matgb | Entries tagged with lj friends

So, uninstalling all my internet drivers, installing a completely new USB dongle, finding out that didn't work, unistalling it, rebooting the machine, reinstalling the dongle I was using before and rebooting the router, and Ive been online for three hours no problem So, I've backread the 'people' filter. You know,t eh quiet one, with people that don't post much and similar. ?skip=80. So, um, yeah, comments? Not happening.

Congrats to

ms_ntropy, commiserations to those that need it, hugs to the people a bit depressed, and then a "go read this" to one of the funnier posts I've read recently.

Oh, yeah, there's been news. I have no clue, not had time to read. Have been watching lots of Blake's 7 though. Here's hoping that posting this doesn't jinx the whole thing.

shrublette is attacking me with Mr Chompy. I blame

innerbrat, damned silly dinosaurs.

Ah, it appears he prefers chocolate to humans, I'll buy him off with a chunk.

Happy birthday

greyarea, and many thanks for the link. Guardian: The swing against Cameron:

David Cameron is now Britain's least popular party leader, liked less than Gordon Brown or Sir Menzies Campbell

Not exactly unexpected, but nice to see Teh Graun witha fairly balanced article for once. Number of minutes this will last.

Yes, I know it's just a poll, but it's still a nice start to the day. Anyway, gotta go, auditorium beckons...

Worst conference pass picture of the day goes to

sammymorse: we got the picture from the official profile on the website—congrats on the new job my friend, hope it doesn't stop you posting.

Most egregious thief of crisps from my packet—Jeremy John Durham Ashdown, Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon.

Not quite got the 'ate my hamster' ring, but still, Paddy Ashdown stole my crisps...

Some random stuff. Point one.
Hawking hath kids book? Written by him and his daughter? How cool is that?

Point two. Hopefully, if del.icio.us and LJ talk to each other, tonight at some point will be a linkspam post, because I'm regularly working at different PCs, my old way of storing links and posting them when I had time isn't working, so instead I'll just tag em on delicious and in theory they auto post here--it works for others, we shall see. There's a dedicated feed,

matgb_links_fd if you want them direct, and the crosspost is now three hours late...

Point four.

Happy Birthday foxfirefey!

Point five. Question--how many times d'you think it's necessary to tell people where you live while making a point?
( Many many times it seems... )
I think that last is the best one though...

G'night all. Oh, tomorrow evening (Weds--tonight really), going to be in town, probably in the Wetherspoons next to Victoria at some point around 9.30ish if anyone wants to meet for a drink.

Right, I'm off home and then probably into Westminster, but before I go,

greyarea:

One of my biggest bugbears are people - generally fairly rational people in most ways - who bleat on about how the UK is going to shit, how it's not like it was in the old days, how there's no respect for anyone any more. Proof for this is normally that crime is shooting up; you can barely leave your house without some hoodie kicking your head in, and once you make it back from A&E you'll probably find your house burgled and your car missing. And a big shit in the middle of the carpet.

There's huge disagreement on how to handle this massive rise, of course, but the fact that there is a rise is almost universally agreed on.

Except - well, crime isn't actually going up. Overall, crime has been dropping for over a decade. Chances of being burgled are through the floor, as is vehicle crime.

It comes complete with links, sources and explanations of the falling crime numbers, well worth a good read.

OK,

snapesbabe proposed to me by dropping a fairly big hint in an email and then saying yes when I rang and said are you asking me to marry you? This guy? Might just possibly have planned it a little bit too much. Incredibly well done though;

metro_weird has the full story or alternately you could just watch the YouTube.

Hmm, on a different note, worth observing. When we met in February, we had two mutual friends on LJ (

ginasketch and

freddiefraggles. Now, through us meeting each others friends and simply talking about each other and to each others friends, we have 60 mutual friends. Since we announced the engagement just under two weeks ago, I've been added by 13 more people (which is quite scary). As I've always tried to keep the total accounts I read (including feeds and communities) below 500, in order to keep up with actual, RL friends and friends of friends, I've removed a chunk of feeds and some actual LJs; I believe most of these to be dormant, but others are simply people I've not really connected with or even heard from much recently. I still have too many accounts friended, but I don't read the blog feeds and similar on my default--for those wondering, every LJ account I've got on my list is on my default, and is also on one of my three main filters, but only those people I've met in person are on my "always going to backread unles impossible" filter; also, all my viewing filters are public and linked from my sidebar. Some people set great store by these things, so just thought I'd say.

