casual synchronicity

// I keep hoping they do something else on par with this. /

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:36:45 GMT

I am breaking my LJ-retirement to post the BEST Teevee clip of 2009.

Glee Football Dance (single Ladies) HQ Full Video - For more of the funniest videos, click here

// Switch! /

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 22:36:40 GMT

The hax LJ got? Not on DW. JUST SAYIN'. Switch!

(Inorite, who am I to talk given I never post to DW myself? If you want me, look for me ~~beneath your boot-soles~~ on Facebook and occasionally Twitter.)

// It's like Burning Man for the cultural elite. /

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:01:42 GMT

Tomorrow, the wish Loge made hundreds of years ago (on Monday) will be fulfilled, and Valhalla will be consumed in a blaze of glory. How does the Andersen family prepare for the end of the world? With a limo ride to a famously delicious restaurant featuring gourmet food, of which each and every component comes from within 100 miles. IT'S ALL ABOUT FOOD.

// Missing Out. /

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:24:33 GMT

Oh shit, I missed all the election drama*? And Jameth lost again?

I'm equal parts bummed and pleased. OK maybe more pleased.

Not LJing seems to be agreeing with me, though.

I do kinda miss reading about your lives, tho.

One of these months I'll find a compromise other than "read back 500 entries every 3 weeks and give up on the rest". Really.

* After poking around a bit, it turns out there was very little drama and even less lulz. Even the troll v. troll was yawn-tastic. No wonder I stopped coming here!

// Shugo Chara! /

Fri, 29 May 2009 12:45:10 GMT

On one hand, just another "magical girl" show with spiffy transformations. On the other hand, the most Western psychology I've EVER seen in in Anime. Shadows, projections, ego development... and cute chibi characters that float around representing one's repressed self. One of which wears a little green dress, is named "su", and ends most of her sentences with DESU. Unfortunately, she's a cook, not a gardener. See it on crunchyroll.com!

// Some Q&A and Dreamwidth. /

Mon, 04 May 2009 01:08:08 GMT

Some answers to some of the Dreamwidth questions I've seen from LJers.

It's like LJ, right?
It's a code fork of LJ, so you'll recognize the way it works, but it's not "just another LJ clone". They've posted some current and planned feature differences.

Why is everyone signing up with their LJ OpenID? Won't their accounts then vanish if they delete their LJ accounts?
OpenID accounts on DW can't post. They can be added to filters, they can comment, and OID accounts with a validated email address received an invite code when Open Beta launched (which is why you've seen so many people using that method). OID is also how comments from LJ users are brought over when importing from LJ to DW. They have future plans to integrate OID and DW accounts and bring everything under one user roof.

How come everyone is making moving to DW sound like a political choice? Is this a Russia-hating thing?
When LJ was sold to 6A, some stupid things happened, but mostly they were just minorly annoying and the sort of things you'd expect when a big company buys a small one. 6A didn't seem to really have a good plan for what to do with LJ. They even launched Vox in an attempt to get a form of LJ without all the trolls and fandom people, who seemed to frankly scare 6A. 6A DID start what became a tradition of stupidity with the Abuse team, forbidding transparency and basically doing the sorts of things big companies traditionally push their customer-facing end into in the name of looking good for advertisers, while actually driving user opinion down. When SUP took over, however, scandal after scandal erupted, the user community was essentially told to suck it, and finally a "user representative election" distraction-fest was held for a token position on an advisory board that SUP clearly had no intention of listening to anyway. Most LJ users weren't even aware of any of this, unless they happened to see other more involved friends complaining about it, as SUP made pretty much no effort at all to let people know about it, much less set role expectations or think through the process. SUP made a bad buy, and they're trying desperately to suck some money out of the dwindling (in the US anyway) LJ userbase. I expect it to become the Russian equivalent of Orkut if things continue as they are.

