hector_rashbaum

mark posting in

Hi all,

We are currently working around a problem with our static file serving -- i.e., JavaScript, CSS, and image files. I had to move these back to our main web frontend instead of using the fast static frontend.

The root cause is that our hosting provider, ServerBeach, reassigned the IP address we were using for static content. They assigned it to one fo the new machines they are building for us. Given the vagaries of networks, I can't unassign that IP easily on my end. I have to kill the machine and it's still in provisioning, so I don't have access to it yet.

In order to work around this problem, I've had to make two changes -- use the main Perlbal infrastructure and turn off an optimization we use -- this is going to cause things to load a little slower. I will be working this evening to resolve the problem in a more efficient way.

My apologies for the issue here. I don't know why they reassigned our IP address, but as soon as I figure out what happened, I will let you know.

Thanks for your patience.

jest posting in

shoes

I'm without regular internet at the moment, so I'm linking instead of working up my own post...

Shoes from a Lost Episode of Star Trek

fizzyblogic

I, er. Sorry about just disappearing again; I'm sure by now many of you are used to this, but I never do mean it to happen. Ah well — I had a ball of sad that I threw myself into a creative fugue to try and get over, and I did all right for a bit, but then the apathy mists descended again and it's all grey and blah and I was never going to get around to coming back online, so I ... forced myself to be social again. It only took me five days of constant poking, sigh. I may end up disappearing into a pile of ebooks so uh, if I disappear again, sorry, I am battling the brain weasels. :/

But okay THINGS HAPPENED while I was off staring into space and sleeping a lot (oh god it is so difficult to stay awake why do I have two chronic illnesses that make me sleep forever whyyyyyy) and one of those things is that I got into a new fandom. ( it is a film called Tigerland and I am going to talk about it )

I have a vid rec, Something True by

leanwellback, Bozz/Paxton, NSFW. These are the dudes who fall in love, the subtext is really really blatant, it's actually the first film I've seen with subtext this blatant where I haven't heard anyone who made it say the characters were together. This vid beautifully brings the subtext to text, and gah, it is SO GORGEOUS OMG ♥___♥

I also, er. I was in something of a creative fugue, like I said, and so I uh. Made some things. Before I link the Tigerland ones, have a couple of things I made before that film ate my entire face.

First there was Festivids! Vidders were revealed a few days ago, yay! I made Let It Go, Doctor Who (1996) and If You See Kate, Sugar Rush. Aliens and tiny lesbians, not bad this year. I wanted to do, like, five more vids but ran out of time. Oh well, I'll make them at some point, I'm sure.

I wrote Mark Our Height Against the Wall, Harry Potter fic, Ron/Hermione, Explicit. I got the urge to explore their relationship a bit, so this happened.

And I made Unconditional, Stuart: A Life Backwards vid, Stuart & Alexander's friendship. Warning for violence. I watched that film and thought of this song and pretty much immediately had to vid it. If you haven't seen the film or read the book, it's about a homeless man who's had a lot of shit happen to him, and done a lot of shit himself. It's ... harrowing. Beautiful, though, and I hope I've done that a bit of justice with this vid. I really love the friendship at the core of it all, so I wanted to vid it.

Okay now for the Tigerland things. I wrote, um, three fics. They're all in the same series: if it takes too long, Another Pale Moon, Tell Me Something New, all Bozz/Paxton, the first two are rated Explicit, the third Mature. I couldn't just not write fix-it fic, okay. I have more to write in this series at some point, and outside of that there may be soulbonding. Possibly daemons. Maybe somebody will be a rabbit. Who knows.

I also made, uh. Three vids in two days. I was just really inspired, okay? I HAVE SO MANY TIGERLAND FEELS. And I expressed basically all of them in the vids I made: A Sense of Identity, Bozz character study (♥ my new fictional boyfriend ♥); Chews You Up and Spits You Out, gen about how the Army breaks some of the characters (lots of violence in this); in the back of my skull, Bozz/Paxton (NSFW).

