givesushope
It's that glorious time of year when we reunite with loved ones (we neglected all year), stuff our faces to excess, and pass out in front of the TV. Perhaps a recalibration of the thanksometer is in order. A spin-off of the popular GivesMeHope.com site, this community invites you to document moments of kindness, generosity, and pure human love in 350 words or less.

veggieslackers
Despite its mainstream appeal, Thanksgiving is not for everyone. There are those struggling with food disorders, for whom this day causes endless conflict. There are the cash-challenged, who can't afford the gluttony we've grown to expect. There are the lonely, who don't have loved ones nearby. And let's not forget the vegetarians, who decry the animal cruelty. But there's one more group we often overlook: the terminally lazy! This community of lazy vegetarians offers easy recipes for an animal-friendly feast.

fashin
Just in time for holiday shopping season, this fashionista community brings you the world of haute couture in the form of sumptuous photos, video clips, and candid commentary. There's also a sugary sprinkle of mainstream movie discussions and debates on such pressing social issues as manicure styles and celebrity colonics. If you need a break from the daily grind to indulge your girlie side, this is twinkly pink on steroids.

David is a specialist in the areas like: Concept Art, Illustration, Storyboard, Digital Painting, Matepainting, Webdesign(Php/Css/Flash), Design, Packaging, Print, 3D.

Best monster movie ever.

Jaws (1982) Rated PG with warning “May Be Too Intense for Younger Children” (um, yeah…unless you really don’t want them to ever swim at a beach again)

Synopsis

Man-eating great white shark terrorizes a seaside town.

Review

This one is usually called a “thriller” rather than a “horror” movie. That just means it was good enough to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, so Hollywood wants to make sure—God forbid—you don’t mistake it for a lowly horror movie. Pfft. It’s horror.
Most kids I know have never seen this one because, well, it’s about a shark. Not a sadistic killer. Not a supernatural monster. Not even a genetically modified shark. Just a really, really big shark. It doesn’t sound very scary or very interesting, but it is. That’s what made this movie great. It took a simple idea and made an amazing movie out of it.

The reason it’s so good is that everyone on it does their best work. This was one of Steven Spielberg’s first movies, and of course he did great, but he had a lot to work with. The script is based on a good novel with good characters. The author (Peter Benchley) was one of the screenwriters, but he had help, too, and this is one of the rare cases where the movie is better than the book (IMO) The characters come alive and the dialogue snaps and sings. The actors are great. The cinematography is good. And the movie won the Oscar for best score for a reason—excellent soundtrack.

If I have one negative comment, it’s the same one I had for Poltergeist. It’s old. I don’t mind it with the out-of-date clothing and hairstyles and all that—it’s like seeing a period picture. But it’s kind of distracting with the special effects. You can tell the shark is mechanical. It’s not a problem, though, because you don’t see the shark until the end. That actually wasn’t intentional—the special effects guys were late building the shark, so they couldn’t use it in the movie. To me, that makes it even better—building up the suspense. And (bonus for modern viewers) you don’t spend the whole movie going “that shark looks so lame” LOL

Chloe’s Rating: A

Spook-meter: Chance you’ll jump out of your seat at least once: 80%

Gross-out-meter: Chance your stomach won’t feel like finishing your popcorn: 20% (only if you’re really squeamish…in which case you probably aren’t going to watch a movie about a man-eating shark anyway)

Contest time!
This week… This movie is known for keeping people out of the water, at least temporarily. If you’ve seen it, how eager were you for your next swim in the ocean? If you haven’t, has a horror movie ever made you afraid to do something? On November 30, I’ll randomly pick one comment from either the MySpace or LiveJournal blogs. The prize will be the same as usual: either a signed copy of The Summoning /The Awakening or a $20 (10£) gift certificate for Amazon.com/Amazon.ca/Amazon.co.uk.

Hi everyone!

I have a brand new BEAUTIFUL original painting today - for my upcoming (well, 2012) calendar - a holiday painting for December- "Christmas Candle" and she is LOVELY- and she's on eBay for just ONE PENNY now!

And also, since you all keep asking - yes, I will be self-publishing my 2010 calendar shortly, so keep an eye out - it will be very soon and I'll be sending out the link! It's a little late (oddly enough) because I've been working on my 2012 calendar (gotta pick up where those Mayans left off, mwahaha) which is a mass-marketed published calendar for retail stores. Yes, the traditional publishing world moves a little slow - they are planning the 2012 calendar already in 2009, hehe. So that one (featuring the new painting most likely) will be in stores in a couple years =P But the new 2010 calendar (available online) will be up soon, and I'll definitely let you all know!

Also - for those others of you who keep asking - my 25% off eBay sale will be running very very soon - so keep an eye out for that announcement as well!

