Hi all! Some friends of mine recently launched a new furry forum, and I think many of you would really enjoy it. It's called Serenity Hollows, and it's meant to be a fun, friendly, generalized furry site for everyone. It's just getting started, so we'd love to have more people there, and all ages are welcome. So, if you're interested in meeting more furs, or if you just like forums, come on over!

The URL is http://www.serenityhollows.net/. Hope to see you there!

PS - I go by Natasha there, not Felix, hence the icon associated with this post :-P

This video is awesome if you're a Star Trek fan :-D

NatashaSoftpaw: (Who the heck saves in .xhtml format? Is that even standard?)
JerryArr: Rad people
JerryArr: it's XTREME~!

So, if you want your web pages to be UBER XTREME, save them as .xhtml. The X makes it better!

I never did post this, I don't think, but a video on Youtube reminded me today. A few weeks ago, I was driving my mom's car (which, unlike the Rover, has a stereo) to get lunch, and flipping through FM radio presets. I came across a song I really like on a light rock station, and cranked the volume. Well, I caught it on the last repetition of the chorus, apparently, because it immediately faded out, and the next song came on: "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley.

So, I've officially been Rick Rolled by a radio station. Go me.

Sorry for not keeping up with my attempts at daily updating, took me a little while to get back in the mood for typing.

First up, weekend at Beltane! If you're not familiar with it, Beltane is a spring holiday celebrating love and fertility, and being the first exposure I had to pagan holidays and rituals (thanks to fox_cub), it's always had a special significance for me. I went to Four Quarters with efwolfcub & crew to celebrate, which involved camping for the weekend (it's both a sanctuary and a campground, how convenient!).

The weekend was very relaxing, and a great trip. I didn't do a whole lot, but watching the Maypole dance this year was really awesome. The Maypole is a fertility ritual where couples do a special dance to weave ribbons around a pole. In past years, the guy in charge of the Maypole at this place has never really encouraged same-sex couple dancing it, because he thinks it's "too confusing". They've never really turned away any same-sex partners before, but it always felt kinda stigmatized when Fox and I did it in the past. Well, this year, it was run by an awesome flamy gay guy, and they openly encouraged couples of all genders to dance it. Combined with added festivities, the whole thing just felt more open and less "stuffy" overall. It rocked :-)

The potluck dinner that went over so well last year wasn't nearly as well-supplied this year. There was an over-abundance of weird vegan stuff, and a shortage of normal, recognizable dishes. Plus, the mystery lasagna that no one touched due to a lack of recipe card. Is it vegetarian? Does it have meat? Is anyone allergic to the ingredients? No one knows!

There was an evening ritual/service as well that, while very entertaining and well-planned, I couldn't quite focus on. Why not? Torrential downpour! It started as we gathered up, and seemed to get continually worse as it went on. By the time we were done, the only dry spots were my feet (ironically), and it was quite an interesting trek back to the campsite to keep them that way. My boots aren't really waterproof, but they're water-resistant enough that standing in puddles didn't affect me. But, my clothes were completely soaked, and I could feel water slowly trickling down my legs along my jeans, bound for the tops of my boots. Yuck! Thankfully, that was the only rain we really encountered.

Little happened on Sunday, aside from a lot of driving. We went back to efwolfcub's house, had showers and such, and after an awesome Chinese dinner, I headed home.

=========================

In other news, I have my car back finally! I'm still not 100% clear on what actually fixed it, or how much it'll be, but I've already picked it up, and it finally runs right! Woot! It's just in time, too, the Rover's inspection expired at the end of April, and there's no way in hell it'll pass a new one. The guy who wrote me a sticker last time doesn't do inspections anymore, so I have it parked strategically behind my house where the sticker isn't visible from the street until I figure out what to do with it.

Good morning everyone! Or afternoon, whatever the case may be. Please pardon my cross-posting, but this announcement needs to be made.

As many of you are aware, LJ is currently holding nominations to appoint a community member to their advisory board. There are a lot of users who are nominated for this, but one in particular stands out for me - tango. I've never met him outside of LJ, but he's a really great guy, with the experience necessary to be perfect for this. He's been an LJ volunteer for nearly two years, and has already made countless contributions to the LiveJournal software and community. For example, whenever I've commented on the LJ software in my journal in the past, he's always been there with a helpful solution/suggestion. He also has many years of customer/tech support experience with various agencies, giving him the skills necessary to identify and communicate the needs/desires/concerns of the community at large to LJ's management.

And, for us furs, there's a bonus; he's one of us! So let's work together and put one of the most compentent, level-headed, and helpful furs on LJ into this position on the Advisory Board!

To show your support for Tango, all you have to do is visit this thread, and leave a comment that says "I support this nomination". Make sure your comment says that pretty much verbatim, it sounds like they're using an automated system to aggregate the votes. Only vote once in his thread.

If you have any questions for Tango, please direct them to this thread in his own LJ.

EDIT: We did it! Thanks everyone!


Read More And Vote In The Nomination Thread
Discuss in Tango's LJ

In my web design projects, I take browser compatibility pretty seriously, particularly among Firefox, Internet Explorer 6, and IE 7; my goal is to always make everything look and function identically in all of them. Usually, if something works in both IE 6 and Firefox, it'll work in IE 7. But, every once in awhile, I encounter something bizarre enough that I can't predict what it will do in IE 7, and I don't have any computers with it installed in my house (installing it on my main computer or my laptop is not an option, since it replaces IE6, and the other PCs in the house run Win2k).

So, I need some people who are willing to help me test layouts and Javascripts in Internet Explorer 7, which usually consists of me sending you a link and asking what a specific page element looks like, or how a script behaves. I don't care if you don't actually use IE, nor do I care if you hate it and think designing for it is retarded, I just need people who:

-Have access to a computer with Internet Explorer 7 installed
-Use a popular instant messaging program on a regular basis

You don't need to have any knowledge of web design or HTML, but it'd be helpful. I usually do this sort of work from evening until late at night/early morning (eastern time).

