This and that

[brigdh]

Hey, livejournal. What is up? I know I haven't posted in ages, but I'm still around, so feel free to comment or email if you ever want my attention. I blame the not posting on, well, everyone else not posting. Which is a terrible excuse, I know. I could follow fandom to Tumblr, but I don't like Tumblr. It is fine for pictures of cute animals (which is an important part of the internet), but I don't like it for conversation, or fic, or making friends, which are the things I want to do.

Anyway, who else is panicking about Yuletide? Hopefully not just me! At least my story is already 1,300 words long, so I will have something to upload by this evening, even if it's not a masterpiece. I may be looking for a beta later.

Also, I have a favor to ask. I'm looking for a few songs that I used to have, but have lost in past computer crashes/ipods inexplicably erasing all their music/lost thumb drives/etc. If anyone has any of these songs and is willing to upload them for me, I will be eternally grateful.
Massive Attack - Safe from Harm (Live in Berlin '03) I'm not sure the parenthesis on this is accurate, but I remember it was a lot more acoustic/guitar sounding than the album version.
Spoon - The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine
Head Automatica - Please Please Please (Young Hollywood)
Matthew Herbet - Birds of a Feather
Shout Out Out Out Out - Self Loathing Rulz (Malente Remix)
Gogol Bordello - Gypsy Part of Town
Freezepop - Bike Thief (Tubeway Mix)
Freezepop - Mastermind (Manipulate Mix)
Kaiser Chiefs - Every Day I Love You Less and Less (Boys Noise Remix)
Stars - He Lied About Death
The Spill Canvas - The Tide
Magnetic Fields - No One Will Ever Love You
Peter Mulvey - Ithaca
Mindless Self Indulgence - You'll Rebel to Anything (As Long As It's Not Challenging)
Rufus Wainwright - Greek Song
Regina Spektor - Fidelity (Blockhead Remix)
The Hold Steady - Citrus
Bif Naked - Lucky
Madeleine Peyroux - Dance Me to the End of Love
Bowerbirds - In Our Talons
Moses - Beautiful Gun
Professional Killer - KMFDM
Hannah Fury - The Necklace of Marie Antoinette
Suede - Attitude
Bell X1 - Flame (Chicken Lips Mix)
Steeleye Span - Boys of Bedlam
Ryan Adams - New York, New York
Nump featuring M.I.A - Grapes (Remix)

What a strange list. Also, if anyone has anything from the Alec FST I made a few years ago, I would really, really appreciate it. I'm so sad that I put all that work into it and then lost the whole thing.

Comments

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I'm just waving hello. (And agreeing about tumblr. It's not that I want to be a snob about it, it's that I can't find any conversation there. I'm sort of waiting for the part of fandom that wasn't in it entirely for picspams before to get bored and migrate to a more discussion-friendly platform. Or back here, whichever happens first.)

I'll have to check the other computer, but I probably have the Steeleye Span. I don't think I've got anything else on your list, but if I do turn out to have that one I'll upload it as soon as I find it. And the Alec FST too, which I may well have downloaded in its entirety, only not to this hard drive. And to think that I thought the computer age was going to solve all my organization problems. It makes them better, but Which hard drive is that on? is it formatted for this computer? is more reminiscent than I ever expected of It's on my desk right under volume 8 of the banking statute, no wait, unless it's in that pile of jurisdiction cases, unless my secretary tried to file it, anyway I know it's here. At least now I don't have to add, No, don't touch that pile, it'll fall over and kill us both. So that's an improvement, anyway.

I'm not panicking about Yuletide, but that's only because I was too much of a coward to sign up for it this year. If it turns out that you do need a beta and it's a canon I know, though, that means I'd probably be able to carve out the time.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hello! You know, I think we may have had the tumblr conversation before, in an anonymous context. Or I've had it, at least. Some people swear it's just as good for conversation, but I can't see how. I have a few specific tumblrs I follow, and I read the things they write, but there doesn't seem to be much of a community, and the whole thing moves so fast I don't see how anyone can really keep up. I keep thinking that fandom can't really be all on tumblr, that I must just be unaware of some other site, but if so, I can't find where everyone's gone.

Thank you! I appreciate your checking, even if you turn out not to have them. My problem is I want everything to be perfectly organized- alphabetized, no excess information, no doubles, sorted in a way both logical and aesthetically appealing- which of course means I never get around to doing any of it, and thus lose important things I have no excuse for not having backed up.

