sofiaviolet | Entries tagged with livejournal

( 5 topics today )

Ellie has found a new grocery store, which is good because it's closer and has better produce, but bad because it's not near anything else (that we know of). (Seriously, we switch grocery stores basically every year. At our old place, we went to the one in walking distance. The first year we lived in JP, we needed a T-accessible supermarket. After Ellie got a car, we started going to South Bay because there were other stores (like Home Depot) nearby. Then we switched allegiance to Dedham - Home Depot along the way, BJ's down the road.)

forthwritten: fanfiction and my younger self

And so, when we were about 16 or 17, one of my friends discovered fanfiction in general and slash fiction in particular. In a way, we used it as a silent, secret rebellion, swapping these stories underground (no, really; our common room was in a basement). It fascinated me. Here were stories about people who presented as female one day and male the next, who loved people of their gender, who negotiated sex, who didn't have happily-ever-afters but who had to talk and argue and reconfigure their friendship. The screen did not coyly fade to black and the story often did not end with sex; instead, there were morning-afters and misunderstandings and confusion that had to be resolved. The people had agency and were active participants and, as the_shoshanna notes, sex did not fundamentally change them.

denise:

dw_suggestions: A User's Guide

So, you want to learn more about the dw_suggestions process! This entry will be made the "sticky entry" in the dw_suggestions community (replacing the existing one, which was starting to show its age) to serve as an introduction to the Suggestions process, Dreamwidth development, and just what the heck people should be keeping in mind while they're discussing things here.

dw_maintenance: New imports temporarily stopped; import queue paused

We are therefore temporarily pausing the existing import jobs until the traffic clears up some and we are able to further modify the importer so that it is even less of a load on LJ. We are also temporarily stopping the ability to queue new imports, so that once we bring the import queue back up, it will give the queue the chance to clear a bit. (Also, we'd like to minimize the impact on LJ.)

Now to assemble a Powerpoint for tomorrow's mini-lecture on Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, and Teh Famous Rivalry!!!! (Wondering whether it would be cool to play an aria and make the class guess which of them is singing it...)

Oof. Spend 30-ish hours finishing a paper and being at work, and you wind up with 50 open tabs after you skip 120 entries back. (Back when I was primarily reading on LJ, I would have had to skip farther back but I wouldn't have needed to open as many tabs.)

internets

Dreamwidth invite code, free for the taking, or check

dw_codesharing.

Warning: the queue for the importer is really backed up right now because so many people want to import and because LJ doesn't have the resources to give the import tool what it's asking for. If you can wait to import, please do.

What to do with Dreamwidth: a list of tutorials and information

Follow Friday

leverage_flashfic! The Leverage panel at Muskrat Jamboree wanted a flashfic comm and I volunteered to run it. No one has posted fic yet, but I am soliciting prompts.

ao3some, which may win for best comm name.

lj_refugees

dw_community_promo is hosting a communities-only version of Follow Friday.

Links

melannen: Love & Marriage

One thing I love in a good SF story is ways of doing love, marriage, and romance that don't buy in to our society's idea of love+romance+sex+monogamy all on one single person as the only way to do it.

denise: (no subject)

I've seen people wondering why imports are taking so @)#$(*& long. This might help shed some light:

synecdochic: LiveJournal's DDoS and Russian Politics

So, people who grumble about "the Russians" taking over LJ should remember that in Russia, LiveJournal isn't just the top blogging platform, it's the blogging platform. It is Russia's free press. It is the tool being used to fight corruption and advance the cause of democracy. And, more practically to LJ users, the Russian-speaking sector of LJ is the reason LJ is still there at all.

helens78: Vote Ticky!

I am in favor of tickys because tickys are a form of communication. They can help engender community and relationships in a way that can enhance comments rather than replacing them or taking away from them. When someone isn't commenting, it's impossible to know if it's because they're lost for words, aren't on a platform suitable for lengthy comments (how many users read the site from smartphones now?), don't have a lot of spoons, have to conserve typing time... or aren't reading and don't care. Seeing people's names crop up repeatedly in tickys helps us discover who out there is giving us their time and attention, and can be a greatly-appreciated form of support, even or especially in times when hearing many individual comments -- and feeling obliged to respond to each of them -- can feel overwhelming.

