Below are the most recent 20 friends' journal entries.

Thursday, December 10th, 2009
news [ theljstaff ]	2:49p	LiveJournal Major Notes: Notification fix, Snowflake cookie avalanche, LJLimerick, holiday vgifts! Tweaks and enhancements As a number of you reported, a service interruption impaired sending and receiving notifications for a couple of days. This was due to an avalanche of snowflake cookies. We've removed the free snowflake cookie and unclogged the pipeline. Timely notifications should resume shortly. Please note that there's a backlog in our queues, so you'll be getting earlier notifications first. For more details, check out this post at lj_maintenance. In anticipation of the new year, we've embarked on a self-improvement kick to boost our backend (pun semi-intended). This will allow us to offer you a holiday promotion in the next few weeks (yes, we're listening and working very hard to make it happen). We sincerely appreciate your continued patience and support. Holiday vgifts are here! We've added some fantastic new vgifts to help you spread holiday cheer. We also hope you'll honor AIDS Awareness Month by purchasing virtual red ribbons. Priced at $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine. Introducing: LJLimericks We cordially here do invite you To craft a fine limerick. Might you? Each week, a new theme, Then a poll, that's our dream Winner posted on news to delight you! In honor of all the brilliant writers on LiveJournal, we've created a brand new community: ljlimericks! Each week, we'll enter a handful of limericks into a poll (which we'll tuck snugly under an LJ-Cut). The winning poem will be published in the following newsletter. In addition, the author will receive a virtual blue ribbon! If you have the time, come drop us a rhyme. Please keep the "Nantucket" stuff on the downlow, since this is a youth-friendly community. Our first prompt is: Insomnia in winter. Photos of the week We're back with more incredible images from our global photography community. Congratulations to sempre_marseeya, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our second lj_photophile poll. We hate to squelch your creativity, but, as a courtesy to other users, please post only one photo at a time and keep the main photo no larger than 350x350 (so images display properly via mobile and on friends pages). You can link to a larger image and/or post photos under a cut. Just so you know, we select photos for the poll blindly, based on user comments and staff feedback. Please continue to vote, comment, and, of course, enjoy. You can check out the week in pictures and view more awesome user content after the jump! ( Read more... ) Curtains Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay warm and safe out there! (357 Comments |Comment on this)
lj_spotlight [ ljspotlight ]	12:18p	01/24/09 Homepage Spotlight doorwindowwall A stunning collection of images sure to delight anyone with a penchant for architectural elements, this talented community, largely from New York, is hoping to attract new members from around the world. Featuring an eclectic variety of photos depicting doors, windows, and walls, there's an interesting balance of interior and exterior shots, many from urban streets, some from ramshackle rural farmhouses. Wonderful! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
ludimagist	5:14p	On why my dissertation is kind of awesome. I just got to interview B.H. Barry. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, December 7th, 2009
lj_maintenance [ mhwest ]	1:15p	Notification System **FINAL EDIT Thu Dec 10 02:15:47 UTC 2009** So there is the final update... Over the past day we have processed around 11 million jobs out of the 12 million that were in queue at that time. Please bear in mind that over this past day, more jobs for notifications are also created. So while the queue has been dropping, we are still not fully caught up at this point, due to backlog and new jobs. We have roughly 3 million jobs still pending that involve the notification system in some manner. We had hoped we could have fully cleared the queue in a day, but unfortunately we can't clear it too quickly, since we need the rest of the site to operate normally. From our current perspective on the amount of jobs that are left in queue, and how many it has processed thus far, we believe it will take around another 8 - 12 hours to process everything. And finally some answers to some questions: ( Read More and Get Some Answers... ) Current Mood: grumpy (536 Comments |Comment on this)
lj_spotlight [ ljspotlight ]	9:46a	12/08/09 Homepage Spotlight freeskiers While some of us long to escape the cold, dark stretch of winter for hot tropical beaches, for others, there's nothing quite like whoooooshing down those shimmering sugar alps. If you're fond of freestyle skiing, get ready to slide down the slippery slopes in good company. This passionate, international community shares travel/gear tips, anecdotes, photos, and videos for those who can't get enough of the sweet stuff. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