DW was created by two people that had worked on LJ Abuse and for LJ itself, and know the special kinds of things people on the front line that deal with users know. They are openly committed to transparency and free speech, against advertising revenue, and actually want to add value features that people want and will use. However, they may suffer from the hubris that front-liners that go off to do it "the right way" sometimes get, which is something of a blind-sidedness to some of the whys behind larger strategic decisions and revenue issues. Only time will tell if their values and model will hold up to massive scale. However, the idealist in me remembers the early days of LJ, when I believed in what was going on enough to drop a chunk of money on a permanent account, and adds that while Brad wasn't thinking about the long term or making any commitment to it, the DW people are definitely trying to.

What's the downside?
Well, if you're not in Fandom, you may be a bit turned off to discover that Harry Potter is currently more popular there than the universal Interest measuring point "music". This may or may not represent its eventual userbase mass. This also may or may not matter to you. Me, personally, for some reason it matters. I stopped using DeviantArt when it became socially associated as the home of the furrys, despite having nothing against the parent company. If DW turns out to be associated socially as "the new slashfic place," let's just say I won't be directing people to any content I place there. But then, I've already not directed many people to my LJ because of LJ's reputation of emo whiner drama queen central, and it has still served just fine as a backroads little place to tell stories of my life to my peeps, so maybe it's not as bad as all that. Other downsides might include the fact that it's new and your peeps are already on LJ and you'd have to pry them off their bums to get them to go with you. However, if enough people move, maybe they'll read DW once a week with their OpenID from LJ, making that less of a big deal.

Why do you hate fandom so much?
I don't actually hate fandom. It does currently have a legally dubious position, and is even done sometimes against the original content creator's explicit wishes. And we're unfortunately not just talking run of the mill fanfic, but slashfic and sexually explicit art, which is additionally in a morally dubious position currently. Myself personally, I don't have a problem with it, and even read some of it. However, the fact remains that I'm certainly not going to direct a potential employer or someone I just met in the supermarket to content I have created that resides on a social network which the public associates with slashfic, because people DO make snap judgments on such grounds without even going to see what might be actually posted there. It's just something I'm very aware of, having been persecuted in the past for such blink associations. This association doesn't make Dreamwidth worthless as such, but is does drive home the fact that the demographic associations of hosted social content sites are outside of the users' individual control and should not be a substitute for simply having one's own domain for one's public/professional content. This is why even if DW turns out to be all that AND a bag of chips, I'm still shifting the bulk of my content to my own domain, and my formal recommendation to the world in general is to take such an approach. Social blogging sites retain their ideal niche use as a place to banter and keep up with one's peeps.

I'm still not sold...
They realize this, and have actually set things up so you can crosspost both to DW and LJ, like Vox did. You can try things out over there with a free account and let them prove themselves to you before you actually invest any money in them (should you want more features). Your friends who stay on LJ can still leave you comments, and you can add them to filter groups via OpenID. I do encourage you to give it a try.

What do you think is particularly Nifty about DW, Angyl?
I really like how they're revamping the RSS to obey lj-cuts and will be letting content producers 'own' the RSS feeds of their content there. I also like their future plans to under the covers 'bundle' main and puppet accounts together - not because I'd use that feature, but because I think it's a brilliant idea from an admin perspective with all sorts of value add revenue potential on the user end as well. I like the feature because it shows they're thinking at a fairly advanced level about how to make their life easier as well as please their core users.

// Dreamwidth Invite Codes (2) /

Mon, 04 May 2009 00:52:10 GMT

I have two dreamwidth invite codes. I'd rather give them to people who actually want to check it out than people that just want to reserve their username. Comments screened, reply with the email address you want the code sent to.

Post coming up addressing some of the most common questions about DW I've seen from LJ people.

// Ponderous. /

Fri, 01 May 2009 15:49:05 GMT

After a night's sleep, I think maybe I dislike SUP more than whiny fandoms.

angyl.dreamwidth.org

Anybody else considering jumping ship?

