Friends JournalFen for britikitty.
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| Thursday, March 18th, 2010 |
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This is hilarious. I hope Al Gore comes to the Futurama panel! (Oh jeez, I can't imagine what this is going to do to security.) News here and here. In short: the American Hospital Association is holding a leadership summit in San Diego. The same weekend as Comic-Con. Two blocks from the convention center. In a hotel that, up until yesterday, was on SDCC's official list of con hotels. Guests include Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, DeeDee Myers, Ken Burns and Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt. (And speaking of SDCC hotels, is anyone else pacing back and forth, waiting for their confirmation email? Last year's booking sucked, but at least I knew by 10am. Submitted my list by 9:05, still haven't heard anything.) |
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...you get really cool stuff! There are more shades of awesome here than I can shake a stick at. Check out Expedition 16's Matrix-themed poster (huge pdf, takes awhile). For a quicker preview, Gizmondo has a good write-up. There's even a ST:XI themed poster in the comments. |
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| The trailer for Ramona and Beezus is now online. | ||||||||
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| Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 |
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Time to say goodnight to the Blockbuster night? I've heard from more person that game rentals are the only thing that have kept Blockbuster afloat for this long. Between Netflix, On-Demand PPV, and Redbox kiosks, Blockbuster's damn near obsolete in terms of watching the newest vid releases. I hope they can right the ship, if just to save what jobs are left in Blockbusterville. |
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Some simple action icons, free to take. :)
A preview: |
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The leaders of several major (U.S. Roman Catholic) women religious orders sent a letter to every member of congress asking them to vote yes on the U.S. health care bill. ( Article under cut. ) Full text of the letter is here. |
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Dear people of the wank communities, Please allow us a moment for wank business. Your mods are not receiving any emails from JF letting us know that there are posts in the mod queues, awaiting approval. This leads to wank back up, something none of us want. Until JF's email issue is resolved, if you submit a post, please also submit an email to the Modsquad (mods @ thefannish.org), so we will know it's waiting for approval. Thank you kindly, Your loving Modsquad |
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| Monday, March 15th, 2010 |
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Not quite big enough for It started off as a fairly typical agent-searching story: aspiring writer e-mails a query letter to a Big Time literary agent. The project piques the agent's interest, and she asks for the manuscript. Writer sends manuscript... and then hears nothing for seven months. Writer asks the agent what's going on, and still hears nothing. The writer, in an ill-advised move, decides to go over the agent's head and inform her boss that she's taking too long, and in the ensuing e-mails, withdraws his manuscript from consideration. How does Big Time agent react? By posting the entire chain of correspondence, including enough of the query letter that another agent would be able to identify the writer, on her blog to teach him a lesson. Tiny kerfuffles have broken out in the comments of her post, in which the agent argues with dissenters, and the Absolute Write Bewares and Background Checks forum, where one of the agent's clients shows up to defend her. (Discussion of the post starts halfway down page 14, and the client shows up on page 15.) EDIT: ... is it just me, or did we travel back to March 15th just now? (Okay, yes, apparently so. Carry on!) |
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Direct from the pages of wank report: "Sheezyart's (http://sheezyart.com) admins troll members who use Adblock by forcing a flashing red and yellow background and music to appear for anyone who uses Adblock on their site." "Comments with a star are Sheezyart staff/admins, who have been the epitome of class throughout... The flashing background and music have since been removed and replaced with a text banner, but not before someone actually had a seizure from it." 720+ comments, including an appearance on page two by the Goddamn Batman. Yes, that one. |
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Yesterday over at rvb_slash (a community for Red vs. Blue slash) one of the mods makes a post saying, basically, I know I don't do much active modding, so are there any suggestions you all have for improving the community? It should have been clear this wasn't going to go well when the first comment is from somebody saying how they've left the community because it's gotten so awful, and then snarking at the next commenter when she says she's happy with it. Other people show up agreeing that it's gone downhill and there's a decent amount of wank in the first post, but it really takes off when the mod makes a second post addressing some of the concerns that came up. So, what's made the community become so awful that it's apparently driven off a bunch of old-timers and made one of the biggest wanker in the posts "[decide] the fandom needed saving" and feel like he's been holding the fort until things improve? Have oodles of trolls shown up while the mod wasn't paying attention? Has the community been flooded with off-topic posts? No, it's because everyone who's joined since October '08's fanfiction is bad and they should feel bad. They don't say exactly why October '08 (mid-October '08 to get even more specific) is so clearly the start of it's downfall, but they're very certain that's it. While there's wank scattered all over the place in the two posts, my personal favorite part would have to be Another thing to keep an eye out for is |
