Friends

Shot another episode of TheSocialWeb.tv with John and Joseph yesterday. Focused mainly on Meebo's new Community IM and how it's continuing the trend of making the entire web more social. Check it out and I'll be at both Facebook f8 and OSCON next week.

I haven't written a life update in a while. Don't really feel up to writing anything big right now, but I figure I'll post a little something...

Not much to report. I'm mostly better from the accident. Drove today for the first time in two weeks, discovered that lifting my foot (i.e., the "toe up" motion) is somewhat painful, but bearable. Sitting/standing motion still causes some pain, but again, bearable. Not taking any medication now except sleep and water. Going back to the office on Monday.

Been a pretty uneventful two weeks. Been working this week and playing Warcraft. Gearing up my gnome, she's so cute, and her gear is coming along well. Have had an unbelievably lucky string of gear drops, she just needs a few more pieces and she could roll into Tier 5 content and start tanking bosses (can already tank trash).

Janine just said this laptop looks so small. It's the 12" PowerBook from way back. Since my work laptop is all deformed, I'm not using it. Need to take it in Monday and figure out what's going to happen to it. Lol.

Not much else to report. Going to sleep now.

Oh yeah, Happy Birthday to my lovely fiancee, my dearest Janine. Hope it's a good one, honey. :)

It's a shame that SUP feels the need to tiptoe around things and hide decisions from their users.

In news, they just announced that Basic Accounts are back!

That's a good thing, right?! Oh wait. If you actually click through to the lj_2008 community, you'll see the caveat:

Oh yeah, we're still gonna monetize the bitches, lololol ads.

But I guess that if they just tell people in the announcement that they're bringing them back with no details, it will avoid a lot of drama they would incur by saying "and we're adding ads." Lame.

Anyway, I do have to give a little bit of kudos because they are asking for feedback on how the ads would be presented. And as users have said time and time again: be honest! So kudos to SUP for saying flat out "we need to make more money" and giving the users some input into how it's going to play out.

Of course, not the kind of statement you want to hear in general, but better to have it out.

P.S., we don't make features anymore, so have some more v-gifts!!!

Account Structure Update
Back by popular demand, Basic Accounts will be available to all users again by the end of the (northern hemisphere) summer. More information on the decision-making process and proposals relating to the future of Basic Accounts are in lj_2008.

New Themes
Two attractive and all-new Flexible Squares themes, "Circular" and "Circular Brown" are now available.


L to R: Circular and Brown

New V-Gifts
Give someone you care about the gift of enticement. With the new Chocolate Ice Cream, Vanilla Ice Cream, Tea, Coffee, Curry and Sushi v-gifts, all the significant people in your life will be able to share in the longing for the tasty edibles below. Plus, it reminds loved ones you think they're really sweet, really savory or just plain satisfying.


L to R: Chocolate Ice Cream, Vanilla Ice Cream, Tea, Coffee, Curry and Sushi

Ж-Men...but not the ones you might expect!
This week LJ Russia launched Ж-Men, a new comedy series about superheroes, inspired by the LJ communities dedicated to superheros, comics and cartoons. The title's "Ж" comes from ЖЖ, the nickname for LiveJournal in Russia.

Ж-Men's script is written by a group of LJ enthusiasts who also happen to be television professionals. Who knew? Following the premiere, five more episodes will be broadcast over the next two weeks. We hope you find the series fresh and enjoyable.

This is, of course, an experiment for LiveJournal. As always, we'd love to hear what you think!

Today I stumbled on an article about making a better chocolate chip cookie which was linked from a blog entry about how to perhaps attain the same effect but in a shorter time. As the chocolate chip cookie is one of the greatest inventions of the modern world I was definitely intrigued. Reading the post at Ideas In Food however I was disappointed that the author didn't maintain a control sample during his experiment. There are so many variables in the baking of a chocolate chip cookie that it can be difficult to determine what changes had how much of an effect. Could vacuum sealing the cookie dough in a plastic bag have an effect on the cookie dough? Would it aid in the rate of hydration of the flour grains? The world must know!

I decided to use Science™ to find out.

I made up a batch of my favorite chocolate chip cookie dough. I split the batch into 3 more or less equal portions. One portion was placed into a glass bowl and covered with plastic cling wrap. The second portion was vacuum sealed in a plastic bag with a consumer grade vacuum sealer. The third portion was left in the mixing bowl, covered with plastic cling wrap (this is my control). All three portions were placed in the fridge.

