Entry tags:
Sh'lach l'cha
I submitted the d'var torah I wrote last year on this week's portion to the Reform Judaism blog and they published it today. I enjoy reading the RJ blog, which is syndicated to LJ here: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
reform_judaism.
reform_judaism.Entry tags:
LJ failures
OK, why is it that Firefox is giving me 502 (bad gateway) from LJ and asserting that it's them, not me, but I can access the site from Safari running on the same machine? I don't particularly want to use Safari; all my usability improvements are already set up in Firefox.
(I guess I should mention that I'm also on Dreamwidth with this user name, but I haven't been posting there so far.)
(I guess I should mention that I'm also on Dreamwidth with this user name, but I haven't been posting there so far.)
Entry tags:
LJ spam
In the last month or so I've seen a large increase in the number of spam comments I get. (That's why I had to set anonymous comments to be screened, though it delays some legitimate comments.) I understand that this has been happening all over LJ. What puzzles me is why a majority of my spam comments have targeted this short, older entry on an obscure topic -- but an entry that is not so complete or keyword-laden to be clearly the definitive web page on the topic or anything like that. I mean, what search produces that page as a top candidate, and why would spammers selling dating services and shoes and Viagra care about those search terms? I just don't get it; what's so special about that one among my 3000+ journal entries?
some reading material
Stack Overflow has a candidate site
for Q&A on Jewish topics. Stack Overflow takes what looks like a
sound approach to launching new sites like this, waiting until enough
people commit before launching. After all, if they can't attract good
questions and good answers, no one will care. I committed.
What
Level 3 v. Comcast says about the FCC's obsolescence is a
good explanation of what is going on with throttling internet traffic
(link, as with many on this topic, from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
osewalrus).
goldsquare writes about why
you should care.
Law and the Multiverse
(now syndicated at law_multiverse) does fun legal analysis
of superhero law. From their "about" page:
"If there's one thing comic book nerds like doing it's over-thinking the
smallest details. Here we turn our attention to the hypothetical legal
ramifications of comic book tropes, characters, and powers. Just a few
examples: Are mutants a protected class? Who foots the bill when a hero
damages property while fighting a villain? What happens legally when a
character comes back from the dead?" Thanks to anastasiav
for pointing it out.
The first truly honest
privacy policy sounds about right to me. Link from cahwyguy.
The semicolon wars
discusses differences in programming languages and some of the religious
wars that have been fought over them. Thanks to nancylebov
for the link.
Thanks to brokengoose for pointing me to
Kindle Feeder, which supports
RSS feeds to the Kindle. Now, do any of you know how to get an RSS
feed to cough up the entire article instead of just the first paragraph?
If the publisher didn't set it up that way is there anything I can do about
it?
link round-up (mostly)
Neat visualization #1: the scale
of the universe, showing how big (and small) things are. Link from
filkerdave.
filkerdave.
Ooh, pretty: when Planet Earth
looks like art. Link from browngirl.
Overheard at work: "Every time a developer cries, a tester gets his horns".
Neat visualization #2, from a coworker: 200 counteries, 200 years, 4 minutes.
I had sometimes wondered what the point of bots was -- what does somebody
get out of creating bogus LJ accounts just to add and remove friends?
(At least when they post nonsense comments they might be testing security
for when the spam comes later.) Bots on Livejournal explored
helps answer that question. Link from alienor.
Graph paper on
demand (other types too). Thanks, loosecanon; I can
never find the right size graph paper lying around when I need it.
A handy tool: bandwidth meter, because the router reports theoretical, not actual, connection speed.
And a request for links (or other input): does anybody have midrash or torah commentary on the light of creation (meaning the light of that first day)? I have the couple passasges from B'reishit Rabbah quoted in Sefer Ha-Aggadah and I have the Rashi; any other biggies? I was asked to teach a segment of a class in a few days.
Entry tags:
LJ and privacy
Facebook doesn't have a monopoly on doing funky things with privacy; LJ is at it too. For those not clicking through: you can now have LJ automatically cross-post your entries and comments, including comments made on other people's locked entries, to other sites. Sometimes comments reveal context even without the original entry being available. That strikes me as problematic, because we are not all completely careful all of the time.