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| Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 |
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Snapefen at Snapedom are engaging in their favorite pastime - abusing everybody who isn't Snape or at least a Slytherin. This time their designated target is Remus Lupin. Note that this wank started 21 day ago and is still going on. It all began when ( Read more ) The essay ends with a horror-novel scenario: But if my reasoning is correct, human mothers, in general, can only carry a human child to term. So Remus should have been angsting over the possibility that Tonks would miscarry her much-wanted child, not that it would be born a lycanthrope. But he wasn’t. Unless the only precedents Remus knew of involved werewolf mothers, who must always produce werewolf children if any. In which case Remus got Tonks pregnant while believing that any child he fathered MUST be born a lycanthrope. * But there’s a wrinkle thrown into all this by the fact that Tonks is a Metamorphmagus. She can alter her body—including, we have seen, taking on superficial bestial characteristics (a pig’s snout). Can she alter other organs to be bestial? Specifically, can she alter her uterus and the mother’s portion of the placenta, perhaps subconsciously, to be more lupine to save her changing child? If she can, that opens a truly chilling possibility. The metamorphmagus alters her uterus at the first full moon after conception, and manages to carry her lycanthrope fetus past the first full moon. And past the second, and the third…. Over time her fetus’s nervous system develops, and with it its normal instincts. Human, for almost all of the month. Except for those few hours when the full moon is above the horizon. Her fetus will have no teeth, not before birth, unless that might be another point in which werewolves are unlike other canids, but it will eventually grow claws. And then will come another full moon, the last one, and the werewolf-fetus’s instincts will urge it overwhelmingly to rend, to tear, the nearest human. The one surrounding it. ( Read more ) After all that ( Read more ) |
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An afternoon snack in miniwank form from Over at However, for one Okay, seriously? As the thread unfolds, the reason for such an outburst is soon explained... I understand the math of the cheese, I really do. "I understand the math of the cheese" may be my new favorite phrase. Cue rabid dogpiling and unsuccessful attempts to reason with Earth Logic and first grade math. Unfortunately it is all for naught as even NO, it costs more because McDonalds saw a way to make more money by adding another burger. They are all "meat"burgers, if you can legally call whatever they put in those things "meat"... I know damn well what is in each one because it was in the news and whatnot about what the change would be. My case is correct, and it stands. And the arguments just keep coming... |
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| Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 |
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For those who enjoy "mainstream-meets-fandom" type of events. Quote/link: It's difficult to say why, but some shows simply attract a different breed of supporters. Creepy, scary, insane supporters. And so we present TV's craziest fans, who've taken their love of TV to the next, sick level. ..this article is seriously stupid. Highlights include "omg somebody made a Hurley fanvid, how bizarre" (awesome fanvid, and I'm not even a Lost fan!), fanfiction trailers (I admit these are weird to me but only because the fics I've seen have such are usually unbearably shitty), Supernatural fanfic (Wincest & Dean/Castiel) and "Mad Men fans aren't crazy because they're pretentious and that show's overrated, wahhh". Looks like the guy writing this googled and youtube searched a few shows and found some pretty average fandom-created materials and decided to label them sick and insane and gross and weird. Yaaaawn. |
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| Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 |
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You're my only hope! All right, so I have a vague recollection of a wank about EarthBound (Mother 2) some years back. Someone got real offended about the secret to beating Giygas and decided he had to let all of us know about it. I've just spent the last few hours looking through Fandom Wank, Clairvoyant Wank, and I Wank, but I can't find it at all! Anyone know where or when it was? |
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| Saturday, March 13th, 2010 |
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Awww, the Twihards had their first total failcon... Not that it is that surprising, but Twicon has canceled both it's shows. With a big announcement on it's website: In hind sight, it was pretty obvious things were going downhill for these guys. In February, they had to move their Toronto show to Ottawa due to the G20 Conference happening that weekend. This set off a flurry of cancellations and some grumblings on the message board about the Partners dragging their feet on refunds The announcement is only a few hours old, and right now there is lots of confusion on the forum, especially about how they get refunds since the announcement didn't bother to mention how you go about this. ETA: Becky Scoggins has posted a personal apology that specifically states it's not an official statement from Twicon. It's obvious she's distancing herself from the Twicon partners, trying to shift blame. ETA 2: Noneya calls bullshit on Becky's apology pointing out the discrepancies in her statements At first, TwiCon 09 was premised on the idea of a charitable donation to Autism research but that apparently went to the wayside without any explanation to ticket holders either. Then you threw a TERRIBLE convention and had your spokesperson saying that "you did your best" and "I still think it went pretty well..." Lies. And it looks like the post has been deleted! Thankfully I have screencaps! (the offending post will be at the bottom :) ETA 3.5: And the thread about refunds has now disappeared! You think the forum will last the week? But Becky is claiming the threads were deleted by the users! ETA 4: Now we have other Twicon Partner Bailey Gauthier responding. And she's saying she doesn't know what's happened either! |
