| LJ, redux |
[07 Jan 2009|03:26pm] |
Is LJ being exceptionally robust, or is it just me? Vandalism by pissed-off ex-employees?
It's probably just me. But I can't get to LJstatus to find out for sure, so I thought I'd post here.
Sorry to bother everyone (okay, I'm not. Not really.)
Edited to add: Okay, not just me, then. On the one hand, Phew. On the other hand...I bet this has the potential to become epic. Even when it turns out to be just a hiccup.
Edited again to add: Now when LJ comes up it shows the following message: LiveJournal.com is currently unavailable due to emergency maintenance. Don't worry, this has nothing to do with our recent company layoffs! It's a technical problem, not a lack-of-personnel problem. Thank you for your patience.
Final edit: It's baa-ack. And I'm going to the bookstore.
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| RIP, GJ. |
[07 Jan 2009|05:15pm] |
And GreatestJournal is dead.
http://www.greatestjournal.com
A week in the new year, and two journaling services are already dead? That's harsh. Check out the 403 error.
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[07 Jan 2009|11:31am] |
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While gamer sites are doing the "Best/Worst of 2008" awards, Zero Punctuation decides to do one too... but a little bit differently.
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| Portollies.com poll |
[06 Jan 2009|06:54pm] |
Doubtless you saw this in Metafandom, but I thought I'd post it here too.
Portfollies.com poll
"Portfollies will be a social networking website where people can upload their portfolios (text, image, video and audio files), both original and fan works. The website will also offer communities/forums, and a variety of tools to help with creation and communication."
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| So Transfan, I Herd U Liek Pedo Bear? |
[06 Jan 2009|12:54pm] |
Transformers comic book fandom wank.. Early this morning, it was about pedophilia.
My doppelgänger from the IDW fan forum Skwege learned that he had been accused of having sex with children by the IDW forum fantards on Transfans.net. Sprunkner is a real internet tough guy. Unfortunately, he made it quite easy to find his dox.
Skwege was not happy to find he'd been slandered as a pedo. So he calls (yes, as in calls Sprunkner's landline) to tell him to take it down. No yelling, just something along the lines of "call me whatever you want but accusing me of child fucking is not cool."
What does Spencer (Sprunkner's IRL name) do? He freaks out and hangs up!
That's right-he's a coward. So Skwege leaves him a voicemail:
"Hi Spencer :
You like to make libelous accusations about people having sex with kids? That is really grown up of you. Oh wow, you live in Washington State as well? What a coincidence! Bellingham is only an hour from here.
It's not funny! I know little punks like you think they can run around all anonymous on the internet and think nothing can bite them in their ass. However let me tell you little man, you are going to retract your statement, and then apologize. Talking shit about someone is one thing, but making a disgusting and FOUL comment like that is libelous. I have the time, money, resources, and most importantly the fucking patience to see this through so don't toy with me little man."
Then Sprunkner has his wife (yes, someone actually agreed to marry him) respond. He doesn't have the balls to answer Skwege himself-he makes his wife call him back and tell him not to call. Unfortunately, Spencer posted her phone number and email as his contact information.
Some PMs get exchanged on the IDW forum and Sprunkner accuses Skwege of threatening him (although I doubt the police consider being asked to take down a post or telling someone you're suing them for slander are violations of any particular laws). He makes an announcement on Transfans.net, crying that Skwege is harassing his family and that he called the po-po on him.
Sprunkner did call the police and they in turn contact Skwege.
The result? The police are highly pissed off-at Sprunkner. Because this is much ado about comic books.
All this name calling and wank is over whether or not the comic book series All Hail Megatron is in continuity.
The police were not too happy about being called to mediate a dispute over Starscream's alt mode.
They lecture Sprunkner and felt Skwege was somewhat justified. Skwege apologizes for dragging the wife into the mess because being accused of fucking children is serious business that involves the IRL banhammer.
The wank continues on Tranfan.net where Sprunkner whines some more (I guess his wife made him sleep on the couch) and Skwege threatens to post a scan of the police report.
These fine examples of male adulthood continue to fight about giant robots. I believe Sprunkner's wife summed it up succinctly in an email to Skwege: "This is a fight over made up robots-let it go."