EDIT:

dw_maintenance: LiveJournal slowdowns/DDoS affecting importer, crossposts

Links

charmian: more notifications problems at LJ?

Currently there's a notifications problem at LJ, which apparently has something to do with a third party [EDIT: possibly Spamhaus]. People are getting fairly upset about it in the comments of the news post (well, also because of the banner color scheme).

Also, LJ is currently blacklisted with Spamhaus.

azurelunatic: Spamhaus and LJ

LJ has been listed by Spamhaus, which has likely got a decent amount to do with the notifications some people aren't getting. I propose a plan of action for users to help the Abuse Prevention Team squish as many spammerbots as humanly possible.

Follow Friday

lireavue has been posting good links and personal accounts of the Wisconsin protests.

laughingrat posts about library and social justice issues.

helpfordelight is an auction comm to assist

delight with moving out of an unsafe housing situation and paying for her mother's cancer treatment.

three_weeks_for_dw is ramping up for another round, beginning on April 25th. Planning of activities is currently in progress.

unclutter is devoted to getting rid of one thing per day and one thing per new thing. (Kind of high traffic, but a really great way to clean sustainably.)

dw_meetups is usually pretty quiet, but if you are interested in hanging out with other Dreamwidth users, you should subscribe in case someone plans a meetup in your area (and/or plan a meetup yourself!).

Boston meetup

Boston Meetup: tentatively scheduled for 3/17

Meme

Poll #6257 Ask me a question!

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 2

My question is:

I have another question!

And another!

When I answer your question(s), may I reveal who asked it?

Yes, you can say that $username asked "blah blah blah?"
2 (100.0%)

No, please answer my question without attributing it to me.
0 (0.0%)

jimhines: Troll Poll

To me, a troll is someone who shows up solely to stir things up and piss people off. There’s zero interest in the conversation, zero interest in listening. It’s a game for the troll’s amusement, to poke buttons and see who s/he can piss off.

To me, clueless =/= troll. Angry =/= troll. Even blatant violation of Wheaton’s Law doesn’t necessarily equate to trolling. We all act like jerks sometimes. (I might still ban you for repeated offenses, but I wouldn’t automatically assume you were a troll.)

The Morning News: Who You Are and Who You Say You Are

A Norman Rockwell painting from 1995: You can almost hear the modem connecting over the course of 90 screeching, howling seconds. A man’s back is framed by a desk chair—because he’s at a desk, the only place he can use his computer, a 16-pound beige rectangular desktop model with a loud fan that has three plugs connecting it to various electronic conduits. The person is alternately posting on a message board and trolling a chat room under an assumed name, and probably an assumed age, sex, and/or location. There is safety in the scenery of this painting: the basset hound curled under the desk, the tapping of fingers on keys, the fantasy of being Petunia, 18 years old, from Princeton, N.J., when in fact the person at the desk is really Robert, 49, from North Hollywood.

Miller-McCune: Slugging - The People's Transit

And off the three go toward the highway — and the suburbs — complete strangers, with not the least concern for personal safety, trying to shave 20 or 30 minutes, maybe more, off their afternoon trip home. “People are cooperating … to commute?” says Marc Oliphant, underscoring the novelty of what is going on here. “It’s like the opposite of road rage!”

I fiddled with the Dreamwidth bookmarklets some more, in response to this comment by

facetofcathy. Now there are some view=flat bookmarklets (and they should work on LJ, too).

[Originally posted at The Networked Society]

Many important pieces of paper call me Dominique, but I wouldn't say that's my "real name." More on that in a moment.

I've been a blogger/journaller (in varying proportions) since 2002, when I whirled through several journal sites before settling on LiveJournal. I have since switched my allegiance to Dreamwidth, which I have been using since closed beta.*

I will be cross-posting and cross-linking everything I contribute to this blog on Dreamwidth. For the class and anyone who happens upon The Networked Society by whatever means: you are welcome to follow me home to

sofiaviolet. For my regular readers: you can visit The Networked Society to read everyone else's posts.

I have almost always been pseudonymous online, for certain values of pseudonymous: Sofia Blackthorne and sofiaviolet aren't on my passport or anything, but they're both me in a way my legal name isn't. I use them everywhere. This isn't the first time I've made a connection between my offline, "official" self and my online/offline "real" self, but it is the first time I've made the connection publicly in a manner that funnels people from Dominique to Sofia.

