my blog’s birthday is today: it was on this day nine years ago that i left LiveJournal for good. i finally learned at least part of the lesson taught by Bacchus, in Bacchus’ First Rule of the Internet, which is, “Anything worth doing on internet, is worth doing on a server you own, and over which you have control.”
oh well, better luck next time…
i don’t use facebook for a large number of reasons. primary among these is that, despite the fact that a lot of my current friends are facebook members, there are certain people from my past that might want to get in touch with me, and i would prefer it a great deal if they did not know how to get in touch with me. not being a member of facebook is a good way to accomplish that. among the other reasons, in no particular order, are these: Facebook users ‘are insecure, narcissistic and have low self-esteem’, Understanding the latest Facebook privacy train wreck, Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook, More Reasons Why You Should Still Quit Facebook and Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook? i’m not going to rant about this, despite the fact that i could rant for quite some time about facebook, because whatever i say, people are going to do what people are going to do, and one of those things is to use facebook in spite of it’s obvious and blatant flaws.
reminder: THIS is the reason why i am no longer using LiveJournal for anything remotely blog-related. i know enough about how these things work to realise that there’s probably a lot going on that i don’t understand, and that i don’t know about, but there’s one distinct advantage to having a blog located on a server over which you have exclusive control, and that is that you don’t have perverts sysadmins stalking poking their noses in where they’re not supposed to be. if you’re looking for an alternative, i can host your domain and you can run your own version of wordpress there, and i promise i won’t comment on flocked entries. contact me for more details.
Death by iPod – this is directly related to last week’s link detailing people still falling for scams, despite the fact that they’ve been running essentially the same scams for at least ten years… society needs a collective brain upgrade. examples: Google squirrels into human brains with Scribe experiment and Russia Uses Microsoft to Suppress Dissent
Windows malware dwarfs other viral threats – “The vast majority of malware – more than 99 per cent – targets Windows PCs”. another very good reason to use linux.
50 Mind Blowing Facts About America That Our Founding Fathers Never Would Have Believed – Sheriffs want lists of patients using painkillers – for example…
Stuffed Pony Blown Up By Bomb Squad Suspicious ‘FurReal’ pony blown up near elementary school – it was a battery powered, stuffed pony, in the vicinity of an elementary school… because the clowns at clownland security didn’t have anything better to do…
‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Unconstitutional – this actually happened a few days ago, but i haven’t seen it in any of the regular news at all. the “christians” will say that it’s further evidence that they are a “persecuted minority”. meanwhile Self-Described ‘Christian Counterpart To Osama Bin Laden’ Arrested In Plot To Bomb Abortion Clinic and Self-labeled ‘Christian counterpart of Osama bin Laden’ allegedly planned clinic bombing – “christians” are the real terrorists.
What does it take to be happy? About $75,000 – money can’t buy happiness, but apparently $75k a year will get you pretty close…
New research restores psychedelics’ medical respectability – first they were used as medicine for thousands of years, then they decided that they have no medicinal value, now they’re saying that they might have medicinial value after all… i wish they’d just make up their minds and stop decieving us. sign The Vienna Declaration to advocate for evidence based drug policy and strengthen the call for policies driven by evidence. join the movement to end the failed war on drugs!
Cannabis Yoga – to help you come down from your stressful life. this is not a joke.
Noam Chomsky to become new X-Factor judge – this is a joke.
Vox is closing September 30, 2010 – that didn’t last long… they started vox after i left livejournal, which was a little more than two years ago…
i’m intrigued, though… they’re moving people to typepad and flickr rather than to livejournal… i wonder why…?
The Russian Bear Slashes a Social Network – anybody looking for a place to run a blog? i’ve got web space and blogging software available…
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this is exactly why i wanted to get away from using LiveJournal!
No more Basic Accounts – this means that you can no longer sign up for a free account at LiveJournal. they apparently haven’t said whether or not the free accounts created before March 12, 2008 will be grandfathered, or if they will be automatically transferred into “plus” – i.e. “with advertising” – accounts. when i originally signed up at LJ, there was no such thing as advertising, and they assured me that there would never be advertising, and yet not only is it here, but there’s no way to not have advertising on your livejournal account.
i’m SO glad i’m not blogging there any longer! you have no idea!
my livejournal is now officially retired. i just received the emails saying that it is now a “free” account, and that all of my “paid” options have expired.
hooray! no more ???!
and, in case anybody else wants to jump ship, download .xml files using ljArchive and get a wordpress account or follow this tutorial.
LJ, SUP, Putin, the Kremlin, and its creatures. – it’s worse than i could have possibly imagined. i’m SO glad i’m out of there… 8P
Continue reading LJ, SUP, Putin, the Kremlin, and its creatures.
