is it the jacket? because it should be.

LJ gives users the option to cross-post any LJ post/comment they make to Facebook and Twitter...even comments they make on other people's journals and protected entries, with a link back to the original post
~ via chaosraven. Just...ugh. This is why DW is awesome. I use FB to game sometimes, but that's it. Even that already compromises my personal information. Here are a few reasons to abhor Facebook:

Facebook disregards privacy, and says that the modern default is now "social"
~ Facebook makes changes in its code and privacy settings so freaking often, it's hard to keep track. Unfortunately, these changes rarely benefit users, and often default to sharing personal information until the affected users actually take the trouble to fiddle with their confusing Account Settings and choose to opt out. By then, the information had already been shared, mostly to advertisers and application developers.

A software developer showed how much information FB shares
~ and then Facebook sued him.

Trusting FB with your data means also trusting every individual developer whose FB application you've installed
~ FB shares user information with all the apps users have let crawl all over their profiles, and these apps are allowed to keep this information even after the user deletes the application.

FB intentionally makes it difficult to truly delete a user account
~ FB easily lets you deactivate your account, which isn't the same as deleting. It makes it look like deletion, though. And once you've figured out how to actually delete your account, they won't really delete it until after 14 days. If you access your FB account in any way during those 14 days, it gets reactivated and the deletion is canceled. FB also further claims that any IP content that you shared on FB becomes their property as long as it is still being shared by someone else who hasn't deleted their account.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of FB, is a hacking jerk
~ From the early days of FB: "Mark used his site, TheFacebook.com, to look up members of the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson. Then he examined a log of failed logins to see if any of the Crimson members had ever entered an incorrect password into TheFacebook.com. If the cases in which they had entered failed logins, Mark tried to use them to access the Crimson members' Harvard email accounts. He successfully accessed two of them. In other words, Mark appears to have used private login data from TheFacebook to hack into the separate email accounts of some TheFacebook users." This [isn't an] [isolated incident], either.

How Dreamwidth's reading page finally convinced me to quit Facebook by dee
~ A user's account of how just about anyone can access highly personal information through FB.

Also, if anyone wants a Dreamwidth invite code, I have a bunch to spare. Just throw me a note/comment/whathaveyou ♥.

Fandom: Assassin's Creed
Character(s): Leonardo da Vinci, Altair Ibn-La'Ahad/Malik Al-Sayf
Rating: G
Notes: just two rough sketches. ♥ summerbreeze21 for crits ♥ (you can blame her for the AltMal, too) I haven't used this brush in a long time o.o;





Refs:
Ornery pigeon
pretty hand <3

I swear Renaissance history is a slasher. Leonardo, Cesare Borgia, and Machiavelli were all in Romagna in 1502. ♥ ♥ ♥

This is going to be very weird and fragmented, sorry in advance. Need to type these out before I forget, though.

I just woke up from a really weird dream involving ghosts of relatives I didn't know (one was a little girl, typical Pinay features, fair-skinned though. but black hair and black eyes wearing a white dress), and the dead body of my grandfather lying on a sofa.

I forgot where the little girl fits in, but she was supposedly a relative who had been falsely imprisoned as a child and was haunting that house.

There was a scene where someone dropped by with a lot of gifts. Think it was one of my aunts. I had a feeling they were gifts for people with recently deceased friends or family members. One of them was this large, fancy sheet -- lacy and white. My grandmother took that and went over to where my grandfather's body was (I didn't know it was there until she went to it -- I didn't even know whoever it was was dead until I saw who it was), then she gingerly laid the sheet on him and very carefully tucked the corners of one side around his head.

It was nighttime throughout my entire dream. I can't remember the last time I had a dream where the time of day was defined.

Another part of the dream involved walking around this really small, open-air, makeshift circus thing with my sister, who was trying out various booth games. I remember feeling that there was something very weird about the place, otherworldly, but sister seemed oblivious to it, so I just trailed after her being all watchfully paranoid. I vividly remembered there was this booth where one had to hit the ball (looked like a tennis ball) squarely into the rectangular marks on an old, peeling vertical board (the balls get stuck to the board) to get prizes.

She managed to shoot one squarely in, but a tall, thin teenage boy whose face I couldn't see (he was hunched over and it was dark) tried to take the remaining shots from her, eager to play. She wouldn't allow him to and admonished him, and I remember feeling a spike of fear during that, that angering that silent boy was NOT a good idea. The boy didn't do anything though, but he continued to watch standing to one side while she kept playing.

She finished up and moved on to the next booth. I asked, "What about the prizes?" ("Pa'no 'yung prizes?")

She said, "Later." ("Mamaya na lahat.")

But the booths didn't have prizes. Or if they did, they weren't anything we could touch or carry. Sister kept playing the games despite the lack of incentive, and that struck me as very dangerous at the time.