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| And now all my video-downloader FF extensions no longer work. Does anyone know of a FF extension that works with the new youtube video pages? | ||||||||
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With Heart Gold and Soul Silver coming out tomorrow, Cartoon Network had a mini-marathon of Orange Island episodes ending in the second movie. So let's have a big ol' Pokemon discussion-fest! Which generation/side game/movie/episode/etc. is your favorite? Are you getting HG or SS? Any choice bits of fanfic or shipping nostalgia you wanna impart? I'm getting Soul Silver because it has Vulpix, Meowth and Skarmory. :D And movie 2 is my favorite probably because deep down I'm still 16 years old when it comes to this fandom and I can't say no to Ash/Misty. |
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I have a paper to write about Dark Fantasy -- doing a thematic analysis across a period of time. I need to pick 6-8 works published in a range of dates spanning at least two decades. So far, I'm looking at starting with Interview with the Vampire/The Vampire Lestat and ending with Twilight and teasing at the twin strands that spin off of Rice's novels of the hero who's tortured by his identity and the hero who revels in it (ie, Edward vs. Bella in Eclipse.) So far, I'm really just looking at the two Vampire Chronicles novels, the Black Jewels Trilogy (so! much! reveling!) and Twilight. So I could use a hand coming up with more works of Dark Fantasy (needs to be books, or I'd be all over Buffy so fast you wouldn't believe it). Thanks! ETA:Further clarification on what I'm looking for: Since dark fanstay is still too broad a sub-genre to write about in full, I'm trying to look at novels where protagonists have the aesthetic that was, in classic horror, reserved for the villains. |
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| Friday, March 12th, 2010 |
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There's a new community called Nominations are open until Sunday 12:00 PM EST. Remember, daylight saving time starts on Sunday morning at 2:00. You can nominate characters here. |
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| Thursday, March 11th, 2010 |
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Hello The trouble, of course, is that we've got a mac, and it doesn't have WMP or RealPlayer or any of those windows things on it, so I need a site with its own flash-based player or ... something that's on a mac, idk. Any suggestions? |
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Have you ever fallen fannishly in love with something and scoured the internet for fellow fans only to throw up your hands in dismay, shouting "Why am I the only one watching this show/reading this book/playing this game?" Then this is the meme for you: There's a nice variety of manga and videogame fandoms there already, but there are so many fandoms that could be added. In fact, I'm going to add Royal Pains now, because I just can't believe there's only two of us on all of LJ shipping Boris/Hank. |
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| Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 |
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| For those of you who have replies to your journal posts and/or comments CC:ed to your e-mail, have you noticed JournalFen "dropping" comments? I've already caught a few replies to my comments that never got CC:ed into my e-mail inbox. | ||||||||
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Highlights: "The studio's forthcoming version of the Brothers Grimm story will be renamed "Tangled" after market research showed that boys do not like films with girls' names in the title. Disney bosses believe that is the reason for the disappointing box office performance of its recent offering, The Princess and the Frog." "Disney has also shelved another film, The Snow Queen, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, fearing it will alienate boys." Full article here. ETA: Rebuttal at NPR. |
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| Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 |
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So apparently Del Ray Spectra is doing something arcane with various fictional characters. Steven Brust is puzzled. And as for the actual matchup it self, uh, hard to say? But matching Dumbledore against a guy whose goto weapon is* called Spellbreaker is a bit much. *or was called, until it got an upgrade |
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I'm taking a library science course on gender and computerization and our latest assignment is an actual "social experiment" wherein we must join a virtual world and create both a male and a female avatar and analyze our interactions, etc. Thing is, I'm not much of a virtual world person at all and I have no idea where to start so I was hoping y'all might be able to provide some suggestions. Free is obviously the best, but I'd also like to join someplace where there is a high potential for being approached by other characters/avatars (preferably of the non-skeevy variety but I'm aware this IS the internet) so I don't have to seek people out. Thanks! ETA: You guys are awesome! I'm definitely having you Also, apparently the My Ponies Hate You guy is at it again (See Also: Impressions of Avatar). I recommend &style=mine to avoid the blinky gif background.
