I subscribe to journals I want to read, adding and removing as I gain and lose interest. If you add me to your circle, I'll check out the last five or so entries of your journal to see if I'm interested in reading. Pets, memes, and TV shows I hate make this less likely.

I'm being conservative about unlocking for people. I have not yet unlocked for anyone with whom I'm not reciprocal friends on LJ. I also have not yet posted any locked entries, so nobody's missed anything. (Locked content on LJ? Pleas for attention, grudgewanky snarling, and questions too embarrassing to ask in public, along with the occasional bit of bitching about family.)

My standard for unlocking so far has been extremely random, because I have a very weird headspace about being 'friends.' Er, long story short getting on my access list is weirdly difficult, but it's not because there's a super high standard associated with it or anything. I'm just weird.

That being said…I love people unlocking for me! No, like, seriously, I do. Way to be totally inconsistent, I know, but I love to see the behind-the-curtain stuff. And I don't break lock, really. And, if I were silently judging you, I'd just unsubscribe, I wouldn't say something hideously embarrassing. So, unlock for me if you'd like, it would be very cool.

Add or remove me from your circle at will. Please don't mention it, either way. I have circle notifications on, and I never know how to reply to a personal note.

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if one is English (or Irish) and drinking beer of no particular quality at home, is one liable to be pulling it out of a refrigerator or out of a cabinet/pantry or out of some specifically British beer storage area with which I am unfamiliar?

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Okay, I think we have established that I actually hate it when people put music as an intro or outro of their podfic. Perhaps ten seconds of mood setting is appropriate, but I abhor the inclusion of entire songs, not least because fandom appears to have shitty taste in music. (No, seriously. I think that of every time I've downloaded a podfic which includes songs, I've heard one decent song. Also, I hate the music to probably a third of all fanvids. So, yes, I feel comfortable hating fandom's taste in music.)

But, if somebody insists on adding songs to their podfic, why the hell can't they make sure the song is at the same volume as the fic reading? Because I generally listen to podfic in one of two ways: with earbuds or while I'm sleeping. And the music volume jumping around fucks with both of those instances. If I set the earbuds at the right volume for the fic, the music is painfully loud. If I set it at the right volume for the music, the reading is too soft.

On the other hand, if I'm sleeping, what I mean is, I put a podfic playlist on repeat all night, and while it's not terrible to have the music play a little too loud as I'm falling asleep (although it takes me longer to fall asleep because I'm gritting my teeth through someone's crap taste in music), but the volume jump can sometimes be significant enough to wake me up when we cycle back around to the music.

I really, really, really hate when people preface or epilogue their podfic with songs.

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Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die". Just introduce us to some new things to read.

marina is an Israeli-Russian university student. She's funny, she writes about her military experience, her time at university, her drunken adolescence, and life as a not visible minority in Israel. She manages to be both thoughtful and LOLsy, which I appreciate in a person.

(For reasons which are lost to the mists of time, I thought I subscribed to her for writing the City!verse Star Trek AU, in which Jim runs a fashion mag and his boyfriend Bones is a photographer and Spock and Uhura are editors. But this would appear to be 100% falsefax, so I couldn't begin to tell you how she came to my attention. But I liked the stories anyway, so even though they are not on Dreamwidth, I link you to them.

ETA: marina points out to me that she and miarr plotted a GQ MF AU where everyone is a model except Pike, who is their manager. They didn't actually write it though. D:)

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Here's the thing about USA Network and crime shows. USA Network's crime shows are not necessarily procedurals. Which would be okay, if they weren't about fighting crime. It makes it very difficult for me not to watch the shows as if they were procedurals, which makes me unhappy, as it is not at all uncommon for them to quickly and easily break multiple procedural rules.

What happened to me with White Collar, though, is that the first episode featured Peter and Neal being really smart, not just about investigatory things, but also about the law. (I don't know if you noticed, but when Neal went to enter the warehouse, he did not break into it. This is important, because, since he is working as an agent of the government, a search that happened because Neal did something illegal would be just as inadmissable as a search where Peter did something illegal. On the other hand, when he was kidnapped, and Peter pursued him, that was a hot pursuit, and anything Peter saw in plain view when he entered the warehouse was completely fair game. So smart.

So, I watched the second episode and ( I was completely unhappy. )

Not that I ever watched more than a minute of this show, but TNT has picked up Southland. They'll start airing the first season's 7 in January, following up with the six second season eps that NBC ordered but never aired. Depending on ratings, they may order more.

