Today, using a pen name is less often a creative or playful endeavor than a commercial one. Reticence is not what it used to be. Well, I guess if you limit your inquiry to commercial endeavors, that might seem to be the case?  But pound for pound, it's hard to believe that commercial pseuds outnumber noncommercial ones.  Too bad, the book title sounded interesting.

( Spoilers for most recent Fringe )

It’s the OTW’s March Fundraising Drive!  The theme is “transform the OTW” and I wanted to highlight a couple of interesting posts, because I have nothing to say other than “the organization is doing good things and it would be great if you donated!”--check out lim's story of doing specific work for the OTW, including the logo:

I appreciate its commitment to diversity in these practical ways: I don't have to subscribe to every goal of OTW to participate in and benefit from some of its goals; I don't have to be on a committee and go to meetings to do valuable, interesting work that moves us forward. It's an organisation that can feel frustrating and bureaucratic, but that ultimately has welcomed me, in all most of my erratic weirdnesses.

Arguing, learning, teaching, and sometimes filibustering (htmlibustering?) on accessibility at AO3 has given me, through finding ways through procedural barriers, a theory of accessibility that I apply in all my design work. … [B]ecause of the active efforts of people like Zooey Glass (my chair), Francesca Coppa and Astolat, who set up quiet and single-focus areas for me to work in, set aside time to develop and code one-to-one, and continually, forcefully valued my ideas, I have made things! I have built things! Some of them are quite good! This is the complete opposite of every interaction I have had with any other organisation or institution, so I know how extraordinary it is. It is walking the walk of accessibility. It is the quotidian work of inclusion.

And elz, the co-chair of the OTW Accessibility, Design and Technology Committee, which is the committee responsible for design, coding and testing for the Archive of Our Own, writes:

Thank you to our beta users for being so patient with us. Thank you to the OTW donors who fund the hosting costs. Thank you to everyone who's created an account and posted a work. Thank you to everyone who leaves comments and kudos and makes authors' days a little brighter. Thank you to everyone who's started a collection or run a challenge. Thank you, THANK YOU to everyone who sends in support requests alerting us to problems and suggesting new features.

In short, thank you to everyone who keeps making work for us, and thank you to fandom for continuing to inspire us to keep making things better. We've got a really amazing team of volunteers this year, and there will be some great features and improvements rolling over the next few months - some within the next week! We'd love to hear from you about what else you'd like to see, and our doors are always open to new volunteers, whether you're an artist, a designer, a coder, a good organizer or communicator, or just someone with a lot of enthusiasm. AO3 is a community project, build, funded, maintained and used by fandom, and we all make it happen together.

I’ll just add: thank you to the volunteers who design, code, fix, support, and otherwise make the AO3 work. I can’t code, but I benefit from all their hard work every day. And I love hearing stories like the one about the fan who traveled to Iowa to read the Kirk/Spock zines and find the history of her fandom. I was proud to work on the successful proposal for a noncommercial remix exemption to the DMCA’s anticircumvention provisions, and I plan to be back in 2012 asking for it again, with the support of the OTW. You can donate, and maybe pick up a mug, here.

Jason Mittell on how to rip DVD clips for educators using their new DMCA exemption.

zvi linked to an excellent author website.

A 3-year-old recites Litany, by Billy Collins.

( Jewish sweetener entrepreneurs and JP Morgan )

( Oh, fandom: racist assumptions edition )

OK, even better exam answer than the previous one: “O’Neill in deeding his house (and probably fishless pond) to DJ is attempting to and does create a Life Estate.” Now that’s a Stargate fan!

In other news, Gmail keeps putting a deleted conversation about a story back in my inbox. Google, have you concluded that we’re not done yet?

Thanks, sol_se, for the birthday gift! I haven’t been getting LJ notifications for the past few days, so I apologize for anything else I missed. 

The AO3 team seeks fanartist input on how art should be hosted the archive. They are looking for use cases (I think I have the lingo right!) and features that would be useful to fanartists and those interested in fanart. (You can currently embed images, but they have to be hosted offsite.)

Forgot to mention: ( More on Dark Side of the Moon )

My Yuletide gift was Chuck, When He Catches His Reflection on Accident, Ellie finding out about Chuck. Her reactions, and the reactions of the other characters, are spot-on, and bonus points for remembering what a doctor would do under the circumstances.

