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maxwriteWriting: The stranded-on-a-desert-island STXI fic that came out of nowhere has somehow blossomed into a 20k-and-climbing sort of fic. I'm not even sure what the point of it is, really. I suppose it's kinda Lost-ish. No, I'm positive it's kinda Lost-ish, 'cause they're not sure how they got there and they don't know how to get back and now I need an ending and I'm kind of flailing, trying to figure out how to tie everything together in some kinda meaningful way. Yup. Lost-ish.
In other news: Steven Page married his girlfriend. Congrats, Steve! I hope this marriage goes better than the first one did. They do seem well suited, so I'm optimistic.
LJ: Ugh, people are dumb. When I found out what was really going on with LJ's DDoS attacks, I was like "Oh ... oh, shit, well ... huh ..." I felt seriously small, because what's going on is so much bigger than us. But apparently some people still think this is all about "the Russians" trying to take their porn away. Guys, Russia doesn't care about your porn. They got their own problems. This is not about you.
And is anyone else slightly uncomfortable with people saying stuff like "the Russians" this and "the Russians" that? I know that's where everything's happening, but still ... makes me uncomfortable, man. :/
I realize that most places other than LJ are kinda graveyard-y, but they're only like that because people won't use them. Nobody's suggesting leaving LJ altogether (although, who the heck knows what's gonna happen with this latest attack), but mirror comms, crossposting, keeping that stuff up to date even if no one's viewing it, all would've prevented this complete shut down of LJ fandom. You don't keep your important shizz all in one place! The days of LJ being reliable may very well be done and gone. I am not a "hipster" for partially jumping to DW early on. What I am is a paranoid bastard who doesn't trust anything, least of all technology. I didn't call myself MadEye for nothin'. I realize that organizing fandom can be like herding cats, but if it's important to you, back that shizz up, yo. It's not hard. No, I don't know how reliable DW will be in the future. There's no security on the internet, but at least I tried. You still try, man.
Anyhoo, places to find me that aren't LJ:
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Although I haven't really started using G+ yet. I'm still not sure I need it. :/
Now then. More bitching. About browsers.
Firefox is getting increasingly slow of late (I suspect my computer is at least partially to blame, because FF isn't the only program that does this). It'll stall for like thirty seconds or something, just sit there chillin' while I freak out 'cause I have super-important things to get done right-now-yesterday, and frankly these days whatever it is I need to do could disappear from my mind the very next second, so time is of the essence.
So, I'm giving Chrome a try for a while. So far, it's not terrible, but there are a few things that irk me.
Anyway, I'll stick with Chrome for now because Firefox was just getting to be too much, which sucks balls 'cause I had FF working exactly the way I wanted it to, save for this one thing with it stalling all the time. What I don't get (and I'm not a programmer of any kind, so please forgive my ignorance) is how Chrome can have existed for however many years it's been around and still not do some of the basic things that all other browsers do. Is it because they're trying to keep it really light and simple? Because there's a fine line between simple and just plain inconvenient. I know some people are perfectly happy with it and that's great. It is a nice browser. Shiny. I do like it, really. There's just these little things that make me want to punch things just a little. I'm sure I'll get over it. I hope.
That's all
In other news: Steven Page married his girlfriend. Congrats, Steve! I hope this marriage goes better than the first one did. They do seem well suited, so I'm optimistic.
LJ: Ugh, people are dumb. When I found out what was really going on with LJ's DDoS attacks, I was like "Oh ... oh, shit, well ... huh ..." I felt seriously small, because what's going on is so much bigger than us. But apparently some people still think this is all about "the Russians" trying to take their porn away. Guys, Russia doesn't care about your porn. They got their own problems. This is not about you.
And is anyone else slightly uncomfortable with people saying stuff like "the Russians" this and "the Russians" that? I know that's where everything's happening, but still ... makes me uncomfortable, man. :/
I realize that most places other than LJ are kinda graveyard-y, but they're only like that because people won't use them. Nobody's suggesting leaving LJ altogether (although, who the heck knows what's gonna happen with this latest attack), but mirror comms, crossposting, keeping that stuff up to date even if no one's viewing it, all would've prevented this complete shut down of LJ fandom. You don't keep your important shizz all in one place! The days of LJ being reliable may very well be done and gone. I am not a "hipster" for partially jumping to DW early on. What I am is a paranoid bastard who doesn't trust anything, least of all technology. I didn't call myself MadEye for nothin'. I realize that organizing fandom can be like herding cats, but if it's important to you, back that shizz up, yo. It's not hard. No, I don't know how reliable DW will be in the future. There's no security on the internet, but at least I tried. You still try, man.
