I went ahead anyway (damn subject text limit ;P)

Then I ram my ovapositor down your throat and lay my eggs in your chest--But I'm not an alien!

Hmmmm. Two-fer thursday? Celebration of getting the preorder page up? Take it however you will.


WRD: Two of Cogs by =Winneganfake on deviantART

It's been a momentous 12 months here at LiveJournal. We crossed a capital T at Ten years young. And, like most precocious pubescents, we celebrated turning double digits by publishing our first book! Needless to say, we've experienced some major changes, both inside and out. Before we recap, we'd like to thank you for bearing with us as we've struggled through ungainly growth spurts, identity pangs, and, yes, the occasional blemish. We hope you'll continue to stand by us: We're gaining wisdom with maturity.

Stuff you liked

• Back in February, we placed a call for entries for our ten-year anniversary anthology in lj_turns10. In December (less than a year later!), we officially announced the publication of Live Journal: The First Decade. Featuring an inspired collection of writing, photographs, and artwork from the pages of LiveJournal history, the book has been selected by Blurb.com as a top staff pick! We are proud to have played host to so much talent over the years, and we thank our contributors for sharing their extraordinary work.
• We all love quirky surprises, but not when it comes to managing our account settings. This year we streamlined settings into one central account management area. No more pouring through FAQs to figure out how to control privacy settings, modify notifications, adjust mobile settings, or update contact information!
• Being users ourselves, we realize our own mothers couldn't find us on LiveJournal based on our usernames and userpics alone (*heaves heavy sigh of relief*). But since there are times when we actually want to be found, we created a search tool--Find Your Friends--to help locate people by email address (it's in the Friends drop-down menu).
• Spam counter-attack: The war against vicious malware and spambots reigns eternal, but we've been making serious inroads to ensure your online security. We've established new protocols, such as requiring email address validations. We've grown more savvy about ferreting out suspicious behavior. We've added features, like whitelisting, to help you protect your communities. Our valiant (i.e., overworked) spam avengers (a/k/a the LiveJournal ops team) are standing on red alert so you can sleep safely at night.
• After an intensive beta, we launched My Guests at the end of the year, which lets you see who's been hanging around your journal. A number of you have even discovered secret admirers (not all of whom are creepy)!
• Last, but by no means least, we want to thank our volunteers for providing invaluable support and feedback. Their Herculean efforts enable us to answer your questions more efficiently, identify spammers, reduce abuse, and deliver better features (through tireless testing). On behalf of the staff and the larger LiveJournal community, we are truly grateful for their diligence, intelligence, loyalty, and passion.

You got your fix

• We recently debugged a number of the oustanding issues with the rich text editor so your entries look great regardless of whether you know html. You can read more about text editors here.
• In response to user demand, we brought back international voice posting. For more info on voice posting, read here.
• At long last, we revived TxtLJ with Verizon. For more info on TxtLJ, check out the FAQ.

Paid features you enjoyed

• In December, we introduced My Stats, which provides detailed data on who's been viewing your entries as well as statistics on commenting, RSS requests, friending history, and more. Despite a few early glitches, the response has been extremely favorable.
• This year, we launched and improved Notes (i.e., the feature formerly known as Alias), which lets you add private comments on friends and commenters (it's in the Profile drop-down menu). This way you won't be caught red-faced when you strain to remember details about that wonderful LiveJournal friend who sent you a birthday vGift. For more info, read the FAQ.
• When we first announced View friends pages by date, we thought it would be a quiet, minor enhancement. The rave reaction floored us, which made us all very happy. We gave it a fine tuning in February of 2009, so it's even better!
• How embarrassing! It appears pingbacks have gone back to the shop for service. We’ll keep you posted. We didn't know just much you liked pingbacks until it went in for service. It's back and, judging by your irritation when it wasn't available, this is good news. FYI, pingbacks send instant notifications (via screened comments) whenever someone links to one of your entries on LiveJournal. For more info, read this entry in paidmembers or check out the FAQ.

