PSA: Lime Muffins

If anyone is interested, this BBC recipe for lemon muffins works just as well, if not better, if you substitute all references to 'lemon' with the word 'lime'.

I've had 2, SB and Shrub are eating 2 each upstairs, and I'm tempted to go downstairs and get another one.

Dreaming in digital

So, I've mentioned previously the Dreamwidth project, taking a fork of the LJ code, going back to first principles, and building a really good blogging/feedreading/social media platform out of the nascent ideas that LJ had but never did well, right?

I've also, previously to that, talked about other alternative platforms, specifically trying to build a distributed platform with the social/privacy features of LJ but without the reliance on one centralised point of failure. The specific idea being to try to Reclaim the Web.

our sort of blogging

Well, I never did get that project going. Partially because, well, it was fairly reliant on a few other individuals. All of whom are involved in Dreamwidth. All of whom share the idea of a distributed social model for our sort of blogging, a way to write about whatever you like, keep in touch with friends, but be able to interact with others on other sites easily and effectively, and crucuailly allow them to interact with you.

Dreamwidth is doing all that.

The Friends Page is replaced

But more importantly, they've taken so many little annoyances or stupidities out of LJ and replaced them with something that makes sense. The Friends Page has gone, it's a Reading Page. If you add someone to your friends page, you subscribe to them. You might also want to Grant Access to your privacy enabled posts, or you might not. Essentially, find someone interesting, follow them for a bit, learn to trust them, you can grant them access. Meaning I can follow the execrable j_rentoul's outpourings but not let him read my private thoughts.

OpenID actually works!

OpenID is substantially improved. You can tie an OpenID to your DW account if you've got one, and you can use your OpenID to control any syndicated feeds from any sites you've got (so LJers can turn off comments to the Dreamwidth feed of their stuff if they want, which is good). Well, you'll be able to anyway, that's not quite working yet.

easiest backup I've ever done

Most importantly, the import feature isn't finished yet. It's still the easiest backup of everything I've ever done—all my stuff from LJ is over there, including my icons, filters, bio, etc.

So, even though I still hope to set up my own server running the code eventually, I'll wait until the code is in a proper release model to do it first. In the meantime, I'll be going there properly as soon as they've finished a few features.

I won't be leaving here

Most importantly, I'll be going there, but I won't be leaving here. They're building a cross poster, so when I write a post there, it'll turn up here. You'll be able to follow links there and comment there using your LJ ID without problems, and I'll still be reading everything here.

Basically, it looks damn cool. It's what LJ should already be, and they've not finished yet.

Interested? First person to click this can use my last invite code Gone to akicif. I'll likelyalmost certainly get more.