Here are the results from Week 230...


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It's been a momentous 12 months here at LiveJournal. We crossed a capital T at Ten years young. And, like most precocious pubescents, we celebrated turning double digits by publishing our first book! Needless to say, we've experienced some major changes, both inside and out. Before we recap, we'd like to thank you for bearing with us as we've struggled through ungainly growth spurts, identity pangs, and, yes, the occasional blemish. We hope you'll continue to stand by us: We're gaining wisdom with maturity.

Stuff you liked

• Back in February, we placed a call for entries for our ten-year anniversary anthology in lj_turns10. In December (less than a year later!), we officially announced the publication of Live Journal: The First Decade. Featuring an inspired collection of writing, photographs, and artwork from the pages of LiveJournal history, the book has been selected by Blurb.com as a top staff pick! We are proud to have played host to so much talent over the years, and we thank our contributors for sharing their extraordinary work.
• We all love quirky surprises, but not when it comes to managing our account settings. This year we streamlined settings into one central account management area. No more pouring through FAQs to figure out how to control privacy settings, modify notifications, adjust mobile settings, or update contact information!
• Being users ourselves, we realize our own mothers couldn't find us on LiveJournal based on our usernames and userpics alone (*heaves heavy sigh of relief*). But since there are times when we actually want to be found, we created a search tool--Find Your Friends--to help locate people by email address (it's in the Friends drop-down menu).
• Spam counter-attack: The war against vicious malware and spambots reigns eternal, but we've been making serious inroads to ensure your online security. We've established new protocols, such as requiring email address validations. We've grown more savvy about ferreting out suspicious behavior. We've added features, like whitelisting, to help you protect your communities. Our valiant (i.e., overworked) spam avengers (a/k/a the LiveJournal ops team) are standing on red alert so you can sleep safely at night.
• After an intensive beta, we launched My Guests at the end of the year, which lets you see who's been hanging around your journal. A number of you have even discovered secret admirers (not all of whom are creepy)!
• Last, but by no means least, we want to thank our volunteers for providing invaluable support and feedback. Their Herculean efforts enable us to answer your questions more efficiently, identify spammers, reduce abuse, and deliver better features (through tireless testing). On behalf of the staff and the larger LiveJournal community, we are truly grateful for their diligence, intelligence, loyalty, and passion.

You got your fix

• We recently debugged a number of the oustanding issues with the rich text editor so your entries look great regardless of whether you know html. You can read more about text editors here.
• In response to user demand, we brought back international voice posting. For more info on voice posting, read here.
• At long last, we revived TxtLJ with Verizon. For more info on TxtLJ, check out the FAQ.

Paid features you enjoyed

• In December, we introduced My Stats, which provides detailed data on who's been viewing your entries as well as statistics on commenting, RSS requests, friending history, and more. Despite a few early glitches, the response has been extremely favorable.
• This year, we launched and improved Notes (i.e., the feature formerly known as Alias), which lets you add private comments on friends and commenters (it's in the Profile drop-down menu). This way you won't be caught red-faced when you strain to remember details about that wonderful LiveJournal friend who sent you a birthday vGift. For more info, read the FAQ.
• When we first announced View friends pages by date, we thought it would be a quiet, minor enhancement. The rave reaction floored us, which made us all very happy. We gave it a fine tuning in February of 2009, so it's even better!
• How embarrassing! It appears pingbacks have gone back to the shop for service. We’ll keep you posted. We didn't know just much you liked pingbacks until it went in for service. It's back and, judging by your irritation when it wasn't available, this is good news. FYI, pingbacks send instant notifications (via screened comments) whenever someone links to one of your entries on LiveJournal. For more info, read this entry in paidmembers or check out the FAQ.

Mixed reviews

• The search is still on. Some of you have reported getting more comprehensive results for keyword searches using the new Yandex search engine and like the ability to search within content categories (like entries or comments). Others have not been satisfied with the relevancy of search results. Please be patient. We're still tweaking this product.
• This past December, we wanted to try out a new holiday promotion. Given the crap economy, we decided to offer our Paid/Permanent users a stack of $10 coupons to send to Basic/Plus users for paid account upgrades. We hoped you would like it. And some of you did, but many were disappointed that we didn't offer Give More as well. We want to thank you so much for letting us know. Your input will help us plan better in the future. Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users can continue to send out coupons through January 15th. Coupons can be redeemed through January 31, 2010.
• We were pretty excited about Your Journal Your Money, which allows Paid/Permanent users to earn extra cash by displaying Google ads to Basic/Plus and logged out users. A number of you tried it. Some of you really like it. Others, not so much. (Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users who do not participate in this program will not view ads on journals. Participants will see ads on their own journal, but won't see them on other journals unless they specifically opt in.) For additional details, visit here.
• We relaunched m.livejournal.com, our mobile app. While it offers a nicer UI and enhanced functionality, some of you think we can do better on load times. Like most of us, it's a work in progress. You can customize your mobile settings here. For more info, please read the FAQ.