Unfortunately, everyone ignores her.
Edit: I accept this is total fail. Need more recipes and fail macros, please.
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| LJ going under? |
[06 Jan 2009|09:57pm] |
The bubble in social networking has burst, decisively. LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet startup, has cut about 20 of 28 employees — and offered them no severance, we're told.
The company's product managers and engineers were laid off, leaving only a handful of finance and operations workers — which speaks to a website to be left on life support. Matt Berardo, a Yahoo executive hired on last summer, is also believed to be gone.
Source
Can you imagine the amazing bitchfest wankery that would go on if anything happened to LJ??? The internet would implode...
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| Astro Boy's Caucasian Makeover |
[06 Jan 2009|12:25am] |
Note: This rant and the linked article refer to the upcoming Astro Boy CGI movie. If you are at all familiar with the source material, you will probably be offended by this article. Also, I hope none of you out there are big on Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, as Imagi promises that since "it is not as well known as Astro Boy, the project, about five super-powered teens fighting monsters, is open to interpretation. 'We’re kind of making up our own version based on the original 1970s cartoon.' "
http://www.star-ecentral.com/news/story.asp?file=/2009/1/4/movies/2871865&sec=movies
At the risk of pushing this into i_wank territory, WHAT THE FUCK. I mean, seriously. WHAT THE FUCK are you people thinking?
You did not just seriously say that you want to make Astro 'less feminine' because he has large eyes and, oh no, EYELASHES? He's a FREAKING 6-year-old-analogue ROBOT. What, are you worried about robo-pedophiles or something? It's not like he has tiny little robot-boy nipples to put pasties over, or a tiny little robot e-peen to cover up.
You did not just seriously argue with the goddamn Tezuka estate about the size of his ASS.
You did not just seriously say that you didn't MEAN to make a legendary Japanese iconic character look "American" but that it just kinda happened.
Just plain fucking NO. A huge bag of no.
(edit to fix URL)
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| A Request for Recs |
[05 Jan 2009|08:32pm] |
This one is for my mom - she just finished reading Phantom of the Opera (book, obviously) and wants to know where the fandom is - or at least where the fanfiction is: if anyone could rec me some good bookverse fic* I would be very, very much obliged. Good mimickry of Gaston Leroux's style (in the puffin classics translation) is a gigantic bonus.
Also one from/for myself - now that I've exhausted Yuletide's offerings and am already in the middle of the Dragonchoice duology (it's good!) - is there any other good Dragonriders of Pern fic on the net? I'll read most anything, although I really like metay fic.
* (gen or het, ideally; I think she would freak if I linked her slash. Also, non-porny, since I would freak at sending links to porn to my mom)
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| Bad placement of subtitles |
[05 Jan 2009|01:57am] |
Dear Fansubbers,
I appreciate all the hard work that you put into subbing anime and other international titles not available in the English language.
But for the love of god! Please use common sense when you decide to get creative and place text on random spots of the fucking screen. While I don't have a problem with a line of text appearing occasionally on top to translate signs or to briefly explain certain phrases unique to that language, I don't however want a whole freaken paragraph that covers up half of the characters' faces, while at the same time translating their dialogue at the bottom of the screen.
If you must write a full explanation for a particular idiom, or a particular event in the story, please DO so at the beginning of the episode before the actual opening credits start. Do you have ANY idea how it annoying it is to see a paragraph of text over a character's face JUST to be able explain a reference that you noticed early on? It's not only distracting, but if I'm reading a paragraph of text on the screen, I'm not seeing the action that's taking place, nor reading the dialogue that's being said. I can notice events for myself without you having to point them out to me, and if I missed a reference to something, it's very unlikely that I'll give a damn. I just want to watch the damned show.
Another thing bothers me: please, please, PLEASE! Keep the subtitles at the bottom of the screen? I don't think it's asking too much to not want my eyes to have to follow a trail of text appearing on different sides of the screen at random times. That's also really annoying and really distracting. I'd like to be able to focus as much on the action as possible rather than the actual text thank you.
Sincerely,
A Lover of Foreign Entertainment
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| Disney Buys Fanlib |
[04 Jan 2009|06:25pm] |
Written up here by ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif) stewardess.
