Never go away again, IJ! I missed you something horrible. Been obsessively f5ing Twitter - wore the markings almost gone.

Thanks to squeaky for the hard work and headaches. *tips glass*

insanity is looking for ideas for IJ virtual gifts --> here <--.

I put in for booze and cake, because I'm one-track and easy to please like that.

Saw suggestions for fandom-specific gifts, which is a pretty cool idea. I'd love to be able to hand out, say, a Travel Mug of Rassilon or Presidential Airlocking, as the occasion called.

VGifts - easy and fun. With 200,000 users here now, it's a spare change way to maybe help ease the cost of server strain & support the site.

So pony up with the creative notions!

Am I the last person to find s2bloggish? Great asylum full of carriep63's excellent code.

My original layout here was Bloggish, and I liked everything about it except for the awkward way the metadata went around the mood icons. It bugged me enough that I switched to FlexiSquares, because I am weirdly picky over the strangest details.

But hey - Hello s2bloggish!

Played around with the theme layers available there, and ♥♥♥ the results.


Got code to move the metadata to right here. Looks like -




More code to replace the text with pictures here. Ta da!



Yay! But now can't I decide if I want to switch back to the old Boxspring layout. Coin toss, maybe?

Since I hear IJ did away with the RSS point system - Thanks, snakeling! - I made a feed for Curtis Granderson's blog.

granderson_espn

So now I have up to date flist info on how he feels about being compared to Willie Mays, why he wears the old-school tall socks, and what he had for Easter Dinner.

Also made feeds for two of my favorite Tigers blogs -

tigers_bilfer
tigers_mackave

OPENING DAY=TOMORROW!

nameless_layout has the source code for Flexible Squares and Smooth Sailing available, with easy directions for adding layout layers.

And now I have both options right on the dropdown on the Customize page.

Copious YAY to that.

Not everyone is fond of your big orange head as a userinfo icon.

If you want to replace him with something more like this -

user-name

user-name

user-name

( Codes inside )

Please credit the icon makers if used. And _excentric_ has a ton more tiny icons, so check out her livejournal for more options.

Thanks and credit to fruitcup for the original code.

Well, that didn't take long.

LJ's flag_content went live.
- Thanks to ingrid for the heads up on that one.

And... account deletions.

Latest LJ News post has the comment flood thing going on.

Whether someone used the new form, or LJ took advantage of the timing, the results are the same. Can't say I'm shocked or anything here. The 6A winds have been blowing this way for a while now, and I honestly see them becoming an even less Media fan-friendly place as time goes on.

I think the time will come when 6A decides hosting the grey area that is fanfic to be too much of a pain in the ass, business-wise, to bother with. Yes, fanfic helped build their userbase. They have their numbers and a higher profile now. While loyalty to its roots would be a fabulous thing, it would also be an unusual thing. Ask anyone who's been fired a month short of retirement, or scheduled five hour short of insurance-eligible status. Corporations deal in profit/loss, reward/risk. I feel fandom doings start falling more in the latter categories the more successful a site like Livejournal becomes.

So I'm happy to be here, happy I have a Journalfen. Happy I have tabbed browsing, so I can watch 3 different FLists at the same time. Happy to see favorite posters show up on my other sites. I'm not a heavy poster, and I don't leave many comments, but I read my FLists every day or so. There are tons of journals I would miss if they disappeared.

And I'm keeping tabs on where various favorites are moving to. Some won't move from LJ. Comms like baseball and gearheads just aren't in the same boat as flyingpetrellis. fandom_wank got bounced several times before settling in at Journalfen.

So I'm reminding myself that fandom isn't a place (or a server). It's us. It happens wherever we congregate. If we get displaced for a while, it's only temporary. Fandom always reconstructs itself.

LJ was a terrific central location for several years. Before that, so were Usenet, ListServs, EZboard and the old Prodigy forums. When a situation becomes boneheaded and frustrating as a media fan, it's time to for me to move on.

And be grateful I backed my LJ stuff up here. Love to Insane Journal.