I noticed that eudyptes’s journal was looking rather spiffy, so I asked him about it. It turns out he’s using Bloggish, a new-ish layout for users of LiveJournal’s S2 system. (I consider anything since Refried Paper to be “new,” though.) So I went to check out Bloggish for myself.

It turns out it’s based on Six Apart’s default design for TypePad, which can be customized using CSS. There are several themes available and you can always create your own layer for more. I did notice a few problems with it, though, so I checked out s2bloggish and was pointed to this custom layer to fix some of them. Now I can see communities on my friends page, and hopefully the long reply box won’t make my page do weird things anymore. I’m still not satisfied, though, so I’m not sure I’ll keep it.

One problem, though, is not the fault of Bloggish. It’s entirely my fault that every time I see ljgenie in the default Bloggish font I read it as “lingerie.”

Today was a rather LiveJournally day. I didn’t sleep well, so I was kind of out of it for most of the morning and just goofing off. I suddenly realized I was late for tikva’s birthday lunch at Oriental East in Silver Spring. Obviously dim sum is not a favorite treat for me due to the few vegetarian options, but I do like sesame balls and pineapple buns so I didn’t mind going - I figured I could always get something after if I was still hungry. I got there about half an hour late but I wasn’t the last one there, although I was the only latecomer who was late due to carelessness and not previous engagements! Anyway, I got to meet three new friends, bringing the total number of people on my friends list that I have met to 56! (That’s about one-third if you drop out the duplicate journals and the journals written by cats, even though I have met both of the cats with journals.) I really enjoyed these people - zaph and I seem to have a fair bit in common in terms of personality, if not necessarily interests; I found him quite interesting to talk to. antuvschle was kind of quiet compared to the rest of us chatterboxes, but she seems really cool, she lives in the town where I grew up, and she gives hugs the first time you meet her! (Now that’s cool.) I was a little bit intimidated by sskipstress, probably because she is both pretty and intelligent and I always wonder how people who impress me are perceiving me when we interact. It was a very good lunch overall - I did get enough to eat! - even though I missed seeing tikva’s guide dog Brodie, who was at home.

Tonight I spent a while completely revamping my LiveJournal design. I decided to go back to S1, the style system that I actually understand, and I used a design from Open Source Web Design to make a unique look for myself. Returning to S1 means I don’t get attractively-formatted talk pages, but I will probably stick with it for a while. If you want to see the new design, check it out here. I was pretty pleased with the way the Flickr badges came out; you can’t use the usual badge generator because Livejournal won’t allow Javascript but rd84 created a scriptless badge generator!

There are some emotional musings I need to get out. They’re kind of rambling and confused. I’m pretty open online about who I am and how I’m feeling, so I’m going to share these thoughts.
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LJ Interests meme results

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My friend boiswillbebois has been making a lot of LiveJournal haikus lately, so I thought I’d give it a try. I got a few good results:

The syllable counting mechanism doesn’t seem quite right, but I thought they were good anyway. You can make your own if you have a LiveJournal too.

I’m doing the “happy Snoopy” dance! I have been hand-copying my blog posts from Movable Type to LiveJournal for more than three years now. Every time I posted to MT, I would then copy the entry text and go to the “update journal” page on LJ and paste it in, choosing my userpic by hand, etc. I have tried various automated methods - for I while I was looking for a Windows client that could post to both MT and LJ so I could minimize the number of clicks necessary - it would still involve me doing two updates, but I wouldn’t be copying and pasting because it wouldn’t be web-based. That never worked, and neither did the LJPost plugin for MT. But with WordPress, I can automatically post to LiveJournal thanks to a spiffy plugin called LivePress. I had some problems installing it, and as I read through the 100+ comments I found various fixes for making it work with WP 1.5 and so on. And then I found the fixed-up version of LivePress which works with 1.5.1.3 (the latest WP, and what I’m using now) and is itself a minor tweak of this version of LivePress.

What really makes LivePress so jaw-droppingly superb is its support for all the little tweaks of LiveJournal. You can choose your userpic, music, mood, and security level right in the WP “Write Post” screen. You can even post directly to any community that you have rights to post to from LiveJournal. I’m not 100% sure yet, but I think you might even be able to edit an entry in WP and have LivePress automatically update the corresponding LJ entry. I am so excited by this plugin!

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It’s going to be a good vacation, because the cosmos are in alignment - my awful co-worker wasn’t even here today! In between smiling and nodding while chatting with her very friendly drama queen replacement (who I had to tell not to talk on the phone about condoms while in a professional office), I browsed the 2005 expunged LiveJournal list and picked out a set of fun names. These are only available to users who purchase a $15 rename token - they can’t be created as new journals or communities. (Also, as a side note, I’m thinking about revamping my entire website. More to come on this later.)

artsluts batdyke* chocokat dorkify ewww faggotry	girlgasm hellminx infonerd jhchrist kuteness lazydiva	missmeow netguide otaku plumdumb quelquun ryanisms	scoozie theblog unbodied veggiefu wordshop xpiratex
yarnspin		zenkitty

* - and her sidekick gaygirl