Ordinary Day

So way back when, when Google killed off Google Reader, I wound up flipping about a lot in search of an RSS reader solution that’d let me get the links I wanted to follow in all the places I wanted to follow them.

I finally settled on a solution that didn’t exactly satisfy me: using a Feedly account, plus two different RSS clients. I needed one RSS client to pull stuff down from Feedly, and it’s an RSS client I do like–but unfortunately it doesn’t support authenticated feeds. So I also had to install a second client to get at the feeds I wanted to read from Dreamwidth (and at least until everybody seriously bailed on LJ, LJ as well).

But I had to also keep the first client, because the second one didn’t talk to Feedly.

In other words: stupidly complicated.

(And this is also stupidly long for a post, so here’s a More/cut tag for y’all.)

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Crossposted from annathepiper.org. Original post: http://www.annathepiper.org/2020/06/20/solving-more-computer-issues-rss-client-edition/

So my Livejournal paid account status expired, and after a few days of mulling about whether I care, I have decided to go ahead and pull the plug on the account. There are a few reasons for this.

One, I don’t get many comments any more on the LJ account. The vast majority of my online interactions are on Facebook and Twitter now.

Two, while I can certainly afford the yearly paid account fee, there are better things I can be putting that money to.

Three, given that I host my own WordPress site on my own server, and I’m already mirroring my posts from there out to Dreamwidth, having an LJ account as well is kind of redundant.

Four, while I know there’s some nervousness out there re: the new LJ user agreement (see the discussion here, for example), this isn’t making me particularly more nervous about LJ being headquartered in Russia than I was before. But that said, I’m still nervous about LJ being headquartered in Russia, in no small part because hi I’m queer, and Russian law is currently heavily anti-queer, so.

For the small number of you who do periodically still answer my posts on LJ, I apologize in advance for the forthcoming inconvenience, and I hope you’ll consider keeping up with me elsewhere. There are a bunch of options for doing so, all of which are on my Contact page, which I will be bringing up to date shortly.

In particular, if you are also on Dreamwidth and/or will be migrating over there yourself in the near future, I am there as annathepiper. Or, you can grab the RSS feed for angelahighland.com and get my posts directly from the source.

I will be deleting my LJ as soon as I finish verifying that my last import of content from LJ to Dreamwidth went as expected.

Questions, comments, please let me know!

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Namely, Bandcamp embeds! So here, have a couple! (Does this also work on Dreamwidth? LET’S FIND OUT.)

Like “Manteau d’hiver” by Le Vent du Nord!

And “La déroutée” by Yves “Most Badass Accordion Player in Quebec” Lambert and his trio! A song which rattles me around every time I hear it. I LOVE the repeated chorus.

And last but MOST ASSUREDLY not least, Dara’s got some tasty previews up for the WE SWEAR TO ODIN IS ACTUALLY FORTHCOMING Bone Walker Soundtrack!

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

(This is an LJ-specific, unmirrored from anywhere else post.)

For the longest time I've been reading my LJ Friends list via the custom style they'd provided for paid and permanent users. As of the end of May, though, this stopped working. And while they've provided a new way to get at one's Friends page via RSS, it's not bloody well working, and by 'not working', I mean, the time stamps on the posts are all 2038 and the links are broken as well, so I can't even click through to the right pages off the feed.

Which means that I've missed a lot of LJ content in the last several weeks. Unfortunately I have a hard time keeping up with my Friends page posts via any means that don't let me track what I've read and what I haven't (and that includes just visiting the page directly in a browser). I'm going to have to manually subscribe to friends-locked feeds via my Mail client at home. If you typically post outside a Friends lock, I'll put you in my Google reader. But either way, it'll take me a bit to set up.

So apologies if you've posted anything I should possibly have seen in the last many weeks! If you need to bring any specific post to my attention, do please drop me a comment. And if you happen to have a Dreamwidth account that you're actively using and crossposting from it over to here, please let me know so I can subscribe to your journal over there instead. I'm still slowly migrating off of LJ, and unfortunately that's going to continue if they're going to keep up this trend of getting rid of functionality I've been using all this time, and replacing it with stuff that just doesn't bloody well work.

For those of you who may not have seen this yet, this story started going around last night. I saw the LJ Twitter account link to it, so one presumes this is indeed legit. The article’s talking about future plans for LJ, and it’s looking like the ongoing trend of not giving a damn about the old-school LJ user base isn’t stopping for the foreseeable future. The money quote is this one:

LiveJournal’s leadership has made it clear that their future American business strategy lies in generating new traffic rather than catering to the service’s current small-but-loyal membership. The challenge for Petrochenko and other executives at LiveJournal will be redefining the brand’s identity in a crowded media marketplace.

The ONTD_political community is not amused. Neither is JF’s fandom_lounge.

I am not abandoning LJ quite yet. But I HAVE shifted a lot of my primary reading over to Dreamwidth–so if you’re on both sites, and if you are actively posting to DW, I’ll be reading and replying to you on DW. So if you plan to make the jump and you’re on my LJ friends list, let me know so I can add you on DW.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

(This is an LJ-specific post so I'm posting it directly here versus mirroring off my WP blog.)