Mixed reviews

• The search is still on. Some of you have reported getting more comprehensive results for keyword searches using the new Yandex search engine and like the ability to search within content categories (like entries or comments). Others have not been satisfied with the relevancy of search results. Please be patient. We're still tweaking this product.
• This past December, we wanted to try out a new holiday promotion. Given the crap economy, we decided to offer our Paid/Permanent users a stack of $10 coupons to send to Basic/Plus users for paid account upgrades. We hoped you would like it. And some of you did, but many were disappointed that we didn't offer Give More as well. We want to thank you so much for letting us know. Your input will help us plan better in the future. Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users can continue to send out coupons through January 15th. Coupons can be redeemed through January 31, 2010.
• We were pretty excited about Your Journal Your Money, which allows Paid/Permanent users to earn extra cash by displaying Google ads to Basic/Plus and logged out users. A number of you tried it. Some of you really like it. Others, not so much. (Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users who do not participate in this program will not view ads on journals. Participants will see ads on their own journal, but won't see them on other journals unless they specifically opt in.) For additional details, visit here.
• We relaunched m.livejournal.com, our mobile app. While it offers a nicer UI and enhanced functionality, some of you think we can do better on load times. Like most of us, it's a work in progress. You can customize your mobile settings here. For more info, please read the FAQ.

Missing Inaction

• We shudder to bring up the neon purple elephant squatting on our heads, but, yes, we didn't give you those a la carte userpics. We've been making radical improvements to our backend in order to support them. But no excuses. We know you want them. We cringe every time you mention them. We're sorry we dropped the ball on this, and we promise to do our best to get them to you in 2010.

Stumbling points

• Back in early August, we experienced outages related to a series of DDoS attacks. We are proud to report that we were down a total of one hour over the course of a few days. We thank our heroic ops guys for getting us up sooner and more consistently than any of our less fortunate social networking friends. We apologize for leaving you temporarily stranded.
• A couple of months back, we offered a free, unrestricted vGift, which induced a snowflake cookie avalanche. This resulted in backed up/delayed notifications, which, in turn, led us to reboot systems, rendering scrapbooks unavailable. It took a while to shovel free. Apologies for the inconvenience. We learned a valuable lesson that should keep us calamity-free in the future (fingers crossed while knocking on wood).
• That darn Best Buy ad. First off, we're sorry about the audio auto-play (we got it turned off as quickly as possible). While it's true that we'll continue to show this type of ad to accounts that normally see them (never to Paid/Permanent accounts), we'll make sure the sound defaults to off moving forward. We promise to do our very best to keep ads to a minimum on LiveJournal, while keeping a roof over Frank's head.

Full steam ahead!

As we plunge headfirst into the next decade, we want to take a moment to look back and thank all of our employees, both past and present, who have worked so hard to create our unique and magical universe. We couldn't have made it this far without you: Your contributions brighten our path everyday. We also want to extend our heartfelt appreciation to each and every one of you. Whether you've been around for ten days or ten years, your humor, intelligence, talent, and creativity are what makes this the most vibrant global community on the Internet (the best place on the Web, in our humble opinion). Here's hoping that 2010 will be the greatest year yet! We thank you for joining us as we embark upon another glorious decade of LiveJournal history!

WRD: Ace of the Sea by =Winneganfake on deviantART

Ok, folks, it's official- I've got a big fat new Tormented Artifacts site update finished up and uploaded.

Ok, not all that big and fat- theree new products, and that's it. Though the specific products kick much ass, like this:



And the preorder page for the Windrow-Ravenswood deck is now up and running:

So I had hoped to hang out with a few more MDfolks during this break. As you may have noticed, the radio silence on my part makes that a bit more difficult.

The reason there's been radio silence is because my uncle is in the ICU right now, and I'm needed as one of the people to take care of him (since I'm close to DC & metro - closer than other family members).

When my uncle first started having his health problems (see here), I thought they would be severe, but ultimately surmountable. I'm starting to realize that this is going to be going on very likely for the rest of his life.

It's scary.

Ask me one fandom-related question in the comments. This can be fandom specific, general, or about fandom/lj stuff/fic writing/etc. in general. Favorite character, favorite moment, unpopular opinion, something about a fic of mine... whatever. Wackiness encouraged.

So I grabbed this meme from a couple of other Star Trek people, because I thought it looked like fun.

Since the majority of my lj friends (I think? It's not like I have spreadsheets) are non-fandom friends, I am extending the term "fandom" to refer to media stuff in general, not just fandoms that I actually belong to. So you can, like, ask me who my favorite Doctor is even though I've never actually written Who-verse fic or anything.* Or you can ask about gaming stuff, because that's kind of a fandom too.

