raloria

Well, Livejournal is still around!
But it begs the question, "For how long?".

For now, I'm existing on both sites. Pretty much all the communities have been imported over to DW, including positively_spn. But I find it hard to give up on LJ as long as it's still around. At the same time, it's a little weird to be existing in both places. Plus, everything on DW is still in a state of "not totally finished" as far as the look goes and making sure all the links work, etc. I did a little cleaning up to spn_locations, but that's about it. Ugh! I hate this uncertainty about LJ's existence!

+ How does everyone else feel?
+ Are you still existing/posting to both LJ & DW or have you totally given up on LJ?
+ If you're still on LJ, how long do you intend to stick around?

Happened to discover a weird LJ Layout issue tonight.
Thankfully, it's only showing up on the Chrome & Opera Beta browsers (at least for me).
I checked it out in Safari, Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi, & Yandex browsers and everything looks fine on them.

The issue is having thumbnail images in an LJ post that are no longer nice and neat within the confines of the layout, but spill over in a horizontal line to the right, causing a scroll bar to appear at the bottom of the page.

Like this...Ugh!



So I apologize to anyone looking at my big image posts on my LJ or hurtwinchesters or spn_locations on the Chrome or Opera Beta browsers. Hopefully, they will update their code or whatever & those thumbnails will get back in line!

Until then, I hope you use other browsers to view LJ that don't have this issue! :)

I just made this animated gif because I need it in my life. ;)



I'll be making a formal posting of this gif (and in other sizes) next week. Stay tuned!

♦ Who knew you couldn't use Spotify in the Safari web browser??? WTH??? *fumes* I looked into why, but then my eyes glazed over because apparently there isn't any solution. Grrr! Well, that's annoying! Especially since I'm trying to use my Safari browser more now, because for some reason when I watch online videos too long in any other browser, my CPU heats up. WTH is with that??? *sigh*

♦ I uploaded the above animation to one of my old Photobucket accounts. Yes, still trying to decide what to do about them - which account to sign up for with payments again, now that they've got more reasonable plans. I wouldn't have even uploaded it to PB, but I can't get into my account at PhotoLand.io!!!! That's where I've been uploading and posting my gifs from. All of a sudden there's no way to sign in with Twitter, which is what I used. Gah!!!! I've contacted them about it, but who knows if I'll ever get a response. Well, speak of the devil....just got this email from them:

Hello,

We are having issues with the twitter API and are working on fixing it. Will update you once it's working again.

Thank you
Photoland Team

Well, I'll give them points for getting back to me so quickly. Sad that I can't get into my account there though. Serves me right for going the shortcut way into signing into a site. *sigh* So I guess I'll be using my PB accounts again for now...

Ok. Wow! The PhotoLand Support Team literally just got back to me, saying the problem is fixed. Sure enough, I was able to log in w/Twitter and upload the gifs. Yay! Very impressive support at PhotoLand!

♦ For my artsy & craftsy friends, I got quite the deal this past week at Hobby Lobby. A Marvy waterbrush marked down to $1.24, a set of Faber Castell 24 Watercolor Pencils marked down to $3.74 (from $14.99), and a set of 25 Stabilo colored pens marked down to $7.49 (from $29.99!). I've always been curious about the Stabilo pens because I've heard such good things about them (they are good!) but the price always turned me off. No more! These aren't the first great deals I've found at HL. A month or so ago I finally got a Gouache set of paints that was marked way down. I do love saving money on supplies!

♦ I found a great site for free book PDFs! Check out Ocean Of PDF! I've already got a few of them loaded on my phone for reading there. Such a great selection.

♦ Since SPN is finished for the summer, it's time to start in on updating the Locations List (LL) with Season 13 for spn_locations. Problem is...looking up addresses on Google Maps really eats up my internet data. *heavy sigh* I could really use some help from volunteers, but I've failed to use people in the past so I'm pretty sure it's a waste of time. People don't want to risk it. Of course, this time I KNOW what I would have volunteers help me with! :(

♦ Late add-in Edit!!!! OMG Does anyone else play Candy Crush on their phone??? I've been stuck on a level before, but nothing like with Level 149! OMG!!!! I CANNOT GET THROUGH IT!!!!! I've lost track of how many times I've played that level. And I've had tons of help from the game, but alas....still stuck. Gah!

