Friends

Well, here we are, the middle of November, and it feels like late August. I can't figure out this weather! Anyway, despite what the weather is making me think, we are heading towards the holiday season, and we are heading towards the end of 2009.

I know that 2009 is a year that many of us will not look back on with kindness, but I hope you all realize how special that makes the fact that we still were able to do so much as a group this year. You really are awesome.

Now, I do have a little goal that I'd like to toss out there just for fun. Right now our tally is at 2,429 items. Do you think we can hit 3,000 by the end of the year? It's a tall order, especially if you are doing a lot of crafting for the holidays, but let's see what we can do.

Have a great rest of the weekend! :)

Notes augmented

We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!

Product tweaks and bug kill

1. In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
2. If you sign up to get notifications of the Writer's Block question of the day, you'll now see the daily question in the email notification, so you'll have a little extra time to ponder before you post. You can subscribe to Writers Block notifications here
3. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
4. If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
5. If you don't edit the timestamp for an entry at all, the entry timestamp will indicate the time the entry was posted instead of the time the Update Journal page was loaded
6. Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)

New FCK fixes rich text editor!

1. We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
2. When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
3. RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
4. An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
5. The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers

LiveJournal Cares

We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.

In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.

Papered in postcards

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.

Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing 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 drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!

Photos of the week

We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.

You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!

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Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

hey everyone! i just wanted to post about a way to help keep people warm!

a girl at our church does a collection for hats, scarves, and mittens now through dec 31st to give to homeless kids and adults. i'd love to put this out there for anyone who might have time to make a hat or scarf or two, or mittens... she does so much for people that i'd love to surprise her with as many as i might be able to do, so i figured i'd put this out to you all as well. i know she'd be thrilled to have as many items as she can to give out.

if you're interested in helping, you could send the items directly to me..
Erin Walker
401 Lake Avenue
Pitman, NJ 08071

she collects them up until december 31st, but if by chance you want to make some after, she also is opening a clothing closet for needy people and i'm sure she could use them there as well, and that will be a year round thing. here is the website for that. http://www.angelsofgod.org/

EDIT@08:16 UTC/GMT. Wow. That was ugly. I expected it to go for 30 minutes and have maybe 1 minute of broken connectivity. Instead it lasted over 4 hours and we had 10 minutes of downtime directly related to the load balancer upgrades and then another 5-10 minutes of downtime when our primary Pingback database server crashed and the secondary couldn't take over; which could have been indirectly caused by the network upgrade missing a self-VIP.

Anyways, we're up, we're working, the load balancers are barely breaking a sweat right now and I need some food and a shot of whiskey. I don't even *like* whiskey!!

Thanks mhwest and dnewhall for helping out!

---

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.

sixwordstories
Whether you're in the mood for a creative challenge or you're short on time or attention span, this semi-addictive community is perfect for those who find flash fiction way long. Once you get the hang of it, you won't be able to stop. The prince turned into a frog. The girl ran home to mother. Tough to write. Easy to read. It's a double threesome of fun.

dailyfoodie
Delicious, ambitious, and occasionally nutritious dishes make for an eclectic, all-you-can-eat feast. Whether you're searching for recipes for your next dinner party or you're jonesing for a late-night brownie fix, your cravings are sure to be well sated. A warm and inclusive community that welcomes all orientations, from carnivores to vegans, from gourmands to junk-food junkies. Guaranteed bias-free, food-positive, and pan-epicurian.

Hey folks,

A friend of a friend of mine is collecting blankets here in my hometown for refugees -- drive will last till 11/29.

If you're interested, let me know!

Thanks :)

Also, Sandy has volunteered to create a blog that would just be an information source. We'd like to emphasize charities that you (our membership) is involved in. For example, Sandy's Bridge Project, Robyn's 100 hats work, Ninja's Preemie drive, etc. We're thinking email addresses so that folks can contact you for your address. If you want to create an email specifically for your charity so that you aren't publishing your personal email address, that's fine.

The blog that Sandy would create would be linked to all of our communities. This also might inspire some of you to create your own blogs for your drives like our friend Amy over at Warm Up Winchester!

feedback, again, welcome and desired! :)

Although there was not a lot of debate about having a "pet" charity for 2010, the arguments against it were extremely compelling. The best argument for having a single charity to concentrate on is Zort's point -- it gives you time to plan and work on things like outfits, etc.

The arguments against having a pet charity included the fact that a lot of people wouldn't feel able to concentrate so much just on one charity because there are so many great ones out there. Holding on to items to make one big donation might mean missing important deadlines.

I would like to try something new that I think might be the best of all of these opportunities. I'd like someone to create a single place where all of the information about charities we donate to could be found. They'll all be listed. They'll be linked to from all of our communities. I'm thinking maybe a separate blog, a single web page -- something easy but accessible. I thought that our Yahoo Groups page could help with this but I am not sure how many people go there -- and since you need to be a member it's not as accessible as I'd like.

I'm very open to suggestions as to what charities should go on this list and how this database could be made accessible to everyone. I'm also thinking that maybe some of the charities could incorporate their logos or links back to their website -- just thinking out loud here.

Please discuss! :)

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!
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aiyatheydidnt
The Chinese version of ONTD, AIYA is a dynamic international community that welcomes users who share a love of contemporary Chinese pop culture. Dedicated to celebrity gossip and entertainment news, you'll enjoy gorgeous photos and breaking stories featuring the glitterati of mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

wendylady2
Designed to rescue fashion victims everywhere, this Brit-based community reads like a rag-ezine. Published once or twice weekly, you'll view bizarre highlights of the global fashion scene through captivating photos and delightfully snarky editorial. Sit tight for a virtual fashion tour from the runways of New York to Milan to Paris and back home again to London in homage to the adage: you can't buy good taste.

soldiers_heart
A passionate community for veterans of all ages (mostly American), plus families, friends, and supporters. View poignant snapshots detailing life in combat and back on civilian soil in the form of original artwork, personal narratives, poetry, and photos. Be forewarned that members don't shy away from describing their disappointments, disabilities, and struggles.

First things first. It's hat hat shaky shaky time!

And our winner of the October contest is....Cienna2000!

Let me know what you would like to have sent to you! Congratulations!

In other news, today is the first day you can submit entries for what you would like our pet project to be in 2010. Entries accepted till 11/15. Around that time, I'll post all of the entries as a reminder. Votes will be sent to me in lieu of public polling.

Reminder again -- just because we're going to have a single pet project does not mean you have to donate to that organization at all or a ton. In fact, if someone wants to be in charge of picking causes for each month, that is fine. The single organization will just get all of our donations at once, around the holiday time :)

Speaking of monthly causes, November is all about boys! JezebelSF told me last year that the shelter that she donates our stuff to really needs boy stuff - -apparently crafters make girl stuff a lot more often. So November is the time to get away from those pinks and purples! If you don't have Jezebel's address, please message me.

I think that's everything! Let me know if you have any questions, concerns, etc. :)