Tweaks and enhancements

1. In order to improve site security, we've temporarily suspended the ability to change passwords for old email addresses that haven't been used for over six months. For further information and support, please visit our customer care page.
2. We've launched a new mobile site with an enhanced UI at m.livejournal.com. View spotlights, post to your journal, read and post to friends pages, and more, no matter where you roam! Please let us know what you think, since this will eventually replace our existing mobile interface. You can update your mobile preferences on your account page.
3. We've upgraded from Beacon to Facebook Connect to improve dual posting. If you've already signed up for Facebook Beacon, you're good to go. If you wish to update your Facebook Connect setting, visit Account Privacy settings and scroll down to the option labeled: "Send information about my updates to Facebook." You can choose Always or Ask each time. Remember to save (on the bottom left corner of the page). To learn more, check out FAQ 249. While we're on the subject, if you happen to be visiting that side of town, please join our Facebook fan page for a touch of home away from home.
4. You'll now receive the Writer's Block Question of the Day in the body of email notifications. To sign up for Writer's Block notifications, visit writersblock and choose the Watch Community option. Next, update your Writer's Block notification settings by checking the box to the right of "Someone posts a new entry to writersblock."
5. Paid and permanent users can now view, add, and edit Notes of commenters. Notes will appear beside the username of comment posters (instead of stars) on S1-themed comment pages.

Send some lovin' thanks to your friends with our holiday vgifts!

Photos of the week

We're so delighted with the immense talent of our growing, global lj_photophile community that we've decided to introduce a poll. Each week, we'll choose a half-dozen photos (based on user comments and staff feedback) and ask you to select a photo of the week. The winning photo will be announced in the next newsletter. If possible, please limit photo size to 350x350 to ensure that images display properly on friends pages. We want to thank you again (and again!) for sharing your passion.

Check out this week's photo poll and more fantastic user content after the jump!

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Curtains

Thanks for joining us. To our American friends, have a fantastic Thanksgiving. To all of our international neighbors, we'll eat a little extra for you!

I'm sitting here, in my pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers, with my third Farseer book just arrived in the post (in slightly worse condition than I'd have liked -- personally I wouldn't have advertised it as being in 'good' condition on the website, but I've read books with curvy spines and dog-eared edges before (take Assassin's Apprentice, although that was slightly better preserved than this one is)) and I'm having a cup of tea.

I do like having these mid-week days off.
Especially this week too, as I had Monday off, I've got today off, and I'll have Friday off as well. I'm only in for two days this week. :)
Win!

I am going to get work done. I am. I'm not going to spend the whole day playing on Sam's Tomb Raider: Anniversary that I stole from his room....

65redroses
Eva is a vibrant young woman with Cystic Fibrosis who survived a double lung transplant. Read about her difficult recovery and personal triumphs over pain, isolation, and fear. Back in school, Eva now works part-time in a children's center and enjoys running and cross-country skiing. A documentary on her story, entitled 65 Red Roses, won three awards at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

meet_other_moms
A warm and welcoming "Add me" community for moms of all ages and backgrounds from around the world. If you're a mom, just post a little about yourself and start connecting with other mothers based on similar hobbies, musical interests, book/TV/movie preferences, or taste in humor! A great way for busy moms to socialize online.

kitchenfaq
Want to share a fabulous home recipe for coconut bread? Suddenly run out of confectioner's sugar with company on the way and need to find out a quick in-house substitute? Searching for tips on what to charge for a custom-designed wedding cake? Whether you're a professional chef, an aspiring culinary wizard, or a happy home-baker, you'll get delicious guidance from fellow and sister foodies.

The English translation is not mine, but I have put it with the original Irish lyrics as closely as I could get them. Irish's word order prevents it from being a direct word-for-word correspondence, though. Take, for instance,

Literally translated, the word order is more like:

But despite these little differences, I've done as best as I can. As you can see, the Gaelic is in bold; the English in italics.
Notice, too, Sinéad's accent -- how it differs from that of Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin




Tá bean in Éirinn a phronnfadh séad damh
There's a woman in Ireland who'd give me a gem
is mo sháith le n-ól.
and my fill to drink.
Is tá bean in Éirinn is ba binne léithe
There's a woman in Ireland to whom
mo rafla ceoil no seinm théid;
my singing is sweeter than the music of strings;
tá bean in Éirinn is níorbh fhearr léi beo
there's a woman in Ireland who would much prefer
mise ag léimnigh no leagtha i gcré
me leaping than laid in the clay
is mo tharr faoi fhód.
and my belly under the sod.

Tá bean in Éirinn a bheadh ag éad liom
There's a woman in Ireland who'd envy me
mur bhfaighinn ach póg
if I got naught but a kiss
O bhean ar aonach, nach ait an scéala,
From a woman at a fair, isn't it strange (lit. 'the story'),
is mo dhaimh féin leo; tá bean ab fhearr liom
and the love I have for them; there's a woman I'd prefer
no cath is céad dhíobh, nach bhfagham go deo;
to a battalion and a hundred of them, whom I will never get;
Is tá cailín spéiriúil ag fear gan Bhearla, dubhghránna cróin.
And an ugly, swarthy man with no English has a beautiful girl.


Tá bean a dearfadh da siúlainn léithe
There's a woman who would say that if I walked with her
go bhfaighinn an t-ór,
I'd get the gold,
Is tá bean 'na léine is fearr a méin
And there's the woman of the shirt whose mien is better
no na tainte bó; le bean a bhuairfeadh
than herds of cows; with a woman who would deafen
Baile an Mhaoir agus clar Thir Eoghann,
Baile an Mhaoir and the Plain of Tyrone,
Is ní fhaicim leigheas ar mo ghalar féin
And I see no cure for my disease
ach scaird a dh'ól.
but to give up the drink.

