So yeah, this journal's mostly friends only. There'll only be a few public posts now and then, because where it comes to my online life, I'm actually pretty damn private. I would expect that anything I say in my friends-only journal stays that way, which means no re-posting or telling someone else what I said, especially if it's in a 'tattling' sort of sense.

I'd like to ask if you friend me, please drop a comment as to who you are or how you found me or why you added me so I don't wonder? Also it helps to have some interests listed so I can see if we have things in common so I can add you back!

I'm picky about who I add, and honestly, if I know nothing about you, you've got nothing in common with me, or I have no idea how you even found me because you haven't said so, chances are I won't add you back. I talk about gaming [Dungeons and Dragons], roleplaying [online], my job, my writing, and stupid people. A lot. This is 90% of my journal babble. The rest is probably fangirlish musings.

My interests are all in my profile. Don't preach at me in my journal about anything, period, especially if it's something I've expressed my own opinion on, in my own journal. I will do you the same courtesy. And if I bother you that much with my opinions, believe me, I won't be butthurt if you defriend me.

Speaking of defriending? If I've defriended you, don't get too upset. It just means I didn't think we had enough in common, or I never had anything to say to your posts, or honestly you may just update too frequently for me to keep up with, especially if it's about things I have nothing to comment on.

I have filters. If you wish to be added to them, please say so in your comment.

Opt-in filters:
RP/Gaming - for those who roleplay online or do tabletop gaming. I don't want to bore others with my gaming/rping ramblings if you're not interested.

That's all for now. I have others that are not opt-in. I will determine whether you go in those or not.

Oh and if you're only here for my writing, go friend mysticmuses and leave a comment, and I'll probably friend you back there.

That said, welcome to Inksome, and welcome to my journal.

Changed my layout. The light text on dark purple background was getting hard for me to read, but I still wanted Yoruichi.

mysticshell

mysticshell

It's the same on LJ and IS. It's by cielo_gris on LJ and was HEAVILY tweaked by me because everything was too tiny. The header's by me, but I didn't do anything special to the image. It's Yoruichi from Bleach, which has recently become the longest anime series I've ever watched, beating Sailor Moon by 12 episodes so far. Yoruichi is my favorite character because uh, she's awesome, nuff said.

That's all. Also, I just wrote about 1,000 words in maybe 40 minutes. I can see an end to this story. I had a really AMAZINGly good for me conversation with Ai, and I honestly feel like there's improvement in sight.

Real entry coming soon, I promise.

I accidentally followed an old link to GreatestJournal today and was surprised to find it up and running. Well, the crappy half-assed way it had been for a year before it vanished completely earlier this week. Anyway, if you haven't saved your shit from there yet, now's the time to do it.

EDIT: there's a note up on the main page saying "Server no longer maintained and will be closed Jan 30 2009 - Please use LiveJournal or ljarchive"

So there's your end, date people. Do it now so you don't lose things later!

I helped make a layout the other day [really just finagled an S1 layout into an S2 Flexible Squares one], and it made me learn more about Flexible Squares. So I decided to revamp my own layout since I'd had it a while. And here it is! New layout on my Inksome journal: mysticshell. New default icon and matching mood theme and everything!

Brushes by seleneheart on DeviantArt
background by StrangeClaire on DeviantArt
Header and all coding by me. Yep! All by me with an EXTENSIVE tutorial by the_lj_reboot on LJ. Even though that place is an archive now, it's still incredibly helpful.

Layout features Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Alexander. JRM with the long hair is the face of a character of mine, a fey named Seamus. He's one of my favorites, and a character I've had for years now. And he's just pretty as all hell. xD Lyrics on the header from Drink With Me from Les Miserables. Font is Hannibal Lecter, not sure from where. Maybe dafont.com. I've had it awhile.

Ai was working on a layout as well and hers is up too! olukemi

So it's been asked how to back up your journals and/or transfer them to another server. There are a couple ways, but I'll tell you the way I do it. Note: this only works on a PC. Mac instructions at the bottom.

( Backing up all entries )


( Migrating entries to another server )


( Mac Users )


( Making multiple entries at once )


Hope that helps guys!

