Strong Verbs Are Just Better

I finally got off my backside and made a new Dreamwidth backup via Blogbooker. The last time I did this was Oct 2011 - I have a single file PDF archive for 2005-Oct 2011, but no further.

Blogbooker costs, and I bought myself a subscription worth EITHER 24 PDFS over 1 year OR 4 hours of server time over 1 year.

Discoveries:

- The dreamwidth simplified HTML protocols don't carry over. So anywhere where I haven't HARD CODED the paragraph breaks, it all appears as a single block. (Peculiarly, this is also the case for ifttt crossposts of poetry from tumblr, which I definitely do hard-code)

- Embedded images from goodreads, photbucket, tumblr (unless the URL is borked) all appear, but NOT images that are hosted on Dreamwidth (my ifttt crossposting imports the images to DW's image hosting service).

Have fun with that, future documentary historians!

Since part of the point of this was supposed to be saving the images, I'm now making the service do a separate PDF backup of my photo tumblr, which is probably a nicer way to save the images anyway.

Lemme know if you want them.

Every week when I see people doing this Follow Friday thing I think to myself "aha what a clever idea!" It's one of the nicer things about DW, I think.

Anyway, for once I'm going to actually participate!

poetry! People, this comm is awesome. It is singlehandedly expanding my knowledge of Modern Poetry, in fun and entertaining ways. Although one week we also had Anglo-Saxon riddles, that was fun. :D

The comm is set up so that one member presides each week, posting five or more poems in seven days; and other members chime in whenever they feel like it. Members' tastes vary quite a bit, but we're seeing a pleasingly high representation of nifty feminist poets (for a cheerful example, Carol Ann Duffy; for a chilling and utterly awesome example, Margaret Atwood). We're also seeing quite a bit of poetry in languages other than English, poetry about language and culture, poetry about race, identity, and other fun and exciting things of that ilk.

That while DW imports your openID onto imported filters, it doesn't do the same for DW friends and it doesn't ask what filters I want you on when I friend you.

If you can read a post on LJ and not on DW, leave me an LJ comment and I'll sort the filters out.

I use an ad blocking program, so the whole time that I've had a Plus account, I've been able to enjoy 15 userpics without seeing any ads.

Lately, I've been checking this flist through Semagic's web interface, and I've discovered that my journal is beautifully decorated with a mixture of weight loss ads and sexist ads for what purports to be an online fantasy RPG but appears to be mostly about the cleavage. I find both of these disgusting.

This weekend, I will be moving this journal to Dreamwidth. I will be paying for their paid account, which I have never done and never had any intention to do on Livejournal, because paid accounts on Dreamwidth are a) cheaper than LJ and b) contributing toward the running of an ethical open-source project founded on principles of free speech, tolerance, community and co-operation. When they went to open beta, Dreamwidth had their first objectionable content report within three hours. The response: don't look at it then. Currently, Dreamwidth is the only open-source project in the tech world which has a majority female development team. I can't code and so cannot speak from personal experience, but rumour has it DW is one of the few open source projects out there where the management and the development team actively work to include and build up the skills of new coders.

The owners of Dreamwidth, Denise and Mark, are transparent in their decision-making and keep their userbase well informed about anything affecting the development of the site: development stats, service interuptions, new publicity initiatives, development policy... you name it, they put the information out there.

I have been uncertain about moving this journal: I don't post anything controversial, so I can't see this account being affected by something like Strikeout if it ever happens again. But I do not trust you, Livejournal. Last week, LJ, Twitter, Google and Facebook were all hit by DDOS attacks directed at a Georgian blogger who posts anti-Russian activist writing. It took three days for Livejournal to update its users about the attack and its effect on LJ service. LJers were having their IPs blocked before you told us what was going on. I could find out from the Sydney Morning Herald before I could find out from Livejournal about what's going on with Livejournal.

Incidentally, Livejournal: according to the SMH yesterday, Twitter and FB have restored the Georgian blogger's pages and are keeping them running (I can't spell his name, or I would), and, at the time, his LJ was still unavailable. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is because Twitter and FB are American-owned, and LJ is not. Whether Twitter and FB would be as good if the issue were politically sensitive in America, as this one is in Russia, I do not know. But LJ has a long track record of poor handling of politically sensitive issues - it started long before the site was sold to the current Russian owners.

Dreamwidth is still too small for scandal. But, based on Denise and Mark's clear business integrity policies, I trust them to handle any scandal they encounter with principles of free speech, anti-discrimination, and individual responsibility at the forefront. And I trust them to keep their users well-informed about anything affecting the site.

I also know for certain that I will never find disgustingly sexist advertisements on my Dreamwidth page.

If you have been viewing this journal without an adblocker, my apologies. The world has enough disgusting advertisements encouraging women to lose weight, and enough media designed to appeal to men by the use of large-busted, submissive images of women. I am unable to remove the ads, as basic accounts are no longer available on Livejournal. As soon as I have Dreamwidth set up, I suggest you read me over there.

For my flist, I will continue to cross-post, but I will endeavour to find a way to lock all future entries here while keeping them public on DW.