So just to clarify:
1. I do not have Facebook or Twitter accounts.
2. I don't knowingly violate others' trust; if you locked it I'm not going to leak it. I have this "feature" turned off.
3. While I realize that anything on the net isn't really secure and I take that into account when posting, I do occasionally post locked entries. I do so with the expectation that such information will stay here. Please respect that.
I know some of my friends are talking about migrating to Dreamwidth. I staked out a journal there when they started last year. Thus far I haven't done anything with it, but if you're there please feel free to let me know. As more people migrate it becomes a higher priority to read a subscription list there, too.
So just to clarify:
1. I do not have Facebook or Twitter accounts.
2. I don't knowingly violate others' trust; if you locked it I'm not going to leak it. I have this "feature" turned off.
3. While I realize that anything on the net isn't really secure and I take that into account when posting, I do occasionally post locked entries. I do so with the expectation that such information will stay here. Please respect that.
I know some of my friends are talking about migrating to Dreamwidth. I staked out a journal there when they started last year. Thus far I haven't done anything with it, but if you're there please feel free to let me know. As more people migrate it becomes a higher priority to read a subscription list there, too.
Entry tags:
LJ tagging: baby steps
Since about 30 seconds after LJ announced the tagging feature I have been wanting boolean search for tags, so that I could find entries tagged A and (B or C) or the like. This has never been possible.
Today in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
news they announced that you can search for entries with two tags (specifically two) using the following syntax:
http://username.livejournal.com/tag/tag1,tag2?mode=and
(Substitute for username, tag1, and tag2, of course.)
That's great. This will help. But I can't help wondering... why this implementation? I tried it with three tags; it took the first two and ignored the third. I tried mode=or; didn't work. I assume from this interface that they'll be extending this to support the latter; it makes sense to introduce a "mode" argument now and support other options later. But what kind of implementation limits the parameters to two? I'm trying to imagine the design that produced this result and seemed like a good idea to the dev team, and I'm coming up blank. (Yes, I know LJ is open-source so theoretically I could go look. I don't care that much.) Isn't it just as easy to process arg1,arg2,...argn as to parse arg1,arg2?
So yay for the beginnings of expressive tagging, but I do hope more is coming.
Today in
news they announced that you can search for entries with two tags (specifically two) using the following syntax:http://username.livejournal.com/tag/tag1,tag2?mode=and
(Substitute for username, tag1, and tag2, of course.)
That's great. This will help. But I can't help wondering... why this implementation? I tried it with three tags; it took the first two and ignored the third. I tried mode=or; didn't work. I assume from this interface that they'll be extending this to support the latter; it makes sense to introduce a "mode" argument now and support other options later. But what kind of implementation limits the parameters to two? I'm trying to imagine the design that produced this result and seemed like a good idea to the dev team, and I'm coming up blank. (Yes, I know LJ is open-source so theoretically I could go look. I don't care that much.) Isn't it just as easy to process arg1,arg2,...argn as to parse arg1,arg2?
So yay for the beginnings of expressive tagging, but I do hope more is coming.
Entry tags:
LJ coupons
As a holder of a paid LJ account I can currently give out $10 gift certificates toward upgrades to paid accounts. (This can't be used to add time to an already-paid account.) If you want one, comment here. I have 9 more I can give out.
Entry tags:
random bits
15 most strange buildings in the world is bizarre. While it's not the strangest, I am fond of the library that looks like a shelf full of books.
Dani's comfort foods include shepherd's pie, which was not part of my upbringing. I've made the version from Cooking for Engineers a couple times, substituting margarine for the butter because of kashrut and beef for the lamb because of availability, but he says it's not quite right. I asked him to do some searching and he reports that everything that looks right involves milk or cheese, which is of course a problem. Do any of my kosher or lactose-intolerant readers have a favorite recipe?
A friend recently burned DVDs from some treasured old videotapes, but our DVD player won't play them. (The computers will.) Google tells me that this is a common problem, especially with older players. There are the competing standards of DVD+R and DVD-R; the documentation for our player mentions neither by name. (These discs are DVD+R.) This happened once before and I assumed a bad disc; now I suspect the problem is the player. We bought our DVD player, a region-free Sampo, when the first season of The West Wing was released in the UK, which was apparently 2002.
