the next stage of moving house

[cimorene]

Well, my paid lj account has finally expired! I'm a bit relieved to be rid of it, in fact. Since I opened commenting in both places, I've had very few on lj, which I didn't really expect. It's interesting - and nice! - to reflect that I am so firmly situated in the segment of fandom that has moved house. I've seen other people's posts via metafandom indicating that that isn't the case for them, and that would be distressing.

So I've successfully moved my picture hosting now to Google's Picasa. If you have a gmail or other google account, you can sign in there, and link them up easily; and you can tag, caption, re-order, embed, export links, etc etc, as well as sharing your albums to allow selected other people to modify them - this last is already a huge step up in functionality (and even if I weren't finding it useful I'd still find it awesome because eee! Living in the future!). The only downside to Picasa I have so far discovered is that I have to use the Picasa program to upload; it doesn't integrate with the desktop browser (in my case, since I'm using Gnome-Ubuntu-based Linux Mint, Nautilus).

Surprisingly enough, it seems the zillion images that are already in my lj picture folders haven't been deleted. I don't know if they just haven't gotten around to it or what. If they do all get deleted, I'm sorry to say I won't be fixing all the links in my shoe posts - it's just way, way too many to go back and manually re-code all of them.

What I hadn't considered was that not giving lj any more money would mean I see ads now. I believe it used to be the case that basic accounts didn't have to see ads when they were logged in, only plus accounts? But I can't find any way to turn them off. It's really annoying to have ads tacked onto the end (or beginning) of a story you're attempting to read - even more annoying than reading on LJ already was. Seriously, people putting your fic on LJ, move into the 21st century, for Bob's sake, and get a Dreamwidth and/or A03 invite! Everyone has more DW invites than they know what to do with, and the waiting list for AO3 codes is quite short. Just mosey over there and stick your email on it.

I've also reached a happy stage of only checking my lj flist - for a handful of journals, but mostly for the communities that haven't moved - every couple of days.

I'm never going to get rid of my lj account entirely because I will need it for commenting, if nothing else. But I can't wait until dw's read-your-lj-flist functionality rolls out.

Comments

[anatsuno]

my pictures kept on existing in the Lj scrapbook for a time, but eventually I tried going back out of curiosity and they'd been deleted, so I think it's only that they haven't gotten around to it yet. :)

[anatsuno]

it's possible that you need to change your account level back to Basic yourself? I seem to remember that was a possibility - I don't see ads all the time; myself, so I think I don't them shen I'm logged in? I'm not sure.

http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/

I see on this same acct settings page that my galleries must still eb there though they're unreachable, since they tell me how many MBs of stuff I have up, which supposedly I could see again if I ever updated my account? *uncertain all around*

[northern]

But I can't wait until dw's read-your-lj-flist functionality rolls out.

Gah, looking forward to it so much.

[jain]

If you have a basic account, then you're not forcing other people who view your journal to see ads, but you'll still see ads yourself anytime you view a plus account's journal. And, yes, it is really annoying; I lasted a bit over a week before I caved and bought more paid time (albeit at a discount, since someone on my flist was kind enough to give me one of those holiday promotional coupons).

[kellyfaboo]

Dude I have two words: Adblock Plus (http://adblockplus.org/)

[sophiawestern]

I cannot wait for DW's LJ reading functionality either. Then I never have to see another ad ever! :)

[onceamy]

I've seen other people's posts via metafandom indicating that that isn't the case for them, and that would be distressing.

Eh, it doesn't bother me that people live on both.

Ads are not the evillest thing EVAR? They only work if people actually feel pressured - think the opposite way, and they never work.

[copracat]

Is there anything like Adblock Plus for your platform/browser combination? It's a firefox addon that means I never see ads ever regardless of my status on a site. It and Flashblock make my browsing moving-flashing-rotating-eye-jabbing picture free.

[cimorene]

Well, I don't think so. I use Opera, and as far as I can tell the widgets don't do that.

[iridesce]

Tamil has done great work with an adblock-like approach to Opera.

http://my.opera.com/Tamil/blog/ad-block?startidx=300#comments

The original post was in 2006 and Tamil has been on the ball with each Opera upgrade.

Check out the comments, Tamil does a great job of responding to requests for assistance and specific workarounds.