So I'm not super-strict in enforcing separation of my "official" self's (fairly minimal) online presence and the vast majority of what I do online. I avoid directing people from Dominique to Sofia and exercise caution in directing them from Sofia to Dominique. Basic internet skills.

As for internal separation, talking to one group of friends about this topic and another group of friends about some other topic - I pretty much don't do it. This is an area where journal sites, like most social networking/social media** sites, kind of fall down on the job. Sites using the LiveJournal codebase (which include clones such as InsaneJournal and forks such as Dreamwidth) have filters (user-defined groups of people; entries can be restricted to a particular filter or to multiple filters), which can be used for this kind of separation as well as for privacy.

* I would like to devote another post to issues surrounding Dreamwidth: why the site came into existence, who has started using it and why, etc. I'd also like to talk about the experience of being an early adopter, something I'd never been before committing to Dreamwidth.

** In part three of her essay on Why Monetizing Social Media Through Advertising Is Doomed To Failure,

synecdochic/

denise (co-founder/co-owner of Dreamwidth) provides a nice disambiguation for social networking and social media:

The two terms are not interchangeable, ultimately. Social networking seeks to (for the most part) replicate a person's existing social web (think of sites like Classmates.com and LinkedIn.com); its purpose is to define your ties with others. Social media takes that one step further: it seeks to create and nurture social ties to others, through the content that you provide.

If you think of a site as a game, the "winning conditions" of the game will be a good clue as to whether the site is a social networking site or a social media site. If you win the game when you collect all of your existing friends, or collect as many new friends as possible, you're on a social network. If you win the game when you provide content that's interesting enough to get other people to build relationships with you, when your social currency is the content you provide, you're on a social media site.

This suggests to me that social media users may in fact benefit from talking to everyone about everything, in terms of creating these new relationships. Not simply because diverse content brings more diverse followers, but also because publicly available content brings more followers.

Notes

I've created a character for ~~LARPing in the desert~~ participating in the MCR/Killjoys shenanigans. If this is relevant to your interests, check out the Violet Menace on Twitter, tumblr, and Dreamwidth.

Links

rydra_wong: So, yeah
brenden's now-deleted sockpuppet trolling of the news post included taunting a user about having Asperger's.
thedivinegoat: "Can I talk to you" Troll redux
Just a heads up, the "Can I talk to you" Troll seems to have increased his activity again, only this time is taking advantage of the Facebook Connect.

I'm still updating the original post with any new pseudonyms that come to light, if you or any of your friends have come across new ones, please let me know.
Social/Justice
Solomon's threat is the threat of fairness; Solomon's justice is that he restores right human relationships. Justice is not measured by a pattern -- of uniformity or otherwise -- *or* by a fair process which must logically produce fair results. Justice occurs only when it supports just human relationships. It doesn't matter how fair the process, if a beggar starves while a rich man feasts *this is not justice*, because justice is about having the right human relationships. "Social justice", in my thinking, is a concept of justice that is still focussed, as of old, not on who has the "stuff", but on the relationships between people that the "stuff" (money, property) is tracking. We need a modifier because "justice" unadorned now refers to the process of law, e.g. in "Department of Justice".
copperbadge: THE .DOC FILE OF J ALFRED PRUFROCK
This morning I was asked to change my password on my work computer, as I must do every four months. And I sat there waiting for it to authorise my new password, and I thought, I have measured out my life in login codes.

And, as it so often does, then my brain screwed me out of several hours of productivity.
skalja: An experiment in translation.
O Hai Just FYI

Recently

Ellie and I were going to have a roast for dinner last night, but it had gone off. We wound up getting Indian food at Ghazal instead, along with Courtney. And as we were settling the bill, other people we knew walked by. So we wound up following Cid, Jason, Daly, and Scarlet to JP Licks for ice cream (and then everybody got to say hi to Brashani and Christian too, when they stopped by), and then went back to Cid and Jason's apartment - in theory to play Clue, but we actually wound up watching Crank 2 and yelling at the shenanigans.

Then Ellie wanted to get some stuff from Woodcraft today, so I went with her because I wanted to get out of the house. I wound up getting some turning blanks: black and white ebony, rosewood, lignum vitae, and olivewood. (Not a new hobby! I make little wire trees in addition to jewelry, and thought it would be awesome to attach the wire trees to small pieces of actual wood.) I'm going to have to cut some of the blanks into smaller pieces, and probably surface them a little.

