Hi. I still use LJ, follow my friends and similar, but I've moved my main host to Dreamwidth, and crosspost everything here.

Mat Bowles. It's fully interoperative, the OpenID comment functions there are good and improving, and I follow everything from both sites without problem.

Oh come on, like I could resist posting this: It's a bit like ASCII art, but done with D6s. Must've taken a lot more patience than I could manage. From karohemd.

PSA: I am away for a few days as of about an hours time when I get on the bus, I'll be staying at my sister's, and I'm not taking the laptop, I'll likely use hers to check in, but I won't be online at my normal frequency.

Devon types!

Having completely lost track of who reads this that's still in Devon, well, no set plans, Red Arrows this evening, going to Dartmouth Regatta at some point, and probably visiting my grandmothers in Slapton and South Pool Saturday, travelling back up Sunday, I'll be reliant on my sister and/or buses to get about, but it'd be cool to see people if possible.

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comments on the original post on Dreamwidth. I'd prefer it if you comment there^[1] if you are able to keep the discussion together. [1] If you are reading this, you very likely have an OpenID.

Picking a paragraph to quote from for this was difficult. My application for a job as a Homeopath

I am a qualified doctor of Neuroscience, so am aware of many long and complex words which I often use to convince people I know what I’m talking about, when in reality I am just exploiting their ignorance for my own amusement. As such, I feel I would be an ideal candidate for the post of doctor of homeopathy.

I was tempted by the bit about Richard Littlejohn, the Desperate Dan fanclub reference was tempting, and the paragraph on the Placebo effect quite good as well. Basically, go and read. It's a genuine job application.

ETA: More posts on the subject: Anomalous Distraction, dcscience.net, Reality Is My Religion, torgwen's posterous

Athough I am comftable wit my knoledge of homepaty, and I liv neaby, I stll feel tht othr aplicants wit medcal quafications stnd a beter chnce thn me. Wit tht in mnd, I’ve dcided to remov caracters frm my words, as yu cn see. As a tru homepath, I flt tht th les caracters I usd in my wrds, th mor efective they woud be.

And this one I really like, from davidnm at his 'proper' blog:

My education so far includes two degrees in real sciences, a BSc in Physics and an MSc in Astrophysics, and I’m currently working toward a PhD in Astronomy. Thus one day, unlike your homeopath, I may actually be a doctor! As I have no actual medical qualifications, any medical knowledge in my brain is diluted to an extreme degree – and thus, from the basic principles of homeopathy, this means that I must be an extremely good doctor.

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comments on the original post on Dreamwidth. I'd prefer it if you comment there^[1] if you are able to keep the discussion together. [1] If you are reading this, you very likely have an OpenID.

This post exists purely so I can test some CSS on a non-locked entry, I'm hoping to have a box that only displays to logged out users.


Right, that works. Code is:
.logged-out .poll {display:none;}
.logged-in .loggedout {display:none;}
<div class="loggedout">You need to be logged in in order to take part in the poll. You do not need a Dreamwidth account, <a href="http://www.dreamwidth.org/openid/?returnto=/users/miss_s_b/1087048.html" title="">use your blog url as an OpenID here</a>, you can also use your Google or Yahoo account, just type http://www.google.com/profiles/USERNAME or https://me.yahoo.com/ in the OpenID box.</div> <div class="poll"><cut text="cut text within a hidden div">There now follows a poll, you shouldn't be able to see this if you're logged out <div><a href="http://www.dreamwidth.org/poll/?id=4056">View poll: Sexiest Blogger</a></div></cut></div>

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comments on the original post on Dreamwidth. I'd prefer it if you comment there^[1] if you are able to keep the discussion together. [1] If you are reading this, you very likely have an OpenID.

Seriously, 5 days after Bart and I wrote about it, her people have issued a statement saying 'Dragon Tattoo' Rumor Is 'Absolutely False'. This is because The Sun and Metro.co.uk ran it as a story yesterday

Tabloids, not only do they get the stories completely wrong, they get the stories wrong 5 days later than a pair of bloggers...

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comments on the original post on Dreamwidth. I'd prefer it if you comment there^[1] if you are able to keep the discussion together. [1] If you are reading this, you very likely have an OpenID.

I've got proper coding work to do, but my brain isn't working straight, so I've been hacking my layout again. Almost certainly Dreamwidth specific as they only work because the Devs put a lot of effort into Classes for CSS tricks within the base code.

Two little tricks, both done through the Customize Journal Style CSS page, dead easy.

Custom comment colours

First is to give a regular commenter a custom colour in the comments box. Can only be done for logged in DW users, unfortunately, an OpenID user has .s in their name and that breaks CSS, might get that fixed but it needs a change in the base code. So, if you want to give commenters their own custom appearance (this includes yourself, naturally) in your comments box, here's how:

Let's start with you, the entry author. This is a generic tweak, so can be done on a Community as well. Simply put the following code in at the bottom of any other CSS you have there:

( Code for making your own comments appear differently, and then for individual named users )
Sorted.

Feed icons on Reading page

On a reading page, an icon only displays for accounts and journals that use userpics--feeds, having no userpic, get nothing displayed. That's fine, except I like the visual trigger if I'm scanning, so I've figured out how to get the feed logo to display in place of a userpic:

( Code for Feed icons and for individual account icons )
All straightforward hackery, typing it all up took longer than actually doing it. An example of the comment colours in action can be found here. Next up on my layout posts should be a tutorial for the 'sharethis' widgets, but that'll take a bit more time and screenshotting, so don't hold your breath. Linkspam post may follow later, but I have a bath to get into.

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comments on the original post on Dreamwidth. I'd prefer it if you comment there^[1] if you are able to keep the discussion together. [1] If you are reading this, you very likely have an OpenID.