lj_spotlight [ ljspotlight ]	9:45a	12/08/09 Homepage Spotlight seasonal_icons Need some extra twinkle to decorate your place? Check out these dazzling holiday-themed icons. If you're an artist, you can post your own creations, provided you abide by the simple rules (which is to say, all cheer and no politicking). Be sure to comment and give credit if you wish to borrow a little spirit (no direct links, please). If you're feeling a touch of humbug this season, this is an instant shot of festivity. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
lj_spotlight [ ljspotlight ]	9:43a	12/08/09 Homepage Spotlight handmade_gifts High on creativity, but low on cash? You'll find tons of brilliant suggestions for do-it-yourself crafts sure to please everyone on your holiday gift list. Offering detailed instructions, photos, budgets, timelines, and active support, you'll soon turn spare remnants of fabric and time into cherished keepsakes. Be sure to search entries and read user guidelines before you post for help! (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
marmal8	7:31p	Weekly Accoutability Starting Word Count = 56,346 Ending Word Count Words Written Today Average Pace 1-Dec 58,312 1,966 1,966 2-Dec 58,709 397 1,182 3-Dec 60,402 1,693 1,352 4-Dec 60,402 0 1,352 5-Dec 60,402 0 1,014 6-Dec 62,208 1,806 977 That probably speaks for itself. Considering that I just spent a whole month writing every day, I'm trying not to beat myself up over the lean days. I did get out of the house today to write. I'm not sure I'm all that happy with what I have, but it's better than the notes in parentheses I had when the day started. Just for the heck of it, besides my usual 2 miles of walking 3-4 times a week (work-related), I also did Yoga Class on Weds, 20 min of Gilad Friday, 1 hr of yoga Saturday, and am about to do semi-hot yoga in my apartment (the heat control in here is negligible at best). Yesterday included loads of upward facing dogs to downward dogs, so today is going to be a gentler practice. Ow. Ow ow ow. I have a job interview coming up this week for a cyber school. Anyone familiar with my Nanonovel will immediately realize the irony of this, but I am increasingly feeling the financial effects of working only half time broke and need to do something about it. Seriously. Happy holidays, thanks for cutting my hours. Current Mood: distressed (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 4th, 2009
sk4p	6:03p	oh, and in case you’re not depressed enough Originally published at sk4p.net. You can comment here or there. I’ll just add one more thing that has me down. The only good thing for Afghanistan at this point is for us to get the hell out of Dodge.  Yesterday. 30,000 more lives which can be wasted, and less important but still very relevant billions in revenue? Any crazy illusions I may have entertained about Obama are pretty much finished now.  Yeah, he’s better than his predecessor, but I found things growing in my bachelor-pad sink which could make the same claim. I suspect that the United States will not exist in something close to its existing form in 100 years. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
sk4p	5:15p	incompleteness and theorems Originally published at sk4p.net. You can comment here or there. Incomplete.  That’s what I feel of late.  Buddha taught that satisfying one desire doesn’t help; there are always more. I had a lot more enthusiasm about the whole magical revival and undertaking … but then stuff happened and a lot of my heart just went out of it.  I do have a nifty new set of tools, but … they lay idle on the nifty new altar.  It was a fine idea.  It got me going for a while.  But here we are. Part of the problem: there are definitely things which I want but feel are unattainable.  That’s frustrating.  But a bigger problem is still direction. A year ago at the end of this month, I realized my dream.  I graduated.  To make it all even more real, I did the whole ceremony thing in May.  And here we are and I am aimless. What am I doing with my life?  What is my life for? Three months ago, in September, I was giving serious thought to further magical studies and pursuits.  But now … I dunno.  I was badly disillusioned by events along the way.  I ignored that while working on my tools, but now here I am. I’ve been studying Buddhism lately.  That feels increasingly worthless too.  On the first of the month, a few days ago, I reflected on how it was the anniversary of Crowley’s death.  I thought, “Ah yes, Crowley’s mahanirvana” (entrance into ultimate enlightenment at the time of death).  