Ok, so there are a few games I'm in that have been going strong for a while, and one I joined that's starting next Friday. Imma talk about them now and try to drum up some interest. Ignore this if you have no interest in RPing. I'd normally lock this to my RP filter, but I want to get max exposure [and maybe there are people who aren't on my RP filter who should be! Comment if you want to be on it or aren't sure if you are!]


derp_: Run by Ashley, Devon, and Gwen. The year is 1999, a year after the end of the Second War. Lord Voldemort is dead, killed by Harry Potter, the Wizarding World’s Hero. But there has been no rest for those in the Ministery. With Kingsley Shacklebolt the newly elected Minister, the Aurors are busier than ever, hunting down the remnants of the Death Eaters. That is when Minister Shacklebolt is approached by a young woman, a Seer with a plan of action: a melding of good and evil through marriage, a way to reform the Death Eaters into people acceptable by today’s society. The response to this is mixed, with opposition the majority. Not even the offer of compensation through money could do much to make the populace more receptive. But the Minister and his Seer stand steadfast, waiting the storm out and hoping that fate will not twist and turn the Seer’s future into yet another war.

exmachina Run by Deus. This is the new game that will be starting next Friday the 12th. An original futuristic game set in 2020 NYC. In 2015, Valley Dynamics, a renowned global technological giant, developed bio-mechanical androids called Neohumans^TM. They were hailed as a breakthrough in artificial intelligence and the next generation in computer technology, Neohumans^TM became available to anyone who could afford them at the time. Unknown to the public, Valley Dynamics was also working on a more subtle version of bio-mechanical androids called Facsimiles that can blend seamlessly into the general population. Now in 2020, whether it be from outside influence or internal, Neohumans^TM and Facsimiles alike are experiencing glitches in their programming. But something bigger is coming and no one, not even those at Valley Dynamics, knows what it is, when it will happen, and least of all why.

pentamerone Run by myself and Ai. What happens after ever after? Do our beloved heroes and villains vanish? Are they doomed to repeat themselves over and over again with each human retelling? Do they continue to progress and grow even when their most avid fans & biographers stopped listening to them decades, even centuries ago? Pentamerone is the last stronghold of human imagination. The hundreds of magical lands and worlds that used to exist in the minds of children are now in a state of decay. As a result, the figures of legend have fled to this newly imagined land. Some are afraid Pentamerone will merely become a graveyard for the last of the fairy tales, others are determined to start a new life in their promised land. It's up to you, and them, to decide how they will survive. Or not.

uber_alles Run by myself and Ai. A Harry Potter game set in Durmstrang, original characters only. The wizarding world goes far beyond the walls of Hogwarts. The Durmstrang Institute was created by German scholars for the magical instruction of Eastern European wizards sometime after the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was established. In its inception, Durmstrang accepted all promising students who had magical aptitude. However, the rise of the wizard Grindelwald and increasing tensions between the social classes resulted in the expulsion of any non-pureblooded students. Now, known Muggleborns and halfbloods are no longer accepted, and the school is known for pureblooded wizards, the study of Dark Arts, rigid social classes, and tradition. Students that graduate from Durmstrang are the most talented, the strongest, the brightest, and the best. Stakes are high, and not all students will succeed. Some may never make it to graduation. Are you strong enough to survive?


So there you have it. They're all on Inksome; mods will give out codes to accepted characters. Feel free to hit up any of the games listed if your interested. There's contact information posted for the mods of each game. Hope to see some of you there!

I've set up a community to serve as a sort of forum for all of us who are helping Kit run the site. That means anyone with support privileges etc. Please spread the word and join up so we have a place to come together to discuss how to best help Kit and keep this site running, especially in light of this new pilgrimage of users!

The community is volunteers. Easy enough. Join up whilst we figure out exactly how we're going to be running this thing haha.

Enter the contest at http://www.handbagplanet.com/ for more details and win a free handbag!!!

It's totally free, and the bags are really nice, so what have you got to lose? Except just a hair more closet space. ;-)

When Livejournal's Strikethrough and Boldthrough '07 happened, a large number of users left and sought to make Greatestjournal their new home. Greatestjournal was completely incapable of supporting the huge wave of users, and began dying its slow death towards the end of 2007. Bloggers and RPers alike scattered to the winds.

