Platypus Sketchbook

I'm adding a new feature for Typo Friday posts. When ever I see some lettering or signage that strikes my eye around Portland, I will try to snap a picture of it if I can and share it with you folks. For the first one, I thought it appropriate to start with one of my favorite signs in town, and a favorite store as well, the Portland Outdoor Store on SW 3rd. It's a huge store, and you can still buy all manner of western and outdoor wear here, in fact I just bought a new belt and shirt when I stopped by to take these pictures. Enjoy!





The store has been around for a while and the original painted signage on the building is starting to fade a lot.



Close up.

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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Here's a spot illustration that will be in the Portland Mercury this week. The article it accompanies is about an incidence of internal racism in the police department of Gresham, a suburb of Portland.

I've been thinking ahead and started to put together a 2010 calendar already. These little tearaway calendars were all bound on the perfect binder at the IPRC and will later be attached to a screenprinted poster and ready to hang, similar in style to old shop calendars.

That wonderful green, levered machine is a corner-rounder; such a beautiful thing.

Jared Mees of Tender Loving Empire holds up my "Make Music" shirt design which they just released. It's the first two-color t-shirt that TLE has ever printed! It's blue and bright orange on cream American Apparel tees.

Right now it's only available in the store (NW 18th & Lovejoy in Portland), but it will soon be in TLE's Etsy shop.



Also, I added little icons for all my important links on radrobot.org! I've been wanting to do some updates to the site for a while, but I don't have a lot of time, so I'll probably be doing all future updates step by step as I can find the time.

EDIT: If you're reading this, our maintenance is OVER! The problem was not found on our equipment, which means we'll have to work with our ISP to fix this small problem -- which also means another maintenance window in the future -- but at least we have eliminated our side.

Thank you everyone, and a special shout out to rekoil for giving me a great suggestion AND also the opportunity to feel like I've just called in to a local radio station.

Have a great day, night or afternoon wherever you may be.

---

Hi everyone, sorry for the late notice but I'm going to have to do some testing on 1 of our 4 internet circuits TONIGHT; Friday night or Saturday morning depending on which time zone you're in.

Most of us shouldn't notice any impact, though there may be some slowness or lag when I switch traffic on to our other ISP circuits and then another hit when I stop the tests. If a page won't load or times out, try hitting refresh 1 or 2 times and it should load then. If it doesn't work at all... trust me, I'll be typing really really really fast to try to undo whatever I just did. Hopefully you'll have some Halloween candy (if you're in the USA and celebrate that kind of thing) nearby to take away the bitterness of a small site outage. :(

Here's the handy-dandy Website That I Always Use to get a feel for when the maintenance will start in your area. Our site traffic historically dips on Friday afternoons until Saturday morning which is why we tend to pick this time for maintenance work.

( tech details )

status.livejournal.org will, of course be updated before and after the maintenance window. Or else marta will get mad at me. :D

bt

In honor of Halloween being tomorrow and all, I thought this week's Typo Friday should have a spooky flair to it, so I present to you Ryan Heshka's ABC Spookshow, one of my favorite alphabet books. I bought it a few years ago and I just keep coming back to it time and time again for a fun and quick read.

Heshka does a wonderful job of mixing his retro-esque, painted illustration style with both painted and collaged type throughout the book. Each page of the book is very engaging. Here are a few of my favorite pages:







ABC Spookshow is available for a very reasonable price on Amazon.

And of course you should check out more of Ryan Heshka's work at his website, www.ryanheshka.com

I'm working on an alphabet book for my thesis, which I made reference to on Wednesday, so I'm looking for more alphabet books for research, both those geared towards children and not. Anyone have any favorites?

In response to user comments from last week, we want to let you know that we'll remain LJ cut-free for the next month in order to get more eyeballs on our evolving newsletter. As for product coverage, that continues to be our top priority. For more granular detail, however, we recommend you join lj_releases.

Super-tweak for Yandex search

Some of our beta testers expressed privacy concerns using the Yandex search engine. Here's why: Last week, when you ran a search, you could see the usernames (and only the usernames) of everyone who commented on an entry, even if that entry was switched to Private or Friends Only after it was originally indexed. You could NOT see the actual comments from Friends Only or Private posts. In response to your input, we've implemented a fix to keep all user activity currently marked Friends Only or Private completely hidden. If you'd prefer your public content not to be indexed by Yandex, click here and use the settings labeled Search Inclusion (this covers your entire journal) and/or Comment Search Inclusion (which covers comments only). To test drive Yandex search now, click here.