It'll be rolling Tuesday nights at 10, opposite Leno. 'Twould be lolarious if they garnered bigger ratings than Leno, although it seems a trifle improbable. Anyway, I suspect that, with The Closer and Saving Grace and Raising the Bar, a scripted cop drama with pretensions of grittiness is a good network fit.

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You should get Firefox so that when Yuletide signups open (which is not now!) the website will work for you.

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The themes for this year's 3_ships selections are: black people are awesome and women kick ass. As always, queerness is also appreciated as a theme, but if you want to explore queer dynamics, I'd prefer you picked one of my f/f/m requests to do it with.

I like characters who are competent, characters who have formed a chosen family (especially in opposition to outside forces), and humor. (If humor is not your thing, please don't force it.) I like when characters don't talk and understand each other anyway; I hate when they don't talk and it winds up in a messy, painful misunderstanding that could have been cleared up with two minutes' conversation. I'm not afraid of angst and pain but hurt/comfort as an end in itself doesn't turn me on, and I want an unambiguously happy ending. The characters doing what they do — fight crime, explore space, nerdly vengeance, kvetch — and having their relationship status as a b-plot is fine, provided you can write plot. Plot-forwarding sex is good but not required.

If you want to write a PWP, I like safer sex, cunnilingus, vaginal fisting, rimming, fingering, sex toys, and pegging. Please no felching, snowballing, or scat. Watersports are fine if it's more about warm liquid or trust and less about raunchiness.

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Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die". Just introduce us to some new things to read.

dw_suggestions

Somebody makes a suggestion, everybody votes yay/it would be better with my fabulous innovation/no. Almost 300 of these suggestions have been migrated to Bugzilla (the list of things the developers have to work on) and about 30 have already been implemented.

dw_biz

Generally speaking, when it's time to brainstorm a giant new feature (the last two were photo hosting and a re-work of the update page to include draft posting and scheduled posting.

dw_maintenance

Nobody asks you what you want ahead of time on this comm. However, after every code push, people come and report problems. I always track the most recent post-code push-post.

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So, LJ has changed the format of news to make it a boosterish and gossipy newsletter telling you about original user content. I disapprove of this change, but that's page three of the problems I am having.

Page one is that they are including unattributed Writers' Block responses in the newsletter, ( plagiarized ) azurelunatic explains how to remove your Writers' Block entries from their database.

The next thing is the problems both with the yandex search and with how the bugfix for it was presented to users. LOL, no.

And last, but seriously not least, In response to user comments from last week, we want to let you know that we'll remain LJ cut-free for the next month in order to get more eyeballs on our evolving newsletter. ( which breaks your layout )

I have defriended news, and I'm subscribing to the_lj_monthly, but I have to think very seriously about whether or not I'm going to continue cross-posting, and whether or not I'm going to go back and lock everything on my LJ to private or delete it or what.

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Today is the last day to signup for I Saw Three Ships! For those of you joining this journal in progress, it's a Multifandom Threesomes Secret Santa Exchange. Stories are due December 29, and they will be posted on January 6. Loads of fandoms have been requested and many more have been offered for writing. Loads of fun for everyone, please consider it!

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On Dreamwidth, monthly accounts are going to $35/50 year as of November 1. the-shoshanna explains why you might want an invite code. If you want a code, you can ask me; I've got a buttload coming to me from styles work, but I haven't bothered requesting them because of my perception that everybody who wants an account has one.

I have twenty eleven zero googlewave invites. Drop me a line if you want one. p.s. I have to have an e-mail address. you can pm me.

Write or Die now comes in Write or Die desktop edition. It's US$10, which I would think was a pretty excellent investment for NaNo, but it's an Adobe Air app, and I have the feeling my desktop would keel over and die if I put Adobe Air on it.

whitecollar
theboathouse for NCIS: Los Angeles
intro_to_cs (people taking themselves through MIT's course materials, if I weren't doing NaNo, I would do this.)

Today I totally took a nap instead of either doing the e-mail thing for 3_ships or more planning for NaNo. :(

Speaking of I Saw Three Ships, you should sign up for 3 Ships now. It's awesome.

I don't know why, but I've seen an uptick in badly named links in journal entries. When you link to something, the link text should describe (more or less) what the link is pointing to. It should never, ever be something that is 100% meaningless out of context, like "link" or "here" or "there" or *shudders* "follow the fake cut." (resist the temptation to leave your real cuts with the default text.) Three reasons: screenreader users may not listen to your deathless prose in linear fashion, they may get a list of links on the page before they start reading, and "here" means they can't guess what the link points to. Two, search engines and other spiders use the information in links to try to build a more coherent picture of the web. "here" is meaningless to them as well. Finally, software used on a more local basis, like FF bookmarking a link when I right-click on it, is also befuddled by meaningless link text. I can usually adjust it after the fact, but if I have to manipulate the bookmarking process in any way, I'm less inclined to do it at all. ETA: More advice at the WebAim article on good hypertext practice. Thanks, Vera.

