At the End of the Reel

It's been a momentous 12 months here at LiveJournal. We crossed a capital T at Ten years young. And, like most precocious pubescents, we celebrated turning double digits by publishing our first book! Needless to say, we've experienced some major changes, both inside and out. Before we recap, we'd like to thank you for bearing with us as we've struggled through ungainly growth spurts, identity pangs, and, yes, the occasional blemish. We hope you'll continue to stand by us: We're gaining wisdom with maturity.

Stuff you liked

• Back in February, we placed a call for entries for our ten-year anniversary anthology in lj_turns10. In December (less than a year later!), we officially announced the publication of Live Journal: The First Decade. Featuring an inspired collection of writing, photographs, and artwork from the pages of LiveJournal history, the book has been selected by Blurb.com as a top staff pick! We are proud to have played host to so much talent over the years, and we thank our contributors for sharing their extraordinary work.
• We all love quirky surprises, but not when it comes to managing our account settings. This year we streamlined settings into one central account management area. No more pouring through FAQs to figure out how to control privacy settings, modify notifications, adjust mobile settings, or update contact information!
• Being users ourselves, we realize our own mothers couldn't find us on LiveJournal based on our usernames and userpics alone (*heaves heavy sigh of relief*). But since there are times when we actually want to be found, we created a search tool--Find Your Friends--to help locate people by email address (it's in the Friends drop-down menu).
• Spam counter-attack: The war against viscious malware and spambots reigns eternal, but we've been making serious inroads to ensure your online security. We've established new protocols, such as requiring email address validations. We've grown more savvy about ferreting out suspicious behavior. We've added features, like whitelisting, to help you protect your communities. Our valiant (i.e., overworked) spam avengers (a/k/a the LiveJournal ops team) are standing on red alert so you can sleep safely at night.
• After an intensive beta, we launched My Guests at the end of the year, which lets you see who's been hanging around your journal. A number of you have even discovered secret admirers (not all of whom are creepy)!
• Last, but by no means least, we want to thank our volunteers for providing invaluable support and feedback. Their Herculean efforts enable us to answer your questions more efficiently, identify spammers, reduce abuse, and deliver better features (through tireless testing). On behalf of the staff and the larger LiveJournal community, we are truly grateful for their diligence, intelligence, loyalty, and passion.

You got your fix

• We recently debugged a number of the oustanding issues with the rich text editor so your entries look great regardless of whether you know html. You can read more about text editors here.
• In response to user demand, we brought back international voice posting. For more info on voice posting, read here.
• At long last, we revived TxtLJ with Verizon. For more info on TxtLJ, check out the FAQ.

Paid features you enjoyed

• In December, we introduced My Stats, which provides detailed data on who's been viewing your entries as well as statistics on commenting, RSS requests, friending history, and more. Despite a few early glitches, the response has been extremely favorable.
• This year, we launched and improved Notes (i.e., the feature formerly known as Alias), which lets you add private comments on friends and commenters (it's in the Profile drop-down menu). This way you won't be caught red-faced when you strain to remember details about that wonderful LiveJournal friend who sent you a birthday vGift. For more info, read the FAQ.
• When we first announced View friends pages by date, we thought it would be a quiet, minor enhancement. The rave reaction floored us, which made us all very happy. We gave it a fine tuning in February of 2009, so it's even better!
• We didn't know just much you liked pingbacks until it went in for service. It's back and, judging by your irritation when it wasn't available, this is good news. FYI, pingbacks send instant notifications (via screened comments) whenever someone links to one of your entries on LiveJournal. For more info, read this entry in paidmembers or check out the FAQ.

Mixed reviews

• The search is still on. Some of you have reported getting more comprehensive results for keyword searches using the new Yandex search engine and like the ability to search within content categories (like entries or comments). Others have not been satisfied with the relevancy of search results. Please be patient. We're still tweaking this product.
• This past December, we wanted to try out a new holiday promotion. Given the crap economy, we decided to offer our Paid/Permanent users a stack of $10 coupons to send to Basic/Plus users for paid account upgrades. We hoped you would like it. And some of you did, but many were disappointed that we didn't offer Give More as well. We want to thank you so much for letting us know. Your input will help us plan better in the future. Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users can continue to send out coupons through January 15th. Coupons can be redeemed through January 31, 2010.
• We were pretty excited about Your Journal Your Money, which allows Paid/Permanent users to earn extra cash by displaying Google ads to Basic/Plus and logged out users. A number of you tried it. Some of you really like it. Others, not so much. (Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users who do not participate in this program will not view ads on journals. Participants will see ads on their own journal, but won't see them on other journals unless they specifically opt in.) For additional details, visit here.
• We relaunched m.livejournal.com, our mobile app. While it offers a nicer UI and enhanced functionality, some of you think we can do better on load times. Like most of us, it's a work in progress. You can customize your mobile settings here. For more info, please read the FAQ.