All righty, the new original painting! "Christmas Candle" is the title - possibly my favourite Christmas painting I've done yet! This is actually intended as the December image on my 2012 calendar, we'll see. It is beautiful - an angelic creature cradling a candle with garlands of poinsettias and other holiday hoopla about her. I love it! A ton of beautiful detail! She's 12"x16" in size, READY TO HANG - 2" deep cradled masonite, hanger already on back. This ORIGINAL acrylic painting is up on eBay starting at just ONE PENNY for a 10-day auction ending the evening of Monday, November 23rd at 6:27PM Central Time , and you can see her below:



"Christmas Candle" 12"x16" ORIGINAL PAINTING!

And as always, to see all of my other currently available original paintings, click below - I have some BEAUTIFUL originals up right now:

Jasmine's Originals

In other news - I have a ton of new stuff up in my Zazzle store! Check all the goodies out HERE!

Enjoy!

Until next time...
-Jasmine


make custom gifts at Zazzle

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!

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Curtains

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

Hi everyone!

Since yesterday was Veteran's Day (post office closed) all orders that were placed or paid for while I was away at FaerieCon will now be shipping out this morning! Thank you all for your patience! Good news for you today - firstly I have ALL THREE of my "Dragonling Garden" series now up as SALE prints at eBay! Only $9.99 for small prints, $20 for big ones. Pick your favourite, get all three, whatever! Also I have two brand new paintings you've never seen (ones I debuted & sold at FaerieCon) that are available now as ACEO cards! Their names are "Lyre Angel" and "Faces of Faery #47". I have a couple of other new ACEOs up on eBay too - all ACEOs are starting at a penny.

To see any current ORIGINAL PAINTINGS up on eBay for auctions, click HERE

Now for the new ACEOs - for more info about ACEO cards, how I make them & what they are (basically tiny hand embellished one of a kind canvas prints, trading card sized at 2.5"x3.5" and highly collectable), consult the individual auction descriptions - they are each one of a kind and are awesome! All are starting at a penny, with no reserve for seven-day auctions ending on the evening of Wednesday, November 18th 6:00PM-6:09PM Central Time!



To see them all together visit the ACEO section of my store here

or individually, the links are below:

BRAND NEW - NEVER SEEN: "Lyre Angel" ACEO

BRAND NEW - NEVER SEEN: "Faces of Faery 47" ACEO

"Faces of Faery 44" ACEO

& "Faces of Faery 45" ACEO

Now for this week's SALE PRINTS! ALL of my new "Dragonling Gardens" are available, from only $9.99! To see all of the SALE prints together, CLICK HERE!



The 8x10 "Dragonling Garden I" SALE prints are here for $9.99

& The BIG 12x16 "Dragonling Garden I" SALE prints are here for $20

& The 8x10 "Dragonling Garden II" SALE prints are here for $9.99

& The BIG 12x16 "Dragonling Garden II" SALE prints are here for $20

& The 8x10 "Dragonling Garden III" SALE prints are here for $9.99

& The BIG 12x16 "Dragonling Garden III" SALE prints are here for $20

Enjoy!

Until next time...

-Jasmine


create custom t-shirts at Zazzle

EDIT@08:16 UTC/GMT. Wow. That was ugly. I expected it to go for 30 minutes and have maybe 1 minute of broken connectivity. Instead it lasted over 4 hours and we had 10 minutes of downtime directly related to the load balancer upgrades and then another 5-10 minutes of downtime when our primary Pingback database server crashed and the secondary couldn't take over; which could have been indirectly caused by the network upgrade missing a self-VIP.

Anyways, we're up, we're working, the load balancers are barely breaking a sweat right now and I need some food and a shot of whiskey. I don't even *like* whiskey!!

Thanks mhwest and dnewhall for helping out!

---

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

Hi everyone!

I'm back from FaerieCon! Just now got home! It was our best FaerieCon ever, hands down. Had a fantastic time seeing all of you, and sold just about everything, hehe! We've confirmed that FaerieCon will be back in the same Hunt Valley venue next year around this time too, and I've already signed up! Thank you ALL who came out!

A very special thanks goes to Steven Marwick - www.fantasyezine.com - for spending HOURS helping Matt & I load boxes, and keeping us entertained =) =)

Let me see - I do have some new artwork that still needs to find a good home (homes!) - in fact, I have THREE NEW ORIGINAL paintings for you! One large framed original - my long-awaited "Mechanical Angel III" (gorgeously framed!) and also two new Faces of Faery - #48 and #49 (both start at just ONE PENNY on eBay!). I'll have some other new stuff soon - but for now Matt & I need to play catch-up on having been gone the past week. Thank you for your patience while we sort through the, um, thousand or so emails and get all the orders & payments processed over the next day or two. We should be all caught up with shipping shortly!

Okay! The new original paintings....to see ALL of my currently available original paintings, including the new ones click below:

All Jasmine's LOVELY Original Paintings are HERE

The first new painting is one I debuted at FaerieCon - and yes, you heard right - it is indeed "Mechanical Angel III" - the THIRD in my series of Mechanical Angels - a steampunk fairy with all sorts of exciting things going on - the requisite gears and clockwork, creepy eyeball pocketwatches, glowing angel wings, an Atlas Beetle and more..... And she too is in a huge, ornate, antique style picture frame. Many details on this - I love it. It's an open wood frame with a posh golden finish. The frame measures 22" wide by 26" high. The masonite panel itself is 12"x16". This really is a stunning piece - it truly can be the focus of any room. She is up in my eBay store below (she is gorgeous!)! So snag her now if you'd like her!



