03:12 OMGWTFBBQ will you look at the time??? #

12:05 @irinarempt I only scored 95% because I thought it was "embarassment". Which is silly because now I can see it's wrong... #

13:22 @splinister Yay for young women directors! #

15:13 @splinister Indeed! :-) #

17:12 The Britten stuff is starting to come together properly, but boy did he like confusing rhythms! #

17:12 Although I admit that the confusing rhythms are probably what makes these pieces interesting. #

19:45 The fact that a brand of pasta is made in Italy is no guarantee of authenticity. You want to see if it's SOLD in Italy... #

22:33 RT @daraobriain RT @foxiness: bit.ly/4ucd8J <-- snrch! #

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Yesterday, despite failing to make it to the writing group, I managed to drag myself over to Ikea. Ikea is like the safety blanket or the teddy bear for me, I go for reassurance. It's familiar and safe.

But today I failed to go out for groceries, and just huddled home, feeling sort of shaky. I have no idea what is going on here.

I did manage to write 1,000 words today. I am awfully behind in my Nanowrimo, but I am not giving up. Realistically I am not going to finish, but whatever outpouring of productivity I can achieve is good.

Mostly I find myself tormented by various failures on the writing front. Not so much a question of verbiage but things like - writing bores me. It used to be the great pleasure of my life, the thing that reliably made me happy. Now it bores me.

Maybe it is because I am otherwise happier, and I find it hard to write angst as I use to do.

And then... maybe the reason I didn't make it to my writing group is that I read my fellow writer's stories and feel a dreadful lack of purpose. What's the point of this story, I ask myself? But, really, what's the point of any story? Maybe that's why I cannot read fiction any more. I have lost the ability to care even when there isn't a point.

I feel so, so tired.

--with the Sparkly Paddle of Birthday Wonderfulness for kkittydoom, nmg, and erudite_ogre, all of whom need to be spanked into another year!

Hope you've been having the most wonderful Day of Days, full of Teh Bright and Shinies, starting a year with all the Good, the Great, the Fabulous, and the All-Time Terrific. With whipped cream, sparkles, and extra kittens!

And hey--alla youse, without exception, no excuses!--don't forget to live forever!

Notes augmented

We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!

Product tweaks and bug kill

1. In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
2. If you sign up to get notifications of the Writer's Block question of the day, you'll now see the daily question in the email notification, so you'll have a little extra time to ponder before you post. You can subscribe to Writers Block notifications here
3. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
4. If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
5. If you don't edit the timestamp for an entry at all, the entry timestamp will indicate the time the entry was posted instead of the time the Update Journal page was loaded
6. Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)

New FCK fixes rich text editor!

1. We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
2. When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
3. RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
4. An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
5. The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers

LiveJournal Cares

We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.

In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.

Papered in postcards

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.

Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!

Photos of the week

We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.

You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

I don't really feel up to explaining, but I have been strangely distressed all day, and ended up not being able to go to my writing group, and feeling cold, miserable, my hands shaking - all very strange.

14:09 Right. Time to get ready to go to the dentist for Part 2 of the root canal. Meep... #

16:37 Back from dentist. Again, root canal no more unpleasant than standard filling. Good, because in 2 weeks' time I'm back for another one... #

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On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

No, seriously--Let's Raise A Cloud Over London!

It would be brilliant!

Jam likes to perch on the windowsill next to the computer, looking out. Today she let me stroke her, purring and trying to sit on the ledge (which is cold, and too small).

This was unthinkable even just a few days ago.

I moved a chair closer. She was a bit suspicious at first, but is now curled up there.

  I'm putting a bid on this one, myself.  The Animometer by Carisa Swenson -- mixed media art made with antique pocket watch, acrylic paint, magnets, chain, steel wire, brad, jewelry bead, paper, illustration board. 

Here's the artist's statement about it from the auction site: 

The inspiration for this piece arose from a short story within “The War Between Heaven and Hell Wallpaper”- a woman realizes that her actions throughout the day directly influence whether the angelic or demonic army make headway in the eternal battle being played out daily on the walls of her bedroom. The woman eventually empathizes with the forces of Hell as they are reduced to occupying a tiny space of wall, facing annihilation at the point of angels’ spears, and begins doing little things each day to help the demons gain ground. Using a pocket watch shell seemed an appropriate fit for the piece, as it evokes the passage of time. Our thoughts, emotions and body are constantly changing, and what we idealized in our youth may be scoffed at or frowned upon with the advent of age, and vice versa. This piece does not advocate for one side or the other, but allows the owner to reflect upon the nature of our actions, and how often our decisions may appear clear to us, but upon closer inspection actually lead to consequences that are farther away from what we intended.

This piece is intended for display only, pocket watch does not close. The magnetized sides allow the needle to rest on one side or the other depending on how you’d like to display the piece. Please do not display near electronic equipment that may be sensitive to magnets!