You do know the canon! Perhaps I will send you an email later, to see if you're interested, though there's no guarantee that I'll have something at a beta-ready stage today or, really, ever.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

We very likely have had that conversation, or at least watched while other people had that conversation. I keep wanting to ask the pro-tumblr contingent to give examples, with urls, so that somebody like me who can't find this alleged conversation on tumblr can look at what they consider a good and active discussion. That would at least let me see how the discussions are organized, what the timing looks like, whether you need to be looking at participants or tags or what to see it and consider joining it while it happens. And at least in theory, after I'd seen a few of them I would either know how to have conversations there myself or else would be able to conclude that what they're calling worthwhile conversation isn't actually what those of us who don't get tumblr are looking for. Which I often suspect may be the case, but who knows?

At any rate, I don't think we're the only ones. In fact, I know we're not. I was too disorganized to ever get around to participating in the big friending meme kouredios hosted on Dreamwidth two weeks ago, but that was all about people looking to have substantive conversations again, and I gather that the response was epic.

As you know, there's never any guarantee that my brain will be on line from moment to moment. Not being able to guarantee that you'll have Yuletide fic at a beta-ready stage, either today or ever, seems entirely natural to me. If it turns out that I can be useful, I'll be around; if not, I'm not worried on your behalf. You always do get fic written by deadline, and it's always wonderful; in your case a beta is pretty much redundant anyway.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

The conversations I've seen seem very, hmm, individual-focused? If that makes sense. One person posts a thing, or answers a question, and other people reply (either simply by reposting the whole thing, or by writing something of their own), and then the original person might continue it, or not. But there's no group dynamic to it, no sort of natural flow or change of topic. And if you're not following each person involved and constantly updating, you might well miss all of it. It's like a wordpress blog, if each commentator only ever speaks to the blogger and never to each other.

I could be totally wrong. I don't even have one of my own to play with, so it's possible I've misunderstood the dynamic.

You're too kind, as usual. You underestimate my skill at typos, misspellings, and dropped words, if nothing else. I'm encouraged with this one, though: now it's up to 2,400 words! However, I still have not reached what was supposed to be the point of the story.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

So it turns out that I do not have the Steeleye Span (or at least, not on the hard drives I've found and checked). I do, however, have the complete Alec FST, in order and with the bonus track. Now that megaupload is no more and it's the holidays, it may take me a little while to figure out how to upload it for you (do you have a recommended cloud service? ideally, one for which you don't need an ongoing registration?), but that's only a matter of logistics. And hell, maybe while I'm trying to figure out the upload I'll find the other thing.

I've had that same impression of tumblr conversations, but I keep thinking that the people insisting they have good discussions over there must have something more in mind. Because how can that make for a good discussion, as we know them? The best discussions LJ ever had were the ones where you could talk to more than one person at once, and where even if it started as a colloquy among a few interesting people, readers passing by could jump in if they were so inclined. That's still the way good comments sections work, in the few places where they still exist. Which brings me back to my dark suspicion that the people talking about the great conversations they have on tumblr don't mean what I mean by 'great conversation.' Though I certainly wouldn't mind being wrong.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I can hardly hold losing some music against you, when I clearly do the same so often myself. The loss of upload sites has been just terrible this year; I was particularly sad when Demonoid went down, because that used to be my best source for obscure music and audiobooks I couldn't find anywhere else, even if I paid. I think SendSpace (www.sendspace.com) is the best of the ones left. Box.net, 4shared.com and mediafire.com are also easy enough to use, though you would have to register. The worst is some of the new ones that have popped up recently that are nearly impossible to use; they make you go through so many links and popups and scrolling ads that you can hardly figure out where you should click.

Anyway, I am so grateful whenever you should find a moment to upload it; I know how time-consuming an entire fst can be.

I suppose it could be a pendulum swing in how fandom works; for a while it was all about shared meta analysis and conversations, love memes and gif posts and interacting in a more social way. Now there seems to be more of a focus on producing spreadable content, stuff that doesn't have to come with knowledge of the creator- fic, fanart, photosets, music calls. Which apparently some people prefer, or so I've heard; they were frustrated by everyone having to be friends, rather than just strangers with a shared interest. If this is the case, it's more that Tumblr's popular because it lends itself to such interactions than that it's tolerated despite stifling them, which means it might be a while before things swing back the other way. I won't like the wait, personally, but there's not much to do about it.

