All Shall Love Me and Despair

Their latest updates - so far only affecting S1 based layouts (i.e. the standard ones), but threatened to be coming for S2 layouts soon - remove the subject lines from comments, as well as the Parent and Thread links, and Preview of a post is no longer possible. The new version of the user picture browser is a comparably minor issue to me (not to others), but it's annoying - you now get the images in non-alphabetical order, instead of the alphabetical list of their names. More info here - so far there are 134 pages of mostly complaints and demands for them to roll back this release. There is also this poll which you may want to fill in. If you haven't noticed any changes on your personal LJ or on the communities you own/hang out at, you will notice them when you go to the first link at the lj_releases community, which is in a S1 layout. I seriously see no reason to remove the subject lines from comments - who would be bothered by them if they don't use them? However, many large communities like fan fic writing memes, RPGs etc. rely on them to make the community navigable at all - particularly communities that regularly reach the maximum number of comments in their entries! Why do LJ "fix" things that are not broken without consulting their users first, or at least giving them the option to opt out?! This is after all not a matter of taste, but of usability! And that one Russian developer who was working on this release got enough negative comments on his personal LJ that it should have raised some flags, frankly - but no, they go ahead and do it anyway! So if you have an opinion about this latest rollout, do go to the links above and voice it - in the hopes that they will at least listen if there is a large enough number of complaints!

I can't access the main file repository on our craptastic webpublisher software, and of course the guy in IT who could help is at the congress center along with almost all the rest of his team, and I can't reach him on his mobile nor, for some reason, leave a message. I hope his colleague listens to his messages and can tell him to call me back asap. At least now that the annual courses are running, things are considerably slower than they were in the weeks leading up to them. But that doesn't mean I don't have better things to do than sit around and shuffle random work files/emails, surf around, read my private email and twiddle my thumbs until I leave for the congress center late this afternoon... And no, I don't really have stuff I can do outside the webpublisher. *sigh*

Tomorrow we'll see the first prototype of the new webpublisher software, which is being tailor-made for us, and should be finished by March 09. It can't be spring soon enough...

Am very pissed off and disappointed with the garden center in the next valley where we (Mum, me, sometimes sister) usually get a good part of our plants for the balcony. Yes, the one where we bought some plants almost a month ago. They royally fucked up this time with the plants we left for them to bring up to their shop here, where we could pick them up. I don't want to go into detail because I'll just get more upset again/start ranting, but tonight was supposed to draw the line under this affair and instead it was the straw that broke the camel's back/my patience and understanding. I had SO been looking forward to that unusual gorgeous orange-pink bougainvillea! Crap crap crap!!!

Who the hell is responsible for the new episode title sequence on the British Blood Ties DVDs? Particularly, the very annoying, totally unsuitable song that replaces the nice, simple melody they used in the original? That person should be slapped around, HARD. Yeah, so the lyrics include "want to live forever", big deal - but the style is just WRONG for BT! It's like one of those nervous dance songs and it makes me want to crawl. out. of. my. skin. Did they already use it in the UK TV broadcast?

Why do they do stupid things like this?!

A message from Six Apart's Chairman/CEO regarding the recent wave of (in many cases wrongful) suspensions:

Well we really screwed this one up…

Glad to hear they'll review all suspensions! And I hope this will be a lesson to them. Edited to add: However, that whole thing about the profiles of (some of) the suspended LJs not making clear that they're, say, fiction/not promoting child abuse etc. - well DUH of course not if you only look at the interests! If a disclaimer "this is fiction only" etc. isn't enough, well...

Ahahaha you have to read ladysunrope's brilliant reply to the apology.

Could we just stop it with the snow until late November?!

/rant of the day

Oh friggin' hell!

It's not enough that the "minimise my inclusion in search engines" option is worth shit (Google's blog search robot certainly doesn't seem to recognise whatever LJ does to discourage them from including my LJ, so I had to complain to Google and have them take me off their list manually). No, it's also possible for external sites to automatically get a feed of the newest pictures that were posted to LJ. Like this one. Which is one thing - but it means they actually hotlink the pictures. I only noticed because I happened to look at the 100 latest visitors list in my site stats, and found that the wallpaper I just posted (the file is on my website, not Photobucket or Imageshack) had been hotlinked by at least half a dozen such sites! Now I have plenty of bandwidth and it's not much that gets used, but for others this might be a problem. Besides, hotlinking is just plain fucking rude! So if you want to prevent Livejournal from giving others automatic access to the latest pictures you posted, follow the advice that the webmaster of above site kindly provides (and you can ignore this if you only post friendslocked):

To opt-out entirely, go to the command console and type "set latest_optout yes" (without the quotes) and hit execute. You must be logged into LJ to do this.

Why does it have to be so depressively dark outside?! It's bad enough having to get up/go to work and get home in the total dark for months in winter, I don't need this now already, tyvm!!! Why did I have to get up this morning when I was sleeping so wonderfully?????!!!!!

And why wasn't Lost online yet before I left home, I neeeeeeeed my fix!!!

Could I please just go home again and curl up in bed?! *falls asleep over keyboard*



Good morning to you all...