*(For the record, it's Ten, with a special soft spot for Paul McGann's voice Eight.(

So the place that I thought didn't want to hire now wants to hire me because someone quit this morning!  They gave me a call back and want me to go on a second interview next Tuesday!  Job hunting WIN!!!

Of course the interview could have been tomorrow but the probability of snow killed that.  One more reason to hate snow.  Grrr.

I seem to be shilling things a lot these days, but what can you do? There's a whole internet out there for my personal amusement!

Shakespeare does The Big Lebowski.

'Nuff said.

I've got my list for 2009 together, and had a bit of fun putting together some numbers for you - actually, some are a bit scary. And I've given out some "awards" too, which are hard for me to do - about as hard as giving ratings in the first place. But first...

You've probably seen this before, but I came across this fairly recent edition of a book by C.S. Lewis in a secondhand bookshop today and naturally the cover caught my eye.

Look familiar?

The symbolism of the apple is tiresomely old isn't it. Ah the crispy, juicy temptation of truth, knowledge and self-awareness, all wrapped up in a shiny red or green skin ...


BOOKS READ IN 2009

It's so weird to look back and see the books you read at the beginning of the year - I would have sworn I'd read those the previous year! It feels so far away now.

Year End Statistics:

Total # of Books Read: 170
Most # of Books Read in a Month: 19 (June)
Least # of Books Read in a Month: 9 (December)
Total # of Books I own, end of 2009: 1595
Total # of Books I own, unread by end of 2009: 568
% of My Books That Are Unread: 35.6% (I am crap at maths, percentages especially, so please correct me if I'm wrong!)
# of Review Copies Read: 18 (many were ARCs, but not all of them arrived before the release date, so I just call them review copies)

"IT TAKES THE CAKE" Awards:

Best Dystopian World:
(I love the contradiction in those words!) This is a tough one. It's a toss-up between Janet McNaughton's The Secret Under My Skin, Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, and Yevgeny Zamyatin's We.

Best Book to Recommend to Your Mum:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows. This was such a lovely, "afternoon tea" kind of read, a delightful post-war story told through letters. I highly enjoyed it.

Book I Wish I'd Read When Younger:
This is where we delve into the Young Adult "genre", such as it is (it's not, of course, an actual genre, but it's conveniently used as such). I often say in a review "I wish I'd read this when I was a teen, I probably would have really loved it." Doesn't help if they weren't published at the time though! Anyway, as much as I loved Lisa Mantchev's Eyes Like Stars, I do think I would have enjoyed it more had I been younger. There are a few others, but I can only pick one.

Best Vampire Book:
I have to give this award to The Society of S by Susan Hubbard - another book that took me by surprise. I was totally engrossed, and it's not your usual vampire story at all.

Most Fun Romance:
I loved Seducing Mr. Darcy by Gwyn Cready - it was an impulse buy and I thought I'd hate it, but it had me laughing and I still sometimes think of the characters, all these months later.

Classic that Surprised Me the Most:
I was very surprised by I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, actually - mostly because I was expecting something dry and dull and waffling. They were fun short stories that touched on some very interesting philosophical questions, without boring the pants off me.

Non-fiction to Write Home About:
I didn't read much non-fiction this year, but there were a couple of stand-outs, most notably Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. If you read any non-fiction book this year, make it this one.

Most Enjoyed Book of the Year:
Why do I do this to myself? I hate putting books in competition with each other! However, I've set myself the task of picking one that especially blew me away, and it would have to be Lawrence Hills' The Book of Negroes (outside Canada, the title is Someone Knows My Name, if you're looking for it).

Another favourite from 2009 was Jessica Z. by Shawn Klomparens.

Crappiest Book of the Year:
This is of the books I read in 2009, that were published in 2009. It's an unfair award to give out, and you just know it's going to go to something in the Romance genre don't you. Well, you're not wrong.

The award goes to Rita Herron's Dark Hunger - I don't write narky reviews, as a rule, but I come close with this one. It was one of the worst written books I've read all year, which is saying a lot, because there were quite a few disappointing reads.

Another crappy read was Laura Whitcomb's The Fetch. What a yawn-fest!

