jedibuttercup | Entries tagged with rl: webbing

So, I only made it about half-way through the Snowflake Challenge this year before getting derailed. (Although I will at least finish answering comments!) Part of it's due to RL being exhausting thanks to family injuries and a massive current work project, but part of it is something extra and unexpected.

Tripod (the website hosting site) appears to be finally dying. I've had a site there since at least 2002, maybe even 2000, I think before it was owned by Lycos; the public-facing parts of my page hadn't been updated in years, but I still used it for things like image hosting all the time, and I kept a few things there (scraps of original fiction and poetry, for example) that had never been added to any other archive. But this month I got a weird email notice that the monthly credit card billing had failed, and that if it wasn't corrected within 16 days I'd lose my subscription features. This was the error referenced:

The error message is 'Batch Submitted No Results,Cleanup'.

Which ...has nothing to do with my actual credit card info, as far as I can tell. But I still tried to log in to check. Well, I'd noticed that my paid jedibuttercup domain name had been intermittently having issues forwarding to the underlying tripod web address before, but now it only gives "This site can't be reached" errors. Direct HTML links to my shellpatine tripod site still connect, but when I try to access the admin side of the site at all (to check the aforementioned financial info, or see what files actually are saved there that are not linked on the public webpages such as the photos), all I get are 500 errors that claim "There has been an error with one of our scripts".

It doesn't seem like Lycos is answering support requests, either. I think it's going the way of the dodo.

And then, of course, there are recent developments with LJ going full Russian... and there are a lot of old Dreamwidth posts here that were scraped over when I first transferred that still contain a lot of internal LJ links, photos hosted there, and so on. (I can't see those at work at all; our IT company now filters LJ out entirely for, well, being Russian). I'd like to go ahead and completely purge my old LJ, but I am a little wary of doing that until I've checked all those links (especially photos &etc.).

So, two birds, one fix, although more urgent for one reason than the other. I've started opening every post on my Dreamwidth in the evenings, beginning with the oldest, and have been working my way back through them fixing or eliminating LJ links; grabbing any link that went to my private site, modifying it to use the tripod address, and seeing if it linked to something I want to save; and so on. It's ... a lot. I've still got several years' worth to go through.

It's not all terrible, though. I get to look at all my old photos from when I posted them regularly, and I've found some of that original work, now being rehomed on AO3 under the college pseud behind the name of the failing site: shellpatine. :)

I checked back on the content import page this morning, and discovered that tags/icon/profile had finally made it through after three days in the verification queue, but the entries had failed? The queue had been cleared out, though, so I quickly tried again, and voilà!

tthdrabbles is up!

I'll have to think about when running something would be possible - at this point it might have to be September, given other immediate RL commitments, and the fact that August is already Buffy crossover month. We'll see! I'll try to figure out a poll later on in the summer.

As far as other comms go, I already imported my old personal fic subcommunities years ago when I did my main journal; some of the internal links still need to be updated, but their indexes are all fixed now:

lessermensaga,

backagainharry, and

bookslegacy. I've scoured my pinned fic indexes on my main journal as well to remove any LJ links. That just leaves stargate_xing, I think - but that was more a crossposting platform for Stargate crossovers, not a challenge comm like TtH Drabbles? And no-one's touched it in ages. I might leave that one there.

In less ficcy news, the second vet appointment for my kitten is tomorrow: Parker is now four months old, and has just this week finally found her voice. She used to give a tiny Mew! when I put wet food out for her, but seldom at any other time. She seems to have finally realized that I'll respond when she does it, though, so she now complains when she knocks toys under the furniture, which is fun. I now need to buy a yardstick, as I had not realized how many balls and clothespins and other items she's batted under the stove and refrigerator!

In light of, well, everything. I haven't deleted my LJ yet, but I'm not checking it or crossposting anymore, and I'm very slowly going down through my fic posts to update both internal links and the pinned indexes to use all-DW or AO3 links instead of LJ ones. I have 1207 posts tagged for fic, though, and it has not been all that long (comparatively) since I started using DW as my primary, so this is a shit ton of work. Rewarding, though. I keep finding gems I'd forgotten I'd written and/or had wanted to continue and lost track of.

(Relatedly, I really, really need to get around to that SG-1 rewatch. After I get through Sleepy Hollow again for this year's

het_bigbang, I swear.)

