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Notes augmented

We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!

Product tweaks and bug kill

1. In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
2. If you sign up to get notifications of the Writer's Block question of the day, you'll now see the daily question in the email notification, so you'll have a little extra time to ponder before you post. You can subscribe to Writers Block notifications here
3. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
4. If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
5. If you don't edit the timestamp for an entry at all, the entry timestamp will indicate the time the entry was posted instead of the time the Update Journal page was loaded
6. Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)

New FCK fixes rich text editor!

1. We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
2. When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
3. RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
4. An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
5. The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers

LiveJournal Cares

We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.

In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.

Papered in postcards

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.

Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!

Photos of the week

We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.

You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!

Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

niliwen

Prompt: Key. Literature is a dangerous thing. This is dedicated to my high school lit teacher.

Fire in the Bones

            “Who the hell would want to read a novel about a French ex-convict?”

            It had been one of many things that she would wish she had never spoken. From the first day she’d forced herself to open the novel bound in green, she’d been drawn in. Within a day, she had reached the last page. As she sat in her usual seat on the school bus en route home, she felt something like a ray of light probing in her seventeen-year old mind.

            “What is happening to me?” she wondered some days later as she found herself in the library, poking around in the dusty shelves for the gray-wrapped progenitor of that green volume. She at last lifted out the unabridged tome from its repository, and checked it out. Never mind if her bag seemed to now harbor a huge heavy brick.

            Within four days, she had finished the book. By this time, a flame had started from someplace within her brain, and had now spread down to her breast, her limbs, even to the very tips of her fingers and toes. It was as if a clear light had come into her eyes, which now missed nothing. So it came to pass that one afternoon, after hearing of a certain travesty on campus, she sat down in front of a computer and began to type.

            Two days later, several envelopes were delivered rather haphazardly to certain administration offices. Some stir was caused by this, for no student before had the audacity to openly point out the mistakes of the regime when it came to driving home to the students the plight of the poor around them.

            Of course, it couldn’t have been the novel that had started it. After all, the school had approved the reading and teaching of the text.  

theljstaff
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The empire strikes back

RSS feeds again

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icanhaschzbrgr

Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

c_s_i

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Enveloped in postcards

Photos of the week

lj_photophile

niliwen

A/N: Prompt: China. Two letters. Could be read independent of a series.

Getting Cold Feet

 April 24, 2012

            Mark,

            You have asked for the exact circumstances that finally drove me back to Manila after one year of “hiding” in Barcelona. I have wondered at times how I was going to tell you the truth without leaving myself so vulnerable to your reaction. Now that I am more certain that I can confide in you again, here is the story.

            I actually turned down my first marriage proposal last December. Before you make conjectures, the truth is I couldn’t think of a reason not to marry Howard: he was suave, passionate, gentle, and romantic---everything you are not. I liked him well enough, actually. It was the memory though of something that had happened back in college that reminded me that I was not quite ready to marry.

            It was one of those days when the best thing to eat on campus were steamed dumplings with fried Cantonese rice. I was eating with my right hand and typing with my left when you showed up at the hangout. You had with you a huge binder covered with photos and colored paper, as well as some pieces of plastic sheeting. I knew what it was: the new folder for archiving the documents of your organization.

            I’ll never forget the conversation. You nudged me with your elbow and I looked at you. You asked, “Ida, could you cover this folder for me?”

            I shook my head. “I’m eating.”

            “Even if you do it after you eat. I brought scissors and tape,” you said a little more desperately.

            I remember I looked you in the face. “It’s not that I don’t want to, Mark. I can’t. I don’t even cover my own books properly.” I had to be honest with you. I didn’t want you to get embarrassed in front of your subordinates because you gave them a folder that was hardly decent to look at.

            You nearly burst out laughing. “I thought that all girls know how to do that.”

            “What the hell gave you that idea?” I asked you. I was starting to feel so embarrassed for myself and the fried rice was starting to taste bitter. By the way, you might want to note that I have never ordered that meal again without even remembering what happened.

            You shrugged. “How will you cover your kids’ textbooks one day? That’s what moms do, right?”

            I got your point. My mom also did that for me when I was younger. I suppose I could have told you that your quip was sexist and gender stereo-typed, but I was feeling too disappointed. It wasn’t the first time that someone had pointed out my lack of domestic skills to my face, but the thing was that it was you. I felt as if I’d let you down, or let something more intangible down. It was at that moment that I realized that even at that point in our lives, you were pretty much imagining yourself as a career man and a father. I couldn’t see myself as the counterpart to that yet. This difference impressed me yet also scared me at the same time. We were only twenty then, for heaven’s sake.

            Which was what I realized too when I was in Barcelona with Howard. I won’t list the details here, only that he asked and I refused. I still had the same fears. I was still hoping to explore the world then see how I fit back in Manila, or maybe even take another degree. I couldn’t quite imagine myself living in Spain with him, or covering his children’s schoolbooks, or sharing whatever aspects of domestic life. I tried to convince him of this, but he was so persistent. Right away, I finished whatever business I had in that city so I could prepare to return home.

            That is pretty much the story I have to tell. Perhaps you will not understand, but that is the truth. I ask you not to read anything more between these lines.

As always,

Ida

**

April 25, 2012

            Firstly, happy birthday Ida. I can’t believe you’re twenty-three already.

            The right thing would be for me to go over to where you are seated in order to tell you all of this. I think that it would be better for you to read this and reflect.

            Some months ago, I was with my former thesis-mates getting a wedding present for a former classmate of ours. We were in one of those household goods stores when I came across a fine china dining set. If I recall, it was all white with some simple red geometrical detail round the sides. Now that I think about it, it was something you would like.

My friends and I debated about getting the dishes till one of them said that maybe I should just get the set at some other occasion, maybe when it was my own turn to get married.

Oddly enough, you came to mind even if you were all the way in Barcelona then.

Please feel free to come up with any theory, however wild.

Your friend,

Mark