I could get this video adapter for my iBook for $19. There might be other benefits to that too, though streaming Hulu might not be one of them (video seems jumpy). Or it appears that region-free DVDs have come way down in price, so maybe we should replace our player. Maybe with this ($58 and I've heard of the manufacturer) or this ($40, no reviews, and never heard of the maker). These are the results of half an hour of surfing; if anyone reading this has opinions, I'd love to hear 'em.
Recently I've seen a few "bot" LJ accounts go by -- users that seem to subscribe to people at random but don't do anything else (so they're not, say, making harrassing comments), and then the accounts get nuked. The last one I got was Russian, as I gather many are. I don't really care if such accounts show up as subscribers, but I find myself wondering two things: what do they get out of it, and why do some folks get upset enough to get the accounts suspended? What am I missing?
Dani's comfort foods include shepherd's pie, which was not part of my upbringing. I've made the version from Cooking for Engineers a couple times, substituting margarine for the butter because of kashrut and beef for the lamb because of availability, but he says it's not quite right. I asked him to do some searching and he reports that everything that looks right involves milk or cheese, which is of course a problem. Do any of my kosher or lactose-intolerant readers have a favorite recipe?
A friend recently burned DVDs from some treasured old videotapes, but our DVD player won't play them. (The computers will.) Google tells me that this is a common problem, especially with older players. There are the competing standards of DVD+R and DVD-R; the documentation for our player mentions neither by name. (These discs are DVD+R.) This happened once before and I assumed a bad disc; now I suspect the problem is the player. We bought our DVD player, a region-free Sampo, when the first season of The West Wing was released in the UK, which was apparently 2002.
I could get this video adapter for my iBook for $19. There might be other benefits to that too, though streaming Hulu might not be one of them (video seems jumpy). Or it appears that region-free DVDs have come way down in price, so maybe we should replace our player. Maybe with this ($58 and I've heard of the manufacturer) or this ($40, no reviews, and never heard of the maker). These are the results of half an hour of surfing; if anyone reading this has opinions, I'd love to hear 'em.
Recently I've seen a few "bot" LJ accounts go by -- users that seem to subscribe to people at random but don't do anything else (so they're not, say, making harrassing comments), and then the accounts get nuked. The last one I got was Russian, as I gather many are. I don't really care if such accounts show up as subscribers, but I find myself wondering two things: what do they get out of it, and why do some folks get upset enough to get the accounts suspended? What am I missing?
Entry tags:
request for minor LJ support
Dear LazyWeb,
LJ seems to have made a change today that makes single-entry pages in the default style too wide for my preferred browser-window size. Specifically, the links at the bottom are in 5 columns (that's fine) (About, Help, Legal, Store, LJ Labs), and then over on the right is a drop-down list to change languages, with "current version: v46" under it. That last column of content is what's making the page too wide. I do not care very much about it.
Do I have any readers who have both the know-how and the inclination to write me something that will move, or remove, that drop-down? I'm using Firefox v2 (not 3 yet) and have GreaseMonkey installed already. I'm using Vertigo (not Horizon), if that makes a difference. Sticking it at the bottom of one of the five other columns, or just eliminating it, would fix my problem.
Thanks! (Yes, I will learn GreaseMonkey someday, perhaps even soon, but this is painful now.)
LJ seems to have made a change today that makes single-entry pages in the default style too wide for my preferred browser-window size. Specifically, the links at the bottom are in 5 columns (that's fine) (About, Help, Legal, Store, LJ Labs), and then over on the right is a drop-down list to change languages, with "current version: v46" under it. That last column of content is what's making the page too wide. I do not care very much about it.
Do I have any readers who have both the know-how and the inclination to write me something that will move, or remove, that drop-down? I'm using Firefox v2 (not 3 yet) and have GreaseMonkey installed already. I'm using Vertigo (not Horizon), if that makes a difference. Sticking it at the bottom of one of the five other columns, or just eliminating it, would fix my problem.