In other news: I was recently reminded of the existence of a couple of comms I used to own on LJ? I put tthdrabbles in the DW import queue last night to test it, but apparently it's super hit or miss whether those eventually go through these days. At this point, it's been waiting for 17 hours, and I'm 27th of *checks* currently 31 in the verification queue. We'll see what happens. If it does go, maybe I'll hold a nostalgia round this summer. I might, actually, finally have the time and spoons available to do so again. But I suppose I'd better find the last lingering requests on my old prompt lists and get through those first. :)

First, just to get it out of the way: I'm going to keep crossposting to LJ for awhile, despite the annoying new TOS, but I did go ahead and set my journal for Adult warnings and un-check the 'participate in rankings' box so as to avoid the most blatant of the new potential issues. Mostly, I'm amused that they did this the very day before my pre-paid account was to expire, and added six months to the time I can expect to avoid seeing ads there.

Nonetheless, if you're reading this from LJ, and have a DW, and I'm not already friends with you there, let me know, would you? Would probably be prudent to consolidate my 'circle'.

Anyway, with that out of the way: two more things that've really bothered me as I continue to reread HBP. First: how the hell can anyone reread the scene with Dumbledore 'asking' Harry to get Slughorn's memory and not realize he's the very definition of a manipulative son-of-a-bitch? Good intentioned, I usually grant; but still. That is not something you do to an impressionable teenager that you don't view as a means to an end more than a human being who deserves to chart his own fully informed course in life.

And secondly... regarding the Felix Felicis. And I quote: "I dunno... I was sort of saving it..." // "...vague and unformulated plans that involved Ginny splitting up with Dean..." WTF, Harry? Is this or is this not the child who just lost his godfather in a life-or-death battle that a little Lucky potion might have potentially helped with? I'd have been saving that stuff too, good job there, but for the potential next fight of my life with my nemesis, not for romantic daydreams! If you ask me, that's a far more persuasive argument for the Weasley-potioning-theorists than most of the ones that actually show up in fic! *sigh*

Crossposts: http://jedibuttercup.livejournal.com/599032.html

I'm not going to close my Livejournal just yet. I've been here since the mid oughts, I've connected with people and discovered fandom here, almost all of my online history is here, and I'm the nesting type; I don't want to leave.

However, given the latest wave of user migration and the news about the site's servers moving, I've decided it would only be prudent to finally import everything wholesale to Dreamwidth, work out how that dual-posting system functions, and stop giving LJ extra money.

So. IF YOU ARE ON DW, please drop me a line with your Dreamwidth name, or connect to me there, if we aren't connected over there already. I'm

jedibuttercup over there; currently all that journal has are my fic indexes and a few copies of my longer stories that never did fit in an LJ post; but hopefully I'll have everything else mirrored over there soon.

My three fic communities are already mirrored: lesser_men_saga is now up at

lessermensaga; watching_river is now up at

bookslegacy; and last but not least, backagainharry has been mirrored at

backagainharry.

*hugs you all*

(ETA on Dreamwidth: WOOT, the import finished!)

I know I've not been posting much this month, but I promise I'm writing! Just on longer stuff that isn't ready to go up for awhile. Once I have the first bangfic ready for draft (this week should do it) I'll get some littler things out (and work on BAH).

In the meanwhile, I've also finally (finally!) been touching up my old website, jedibuttercup.com. So far I've been ignoring the "useful links" section to update the fiction archive section, seeing as I've written more than a million words since the last time I updated the thing, back in the summer of '09. If you're curious, here's the fiction index page; the red checks are sections where I've finished touching up the old works that are up (adding the links to AO3 for each story, putting in a CSS link instead of instacoding every detail, nixing the old dead counter code in favor of Google Analytics, that sort of thing - ugh, it's exhausting) and adding all the new fics.

The short story sections (1,000 - 10,000 words) are taking the longest to update - there's been a lot of them. I think I've gotten things divided out fairly well as to what the categories should be, at least. And I think when I'm all done I'll have to do a massive by-title-and-fandom overall index for people to find things if they don't know where to look (because a lot of old fic links probably got broken in my reorganization). Some other day I'll retool the whole thing to be more stylish and a percentage of screen width rather than the current limited size, but, baby steps.

