Hi. I still use LJ, follow my friends and similar, but I've moved my main host to Dreamwidth now, and am crossposting everything to here, but asking people to comment there.

Mat Bowles.

It's still fully interoperative, the OpenID comment functions there are good and improving, and I can follow everything from both sites easily.

In my Monday post about icons, I gave replacement codes for the 5 icons that DW commonly uses as well as the 3 that LJ commonly uses. I missed one that DW uses, namely direct links to LJs using the new custom site code.

If you didn't know, rather than the old [lj-user="matgb"] code, DW has replaced it with [user name="matgb"], ie removing the LJ bit given, obviously, it's not on LJ. But cunningly, they've also added another option, if you code [user name="matgb" site="livejournal.com"] it will link to matgb on LJ, not DW. And it'll take the LJ usericon from the LJ server as well.

Which would be cool. Except it doesn't auto-discover whether it's a person, community or feed. So my post Tuesday mentioning the Russian President's blog displayed it as a person, not as a community. Which I think is slightly unintuitive and misleading. So I've fixed that.

.ljuser img[src="http://www.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif"] { background-color:transparent; background-image: url(http://www.livejournal.com/img/pencil.gif); padding: 17px 17px 0 2px !important; } I've added another bit of code for DW so that off-site links to LJs instead display the LJ pencil, to show it's something on LJ, not a bloke regardless of what it is on LJ. So, if you look at this post on DW using my style, it'll show the little pencil when I repeat the link. Look: blog_medvedev. I suspect I could keep doing these for ages—if you regularly link to IJ, WP, JF or whatever people, y'know what? Sort your own code out, ask me if you need help.

This entry was originally posted at http://matgb.dreamwidth.org/362303.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Couldn't resist writing this one up: In post-Soviet Russia, President blogs you. The President of Russia has a Livejournal (blog_medvedev) and updates it (or gets someone to, anyway) fairly regularly.

( LJ, its future, DW not a threat and SUp taking it in the wrong direction )

Ah well. I'm supposed to be writing up what's wrong with the OpenID implementation on both LJ and DW, but I keep getting distracted.

Short version: ( Both sites are problematic, DW has the excuse of being new, LJ has no excuse at all )

That's pathetic. Hopefully the competitive pressure from DW will push them into making more improvements, like it has done elsewhere. Competition is, after all, a good thing, and LJs been stuck in its own little rut with nowt but a bunch of clones for too long.

Meh, rambling. Time to go do something constructive.

This entry was originally posted at http://matgb.dreamwidth.org/362185.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

OK, testing again. Using the Dreamwidth poll wizard, then looking to see if/how polls crosspost to LJ. Odds are you'll need to login with OpenID to vote, etc, but it's about time you did that anyway.

I am having difficulty figuring out words for describing how cool this is:

My quote of the day is from the description:

Keep in mind the scanner and floppy drive are not musical instruments. These are mechancial devices whose frequencies tend to drift and can cause some notes to be out of tune.

Seriously, how cool is that? (via)

Also, I'm testing the DW crossposter, apparently there are issues with post edits and embedded videos that we need to iron out. So comments off on LJ and on on DW, I don't plan on making a habit of this until it's way out of closed beta, but you all know me and plans...

This entry was originally posted at http://matgb.dreamwidth.org/360502.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
ETA:Um, yeah, some horrible glitch, for some time, this was displaying as the tesla orchestra 1812 I posted awhileback, now fixed to the correct cover of Bohemian Rhapsody.

OK, forgot to tick a box on the crossposter, let's try that again.

If you're already on Dreamwidth then really, nothing to see here...

This are a test post. There is nothing really to see. However, if you fancy following the link and saying hello to test the OpenID login, that'd be cool.

Gotta love beta testing features, this might not even work...

ETA: not only does it work, but apparently it auto-edits as well. How cool is that?

This entry was originally posted at http://matgb.dreamwidth.org/360244.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

So, I've mentioned previously the Dreamwidth project, taking a fork of the LJ code, going back to first principles, and building a really good blogging/feedreading/social media platform out of the nascent ideas that LJ had but never did well, right?

I've also, previously to that, talked about other alternative platforms, specifically trying to build a distributed platform with the social/privacy features of LJ but without the reliance on one centralised point of failure. The specific idea being to try to Reclaim the Web.

our sort of blogging

Well, I never did get that project going. Partially because, well, it was fairly reliant on a few other individuals. All of whom are involved in Dreamwidth. All of whom share the idea of a distributed social model for our sort of blogging, a way to write about whatever you like, keep in touch with friends, but be able to interact with others on other sites easily and effectively, and crucuailly allow them to interact with you.

Dreamwidth is doing all that.

The Friends Page is replaced

But more importantly, they've taken so many little annoyances or stupidities out of LJ and replaced them with something that makes sense. The Friends Page has gone, it's a Reading Page. If you add someone to your friends page, you subscribe to them. You might also want to Grant Access to your privacy enabled posts, or you might not. Essentially, find someone interesting, follow them for a bit, learn to trust them, you can grant them access. Meaning I can follow the execrable j_rentoul's outpourings but not let him read my private thoughts.