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nicked from the very long comment at Bandom darlings My Chemical Romance broke up according to their website. Their drummer Bob Bryar has left the band. People leave bands all the time, but that never stops people from pouring dirt on their heads, or beating their breasts, or making long bitchy comments on livejournal. There is a post in Until ( CUT FOR STRONG LANGUASE AND YOUR RETINAS ) |
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| Monday, March 8th, 2010 |
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| Google issues apology for privacy screw-ups. | ||||||
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A tiny old wank, but one that's a microcosm of why I love programming wank. Background information for non-computer people: PHP is an older web programming language, that's widely supported by everyone on the planet and thus decidedly uncool. IBM supports it, for chrissakes. Do you get more stodgy than that? Ruby on Rails is a new, hip web programming language and framework that is way cooler than PHP. And supposedly it's easier to program with, but mostly it is way cool. Twitter uses it! Frameworks are software to make it easier to program. They're kinda boring, except that Ruby on Rails has theirs automatically included while PHP people have to find or make their own, thus making Rails infinitely more cool. When writing an article about your new PHP framework, never, ever make an unflattering side comment about Rails. Else its creator will jump in immediately with: “Rails also suffers because it is hard to decouple Rails code from page display code.”. WTF? Have you actually tried Rails? What part of MVC escaped your observant eye? When you talk about “Rails code”, what would you be referring to? Business logic? Controller logic? Hand-waving logic? Not only does Rails go to greater lengths than most to separate concerns, but it also ships with a host of solutions to better organize “page display code” (I assume you’re referring to view logic). From partials to helpers to layouts. Hell must certainly have frozen over with pigs flying across the skies. There’s no other day of the week that a PHP framework could be slinging accusations of poorly separated concerns. CLEARLY THIS IS OFF TO A FRIENDLY START. Why, next I expect them to be sitting in a circle singing Kumbaya. Or slinging accusations of slander, hyperbole, cult membership, and of course fascism in less than thirty comments. One of the two. |
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| Sunday, March 7th, 2010 |
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| I'm slowly migrating over in that direction, but for now my f'list consists of pretty much nobody. Anyone over there? Any interesting communities? | ||||||||
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| Saturday, March 6th, 2010 |
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I was wondering if anyone else here has a website hosted on slashcity.net and if so, if their site has disappeared within the past 24 hours. Mine went down yesterday morning, and I noticed today that if you go to http://www.slashcity.net, that's down too. I checked a couple of slashcity.net sites to see if perhaps the whole domain down, but those sites are still up and running. I opened a case at CKR yesterday morning, but no response so far, and my site is still giving a 404 error. :/ |
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| Friday, March 5th, 2010 |
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Okay, this was over on SF_Drama already, but the writeup on Wank Report was glorious and had better context. So here it is, courtesy of a mousey and with most of mousey's language intact (I cut some editorial and found some more links): The SCP Foundation is creepypasta that evolved into its own wiki: it's a series of articles presented as the internal documentation of an organization that stores and studies supernatural or otherworldly entities and phenomena. It's got a convincing real-world horror bent and is fairly popular. A while back, a few people decided to start a panfandom livejournal roleplay based on the SCP Foundation. Since there's a fair bit of overlap in audiences, Project SCP immediately garnered good word-of-mouth and a lot of interest on LJ's own RP-oriented anonymous discussion board, ( I'm sure this will end well.... ) |
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Portal 2 is official and coming this Christmas! Also mentioned in that article: Valve's ad parody teasers for the (all but announced) Mac version of Steam. (I'm a Boot Camper, but still... yay!) ETA: Steam on Mac is officially official! And this is especially sweet: • If players already own the PC versions of Valve games, they’ll get Mac versions at no extra charge through a feature called Steam Play. • By using the Steam Cloud feature that the company introduced in 2008, players can save in-progress games online, then call up those saved games no matter which version they’re playing. If you’re playing Half-Life 2 on your home PC but then head out on the road with your MacBook, you can continue your game-in-progress. This, too: “We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac and the Xbox 360,” Cook said. “Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows.” Portal 2 will be Valve’s first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows, the company said. |
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Apologies if this is against the rules, but I thought people would be interested. Apparently, LJ is very sneakily tracking outbound links, and it's very difficult to turn the setting off. This'll end well... |
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Friends JournalFen for britikitty.
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