One other thing I've been doing is creating title art for some of the stories/series/etc. :) See below! Commentary welcome.

( Cut for ten pieces of title art! )

So, it turns out I can't see anything from Tumblr on my work computers; pictures hosted there show up as little x's, and an attempt to visit the site directly brings up the message, "This site has been blocked by the network administrator. Block reason: Forbidden Category 'Adult/Mature Content'".

... Yeah, so I won't be following fandom that-a-way. Though it's kind of hilarious that the filter catches on Tumblr, considering some of the things it does allow, really.

In other news! I received a lovely story in the xover_exchange: a little vision of the start at the end by angeldylan628: PG, Fringe/Grimm, Olivia Dunham/Nick Burkhardt. Not a combo I'd have ever expected, but it is utterly faboo. Well done setup and characterizations. If you know the fandoms, give it a chance!

Also: is anyone else out there going to Portland Comic-Con? Totally got my weekend tickets already. *bouncing*

I posted the following over on the TtH webforums, too, but I think I may get more response here on LJ.

( I'm thinking about starting a crossover edition of Last Fan Fiction Writer Standing, but... )

What do you think? I'd set it up as a Buffy-centric crossover competition first, if I get enough interest, as that's where I've seen the most fans so far; if that goes over well, I'd be open to running a Stargate-centric crossover one as well, or other fandoms according to demand.

Comments, please.

I'm hoping that no-one will terribly mind me putting up the week's crossover newsletter tomorrow night instead of tonight, considering that I put up the six weeks' Post of Insane Proportions just last Wednesday. I spent today doing necessary, also-long-neglected things like laundry and updating the ficdex on my website and catching up on my writing instead, and kind of lost track of time. =)

But enough rambling! As I've finally finished off the prompts my lovely f-list gave me for last year's Drabble Meme, I'm going to run another:

The first 10 people to comment on this post get to request a drabble from you. Post all fandoms you're willing to write for.

Comment on this post, and I'll comment back with the link to the drabble as soon as I get it done. Just give me a fandom (or two fandoms, if you want a crossover), a name or pairing, and a one or two word prompt. Use your imaginations!

Fandoms I'm willing to write (or cross) for this challenge include: B:tVS, A:tS, Firefly/Serenity, Harry Potter, Jane Austen, Star Trek (TOS or TNG), Stargate: SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, CSI, Pitch Black, Boondock Saints, Dracula 2000, Equilibrium, Jurassic Park, Independence Day, The Mummy... and, er, anything else I'm known to write. =)

ETA: That's all 10 prompts filled! Man, some of these are going to be challenging to write...

First of all: major *hugs* to spk1121 for giving me his leftover 98 days of paid livejournal time. Next weekend, I'm going to spend some time playing with icons and styles. *huge grin*

And secondly: The stargate crossover livejournal I've been talking about is now open. Construction isn't quite finished, so any commentary you have on layout or the rules I posted on the info page is welcome.

stargate_xing is the best name I could come up with; please don't laugh. =)

... And now, I'm off to bed. *yawns* Blessings, all.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: "Rich Girl" - Gwen Stefani

You know, you can find the weirdest things when you put your own name into a Google search field.

Like this article. I found it a couple of months ago, and my jaw was on the floor for days. I got mentioned in a newspaper! By pseudonym! For a parody of a Robert Frost poem I wrote in Lit class years ago! *boggle*

Today I found, to my surprise, that someone's been archiving my story "The Five Stages of Grief" at at Wes/Fred archive called A Whole New World since I started posting it on FF.net back in May. Whoa. I am completely pleased by the fact that someone likes my characterization enough to snag the story for their archive, but I really wish they'd emailed me first to let me know. I would have told them, "I'd love that, but please wait, as I'm not entirely happy with it yet." Hm. I hope they got my email today; I'll gladly zip over the text files of the "authoritative version" I've been posting here if they need me to.

Speaking of. *cracking knuckles* Better get back to work on polishing off Chapter Five. *sigh* I can't believe I actually thought, when I started this fic-writing thing two years ago, that I knew what being a writer is all about; I learn new things all the time, and I'm pretty sure this is my best work yet. I'm almost reluctant to actually release it onto the 'Net, because it will mean it is finally done, and not my baby anymore. Don't worry, though. I'm not that evil!

Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: Audio Adrenaline - Good People