Like most dreams, more crap happened, but I can't remember any of them anymore. I woke up feeling very weak and heavy, no strength in my fingers. I was waiting for my body to catch up to my being awake and thought the dream was an ill omen, but no one was interacting with the dead right? Then I remembered my grandmother and got pretty fucking worried.

It doesn't help that before I went to sleep, I was aware of my friend IMing me from the comp, but I couldn't make myself go over there and check. I felt like I got dragged down to sleep after that. When I woke up, my body felt like it wanted to go back to sleep, but I was resisting. I couldn't make a fist with my hand, though, and my head felt cloudy.

I'm fairly superstitious (to a degree), especially involving ghosts. I hope this dream was just my subconscious screwing with me, though. And the dream didn't have that "Shit, this is real. This is actually happening" thing I felt when my mom spoke to me soon after her death. So there's that, I guess.

I have very mixed feelings about people using a culture foreign to their own if it's merely for the sake of having something "ethnic" or "exotic" in a story. On one hand, it's extremely flattering that others are taking an interest -- and if the story is engaging enough, it might even get more people to do the same. On the other, it has so much potential for encouraging stereotypes and spreading wrong information.

( I just have a lot of feelingz )

This poster is also awesome. Nabbed from nothingtrue:



And Altair apparently doesn't really mean eagle, but I'mma stop nitpicking now.

fixed the broken image links in the previous post >.>;

Apollo Justice Case 5 (Gyakuten Saiban fan game)
~ from gyakuten_saiban. Fan-made and professional-looking Ace Attorney game, set post-Apollo Justice. Promises 7+ hours of gameplay. Check out the thread for more details + the download link. The game also needs the PyWright Casemaker in order to run, which can be downloaded here (place the Turnabout Substitution folder into the "games" folder of the PyWright app, then run PyWright).

Do Big Cats Like Catnip?
~ nabbed from wikdsushi ♥ Big cats being drunk cute!

( 'adult English' according to Date )

Found this in my inbox a few days ago. Kingdom of Loathing writes one of the most adorable "come back and play our game again" e-mail. XD

( I figured I'd make you a mix CD, but I couldn't decide what 'our song' was... )

[Hands On Firefox 4 Beta]
~ Mozilla seems to have taken a few cues from Google Chrome, and improved upon them if the reviews hold true. A little wary of bugs at this point, but thinking about trying it out soon.

[Super Mario on Violin]
~ So awesome. It's not just a Super Mario music cover, the guy plays the whole playthrough music + sound effects with his violin. XD

[Dolls and Toys that Creep Us Out]
~ Doesn't really look all that scary when they're laid out like this on a bright screen, but I'm sure these things would scare the living crap out of me in a darkened room.

[Eight Fairy Tales and Their Not-So-Happy Endings]
~ I'm surprised this didn't include a mention in Cinderella where one of the stepsisters cut off the heel of her own foot so that it would fit into the shoe and fool the prince. Two bastard birds ratted her out while they were on horseback, and the prince saw that her shoe was filling up with blood. He just rode back home and returned her then demanded more of the stepmother's daughters ("SHOW ME MOAR DAUGHTERS, BITCH, THIS AIN'T THE RIGHT ONE"). :/ Not an ending I guess, but close enough.

[Some dude deep-fried his motherboard]
~ ... then played Quake 3 with it. And made fries during.

[Nailing jelly to a wall: is it possible?]
~ A bit old, but I love the amount of time and dedication spent on making this post.

[Details on the Stabbing at the San Diego Comic Con]
~ IN THE EYE. IN THE MOTHERFREAKING EYE. T_T

[White Collar's Tim DeKay and Matt Bomer doing a dance game]
~ White Collar's boys continue to be adorable outside of their roles ♥

[(Bliss Scanlation) Revaival]
~ That's not a typo on my part, that really is the title. One of the most amazing Sengoku Basara doujinshi ever. Chapter 4 almost made me baw (then again, I baw easy). Kojuuro ♥. Chapter 5 still in the process of being scanlated, looks like.

[First Look at Moffat's Sherlock]
~ Upcoming BBC series on a modern-day revival of Sherlock Holmes, from Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.

["yeah that's not what I was looking for at all"]
~ Missing cat = not funny. I hope the lady found her kitty again. But couldn't resist David's sense of humor in this post. His entire site's worth a browse for some fun, everyday humor.

[Official Vampires Suck Trailer]
~ "From the guys who couldn't sit through another vampire movie" XD

And just 'cause it is awesome, Leyte Dance Theater's version of Singkil:

I think just about every elementary/high school student here in the Philippines has had a go at a version of Singkil (back in the day, anyway). If it wasn't Singkil, it was Tinikling or Pandango sa Ilaw. Or one of the harvest dances. Anyway. Good times.

Considering making a few pimp posts soon (Sengoku Basara and probably Yoroiden Samurai Troopers). ♥

I honestly hope I'm not the only one who thought of this when this shot of Kojuro popped up in the ending sequence. D:

Because steampunk-ish!Adam is too delicious not to share (courtesy of summerbreeze21):