(May shortly be wanky, but not provocative enough for ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/community.gif) clairvoyantwank just yet, I thought.)
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| Pratchett recs? |
[03 Jan 2009|08:31pm] |
Okay, I think this is the place to post this, but if it's not, let me know and I'll delete it. It seems to pertain to "fandom" as a general rule.
Anyway, the news about Terry Pratchett being knighted has inspired me to pick up the books I've had sitting around waiting to read. I've finished "Mort" and I'm most of the way through "Wyrd Sisters" and while I can say that I love Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, the character I'm really in love with is Death himself. (God that sounds weird!)
Being that I'm pretty much broke right now (car payments, credit card payments, car repairs and now I'm going back to school... I has no money to spare on things like novels!) I have to reserve them at the library through their transfer system, and the transfer system is not very good at giving decent book descriptions beyond author, title, year published and format (hardcover vs softbound). So what I'd like to know is this: which books focus most on Death and his household? Because I seriously love his laid-back everything-in-due-time attitude, and I'd love to read more of his escapades. I'm sure I'll enjoy any Pratchett book I pick up, but I'm really eager to read the books about Death. (Why do I get this weird feeling that I sound like an emo-gothic-wannabe when I say that?)
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| Not to cause mass panic but I have to ask.... |
[03 Jan 2009|06:50pm] |
I don't mean to rouse people into a tizzy but I thought I'd inquire...
I've heard mumblings on my LJ friends list of malware (Specifically vundo) infecting people via LJ's ads. Is this really happening?
I have adblock so I think I'm good but still...
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| Got an account on JournalSpace? |
[03 Jan 2009|07:22pm] |
Not anymore, you don't.
Journalspace is no more.
DriveSavers called today to inform me that the data was unrecoverable.
Here is what happened: the server which held the journalspace data had two large drives in a RAID configuration. As data is written (such as saving an item to the database), it's automatically copied to both drives, as a backup mechanism.
The value of such a setup is that if one drive fails, the server keeps running, using the remaining drive. Since the remaining drive has a copy of the data on the other drive, the data is intact. The administrator simply replaces the drive that's gone bad, and the server is back to operating with two redundant drives.
But that's not what happened here. There was no hardware failure. Both drives are operating fine; DriveSavers had no problem in making images of the drives. The data was simply gone. Overwritten.
For all the bitching we do about LJ and (occasionally) JF, at least their backups actually back things up.
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| Naruto Shippuden on Hulu? Sign me up! |
[02 Jan 2009|07:43pm] |
Remember that post about Crunchyroll going legit? One of the first things they're picking up is Naruto Shippuden, which will run on Crunchyroll with subtitles an hour after the show runs in Japan for the paid members there. Joost.com, Hulu.com, and Naruto.com will run the episodes for free a week later. This will start with the next episode, running on January 8.
In addition, subtitled episodes will be uploaded to all above websites at 8/week until the entire catalog is available.
In related news, Dattebayo has dropped Naruto Shippuden from its subtitling rounds.
I'd like to start a betting pool on when the wank will begin.
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| Did you know... |
[02 Jan 2009|08:43pm] |
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... that TV Tropes was on twitter? I didn't. I almost wish I still didn't.
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| The grammar! My eyes! |
[01 Jan 2009|09:21am] |
I'm just C&P'ing a mousie's post from wank_report. I can't pass up entitlement wank.
Crunchyroll is going legit. The site owner, Shinji, has been wheeling and dealing to have anime air subbed only days after it airs in Japan.
OK, users are pleased, the Naruto fans look on in anticipation, everything seems hunky-dory.
Then, Shinji introduces Anime memberships for the site. Did not read all of the benefits but the gist seems to be higher quality videos and quicker access to the anime from Japan.
That happened in the past few weeks. Now queue the new year!
Oops, did he just say that he was removing all fan uploaded content and getting permission from the publishers?
Queue the butthurt, angst, and I will kill for my anime!!!!Z!!!!!!ZOMG~!!!! Along with people eagerly trading links for other sites to feed their addiction.
The dramas, anime, and music sections now look like ghost towns, with the exception of stuff Shinji has wheeled and dealed for.
People are predicting the death of the site, but for now, it's fun seeing the entitlement angst going on over there.
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