Missing Inaction

• We shudder to bring up the neon purple elephant squatting on our heads, but, yes, we didn't give you those a la carte userpics. We've been making radical improvements to our backend in order to support them. But no excuses. We know you want them. We cringe every time you mention them. We're sorry we dropped the ball on this, and we promise to do our best to get them to you in 2010.

Stumbling points

• Back in early August, we experienced outages related to a series of DDoS attacks. We are proud to report that we were down a total of one hour over the course of a few days. We thank our heroic ops guys for getting us up sooner and more consistently than any of our less fortunate social networking friends. We apologize for leaving you temporarily stranded.
• A couple of months back, we offered a free, unrestricted vGift, which induced a snowflake cookie avalanche. This resulted in backed up/delayed notifications, which, in turn, led us to reboot systems, rendering scrapbooks unavailable. It took a while to shovel free. Apologies for the inconvenience. We learned a valuable lesson that should keep us calamity-free in the future (fingers crossed while knocking on wood).
• That darn Best Buy ad. First off, we're sorry about the audio auto-play (we got it turned off as quickly as possible). While it's true that we'll continue to show this type of ad to accounts that normally see them (never to Paid/Permanent accounts), we'll make sure the sound defaults to off moving forward. We promise to do our very best to keep ads to a minimum on LiveJournal, while keeping a roof over Frank's head.

Full steam ahead!

As we plunge headfirst into the next decade, we want to take a moment to look back and thank all of our employees, both past and present, who have worked so hard to create our unique and magical universe. We couldn't have made it this far without you: Your contributions brighten our path everyday. We also want to extend our heartfelt appreciation to each and every one of you. Whether you've been around for ten days or ten years, your humor, intelligence, talent, and creativity are what makes this the most vibrant global community on the Internet (the best place on the Web, in our humble opinion). Here's hoping that 2010 will be the greatest year yet! We thank you for joining us as we embark upon another glorious decade of LiveJournal history!

I haven't posted any Finn-like pictures lately. So here some are!

( fearsome black snowbeast )

In other news: 2010 is off to a good start. A very good start. I posted fic, I'm one step closer to an actual job oh my god, and I made a pretty good pot of coffee this morning.

FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY I'VE FINISHED A FIC SORT OF THING OMG FINALLY.

I'm sorry, I'm very excited about this. It's more or less completely not serious, as close to fluff as I ever get… I mostly needed something I could get out there without too much mucking around and hand-wringing.

Motel swimming pools; or, Other entries in the Liber miraculorum (Dean/Castiel) PG13 | ~2,750
Follows Breakfast for dinner, as another fic that considers the small, yet deeply awesome, things that make life good. It takes place more concretely in S5 canon, but probably before 5.10.

Sam shamelessly lifts quotations from The Princess Bride, Marlowe, and UB40, by the way.

(  Castiel's back in five minutes on the nose, lithe and awkward in his neon green WalMart shorts. It isn't until he sees Cas's bare chest that Dean realizes he'd half-expected him to show up with the shorts on over his pants, or else to swap out his suit for the shorts right there on the deck. )

aesc: roommate emailed me with the depressing intelligence that there is almost three feet of snow on the ground in [town]
sheafrotherdon: sdakjhflksh
aesc: which means my street will probably be impassible, unless I hitch my car to a team of yaks
sheafrotherdon: yaks are pretty easy to come by in Ohio, you'd better stop on your way home :D
aesc: : :)) yis, I will pick up a couple! they can share the backseat with Finn
sheafrotherdon: yeah!
sheafrotherdon: I wish I could draw, because that's a really funny image :D
aesc: it is!! I am picturing my wee silver car being towed behind two large, hairy yaks :D
aesc: I wish I had my drawing tablet! I would try to draw that
sheafrotherdon: ahahah :D
sheafrotherdon: I want to see it!
sheafrotherdon: when you do have your tablet!
aesc: maybe I could draw it on an actual piece of paper and take a picture
aesc: I dun have a scanner here!
sheafrotherdon: paper!
sheafrotherdon: I like your old skool skillz!

( MY VERY TERRIBLE CARTOONY DRAWING OF A YAK PULLING MY CAR. APOLOGIES TO YAKS, I KNOW YOU DON'T ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE THIS. )

In other news: I've been working on a short, ridiculous fic, and it's taken me two weeks to write... two pages. I'm finishing the thing tonight, even if it kills me, because I just want my writing confidence back. Argh, it suuuucks :|

But yaks! Yaks are awesome.

Due to me posting this late, entries will be accepted until January 13th.

CONTESTANTS: 00
Actor Submissions: 00
Capt Submissions: 00
Hunt Submissions: 00


Please remember to read the rules carefully for each challenge, because they vary depending on what they call for. If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Also, we nominate all winning icons to hp_awards. If you do not want your icons to be nominated, you need to say so when you submit your entries!


( challenges behind the cut )


If you have ideas for a future challenge, drop a line in our suggestion box! Also, please help us by adding to the community resources!

