Daily Tweet

• 12:24 another downside to the boob issue, no alcohol & no Wii playing :( TV is driving me nuts, can't wait 2 b able 2 excersise again. #
• 13:18 @DavidBlue i canflow with that idea ^_^, i used to be a projectionist, does that make me a minister? #
• 15:56 GAAAHHH itchy boob, its annoying, also got bad hiccups, so 2 painfull annoyances. so bored i watched new moon...don't judge me, it was crap #
• 21:42 @sakara75 impressive....you do have a face underneath it all =^_^= lol snow cat looks fab. #

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http://criggo.com/2010/01/07/healthy/

http://criggo.com/?p=4305

It's been a momentous 12 months here at LiveJournal. We crossed a capital T at Ten years young. And, like most precocious pubescents, we celebrated turning double digits by publishing our first book! Needless to say, we've experienced some major changes, both inside and out. Before we recap, we'd like to thank you for bearing with us as we've struggled through ungainly growth spurts, identity pangs, and, yes, the occasional blemish. We hope you'll continue to stand by us: We're gaining wisdom with maturity.

Stuff you liked

• Back in February, we placed a call for entries for our ten-year anniversary anthology in lj_turns10. In December (less than a year later!), we officially announced the publication of Live Journal: The First Decade. Featuring an inspired collection of writing, photographs, and artwork from the pages of LiveJournal history, the book has been selected by Blurb.com as a top staff pick! We are proud to have played host to so much talent over the years, and we thank our contributors for sharing their extraordinary work.
• We all love quirky surprises, but not when it comes to managing our account settings. This year we streamlined settings into one central account management area. No more pouring through FAQs to figure out how to control privacy settings, modify notifications, adjust mobile settings, or update contact information!
• Being users ourselves, we realize our own mothers couldn't find us on LiveJournal based on our usernames and userpics alone (*heaves heavy sigh of relief*). But since there are times when we actually want to be found, we created a search tool--Find Your Friends--to help locate people by email address (it's in the Friends drop-down menu).
• Spam counter-attack: The war against vicious malware and spambots reigns eternal, but we've been making serious inroads to ensure your online security. We've established new protocols, such as requiring email address validations. We've grown more savvy about ferreting out suspicious behavior. We've added features, like whitelisting, to help you protect your communities. Our valiant (i.e., overworked) spam avengers (a/k/a the LiveJournal ops team) are standing on red alert so you can sleep safely at night.
• After an intensive beta, we launched My Guests at the end of the year, which lets you see who's been hanging around your journal. A number of you have even discovered secret admirers (not all of whom are creepy)!
• Last, but by no means least, we want to thank our volunteers for providing invaluable support and feedback. Their Herculean efforts enable us to answer your questions more efficiently, identify spammers, reduce abuse, and deliver better features (through tireless testing). On behalf of the staff and the larger LiveJournal community, we are truly grateful for their diligence, intelligence, loyalty, and passion.

You got your fix

• We recently debugged a number of the oustanding issues with the rich text editor so your entries look great regardless of whether you know html. You can read more about text editors here.
• In response to user demand, we brought back international voice posting. For more info on voice posting, read here.
• At long last, we revived TxtLJ with Verizon. For more info on TxtLJ, check out the FAQ.

Paid features you enjoyed

• In December, we introduced My Stats, which provides detailed data on who's been viewing your entries as well as statistics on commenting, RSS requests, friending history, and more. Despite a few early glitches, the response has been extremely favorable.
• This year, we launched and improved Notes (i.e., the feature formerly known as Alias), which lets you add private comments on friends and commenters (it's in the Profile drop-down menu). This way you won't be caught red-faced when you strain to remember details about that wonderful LiveJournal friend who sent you a birthday vGift. For more info, read the FAQ.
• When we first announced View friends pages by date, we thought it would be a quiet, minor enhancement. The rave reaction floored us, which made us all very happy. We gave it a fine tuning in February of 2009, so it's even better!
• How embarrassing! It appears pingbacks have gone back to the shop for service. We’ll keep you posted. We didn't know just much you liked pingbacks until it went in for service. It's back and, judging by your irritation when it wasn't available, this is good news. FYI, pingbacks send instant notifications (via screened comments) whenever someone links to one of your entries on LiveJournal. For more info, read this entry in paidmembers or check out the FAQ.