Oh--I haven't added back a few accounts that I believe to be spammers or serial adders, if that's not the case? Well, my userinfo does say to say hello. I'm still busy with various things, and not feeling 100%, my system is rebelling against me currently. Ah well. A few other posts to follow next few days about various projects (I hope).

Reposted here mostly for my reference, there's a referendum in October in Ontario on electoral reform (which those that know me will be aware is my big red button issue),

grrliz wrote a post explaining why she's not in favour, it's 8 well argued points, and on some of them (the failings of MMS as a bloody stupid system) I agree. But on others I strongly disagree, so I replied, I' reposting it here for my later reference:

( Bullet point rebuttal of a bullet point post )

Cut for the sanity of your friends page.

See, last night I posted twice, both fairly long posts that have attracted a lot of comments. First thing this morning, I posted an entry to

no_lj_ads which was a follow up. Again, it got a lot of comments.

( How the engagement seems to have happened )( and I got swamped in comments ) So, yeah, we're engaged. I've told my parents (they're very pleased) and my sister (who runs a wedding planning business as a hobby), she's, naturally, ecstatic. I've spoken to Jennie by phone a few times.

I've tried to backread everyone. I really have. But, um, it's not every day you get engaged is it? I've got a good excuse, right?

Um, yeah, some things just got put on hold again for a bit; I'll be off to Manchester Friday evening, then staying the week in Yorkshire (my boss insisted I work from home next week when I told him). So if I was supposed to be doing stuff, or something, um, yeah, I've probably forgotten; remind me later? In the meantime, in her post describing todays events, Jennie has also Simpsonised us. Um, yeah. Close enough I guess.

Oh, I've had a fair few more people add me today. Um, yeah, I'll look into adding people back, um, when I've got my head around stuff. Promise. At least people have said hi this time around.

OK, with all the fuss about the latest fandom controversy, many of those not involved in fandom at all (which, let's face it, is a huge chunk of LJ including me) might be wondering why it affects them and why it's more evidence towards the site dying off. Indeed,

publicansdecoy posted a poll yesterday and followed it up today with another point about what he likes about Livejournal as a platform and network. And I don't disagree with him on any of those points.
( Livejournal needs money )
( Money needs users, and they're off )
( Site usage is dropping, and has been for a long time ) In order for the site to continue to exist, the owners need to make money. They're failing in this. Now?

liz_marcs: The fat lady sure does sing,

brad is leaving SixApart, and

insomnia suggests that he don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. The site owner is bored and is leaving. To go work for Google it seems. Mark thinks it's because he's seen the writing on the wall, and we've been aware for some time he wasn't happy with the way things are.
( Long term, the LJ we know is doomed )

And that's why I'm preparing to both jump ship, and make it easy for everyone to follow. There are services that replicate LJ utility, there are ways of keeping up with blogs on many platforms in a manner that's as easy as your friends list. They just require a bit of know how. So, when I've got time (and work has hit me with a bit of extra stuff), I'll begin to write up what I'm specifically doing. Because it'll be easier to be prepared.

Because I love this place, I love the way it's networked and let me meet a lot of cool people. And I hate to see it dying. But it is dying, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. So I want to keep you guys even after it's dead.

ETA: Posted a follow up at

no_lj_ads, specifically linking to this post with a very well done set of graphs emphasising the points made above.

Did someone throw a bloggers gender awareness week thing and I missed the notification? Maybe I'm just noticing it a bit more, but discussions on objectification, stereotypes and dodgy attitudes seem to be everywhere I look at the moment.

andrewducker reposted The Rules yesterday and the comment thread at that link is worth reading. Following that, SB made a comment to my post and expanded on it at Steve' s about the sexism of the vid I posted yesterday. She's followed it up with two posts today, asking Ever Wish You Could Switch a Part of Your Personality Off? and then as a Follow-on from the previous post:

Men are biologically designed to look upon women's bodies as sexy = men are biologically designed to look on women as things, not people?

y/n?

The latter being in response to Steve's follow on post:

these days I find myself being offended at it for all the wrong reasons. Adverts for random things that feature bikini-clad Barbie dolls and “oooh!” music don’t make me think “I really wish they’d stop objectifying women, because it’s detrimental to women’s rights and society.” They make me think “I wish they’d stop being SO STUPID and assuming I am also very STUPID and why do they think a bored-looking model can make sink cleaner sexy anyway?”