Been meaning to post this little video, since I edited it way back in October. :P
It's now one of those little things I want to get posted before the end of the year, so here we go!

Back in August, after VanCon was finished, we ventured out for the usual Location Hunting. I had a few spots I wanted to check out and Ladner Harbour Park in Delta was one of them. I realize that this park has been used by SPN numerous times over the years, but I had just updated spn_locations with the list of locations for Season 12, and this park was used quite heavily for 12x15 "Somewhere Between Heaven And Hell".

In the video I walk you through this one spot where the Impala drives up and the boys get out to investigate the crime scene. It's then used 2 more times in the episode.
Luckily, when we first got there, I was all alone and was able to film this footage very easily. I did check out a section past the playground where Heaven's doorway/portal is filmed, because I thought it might be the camp scene from the opening of 12x15 where Gwen and her boyfriend are attacked by the hellhound. However, I couldn't find a spot that looked quite right (didn't help that when they filmed it was winter and I was there in the late summer). So sadly, that spot remains a mystery for now.

Hope you enjoy watching! :D

I haven't tried downloading any of my images off Photobucket since July, when I was trying to get my Location Caps off the site to re-upload to Slickpic and restore the images on my LJ comm posts.

Well, now I can't even download albums off of PB!
Either I get no response after Proving I'm Not A Robot and clicking Download or I get an error message at the top of the page saying something went wrong and to try again.
I try again and...rinse, repeat with the no response and error message.
I tried a different browser, and turning off my ad blocker. No change.

Finally, I went looking online for an answer. Looks like others have run into the same issue (those who can get logged into their accounts, that is).

I found this blip on a forum page from just a couple of weeks ago:


So PB knows it doesn't work and just doesn't care. Typical.
I can download my images one by one...but we're talking around 100 images - in one album alone!
No thanks!!!! *fumes*

So I guess I'll be making all-new map images for locations over at spn_locations. Oh, goody!

I also found this article about the Better Business Bureau issuing an "F" grade to the company after 15 complaints were issued. Really??? Only 15???? And surprise..."Despite repeated contacts from BBB, the business has not responded to any of these complaints."

Seriously, I truly hope Photobucket dies a fiery death!

More images on my journal are gone thanks to Photobucket. *sigh*
I figured this was going to happen. I have 4 Photobucket accounts - 2 that were my "main ones", the ones I used to pay for. They started with the 2nd one and now the first, older one has been hit with the "No 3rd Party Hosting" invasion. Grrrr.

Guess I know what I'll be doing later on today...re-uploading all those images over to SlickPic so I can re-link them. *sigh*

Btw, I've made a decision over this whole issue that is heavily effecting posts over at spn_locations. I'll be posting about it later.

Oh, why did I look at my lj comms???
The header and backgrounds are totally gone at positively_spn and spn_onthheeset! * Gah!!!! They look HIDEOUS!!! Thanks, Photobucket. Thanks for ruining my life. Thanks for giving me more work than I need right now.

* Thankfully, the actual images used in all the posts for spn_ontheset are in LJ's Scrapbook and unaffected.

You know what this means....all my old Just 'Cause posts are now gone. The ones made from when I began them 9 years ago until I switched them over to SlickPic a couple of years ago. Lovely. I'm so sorry for anyone who goes back and views those old posts, not that I expect many will, but still. OMG This is so upsetting! Hundreds of posts just GONE like that! Seriously, I'm tearing up just thinking of all those Just 'Cause posts that are totally worthless now - on top of Seasons 1-7 over at spn_locations! Friggin' Photobucket and their $400!!!!

Been busy trying to work on things over at spn_locations aka The Locations List, but it's tough because it's eating away at what little internet data I have left. *sigh* It's frustrating.