Mixed reviews

• The search is still on. Some of you have reported getting more comprehensive results for keyword searches using the new Yandex search engine and like the ability to search within content categories (like entries or comments). Others have not been satisfied with the relevancy of search results. Please be patient. We're still tweaking this product.
• This past December, we wanted to try out a new holiday promotion. Given the crap economy, we decided to offer our Paid/Permanent users a stack of $10 coupons to send to Basic/Plus users for paid account upgrades. We hoped you would like it. And some of you did, but many were disappointed that we didn't offer Give More as well. We want to thank you so much for letting us know. Your input will help us plan better in the future. Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users can continue to send out coupons through January 15th. Coupons can be redeemed through January 31, 2010.
• We were pretty excited about Your Journal Your Money, which allows Paid/Permanent users to earn extra cash by displaying Google ads to Basic/Plus and logged out users. A number of you tried it. Some of you really like it. Others, not so much. (Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users who do not participate in this program will not view ads on journals. Participants will see ads on their own journal, but won't see them on other journals unless they specifically opt in.) For additional details, visit here.
• We relaunched m.livejournal.com, our mobile app. While it offers a nicer UI and enhanced functionality, some of you think we can do better on load times. Like most of us, it's a work in progress. You can customize your mobile settings here. For more info, please read the FAQ.

Missing Inaction

• We shudder to bring up the neon purple elephant squatting on our heads, but, yes, we didn't give you those a la carte userpics. We've been making radical improvements to our backend in order to support them. But no excuses. We know you want them. We cringe every time you mention them. We're sorry we dropped the ball on this, and we promise to do our best to get them to you in 2010.

Stumbling points

• Back in early August, we experienced outages related to a series of DDoS attacks. We are proud to report that we were down a total of one hour over the course of a few days. We thank our heroic ops guys for getting us up sooner and more consistently than any of our less fortunate social networking friends. We apologize for leaving you temporarily stranded.
• A couple of months back, we offered a free, unrestricted vGift, which induced a snowflake cookie avalanche. This resulted in backed up/delayed notifications, which, in turn, led us to reboot systems, rendering scrapbooks unavailable. It took a while to shovel free. Apologies for the inconvenience. We learned a valuable lesson that should keep us calamity-free in the future (fingers crossed while knocking on wood).
• That darn Best Buy ad. First off, we're sorry about the audio auto-play (we got it turned off as quickly as possible). While it's true that we'll continue to show this type of ad to accounts that normally see them (never to Paid/Permanent accounts), we'll make sure the sound defaults to off moving forward. We promise to do our very best to keep ads to a minimum on LiveJournal, while keeping a roof over Frank's head.

Full steam ahead!

As we plunge headfirst into the next decade, we want to take a moment to look back and thank all of our employees, both past and present, who have worked so hard to create our unique and magical universe. We couldn't have made it this far without you: Your contributions brighten our path everyday. We also want to extend our heartfelt appreciation to each and every one of you. Whether you've been around for ten days or ten years, your humor, intelligence, talent, and creativity are what makes this the most vibrant global community on the Internet (the best place on the Web, in our humble opinion). Here's hoping that 2010 will be the greatest year yet! We thank you for joining us as we embark upon another glorious decade of LiveJournal history!

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

I'm on the hunt for more comic conventions in the Midwest to check out this year.

I'm already going to C2E2 and Wizard World Chicago, as well as a few gaming cons (GenCon especially).