I don't think I've seen this particular shot before ♥♥♥
Have you?
ps_look at THAT smile *_*

 

click to make bigger

source: fanpop

..and this one as well... thought it's smaller

source: LIFE

( banners behind here )

(x) please save to your own server (hotlink)
(x) don't forget to enter enter challenge #166
(x) if you haven't voted in challenge #165, please do so

I noticed that the psd files from my tutorials are still being downloaded quite frequently (and I'm bored today) so I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a tutorial or psd for any of my icons. I can't guarantee that I still have all the psds for all of my icons, but I usually save them... so feel free to pick any of my icons :)

Also, I came across a post in a forum that hotlinks some of my icons/psd files. Personally, I don't mind because I don't have a traffic limit, but since there are a lot of other icon maker's icons/psd files linked I thought I should mention it here. link to the post. (Does anyone know if there is a community or something where you post this kind of stuff?)

Thank you for your time :D

The layout has changed and now reflects the winning header made by lumiscious!

click me to see the new layout!!!



second & third places also go to lumiscious!!!

The profile of this community will reflect the second place choice. It's not even started yet, but it will soon have a new look. THE PROFILE HAS BEEN UPDATED!


Congrats, lumiscious!!!!

O hai, happy new year to you all. So far, 2010 is not as awful as the end of 2009. I just finished The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (GK Chesterton), which was very emphatically recced to me by trinityofone, and I love it. I love it love it LOVE IT. A lot. I'm halfway through Kit Whitfield's In Great Waters (alternate history), which I'm not entirely sure I like, although I do love Whitfield's prose, and am about to start Stefan Brijs's The Angel Maker. This is a lot of contemporary fiction for me to be reading.

Meme!

Ask me any fandom-related questions in the comments. They can be fandom specific, general, or about fandom/lj stuff/fic writing/etc. in general.

Questions can be as wacky as you want and have as many subparts as you like. Ask me about tv shows, characters, fanfic in general, fandom issues/meta, anything about any of my stories specifically, art, etc. etc. etc. Whatever you want.


I've come to the conclusion that, if you want fic out of me, you have to be willing to accept it in rambling, disconnected IM format. So far siriaeve and I have contemplated Rodney dealing with the double horror of John's mangled knee and terrible puns, 22by7 and I have covered pretty much all of Castiel's past, present, and future (which are all awesome), dogeared and I have talked about how the mouse in my parents' house is feeding intelligence regarding cable and computers to turkey!Rodney, and trinityofone and I have earnestly discussed... wow, way too much to recount.

I love IM.

What I don't love? That my "vacation" is almost over.

Oh, and question... I've been thinking about putting together a masterlist of links to my fic and art. The thing is, I have tags for these things. Those of you who have masterlists (or who like them), what's appealing about them to you? Do you prefer them to tags?

New videos from the Burberry Spring/Summer 2010

Hiya!



( There goes Emma Watson's Spring/Summer 2010 Burberry campaign have been released with younger brother Alex Watson. )

Hope u like it!

Now that i'm on vacations and i wanted to do this a long time ago (i couldn't do it because of the lack of time) i finally did it and i'm here to post it: my first r/hr picspam ♥. I love them and i love their relationship. I love how they look at eachother, and i'm really thankful to rupert and emma for interpret their roles so well. The coloring did not convince me too much but anyway this is love! Hope you like it!



( Knowing Glances )

»»» Sorry for the lateness, something broke in my computer, but thank Merlin my cousin bring me her laptop until it gets fixed. And luckyly, the templates for this Comm are in my gmail account just in case.

Here's the poll for WEEK 230. The results will be posted on Thursday... Good luck everyone! And remember:



( vote here )

                                         


HAHAHA ALFIN.... FOTOS NUEVAS DE EMMA WATSON... EN LA COLECCIION PRIMAVERA VERANOO :D, WAAA ALEXX SALEE MUYY GUAPOO *o* ESTANN IGUALITOOSS AJAJAJA, BUENO PZZ ESTEE ES MI PRIMER POST DEL AIO... ESPERO QUE TODA MI F-LIST CUMPLA TODOOS SUS PROPOSITOOSS D AIOO.... ME VOY... BESOOSS A TODOOS Y LES DEJO MAS FOTOS DE EMMA EN BURBERRY :) AQUI DEJO EL LINK PARA QUE VEAN LAS OTRASS FOTOOSS XD WATSONBLOG
BYEEE ^^  

base:



theme:
negative space. i want to at least 50 percent of your icon being covered with what icon makers call negative space (empty space). you may use any picture of hermione granger that you wish (not emma watson but hermione granger or if you will...emma as hermione granger)

[x] Make up to 3 icons for each the base and theme challenge, for a total of up to 6 icons.
[x] You may only use each base once.
[x] For the themed challenge only pictures of Hermione are allowed [not Emma].
[x] No restrictions on brushes/textures... etc.
[x] Icons must follow rules set out in the userinfo.
[x] Don't forget to include a URL with your entries.
[x] Icons must remain anonymous until results are posted.
[x] Any questions, feel free to ask! (the userinfo is also very helpful)
[x] Have fun! ♥
[x] Icons are due on Sunday, January 1oth at 5pm est

base: 15 entries
theme: 08 entries