Links

( 6 links )

Recently

I've been following the latest LJwtf and going to work, pretty much. Managed to wear a skirt today, and I think every single person I work with complimented it.

( Follow Friday )

Links

( 7 links )

Plans

Get rained on and blown about. Hope the power stays on long enough to to chat with C. for a good long while. Drive up to NH with Ellie and shadesong for the art retreat, and catch the bus back. Drag Ellie to see Scott Pilgrim, get groceries, and pick up the hair stuff I forgot last week. Make attempt number 4 at purple hair: bleach a thick streak and purple it, then update the rest to black.

zvi: LiveJournal automates privacy breech, breaks accessibility for small gains, and ...
LiveJournal has automated crossposting of entries and comments to Facebook and Twitter.

There are two serious problems with their implementation, one to do with accessibility/usability and one to do with privacy.
via dw_news: new update page demo

zarhooie: Friending Frenzy!
What with the recent influx of new folk to Dreamwidth (thanks, LJ!), I think it's time for a friending frenzy. You know the drill: comment here with 3-5 reasons that people should follow you on Dreamwidth. Also comment with your favorite spice, your least favorite ice cream flavor and your bedding preferences.
rydra_wong: In this morning's LJ shenanigans
cleolinda reports that if you turn on Facebook connect, it will automatically put your full real name (as listed on Facebook) on your LiveJournal user page.

oursin: More about money, extravagance, frivolity etc
Such is the power of a-synchronicity, that it was only after making yesterday evening's post that I picked up Katharine Whitehorn's Only on Sundays, which of course fell open at the essay 'As Rich As You Feel', the vague memory of which lay behind much of my thinking in that post.
thingswithwings: while waiting for pain to subside, I wrote this post
But the thing that really thrills me is seeing people get more and more efficient and matter-of-fact about their content notes, especially the content notes that are providing a warning for potentially triggering content. I don't credit kink bingo with this, but rather a shift in fandom thinking at large: I see more and more notes for things like forced feeding, self-harm, characters expressing racist sentiments, parental abuse, and all sorts of things - a range of things that reflects the broad manner in which people are beginning to think about how their story/artpiece might be read/viewed by someone with different life experiences than the writer's or artist's own. It feels to me, subjectively of course, that people in my fannish community are more and more willing to be upfront about what their story/artpiece contains, in order to provide the best possible information to potential readers. And that upfrontness, more importantly, is an indication of self-acceptance that I find extremely exciting and refreshing.
eruthros: some useful things on the internet
1. Are you, too, frustrated by the new lj facebook and twitter connect buttons under your comments? Fear not, for not one but two people have made magical solutions! Do not mess with tab order or people shall make greasemonkey scripts, lj.
emceeaich: (no subject)
The rest of the web is not the walled garden, Facebook is the walled garden, with a manifest destiny complex.
zulu: *flails* I just DON'T EVEN KNOW, livejournal. I JUST DON'T.
Not to mention people could be automatically crossposting their comments to any post you made. Triangulation is suddenly that much simpler for stalkers, abusive exes, and potential or current employers. Any work you've put in to keep your fandom presence separate from your real life or professional presence is suddenly tissue paper where once it was at least nice sturdy cardstock. Feedback on your latest PWP that says "Fuck, you write hot man-on-man action, I totally got off to that," could end up side-by-side with your grandma's cookie recipe.

Notes

I'll be out of town August 14-21. While I'll have internet access, I have no idea how much I'll be online. But rest assured I'll catch up even if I can't keep up.

Recently

Bosses and one reference desk person are away for the Society of American Archivists conference. Work is freakishly quiet.

Busy couple of days. Tuesday morning, I hauled a box of fun surprises to the post office (since the TSA probably frowns on taking rope in your carry-on), went to work, and then went to Diesel to meet up with shadesong and receive my BARCC auction winnings: a lovely flogger. After that, I ran into Andra and spent forever telling her about C. (she kept asking questions, and I am still flush with omgyay).

Yesterday I got some purple dye, and this morning before work, I put it in my hair to see what it would do. Not a lot, as it turns out: my hair is too dark. Now it's even darker, with something of a blue cast to it. While kinda disappointing, it's not actually surprising, and it's definitely not a bad result.