So, what shows am I missing? Which ones are worth checking out?

http://criggo.com/2010/01/07/huh-7/

http://criggo.com/?p=4302

http://www.progressiveruin.com/2010_01_03_archive.html#6683872007360659026

It's a brand new year, and a brand new bunch of items in the latest Previews catalog! Bust out your January 2010 edition, and follow me into...the future...as I take a look at the swell items coming soon to your local comic book store:

p. 26 - Free Comic Book Day 2010 Eco-Friendly Shopping Bags:


Perfect for hauling around your dead-tree funnybooks!

p. 64 - Capsule Assortments Marvel Figurines:


I'm okay with most of these, I suppose, but there's something hideously wrong with the Thor one in the upper left. I don't even know what's going on there. Say, Thor, the giant helmet isn't helping to hide your macrocephalic head, there.

p. 179 - Marvel Select Cyclops Action Figure:


"Now Mr. Summers, just apply these strawberry compresses for a half-hour every evening before bed, and those unsightly dark circles should begin to fade."

p. 192 - Twi-Lit #1:

"When the vampires on campus would rather bake in their weed than drink blood, life is pretty mellow. Well, except for the occasional scraps with the werewolves, but as long as they vacuum up afterward, the vamps are cool with it. What's worse is the furry fan down the hall who's convinced he's a werewolf, but isn't. If the vampires didn't need him to handle the UV lights for growing their stash (vaporized limbs are a real downer), they'd drain his blood like that...if they weren't out getting more snack cakes for the munchies."

Sounds like it hews more closely to traditional vampire legends than the actual Twilight novels.

Also, please note the lit cigarette "L" in the logo. Fantastic.

p. 196 - The Archie Wedding: Will You Marry Me? TPB:


It sorta looks like he's looking out at the readers and asking them to marry him. "I'm totally done with Veronica and what's-her-name, the blond one...I'm a'fixin' to marry you!"

p. 316 - Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter HC:


I think my favorite part is when Spike and Angel are competing for Abe's love.

p. 316 - The World of Warcraft Guide to Winning at Life SC:


"Step 1: Turn off the World of Warcraft game, go outside."

p. 326 - Marvel 70th Anniversary Trading Cards:


This is probably just me, but when I come across the art cards drawn by Joe Pekar (as I have just recently processing some of them for the eBay) a small part of my mind keeps telling me they're by Harvey Pekar, and just the very idea of Harvey Pekar sitting at his dinner table drawing sketch after sketch of Marvel characters amused me.

It doesn't take much to amuse me, sometimes, I know.

p. 330 - Dark Knight at Heart t-shirt:


"Ma'am...I'm sorry, but I'm afraid the Batman bat emblem is sticking directly into his aorta. We must operate immediately."

"Doctor, didn't you do this exact same joke last time?"

"Ma'am, please...leave this to the experts."

p. 331 - Undead Jay & Silent Bob t-shirt:


I see the Pop Culture Mixmaster has struck again, randomly slapping together two slightly past their sale date fads into one brand new exciting product!

p. 333- Star Wars Greedo Blueberry t-shirt:


On the other hand, speaking of "past the sale date," this Greedo shirt has a charming simplicity to it. I can't remember ever seeing just a plain ol' Greedo shirt before. At long last, the Greedo fan base is being catered to.

p. 342 - The Smurfs Quick-Stepping Smurf Figure:

"Get down and funky with the grooviest Smurf ever - Quick-Steppin' Smurf! He's down with the lingo, he's got all the moves, and he'll smurf up the dance floor like no other Smurf!"

Okay, first...whose grandpa wrote that solicitation copy? And second, I'm assuming there's a sound chip involved somewhere, which has me hoping there's an option to have the Smurf sing the "la la lalala la la lala" bit from the cartoons. A whole room of these singing that Smurf refrain could quite possibly be the creepiest thing ever.

p. 346 - Obama 8-inch Plush:




I don't know, man...just sayin'.

p. 346 - Sleepy Joe the Egg:


That's almost like the barest minimum you'd require to make a brand new copyrightable character. I actually kind of admire that. "And here's our other new character, 'Finger Line Drawn in Sand!'"

p. 348 - Barbie Bond Girl Dolls:


Finally, my overly-airbushed fashion magazine cover model dolls have arrived!

p. 349 - Twilight New Moon Jacob Doll:


I'm assuming that they're not even bothering to include a shirt with this doll.

p. 362 - Star Wars Jango Fett Scaled Helmet Replica:


Severed Jango Fett head not included.

p. 364 - World of Warcraft Wearable Tabards:


So close to World of Warcraft Snuggies. So close.