[call-me-ishmael.livejournal.com]

I could follow fandom to Tumblr, but I don't like Tumblr. It is fine for pictures of cute animals (which is an important part of the internet), but I don't like it for conversation, or fic, or making friends, which are the things I want to do.

This is exactly why I hate tumblr. But I find more and more people who are active there and only there (including people who also hate it) and it's incredibly frustrating when I want to attempt to talk to anyone. But I'm also terrible about posting on LJ. Whoops. I really don't know what to do there.

Nice seeing you post. LJ feels empty and I am terrible at keeping in touch with anyone.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm in the same place. It's hard to keep posting to LJ when it feels a bit like shouting into the void, but tumblr is just so unappealing.

And you, too! I think you've become one of the more frequent posters on my flist, sadly. Not sadly because of you, but sadly because there just seems to be so few of us left.

[call-me-ishmael.livejournal.com]

Wow. Considering how often I post, that really is sad.

I guess I'll have to decide if I want to attempt being more active at dreamwidth or settle for tumblr and a lot more live chatting (as I've seen attempts at tumblr "discussions" and they're complete shit to attempt to follow, I refuse to deal with that. FFS the site automatically cuts it off after so long unless you use a browser addon!) Even if I stay here I'm not going to end up happy. Just like you said, it feels like shouting at a void. The communities I follow and getting slower and slower as people seem to migrate to AO3 for fic.

I guess this is where I sit on my lawn and wave my cane at the young whippersnappers like a proper curmudgeon.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Is dreamwidth more active than LJ? I have one, but I'm always forgetting to check it, because most of the people I know post the same things to both places. I'm willing to switch there if it's worthwhile, though. I also didn't know people were still into livechatting; that hasn't been part of my fandom experience in years and years. I don't even know what program would be popular now! People can't still be using AIM, are they?

[call-me-ishmael.livejournal.com]

I noticed some migration and talk of communities trying for more activity but nothing seems to reach the residual levels on LJ. At least that I've noticed. I'm also terrible at checking DW because most of it is the same stuff.

Hilariously enough I got back into IRC with Sherlock. (Talk about a blast from the past.) That could be unique to us, though. Google seems to have won out the assorted chatting things. I see gchat come up most frequently as well as talking with people in gdocs for betaing, that kind of thing.

[pocketmouse]

In Our Talons
Beautiful Gun (this probably has wrong metadata; I got it off a fanmix.)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, fantastic!! Thank you so much. ♥

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

http://stenoknight.com/magneticsteelbordellospoon.zip

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

This is wonderful! Thank you so much!

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

I've still got a lot of that! But I'm on the road right now. If I haven't gotten back to you by .. tomorrow night? or thereabouts? feel free to poke me again!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That's amazing! I would appreciate it so much. But don't worry about doing it now if you're traveling; some of the stuff I lost years ago, so it hardly matters if I get it today or next week.

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

You (and anyone else who wants it) can get what I have at http://w2.moonpants.org/tunes/wordsofastory (http://w2.moonpants.org/tunes/wordsofastory) - username secret, password tunnel. Enjoy!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ahh, thank you so much! This is absolutely fantastic! I am so, so grateful.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

I think I got all of these from you in the first place, actually. *G* Anyway, Merry Christmas!

Link to whole Alec FST, Bell X1, Suede, Hannah Fury, and Regina Spektor: http://www.mediafire.com/?lbuuecjkk6ivyyz,ev66k6nq9mahqyt,dd7ofk9wjpvit75,qft15wis1n3wf8i,3ph7cz8avhabzzg

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, fantastic! Thank you so, so much! I am eternally grateful!

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I too think I got some of these from you! Others have most of the ones I have but here's New York, New York and Greek Song. (http://www.mediafire.com/?8ck6n8jhhacu5)

Let me know if that doesn't work.

I find Tumblr a very satisfying way to waste time but really awful for an actual conversation.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I am so lucky that other people can keep better track of their music than I do. I am so grateful; thank you again!

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it's better track, really, I have an external hard drive I used to put stuff on, and I hit 'find.' ;-)

But I'm glad to help!