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The empire strikes back

In recent weeks, we've taken huge steps towards blocking spam accounts on LiveJournal. In fact, we've suspended as many as 30,000 accounts in a single day! We've implemented several pre-emptive measures to prevent the creation of spam accounts, and we've honed our detection of suspicious content. Spam bots are a crafty lot, so we'll continue to refine our tactics and keep up the good fight to keep you safe from spam attacks on LiveJournal.

RSS feeds again

If you're addicted to xkcd_rss, icanhaschzbrgr, or other syndicated feeds, we're pleased to report that we've resolved the update error that was mucking up your RSS feeds. While content was being pulled correctly, it wasn't being posted to the feeds themselves. Late last week, we finally nailed down what we hope was the root problem, so content should post properly. We thank you for your patience.

Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

c_s_i

If you're a gamer who loves CSI, have Wii got news for you! c_s_i is sponsoring killer contests. Simply post a question to a member of the CSI crew. The winner will get a free copy of CSI: Deadly Intent for Nintendo Wii (with a retail value of $39.99) and get their question answered by a member of the CSI writing team! There's also a fantastic monthly contest. To enter, join c_s_i, play the online version of CSI: Deadly Intent, and respond to a two-part query for a chance to win a Wii! Entries will be judged on composition and originality. Sorry, but you must be a U.S. resident and over 18 years old to participate. Check out the rules here.

Enveloped in postcards

Last week, we asked you to send in postcards to help us decorate our drab concrete walls. Here's a photo of the results so far! Thank you so much and please keep them coming! You can mail them to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be giving ten random users paid account credits.

Photos of the week

If you haven't visited our new LiveJournal photo community, you're in for an amazing visual trip. LiveJournal users from around the world will take you on a scenic journey to everywhere. Post your own pictures or kick back and enjoy at lj_photophile. You can view some of this week's awesome photos after the jump. Please start tagging with geographic location, since we'd like to track all the places around the world represented in this community. Keep on commenting too!
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I know there were a couple of posts this week about Halloween but since Halloween is this weekend, and most people will be taking photos of thier outfits, I thought it'd be fun to make a post for everyone to show off what they've come up with. So I would love to see all your Halloween outfits and make-up this year!

My outfit. I went as a Sugar Skull/Day of the Dead lady. I went to a brilliant Mexican market in San Antonio this year when I was visiting my boyfriend/friends in Texas. Needless to say, sugar skulls aren't very popular in Northern Ireland (where I am right now) so I don't think a lot of people got it. I'm using this photo as part of my 365 project I'm doing on my blog, where I'll hopefully put the rest of my Halloween snaps up soon.

SHOW ME YOUR STUFF!

Ages ago I saw a post about children's books. And it was ages ago, but putting this together took much longest than I was expecting. Mostly because I am lazy and photobucket wasn't co-operating. BUT I wanted to share these with you, because I think they are among the most beautiful illustrations I have ever seen in children’s books.

They are from a series of books of East African folk tales re-written for children by "Mwenye Hadithi" and illustrated by Adrienne Kennaway. I think they are just so beautiful and incredibly joyful and happy. I loved these books as a child and I love them even more now.

( WARNING: Image Heavy )

Please: share your favourite book illustrations and folktales.

So I figured it was about time for an introduction.
My name is Paula, I just moved back to Santa Cruz, CA last August from Braselton, GA where I lived for roughly ten years.
I'm struggling to get into school, working at a drug store, and dreaming constantly.

My influences change from day to day. Lets just say I'm obsessed by anything creative.
I feel strongly in a very personal way about music and traditional art, though I am myself not proficient at either nor particularly knowledgeable in an academic sense. I do however enjoy the appreciating and doing of both. And very recently have been trying my hand at acting in community theater.
I'm a very accepting person and it takes alot to get me to disagree strongly in any sort of philosophical debate, or argument of taste. I abhor elitism and love an open mind.

I'd like to say it's been a pleasure to get to know you ladies (some gents) in the limited fashion that this community has allowed. To hear from so many people from so many varied backgrounds is very exciting. I know thats what the internet is all about, but I'm not the most net savy and don't spend what I consider to be "alot" of time online.