// Fandomgasm is not for me. /

Fri, 01 May 2009 01:32:53 GMT

Everything you need to know about Dreamwidth. Sigh.

In somewhat related news, I'm setting up a blog and personal journal on my own site. I'm using Disqus for at least one of them*, which supports OpenID and Facebook Connect, so we'll have threaded comments you don't need to register for anything else to leave and track. I guess I'll keep the LJ account around just in case, since it's perm. and all.

* I have it set up for the blog portion. I'm still undecided on if I want to link the journal in with all that, especially since based on previous LJ trends I expect the content there to draw way less comments anyway. Not to imply that people don't read or care, but they tend to comment less - and those comments turn into discussions less - on personal rambles, which is fine by me.

Once more, with feeling: BLEH.

// Dreamwidth pls? /

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:29:57 GMT

I was out of the loop, but I am told the Dreamwidth is actually happening! I haven't seen any of you mention it, but I thought I'd give this a try just in case: PLS HOOK A GIRL UP K THX. Also pls to using dreamwidth at my-username-minus-the-two-extra-a's dot com so the inviting. Mwah.

// Oh wow maybe I can. /

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 22:26:40 GMT

That part where I said I was still reading LJ?

Not really so much anymore.

Not sure if I should do a big purge and try to get the list small enough that I can read it in an hour or two a week, or just hiatus and see what, if anything, I miss.

It would all be so much easier if y'all were just on facebook.

// Need Some New Music? /

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:00:02 GMT

Ladies and gents, just two days remain to pre-order the new Juliana Finch double-CD set for a mere $9. That's like, two mochas. You can skip two mochas to discover awesome new music, right?

Also, I've been re-developing a vague interest in blogging again, but not in coming back to LJ. I haven't stopped reading every couple of days yet, but I think my time of actually updating worth anything here is past. Facebook and Twitter ("angyl") are the places to find me anymore. I totally miss my huge collection of icons. :(

Awww

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 03:57:08 GMT

Awww, originally uploaded by angyl.

// Beyond Brat. /

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:02:27 GMT

I find it interesting that outside of those that suggest a "brat" phase, there's not really any official scientific subdivisions in the "juvenile" canid phase. PNG is clearly not fully mature yet - he's got more than ten pounds to put on, he's still teething molars, and his longbone spurt hasn't even started yet. But he's also something clearly different from when he was entering the juvenile stage.

Over the past week, he's lost the last of his deciduous canines, made a dramatic leap in his attention span and self-control, and generally started showing signs of "adult brain" peeking up through puppy brain. He's no longer rebellious for the sake of itself, he rebels at very specific times to test very specific rules and rewards. He is much less obnoxious about his needs, but is also much more assertive, specific, and responsive. He understands word-sounds and items associated with his needs; when I'm lucky, he'll do something like bring me his grooming brush or knock the leash off the table or ring the potty bells or bat his empty food bowl around loudly. When I'm less lucky, I can usually run off a verbal list of "noms? water? cuddles? brush? potty? poo? tuggie? play? bone? walk?" and he'll respond with enthusiasm when I hit the right one. I can string two or three words together with gestures and he can often follow and retain a basic compound like "go curb sit cookie" or "up that sit wait". He also seems to have become capable of understanding the concept of waiting for me to finish what I'm right in the middle of before I do whatever he needs, so his interrupts are much less jarring on my brain than they were a month ago, though I still have to box him if I want say a whole hour to focus on something.

We still have bad days sometimes, and I still end each bad day convinced I'm utterly unqualified to be a parental, but on the good days he's a fabulous companion with impressive manners. Six months is coming up, and by then the adult brain should have more influence than the puppy brain on a consistent basis.

// TEAR DOWN THE WALL! /

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:14:58 GMT

I put on Pink Floyd's The Wall on my iTunes for the first time in YEARS today. (I usually keep it off iTunes because it's no good in rotation, only for sitting down and listening to the whole arc.) I always remember it fondly, but it still somehow always vastly exceeds my expectations. ANYWAY, I was just so overcome with fondness I thought I should post to LJ, so maybe it'll be stuck in your head too.