Anyhoo, places to find me that aren't LJ:
• • • • Although I haven't really started using G+ yet. I'm still not sure I need it. :/
Now then. More bitching. About browsers.
Firefox is getting increasingly slow of late (I suspect my computer is at least partially to blame, because FF isn't the only program that does this). It'll stall for like thirty seconds or something, just sit there chillin' while I freak out 'cause I have super-important things to get done right-now-yesterday, and frankly these days whatever it is I need to do could disappear from my mind the very next second, so time is of the essence.
So, I'm giving Chrome a try for a while. So far, it's not terrible, but there are a few things that irk me.
- For starters, there is no text-only zoom. Yes, I am aware that I can make the text bigger in general; that's not what I want. I want control over the text size on each web page individually. Right now, you can change the font size universally in your settings, or use ctrl+plus to zoom an entire page. No text only. I have a tiny screen and I am nearsighted and my prescription is out of date. I am disappoint.
- It doesn't save the themes that you install to prettify it. When I go back to a theme's page to reinstall it, the install button will say "installed" even though that theme is not still installed. The button is totally not clickable. The install buttons of previously installed themes become clickable again once I restart my browser, but that's a pain in the butt. It seems, though, that if I save my themes as bookmarks, some of them will allow me to install straight from the bookmark whether they've been installed previously or not, which is fab, but not all of them do that for some reason. I feel like I'm missing something.
- There's currently no way to auto-run certain file types when you download them. So, when I download torrent files, there's no option to "open with" my Torrent client. I have to save the file, then go to wherever I saved it and double click from there. Which is annoying.
- As I use a teeny, tiny netbook, screen space is crucial. In Firefox I could completely control each one of my toolbars individually with an addon, but no such thing exists for Chrome as far as I know. I tried the experimental "compact navigation" in Chrome Canary to hide and unhide the address bar at will, and it was fine, but there are a few things about it that I can't stand, like the address bar popping up kinda randomly (when I click a link (but only sometimes) or when I click to open an e-mail, etc.). Sometimes it disappears on its own, but other times I have to click somewhere on the page to get it to go the hell away, and either way, once the address bar has appeared, the cursor, or whatever, is no longer attached to the page I'm on. Meaning, I can no longer scroll down a page with my arrow keys or pg up/pg down keys, and my keyboard shortcuts don't work in Gmail. I have to click somewhere on the page to set things right again, which isn't a huge deal, I realize, but when you're used to doing things a certain way, it's just irritating. I've gone back to regular Chrome because of that one thing. It bugs me that much. I'll just deal with the loss of screen space. It's only, what, thirty pixels? I'll live. *calming breaths* And you can't set Chrome Canary as your default browser. This makes no sense to me. I get that it's a beta version of Chrome and therefore might be unstable, but as long as you tell people that, and they agree to it, what's the problem?
- It allows you to close pinned tabs ... Let me repeat that: IT ALLOWS YOU TO CLOSE PINNED TABS. D: One of the great features of the pinned tab is that you can't accidentally close it, so why on earth would they let you close tabs while they're pinned? It makes zero sense! What's the point of having the pinned tab feature at all? Because they open up again after the browser restarts? You can set the browser to do that anyway, regardless of whether the tabs were pinned or not. I mean, it's nice that the pinned tabs are all compact and squished off to the side, but that doesn't make up for being able to close them accidentally. Just ... what?
- There are a few addons that are great in FF but that suck in Chrome. Stumbleupon for Chrome, for example, is a big ol' pile of crap. Just awful. It's a good thing I didn't use Stumbleupon all that often.