The rundown of cut and paste personlaity under the cut.
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EDIT: If you're reading this, our maintenance is OVER! The problem was not found on our equipment, which means we'll have to work with our ISP to fix this small problem -- which also means another maintenance window in the future -- but at least we have eliminated our side.

Thank you everyone, and a special shout out to rekoil for giving me a great suggestion AND also the opportunity to feel like I've just called in to a local radio station.

Have a great day, night or afternoon wherever you may be.

---

Hi everyone, sorry for the late notice but I'm going to have to do some testing on 1 of our 4 internet circuits TONIGHT; Friday night or Saturday morning depending on which time zone you're in.

Most of us shouldn't notice any impact, though there may be some slowness or lag when I switch traffic on to our other ISP circuits and then another hit when I stop the tests. If a page won't load or times out, try hitting refresh 1 or 2 times and it should load then. If it doesn't work at all... trust me, I'll be typing really really really fast to try to undo whatever I just did. Hopefully you'll have some Halloween candy (if you're in the USA and celebrate that kind of thing) nearby to take away the bitterness of a small site outage. :(

Here's the handy-dandy Website That I Always Use to get a feel for when the maintenance will start in your area. Our site traffic historically dips on Friday afternoons until Saturday morning which is why we tend to pick this time for maintenance work.

( tech details )

status.livejournal.org will, of course be updated before and after the maintenance window. Or else marta will get mad at me. :D

bt

Jennifer, 20, third year Feminist Studies major in Santa Cruz, California. In response to this post regarding feminism (I've been getting worked up lately about people's abhorrent rejection of the sheer word feminist, but I digress), I would like to offer just A FEW of the reasons why I dedicate my life to this field of study, beginning with a past professor's "Working Definition of Feminism."

( What is feminism? )

My sweet, short, and simple definition of feminism? Compassion.

( The POEM that SHOOK MY WORLD when I was fifteen )

( The MOVEMENT that LIBERATED my teenage self )

( The GENDER SPECTRUM )

( BODY and EATING DISORDER issues )

( BOOKS )

& last, but certainly not least, ( the COUNTLESS women who inspire me )

ETC ETC ETC

:]

 



Hello! I've never posted here before so I'm a little scared! I just wanted to get other peoples opinions on Feminism. Do you consider yourself a feminist? I know many girls agree with equal rights for women but are afraid to call themselves Feminists because of all the stereotypes of feminism. I am an Anthropology major and Women and Gender Studies Minor so I definetly consider myself a feminist. Do you?

Here is a link to my blog that I am working on for my class, Inscribing Gender on the body. I am addressing issues of the fashion industry and feminism. Take a Look! briana89nicole.blogspot.com  

In response to user comments from last week, we want to let you know that we'll remain LJ cut-free for the next month in order to get more eyeballs on our evolving newsletter. As for product coverage, that continues to be our top priority. For more granular detail, however, we recommend you join lj_releases.

Super-tweak for Yandex search

Some of our beta testers expressed privacy concerns using the Yandex search engine. Here's why: Last week, when you ran a search, you could see the usernames (and only the usernames) of everyone who commented on an entry, even if that entry was switched to Private or Friends Only after it was originally indexed. You could NOT see the actual comments from Friends Only or Private posts. In response to your input, we've implemented a fix to keep all user activity currently marked Friends Only or Private completely hidden. If you'd prefer your public content not to be indexed by Yandex, click here and use the settings labeled Search Inclusion (this covers your entire journal) and/or Comment Search Inclusion (which covers comments only). To test drive Yandex search now, click here.

Postcards from the edge

Several years ago, we asked LiveJournal users to send postcards to help us decorate our dull, white-washed offices. Since a good idea warrants repetition, we're at it again (same issue, new address). We hope you'll surround us with LiveJournal love by sending your postcards to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. We'll post snapshots right here. Be sure to include your username, since we'll randomly pick 10 lucky recipients to win free paid account time.