And that, essentially, is as close to my take on it as I can manage to enunciate.( I'm aware that I'm priviledged )( and that some issues, even ones I care about, don't always cross my radar )( but we all look at things through prisms, mine is governance, not sexism )( The video yesterday was all about stereotypes, that's one of the reasons the comedy worked )( and the argument for gender equality has, essentially, been won, the pay gap has lessened in most like-for-like comparisons, etc. )( besides which, sometimes it's the men who face discrimination )( and this sucks, besides, outdated societal notions were bad for all of us )( and I like that these days I can be out-geeked by female friends )

I'm not deluding myself, I've not got on rose tinted goggles; I know that discrimination exists, that sexism exists, that we're Not There Yet.

But ultimately I'm an optimist. Things are getting better, people are treated better, women in the workplace are just accepted now, and attitudes that they don't belong there are, culturally, seen as unacceptable by the overwhelming majority of the people that I come into contact with.

But then, I mostly come into contact with young(ish) professional(ish) educated types. The so-called opinion formers. something which leads me to believe that things will continue to get better, that society will continue to improve. We've got to monitor, we've got to watch, we've got to be vigilant, to make sure it doesn't regress, but the world today has changed fromt eh world in which my mother left school at 14 to become a shop girl.

And that's a damn good thing.

OK, that was about three times longer than planned, and I rambled, and I need to tidy it up. Gah!

OK, the other part of the post becomes a separate post. Later. Possibly. And I was going to throw in more links to studies and stuff, but, y'know, Google is your friend. Or Yahoo if your name is Iain.

So, um, yeah. Did I mention that while I was oop North we went to see that Harry Potter film on the Bradford IMAX? No? Ah well. SB wrote her review so I thought I'd do a quick summary of good and bad bits before the link below:

( Mat's review of HP:OOTP )

There, that's a fairly good review I think. Anyway, for those that haven't seen it, don't want to see it, or simply fancy a giggle,

waka_laka has seen it, and gives a reasonable summary of the main points of plot:

During filming

Emma Watson: *reading the script* Do I FINALLY get a potentially funny line?!
Rupert Grint: Are you sure you can handle it? Can you handle the responsibility that comes with it? You don't want to let me do it?
Emma Watson: Oh RUPERTALD. I can of COURSE do this line expertly for I am EMMA WATSON and I am HERMIONE!
Rupert Grint: *shuffles off back to his ice cream van*

Back to the film -

Hermione: Allow me to introduce you to this female homosapien, Loony Lun- I mean, Luna Lovegood!
Audience: ...
Hermione: ...
Tumbleweed: *blows past*
Audience: Yeah that wasn't funny in the slightest.
Hermione: *turns away and looks embarrassed*
Everyone else in the world: *is embarrassed for her*
Luna: *says ANYTHING and saves the scene entirely*

Go read.

Oh yeah, loads of comments to my last entry, and I'm feeling groggy and not thinking straight, but people seem quite happy discussing it between themselves so, well, I promise to re-read when the Lemsip is working better.

I'd heard many, many good things about Avenue Q, many of them from people on LJ. Having now been to see it? Opinion of this noted cynic: 2 thumbs up! Seriously, it's sharp, well observed, it has puppet sex and much much silliness.

freddiefraggles had organised for us to go see it at the Noel Coward in the West End, and it was indeed great fun. I understand that it's currently on tour in the States as well; if you get a chance, go watch, definitely worth the effort. For those greater cynics who don't believe me, here's a clip I found on YouTube, dodgy recording of what appears to be a not-so-good production, but you still get the basic point:

Had been due to go on to Camden to enjoy a night out with

nearly_everyone, but unfortunately the minor cold I've been resisting all week had me in a semi-comatose heap in the pub, so

snapesbabe ~~suggested~~ordered me home for some Lemsip and sleep. Hope those of you that have gone on have fun, thx Miss Freddie for organising it, and, well, I'm going to collapse now; I've had a really good week for the most part.

Oh yeah, a belated Happy Birthday to

paulatpingu and an on-time one for

indiana_george

sammymorse has had his account suspended for no sane reason and could do with some help getting it back.

I've not even got a Wiki account, let alone admin priviledges, but I know a fair few reading this use the place a lot; I've met him a few times, and can definitely vouch that he is who he says. Suckpuppets are annoying, but this isn't the way to deal with it.

Earlier today, I said in passing:

Of course, my main problem with pastafarianism is the pirate obsession; everyone knows ninjas are better than pirates.

This, it appears, was a controversial statement. ( pirates are cool, ninjas are better, QED )So we come to the conclusion. Pirates are cool. Everyone knows pirates are cool. Well, unless you're in, for example, the Brazilian navy, and have to fight against the bastards every day, or your ship gets attacked by them and you get killed. Ninjas? Ninjas don't exist, they have never existed, they are a figment of your imagination, peasant superstitions, foolishness. That shadow you think you saw? Merely a curtain in the moonlight. Those shuriken taking out your guards? Don't be silly man, it didn't happen.

