This afternoon we sat down to listen to the tennis we taped last night... and discovered it had rained in New York so they hadn't played. So now we need to listen to it tonight and tomorrow instead (depending on when they finish and if it rains).

So with the afternoon I suddenly had free, I re-did my LJ layout. It's less red, although I think it looks more red. It's all a bit academic anyway because the only people who will ever see it are people looking at my actual LJ, and me when I come across an unreadable one.

I also discovered the layout I have for Dreamwidth now has a sidebar on the left variant, which I've wanted ever since the layout existed. So now I have that. It's also red, suffice to say.

Since people are suddenly talking about Dreamwidth, I'll mention where I am. I write my posts in my blog, which automatically cross-posts them into my LJ: paranoidangel42 and my DW journal: paranoidangel. You're welcome to read or post in any of those three, I don't mind. But if you're reading by RSS then I would read the blog's RSS (or Atom) feed because it has more useful stuff in it.

Since I read by RSS, I don't care whether I read people's LJ or DW - unless one of them doesn't allow me to see full posts. So if anyone is crossposting to both and would prefer me to comment in one, then I can just change my link and I'll never notice the difference.

My week off means posting more often, now that I have nothing better to do apart from watch tennis. And do all the other things I need to get done this week (Yuletide, Ch secret santa, baking, Rotaract stuff...).

I got to thinking last night about how people use their journals/blogs mostly because I keep coming across people who use it completely different to me.

Personally, I post everything in my blog (which is so much better to post to than the LJ/DW interface) and have a plug-in that crossposts to Livejournal and Dreamwidth, so people who want to read on those sites rather than by RSS feed can do so. On the extremely rare occasion I post something I don't want the whole world to see (which is usually a rant about something/something specific and I don't want them to happen upon it), then I password protect it on my blog and friends lock it on my LJ and DW. Anyone can ask for the password and if you look back in my blog carefully enough (or use the search, it's pretty good) you can find the password.

When it comes to reading, I read everything, no matter what site it's on, by RSS Feed. It means I don't see LJ cuts and I can mark things as unread if I haven't got time to read them at the moment. Or I can mark things as read without reading them if I know I'm not interested or know I'm not going to get time to read. I also don't have to try and remember where I got to, like you do on the LJ friends page.

My LJ friends list is a copy of all the people I'm reading by RSS Feed. If I stop reading I take them off and if I start reading I add them on. I never use filters because I personally feel like that's lying to people about whether you're reading them or not. I sort of expect other people to do the same thing - so if they have me friended then they're reading me, and it annoys me when they defriend me the minute I defriend them - it feels as if they're too much of a coward to take me off their list before I do.

Dreamwidth is a bit different because on that one I allow access to everyone that has friended me on LJ but i haven't friended back. That way they can see my friends entries, but I'm not reading their journal, and they know I'm not. I am subscribed to a few people on DW that I'm not on LJ because they're the ones I'm occasionally interested in reading and I read my DW list on the site every few days ish. Course, that system falls down rather a lot because a lot of people have accounts at DW but aren't posting there.

To conclude: My LJ friends list is nothing more than a reading list and the word friend is a misnomer.

So, how do you use yours?*

*I know it's not Easter, but I haven't had a Cadbury's Creme Egg since 2004 and I don't watch adverts

I had a good weekend - well, half a good weekend. I went to High Wycombe to drop off some knickers and other stuff for Knickers 4 Africa and go to selenay936's ex-local bookshop. Where I saw her parents and spent £17 on books - that was being restrained. I'm still working through the books I got from my mum and grandmother for my birthday yet.

It was a good day and we somehow managed to avoid the worst of the weather. I was really tired when I got home, which I expected. What I didn't expect was how dizzy I felt Sunday. All I ended up doing on Sunday is lying on the sofa reading and watching tennis because I wasn't capable of doing anything else. Fortunately, there was tennis on - exhibition matches under the new Centre Court roof at Wimbledon and I enjoyed them, although I could have done without the camera moving so much. I didn't even feel like I'd done that much either. I'm less dizzy now but back to going to bed at 10pm.

But on Friday I'm going to see if I feel well enough after work to go and see In the Loop, which wasn't at the cinema walking distance from where I live now. But it is at the cinema walking distance from work on Friday and Saturday. Then it is at least a three day weekend, although I plan to do things with it - not least find a place for all these books to live...

Also, in the unlikely event that there's anyone left who doesn't have a Dreamwidth account that wants one, I have four invites. And, it turns out, Trillian Astra invites, since it's now in beta. And probably has been for a while, I've just failed to notice, just gave them money...

I've been playing around on the blog front.

On my blog you can now comment using just your OpenID. It would have worked a year ago if I'd only known the plugin to show you a preview of your comment was interfering with it...

Also, I'm using a new crossposter. The big advantage of this one is that if I create a password protected post here, it posts it on LJ as a friends locked post. Which is what I always wished the crossposter would do, so that's handy. You'll notice on LJ that the header has changed and now become a footer. Exciting, ay?

Since Dreamwidth made it from closed to open beta the other day (at least from my perspective) I now have an account there: paranoidangel. The crossposter posts simultaneously to both LJ and DW, so I now have three backups of my blog.

When I finally wade into RSS Bandit and the 1157 unread feeds I had in there this morning (some of which I've read in Google Reader, to be fair) I might well take some people off my LJ friends list, since that is merely a list of who I am reading and I suspect I will find that I will just mark some of those as read without reading them.

But it's ok because there are other ways of reading my very rare protected posts - which I only really want to hide from random people who've surfed in randomly. Either you can ask me the password and read it on the blog (or search the blog to find it). Or read it on DW. What I plan to do there is give access to anyone who wishes it - basically if you subscribe to my DW journal, I'll give you access. But if you friend my LJ, I will only friend you back if I'm reading your LJ. Clear as mud?

I also have a second DW account (which I did pay about £2 for but there's really nothing a paid account does that a free one doesn't - the same can be said of LJ). This one is paranoidangel42 and is purely for talking about RP things. So people reading my blog/LJ/DW who aren't interested aren't bored by it and I can have RP-related emails in the right email account. No really, that is important.

I know I have a load of comments to reply to and posts to read and people to subscribe to on DW, it's just going to take me a little while to catch up - feel free to subscribe to me and save me the effort

All of a sudden Dreamwidth has become really popular, maybe because it's going live soon, maybe because more and more people are getting invited into closed beta, and people keep asking what it is. So this is my guide, based on why I like the idea of it and my memories of things what have been discussed on the mailing lists. Read more...