Reluctant journalist

[jere7my]

The combined weight of peer pressure finally convinced me to join LiveJournal; enough of my friends have journals that the benefits of the community outweigh my reluctance. Why reluctance? I'm not sure how this outlet will interact with my other textual modes of communication: SWAPA, the Chat list, personal email, and my professional writing. Having an instant outlet for any thought, and receiving instant commentary on it from my friends, is like a vending machine with a broken coin drawer. Will all the free candy prevent me from taking the time to bake key lime pies and caramel brownies?

Also, I've been on Usenet for twelve years, and any html-based discussion forum feels hopelessly clunky to me; I want proper threading. It doesn't really fit my brain, this completely linear mode of communication, with the long loading times and the tricksy filtering system. And I worry that I'm going to be inundated with email if I ever forget to check the "Don't email comments" box. So we'll see how it goes.

I initially tried to use the "foresty" color scheme, but for some reason it involves a lot of black text on a black background. Clever. I like the current scheme -- it fits the "shale" motif, being earthy and layered -- but while it looks lovely on Mozilla here at work, it has weird black voids in iCab at home. And, for some reason, when I look at my comments they revert to the standard blue/white/orange LiveJournal scheme. Odd.

I did discover that someone had already implemented the first suggestion I was going to make; the Mac LJ client Phoenix communicates with iTunes and automatically fills in the "music" field. That's pretty nifty. I won't be able to use it until I get my new iMac (and, therefore, OSX), but I'm pleased someone thought to do it.

(This is me publicly feeling my way around a new interface; don't mind it. Suggestions are welcome, of course.)

I feel I should introduce my friends to one another, but I don't know the protocols for using real names, so I won't. quixoticdancer is a friend of mine from Ann Arbor, who used to be a co-worker; echo_eriol is a wee Goth chick I met when she was part of the Rocky Horror cast here at the State Theater; everybody else I know from Swarthmore. (I suspect there's some way to link their names to their journals, but I'm not terribly html-savvy yet.) (Hmm...I think I've figured it out. 22:11 2/22/04)

Oh, the picture? That's Wiwaxia corrugata, one of the mysteriously unrelated fossils found in the Burgess Shale. It's not as cool as Anomalocaris, but it looks pretty badass for something that's basically a big limpet.

Comments

[franzeska]

1. You can set your comments view to various styles. I have mine set to the default style so that I won't have to wade through whatever hideous mess people made of their personalized journal. Check your settings.

2. I wish lj were better for discussion too, but it's not really a normal discussion forum. Some aspects of the format are actually very nice once you get used to them.

Re:

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Can you post a link to the comment-style editing option? I can't seem to find it; the only style options I'm given are "Recent Entries", "Calendar", "Friends", and "Day View", here (http://www.livejournal.com/modify.bml). Perhaps this is because I have a free account?

There also seems to be this weird S1/S2 option for styles, but I can't get that to work.

Re:

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Ah, here we go: "Paid and Permanent accounts using S2 can customize their journal comment pages to match their journal layout." I have a free account and I'm using S1, so it's not surprising that my comments pages use the default style. That seems sort of randomly vindictive, but perhaps there's some arcane programming reason.

Re:

[franzeska]

Ah. I too was looking and was baffled. I'd never noticed since I like the default style and hate seeing anything else. S1, as near as I can figure involves do-it-yourself CSS, while S2 has a cute interface... or something. Perhaps comment pages are harder to modify correctly.

On another note, be aware that I will only get comment notification mails on replies to comments I make, so I wouldn't have seen this if I hadn't checked back.

Names

[franzeska]

You, on the other hand, can get notification mails for any comment posted in response to one of your entries (assuming you turn on the e-mail comments feature).

As for names, I check the userinfo page first. If the person has listed their real name, then it's totally up for grabs. After that, I see if they use their name in their unlocked entries. If so, I feel ok using it in my own journal. If they never use it or use it only in locked entries... well, I suppose I'd ask them what they prefer.

[quixoticdancer.livejournal.com]

Hey, thanks for the introduction. I was just thinking of introducing you to the folks on my friends list, 'cause I think they'd really enjoy your posts. They're mostly Madstoners. So, yeah, I think I'll do that.