6Apart sells LiveJournal to СУП
from what i’ve read so far, i’m SO glad i got out of there when i did…
i wonder if there’s any money to be made in helping people who are disillusioned former LJ addicts transfer their blogs to WordPress…?
there is now a new icon on livejournal – 
– and a new menu on the “Post an Entry” page where you are now commanded to mark whether or not that particular entry is “safe for minors” or not. if you don’t, or if you are the target of trolls or people like the ones responsible for the memorial day strikeout, your LJ is now subject to being suspended or deleted, and you have no recorse but to abide by 6apart’s childish, petty rules concerning what is and is not allowed.
WHEN THEY CAME FOR THE FANFIC AUTHORS, I SAID NOTHING.
WHEN THEY CAME FOR THE PEOPLE THEY DISAGREED WITH, I SAID NOTHING.
WHEN THEY CAME FOR ME THERE WAS NOBODY LEFT TO SPEAK.
as it is, my blog will continue to exist as long as my administrator chooses to keep it in existence, and as that administrator is me, that should be a good, long time.
i’ve recently (as in the past month or so) been discovering feeds. a friend of mine mentioned them about a year or so ago, but i didn’t have the application that caused them to be rendered as anything other than plain text, which meant an XML document or something like that, instead of a rendered page. then i upgraded to a new operating system a few weeks ago, and the old standard, Kmail, which has been my email client for almost 10 years now, has been integrated into a new application called Kontact, which is a combination of Kmail, Korganizer, Kaggregator, Kontacts and a few other things which i don’t use, such as the K groupware suite, and other suchlike things. the legacy standard is RSS which stands for Really Simple Syndication, and the newer standard is Atom, and it is apparently a series of HTML or other SGML-child documents, the XML documents that represent them, and a little client-side reader that goes and fetches those XML documents on a regular basis. basically it’s just like your “Friends” list on livejournal, except that it updates itself automatically, and you can “subscribe” to more than just livejournal stuff. it makes me wonder why i stayed at livejournal for as long as i did…
i’ve resurrected my computer: i got the operating system installed: i’m now running a shiny new version of Feisty Fawn, despite what walt mossberg says, kubuntu linux is vastly preferable to anything micro$not ever produced, if for no other reason than it is free, but there are many other compelling reasons it is preferable as well, such as it installs more quickly, and is easier to configure than any version of windows that i have ever worked with. not only that, but apparently SCO has filed for bankruptcy, which means, at least for the moment, that we can continue to use free, open source software with impunity, while having a hearty laugh at the expense of those who would have made it otherwise. after i got feisty installed, i searched around and discovered that sigrot isn’t a part of debian any longer (for what reason i know not), but signify is, however signify isn’t as easy to configure, so i found an archive that had sigrot on it, installed it, and now i have my email signature, complete with rotating, random quotes again. i even got xscreensaver working better than it was before.
meanwhile, SixApart has seen fit to let barak berkowitz go and get themselves a new CEO, which makes me even more glad that i bailed from livejournal when i did.
i didn’t make that much money at the punk rock flea market, despite the fact that i was there for almost 12 hours, but i did manage to make $30 without realising it (it was 6:30 in the morning when i arrived, and there’s a good chance that i was, for all intents and purposes, asleep when i did it), which makes me wonder if i could do any better in tacoma. if nothing else, it would mean not having to get up at a ridiculously early hour and drive fourty-fiive minutes before getting there. my boxes of stuff are still in the car, but moe’s car is blocking the driveway, so i’ll have to get them out tomorrow.
i’ve also got some “i am a terrorist” articles to post as well, but they’re going to have to wait until tomorrow as well.
boy am i glad i got out when i did… it just sounds like it’s going from bad to worse…
This journal may disappear at any time. But, guess what? So could yours.
LJ admits they have no legal training re “Bible-based” child abuse communities
And don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.
2007-08-06
By insomnia
Looks like Brad is leaving LJ… to the wolves.
He tries to reassure us by saying “LiveJournal’s in good hands — I’m not worried about it.”
Except, of course, that he doesn’t really believe that. He knows LJ is dying, and he’s been openly upset about the unwillingness of 6A to keep its promises to LJ’s users, about LJ’s obvious shrinking, and about the direction the site has been heading in for quite some time. Continue reading And don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.
in other words, it’s only gonna get worse… 8/
oh well…
EDIT: yep, it’s true, more or less…
LiveJournal creator leaves as Six Apart fails to spin
AUG 6 2007
BY OWEN THOMAS
Word is that Brad Fitzpatrick, the founder of LiveJournal and chief architect of Six Apart, is leaving the troubled blog-software company. And the fact that you’re hearing about from a gossip blog rather than the transparency-loving company is itself a sign of how deep the problems run. Continue reading Brad Bails!
it’s the beginning of the end of my livejournal, and the end of the beginning for my own blog on my own domain, for which i don’t have to pay extra, and which doesn’t have all of the stupid rules and regulations that are getting more and more characteristic of livejournal and its parent company, sixapart.
i still have to:
if everything goes according to plan, my livejournal account will revert back to a free account in december, by which time i hope to have all of the wrinkles ironed out of the new blog.
welcome! 8)