about the previous incident, and I hope they're able to explain to any customers who want to pull their ads that WFI is not necessarily telling a straight story.

We're trying to remember and list works in which Death appears as a personified character over at told_tales. Join the fun!

The best thing since Sex Pollen and Aliens Made Them Do It? The Pentagon tried to make a "gay bomb" (or more accurately, a "gay and really horny" bomb). Leaving aside the WTF PENTAGON reaction for a moment, I see a lot of "The Pentagon Made Us Do It!" fics in the future.

But also, WTF PENTAGON?

Notes on a Fridge (On a Spaceship) For your Firefly fix. I like River's drawings.

LJ Support finally got back to me about my header-overlap weirdness, yay! Now the words aren't all smushed together! You can see the fix here.

I think the LJ staff must be approving a huge backlog of posts in suggestions, because I'm suddenly seeing two or three new updates there (some dating May twentysomethingeth) every two minutes. On one hand, I like seeing other people's suggestions for the site. On the other hand, OH GOD MAKE IT STOP.

Two of the suggestions that especially attract me:

Add wordcount to spell check

Multiple Userpic Upload

The good thing about both of this suggestions (besides being useful) is that they look relatively simple to implement. Not that I know what the programming would actually entail. But they seem like they shouldn't take much work.

I also find it interesting that several of the suggestions concern filtering adult content, tagging journals or comms as containing adult content, and making adult comms unviewable to minors. Also, creating a new category for "character" journals and adding a separate "likes" list in profiles. Sorting through all of this type of suggestion will take some time, I bet, especially since I'm sure there will be many more shortly. Notice, LJ, that none of the suggestions are "Let users vote other users off the island site."

Also, I had my LAST FINAL EVER yesterday. I'm still adjusting to the idea of life without school. I cannot remember such a life. (But that's not the reason I plan to go back in a few years, I swear.)

Finally saw the third Pirates and will probably post thoughts later.

Six Apart has issued apologies and reinstated most of the wrongly-suspended journals by now, but I can't just breathe a sigh of relief and relegate the incident to an interesting footnote, or even chapter, of LiveJournal history.

No, I don't mean OH NOES SA/LJ IS TEH DEBIL IN R FANDOM COMIN 2 DELETE US. At least, not in such a simplistic and capslock-tastic manner. I'm suggesting more a general wariness and watchfulness than paranoia - just being cautious, really.

Here are the problems and potential problems I see that Strikethrough '07 raised:

( What does the interests function mean, and how do we use them? SA has only minimally clarified this, and not in a way that benefits users. At all. )

( Suspending hundreds of journals based on interests without so much as reading the profiles is poor procedure, and SA hasn't demonstrated that they recognize how poor it is. )

( Mr. CEO's statement about what is 'appropriate' in 'their' community is awfully vague, and what content is allowed or not is still up in the air. This could lead to future problems. )

( Finally, we're now reminded that LJ isn't really a public space. But where on the internet is? )

I've read through this before, but some of the implications didn't sink in last time. This has been most enlightening, but not especially comforting. Some points of interest follow.

First, from the Legal Information, a rule:

Do not spam the site or any account on the site.

This is a perfectly good rule. I have no quibbles with it.

However, I can't find a definition of "spam," and that does worry me. Hypothetically, say there is some incident which causes many people to wish to register concerns or complaints. And say that these people start typing their complaints when there are only a few pages of similar complaints, but by the time they post them, there are more like 50 pages. And say further that each person then responds to one or two other comments, or perhaps comments again to express frustration that the site has not responded in a timely manner.

Does commenting on a nearly-maxed-out post with a statement similar to thousands of others count as spam according to LiveJournal? I would like some reassurance that it does not. I'm sure they're sick of that pirate song over at HQ, and who's to say they won't just lump everything after 30 (or however many) pages together and call it spam? I sure hope they wouldn't, given how badly such mass action went for them recently, but again, I'd like some clarification in their policy as reassurance.

On to the TOS. Note: the TOS says it was last modified on April 18, 2006. ( Cut for length. )

So this morning's apology and the reinstating of innocent (i.e., "not full of pedos") communities doesn't reassure me as much as it could.

School is crazy! I really don't know about this quarter system. A midterm after three weeks seems just a little fast. And I have a paper to write... So, once again, from the depths of my hard drive, something I had forgotten I'd written. Interestingly, I wrote this before I had ever heard of MsScribe. I thought it was crazy unbelievable crack. Silly me.

That doesn't make this thingy any less crazy, though. But at least I get to use my shiny new Rotfang Conspiracy icon version 2.0! I'm getting better at this icon thing. It could be much improved, but it's a lot sharper and better than the old version. Moving on: ( 'One can never have enough socks,' said Dumbledore. )

Can't do much extended typing at the moment - shortish comments, cut-and-pasting of documents from hard drive, and such are about my speed right now. But the touchpad only requires one hand, yay!

So I've been doing some light housekeeping. I've updated the "Links" sidebar to include the three tags I use the most (or hope to) - Harry Potter, Star Wars, and the one for fanfic or fanfic-like things. I re-read some of those, and caught a few typos and that sort of thing. The Jedi, Istari, and Wizards essay/fic/thing still cracks me up, though mostly for silly reasons that probably are only funny to me. Like the silly "historian" saying "for the purpose of defeating Sauron" rather than "to defeat Sauron" because she is of the "more words = more impressive!" school of writing. And ha, "intertextual bar". I blame thank my Children's Lit professor and his intertextuality-driven lectures for that one. But it was good to see that I am still entertained, because having fun was the whole point :D

The bigger project is going through my memories. Culling, possibly, but mostly sorting and seeing if I can organize them better. Will probably take a while.

Also tried checking my starwars.com blog, and replied to a comment or two. It's just not as much fun to use, I think. Probably because of their friending system. Only ten people on the blog roll, and you have to click to see their latest entries rather than having them all pop up on one page, and for the rest you just watch everything that is posted. Too much work. Can't write long comments, either. And only one icon! The horror! But I do still like aspects of it - the drop-down menu of pictures to add is pretty cool.

Back to hanging out. Chocolate pudding sounds good.