Words are inadequate

Indeed Do Many Things Come To Pass (LJ), 2000-2022

Sat, 05 Feb 2022 17:41:22 GMT

Admin note:

For many years now I've been posting at jazzfish.dreamwidth.org and using the automated crossposter to post entries here on Livejournal. Unfortunately, as of January 2022, that's no longer an option due to various policies and intransigencies by the Livejournal admins.

As such, my Livejournal is, after a twenty-one-year run, closed to business, even as a mirror for new Dreamwidth posts. I'll keep posting at DW for as long as I feel up to it: I do enjoy long-form blogging. And you can also find me on Facebook or Twitter if you're in to such things.

For now my LJ will remain in place: I dislike the thought of breaking archive links to LJ posts. Of course all the old LJ posts were imported to DW long ago so the content's still there.

Thank you, and goodnight.

(manually xposted)

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the russians are (still) coming

Tue, 04 Apr 2017 22:44:12 GMT

Well.

Via firecat, med_cat has done a fine service by translating relevant bits of LJ's new Terms of Service.

We knew (or at least suspected) that this was coming.

As before, I wholeheartedly recommend Dreamwidth as an alternative. I find it to be like LJ but less deliberately frustrating. rebelsheart offers a guide to leaving LJ for DW.

I'm trying to decide how much I want to reduce my LJ footprint right now. Crossposting and commenting will continue to be enabled for the time being, and I've not (yet) deleted or flocked my entire journal. (Among the reasons I'm not deleting at this time: some number of pre-2011 entries contain links to other LJ entries, and I'd prefer not to linkrot myself.)

We shall see.

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PSA: still on livejournal, for now

Fri, 30 Dec 2016 17:17:57 GMT

siderea observes that it may be time to consider leaving Livejournal (ironically, post is only avaible on LJ, at least right now). Short form: LJ is now based entirely in Russia, not just owned by Russians, and there appear to be political purges of journals already going on.

I wholeheartedly recommend Dreamwidth as an alternative. I find it to be like LJ but less deliberately frustrating. rebelsheart offers a guide to leaving LJ for DW.

For now at least, I'll continue to live primarily at DW and crosspost to LJ. We shall see what, if anything, changes in the next few months.

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b'ham!

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:22:02 GMT

I can tell I'm adapting to Vancouver because the distinctions of "clear" and "partly cloudy" and "cloudy" no longer matter. There's only "bright" and "dim." Today, now that the sun has come up, is "bright."

I don't so much mind it getting dark at 4:30. That's kind of obnoxious but, eh, it's not like it was worth being outside in this weather anyway. It's getting up and going to work and watching sunrise at 8:30 that's starting to get to me. At least it's Sunreturn tomorrow.

On Sunday we popped down to Bellingham to ship Xmas packages and do a bit of US grocery shopping. (Jif peanut butter is curiously unavailable up here.) This trip involved enough awesome things that it's easier to just make a list, viz:

Driving around Stanley Park in the daytime.
The USPS, who only charged us $35 to move nearly eleven pounds of stuff 2500 miles in three days at Xmastime, and would have charged half that if we'd been a couple of days more on the ball.
USPS's Automated Postal Centres, especially on days when the Post Office is closed, because there's a) no line and b) no need to interact with a human being. (This, incidentally, is why I like self-checkout lines at grocery stores: not because it's any faster [it's not], but because I don't have to talk to the cashier.)
Stracciatella Lindt balls. Yow. Seriously, why did no one tell me about these sooner?
La Fiamma pizza followed by Mallard Ice Cream. I'd forgotten how delicious both of those things are.
The Nexus trusted-traveller card, which got us across the border in about five minutes while everyone else was backed up through Blaine. Best time-saving $50 I've spent all year.
And finally, driving around Stanley Park at night, except for the %&$ pink limo in front of us.

I like Bellingham. It's like Blacksburg, if B'burg were cooler and had a larger downtown. There was a brief period of time when I was considering living there and trying to find work in Vancouver. If things had fallen apart in a certain way, and $work hadn't been unexpectedly willing to deal with all the immigration stuff, it would have been a decent place to hole up for a couple of years. Much more than that and I expect the small-town-ness would have gotten to me in the same way it did in B'burg.

If you're wondering what the hell happened to the comment pages on LJ, well, they fixed them. In unrelated news, Dreamwidth has turned off invite codes through the end of the year, so if you were thinking about jumping on that particular bandwagon, now's a decent time. (Credit where it's due, LJ also claims to have fixed the problem with the layout I'm using where images would get cropped rather than expanding it, making it difficult to read comics.)

Late-breaking addition: last year's list of things I want is mostly still operative. I'm no longer in need of a good tattoo artist (at least until I hit whatever I determine to be my next milestone), and I found a Criterion copy of The Third Man last spring. Other than that, though.

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facejournal and sleep

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:58:26 GMT

cleolinda explains just what the heck is going on with LJ and Facebook and Twitter: basically, LJ's owners figure the number of people coming onboard LJ through Facebook and Twitter will outweigh the number of people fleeing to other sites such as Dreamwidth. And the fleeing users were the ones who were disabling all the useful (for advertising) privacy-invasive features anyway, so they won't be much missed.

(There's also a side trip through the creepiness of Facebook's new "Stalk this person" feature. Which just ick no. I anticipate that by this time next year I'll have done what I can to purge my Facebook account as well.)

Still tired. Still writing up Key West (it was awesome). Likely to go home and faceplant for eight hours and wake up around two in the morning. Sleeping on planes works better when you can lean back in your seat, and when the guy next to you doesn't insist on trying to ram his elbow into your ribs, and when the flight doesn't arrive 45 minutes early thus shorting you out of three-quarters of an hour of uneasy but still much missed sleep. Bleh.

(Lessons learned: first, stay the hell away from Airtran. Second, with transit costs BWI may not actually be all that much cheaper than National. Third, do not rely on transit to get home from BWI.)

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from the "i can't believe i have to explain this" department

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:12:26 GMT

The ability to lock your posts to a subset of your readers creates an expectation, and culture, of privacy. The ability to broadcast comments made in locked posts breaks that expectation and defies the norms of that culture.

Telling people "you shouldn't put anything anywhere on the internet you don't want someone else to read" is blaming the victim. The weaker version, "if you don't trust people not to abuse this then don't friend them," is still blaming the victim. Don't do it.

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livetweetbook? DO NOT WANT.

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:39:02 GMT

Dear LJ,

Why in gord's name would you find it at all appropriate to allow-- to encourage-- people to repost LJ comments on Facebook and Twitter? Especially comments made in response to locked posts? And why would you not allow users to disable this "feature" for their journals?

("But it doesn't repost the content of the entry!" That's very slim consolation when the comment consists of "I'm so sorry to hear you and Chris are having problems!")

("But people could always do this!" Yes, but now it's far easier, with a casual disregard for privacy that I usually only expect to see from Facebook or Google.)

No love,

jazzfish

Seriously, LJ. WHAT THE HELL. I'm pretty casual about the connection between my LJ and my realspace identity, because I put everything I don't want coworkers or family to see behind a lock.

I'd prefer that you not repost any comments you make to locked entries in my LJ to FB or Twitter, in the same way that I'd prefer you not publicise anything I put in a locked entry. It's not, quite, a bannable/defriendable offense for me, but it's close.

Note that, as a fun side effect, this breaks the tab order in comments! Which means that if you've been commenting on entries for TEN YEARS and using a reflexive "comment, tab, enter" to post your comments, now you have to learn to add in another tab or three.

ObDWplug, and comment or email if you'd like an invite code.

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