(Chainmail not included, by the way.)

p. 372 - Mickey Mouse & Minnie Mouse Be@rbrick Set:


Frankly, there's not enough Night of the Living Mickey merchandise out there.

p. 372 - Wolverine & The X-Men Wolverine 1/2-Scale Bust:


NOTE: Not a sex toy.

p. 380 - KISS Commemorative Knives:


Some of you may remember this story I told way back when about my inadvertent offending of a KISS fan. Here's how the story may have played out had KISS knives been available at the time:

...A customer brings up the newest issue of the "KISS" comic book and started talking to me about how great it is that there's all this new KISS stuff coming out. I replied, absolutely without any malice, that it was very interesting that a band that was once big and popular could fade away for several years then come back so strongly.

The customer then got very angry with me, shook his finger at me and proclaimed "KISS NEVER FADED AWAY! THEY WERE ALWAYS POPULAR!" (STAB STAB STAB)

p. 381 - Personality Pose Pooh Figurine:


I could have gone my whole life without seeing Winnie-the-Pooh in paisley underpants.

THESE UNDERPANTS

ARE FILLED WITH POOH
I mean, those are underpants, right? Otherwise Winnie-the-Pooh is smearing his nether regions with honey and oh God my childhood is ruined.

Also, they might have been more careful about hyphenating the word "figurines."



p. 385 - Giant Inflatable D20:


NOTE: Not a sex t...well, then again....

p. 391 - Cthulhu Dice:


I'm pretty sure this is exactly what H.P. Lovecraft hoped would result from his writings.

Marvel Previews p. 62 - Breaking into Comics the Marvel Way #1 & #2:


(Video not safe for work. Or maturity.)

Marvel Previews p. 108 - Avengers The Contest Premiere HC:


Oh, c'mon. I know there's other stuff in it, but if you're going to put out a hardcover edition of the Marvel Super-Hero Contest of Champions mini-series, an epic classic of incredibly dopey superhero comics, at least respect it enough to put the full name on the cover. I mean, honestly.

As I've already mentioned there's a good chance that I might not be able to afford to get to Bristol this year because of not actually being in work and earning for a few months before (and after actually) the con itself so not having any spare cash. Or non-spare cash even...

So, I realistically need to put together at least £300 to pay for hotel, travel and food and drink ideally by the end of March (February would be even better because the sooner I book a hotel room the better...). That's a fair bit of money, but I shall see what I can do. So once more the call goes out to anyone who would like me to commission something for them. I'm pretty quick and will turn my hand to drawing pretty much anything (although be warned that if you ask for something with lettering on that it's not my strongest point). As for prices. it sort of depends on how long it'll take as much as anything, but as a rough guide assume about twenty quid for a black and white A4 up to £75 to £100 for a colour A3 (although a full colour version of something like the Batman Villains piece would be much more than that simply because of the time that it takes to do). Postage would just be whatever it costs to post it whatever class you ask for to whichever country so could be anything from a very little to quite a bit.

Please spread the word to people that don't read this blog as well. I really don't want to miss Bristol (if I do it'll be the first one since 2000 that I've not been to) but I can't pretend that I'll scrape the money together some how and then put it all on the credit card so unless I raise the cash well in advance it's not going to happen. :(

If anyone is interested and wants to ask about prices or whatnot e-mail me on bevismusson@yahoo.co.uk 

yeah, so I just checked lj on my phone to see how that last post came out and well, that right there is one of the reasons why I don't really use livejournal anymore. the damn thing can't parse a simple fucking link. jesus.