I am now so sleepy I COULD CRY so I will go fall on my face for ten hours or however long my body decides it needs. This is inconvenient, body, I have a

kink_bingo fic to work on (wherein Damon Salvatore bites Sirius Black and wackiness ensues) (kinky wackiness, of course) (by the way VAMPIRE DIARIES HOLY CRAP THAT SHOW IS SO GOOD AAAAAHHHHHH *FLAILS AT YOUR FACES*). In other news, my kitten is ridiculous, Kane Ricca came back on Got To Dance and James and I were rendered incoherent to the point of sobbing on the furniture with ALL OF THE FEELS, and Alex has become cuddly with me. These things are all delightful. How are your lives coming on? ♥

Current Mood: sleepy

ninetydegrees posting in

fandomcalendar

Link:

fandom_helps

Description: "This community is for the purposes of raising money for charitable causes. This go around we're supporting Planned Parenthood."

Sign-up date/deadline: Offers can be made until February 13. Bidding will take place between Feb 14 and Feb 21.

Due date: Six months after bidding top.

Questions and Answers Post

otw_news_feed

Posted by Claudia Rebaza

http://transformativeworks.org/links-roundup-8-february-2012

Here's a roundup of stories on fannish technologies in the news that might be of interest to fans:

The new site WorldCosplay is making an effort to connect cosplayers across the globe. "Though still in beta, the network already comes in an impressive 12 languages." WorldCosplay has some differences from existing sites. "There are already three big social network players in the cosplay community: the American based Cosplay.com, the Japanese Cure, and the general art site Deviant Art. Since the first two focus on their home countries and the third was never designed to be a cosplay community, Botea said WorldCosplay might have a chance to become the cosplayer’s social network of choice."
Apple's recent effort to promote textbook publishing for the iPad prompted this discussion of the need to simplify epublishing. "Ebooks have blown open that world of exclusivity — but the ease of use still isn’t there. There’s a long list of tools that try to make ebook creation easier, from big names (Apple’s Pages, Adobe’s InDesign) to smaller ones (Scrivener) to open source alternatives like calibre. But it’s still a complicated enough business that there’s a healthy ecosystem of companies offering ebook conversion services." Indeed the growing simplicity of online posting and content hosting sites helped fan fiction's distribution grow enormously, but few sites replicate the print book experience. "But if publishing is dirt simple...how would publishers (book, news, and otherwise) respond to an even greater flood of competing content than the ebook world has already produced?"
YouTube was also a milestone, not just in the distribution of video content, but in its revealing look at the diversity of fan-created visual works. However the site is moving away from the amateur creator. As YouTube increasingly promotes partnerships with professional producers "what will happen to the “little guy,” those who make content to share with people—not for profit?" Various critical reactions have sprung up. "“I don't want my TV to invade YouTube,” commented Porcelanesa on the promo video. “I came here because it was YOUtube, people talking to people and sharing their lives, videos of their kids, their pets, something exciting that happened during the day they wanted to share with someone else. Normal people, like you and me.”"

If you cosplay, write fan fiction, or create videos, why not contribute to Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Watch this post

http://transformativeworks.org/links-roundup-8-february-2012

facetofcathy posting in

dreamwidthlayouts

Title: Fluid Navstrip
Credit to: n/a
Base style: All
Type: Code Snippet
Best resolution: Display widths of 20em and up
Tested in: Firefox, Chrome, Opera
Features: Cells and contents of the navstrip table wrap as required by the user's display.

This is a code snippet that will work on any layout/style (barring any conflicts with other styles applied to the navstrip). The purpose is to make the navstrip wrap at larger font sizes or smaller screen widths rather than triggering a scrollbar as it does normally.

( Screencaps of the code in action under the cut )

The content of each cell in the navstrip table wraps as well, and you can get below a 20em display width without any scrollbars. There is padding added, a font size in ems, and a generous line-height. The result has a little more space around the log out button, which may help with accidental log outs for some users.

There is a 1px bit of visible body background colour at the right, left and bottom edges some of the time in all tested browsers, but I see that with my background image as well.

This code should work correctly in all browsers except IE7 and lower.

Padding, font-size and line-height can be customized at will.

( code under the cut )

lady_krysis posting in

chromatic_fanfic

In the Ache of Her Reply (1020 words) by

lady_krysis
Fandom: The Losers (2010)
Rating: Explicit
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Aisha/Cougar
Summary: Cougar returns home, and Aisha reminds him that he's Carlos, too.

sofiaviolet

Have talked to professor and workplace, and filled out Louisiana Historical Association annual meeting reg form - will mail tomorrow. Wheeeee! Now to stalk JetBlue's site for the best possible deal.