If anyone's willing to be available to lend a paw, I'd greatly appreciate it. And, just to clarify, this wouldn't be exceptionally time-consuming, just a couple minutes of "Does it work now? How about now?".

EDIT: I've never really put a lot of effort into catering to Opera or other browsers, mostly because they have such little usage, but if there are any users of browsers I haven't mentioned who are willing to be testers for me, I'd appreciate that as well. Just comment here and let me know what browser(s) you're willing to play the "Does it work now?" game for :-)

I had a chance to use one of those new Asus Eee PCs today, before hitting the road for the aforementioned camping trip. My analysis is simple:

Eee PC + Big Hands = :-(

I had to type this entry with two fingers, my hands aren't small enough I guess.

This reminds me of a quote I remember from a Popular Science article from many years ago about how laptops were getting smaller and smaller:

We'll soon reach a point where the size of a computer is not limited by technology, but by our physical ability to use them. And, I'm willing to bet that the evolution of humans with smaller hands will be significantly slower than the progress of technology.

I think we've pretty much reached that point. And while I wouldn't mind having one of these for emergency server administration, I just can't use it comfortably for anything else.

========================

This actually is my last post of the weekend, we're leaving from efwolfcub's house in a few hours. See y'all next week!

Yesterday, I finally had a chance to talk to my mechanic directly about my car. And, he listed everything he had checked/tested/replaced in the month he's had it. Needless to say, it was a very long list that I have no hope of remembering. He said that the only theory he hadn't yet checked, due to the complexity involved, was an overly-worn camshaft.

He knows a guy at one of the Ford dealerships around here who will give him a good deal on a diagnostic, if not free, so he's going to take it there for us and let them figure out what's wrong.

I want my car back :-(

===========================

Also, road trip this weekend, I'm going to Four Quarters for Beltane. I'm heading out on Thursday, staying a night at efwolfcub's house, then camping for the weekend. So, I pretty much won't be online while I'm gone.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

While looking for something unrelated in one of my desk drawers, I found an extra set of Russian keyboard labels that I forgot I had. In case you didn't know, I've wanted to learn Russian for many years, I'm just really slow at it. Last October, when I bought my nice new glowy keyboard, I also bought some key labels to make it a bilingual keyboard, in an effort to motivate me to pursue my language studies. And, it has helped, plus it looks cool and confuses people :-D

Anyway, since my laptop is now usable (thanks to the memory upgrade), I decided to put my second set of labels on it. Will I use them? I dunno, but they look cool, and I get to see that awesome "What are all those funny squiggles?" look from others while travelling.

And yes, I have pics (click to enlarge them):
( Thar be pictures in here! )

I've seen some people giving MyFursona a lot of flack lately for being "half-finished" (I'm "softpaw" there, btw). And, admittedly, it is a work in progress. But you know what? They may still be adding features, but the parts they already have actually work. And their site is free of critical, show-stopping errors.

Tonight, I tried to register an account on a similar site, FURiends.com, mostly to keep my name from getting taken by some n00b. But, it does look quite polished (aside from the f***ing ads), so it may take off too, who knows. Right off the bat, I was unable to create an account because the verification image was broken. I gave up, and tried again later, same problem. Could it be an IE6 bug? Nope, same results in Firefox. So, I tried to load the image by itself, and received a PHP Fatal Error: Call to Undefined Function. For those who aren't familiar with PHP, that's a pretty freakin' big problem.

So, I decided to pursue the matter some more, and clicked on the Support link. Oh look, they have an online helpdesk; I have one of those too, I'll use it. Nope! "License Error: Key file has expired". That's not quite what I was expecting to see on a production site, since it probably means they were using a trial version that they didn't purchase when it ran out. But, it's a mistake every admin's allowed to make once, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Luckily, they had a support email address too. So, I wrote up a nice email explaining the errors I encountered, and even made a friendly offer to help out if they're short on programmers. Sent the message on its way, and figured it would make it somewhere, right? Nope! Denied again. But this wasn't just any typical mail server error. The support address listed on their site, which looks like it's an alternative to the helpdesk, is actually directly integrated with that system. And, since it's broken, it rejects all incoming mail.

At this point, I've written them off, at least for awhile. I understand the complexities of running a site like that, but to have that many critical problems that make the site unusable is just pathetic. The FurAffinity team could do better, and that's really saying something, because they suck pretty hard. Their choice of advertising providers really irks me as well, there were some very shady-looking domains asking to plant cookies on my computer; but that's a whole other discussion.

If you want to join a site that actually works properly, check out MyFursona.

EDIT: Thanks to some very ironic timing, the MF crew found some pretty major exploits and have taken the site down temporarily. I stand by my statements about FURiends, though.

Well, about a half-hour ago, my LJ account reverted to its Basic status. It occurred a little faster than I expected, but I was able to get my theme the way I wanted it beforehand (thanks for the info on that, tango!), and I didn't have to do major work to my userpics to compensate for their voodoo-ish deactivation algorithm. Only one of the ones I like didn't get chosen, but I really like the ones that stayed, so it's no big deal.

Also, I don't think this is likely to be a problem, but if anyone reading this is thinking about gifting me a paid subscription, please don't. Such gestures give me warm fuzzies most of the time, but I don't want anyone sending LJ money on my behalf anymore than I want to spend it myself.

And, just to clarify, I'm not "leaving" LJ at this time, and I'll continue to update as regularly as I update anything else. I only dropped my paid account.

These figures don't seem quite right, I could've sworn I checked more "met" boxes than that.