Thanks! (Yes, I will learn GreaseMonkey someday, perhaps even soon, but this is painful now.)
Entry tags:
LJ, rumors, and backups
LJ laid off a bunch of people today. It was initially reported as almost everyone in the US office and all the technical staff, but that report turned out to be erroneous and from a questionable source. This post has a pretty good collection of links and other info.
Is LJ going to go poof soon? I don't think so. But it's never a good idea to rely overly much on any one internet service, so it's a good idea to back up your journal regularly if losing its content would upset you. I use LJArchive on Windows, but am paying attention to ljmigrate on the Mac. Neither has all the features I want, but the former is pretty good and the latter is new and still under development, it appears.
Some of the backup tools out there require that you give a third party your password. Please be mindful of the security problem you create by doing so and, at least, change your password afterwards, ok? You're not just exposing your own journal, but also the locked entries of everyone who's given you access.
If LJ were to go poof, I'd be looking to set up on one of the similar sites that uses the same underlying code. The very most important feature of LJ to me is threaded comments, and for all that this seems basic to me, most of the blogging sites out there don't do it. I have an account at InsaneJournal that I set up during the last big kerfluffle (same user name); the "asylum" theme might keep me from moving in there (would I want colleagues or family members to see that?), but it's a fallback at least. If you have an account at IJ, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know (or add me and then I'll see you).
So, IMO, it's not time for panic but it's always time to be prudent.
Is LJ going to go poof soon? I don't think so. But it's never a good idea to rely overly much on any one internet service, so it's a good idea to back up your journal regularly if losing its content would upset you. I use LJArchive on Windows, but am paying attention to ljmigrate on the Mac. Neither has all the features I want, but the former is pretty good and the latter is new and still under development, it appears.
Some of the backup tools out there require that you give a third party your password. Please be mindful of the security problem you create by doing so and, at least, change your password afterwards, ok? You're not just exposing your own journal, but also the locked entries of everyone who's given you access.
If LJ were to go poof, I'd be looking to set up on one of the similar sites that uses the same underlying code. The very most important feature of LJ to me is threaded comments, and for all that this seems basic to me, most of the blogging sites out there don't do it. I have an account at InsaneJournal that I set up during the last big kerfluffle (same user name); the "asylum" theme might keep me from moving in there (would I want colleagues or family members to see that?), but it's a fallback at least. If you have an account at IJ, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know (or add me and then I'll see you).
So, IMO, it's not time for panic but it's always time to be prudent.
Entry tags:
food goodies
Today's mail brought fruitcake goodies from browngirl, who is way too good to me. Photos of the lovely decorations will be posted after Shabbat.
Today for lunch I went with a group to Little Tokyo Bistro, which has replaced Sushi Two on the South Side. The sushi was fresh and tasty and the portions generous. Ir is the way of local sushi places for portions to start large and shrink over time; I hope that doesn't happen too quickly here. (I don't know how long they've been there, since I get up that way much less frequently since we moved farther away.)
Of the eight of us seven ordered sushi, but we still had our meals in a reasonable amount of time. (I only saw one sushi chef.) The staff members were pleasant.
There was music (American, not Japanese) and it was a little too loud, but they turned it down when we asked them to. There was also a TV showing CNN in my field of vision, which turned out to be distracting, but I didn't ask them to turn it off. (I find that TV draws my eye even if I don't care, and doubly so when there is text. CNN always has a text crawl...) So if you want atmosphere this might not be the place for you, but if you want good sushi, check it out.
browngirl, who is way too good to me. Photos of the lovely decorations will be posted after Shabbat.Today for lunch I went with a group to Little Tokyo Bistro, which has replaced Sushi Two on the South Side. The sushi was fresh and tasty and the portions generous. Ir is the way of local sushi places for portions to start large and shrink over time; I hope that doesn't happen too quickly here. (I don't know how long they've been there, since I get up that way much less frequently since we moved farther away.)
Of the eight of us seven ordered sushi, but we still had our meals in a reasonable amount of time. (I only saw one sushi chef.) The staff members were pleasant.