(And then this weekend is the Flea - totally different kind of gathering, lol. *has awesome roomies, needs to figure out when to get to the train station*)

ninetydegrees posting in

fandomcalendar

Link: http://inception.dreamwidth.org/31022.html

Description: "For the purposes of this fest, a rare ship is defined as anything other than Arthur/Eames. All threesomes/moresomes involving Inception characters are also welcome. "

No sign-ups required; no end date.

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Just to keep you all in the loop -- the servers have been really busy lately!

alierak, one of our sysadmins, has been working on things and found an issue with our load balancer. He fixed that, and that has resolved a number of issues people have had connecting to Dreamwidth during periods of peak load.

(For the technical, the issue was that our connection tracking table in the kernel was set to the default 64k, and we've started peaking past that. He raised the limits.)

We have also submitted an order for two more web servers. This will make things faster by just giving us more horsepower to work with. The rest of the system (databases, memcache, network, etc) isn't anywhere near capacity, but we're running low on CPU on our web servers.

We also have some of our developers working on optimizations for entries that have many comments. That work is in progress and we will continue to iterate to make things faster.

If you have any questions, let me know! I'll do my best to answer them quickly and accurately. :)

otw_news_feed

Posted by Claudia Rebaza

http://transformativeworks.org/links-roundup-6-february-2012

Here's a roundup of stories on fannish histories in the news that might be of interest to fans:

CNN's Geek Out blog hosted a post by Colette Bennett about how she became a J-Pop fangirl. "In 2008, a friend of mine mentioned that he enjoyed Japanese television dramas - known fondly as J-dramas to the fan community. I had no idea what the J-drama scene was about, but it wasn't long before I sat down to watch one. The opening scene was accompanied by a Japanese pop song from outrageously popular boy band Arashi. Within five minutes, I had two new realizations: I was madly in love with J-dramas, and I was madly in love with Arashi." The Korea Herald recently hosted a similar article by Elizabeth Gwee about her love of K-Pop fandom. "I don’t fit the stereotype of a K-pop fan. I like to think of myself as a mature, normal-functioning, happily married adult. I try not to brainwash my friends into liking it, unless they ask me about it. K-pop happens to be something that my husband, who introduced me to it, and I enjoy indulging in when we need an escape from mundane adult life."
Romance novel review site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books hosted a discussion about paranormal vs. contemporary romance fans that tried to define how each group participated in their fandom. "[T]he paranormal fans are more likely to click links, rate books, review books and spread the word about a series they love - and connect with other readers. That's not to say that the contemporary fanbase can't be built among readers; I think the limitation is that the contemporary world building is reality-based, and ultimately the connected activities are both based in the real world (knitting, cooking, etc.) and focused on real-world promotion instead of online."
Today in Comics History posted about the origins of comic book fandom, citing the practice of allowing fans to network among themselves as a turning point. "Now letters pages were not rare before the 1960s, and even letters pages with full addresses (name, street, city, state) were published in comic books back in the 1930s. And there were fans clubs, even if they were mostly company run. But something changed with comic book fans in the early 1960s. There were many factors, but one key was the older, activist fan like Jerry Bails, Roy Thomas, and Don & Maggie Thompson. They enjoyed comic books and wanted to tell others about it. And they had the life experience and knowledge to act on that desire."
Lastly, The Literary Omnivore had some book recommendations about fandoms highlighting "three works dealing with pre-Internet fans."

If you've read zines or are part of the comics, J-pop, K-Pop, or romance book fandoms, why not contribute to Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Watch this post

http://transformativeworks.org/links-roundup-6-february-2012

kikotei posting in

cross_stitch

Hi, I'm new to the group, figured I would give it a try.

I normally post weekly updates on my own journals and DA account, but I thought I would just do a quick/small info dump on some of my pieces.
( Read more... )

For more details on particular pieces and for more of my small goofy things you can check out my website, my DA, dreamwidth or livejournal.

littlemousling

So the below video is the most adorable porn trailer I have ever seen. PORN ACTORS FALL FOR EACH OTHER ON SET.

I generally don't really enjoy visual porn, and my guess is that I probably wouldn't much dig the actual movie this is advertising, but. The trailer is THE GREATEST THING I HAVE SEEN ALL DAY and that is saying something, because today has been a lovely day.

Every porn!AU you've ever read where the two guys meet and then completely dig each other? THIS IS THAT. BUT FOR REALS. (And it's telling that this video has almost 4K notes on their tumblr, compared to an average of about 10 notes for everything else they post.)