I'm still neglecting this thing horribly, but I am actually blogging a
little bit here and there elsewhere on the internet. I wrote a few things
last year for Trouble With
Comics<http://comicbookgalaxy.com/troublewithcomics>,
the group blog of Comic Book Galaxy, but more recently I've been posting
stuff on my tumblr <http://davidwynne.tumblr.com/>. Rather than repost them
here in full like I've done in the past, I thought I'd chuck some links up
here instead.

Just A Thought <http://davidwynne.tumblr.com/post/272432737>

My To-Do List For 2010 <http://davidwynne.tumblr.com/post/289654054>

My Incredibly Narrow Focus Year In Review Part
1<http://davidwynne.tumblr.com/post/312721325>
My Incredibly Narrow Focus Year In Review Part
2<http://davidwynne.tumblr.com/post/317621579>

Fuck Off Snow - A Christmas Song<http://davidwynne.tumblr.com/post/320024585>

And there's another one that I'm waiting to publish itself (I post there via
email, something that's far, far easier to do at Tumblr than it is here,
hence why I'm using that rather than this). Enjoy.


*(Posted via email which is why this post probably looks like shit and why
i won't be surprised if the links are in fact all fucked up and useless,
because livejournal seems to be basically stuck in 2005)*

http://criggo.com/2010/01/06/they-should-do-more-than-apologize/

http://criggo.com/?p=4299

There's something very wrong about this.



No, I tell a lie. There's everything very wrong about this.

Daily Tweet

• 11:19 @DavidBlue I'd go with Q always, besides he could easily give you nifty flippers and a goatee ^_^ i love the Q man #
• 11:20 @mrmrsmith thats bliss to me #
• 11:25 K so had call from GP my 5pm has been moved 2 ASAP due 2 bad weather now & 2 cum, they don't want 2 b stuck there. suits me fine. #
• 14:06 @kerryannphilly where are you? didn't think Philly got snow ^_^ #
• 14:07 it's amazing what and who you think of when your alone kitsu
  ne76.livejournal.com/profile - feeling somewhat happy sad *sniffle* #
• 14:24 @NathanFillion just found a letter i wrote but never sent on how u made my life better just by meeting you, but you know the story already. #
• 15:10 @kerryannphilly i've been given the impression it is via TV ^_^ hope you njoy the snow as much as i do, hey have you got skype? #
• 15:11 @MissDizzy_x you'll get a lot of spam followers (not that you have to follow them) BUT you'll be able to link to your FB & LJ #
• 15:12 @burntcopper thats so geeky ^_^ love it #
• 16:01 so if 2+ women r happy & agree to have relations with u & each other its against the law, but it's acceptable to cheat & ruin personal lives #
• 16:18 it's times like this i'd want to go out walking in the woods for a good hour or more if i wasn't incapable due to my recovery, i just lov it #
• 16:21 o_0 i swear Bumblebee just drove past the house.....COOL #

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http://criggo.com/2010/01/06/damn-quantity-limits/

http://criggo.com/?p=4297

http://criggo.com/2010/01/06/diet-time/

http://criggo.com/?p=4293

http://www.progressiveruin.com/2010_01_03_archive.html#2135488840408033996

• The Variants, the web-only short comedy film series set at a comic shop, has a new installment up, and I suggest you give it a peek. ...It's funny, because it's true.
  
  
• Some cable channel or 'nother apparently decided that it had too many viewers, and thus is running the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film multiple times this week. And having caught it once or twice during those showings, I sort of realized something: I don't completely hate this film.
  
  Don't get me wrong -- it is a bad movie. But it's kind of fun, if you take it on its own entirely brainless, illogical, anachronistic terms. And if you can manage to forget, for a little while, that it was based on a comic that, at its worst, was still a million times better than any of this film's high points. Still, though, the Jekyll/Hyde business was nicely done, Dorian Gray made an interesting addition, and Captain Nemo looked good and imposing, if very shiny and blue.
  