Missing Inaction

• We shudder to bring up the neon purple elephant squatting on our heads, but, yes, we didn't give you those a la carte userpics. We've been making radical improvements to our backend in order to support them. But no excuses. We know you want them. We cringe every time you mention them. We're sorry we dropped the ball on this, and we promise to do our best to get them to you in 2010.

Stumbling points

• Back in early August, we experienced outages related to a series of DDoS attacks. We are proud to report that we were down a total of one hour over the course of a few days. We thank our heroic ops guys for getting us up sooner and more consistently than any of our less fortunate social networking friends. We apologize for leaving you temporarily stranded.
• A couple of months back, we offered a free, unrestricted vGift, which induced a snowflake cookie avalanche. This resulted in backed up/delayed notifications, which, in turn, led us to reboot systems, rendering scrapbooks unavailable. It took a while to shovel free. Apologies for the inconvenience. We learned a valuable lesson that should keep us calamity-free in the future (fingers crossed while knocking on wood).
• That darn Best Buy ad. First off, we're sorry about the audio auto-play (we got it turned off as quickly as possible). While it's true that we'll continue to show this type of ad to accounts that normally see them (never to Paid/Permanent accounts), we'll make sure the sound defaults to off moving forward. We promise to do our very best to keep ads to a minimum on LiveJournal, while keeping a roof over Frank's head.

Full steam ahead!

As we plunge headfirst into the next decade, we want to take a moment to look back and thank all of our employees, both past and present, who have worked so hard to create our unique and magical universe. We couldn't have made it this far without you: Your contributions brighten our path everyday. We also want to extend our heartfelt appreciation to each and every one of you. Whether you've been around for ten days or ten years, your humor, intelligence, talent, and creativity are what makes this the most vibrant global community on the Internet (the best place on the Web, in our humble opinion). Here's hoping that 2010 will be the greatest year yet! We thank you for joining us as we embark upon another glorious decade of LiveJournal history!

So I finally saw Avatar and well…at points I loved it and at other points I hated it…I will discuss further beneath this lovely cut

 
 

Down here…this cut here….you know you want to click it…

Or you don’t and I am just embarrassing myself

 

( Avatar(2009) )

So I finally got to see (500) days of Summer. And so I am reviewing now^_^

 

 

( (500) Days of Summer )

Just a quick list of the movies under the cut:

( Read more... )

Do you recognize any of these men? They're accused of gang-raping two women downtown on New Year's, so if they do, the police would like to hear from you. (This isn't strictly YorkU-related, but it's local and important to boost the signal, y'know?)

Read the reviews here

First sexual assault of 2010

Click here for York Bulletin

There are some things I haven't seen yet which I will probably like, The White Ribbon in particular, but as it stands this is my Top 25 list, roughly ranked with Summer Hours at or near number one.

Summer Hours
A Woman's Way (Strella)
Raging Sun, Raging Sky
Cherry Blossoms
Who's Afraid of the Wolf ( Read more... )

Most overrated would be The Hurt Locker, with A Single Man and Star Trek right up there and a nod toward Inglourious Basterds.

This is my complete list of the 2009 movies I've seen, broken up by whether and to which degree I liked them.

I have never seen this movie.

True story. I have heard that its WAY more fun to see in a theater, but since there arent any showing it anymore, should I just break down and add it to my Netflix, or keep waiting?

Does anybody know what was going on with that, today?
I was walking through around 4:20 or so, and the alarm was blaring, the screens inside Vari said there was a fire, and people should evacuate, but there was very little evacuation, and nobody was preventing us from walking through...What was up with that?