Also, I saw Australia and I love Baz even more than ever.

Best brand evan

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:57:16 GMT

Best brand evan, originally uploaded by angyl.

// Mah Puppah, he has supar cute. /

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:10:23 GMT

Such a pretty puppy!

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:12:34 GMT

Such a pretty puppy!, originally uploaded by angyl.

Well, the real estate market collapsed

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 03:57:31 GMT

Well, the real estate market collapsed, originally uploaded by angyl.

On Vox: // City of Ember. /

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:38:35 GMT

WARNING: Possible minor spoilers. But the plot is to shallow and weak it's not like there's much to spoil.

City of Ember.

Visually, City of Ember is wonderful. Dark, with artificial light tones and frosty blues bouncing off of decaying rust reds and oranges. Everything is grimy, slipshod, and even the costumes tell a clear story of items stretched far beyond their usefulness. It's a grimier, more desperate, and lower-tech version of Gilliam's visual Brazil/12 Monkeys. The female lead (Saoirse Ronan) looks like a young me (this is why I watched the movie at all). I mean, she REALLY looks like a young me. It's CREEPY.

Sadly, eye candy and Saoirse Ronan are pretty much the extents of what this movie has to offer. The plot is hollow and weak - over 200 years ago, the surface people sent their kids down to this underground city - which seems to be more like a town, and seems to be running out of genetic diversity - which also still gets air and water from aboveground, even allowing a note tied to a rock to be dropped into the city from above, spoiling the notion it was to avoid nuclear contamination or something. They were supposed to come out YEARS ago, but the bad guys lost the sacred manual for how to escape and now they're trapped in a world that's falling apart, like the communist empire or something. GEE I WONDER IF IT'S A METAPHOR?!? The adults are all complacent or corrupt, and it's up to the bright-eyed children who still care to rescue them all before time runs out. Giant CGI moles and insects roam around, but only ever damage bad guys, and carefully avoid the kids on their triumphant climb to the surface, where people used to be obsessed with holding babies. We're never actually told why they were sent down there, why it didn't immediately become a Lord of the Flies situation, what made the moles so big, why there needed to be a flume ride escape route, if there were any other humans left, or why this malnourished, contrived plot made it to production. Personally, I would have preferred to see Piggy get sent flying down the flume ride by a big rock in the hormonal chaos when the city was first founded than the so-called storyline they shoved into the beautiful set and costuming work.

Rating: As with the ill-fated Final Fantasy movie, rent it when you want something very pretty with no substance. And a lead that looks like me when I was a kid.

Originally posted on angyl.vox.com

Dinopuppah

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 05:01:26 GMT

Dinopuppah, originally uploaded by angyl.

// Big boy shots! /

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:04:02 GMT

Today, PNG is going to the V-E-T for his first checkup and puppyshots. I caught him chewing on the post-it note with his appointment details - SNEAKY SNEAKY! Soon we'll be able to start socializing him with other dogs! It's the beginning of a whole new era!

// Trendies, take note. /

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 05:11:54 GMT

I think this year would be an excellent time for the return of the over-the-top Sunday hat. I call dibs on the '30s shoe hat from Brazil!

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 01:23:22 GMT

If someone had told me in middle school that when I was 32 I'd watch America inaugurate its first black President... and that I'd be watching it on my computer while chatting realtime with an extended network of friends all over the world, I woulda looked at them like they were crazy.

<3 U FUTURE.

// YES WE CAN HAS! /

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:23:55 GMT

ELECTRIC TUBES! FOOD ON OUR FAMILY! AWESOME HATS! SCIENCE! SAKE!

P.S. If anybody finds a place to get that Air & Simple Gifts song on the mp3, hook me up.