  And yes, there are tons of problems with this movie and with dumbing-down of character concepts (Mina is a vampire woman? Oy.) and the fact the film both made Sean Connery retire and Alan Moore decide (I'm pretty sure) to no longer have a damned thing to do with any movies based on his work.
  
  But hell, I wasn't doing anything else, I'll watch it for free.
  
  
• Employee Aaron has pointed me in the direction of Swamp Thing shoes, custom-painted in tribute to our favorite muck-encrusted mockery of a man. I think they're pretty neat looking, and if you don't believe me, try this reader testimonial from that site's comment section:
  
  

  "MAN diZS iSHH iZS 2 H0T f0R TV! iM TRiPPiN RiTE N0W! WH0O0O!"

  
  Well said!
  
  
• So I was e-mailing some pals and for some reason Star Wars came up, as it tends to do every few weeks or so, and I happened to mention "hey, remember that aborted book series that would have tied Star Wars to Earth?" My pals said "er, no" so I showed them this Wookieepedia entry. I'm pretty sure I've discussed this before here on the site, where the idea was space colonists escape from Earth in the 25th century, get caught in a space/time riptide or some damned thing and end up a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
  
  Anyway, further Wookieepedia investigation revealed another attempt at connecting the Star Wars Universe to Earth, in this entry about the Star Wars galaxy, under "Behind the Scenes." I'll let you read it, but basically it involves E.T. The Extraterrestrial and just how far, far away said galaxy may actually be from our own.
  
  Eventually, I ended up on the R2-D2 page, where there's a mention of, well, not explicitly an Earth connection, but definitely a beloved bit of our world culture:
  
  

  "...There is a humorous scene in the Star Wars: Droids episode 'Tail of the Roon Comets' in which R2-D2 turns on a jukebox and begins to breakdance. This was likely intended by the writers as humor. However, some fans question the possibility of the moves R2-D2 performs in the episode. Nevertheless, the breakdance scene is assumed canonical until an official source confirms it is non-canon."

  
  There's an accompanying illustration of Artoo busting his droid moves here, but you haven't seen anything 'til you've seen the video. He moonwalks. MOONWALKING ASTROMECH IS GO.
  
  (Thanks to Adam Knave for telling me of the video's existence. ...That's who to blame, folks!)

http://feeds.penny-arcade.com/~r/pa-mainsite/~3/caz114PbWrE/

http://criggo.com/2010/01/05/are-these-dogs-or-people/

http://criggo.com/?p=4290

Daily Tweet

• 12:22 Boob update, Hospital called this morning and i'm going in Friday instead of next week to have the hole looked at, will know more after that #
• 13:18 twitpic.com/wrljv - simons cat #
• 14:13 Hate the constant interuptions of birds & planes on #bb, probs why i dont watch it. #
• 17:55 waiting for the snow #
• 21:37 @mrmrsmith if there is snow there why isn't it here? it only round the corner. #
• 21:39 Crappy new web cam doesn't want to work no matter how m
  any USB ports i plug it into *hurmph* light goes on for a few second then off again. #
• 22:09 found some pics i took pre-surgery and put them against the post surgery, MY GODS I WAS HUGE. #

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This is from a blog at the Jewish Chronicle, the blog in question being that of Miriam Shaviv:

Where antisemitic comment is not free
By Miriam Shaviv
January 5, 2010

Damian Thompson, Blogs Editor of the Daily Telegraph, has come up with a revolutionary plan to combat antisemitic trolls on his site, which - as far as I can tell - is perfectly serious:

One answer would be to approve all posts before they appear – but why should the rest of you have to put up with a delay just because a couple of nutters are so obsessed with Jews that they can’t join a supermarket checkout queue without scanning it for Zionist secret agents?

So here’s my plan.

For every anti-Semitic comment that appears on this blog, I will make a small donation to a Jewish charity.

Hope he's paid well...

But seriously, nice to see that at least one of our dailies actually cares enough to have a plan.

Well, it's... different.