Three hours later I removed the vacuum sealed and control portions. I portioned the cookies out using a #20 disher on identical room temperature half sheet pans lined with parchment. Each cookie was sprinkled with a small amount of course sea salt. I baked each pan for 13 minutes at 375º F. I allowed the cookies to cool for about 30-45 minutes.

Willing test subject 1 (crankygirlie) tried both cookies and found the control to taste better, but detected a definite texture difference in the two samples.

It should be noted that I have identified an potential difficulty in preventing test subject 1 from exhausting the supply of test cookies. Hopefully I will be able to prevent such a catastrophe before completion of the experiment.

Should we make it to Friday with sufficient supply in hand I intend to conduct blind taste tests with more willing test subjects. Applications are now being accepted.

i wonder if the traffic from all the mobileme and iphone-fu brought jive to its knees.

I saw that this was open sourced today:

http://code.google.com/p/stubl/

I followed our internal instructions for using it and now I have IPv6 on my desktop at work. Any good IPv6 sites to hit? (besides the Great Experiment, which isn't quite SWF)

blendtec's gimmicky marketing viral videos still work.

Originally posted on liz.vox.com

Hi,

I'm hoping someone might be able to shed some light on the problems I'm having with my latest website.

http://www.rightchoiceinsurance.co.uk/

The site went live today, and is rendering fine in IE6, IE7 and Firefox which are the three browsers that my company tests sites for. I informed the client who was happy with everything until he checked it on his 1280x800 resolution laptop. He has two weird errors which I just can't seem to understand.

The first is that the navigation bar randomly cuts off too early (screenshot here)

The second is that the rendering of the text on the home page in the "Price Guarantee" is rendering differently, so my absolutely positioned image is partially covering the word "insurance" (screenshot here)

Finally, he's also checked the site in the beta IE8 (which I've not even downloaded yet) and the top image isn't rendering in the correct position either (screenshot here)

If anyone has any ideas at all I'd be really greatful! I've literally run out of ideas on this one :(

Thanks :D

iPhone?

Help me choose!

not buy

buy

Comments?

Before you click, give us some idea of why you feel that way.

[Comments]

By way of the previous post, a thought of the day:

resoundingsalmon: Search Engine Optimization people are evil. They want to eat your fucking soul.

oic.

I would feel better about the latest turn in Twilight Princess if, when you listened in on the guards in Castle Town, they had a conversation like this one:

Bell: Dammit, I forgot my lunch sack again.
Frid: Ha, I hear that kid from Ordon will fetch any damn thing.
Bell: No shit? Tell him my lunch sack is vital to Hyrule’s security!

And then they laugh like Tom Nook.

i've been obsessively looking for a case for my new iPwn this weekend, and while i still haven't figured out what i want, i did find some sexiness (or craziness, depending) filling up my tabs in Safari.

Originally posted on liz.vox.com

• 09:49 Google Earth with 3D polarized glasses and huge LCD = f'ing awesome #

(posted using LoudTwitter)

Time for this to go around again! Here's opening line(s) from fifteen songs on my playlist. Person who guesses the most correct song titles and artists is allowed to be smug for a week. Google is cheating.

1. all day staring at the ceiling, making friends with shadows on my wall
2. baby life is like a ride on a freeway, dodging bullets while you're trying to find your way
3. once upon a time you dressed so fine, you threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
4. scanning the scene in the city tonight. we're looking for you to start up a fight
5. i will dedicate and sacrifice my everything for just a second's worth of how my story's ending
6. tom, get your plane right on time, i know your part'll go fine
7. i am thinking it's a sign that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images
8. freezin, rests his head on a pillow made of concrete, again
9. it was great when it all began, i was a regular frankie fan
10. words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup
11. you better work (covergirl), work it girl (give a twirl), do your thing on the runway
12. standing in line, marking time, waiting for the welfare dime
13. sometimes i feel like throwing my hands up in the air, i know i can count on you
14. i really can't stay ... i've got to go away ... this evening's has been so very nice
15. it's not easy having yourself a good time, greasing up those bets and bettors

• 01:03 Playing with twitterific on new iPhone software. Yay new shiny! #

(posted using LoudTwitter)