There was music (American, not Japanese) and it was a little too loud, but they turned it down when we asked them to. There was also a TV showing CNN in my field of vision, which turned out to be distracting, but I didn't ask them to turn it off. (I find that TV draws my eye even if I don't care, and doubly so when there is text. CNN always has a text crawl...) So if you want atmosphere this might not be the place for you, but if you want good sushi, check it out.
today's lunch
We made introductions verbally, but I promised to do this here for the sake of the folks who were there. So, the attendees at today's lunch in Brookline, with identifying info where it's already LJ-public (or trivial), were:
- goldsquare and nudgeprincess, who took me to the airport afterwards
- jducoeur (Justin in the SCA)
- magid, who drove me to the conference and back (and who talked about Burning Man)
- mabfan (who has an SF book coming out soon) and gnomi (who is the sister and sister-in-law of SCAdians and a filker many of us know well)
- 530nm330hz, who was wearing the nifty music t-shirt (E = Fb) and who is organizing a distributed talmud translation at dafcast.net
- sethg_prime (Seth), who alas I did not get to speak with very much
Entry tags:
full disclosure
A discussion in another journal has caused me to realize that what seems an innocuous action to me might be objectionable to others. So, disclosure and an invitation to discuss, if you care to:
I sometimes use a sort of "web bug" in my posts so I can collect limited access data (which data LJ does not provide). I did this initially out of simple curiosity, but soon realized that I could use it to find out (without asking) which of my posts get read more (or less). While I write primarily for myself, it's worth knowing if there are certain classes of posts that my readers tend to ignore. Secondarily, this also gives me some idea of where my "secondary" (non-LJ-subscriber) readers might be coming from, which is casually interesting.
To me this seems akin to someone who hosts his own blog reviewing the server logs. To others, I'm learning, this is akin to "spying". While lj-toys does try to report which LJ users are reading what, it's far from reliable. You'll have to take my word for it that I'm not really looking at that; I've got much better things to do than to peruse logs so I can say "aha! so-and-so claims to be my friend but never reads me!".
At the bottom of this post is a one-pixel image file. (If I could use something more blatant, I would.) If you're using Firefox and the AdBlock extension, you can block that image and lj-toys will never see hits from you. If you're using some other browser, I'm afraid I don't know how you can disable it.
If you feel that what I'm doing is objectionable, I would like to understand where you're coming from (here or privately, as you like).
I sometimes use a sort of "web bug" in my posts so I can collect limited access data (which data LJ does not provide). I did this initially out of simple curiosity, but soon realized that I could use it to find out (without asking) which of my posts get read more (or less). While I write primarily for myself, it's worth knowing if there are certain classes of posts that my readers tend to ignore. Secondarily, this also gives me some idea of where my "secondary" (non-LJ-subscriber) readers might be coming from, which is casually interesting.
To me this seems akin to someone who hosts his own blog reviewing the server logs. To others, I'm learning, this is akin to "spying". While lj-toys does try to report which LJ users are reading what, it's far from reliable. You'll have to take my word for it that I'm not really looking at that; I've got much better things to do than to peruse logs so I can say "aha! so-and-so claims to be my friend but never reads me!".
At the bottom of this post is a one-pixel image file. (If I could use something more blatant, I would.) If you're using Firefox and the AdBlock extension, you can block that image and lj-toys will never see hits from you. If you're using some other browser, I'm afraid I don't know how you can disable it.
If you feel that what I'm doing is objectionable, I would like to understand where you're coming from (here or privately, as you like).
Entry tags:
tag crossroads: jewish education
LJ tags are spiffy but not as fully-featured as I'd like, and I probably haven't figured out the best way to use them yet. So this entry is something of a cross-reference; if you got here via one of the tags on this entry you might also be interested in some of the others. I'll try to update this entry over time, and eventually will create similar entries for other tag families.
Judaism: education is a catch-all bucket. Sometimes things start here and then spin off into their own tags.
Sh'liach K'hilah (LJ swallows the first apostrophe for some reason) is (was) the Reform movement's para-rabbinic program. I attended in 2004 and 2005.
Open Beit Midrash (obm) at Hebrew College. I attended in 2007. I also have a more-general Hebrew College tag that includes entries about a program called Ta Sh'ma that I attended in 2006. One of these days I might give those their own tag.