Or maybe it's just a collection of links. Wait, it's links about... Ah, you get the idea...

GE in a blatant corporate search optimisation bid, have a brilliant visualisation of age demographics over time, huge chunks of the projected population expansion in the next few decades is because we've stopped dying as quickly. Which is, broadly, a good thing, right?

Now, university funding and numbers. Remember that 50% should go to university target that the Govt set? The one that was initially "some form of FE, including apprenticeships" but got changed because they forgot the point of their own policy? You'd have thought that, given that target, the proportion of young people graduating with a degree would've gone up a lot over the last 13 years, right? Wrong. The number of graduations as a proportion of the number of 21 year olds has stayed pretty much constant. nmg does have some caveats, but the basic principle is sound. More students due to a rise in the number of people at university age. That visaulisation above? My age range (born 1974-1980) is one of the smallest, so as the numbers peaked, the total number of students went up, but that was all. More kids = more students. Another failed Labour policy, or just an example of maths inability?

Now, given we've just taken power locally and have to set the budget for the council for next year, news that greater participation and consultation improves information and makes cuts easier is useful to know. The caveat that the society that commissioned the survey was set up to promote participatory democracy is useful but doesn't discredit it.

This, on the other hand, is weird. Giving poor kids computers can decrease their academic attainment. Not conclusive, but far more important to increase the thirst for learning, worries about a "digital divide" may be misplaced, much better to provide a big pile of books. Makes sense to me.

Keeping in touch with people from college is useful. David, now studying astrophysics, likes to think, a lot. The type of disaster that kills the most people is actually the humble heatwave. We're good at dealing with floods and famines, not-so-good at dealing with slower, less obvious problems, but they tend to kill more people. If the world continues to heat, we'll need to adapt to that, fast.

Last up, for now, a bit about mental health. There're lots of pejoratives surrounding mental health problems. The stigma attached is lessening, for some conditions, quickly, and people are much more able to talk about them. But stigma still exists. Especially for those "doing it for the attention". Maybe if those attantion seekers actually got some real attention every so often, they wouldn't need to do it?

Anyway. That's folder one of my link collection emptied out. Some of it was time dependent and deadlines are missed, so not posting, but, y'know. More to follow. Probably. But not tonight, insomnia has kicked in badly last few weeks, but it's partially self inflicted, time to try to sleep, again...

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comments on the original post on Dreamwidth. I'd prefer it if you comment there^[1] if you are able to keep the discussion together. [1] If you are reading this, you very likely have an OpenID.

So, Emma "Hermione" Watson has had a rather drastic haircut. So far, so "girl gets haircut", and while she does look rather pretty with it, who cares? Quoth :

1. In London they are currently trying to cast the role of Lizbeth Salander in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

2. Emma Watson suddenly releases this picture of her "new look" to the media.

3. All of the stories about it somehow work in that she's finished shooting the last Harry Potter movie and is now out of her exclusive contract.

Coincidence?

ETA: 5 days later, Emma Watson officially denies interest in Dragon Tattoo role.

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comments on the original post on Dreamwidth. I'd prefer it if you comment there^[1] if you are able to keep the discussion together. [1] If you are reading this, you very likely have an OpenID.

This is absolutely brilliant. Not perfect, but still cool.

From Nicholas, who got it from Sue, both of whom seem to be having innapropriate thoughts about Anne Francis in that outfit from Forbidden Planet. Can't say I blame them.

ETA: There's a non brilliantly integrated clip from Tennant era Who in there, it's appropriate, but does jar a bit, think they should've used a clip from Tomb myself...

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comments on the original post on Dreamwidth. I'd prefer it if you comment there^[1] if you are able to keep the discussion together. [1] If you are reading this, you very likely have an OpenID.

One of the best things about the internet is the ability to share stuff with friends and others. It can be stuff you've made, done or written, or it can be stuff you've found. Lots of people like doing this so much that there're sites dedicated to the whole idea, or have that sort of function built in as an attraction to users.

Making it easy makes sense

If you're creating content, encouraging others to share what you've written with their friends normally makes sense. Making it easy for them makes it likely that they'll do it. Well, normally, some churlish types are less likely to share something if the site's trying to make it easy. No pleasing some people...

The first weblogs were, literally, logging the web, they existed to share cool stuff found. Now? Billions of aps out there. Awhileback, Debi polled her readers to find out what they like to use, I'm just going to ask.

coding sharethis buttons

I'm coding a share this set of buttons, initially for my and miss_s_b's layout, but eventually to possibly be submitted as part of the core function of Dreamwidth. I don't want to have too many little buttons, but I think I can make it so users can choose which buttons appear on their layout, and today I finally asked how I could strip the html, a silly little problem that'd be stopping me for weeks. I also want to have it only display on public entries, but that's a lesser issue.

I want it for my reading page, to allow easy sharing of links for me. That it might encourage others to share stuff I've written is an added bonus. If I ever get around to writing again regularly.

So, already coded I have Facebook, Livejournal, Twitter, Dreamwidth, Blogger, StumbleUpon, Bit.ly and LibDig (the last being, obviously, a very niche sharing tool). What major tools have I missed?

Unfortunately, as far as I can see, I can't do one for Wordpress.com, let alone custom installs, as the post page is always within your own subdomain, if someone shows me a hack to get around it or an alternative URL, I'm very much all ears.

What link sharing sites do you read or use?

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comments on the original post on Dreamwidth. I'd prefer it if you comment there^[1] if you are able to keep the discussion together. [1] If you are reading this, you very likely have an OpenID.

What happens when you leave reactolite glasses behind a patterned curtain? Ozzy has a picture.

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comments on the original post on Dreamwidth. I'd prefer it if you comment there^[1] if you are able to keep the discussion together. [1] If you are reading this, you very likely have an OpenID.