Here are the nominees from the Producer's Guild of America. These often reflect about 80% of the nominees (and have cracked 100% a few times, but that was with 5 nominees) for Oscar Best Picture. So to those who said to my predictions a month ago that STAR TREK had no chance of getting in.... nyahhh, nyahhh. ;-)  (I'm not saying it's a definite - in fact, I removed it from my predictions about a fortnight ago (but will now reconsider), but it has a very good chance - if it doesn't make it, it would be one of the two or three just outside the ten). Anyway, the nominees are:

AVATAR
Producers: James Cameron, Jon Landau

DISTRICT 9
Producers: Carolynne Cunningham, Peter Jackson

AN EDUCATION
Producers: Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey

THE HURT LOCKER
Producer(s): Awaiting final credit determination.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
Producer: Lawrence Bender

INVICTUS
Producers: Clint Eastwood, Rob Lorenz, Lori McCreary , Mace Neufeld

PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE
Producers: Lee Daniels, Gary Magness, Sarah Siegel-Magness

STAR TREK
Producers: J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof

UP
Producer: Jonas Rivera

UP IN THE AIR
Producer(s): Awaiting final credit determination.

Watched:

 

My Flesh And Blood (recorded off TV): Absolutely moving documentary about a foster mother who takes care of 11 children, each with a disability (some debilitating and/or life threatening). The subject of this film is one of those people that restores your faith in humanity – she easily falls into my ranking of heroes, as she is very selfless in her care of these children. (According to imdb, there is an 83 minute version of this film, which means I lost about 30 minutes in the version I saw. I will need to track down this film on DVD to try and see the rest.) 4 stars.

 

Make ‘Em Laugh: The Funny Business Of America: the last three episodes.

 

Tennis:

 

The comeback of Casey Dellacqua has hit a hurdle with her first round loss at Brisbane (and, looking at the scoreline, she probably could have won it).

2amtomorning
If you find yourself at the crossroads of insomnia and insanity, this is the place to channel those demons that keep you sleepless. Vivid pictures, poetry, ruminations, and confessions from the nether hours between dusk and dawn. Originally formed to celebrate the city at night, there's a strong urban theme.

green_future
Dedicated to promoting global sustainability, this community offers a forum for discussing current environmental news, research, and issues with tips on how to make positive, pro-active changes to reduce carbon impact. You'll also find information on how to get involved in eco-activism and learn about events near you (i.e., act local; think global). Offering a wealth of data on earth-friendly products and practices, you'll be inspired to don an organic bamboo cape and save the planet.

wtf_sexism
Self-described as "a little community with a lot of rage," you can soak up impassioned vibes and read blistering exposes detailing sexist attitudes in the news, pop culture, and science! A must-join community if you are, or love, a feminist. (NB: the topic of whether a "man" can be a feminist is outside the scope of this spotlight, but will probably wind up on the Writer's Block.)

I've copied and pasted today's blog entry, which is about a six-hour marathon of bad movies and jokes, courtesy of the creators of Mystery Science Theater 3000. This version is trimmed a little, to focus on the show itself rather than all the color of the evening. If you're interested in the original post, you can find it in its entirety here.

( Board the Cinematic Titanic. )

This movie really wasnt what I was expecting - but in a good way. It portrayed brilliantly the kind of things that kids (particularly boys) of that age find thrilling and want to do all the time. It also (and this was the bit I wasnt expecting) had a very strong idea of things kids find difficult. The film captured fantastically the moment when kids realise that their families are a maze of conflicting desires and emotions and sometimes there isnt a way to make everyone happy all of the time, so finding the best possible way is a constant battle and nobody can have all the answers. (sometimes people get things wrong). The film does this and also manages to balance an enormous sense of rowdy fun. I like this film a lot, maybe not more than I expected I would - but in a different way.

2010 Movie Project #4 - The Untouchables (De Palma, 1987)

"They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago way!"

Director: Brian De Palma
Writer: David Mamet
Starring: Kevin Coster, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro

Kevin Costner is slowly joining a list of actors I once hated, but have now come to respect. Granted, it's a list of two (the other being Denzel Washington), so it may not hold that much weight, but it's still pretty much a glowing reference to Costner's ability, at least from me. After Mr Brooks, in which even Dane Cook gives a good turn, Costner slowly started creeping up the rankings. After the Untouchables, that slow creep turned into a massive leap.

( Spoilers may follow. )

Hi everyone. So I'm going through the process of bar applications, registering for the MPRE, and registering for bar review courses. As to the latter, does anyone have any tips on the best ways to study?

I've asked some of my friends who graduated last year, and have received some varied advice as to studying only with online/video materials, studying with in-classroom instruction, and using courses other than BAR/BRI. But I'd like to hear your advice as well, because I only have a few friends from last year who took the Illinois bar (which is the one I'm planning to take).