So, new site design. Whee, pretty! Wonder how well this particular iteration will run when it's open in more than one tab.

Oh, bad news. Collections is now intimately tied into the CSS for pretty much everything else on the website, so it's not so easy to get rid of. The whole "middle click and it picks up the deviation even though your mouse didn't move" bug is still very much in place. Thanks a WHOLE LOT, DeviantArt.

Apparently here at DeviantArt, we price ourselves in form above function, even if the form BREAKS the function. This is why designers will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes...

- edit 1 -
It keeps getting better! The new message center? Yeah, I used to work my way through my deviations 100 at a time. Now? Fft, about 20. This'll make it so fast and easy to get through 418!... That was sarcasm, by the way. Jesus, let's get all Web 2.0 even if it means the users are screwed royally. I hate buzz words and "pretty."

The only, ONLY thing that I approve of out of this entire redesign is something that DeviantArt should've implimented years ago. Sorting by oldest first.

WEB TWO POINT OH BISHES!

Dear DeviantArt,

Obviously people complaining about your incompatible Collections feature were ignored. I did find a solution that dealt with it, though, so I guess that evens the score a little. However, it seems you keep changing the filename of the javascript file that makes Collections tick.

Currently, the file to block is:
http:// st.deviantart .com/css/deviant.js/40.js (without spaces)

Sadly (?), it also broke the emotions feature on comments. But I can middle click to open a deviation without having the collections dropdown appear until I click somewhere else.

I believe, as they say in a stand off... "Your move."

Dear DeviantArt staff,
Because you're engaged in lifting as much revenue out of advertisements by using a script to reload them every FIVE SECONDS, you're slowing my browser down immeasurably. And since you're so fond of bannings, I thought I'd borrow your policy.

209.62.176.153
38.96.182.20
64.74.197.88
66.77.65.68

Yes, that's right. Those IPs belong to the servers of the advertising companies that serve some of the ads to your pages. They now reside within the blocked content list of my browser's settings. The bannings shall continue until morale improves.

The nature of this journal is to create a minor raise in awareness, but also just to see if it sparks any conversation.

I've pondered creating an account for my laptop so that I don't have to browse DeviantArt as an anonymous user when I'm not at my desktop, but I haven't yet. For those that aren't aware, if you're not logged in, every few dozen pages or so you get treated to a full screen ad that you have to "click to continue" in one corner. Generally these are for DeviantWear, DeviantArt's clothing line. Anyway, there's an ad for a particular item that sparked this, however. This one.

I'll gloss on the price point for a moment, but that's not my core objection. $20 is a bit steep for a bloody t-shirt that you'll rarely wear. My primary objection to this is, hey, let's a t-shirt showing that we have a history of making controversial bans, and that's funny. Hilarious, even. We shouldn't be ashamed of a community where bannings are common and frequently contested. And our flippant attitude toward that won't affect how people feel about the community at all!

Sorry, I utterly disagree here and find it rather disgusting that they take bans so lightly as to make jokes about them. What, exactly, does that say about your community and your moderation policies?

Just noticed I'm progressing smoothly toward four digits.
...how inna hell'd that happen again? O.o

Getting tired of my job where they over-work me to the point of burnout, so maybe I'll have... well, a LOT of free time soon. Maybe not.

Anyway, to bring relevance to this, I'm thinking about uploading some of my other "works." I'm not an artist, you see, and while I've written stories, I'm too critial of myself and embarassed by them to put them anywhere public.

However, I love to pick up skills here and there in order to make customizing anything electronic easier. For example, cellphone wallpapers and ringtones, audio messages, and Windows tweaks. I've been wondering if maybe I should post a few of those, and maybe some descriptions on how I did it for people that are trying to learn such things.

The problem with that is that what I'm producing generally isn't a completely original work. I've put together a voicemail message using audio files that I'm pretty sure are free as in thought and I know are free as in beer, but dA's policies may not be so gentle.

I could probably get away with posting my laptop'a desktop, just to show people what you can accomplish with Litestep and a little help file skimming. I can't get comfortable using litestep on any other computer, but I can't imagine my laptop without it...

Thoughts? Ideas? Threats? Input of any kind?

Yeah, like anybody's going to read this