Leaving for Grand Forks at stupid o'clock Saturday morning. Clothes are basically picked out, and toiletries are selected and quart-size bagged.

Memes

Still open for questions.

I know so little about you, I'm afraid my question is quite pedestrian! What would your dream job be?

Pretty close to what I'm doing right now. I want to be an archivist full-time, as my real grownup job. But I'm not thrilled with the idea of meetings and managing other people, which my bosses at work have to do. I just want to work with the collections.

Placeholder

I want to write about "lazy femme," which is what I call my gender presentation. In short: I like things like skirts and makeup, but I don't generally bother with these more effortful bits of gendered plumage.

( 11 links )

Plans

More packing, go to bed, sleep, get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, finish packing, go to bed, get up, get on airplane, arrive in Grand Forks, get laid.

( 13 links )

( 18 links )

$sofiaviolet: Dreamwidth logo and Paul Gross arms (dreamwidth \o/)$

skip=400

Since Saturday morning. (I mean, I do use Dreamwidth as my feed reader, but that's still a lot of posts.)

( 26 links )

I took some nyquil a few hours ago because I think I have a cold. It has helped with the epic sneezefest, but now I feel really fuzzy. Apparently, it takes a full dose of nyquil to make me feel like I do at three in the morning (see icon); if I take just one gelcap, I can pretty much function normally.

Daily Song (right-click): The Distillers - Drain the Blood
I have been listening to this a lot lately.

( Here are the links I've collected so far. )

Now I sleep.

$sofiaviolet: Dreamwidth logo and Paul Gross arms (dreamwidth \o/)$

three_weeks_for_dw starts tomorrow! The Latest Things page is already full of people planning their participation, and will be a great place to look for cool stuff over the next three weeks.

2. If you are going to participate, be sure to tag your posts three weeks for dreamwidth or threeweeks so they show up on the special Latest Things page.

3. I would like to post something every day; what kinds of posts would you like to see? Ask questions, give prompts, etc. Quoting from

synecdochic, What kind of topics/entries would you like to see me posting about? Any particular questions you've always wanted to ask me but have resisted because the answer would be a huge essay? Ever want to wind me up and watch me go on a particular topic? Anything you've heard me say "I should write that entry about $foo I've been meaning to write" and have been patiently waiting for?

4. There's also this meme, which has popped up again: Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on alfalfa, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc.

5. If I have you friended on LJ, please fill out this poll or comment here to let me know how you prefer to follow me.

1. If there are things you want to know about me, ask them! I will compile an answers post soon (either after the last paper of the semester is done, or when I need a break from actually working on it).

2. The location of the LJ affiliate script has changed. Since the script messes up ctrl-click/right-click,

jonquil suggests two fixes.

xenacryst explains the security issue with giving up control over one's outbound links.

3. Closet cleaning challenge in

homeeconomics101. I got started with this a couple of weeks ago, but it kind of fizzled. I have a bunch of stuff to get rid of, and I still have to go through half my closet and both my dressers (yes, both. Shut up, I have a lot of clothes.)

4. Apparently, I am attending a Priscilla, Queen of the Desert party tonight.

Took my final for Soviet Secret Police today. I think I did well - there was one "identify this document excerpt" that I swear I had never seen before, but it was a small part of the test.

I foresee using this icon a lot while I'm in New Orleans this summer, and I need to upload one of the "emphasizin ur POC" icons as well.

I have missed my one-year anniversary on Dreamwidth. But it was because I had papers to write, so I will just commemorate it now.

( links galore )

If you used the opt-out I linked yesterday, you might want to go back and do it again. Turns out it's set opt_exclude_stats 1.
( today's links )

Roller derby: awesome! We had to learn the rules and scoring practices through osmosis (and really could not hear the commentators well at all). We also ate some fried dough (truth in advertising!), which was basically a large flat beignet. Nomnomnom.

This morning, we went to the Flea at MIT. The original plan was for me to take the train; Ellie was driving but she had already promised every possible seat in her car to people from Wireless Club. But two cancellations later, I had a ride, yay.

Here are pictures of the things I got! Since I, uh, don't know what some of these doodads are called.
( Not that it matters that much. I'm just going to wrap them in wire anyway. )

April 2014

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30

Page Summary

txtbx

Not nice, but friendly.

right between the scapulae, back of the heart

Entries tagged with livejournal

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