You might like one of the other works of art more.  There are new ones up for auction this week at the Interfictions 2 site.  Check it out. 
http://iafauctions.com/interfictions-2-auction-9/

10:52 Puzzling over the product category "Pastas nourished and cooled" #

11:26 This is frustrating. I *have* a rice cooker, BUT I don't know what to call it in Italian. And it comes up in my current translation. #

11:28 Apparently, "cuociriso" exists. At least, Google thinks so. I'm going to go with it. #

12:55 @matociquala It depends on the length of the paragraph :-) #

13:23 Job finished and delivered. I am sleepy and grumpy. #

21:20 I took out my winter jacket for going out tonight, and I'm very glad that I did. Sigh. #

21:21 Also, they're putting up Christmas lighting on Grafton Street. From a truck called "Highway Maintenance". #

21:21 And: saw a spectacular meteor while walking along Stephen's Green -- bright enough to be clearly visible just on top of the shopping centre. #

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Jam keeps getting more and more domesticated, if by minuscule increments each day. She now lets me touch her before I give the two of them their breakfast or dinner, provided she is hungry enough. Not every time, but more and more often, I can reach out a hand and she will arch her back and let me catch her tail and let her slid out.

It looks like the nice hand that strokes her when she is lounging under the table or on the sofa, and that she rewards with such purring, is slowly joining up with the Scary Human.

Yesterday I was in bed, watching cat videos on YouTube (as we mad cat ladies do) and one of them was of a very small, very squeaky nursing kitten. Zip was curled up at my feet as usual, and more or less unfazed - she knows by now that my computer makes cat noises now and then.

But at one point I looked to a side and there was Jam, all alert, huge yellow eyes very alarmed. On the one hand, Scary Human, which she does not approach on her own. On the other, Kitten in Distress! She is ten months old by now, and in the wild, she would have had at least a litter of her own. Something in her just would not tolerate a distressed kitten. So there she was, scared by running to the rescue.

I love this little cat.

Anyway, I stopped the distressing kitten noises and when I next looked up, she was stretched out on the bed, trying nonchalantly to inch closer to Zip. I switched the light off very quietly, crawled very quietly under the blanket, and savoured for a bit my feline family resting contentedly on my bed. Then Jam decided that she wanted to play with Zip and they both ran away.

This morning, another shift at the shelter. Now and then I find myself getting all choked up - when I see two sad cats left at the shelter by humans who moved and would not take the cats with them, or by a small kitten with a missing front leg.

Other times, I feel like I am making a difference the lives of these confused, lonely, scared animals. One cat today was a beautiful young tuxedo boy, whom I first saw backed off against the bottom of the cabin. I could see his mouth opening, but could not tell if he was hissing quietly or mewoing.

On closer inspection, he was meowing: specifically, he was begging for company and strokes, because he had been found injured and, as I saw when he moved, one of his back legs had had to be removed.

Whenever I took my hand away, the almost-silent meow of pain came back, so I spent a good half hour perched in a cat cabin, calming him down.

And then there was the white cat who not only ran up to me, nuzzled my ear and wrapped himself around my neck: but proceeded to climb on my head, grip it with both paws, and start grooming me. Poor thing, that can't have been easy.

And the moment when, washing the floor of one of the cabins, I saw Kate pour six or seven tiny kitten into the adjoining cabin, all fluffy, elastic and bumpy.

I am less shattered than I was last week, but just as torn between tenderness and pity.

It also seems likely that they will let me adopt Jam.

Or goats?


moar funny pictures

Today's birthday spanking is for redbird--don't bother to run, honey, you'll just be tired when you get spanked!

Hope today is the Total Package for you, the best of the best and the creme de la creme with all the frills, starting a year made of Shiny, Awesome, and Win, with whipped cream, sparkles, and extra kittens!

And hey--say it with me, everybody--don't forget to live forever!

You don't need to tell me that you are not doing NaNoWriMo. Really. I mean this. It is not compulsory.

You don't need to tell in detail how supremely unconcerned you are you are not doing NaNoWriMo. I don't need to. I wasn't assuming the opposite.

You particularly don't need to belligerently tell me how superior you are to such childish pursuits, how tired you are with the whole thing, how silly the whole notion is.

This is my second year of doing Nanowrimo and I will probably not do the required 50,000 words. I am not shattered about it. Last year I found doing it very productive, very liberating, and in the end a lot of fun. It's a good way to free my creativity, and proved me among other things that when cornered I can indeed produce a plot, characters and acceptable prose.

So if you are not doing NaNoWriMo, it's ok. It really is. It is just as OK to do it.

00:02 RT @clanwilliam Best wikipedia editor's query ever: "They are very funny.[citation needed]" (Re Mrs Ackroyd Band, FYI) #

11:04 I've wimped out and turned on the heating. It does make the place somewhat more comfortable... #

15:11 RT @FakeAPStylebook Avoid excessive use of contractions. The baby will come when it comes. <--- groan! #

16:42 Rowling's spell names are physically painful. #

16:42 Other than that, definitely enjoying Order of the Phoenix more than the previous 3 I read -- but still not a fan #

17:48 @annafdd LOL @ Puppy Channel #

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