But then I thought, “Crowley wouldn’t want to be in nirvana; he would come back for more adventures.” He describes it in the Gnostic Mass when he speaks of the reincarnating dead as those whose will is “to achieve the labour and heroism of incarnation”.  Well, says the Mahayana practitioner, of course we reincarnate to help others escape from suffering as well.  But what happens when we all escape?  Endless bliss?  Meaningless as a lie … We’d all say “That was awesome!” and do it again, jumping into the pool of samsara and experiencing life again. Life?  Life isn’t just information processing or the use of energy to create ordered systems.  It’s something more.  Life is the interface between entropy and extropy.  If there were no friction, there would be no life.  Some passive dull awareness, but no life.  No vitality. So yeah.  Nirvana’s a lie as much as heaven is (though at least one isn’t required to sing hymns).  Awesome.  Life is here and now.  Life is in the awareness and the struggle between good and evil — whatever one has chosen them to be.  It’s about friction and resistance, the Second Law and the formation of structure. But what do I want to do?  Magick’s largely a fraud.  The religions are opiates and lullabies.  What’s left?  Love and passion seem promising avenues of exploration and entertainment.  That D&D campaign I was talking about a week or so ago may be fun (it will have a chance to get off the ground when my players’ schedules free up).  But what’s The Great Work?  (Why must there be one? Because my life seems spectacularly unsatisfying without it.) (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
news [ theljstaff ]	3:21p	LiveJournal Major Notes: LiveJournal: The First Decade, AIDS vgift fundraiser, LJ_Photophile poll! LiveJournal: The First Decade Just in time for holiday shopping, we're thrilled to announce the release of our ten-year anniversary anthology. Published by Blurb.com, the book showcases a decade of extraordinary talent drawn from LiveJournal users around the world. This must-read compilation features stories, memes, photos, comics, editorials, graphic content, and more, including: Excerpts from Oh No They Didn't (a/k/a ohnotheydidnt), the largest community on LiveJournal, covering celebrity gossip, entertainment news, and pop culture A look at post-Katrina New Orleans from the journal of Poppy Z. Brite Gripping narratives, including a poignant reverie on a blind date Photography that spans the globe, ranging from old-fashioned Polaroids to underwater photography Mouthwatering dishes from food_porn What began as a late-night inspiration back in Brad Fitzpatrick's college dorm in 1999 has grown to encompass nearly 25 million users worldwide, with journals and communities covering every conceivable hobby, passion, and topic. To get your copy, please visit the Blurb Bookstore. For updates and entries from book contributors, please join lj_turns10. Tweaks and enhancements You can now ban a user from all of your communities and journals at once. To access this feature, hover over the person's userpic and choose Ban user everywhere from the drop-down menu. Follow LiveJournal on Twitter! Give a little to help a lot! In honor of National AIDS Awareness month, we've added a new charitable vgift. For each red ribbon you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine (we'll cover credit card fees). You can read more about IAVI at lj_cares. While we're on the subject, we raised $740 from our November fundraiser for Love Without Boundaries, which supports emergency healthcare and adoption of Chinese orphans. We thank you for helping us help others. Photos of the week We're back with more incredible pictures from our super-talented LiveJournal photographers. Congratulations to ilya_gorokhov, who is the winner of our very first lj_photophile poll. We hope you'll continue to post, vote, and comment! A gentle request: Please post only one photo at a time and limit size to 350x350 (so images display properly on friends pages). And now, without further ado, get ready to cast your ballot and view more awesome user content after the jump! ( Read more... ) Curtains Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay safe and snug out there! (267 Comments |Comment on this)
brotherless_one	2:40p	Nice (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
lj_maintenance [ mhwest ]	12:18p	MogileFS Maintenance **EDIT Thu Dec 3 23:24:15 UTC 2009 ** Hey Everyone, we are about to run the last alter job that we need to on our database servers. This will effect userpics / scrapbook / vgift images for the next few hours. Have no fear, your images aren't lost, there is just a really intensive process running on the servers which store the information for mogilefs. Thank you for your understanding and all the LJ love... Hey LJers, I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;) Thanks, Current Mood: dirty Current Music: Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction (131 Comments |Comment on this)