Melton = Florence Melton Program, an international two-year program of which I completed the first year in 2006-2007. (My class session got cancelled the following year. Someday I will probably return, if the scheduling works.)
Study with my rabbi is for entries related to my one-on-one study. Midrash overlaps that, covering my midrash study in particular.
NHC is a tag for the chavurah program I attended in August 2008.
Kallah is a tag for the ALEPH kallah that I'm attending in 2009.
Shalom Hartman is a tag for the Shalom Hartman Institute, a program I considered in 2008 and 2009. I'll get there some year, I expect...
some light questions
I learned today that there is a full-service gas station on my way to/from work. I didn't know we had any of those locally. It's been years (probably decades); what is the conventional tip?
As I pulled up to an intersction (all-way stop), someone from the cross street was backing through the intersection. After backing into the space in front of my car, he immediately popped into drive and went through the intersection. Whose turn was that, the cross-street or mine? :-)
I have occasionally noticed (because of tracking/RSS feeds or because I viewed the journals directly) posts to LJ that did not show up on my friends page. Is this happening to anyone else? I haven't detected a pattern yet.
Why does Hebrew have two words for "open" that differ only (apparently) in what objects they take? It's peh-kuf-chet when talking about eyes and ears, and peh-taf-chet for anything else.
As I pulled up to an intersction (all-way stop), someone from the cross street was backing through the intersection. After backing into the space in front of my car, he immediately popped into drive and went through the intersection. Whose turn was that, the cross-street or mine? :-)
I have occasionally noticed (because of tracking/RSS feeds or because I viewed the journals directly) posts to LJ that did not show up on my friends page. Is this happening to anyone else? I haven't detected a pattern yet.
Why does Hebrew have two words for "open" that differ only (apparently) in what objects they take? It's peh-kuf-chet when talking about eyes and ears, and peh-taf-chet for anything else.
Entry tags:
short takes
Airfare to Israel these days costs how much?! This may require more thought.
The local SCA choir started some new songs tonight, including Salamone Rossi's Kedusha, which has been in the files waiting to emerge for a few years. It's a pretty piece as a whole; some of the individual lines are a little funky. I think it's going to sound really nifty when we've learned it. The director quite reasonably asked me to lead people through the pronunciation; I had forgotten how awkward I now find transliteration. I should have just read from the Hebrew. Oh well.
The choir performed at an event last weekend, including one joint piece with our consort. That was fun, and the consort is bigger than it's often been in the past. We'll be doing a joint performance at Pennsic.
Last night Dani and I went to a pot-luck dinner (by local SCA folks). The theme was "black history month"; most people interpreted this as calling for African recipes. (I would have figured we'd get some Carribean, but no.) The result was that almost everything involved at least two of: rice, beans, peanuts. (I made a West-African vegetable stew with peanuts, served over rice.) It was all quite tasty, though we usually manage more variety. :-) (Themes sometimes act as themes and sometimes as loose inspiration. We once hosted one with the theme "once in a blue moon", which produced round foods and stuff with blueberries.)
I owe a few sets of interview answers. Thanks for the interesting questions.
The Pardes of pastoral care by Velveteen Rabbi is an interesting, multi-level take on the sometimes-difficult task of relating to people.
Two interesting studies reported bysiderea. "Rat Park" was new to me; who knew that rats use drugs to relieve boredom rather than out of addiction?
Signs you might not be from LJ originally; I forget now who pointed this one out.
Qualities people will pay for even if there are free options, viadsrtao.
The local SCA choir started some new songs tonight, including Salamone Rossi's Kedusha, which has been in the files waiting to emerge for a few years. It's a pretty piece as a whole; some of the individual lines are a little funky. I think it's going to sound really nifty when we've learned it. The director quite reasonably asked me to lead people through the pronunciation; I had forgotten how awkward I now find transliteration. I should have just read from the Hebrew. Oh well.
The choir performed at an event last weekend, including one joint piece with our consort. That was fun, and the consort is bigger than it's often been in the past. We'll be doing a joint performance at Pennsic.