Conquer Writer's Block

Here are some excerpts from this week's most popular question of the day:

If a friend or relative makes a racist or homophobic remark, do you tend to confront them or let it slide? Are you more likely to confront them if it offends you directly or someone else who seems reluctant to speak up?

1. I find it easier to stand up for other people, and i wouldn't let it slide if they made a rude or hurtful comment.
2. Usually if a friend makes a racist or homophobic remark, I tend to let it slide. I think that while i would not say such things myself, I have no right to censor those around me.
3. This happens all of the time. I confront some relatives, but I refuse to if they are drunk or watch Fox News.
4. I'd let it slide if it was just a private remark... As much as I despise bigotry and intolerance, I know that you can't change people-they have to change themselves ...
5. Confront! confront! confront! Politely, but without equivocation.
6. SPEAK UP. Always, always, always speak up. Letting something slide lets ignorance win. No matter if it offends me directly, or someone else, I will confront the speaker and let them know that's not ok.
7. I don't get offended personally. As an immigrant, woman, gay and person of color if I took every single potentially offensive remark seriously I wouldn't get anything done.
8. I punch them in the balls. With my mind.
9. I do speak up, but often very timidly because I feel that I'm white and therefore I don't really have any authority to lecture someone on what's racist and what isn't...
10. Generally speaking, I do not let this shit fly, because it reduces me as a person, to this non-person and it replicates the destructive discourse that makes sure that sexual minorities, racial minorities, women, people with disabilities, trans people and every intersection thereof into something other than human... And sometimes... I'm just too tired to deal with it, so I roll my eyes, make a sarcastic remark and hope the conversation moves on quickly.

For more daily questions and user comments, join writersblock. FYI, we don't want to invade your privacy, so we haven't credited individual users for their responses. We'd appreciate your feedback on this!

Spotlight community of the week

We can't resist making one last midnight trip to the ol' pumpkin patch. If you adore crazy costumes, fiendish festivities, and bottomless candy consumption as much as we do, this community has just what it takes to light up your jack-o-lantern.


halloween_fan

Photos of the week

We received so many incredible photos, we had to close our eyes and point. We uploaded a selection of awesome images at our new lj_photophile community. Please join and start posting (try to keep the width at around 625 for the sake of consistency)! We'd love for you to tell us more about your photos! You can help us select spotlight photos by commenting on your favorites. Once again, we thank you for making our online world more beautiful!

shutter	pancetta	ilya_gorokhov

Curtains

Thanks, again, for tuning in. We look forward to seeing you next week.

Hey there, I'm Astrid. I have an art midterm coming up and I need to do a twelve-piece portrait series. I'm hoping to follow the theme of Halloween, but since these are just facial portraits (with some hair/hat room), I'm having trouble finding interesting enough images.

Post photos of yourself or others with awesome Halloween makeup or outfits that you could recognize from just the head?

Thanks!

(my costume last year:)




Also, I've been writing music my whole life and only just stopped being shy for just long enough to make a music myspace. Now it's out there and I'm having difficulty finding friends... I don't want to just message-spam a bunch of strangers.
Add me if you like my stuff? It would mean the world to me.
www.myspace.com/songsfromsaturn

For a long time I stopped taking digital photos. I had access to a large stash of polaroid film (bought for $1 a pack) and the photos my friends and family took sufficed for commemorating occasions. But the polaroid film has run out and I'm about to go to Australia and I'm realizing I need to buy a digital camera, but its been so long of not taking photographs that when I look at descriptions of cameras I can't even figure out some of the terminology. Photography isn't where my artistic energy goes (obviously) so what I'm looking for is something easy to use that gives me good quality photos (I'm old fashioned, so I'll probably print quite a few photos). I don't care about too many features, and quite honestly I would probably find them frustrating and unsettling, but I do want accurate colour representation, since Australia seems to have that insane red/blue landscape. On account of my plane ticket being $3,000 my camera can't cost the world (under $250, definitely). I would appreciate any feedback on a nice little camera, because right now I feel a bit like Dorothy Parker