Okay! I guess now is a good time. I want to send out Christmas cards again this year. If you want one, just leave your name and address in the comments - they're all screened so only I can see them! I won't stalk you, I promise. I am far too lazy for that.

I'll buy cute cards, and possibly write you a wacky message depending on how I feel that day. It will be fantastic.

Tags: holidays

Super-popular boy bands Arashi and Exile are both on this episode of Music Station (a Japanese music show)!

I was thinking that they should probably have a rumble, and decide who is most loved by the teen girls of Japan... with their fists.

But then I thought, who would win?

It seems obvious. Exile has 14 members while Arashi has only five, so clearly they'd win, right?

However, I'm firmly convinced that Exile would lose. After all, wouldn't it be just like their actual songs? Only two guys doing the work while the other twelve stand in the back and dance?

So I'm coming down on Arashi's side.

Oh man, let's do a poll! Just pick a choice at random if you don't know what I'm talking about.


Poll #1484784 ARASHI VS EXILE
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

FISTFIGHT OVER THE HEARTS OF JAPANESE TEEN GIRLS. WHO WINS?!

Tags: japanese tv, poll!, pop culture overload
Current Mood: FOR SCIENCE!

We've made some additions and improvements to Notes!

The Notes feature has been added to two action-taking pages:

• You can now add a Note directly on the Add a friend page - handy if you'd like to mark down where you met them or another name you know them by!
• On the Ban and unban users page (under Account -> Privacy) you can now add a Note, including to a group of users all banned at the same time (so that next year you won't need to ask yourself "hey, why did I ban these guys?")

Other changes:

• When you're viewing your existing Notes they're grayed out; click in a field to activate it to change the text (this page can be found from the header by using Profile -> Manage Notes)
• Changes to editing:
  • When you're going to create a new Note but one already exists, you'll get a warning that you're editing an existing Note
  • You can now delete a note from the "Edit note" pop-up in the hover menu
  • You can now delete notes for multiple selected users on the Manage notes page
  • When you change Notes on "Ban|unban users" page, they can be edited and saved with "Save Changes" button

Tags: notes

Notes augmented

We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!

Product tweaks and bug kill

1. In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
2. If you sign up to get notifications of the Writer's Block question of the day, you'll now see the daily question in the email notification, so you'll have a little extra time to ponder before you post. You can subscribe to Writers Block notifications here
3. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
4. If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
5. If you don't edit the timestamp for an entry at all, the entry timestamp will indicate the time the entry was posted instead of the time the Update Journal page was loaded
6. Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)

New FCK fixes rich text editor!

1. We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
2. When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
3. RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
4. An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
5. The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers

LiveJournal Cares

We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.

In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.

Papered in postcards

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.

Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing 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 drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!

Photos of the week

We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.

You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

Tags: bugs, csi wii, fck, lj_cares, lj_photophile, notes, rte, writer's block

I have a cold. I'm having a bad time. It's sad.

I also finished correcting all of the diaries, finally! So here's the last installment of beautiful, amazing diary entries from my students.

( My English Summer Diary, Part 3 )

Tags: lol students, teaching is serious business

(Yeah I know I haven't written in this thing in like two years, but there's no one to talk to because everyone with any facsimile of a life or common sense has long since gone to bed, and the second best thing is talking to no one and pretending someone is listening.)

If you have to be emo, sitting in front of a fireplace sipping a root beer listening to the Ink Spots watching the rain on the water in the middle of the night is really the only good way to do it. I spent about an hour doing that, and made up a game called Lets See How Much Shit I Can Get Done Before The Sun Comes Up. So far, I'm winning. Better backtrack a bit and start at the beginning.

I almost left tonight. I was listless so I went out for a drive and before I knew it I was at the city limits and it took a whole lot of debate to turn myself around. In the end I justified it as a trip to a far-away grocery store for a hard-to-find root beer, but there was a lot of thought that went into staying. I also went out because I was missed having someone to talk to in the rain in the middle of the night while watching the city. Which, I will admit, is a pretty silly reason to go out alone. Unsurprisingly, I got lonely, so I texted the first person who came to mind - and was reasonably likely to be awake - sorry for weirding you out, Sarah. She was pretty unnerved by how unlike myself I was sounding, but as I explained later, I don't sound like my usual self because I don't feel like my usual self.

My usual self is content to coast, or drift, or whatever. My usual self is happy to be ordinary, willing to accept whatever comes along. That's not who I used to be, that's not who I should be, and that's not who I want to be. A little more ragging on myself before I meander on: My usual self gives far, far more attention to other peoples' problems than my own - not that it's bad to put other people first, but not always by such a wide margin - and doesn't trust my instinct nearly enough. I'm writing in livejournal by the seat of my pants!

Now that everyone (including me) is confused, I'd just like to say that having a girlfriend I feel a little guilty that I have such a filthy kitchen because she has to endure it too, but having a girlfriend I feel a little better about my filthy kitchen because I know it isn't entirely my own doing. It'll be a moot point pretty soon anyway.

Two hours and thirty-six minutes left till sunrise. I think I can win my game. (You, however, just lost the game.)

Current Mood: (for the first time in too long) excited
Current Music: Ink Spots - Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall (With Ella Fitzgerald)

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!
( Read more... )

Tags: csi, photos of the week, postcards, rss, spam, writer's block

Here are some more gems from my students.

I made a cameo appearance in one journal today, with a girl saying she saw me and we talked (we did) and that I was cute and she was happy I live here. I drew happy faces and stars on her paper. And she didn't even know I'd be correcting it, so she wasn't sucking up! How nice.

( My English Summer Diary, Part 2 )

Tags: lol students, teaching is serious business