Many of you are probably already aware of the latest LJ brouhaha re: a security breach caused by the last code update. For those of you who aren't, this was first brought to my attention over here on JournalFen's Unfunny Business community, which in turn links to this post on the LJ Releases community. Since then there has also been a post to LJ Maintenance which to my current knowledge is LJ's only response to the issue.

I've withstood a lot of LJ brouhahas, but this one troubles me deeply. Less that the breach happened at all--though make no mistake, ANYTHING that allows users to even accidentally see other people's locked content is very much NOT COOL--and more that LJ's official response to the matter appears to be naive at best and actively ignoring contradictory reports from the userbase at worst.

I'm now seriously pondering what to do about this and whether it's enough to drive me off of LJ, or at least to stop giving them money. I have not reached a decision on this yet.

This post, though, is more a) to alert those of you who aren't aware of the issue yet about it, and b) to note to any of you who DO choose to leave LJ or who may opt to do your future primary posting from Dreamwidth, I am over there under the same username. If I don't already have you friended over there, let me know and I'll add you, and shift my reading of your posts to that site.

More on this as I know it.

FYI, all: if I know you have an active journal over on Dreamwidth, and I know you’re clearly crossposting over to here, I’ll be shifting commenting traffic there unless you have LJ content that isn’t actually on Dreamwidth. In which case you’ll still get my comment traffic on LJ. (My beloved solarbird, I’m looking at you. <3)

I am not, repeat, not bailing on LJ for general reasons of remaining available to the widest potential number of people who might be interested in my writing; this is simply an effort on my part to support Dreamwidth traffic and the fact that I do have a paid account over there.

So as I mentioned in an earlier post, if you’re there and we’ve already Friended each other on LJ, feel free to pick me up on Dreamwidth too. Or, keep following me on LJ, or even via WordPress. Whatever your heart desires; it’s all good!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

I’ve seen a lot of news going around about this, but for those of you who haven’t, LJ has just turned on new functionality to crosspost to Facebook and Twitter.

On the face of it this seems fine. I crosspost regularly, as y’all probably know; all my posts these days originate from my WordPress blogs, but from there they head out to LJ, Dreamwidth, Facebook, and Twitter all at the same time. I’m fine with LJ allowing that to happen for stuff that originates on LJ.

What I’m not fine with is that you can apparently now also crosspost comments. Including comments on locked posts, or posts which are set to screen all comments. The crossposted comments will include a link back to the original post–and if that post is locked, sure, only the people who are authorized to see it will still see it. But there’s no way of knowing if those crossposted comments might quote bits of the original post.

So there’s big privacy fail here. There’s also just general fail of manners, because seriously, it’s just rude to link back to locked posts that people on other sites can’t read.

I wouldn’t have been turning on this functionality anyway since my crossposting originates off of LJ and I therefore do not need it. But I’m leaving it off also on general principle just because of this big gaping security hole. I encourage you all to do the same. Also, while I don’t often post locked posts or posts with screened comments, I do ask that if I do, please don’t crosspost any comments off of them.

The FAQ post about the new functionality is here. The new news post that mentions it is here.

If you feel passionately about this, I encourage you to submit feedback to LJ about it.

If you feel really passionately about this, enough to bail on LJ, I have Dreamwidth invite codes. Let me know if you want one.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Just saw this on celandineb’s journal: apparently LJ is about to make the Gender field a mandatory setting on new account creation, and word has it that you’ll have to set it to Male or Female. “Unspecified” will no longer be allowed. Details on this can be found over here.

Since I have several transgendered and genderqueer friends, I find this generally displeasing, especially when coupled with the likelihood that this’ll lead to gender-targeted ads for non-paying users of the system. As per synecdochic’s post, I’ll be sending in some feedback on this to (politely) express my displeasure. I recommend any of y’all who feel likewise do the same.

ETA 12/15/09 6:24am: As has been noted elsewhere, LJ’s support team has been replying to feedback that’s gone in saying that this was apparently beta code and a screw up. I’ve gotten this same support reply, so that seems to be that. Good.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Thanks to a kindly offered invite code (thank you, kind person! You know who you are), I'm now over there with the usual ID, annathepiper. Y'all feel free to link up with me there, and/or drop a comment here to let me know who you are so's I can make with the subscribing and granting access and stuff.

Right now my plans for Dreamwidth mostly involve "playing with their code" to see if the changes they've made are interesting enough to warrant extended attention. But I'll also likely be mirroring posts over there as well.

For those of you who don't intend on joining Dreamwidth, no worries, I'm not jumping ship here. Dreamwidth may have some potentially shiny new toys to play with, but LJ's got the established userbase and name recognition, and it'll be too useful for me to give it up completely!

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about at all, short form: Dreamwidth is the latest Livejournal clone to come into existence. Like Inksome, it's come out of the big spate of scandals going around here when Six Apart was still in charge--and a lot of folks asking the question, "Well, so if we wanted to go found our own site, what features would we like?" There's at least one ex-LJ-staffer on its founding team.

In particular I'm interested in what Dreamwidth is doing with the whole concept of Friending. They're dropping the term 'Friending' entirely, and have set up a more complex system that separates "whose journals you want to read" from "who you'd like to grant access to your own locked stuff".

So anyway, if you're over there, say hi. Or not. :)

ETA: Can any kind souls hook up kathrynt with an invite code? Thanks in advance! She has one now!
ETA #2: And also, alinsa?