We bought a new printer yesterday, because the one in my room was rubbish. The print quality is wonderful; I spent ages yesterday just printing things in different fonts and oohing and ahhing over how cleanly they've come out, considering it's an inkjet.

I did that instead of doing my Quaternary work, which I've discovered Naomi has the data for. It involves plotting a histogram of our results, but so far I have the data for only one of the axes; what they did on Friday afternoon gave the data for the other axis. But, I don't know how useful Naomi's data is going to be. Given how lax her work ethic has been lately -- she doesn't even try to write things down in lectures, moans that there's no point if the lecturer's going to go that quickly, and then complains that she doesn't understand any of it.... self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone? -- I don't know if there's much point in writing to her in the first place. Besides, I'll see her on Tuesday and can blitz the work on next Wednesday and Friday, both of which I have free (assuming no one discovers this and fills my time with stuff I don't need to do). I can ask her then, but won't expect much.

naturesbeauty
Always on the lookout for compelling images, we were delighted to discover this flourishing community of artists who share a love of nature. Honoring the subject with photographs, paintings, sketches, prose, poetry, and
other creative works, you'll be simultaneously riveted to your monitor and inspired to run helter skelter towards the nearest wooded dale.

An update of everything so far.

I handed in my Biogeography essay on why biogeographers need to know about ecosystem energy flow, and I was quite pleased with what I had written. Lots of case studies about inter- and intra-specific competition and extra reading-up on how those two affect sea otters' and European badgers' (Meles meles, a nice easy one to remember) eating habits.
Reconstructing Quaternary Environments has just kicked in: this morning I found that I have a week to write up the lab report of what we've been doing with our soil samples. 2000 words. We're also meant to do some statistical analysis and convert all our grain-size measurements from millimetres to φ-units. Oh dear.
Data Analysis for Physical Geographers (statistics) is... well, I have the deadline for the practice piece for Tuesday (and the practice piece is optional, so it's not really problematic if I don't hand that in) and the lecture I had today was for the second assessed piece of coursework, whose deadline is 8th December. Uggh.
Palaeontology is going okay. I get next Monday off -- three-day weekend! -- because Siveter's going to a funeral in Cambridge, but I suppose I could always have a day of reading up on cephalopods or graptolites or conodonts or something. Speaking of graptolites, I saw Jan today for the first time since, like, forever... bless him, there's something remotely adorable about him even when he sits down at a microscope in the S-B Room; his 'concentration' face is priceless!
And Micropalaeontology: again, I could do with reading up on things. I still don't quite understand what all the letters associated with conodont elements mean...

As for the new car, everything is fine. I drove mum & myself back home from Wellingborough today and came back through Irchester. We've worked out that to get from a full tank of petrol down to a quarter-tank, it takes about two weeks (ish), which isn't too bad. I still need to get used to where the bite is and that you need to rev the engine a bit so that you don't stall: I keep thinking I'm driving the diesel Ford Focus I learnt in, they feel so similar.

I'm fast running out of space for all the books I have. My recent trip down to Bedford made me come back with three new books from Waterstone's, and I already have two more that I bought over Amazon to read as well. Plus, yesterday I bought two more; both of them sequels to Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice, which I finished last night. Both of them are part of the 'Farseer' Trilogy, and the 'Farseer' Trilogy is, in itself, part of a trilogy of trilogies, the other two being the 'Liveship Raiders' Trilogy and the 'The Tawney Man' Trilogy.
Plus, I've just found one of the first scenes from Assassin's Apprentice as a graphic novel page (in French!): the introduction of FitzChivalry Farseer (who isn't called that yet, at this stage) to Burrich, Buckkeep's stablemaster.

Dave's Old Norse is put on hold for a while. At the end of the summer holidays I had just about done the phonology section, but I have done nothing else with it since. I simply don't have the time or the patience at the minute.

Pardon?

Postcard winners!

We wish to extend our heartfelt gratitude for sending so much joy our way. Frank is still blushing with excitement over the love notes, proposals, propositions, and occasional intimate photos sent from his admirers around the world (China, Norway, Japan, and Poland just this week)! At his request, we blindfolded Justin, one of Frank's BFFs, spun him around in five dozen counterclockwise circles, and asked him to point to ten random postcards/envelopes pasted to the wall. After a brief trip to the bathroom, he chose the following lucky winners, to whom we will give a six-month paid account token (for paid, basic, and plus users) or, for our permanent account holders, a $15 voucher for the LiveJournal gift shop.

So, without further ado, the winners are:

1. seraphene
2. fotog
3. boykitten
4. seshat_6
5. anti_aol
6. lisalees
7. katrinkacat
8. mistyboston
9. _woody_lein
10. another_slender

Bugs, Tweaks, and Enhancements

1. We fixed a bug from the last release that was causing screened comments to become unscreened if they were edited
2. If you happen to be gaming around the corner, check us out on Facebook and be sure to spread the word!
3. We've added new vgifts to celebrate Thanksgiving! Check out our feathered friend, below!

Give more with charitable vgifts

In honor of national adoption month, we're offering a charitable vgift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that provides healthcare and adoption to orphans suffering from life-threatening diseases. LiveJournal will donate 100% of gross proceeds from the sale (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries vgifts in the Virtual Gift shop. We'll keep you posted on how much we raise!

Photos of the week

We're delighted to showcase yet more incredible photos from some of our brilliant LiveJournal photographers around the world. Keep posting (and tagging). And be sure to show some love by commenting on the awesome view at lj_photophile.

Check out this week's photos and more amazing user content after the jump!

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Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. See you next week!

The hoodie I have chosen is navy blue, 36", with the words

printed on my back.
I think it's rather a good one. :)

Looking for that Wikipedia article also found me such cool images as this and this. :D

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.

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.