On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

I was at a loss for what to do last night since I have no exams this week, so I tried drawing again. And I realized that I really really suck and am nowhere near the level where I thought I was, much less where I want to be. I definitely want to start focusing on original art though and pick up oil painting again. And comics! I think I want to try finishing that old story I started a long time ago on Tegaki, but in a completely different style.

Gad! I wish I were a little better at drawing faces and bodies and colors and composition and EVERYTHING! :( But where's the time to draw when my only extracurricular currently is Craig? Sigh.

Anyways, since art was a failure, I wasted time and made a mixtapeeeee and by mixtape I really mean a mp3 mix tape CD mix mix.

https://www.yousendit.com/download/TzY3ZGVaY3lEbUtGa1E9PQ

Comment if you take it and let me know if you liked it! If so, I might make another mix (more wintry songs? dance mix?) even though I spent a while gathering these treasures and trying to figure out what order to put it in. Thematically, 'tis music for the winter, but not necessarily due to the title or subject; I lined then up together because something about the musical arrangement or tempo or voices just make me think of tinkly chilly winter time.

Playlist:
Grizzly Bear - Easier
The Dodos - Horny Hippies
YellowFever - Cats and Rats
Sufjan Stevens - Bushwick Bunkie
Tapes 'n Tapes - George Michael
Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks
The Walkmen - We've Been Had
Fredrik - Na Na Ni
Bat for Lashes - What's a Girl to Do?
The Antlers - Kettering
Warpaint - Billie Holiday
Sufjan Stevens - Wolverine
Fleet Foxes - Winter White Hymnal
Run Toto Run - Sleepyhead (Passion Pit cover)

extra: Sea of Bees - When Gnomes Applaud

Songs that didn't make the cut because either I didn't know how to put it into the lineup or I couldn't find a download for them. Still worth checking out:
Sholi - Any Other God ( http://www.myspace.com/sholimusic )
Sea of Bees - Gnomes ( http://www.myspace.com/seaofbees ) ; I included an mp3 of this in the mix, but it's not the version I wanted. listen to the album version online!
The Cave Singers - Dancing on Our Graves ( http://www.myspace.com/thecavesingers )
Fleet Foxes - the entire album lol
Sia - Soon We'll Be Found


/edit
Oh oh! The DRAW ME, MEME? :DDDDDDDDD it would make me happy if you could, BUT ONLY IF YOU'D LIKE TO I GUESS HAHA !! :D <333 Link me to yours if you've got one, so I can try my hand at you! :D

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... )

Did anyone actually like Where the Wild Things Are? As much as I wanted to love it, I was kinda bored by it. I did like the set and props very very much though.






My brother went as Max this year. The Audrey Hepburn he is screaming "FEED ME, WOMAN" to is his girlfriend lol and I'm going to guess that the half naked guy in the first picture is supposed to be Michael Phelps.

Speaking of kiddie book movies, here are some fun Alice videos. I didn't read the book(s) until recently, but I don't think I've ever actually seen this Disney movie? Hmm.



(Put that 1st Youtube video into http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/ @ 160x160 pixels for extra trippiness)



Last year me and my friends went as the whole Alice posse (I was the White Rabbit); I'd like to do something like that again. Group costuming is so much! I feel like I would enjoy cosplay except that cosplay tends to be so much more detail oriented than Halloween costuming. And lolita too, heh. I secretly want to wear those frilly dresses.

Dia de los Muertos is celebrated on November 2nd, not the 1st. November 1st is Dia de los Inocentes or Dia de los Santos Angelitos.

If you insist on appropriating my culture by "celebrating" this holiday (which apparently consists totally of "cute" candy skulls), the least you can do is make an effort to get the date right.

My Halloween was pretty average but whatever.

Mercedes est mon nom et l'assassinat est mon jeu. Et le garcon, il est Phillipe de Marseilles et ensemble nous ordonnons la mer. To be more convincing of my killer nature, I hid a spoon in my loaf of bread; I originally had a knife in there but many people advised otherwise, haha.

The 50s vintage sailor dress came down to my ankles and rehemmed it to a bubble skirt. I really want to wear that dress during a regular day, but I wonder if that would cross the boundary between retro-inspired and ridiculous costume-y?

Hmm. Livejournal is always so appealing when I have exams in the morning. Ugh!

( HAPPY HALLOWEEN! :) )

Happy Halloween everyone!
I have to say this is my favourite celebration because it is so much fun...!

milk_bun came over and we dressed as guro twin school girls. The guro part was pretty weak since we couldn't find eyepatches in time, but it was fun anyway *A*)
I dyed my hair reddy brown~ I really like this much more!




( ☆ Photo dump~! ☆ )


I also drew this picture to celebrate~

Have a spooky Halloween everyone! º_º)/
What mischief did you get up to? ♥

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

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.