"Mechanical Angel III" - a FRAMED ORIGINAL PAINTING - 22"x25"

And here is "Faces of Faery 48" - the 48th in the series. Ready to hang - 2" deep cradled masonite as well - she (like ALL of my Faces of Faery) is 6"x6" an ORIGINAL acrylic painting. My Faces of Faery are all the same size & shape and look fantastic when displayed together with their sisters, if you are collector! Faces of Faery all feature beautiful faery-inspired creatures, and she is no exception. This is the 48th in the series. Faces of Faery all feature beautiful faery-inspired creatures, and she is no exception. This one is a SLEEPING beauty for sure - her lustrous red hair spilling into the meadow of grass - I love her! And yes, to give everybody a chance, she is starting at just ONE PENNY! She's up for a 7-day auction ending the afternoon/evening of Tuesday, November 17th at 4:59 PM Central Time, and you can see her here:




"Faces of Faery: 48" ORIGINAL PAINTING

And - same size & shape of course - Faces of Faery #49 - this This one is SUCH a cutie - poking her head up amongst some daisy flowers! And yes, to give everybody a chance, she is starting at just ONE PENNY! She's up for a 7-day auction ending the afternoon/evening of Tuesday, November 17th at 5:02 PM Central Time, and you can see her here:



"Faces of Faery: 49" ORIGINAL PAINTING

Enjoy! I'll be posting a lot of new artwork soon - many paintings in the works!

Until next time...
-Jasmine


make custom gifts at Zazzle

sixwordstories
Whether you're in the mood for a creative challenge or you're short on time or attention span, this semi-addictive community is perfect for those who find flash fiction way long. Once you get the hang of it, you won't be able to stop. The prince turned into a frog. The girl ran home to mother. Tough to write. Easy to read. It's a double threesome of fun.

dailyfoodie
Delicious, ambitious, and occasionally nutritious dishes make for an eclectic, all-you-can-eat feast. Whether you're searching for recipes for your next dinner party or you're jonesing for a late-night brownie fix, your cravings are sure to be well sated. A warm and inclusive community that welcomes all orientations, from carnivores to vegans, from gourmands to junk-food junkies. Guaranteed bias-free, food-positive, and pan-epicurian.

Visit the Flight Of The Conchords website to listen to music, learn songs,
watch videos, check out photos, and more!

http://flightoftheconchords.co.nz/

The empire strikes back

In recent weeks, we've taken huge steps towards blocking spam accounts on LiveJournal. In fact, we've suspended as many as 30,000 accounts in a single day! We've implemented several pre-emptive measures to prevent the creation of spam accounts, and we've honed our detection of suspicious content. Spam bots are a crafty lot, so we'll continue to refine our tactics and keep up the good fight to keep you safe from spam attacks on LiveJournal.

RSS feeds again

If you're addicted to xkcd_rss, icanhaschzbrgr, or other syndicated feeds, we're pleased to report that we've resolved the update error that was mucking up your RSS feeds. While content was being pulled correctly, it wasn't being posted to the feeds themselves. Late last week, we finally nailed down what we hope was the root problem, so content should post properly. We thank you for your patience.

Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

c_s_i

If you're a gamer who loves CSI, have Wii got news for you! c_s_i is sponsoring killer contests. Simply post a question to a member of the CSI crew. The winner will get a free copy of CSI: Deadly Intent for Nintendo Wii (with a retail value of $39.99) and get their question answered by a member of the CSI writing team! There's also a fantastic monthly contest. To enter, join c_s_i, play the online version of CSI: Deadly Intent, and respond to a two-part query for a chance to win a Wii! Entries will be judged on composition and originality. Sorry, but you must be a U.S. resident and over 18 years old to participate. Check out the rules here.

Enveloped in postcards

Last week, we asked you to send in postcards to help us decorate our drab concrete walls. Here's a photo of the results so far! Thank you so much and please keep them coming! You can mail them 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 giving ten random users paid account credits.

Photos of the week

If you haven't visited our new LiveJournal photo community, you're in for an amazing visual trip. LiveJournal users from around the world will take you on a scenic journey to everywhere. Post your own pictures or kick back and enjoy at lj_photophile. You can view some of this week's awesome photos after the jump. Please start tagging with geographic location, since we'd like to track all the places around the world represented in this community. Keep on commenting too!
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Sorry for the delay. I was preparing for NaNoWriMo, and it completely slipped my mind!

http://www.kelleyarmstrong.com/mJournal.htm

стараниями ke_muri у меня теперь есть такой портрет:)

а у нас снега по колено навалило, а к концу недели опять +15 обещают.
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