Postcards from the edge

Several years ago, we asked LiveJournal users to send postcards to help us decorate our dull, white-washed offices. Since a good idea warrants repetition, we're at it again (same issue, new address). We hope you'll surround us with LiveJournal love by sending your postcards to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. We'll post snapshots right here. Be sure to include your username, since we'll randomly pick 10 lucky recipients to win free paid account time.

Conquer Writer's Block

Here are some excerpts from this week's most popular question of the day:

If a friend or relative makes a racist or homophobic remark, do you tend to confront them or let it slide? Are you more likely to confront them if it offends you directly or someone else who seems reluctant to speak up?

1. I find it easier to stand up for other people, and i wouldn't let it slide if they made a rude or hurtful comment.
2. Usually if a friend makes a racist or homophobic remark, I tend to let it slide. I think that while i would not say such things myself, I have no right to censor those around me.
3. This happens all of the time. I confront some relatives, but I refuse to if they are drunk or watch Fox News.
4. I'd let it slide if it was just a private remark... As much as I despise bigotry and intolerance, I know that you can't change people-they have to change themselves ...
5. Confront! confront! confront! Politely, but without equivocation.
6. SPEAK UP. Always, always, always speak up. Letting something slide lets ignorance win. No matter if it offends me directly, or someone else, I will confront the speaker and let them know that's not ok.
7. I don't get offended personally. As an immigrant, woman, gay and person of color if I took every single potentially offensive remark seriously I wouldn't get anything done.
8. I punch them in the balls. With my mind.
9. I do speak up, but often very timidly because I feel that I'm white and therefore I don't really have any authority to lecture someone on what's racist and what isn't...
10. Generally speaking, I do not let this shit fly, because it reduces me as a person, to this non-person and it replicates the destructive discourse that makes sure that sexual minorities, racial minorities, women, people with disabilities, trans people and every intersection thereof into something other than human... And sometimes... I'm just too tired to deal with it, so I roll my eyes, make a sarcastic remark and hope the conversation moves on quickly.

For more daily questions and user comments, join writersblock. FYI, we don't want to invade your privacy, so we haven't credited individual users for their responses. We'd appreciate your feedback on this!

Spotlight community of the week

We can't resist making one last midnight trip to the ol' pumpkin patch. If you adore crazy costumes, fiendish festivities, and bottomless candy consumption as much as we do, this community has just what it takes to light up your jack-o-lantern.


halloween_fan

Photos of the week

We received so many incredible photos, we had to close our eyes and point. We uploaded a selection of awesome images at our new lj_photophile community. Please join and start posting (try to keep the width at around 625 for the sake of consistency)! We'd love for you to tell us more about your photos! You can help us select spotlight photos by commenting on your favorites. Once again, we thank you for making our online world more beautiful!

shutter	pancetta	ilya_gorokhov

Curtains

Thanks, again, for tuning in. We look forward to seeing you next week.

There was a bit of interest for these t-shirts at APE the other week, but I finally put them up for sale through my Etsy store.

Available in sizes small-XL for only $15 on Etsy!

Because I'm a senior this year, I have access to cheap studio space through my school. I opted to take it so I could work on some large panels for an upcoming show. Most spaces in the studio building at PNCA are essentially large cubicles, but I am in a larger space shared by four other people and no walls to separate us, which I like a lot better.


Last night, however, I felt the place looked a little too stark and white, so I decided to work on my walls a bit instead. My space is right by the front door of the studio building, so everyone will see this as they leave. There's also an upper floor that looks down into my space; hopefully they like it. I know for sure it has already tricked a few folks into actually looking up to the ceiling.


Speaking of being a senior... that means I'm also working on my final thesis project. I haven't brought it up here yet, but you'll be seeing a lot in the coming months. I can say this right now: it involves a personal exploration of facial hair, which may sound funny at first, but for any of you that actually know me, you realize it's a topic I take very seriously.

But, I'm showing you this awful Photobooth picture for a reason (not just to show off my sweet new glasses). I was issued a challenge, sort of. I will propose my thesis idea to a panel of teachers this December, and will give the final presentation of the work almost exactly six months from today. Due to the theme of my project, my thesis instructor informed me yesterday that I cannot shave for the next six months, but then have to show up with something spectacular for my presentation. That's my kind of challenge, and hey, if it's good enough for Alec Longstreth, it's good enough for me. Unlike Alec though, I will not be completely shaven down at the start; I'm keeping the 'stache cause it's hard to sell moustache wax without it.

PS: Thanks to everyone that threw out ideas on Monday night when I couldn't figure out what to draw. I will get around to drawing some of those but in classic me fashion, I was stricken with a bout of other work as soon as I asked the question.

Any ideas?