Caitie ([info]caitiedidit) wrote,
@ 2008-02-18 16:40:00
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Current mood:i has teh flu
Current music:Joshua Radin
Entry tags:avatar, house, indecision 2008, livejournal

Monday Miscellany
1. I have officially been declared a casualty of the flu. This weekend was awful. I was so sick that I actually had trouble sleeping; I barely slept for more than an hour or two at a time on Friday and Saturday. Now I've got this prescription antihistamine that's helping me sleep, but it is also giving me weird, scary dreams that I can remember in detail. (I rarely if ever remember my dreams.) But I do feel better today, so I guess it is working.

2. I couldn't sleep and I couldn't seem to focus on reading, so I spent a lot of time fooling around on Photoshop and fiddling with LJ customizations. My new layout is all thanks to [info]minty_peach, although I did modify the CSS quite a bit. I like it so much that -- apologizes in advance -- I've turned off simple comment pages for the time being. I know some consider that bad manners when you have a custom layout, but I think it is clean and should not take long to load.

     


Weirdness! There is an obvious difference between the vibrance of my header in Safari and Firefox. I can't discern any difference between my icons and other graphics, and it's not just my layout -- even the green header [info]minty_peach uses looked different in Firefox. Even the screenshot of her orange layout looks washed out in Firefox! But nothing else does! It is all very odd. Thoughts from Firefox users as to why this is so?

3. I discovered a Tiny LJ Icon Generator! If you've ever wanted to change the default tiny icon next to usernames or communities (i.e. [info]caitiedidit hates [info]ohnotheydidnt), this makes it really simple. All you have to do is plug in the URLs and size of the tiny icons you want to replace the default ones with. It generates code that you simply paste into your custom CSS box. It is literally as easy as 1 2 3! (The only catch is that there is a fix you have to do for certain layouts, but it's still really easy.) You can get custom icons from a lot of places, but I recommend FamFamFam.

4. I'd say that Johnny Weir should shoot whoever costumes him if I wasn't 100% certain that he designs every inch of his horrendous outfits, meaning he'd have to shoot himself. (Which, actually, I don't have a problem with! I KID YOU, JOHNNY WEIR. NEVER CHANGE.) But even I have to admit that he was pretty great at nationals and was totally robbed of the title. I bet he would have won if his outfit wasn't so HIDEOUS and embarrassingly literal.

5. TV Guide got a great letter about last week's stupid cover story in which the "women of House House" were profiled based on their relationships with House, all of which were approached in romantic terms. And this has been my problem with House for awhile. House is supposed to be a misanthropic jackass, but most of the women who cross his path are attracted to him, often inexplicably so. His superiors and his underlings react to him in generally ridiculous ways. It drives me up the wall when characters' flaws cost them nothing. I recently had the same problem with Beka Cooper and her so-called shyness in Terrier.

6. I know Pitchfork is... Pitchfork, but the score they gave In Rainbows was much with the lulz.

7. I think the Scientology protests were ridiculous. I understand that the event was organized to protest censorship by the church, but that's not how it came off, and I'm sure that's not why most of the protesters showed up. I get that people think Scientology is really weird and creepy, but the fact of the matter is that all three major religions also believe some pretty crazy stuff and have branches that are also pretty freaking creepy. It is all very people-living-in-glass-houses-throwing-the-first-stone to me. Most annoying of all is that if such an event was organized to protest Christianity I'm pretty sure we never would have heard the end of it. Bill O'Reilly would totally have gotten off on it.

8. This is iiiinteresting! A while ago, Obama pledged to abide by public financing in the general election if the Republican candidate would also agree to do so. Well, John McCain has agreed. And since Obama's nomination is looking more and more likely, McCain is already demanding that Obama honor his pledge. I am very nervous about us losing our huge financial advantage, and it's totally the opposite of pragmatic, but I still think this would be a really cool thing. It would also go a long way towards proving to me that Obama is the kind of candidate he claims to be.

9. I saw the most depressing Valentine's Day documentary on Current this weekend, all about roses, chocolate, and diamonds. I already knew the bad stuff about chocolate and diamonds, but apparently most of the roses we buy are grown in South America. And since South America's safety laws are much more lax than ours, the growers use awful chemicals and insecticides and herbicides. Since the roses are grown in greenhouses, the chemicals are even more dangerous. There were even a few cases of greenhouses asking women to submit proof that their tubes had been tied before they could be hired. They claim it's a productivity issue (which should not even be legal; can you imagine if pregnancy was allowed to be considered a liability against hiring women over here?), but it's a flat out lie. They just don't want to have to pay out the ass when their workers' children are born with mental and physical problems because they exposed them to chemicals on a daily basis that no living thing should ever be exposed to. Just so our flowers look pretty! So there's another thing I won't be buying anymore.

10. Attn: Avatar fans! Since Nick has remained silent on the issue of when we'll finally be seeing episode 3.14, [info]boosette is hosting a very clever Pi Day (3/14) ficathon. Be there or be square, etc.

