the sun and the moon and the stars

Now I'm having vid-type-thoughts about Dollhouse. I really didn't need that.

[This entry crossposted to Dreamwidth and LJ.]

So, I've been using Dreamwidth for a little while now, and my impressions are solidly positive. The site's not perfect yet, obviously - there are features yet un-implemented, there are bugs and dead ends, and so on. It is, after all, in closed beta, and that's what beta periods are for. Speaking as someone who's beta tested a reasonable amount of software, Dreamwidth is in pretty good shape. (Try beta-testing World of Warcraft - at least Dreamwidth doesn't completely disappear out from underneath you on a regular basis.) I'll be paying for an account when it goes live, and - if finances allow, which they probably won't - possibly trying to snag one of the permanent seed accounts.

I don't understand why people are being so negative about Dreamwidth; I've seen a lot of hostility from people who don't want to use the service. No-one's holding a gun to their heads and making them get Dreamwidth accounts; no-one forced me to use InsaneJournal or GreatestJournal or any of the LJ clones. Are there really that many offensively pushy Dreamwidth fans out there who are rubbing the naysayers the wrong way? Or is this an unsurprising case of people being resistant to change, and trying to claim the moral high ground about it?

I've seen a number of posts - mostly via metafandom and links, rather than people on my flist - being quite vicious about Dreamwidth and its founders, and painting the people using it as a bunch of elitists who are trying to make the entire population of LiveJournal move en masse. For starters, the irony is choking; these are mostly fandom folks, and fandom is all about squeeing about the good points of something, providing links and picspams and clips of the source and trying to get other people enthused about something you like. And honestly, most of the outright negative posts I've seen just sound like sheer bloody-mindedness at this point.

*eyeroll* Grow up, people. I'm allowed to like something you don't, without it threatening your world.

I keep getting logged out of Dreamwidth; I logged out to check my OpenID account's messages, logged back in, and it's been happening ever since. SO ANNOYING.

I can only assume it's Safari rather than Dreamwidth, so I'll have to see if it's cookies or something. (Mmm, cookies.) Seriously, this is ridiculously annoying. Alternatively, is anyone else having troubles with it? Is it just a Safari thing?

...

In other news, this post has some handy details about features available specifically to paid accounts. musesfool, you might be interested to note that it looks like 'friendsfriends' will be a paid-only feature, as it's a computationally-expensive function.

...

Also, this FAQ answer is very useful for LJ-code equivalents.

<lj user=username> = <user name="username"> or <user name="username" site="site.tld">
<lj-cut> = <cut>
<lj-cut text="foo"> = <cut text="foo">
<lj-raw> = <raw-code>
<lj-poll> = <poll>
<lj-pi> = <poll-item>
<lj-pq> = <poll-question>

However, LiveJournal markup will also work on Dreamwidth for backwards compatibility.

So you could link to me via <user name="eleanorjane"> or you could link to my LJ with <user name="ladyjestyr" site="livejournal.com"> -- I think.

So, DW lets you import old journal entries, icons, and comments from other journalling services using the common codebase - LJ, IJ, et cetera. I'm debating whether or not to do that - moreso from my previous fandom journal than my regular LJ. I think I've decided against it, because:

a) it would ruin my 'fresh start on dreamwidth!' thing, both symbolically and literally (by cluttering up my journal page).
b) it would highlight just how unproductive and sporadic I have been, and how often I've said "I'm doin' it this time, I really am!". I'd rather not immortalise that any further. ;-)

So I think I'll just leave it be.

On another subject, it looks like I'm going to have to abandon my much-loved xJournal app, as it doesn't have any options for adding non-LJ accounts - although the maintainer is working on adding support for non-LJ accounts. I shall turn to iJournal in the meantime, but I remember not being a huge fan of it last time I tried it.

Admittedly that was donkey's years ago, though.