Last night Dani and I went to a pot-luck dinner (by local SCA folks). The theme was "black history month"; most people interpreted this as calling for African recipes. (I would have figured we'd get some Carribean, but no.) The result was that almost everything involved at least two of: rice, beans, peanuts. (I made a West-African vegetable stew with peanuts, served over rice.) It was all quite tasty, though we usually manage more variety. :-) (Themes sometimes act as themes and sometimes as loose inspiration. We once hosted one with the theme "once in a blue moon", which produced round foods and stuff with blueberries.)
I owe a few sets of interview answers. Thanks for the interesting questions.
The Pardes of pastoral care by Velveteen Rabbi is an interesting, multi-level take on the sometimes-difficult task of relating to people.
Two interesting studies reported by
siderea. "Rat Park" was new to me; who knew that rats use drugs to relieve boredom rather than out of addiction?Signs you might not be from LJ originally; I forget now who pointed this one out.
Qualities people will pay for even if there are free options, via
dsrtao.Entry tags:
vroom?
For about the last nine months, LiveJournal has served pages rather slowly for me on my home network (two machines, two operating systems, four browsers). This has not been a problem with any othner sites, and a friend with the same ISP reported no problems when I asked him to try LJ. It's worked fine at the few wireless hotspots I've taken the laptop to. LJ said they had no clue. (In case you're wondering, to compensate I launch all links from my friends page into new tabs. I am the queen of parallel processing.)
Tonight, all of a sudden, the site is fast, after being basically hung this morning. (I'd restarted the browser and none of the tabs would load. Tonight most were corrupted in some way, but reloads worked.) Ironically, the only slow page I've seen tonight is the posting page.
I am absolutely, positively, not looking this gift horse in the mouth. But I'm curious about what changed. I wasn't able to debug it before, so I doubt I can analyze it now. I hope the new behavior sticks around.
Edited to add: I just discovered, by accident, that the "style=mine" directive now works for journals, not just individual posts. Wow! Occasionally I come across a journal that I'd like to read, but I don't want to subscribe yet (maybe I'm checking it out) and the colors and fonts make my eyeballs bleed. No more!
If this is the sort of service the new Russian owners are serving up, I say keep it coming. :-)
Tonight, all of a sudden, the site is fast, after being basically hung this morning. (I'd restarted the browser and none of the tabs would load. Tonight most were corrupted in some way, but reloads worked.) Ironically, the only slow page I've seen tonight is the posting page.
I am absolutely, positively, not looking this gift horse in the mouth. But I'm curious about what changed. I wasn't able to debug it before, so I doubt I can analyze it now. I hope the new behavior sticks around.
Edited to add: I just discovered, by accident, that the "style=mine" directive now works for journals, not just individual posts. Wow! Occasionally I come across a journal that I'd like to read, but I don't want to subscribe yet (maybe I'm checking it out) and the colors and fonts make my eyeballs bleed. No more!
If this is the sort of service the new Russian owners are serving up, I say keep it coming. :-)
sweets!
Every fall browngirl sends excellent fruitcakes -- yummy and beautifully decorated -- to some of her friends. She makes a bunch of different types and this year I knew she would be sending me a sampler. I figured that meant, oh, two or three random mini-fruitcakes, probably.
Today's mail brought a package. As I cut open the box I took in the lovely aroma, and when I got the paper off I saw three little fruitcakes. This seemed generous -- and then I saw that there was a second layer. Ooh.
Some of the icing qua art was damaged on its way to me, alas, but here, let me show you:
( Read more... )
I'm looking forward to tasting them, but I don't want to cut into them just yet.
Thank you,browngirl!
browngirl sends excellent fruitcakes -- yummy and beautifully decorated -- to some of her friends. She makes a bunch of different types and this year I knew she would be sending me a sampler. I figured that meant, oh, two or three random mini-fruitcakes, probably.Today's mail brought a package. As I cut open the box I took in the lovely aroma, and when I got the paper off I saw three little fruitcakes. This seemed generous -- and then I saw that there was a second layer. Ooh.
Some of the icing qua art was damaged on its way to me, alas, but here, let me show you:
( Read more... )
I'm looking forward to tasting them, but I don't want to cut into them just yet.
Thank you,
browngirl!