ludimagist	1:38p	It's Raining Seagulls I've just recieved word that two of my plays, Partisans and A Rain of Seagulls (being a parody of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov), will be performed as part of the New England Russian Theatre Festival at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre from February 19-21, 2010, produced by the Lau Lapides Company. Current Music: My roommate singing Christmas carols in the kitchen (Comment on this)
marmal8	12:08a	NaNoWriMo, Accountability, and so on Yeah, so I do NaNoWriMo every year. Since 2007 (read: since quitting my full-time teaching job, but we won't dwell on that, we could just as easily say 'since it would embarrass me to have Ukrainian computer programmers and 21-year-old zombie gaming geeks beat me'), I've 'won', where 'win' is defined as 'write 50,000 recognizable English words in any order in one story between November first and thirtieth.' And the 'recognizable' and 'English' parts are optional. So is the 'story' part. Really, it's a wonder that anyone manages to not win. That said, I upped the ante for myself this year: I resolved to be a part of NaNo social events and I resolved to conclude my novel. About a week in I also decided to up my wordcount goal to 60k, believing that I needed to write more to write this story, believing I could write more, believing it might help me to conclude. Well, it's December 1, and the novel still isn't done. I did hit my 60k goal, though, and I did go to 2.5 social events. (I was at one of the write-ins but not sitting at the table with the group.) So, now it's time to keep writing and stay accountable. First thing I did, I cut 4k out of my novel because I had some false starts and some ideas that didn't fit into the plot I eventually started crafting. These are in their own files now where they belong, and can be used later for other things. That put my wordcount at the start of December at 56,346. Second thing I did, I kept writing. Starting Word Count = 56,346 Ending Word Count Words Written Today 1-Dec 58,312 1,966 So let's see how that goes, huh? Here's where I give a shout-out to my fellow NaNo'ers, sundaygray , bryguypgh , janeymouse , PopeBeligerent, DustinD, and BoogieBear, 66% of whom made it across the finish line as well. Current Mood: good (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
lj_spotlight [ ljspotlight ]	12:23p	12/01/09 Homepage Spotlight backpacking Want to embrace your wanderlust on the cheap? If you're high on adventurous spirit, but low on funds, this community can help you plan a trip to anywhere. Offering plentiful tips on how to travel light, you can post about inexpensive hotels and youth hostels if you're into urban exploration or discuss camping gear and mosquito netting for the great outdoors. Hitch your backpack, pitch your tent, and carpe diem! (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 30th, 2009
lj_spotlight [ ljspotlight ]	9:39a	11/30/09: Homepage Spotlight bookfails Planning to do your part to help boost the declining publishing industry this holiday? Better check here first. Sure, there are plenty of folks who post glowing reviews of their favorite books. But what about the epic fails? Compose and/or discuss snarky, incisive critiques on the books you despise most. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
lj_spotlight [ ljspotlight ]	9:38a	11/30/09: Homepage Spotlight foundphotos Ever stumble across a frayed photo in your grandmother's attic? How about a faded picture tucked in the sleeve of an old novel at a used book sale? This is the place to post them. An amazing, eclectic collection of photographs sure to delight anyone with a penchant for history or nostalgic memorabilia. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
lj_spotlight [ ljspotlight ]	9:37a	11/30/09: Homepage Spotlight note_to_cat Having trouble conveying the concept of accountability to your cat? Now you can share letters to your significant felines and give public witness to your declarations of love and domestic negotiations. Whether you want to publish an apology for falling short on your cat-nip obligations or you need to raise a delicate hygiene issue. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
ludimagist	3:15p	Smart Phones (or, " wicked smaHt phones" in New England) Who has a smart phone? How much better is it? How many of the capabilities do you actually use? How pricey is the data plan compared to a normal phone? Does it make a difference in your productivity? Do they work internationally? Which one? Blackberry? iPhone? Droid? (I have the iTouch, so the iPhone may be a bit redundant in some ways) Current Music: Matthew Breinich (5 Comments |Comment on this)