P.S. Barack Obama held my hand when I was frightened! (by way of [info]carrielh)


(Post a new comment)


[info]themis
2008-02-18 09:51 pm UTC (link)
I remember part of the reason I switched to Safari was because Firefox was washing everything out and making it look grainy. So I couldn't tell what my icons actually looked like! It was really annoying. I don't know why Firefox does it - they used to randomly delete my bookmarks too.

And, LOL JOHNNY WEIR. I know, I know - my boy is Stephane Lambiel and he wore an orange and blue zebra/tiger costume for the 2006 season. But Johnny Weir's costumes ARE so annoyingly literal. You're skating to "The Swan"? Oh, and you think you'll design your costume to look like a swan? STARTLING. I'm so annoyed I missed the Nationals. I don't like any American skaters - except Evan Lysaceck - but I still like to watch them. Except I never know when they're on.

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[info]caitiedidit
2008-02-18 10:43 pm UTC (link)
But Johnny Weir's costumes ARE so annoyingly literal. You're skating to "The Swan"? Oh, and you think you'll design your costume to look like a swan? STARTLING.

Haaahaaaha. I don't know if you watched the clip I linked or not, but the song was about a love story, and he literally had a BROKEN HEART sown onto his outfit. It was just so, so, so, so terrible.

I don't like any American skaters - except Evan Lysaceck - but I still like to watch them.

Hey, he won! Because of a technicality, but he was still pretty great. And his costume didn't make me want to hurl, which is always a plus.

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[info]keenai
2008-02-19 01:10 am UTC (link)
I know some consider that bad manners when you have a custom layout

Who makes up these rules???

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[info]jasminelily
2008-02-19 02:49 am UTC (link)
What she said! I like it when my friends have their comments link to their layouts, because otherwise I don't see the layouts at all! This, of course, is unless it's a super ugly/busy/slow loading layout, which this one is not.

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[info]keenai
2008-02-19 12:51 pm UTC (link)
I would hope you don't have someone who would engage in such a layout on your flist!

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[info]jasminelily
2008-02-19 04:07 pm UTC (link)
No, but I have seen such things on friendsfriends!

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[info]keenai
2008-02-19 04:35 pm UTC (link)
Ah, friendsfriends. Where evil is born.

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[info]caitiedidit
2008-02-19 08:58 pm UTC (link)
It is just something I have always heard? I think it started back in 2004, when lots of people started customizing the Component layout with elaborate fandomish headers. There was a backlash, and it became a Thing people seemed to vent about -- how they hated loading every one's custom layouts.

The only specific reference I could find to it was from [info]grrliz's LJ (she's the one who makes all the layouts at the Fulcrum community):
I use the default comments page. I don't like forcing users to download my layout just because they want to leave a comment; they are not there to look at my header graphics or clogged-up sidebar, they are there to interact with me. Using the default comments page helps to facilitate this. Similarly, I am less likely to comment on journals that force a user-specific layout onto comment pages, and even less likely to comment when that layout is Component because it takes far too long to load.
Don't you love how I answered this question even though it was rhetorical?

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[info]keenai
2008-02-19 11:26 pm UTC (link)
Yes. Hee.

See, I like seeing people's layouts! The only time I do default comments is when I've had my layout for a long time and figure everyone has seen it. Otherwise, I'm all about showing that sucker off.

Ah, fandom people. Never change.

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[info]gimcracks
2008-02-19 02:38 am UTC (link)
It's horrible but I read your blogs more than I do for school.

I'm beginning to hate ONTD more and more everyday too.

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[info]caitiedidit
2008-02-19 08:49 pm UTC (link)
I don't know what it is about ONTD that makes people so mean. I am sure most of the posters are perfectly nice people IRL, but something about that place just BREEDS unpleasantness.

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[info]elodiebanel
2008-02-19 06:52 pm UTC (link)
Scientology is a freakishly dangerous cult, nothing like the major religions...but it is pretty true that if that was christianity, it would have gotten so much more attention--that's not right..

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[info]caitiedidit
2008-02-19 08:21 pm UTC (link)
I don't know hardly anything about Scientology, and most of what I know is from sources that seem extremely unreliable and biased to me, but there are branches and sub-sects of all three major religions that seem dangerous and creepy and cult-like to me.

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[info]lexy_
2008-02-20 01:09 am UTC (link)
I've noticed a lot of my graphics look a lot different when I look at them on a Mac. But I never noticed a difference on the mac between safari and firefox, so that's odd.

Okay, so about the whole Scientology thing, well yeah a lot of other religions have different/weird beliefs, but at least it's all free. That's my big issue. If you wanted to learn more about Christianity, you could go into a church, read their bibles/scriptures, talk to a preacher, all for free. And they don't keep you away from family members or friends who don't believe. Plus there's a lot of seriously messed up things they've partaken in. But that's all imo.

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