Completely incidental aside, before I turn in.

lokean has had an LJ for longer than me, reads his friends list a lot but rarely posts. I think he a) needs more LJ friends and b) should post more often. For those at

nadriel's birthday last weekend, he was the lunatic that kept buying me drinks (thanks for them BTW mate, much appreciated). So, well, you all know what to do, right?

dearset is back:

Greetings mortals!
After a lengthy, highly medicated absence, I have returned!
Kneel and worship at my serpent!

For many moons I have heard your calling - your pleading for guidance, your begging for advice, and your skull-numbingly insulting questions that are clearly intended only to waste my time!

More worshippers required. That is all.

Right then. First off, on Friday morning I'm travelling to Luton to fly to Muenster for the weekend. KoHIT beckons. Monday, I fly back, and go to

nadriel's place for the rest of the week (again). So that's a week in South London, but with a guy that's working full time. Ergo, I want a) stuff to do in the daytime and b) stuff to do when he's busy gaming and stuff. So...

London Calling

( Anyone about in London next week? )

Icons, LJ and games designers

( Livejournal: the small world )

Neverwhere

It's a free download at his site, Postmortem Studios. In fact, it's got a lot of background stuff as well, so non-gamers like

faeriecween and

jantshira may be interested regardless as, y'know, it's Neverwhere.

New Friends

( Must. Stop. Adding. People... )

Dreddcon: 6.5% proof!

( Anyone fancy some Oxford silliness? )

So, I've got a week and a bit off work, I'm off to see

nearly_everyone in Germany, then spending a week bumming around London and LJ has provided me much amusement thus far last few days. Also,

strictlytrue also went to Ottery, and has pictures. LJ's cool, most of the time. It's just a damn shame that it's dying.

Oh yeah, the

beau_bo_d_or_fd feed has started working again after the LJ crash, Rumsfeld has resigned and the Dems have retaken Congress. I'm off to try and work out what the swing was...

OK, firstly, I am not sober. Not drunk, but not sober. Second, the link in my last post was to here at

livejournal_uk, I used LJ Hook to insert the link and didn't check it as I was running out the door.

Third, Terry Pratchett is a god among men. Great public speaker, very funny, observant (as in, spotted and asked me the correct spelling for my name and was just generally cool), and, well, my credit card got used for a few more books. Not really an issue, it was birthday money, honest.

Fourth, I love LJ. As in, I love the community. Just over a year ago, I went to S-C with

nadriel. When there, I met two cool people. She who was to become

faeriecween and the lady known as

innerbrat. I've obviously got to know the former rather well, but I've actually met the latter three times in person total. Today was the third time. Yet we talked, got on, chatted, as if we knew each other and were old friends. Because of LJ. Because we've commented, helped each other out, advised, consoled, taken the piss, etc. I think this is a good thing. Tonight, also met

rowanberries, who seems slightly more insane. Not as nuts as some on my f-list, but still.

( LJ wittering )

Oh, the title? It's a reference to his next book. Which sounded very cool. And involved a joke with a clockwork vibrator. Seriously.

Oh yeah,

innerbrat?

liz_marcs here. Red Dwarf + Buffy. As discussed.

Meestor

mapp? A young lady from Plymouth has found something you could wave your mighty net-fu over, if'n you're interested...

(I gave her the Nightcap link already)

takhisis is sick. This I know. She linked to a story. On

verywrongslash. It was to do with cartoon characters I'd never heard of. Meh. I looked around.
[Poll #759002]

Two people on my friends list I suspect ought to start watching this one. Actually, I suspect more than 2 of you but still. Two people on my friends list are already members. You sick sick sick depraved people. What is it with women and slashfic? What's wrong with pretty pictures?

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Mat Bowles

September 2021

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Mat Bowles

Dreaming in Digital

Entries tagged with lj friends

Touches wood

Help, I'm being chomped!

It's just another poll, right? Still yay!

Two mad Irishmen—Paddy stole my crisps

The Keys to the Universe

Happy Birthday foxfirefey!

British crime stats: the numbers are falling, you know that, right?

My Early Muir Owl

Electoral reform in Canada

So, keeping busy then...

On sinking ships and LJ...

On objects, women and the quest for equality

So, that HP film then...

The internet is for porn!

Calling Wikipedians (esp admins)

Ninjas > Pirates - I have said it, thus it is true

Announcement: Egyption god runs advice column

Randomness and a bit of London Calling