So, as found by

marina, and passed on to me by

roga:

(Or if you don't have an HTML5-friendly browser or for whatever reason the video isn't working, you can watch it here.)

If porn were actually like that, I would actually watch it. But since it isn't, LET'S TALK ABOUT HOW THIS COULD BE FIC. As

roga points out, it has basically no conflict. But it could do! How about: the adorable first-hardcore-shoot guy suddenly can't get it up for shooting with anyone else? Or they are navigating their offscreen sex life/kinks, which may not match up to their onscreen personas? Or ... what else do we think would be awesome? TALK TO ME ABOUT THESE GUYS, THEY ARE BASICALLY MY NEW FANDOM (for at least the next hour or two, I am fickle that way ;).

evilawyer posting in

fandomcalendar

Link: Valentine's Day Fest
Description: Low-pressure, low-key fest for Valentine's Day. Or thereabouts.
Sign Up Date/Deadline: No official signs.
Due Date: 'round about February 14, but flexible
Posting Date: Self-post around February 14 (flexible)

ratcreature posting in

fandomcalendar

Link:

xmenreversebang (Rules and Information, Sign ups: Artist | Author | Fic and Art Beta)

Description: a challenge where artists make art that author's then claim to write a story off. All based on X-Men.

Sign-up date/deadline: January 30th, 2012 - March 24th, 2012

Due date: art drafts due – March 26th, 2012, fics due – June 20th, 2012

Posting date: July 6th, 2012

ninetydegrees posting in

fandomcalendar

( What can I do in February? )

( What can I read in February? )

azurelunatic posting in

metaquotes

I noticed there was a discrepancy in membership vs. posting access, left over from a beta bug, so I went through and granted posting access where it wasn't. You should now all be able to post entries if you weren't able to before. Carry on!

azurelunatic posting in

metaquotes

runpunkrun has Feelings about the Regency romance genre's overused tropes:

You know what? I want to read a Regency romance about the second most notorious rake in London. He's pretty good at flirting, but that other guy is always swooping in and stealing away his conquests. It just drives him up the wall! So the second most notorious rake in London decides to do something about it. No matter what it takes, he will win the title of Most Notorious Rake in London. The current Most Notorious Rake in London thinks this sounds like good fun, as a little competition always makes things more interesting. They start showing up at all the same parties and watch each other keenly, studying the other's moves, getting into his head, exploiting his weaknesses, admiring his talents, enjoying the tightness of his breeches, going riding together, falling in love.

Context is reading a lot.

littlemousling

So! My life this spring is going to be very different from last year. At the moment, I'm not writing much, and I'm not feeling particularly inspired to write--most of my spare socio-intellectual energy is going (very happily, I promise!) into my new law firm.

I WANT to want to write a BBB. But I don't know if I can find the energy both to write a big idea and to come up with a big idea--and the latter has never been my strength anyway. Most of my best fic has come from other people's brilliance--check out the notes section of most of my big-idea fics and you'll see someone else credited with the plot idea.

If you have a big idea you don't want to write but do want to read: I am super, super open to suggestions right now. I welcome all comers! Brendon- or Spencer-centric ideas are more likely to ping me, but goodness knows I've written other characters and will again, so, you know, feel free.

OR, if you don't have/don't want to drop off an idea, tell me about your BBB plans! Are you writing? Recording? (I super super want to participate in Wave Two.) Art-ing? Mixing? Are you looking forward to this year's challenge? COME, TALK AT ME. <333

otw_news_feed

Posted by fcoppa

http://transformativeworks.org/vidders-and-other-fan-video-artists-we-need-you

Stand with EFF and OTW

Read more about the 2012 exemption proceedings here.

Watch this post

http://transformativeworks.org/vidders-and-other-fan-video-artists-we-need-you

Heaven in Hard Times

Reading

static file hiccup details

There have not been enough shoes yet in 2012...

there is too much! let me sum up

Multifandom: Offers and Bidding for Planned Parenthood

Links roundup for 8 February 2012

Code Snippet - Making the Navstrip fluid.

[Fic] In the Ache of Her Reply (The Losers, Aisha/Cougar)

(no subject)

Inception: Rare Ship Fest

capacity update

Links roundup for 6 February 2012

Hello!

♥______♥

Valentine Day Fest at doctor_and_master

X-Men: Reverse Bang

Recap: February Edition

Posting access

I'd read that.

BBB Ideas

Vidders and other Fan Video Artists - We Need You!