Anyway, I'll stick with Chrome for now because Firefox was just getting to be too much, which sucks balls 'cause I had FF working exactly the way I wanted it to, save for this one thing with it stalling all the time. What I don't get (and I'm not a programmer of any kind, so please forgive my ignorance) is how Chrome can have existed for however many years it's been around and still not do some of the basic things that all other browsers do. Is it because they're trying to keep it really light and simple? Because there's a fine line between simple and just plain inconvenient. I know some people are perfectly happy with it and that's great. It is a nice browser. Shiny. I do like it, really. There's just these little things that make me want to punch things just a little. I'm sure I'll get over it. I hope.
That's all
no subject
Date: 2011-07-29 07:47 pm (UTC)I've been using Chrome a lot. Chrome never hangs on me.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-29 08:54 pm (UTC)When even DW starts acting funky, you know we're in trouble.
Date: 2011-07-30 02:53 pm (UTC)I also use dreamwidth, as you know. I like it though I get confused with the coding differences from LJ, and of course, I usually use it when LJ is down and therefore it doesn't crosspost properly then. It's kind of a necessity to have a backup now that LJ's having so many issues. Which are driving me mad. Even though most of my comms seem to have dried up to nothing, I still want to check on them, dammit!
So, G+. I see that you made an account with your pen name, which was smart. I registered with my real name, and now I'm very anxious and confused about using it for fandom stuff. I like to keep my fandom and "real" lives separate. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't like people in RL to know I enjoy pornography. Especially male homosexual pornography set in space. Maybe I should be loud and proud, but somehow I can't help but feel that my RL friends would be weirded out by it.
But yeah, G+ is dead too, again because no one I know is on it. I've sent out invites, but they're all like, "How's this different than Facebook?" And all I can say is, "Well, no one's over there!" Heh. I did put Wil Wheaton in one of my circles, just so I could feel like something was happening on that dash. ;)
Re: When even DW starts acting funky, you know we're in trouble.
Date: 2011-07-30 08:58 pm (UTC)Chrome is a suitable enough alternative and there are things about it I like despite the impression my post gives. XD I actually did manage to work out the issue with installing themes since I made this post. I just don't get why certain little things haven't been fixed. I've been browsing a Google Chrome help forum and every complaint I have is something someone else already brought up ... years ago. There are posts from '08 for things that still haven't been fixed. *shrug* It's not a huge deal, I guess; it's still better than FF simply because of the speed issues.
Oh, and another gripe about Chrome: when you download things, a bar appears at the bottom of the screen to tell you when it's done, and it doesn't go away on its own! DX Just ... WHHHYYYY?
*cough* Okay, I'm done now.
Lol, I had made my G+ account with my real last name at first, but then I changed it 'cause it made me uncomfortable. I figure it's close enough to sounding like my real name that Google isn't gonna up and suspend my account for using a fake name. Yeah, I'm not comfortable either, using my real full name in fandom. And haha, yeah, I dunno what to do with G+ either. XD I think everybody and their mom follows Wil, but I still almost never check over there 'cause I follow him on Twitter too, so it feels all redundant.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-30 06:14 pm (UTC)"The Russians" is a cultural mindset left over from the cold war that we haven't cycled away from yet, like the Germans and Japanese from WWII. It has nothing to do with anything, and it's obnoxious and xenophobic, but there it is.
I'm trying to shift over to dreamwidth more, but it's still very much a wasteland
and so much of it is ugly/nonfunctional. Plus, the only way I know how to interact with fandom is via lj: I jumped directly from webrings to lj comms, and there are no webrings anymore, so I am completely lost.no subject
Date: 2011-07-30 09:11 pm (UTC)Yeah, Delicious. That's one of the reasons I hesitated to upgrade to FF5 for so long.
"The Russians" is a cultural mindset left over from the cold war that we haven't cycled away from yet, like the Germans and Japanese from WWII. It has nothing to do with anything, and it's obnoxious and xenophobic, but there it is.
And you know, when we're talking about something good or neutral, it doesn't bother me as much, although maybe it should, idk. But when all of this blaming is going around, it's just ... ugh. Makes me cringe.
I was almost hoping this latest attack would force more people over here, and it has, but yeah, it's still quiet as hell. Honestly, I'd settle for more LJ back-ups. We all could've been commenting on things like normal the past few days if more stuff was over here.
LOL, I remember webrings! OMG memories!