Notable Mentions:
There was a lot of flotsam, but also some real gems that didn't get popular attention. I have to recommend Dust of 100 Dogs and The Undrowned Child, both new releases in YA this year.

Other loved books in '09 include:
Ten Thousand Lovers
Perfect Chemistry
Frenchman's Creek
Indiscretion
Carpe Diem
Speak
Sister Wife
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo


( THE LIST )

Exceedingly busy day. Silly drama among the peripheral team. Yay for headphones.

I've finally acquired a copy of the score to Near Dark - along with 52 other Tangerine Dream albums. Almost two days' worth of listening material.

The current reading material is Halting State, by Charles Stross. I'm only a few pages into it, and it's interesting. Written, so far, in second person.

This is, I think, my third read of a full-length Stross product. I thought Glasshouse was extremely good, and had a lot of fun with most of Saturn's Children, but there was a chapter there that left me physically ill. Can't say as I'd like to revisit that experience, but I've got to give Stross credit for being able to elicit that kind of response.

A significant winter storm is forecast for the area tomorrow. 2-6 inches of snow. We've had slight dustings and some ground cover over the past few days, but nothing like points to the northeast and northwest.

WRD: Ace of Circles by =Winneganfake on deviantART

The cool thing about getting my hair cut is I still have my hair, tied into a braid, so now I can go around tickling people with it and cracking it like a whip.  XD

But the back of my neck is cold.  Oh yeah, and the job thing didn't work out.  Way to lead me on, geez lady thanks.  From the way the interview went, I was under the impression I pretty much had the job, they just wanted to wait until a less stressful time for me to start training.  The search continues.

Please no snow on Thursday.  Please no snow on Thursday.  Please no snow on Thursday.

I finally managed to make a kugelhopf!  I bought the mould in Alsace over the summer and it then loitered in my kitchen while I tried to figure out how to temper it before use.  After much googling and failing to find anything it finally occurred to me to search in French.  Thankfully that worked and soon my precious kugelhopf mould was ready to go!  I made it yesterday in my last day of freedom before starting a new job, my first after uni, as a little celebration as I'll have less time to cook now.  I wanted to do something that would take me hours, and this filled the need nicely.

 

See more pics and the recipe over at AnnaintheKitchen.  I have big plans for this mould in the future.  I have visions of making some kind of cake with a pile of delicious ripe summer fruits in the well in the centre.  Yum!  In the meantime this kugelhopf is delicious and just about perfect for this cold weather.

Yep.  Nearly ten years of hair growth = foot and a half of hair hacked off.  It's never been this short (and by short I mean I can't even pull it back into a tail anymore).  I'm not freaked out at all.  I thought I would be, but I actually think this suits me a lot better.

Every winter I always say I will cut my hair (static electricity is real bitch).  I just finally made myself do it this time.

Also I really hope it does not snow on Thursday. 

BlueWater Productions to do Lady GaGa comic. Just in time for Free Comic Book Day (on May 5th) too.

So long story: I was working on that mirror universe fanmix I made, and wanted to put "Shadowboxer" by Fiona Apple on it, so I went digging in my old CDs for my copy of Tidal, which I hadn't listened to in ages. And I've always loved the song "Criminal," and listening to it again:

I've been a bad bad girl
I've been careless with a delicate man
And it's a sad, sad world
When a girl can break a boy just because she can
Don't you tell me to deny it
I've done wrong, and I wanna suffer for my sins
I've come to you 'cause I need guidance to be true
Before it ends, just tell me where to begin.

This scene just popped into my head, fully-formed, and I had to write it.

Title: "I've Been Careless"
Fandom: White Collar
Characters and Pairings: Elizabeth, Kate, Peter, discussion of Neal/Kate and Elizabeth/Peter, possibly pre-OT4 if you like.
Rating: PG for crime talk
Summary: Kate comes to Elizabeth with her concerns about Neal's new life.
Spoilers: Through the very end of 1x07.
Disclaimer: You know the worst thing about fanfiction? You can't take credit for your work. ;)
A/N: I regret to inform you that this fic fails the Bechdel test like it's the Kobayashi Maru. I sort of think these characters deserve one that doesn't, so maybe someday soon I will write that one, too.

( I've been a bad, bad girl. )

Get Epic by =Winneganfake on deviantART