Some went [back] to Livejournal, and took a beating where it came to amount of icons alloted an upaid user, and had to worry about censorship. Some went to Insanejournal, where the influx of new journals staggered the site and left the owner sturggling to buy new servers, fix bugs, and try his hardest to keep the site afloat. It's still running, unlike Greatestjournal, though it has a huge number of unfixed bugs, like comment rot [vanishing comments!!] and disappearing icons. Some went to Scribbld*, where the Early Adopters were the only ones getting a large number of icons, and people complained of a juvenile site owner. that site contnues as well. Some held out and waited for the promise of Inksome, where the site admins and volunteers struggle to find financial balance and security to keep the site running. Inksome still has its own bugs to fix, but also has a dedicated admin and support team, who don't want the site to fail. A few staggered to Journalfen*, where fandom-friendly types are just as welcomed as on Inksome.

And some made the grave mistake of moving to Commiejournal. The owner of Commiejournal, Nebris has long since been accused of being strange, psychotic, crazy, and not someone you'd trust with personal information. Like a blogging site. However, Commie journal plugged along for almost a year.

Until today. Today, CJ users attempted to log in and found a note stating the following: NOTICE
(9/12/2008) CommieJournal is down for 24 hours to give all users the opportunity to read an important announcement. Since some folks don't wish to be on the CJ Mailstring, this is the only way we can get your attention. Please proceed to http://www.commiejournal.net to read the announcement. Thank you.

Upon going to the link suggested, users were then horrified to see this notice, screencapped here [opens in a new window/tab]. The link at the very bottom going to a contact email that is surely being swarmed by irate users.

While we all understand a site like this cannot be run without some monetary support, be it paid or permanent accounts, donations, or as on IJ and LJ, ads, this is unbelievable. One user commented in a post discussing this absurdity that if Nebris did not want people mooching off the site with free accounts, he could have taken away the option to HAVE free accounts. LJ's done it. All accounts on that server are either paid for or plastered in ads now, so everyone's bringing in some kind of revenue whether they like it or not. Nebris could have followed a similar tactic, if he really wanted to keep his site afloat. At the VERY least, he could have given users warning, let them save and transfer information before deleting and purge thousands of free accounts simply because they were never paid for.

The hiatus Nebris mentioned is set to start October 1st. This site redirect is only supposed to be up for a day, so all users can see it. However, there is no mention of the days between September 13th and October 1st. Will users be allowed to save information and move to another server? Or has Nebris already begin the deleting and purging process? Have they already lost all their personal information, a year of entries, games, character development, interactions and plots?

Yes it states in the Terms of Service of everyone one of these clone blogging sites that the owners have the right to delete accounts as they see fit, but whoever thought that clause would refer to a mass purging of active journals with no warning, simply because the site owner was tired of people using the offered free service? A move like this was entirely uncalled for, and if I had a CJ account, paid, permanent or free, you would bet your sweet rear end, I'd be deleting it. True there'd be no way of getting my money back, but I'd refuse to still have a journal on a site that clearly doesn't care one whit about the people who were there using it.

A lesson to those running blogging/social networking sites: this is the perfect way to insure no one will ever return to your site, whether you come off 'hiatus' or not. For those of you out there: Kit @ Inksome, Squeaky @ Insanejournal, and hell in comparison, even the LJ team*, thank you for not sinking to a level so juvenile it makes one stunned that the site ever ran at all.

*I do not have an account at Scribbld and thus know very little of how it is run. I have a nearly unused account at Journalfen, and still know little of it owners and policies. I have mirror account on Livejournal and Inksome, and an advertising account on Insanejournal, where I watch Squeaky's announcement and talk to other users. Anything said in this essay regarding Scribbld and Journalfen is unsubstantiated heresay, and thus will not be expanded upon. I do not own a CommieJournal account, although I did investigate the site when I first planned to make my move from Greatestjournal.

x-posted to testcomm and my other personal journals

EDIT: They have since changed their announcement to this [new window/tab]. This is a far better attitude to take, and one that should have been presented fromt he start. I am led to believe that this was written by the other site owner, not Nebris, as the tone is completely different, and far less abrasive. Perhaps users can be persuaded to remain loyal to CJ, to support it, but I personally would not unless the site owner who goes by Nebris is no longer running the site.