OpenID actually works!

OpenID is substantially improved. You can tie an OpenID to your DW account if you've got one, and you can use your OpenID to control any syndicated feeds from any sites you've got (so LJers can turn off comments to the Dreamwidth feed of their stuff if they want, which is good). Well, you'll be able to anyway, that's not quite working yet.

easiest backup I've ever done

Most importantly, the import feature isn't finished yet. It's still the easiest backup of everything I've ever done—all my stuff from LJ is over there, including my icons, filters, bio, etc.

So, even though I still hope to set up my own server running the code eventually, I'll wait until the code is in a proper release model to do it first. In the meantime, I'll be going there properly as soon as they've finished a few features.

I won't be leaving here

Most importantly, I'll be going there, but I won't be leaving here. They're building a cross poster, so when I write a post there, it'll turn up here. You'll be able to follow links there and comment there using your LJ ID without problems, and I'll still be reading everything here.

Basically, it looks damn cool. It's what LJ should already be, and they've not finished yet.

Interested? First person to click this can use my last invite code Gone to akicif. I'll likelyalmost certainly get more.

Several things online have made me happy today, most of them related to the previously mentioned DreamWidth project.

Firstly, when designing the site navigation structure, they used a card sorting usability test to get it right, and came up with this navigation scheme, based around a design by grrliz. I've used my LJ OpenID to login at the site, and while it's superficially similar to Horizon, it just makes sense. I was stoked about this project just fromt he basic ideas behind it, that they're actually following usability and accessibility guidelines? Yowsers. I uploaded a userpic. I was asked to provide "a description for visually impaired users". Userpics will get proper ALT text. If that means anything to you you know this is cool.

Secondly, they've got what appears to be a top notch comment importer:

( When I import, your comments will be assigned to the OpenID you made them with, which means you take control of them if you want )

Such a simple, simple thing to do, but apparently beyond the ken of most other import tools I've encountered.

On the subject of importing or backing up, remember when I promised I'd write a backing up how to? Well, I never did. Don't really need to now, Wordpress.com (my preferred online backup option) has upgraded their importer and launched Even Easier LiveJournal Migration. Seriously, you create an account, go to 'import', and follow the easy instructions. Mine is here if you want to bookmark it somewhere in case of LJ dying unexpectedly, I'll be turning off the search presence over there, don't want it to look like a mirror. Thanks for the heads up foxfirefey. SRSLY people, you can mark the whole thing as private "your eyes only", just make sure you've got a copy of your journal, just in case?

Lastly, a completely non geeky post. I post a lot of anti-religion stuff when I'm in a ranty mood. I know that not all religious types are crazy bigotted loons, but idiots like Christian Voice tend to spoil it for the sane majority. Today, I got another reminder, several people linked to:

The Life and Opinions of Andrew Rilstone: An Immodest Proposal

Go read it. Really.

Anyway, my importer has finally finished, so time to shut down the PC. G'night all

Short version. Livejournal has today fired about half of its US based staff, including several people that I'd say are key, if not crucial to the operation. This means that while SUP/LJ Inc have the right ideas about where to take the site, they're running out of money (and paid over the odds anyway) and can't afford to do it.

I suspect that LJ itself will continue, as it has ongoing revenue, but the improvements that it needs to turn itself into the successful site it could've been will now be significantly slowed, which puts the long term health of the site in danger. Not got time to do a full post, but here are some links:
( ... )
I promised a 'how to' on backing up your journal and exporting it to other platforms, in order to write that I first need to do it myself fully and properly, so that'll happen later on (hopefully tonight, depends if I can get it all to work). In the meantime, some of the comments/posts linked abouve are from rahaeli/synecdochic, who used to be an LJ staffer but left to concentrate on her writing career (I got the impression she was asked to defend the indefensible once too often)—she's a good fiction writer FWIW. Last year, she announced that with a small number of others she'd be working on a fork of the Open Source Livejournal code (to be called Dreamwidth) to update it, make it compatible with modern servers and run a platform that'd be more community friendly in the way LJ "used to be". Many of the proposals she put forward were ones that echoed what I was looking for—crucially a separation between your 'reading' list and the people you trust to read your friends locked posts, as well as complete interoperability with other sites on the same codebase.

That latter is interesting—if she/they (we?) can get it going, then different people could run Dreamwidth installations and you could still add people, let them read your secure entries, etc from your friends page, without much if any extra effort on your part. That could mean that anyone could pay for a server and run their own site. Drawback is that you'd need your own webserver, renting one of them is a minimum of £50 per month, much more for something decent.

But if enough people were to chip in, it'd be more than possible. In fact, it'd be more than viable, it'd possibly be a very good plan. There are a bunch of you reading this that know a lot more about the backend side of this sort of thing than me—we'd need to work to set it up, and then install updates, etc. Almost certainly viable with enough people, so, well...
Poll #1326311 Dreamwidth UK install?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 50

Interested in paying £20ish per year for a share of a UK based Dreamwidth/LJ installation?

Able and interested in working on and contributing to a UK based Dreamwidth/LJ installation?