So, since that is kind of hit a roadblock at the moment, I've also been trying to figure things out for the spnconcatalog. Things were brought up when I initially started the community, like whether we'd be doing transcripts of the con panels. This was not initially my intention, but I can understand the need for that. It also increases the challenge quite a bit because I know I have a hard time hearing and understanding what's being said in the videos.

Then last week, I was using SuperWiki's list of SPN Cons to look for panel videos. It became pretty apparent that the material from the oldest cons is limited at best. It's also disappearing.

Youtube videos are no longer available, links are no longer viable. So any documentation on the older con panels is fast disappearing. It's also very difficult to find full panel videos from the early cons. Example: I've found a Jensen Panel video from LA Con 2009, but there's none (that I've been able to find) for Jared and then Jared and Jensen's panel.

I've been trying to do a transcript of the J2 Breakfast Panel from ChiCon 2007. Again, there's like only one full video out there, the audio is kind of muffled, and it's difficult to make everything out. But of course, this was from the first SPN Con in the US, so it's pretty important and there's some great moments in there (like Jared wiping his sweaty face on Jensen's shirt).

In thinking all of this over, I've come to a conclusion - We've got to save/document these older con panels before they're totally gone. We need to at least try to transcribe them in order to preserve what happened. At the same time, there's such a backlog of cons to cover, some 10 years of cons from all over the world. Some have more panel videos than others and some were more attended than others. For some cons it's going to be very difficult to find panel videos, especially full ones. Though I'm willing to include panel videos that are broken up into 2 or 3 parts. Not much beyond that though because then it gets too chopped up.

My plan for spnconcatalog is to have entries for individual con panel videos that include an embedded video of the panel and then a transcript of the video/panel. If a transcript can't be done, then there will at least be a list of the highlights of the panel, possibly with some time codes from the video. Since doing transcripts can be really time-consuming, I'm thinking of just doing the highlights first. At least that way we'll have something that documents the panel. The other important element of the comm is going to be the tags. I want them to be simple, yet detailed enough that people will be able to find what they're looking for.

I'm preparing to contact my initial volunteers for spnconcatalog to see if they're still available and interested in helping, but I'm certainly happy to have more. If you enjoy watching SPN con panel videos and have some time, please volunteer over at the community. We're fighting time to preserve these con memories!

Ran into a complication while working on the Season 11 Locations List over at spn_locations last night.

LJ's dreaded post-length limitations.

So I had to split the list into 3 posts instead of my original 2. Yeah, that's the easy part...sorta. At one point I had myself totally confused over which episodes I had copied and pasted into which post. Gah!

Now, of course, my banners for the posts are incorrect. Goody.
Have to make new ones. *sigh*

On the plus side, I'm almost done filling in the locations. Only 5 episodes left to do.
Which is good because the next step is to add all the Season 11 locations into Google Maps.
And I have a separate rant for Google Maps, because they've ruined so much of the site that it's almost un-usable for my list. Grrrr!
Hey, only a week until my deadline of August 19th. It's doable, right?

There's 2 special dates for my Livejournal world this week:

*** On June 4th in 2007 I did my first SPN Name That Cap Challenge, which ran for 19 weeks. Which means this is the 9th Anniversary of that little cap challenge to help us get through long hiatuses...and other times.

*** And today, June 7th I started my spn_locations community in 2012 after realizing that all that locations information was simply becoming too large of a list for my journal. Four years now and the Locations List (as I like to call it) is bigger than ever, still in desperate need of a big overhaul, and waiting for me to update it with the Season 11 locations in time for late August (working on it!!!).

Yes! I've done it again. Inspiration hit me the other day and I came up with a new idea for an LJ comm...Hurt Winchesters!

Of course, there's comms for hurt/comfort fanfic, but this comm is different. I'll be posting caps (and maybe some episode stills & animations) of our boys hurt, bloody, tied up, and in tears. 'Cause I know there are those of you out there who love to see our boys hurting. They're warriors who bleed so pretty! ;)

Naturally, I know this type of comm won't be of interest to everyone and it's certainly not the place if you'd rather see the Winchester brothers happy.

I already have a Welcome post and a First Entry for the Pilot.

hurtwinchesters hurtwinchesters hurtwinchesters