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I decided on a compromise on the question of a separate comm. You can join zvi_wip, and I will try to remember to post a link to the entries there in my journal here every few days. (And I will try to put them at the bottom of posts about other things, instead of just posting boring links.)

I went to the DC area kickoff party Sunday and had a pretty decent time. It's always so curious to me when you have a super large group, and you think some information there is ubiquitous, but it's not. I had to explain the Snowflake Method to a bunch of people who'd never heard of it. FYI, Epicurean in Van Ness is a good, not terribly expensive cafeteria style place.

I didn't get any planning done today, which is not good. I spent time trying to get 3 Ships stuff in order so I don't have to do it during NaNo, and I have one more gigantic job to do for 3 Ships (preparing the e-mails to send out, the most hideous thing after html-izing the files.)

Speaking of, signups for 3_ships close Friday, so if you've been dithering over what you want to request, go sign up now! There are definitely people prepared to write NCIS: LA, and I've got a few people who always assure me they can write anything, so I can probably accommodate some White Collar requests.

As for Yuletide, I'm vacillating really, really hard. I have my, "Yes, I want Les Liaisons Dangereuses and I'm not afraid to make that really apparent" (1 book request, 2 movie adaptation requests, and an unrelated, obscure album for the fourth request.) Lately, though I've been thinking about making a "black people are awesome" request of Psych, NCIS: LA, Glee, and No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (tv). Or, I could make a request of "stuff which smacks my id down hard" of Psych, White Collar, and Leverage.

I can't decide if a tv series of seven hours is sufficiently short to constitute 'fallback which can be picked up quickly" or not, which is the main blow against black people are awesome. But I would actually be happy on any of these, so…pondering, pondering, pondering.

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Soooo, I've totally not done my sign up for 3 Ships yet.

I see a Neal/Peter/Elizabeth request in my future.

Unless I go for a Dianna/Elizabeth/Peter vee, just to keep things interesting.

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Challenges and accessibility

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From fox1013

Hey, LJ. I'm going to do that thing I do as rarely as possible and get serious for a second.

I don't really know how to phrase this, because a ton of worthwhile people have already brought up a ton of worthwhile causes that need your help already this year, but one thing I've seen a few times in the past week that I hadn't heard about before is [Tu Publishing], "a small, independent multicultural SFF press for children and YA." [They sound] seriously fantastic.

They're currently trying to get funding through Kickstarter, where you pledge to donate money to help them get off the ground. If their funding drive works, they'll start accepting manuscripts (for fantasy or science fiction written for the 7-18 range that features characters of color, characters from minority or non-Western cultures, and/or non-Western/minority cultures) in January.

I don't personally know anyone who's directly associated with this, but I've seen it advertised by YA writers who I know are legit, and it's definitely a goal that should be supported. Giving money, submitting manuscripts, or just boosting the signal would all be awesome, because the idea of this being a viable business within the next few months is amazing and fantastic and I would really like to see that happen.

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Saying Yes! is a challenge designed to showcase characters who like sex, enjoy sex, and want sex -- characters fully capable of giving informed consent, and giving it enthusiastically. It's about characters who don't view sex or any of its aspects as something demeaning or shameful and don't pass similar value judgments on their partners' choices.

Saying Yes!, a sex-positive art- and ficbitathon. Our first round will begin on January 4, 2010, and conclude on January 18. We're running the challenge in prompt-tree format

saying_yes_2010

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I Hate "Teachable Moments": Disability and Fanfiction, or How Not to Fail at Disability in Comments by attackfish

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This is fanfic, and it's going to be posted under lock, because it's for someone. PM me if you want to know something about the intended plot before subscribing.

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Yeah, I'm way over that bit about how, on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. My icon shows that I'm a fat black woman with glasses and natural hair who likes TV.

It doesn't show you that I'm a lesbian, and I want to fix that. I think the easiest thing is for me to add something to the TV. (My GIMP skills do not extend to manipulating the t-shirt.) What this means, of course, is that it is poll time!

ETA: poll closed because mpoetess had the photoshop sklls to modify the t-shirt with a double Venus. Thanks, bb.



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