I also wanted to thank elynross and astolat, the amazing administrators of the Yuletide challenge, as well as the coders at the Archive of Our Own [ETA, reminded by jadelennox: and the great folks at OTW Systems, who do largely invisible and completely necessary technical work to keep the computers talking to each other], who kept slogging under heavy fire. The previous software was held together with spit and baling wire, neither of which are pleasant to work with (ick and ow). Given that the transition to the AO3 coincided with the continued uptick in participation, surviving was its own Yuletide miracle, and offers the prospect of easier future years.

Since a lot of people are doing "the decade in review" things, here's a retrospective of Yuletide challenges (pun intended): We begin with 300+ participants!  Yuletide was huge in 2003! Too bad the software couldn’t handle smart quotes.  .txt only to be sure it was right, no takebacks!   In 2004, with over 500 participants, the site was hacked due to the host's failure, despite astolat's warning, to correct a security vulnerablity. Result: server move mid-uploading crunch,  with extra fun propagating a new domain name, and resulting comment glitches. 2005: Growth continues apace, with ~850 participants. Still no editing without modly intervention.  2006: Delays due to server load; incrementally backing up after every single story was uploaded, necessary because of creakiness of database, took time.  There were bizarre uploading database issues, the kind of things it takes a computer to screw up.  Last minute archive lockdown!  Still no editing without modly intervention. And who else recalls the spam comments flood of 2006?

2007, with [edit with info from elynross] 1266 people signed up: Remember having to save your emailed comments, because otherwise you couldn’t respond after the author reveal?  Heavy server load issues are scary.  Yes, modly intervention still required for edits.  This one’s just a well-titled post: We’re working on the problem! (At one point, a couple hundred stories were stranded in database hell.)  I wrote you a story but the server ated it. Strangely prolific author, whose name just happens to be the first on the list.  The archive goes down Dec. 28, and not in the good way.

2008, another year of growth [edited: 1599 signups]: Pre-Dec. 25: Various small but nervewracking bugs, heavy server loads, representative database crashes, including one when astolat herself had crashed, leading to database nervous breakdown, and up and down again (note that these aren’t even all the instances, just a representative sample: something needed to change). Post-Dec. 25, server load still heavy, links still wonky due to size of database, server load so heavy that the quicksearch links couldn’t even be fully generated. Slowness due to heavy server load continues through the author reveal. 

From what I observed from the outside, this year there were the kinds of bugs one expects on new software with a new posting interface, but what I didn't see--characteristic of past years--was a database overloaded and broken down merely by attempted uploads as the deadline approached.  The server's definitely been hammered today with people reading, just as the former server was last year, but at least there are greater resources available now. I’m exhausted just thinking about the huge amount of work, under extraordinary time pressure, the switch to the AO3 represents. I’m really glad there are more wonderful coders around now to share some of the load.

1. Deep fannish thought of the day: Nobody ever inquires into the identificatory position of the guy watching lesbian (quote unquote) porn—we don’t talk about him as torn between the positions “do I want to do her or do I want to be her?”  (Are we that uncomfortable with women in the subject position "director"?)

2. ( Chuck talk )

3. ( Legend of the Seeker premiere )

4. Coffee and Consent: From Until Someone Wakes Up, a play written by Carolyn Levy and a group of Macalester College students:

Waiter: Would you like some coffee?
Woman: Yes, please.
Waiter: Just say when. (Starts to pour.)
Woman: There. (He keeps pouring.) That's fine. (He pours.) Stop! (She grabs the pot; there is coffee everywhere.)
Waiter: Yes, ma'am.
Woman: Well, why didn't you stop pouring?
Waiter: Oh, I wasn't sure you meant it.
Woman: Look, of course I meant it! I have coffee all over my lap! You nearly burned me!
Waiter: Forgive me, ma'am, but you certainly looked thirsty. I thought you wanted more.
Woman: But -
Waiter: And you must admit, you did let me start to pour.

So, we own the servers now, and we're a month away from Open Beta on the Archive of Our Own.  There's no better time to donate to the OTW.  Not only is it tax-deductible in the US (consult your tax laws elsewhere), but now we have tchotchkes!  general_jinjur  made some great illustrations of the mug in use.  ( Three great tastes that taste great together )

Be like Sarah (though probably not like Hamlet): get yours now!

I’ve been thinking a lot about this fan/sex survey thing going around. I found the kink_bingo mods’ response compelling, but I have a couple of concerns to add.

( IRBs and visibility )

Comments on LJ