Sabrina's Creative Journal

To be honest, this is just a call to see if any one else on my friends list has dreamwidth accounts since the last time I asked - if you do, feel free to friend sabrina.

To be honest, after that advertising atrocity LiveJournal gifted me with this morning, I'm really tempted to make more of my base postings there and simply cross post to LJ. I think I need to spend some time really figuring out how to read my flist over there and if I can do that...

Apparently I do NaNoWriMo on odd years. Why do I say this? Well, mainly because that seems to be what I actually have in my tags as years that I actually attempted NaNoWriMo, and yes, this year will be one of them.

I'm thinking I'm going to put some writing up on my dreamwidth, but because it will be original fiction and not fan fiction, I will friend lock it. If you'd like to see it, let me know and I'll add you. I believe I can add access to an open ID login as well so if you have an IJ or LJ account and don't have (or want) a Dreamwidth, that can probably be arranged. Or at least, I'll play around with it.

In the meantime, I posted up more old Star Wars fan fiction, and got a kick out of reading parts of "Lighthouse", which was the Buffy & Wilco fan fiction that Rika and I wrote together. So far that's the only thing on my website that's not now also archived at my Dreamwidth -- and it is partially there, but the html on it was crappy, so I have to clean it up before posting and thus it's not complete yet.

This isn't directly a fandom issue, but I believe it does impact fandom in a round about way, so I'm going to post it here as well.

The most August/September issue of American Libraries contained the article The Download Dilemma, dealing specifically with music, but I believe is extraordinarily relevant as we move into a world where digital media is becoming more and more common whether that be in music (where it is highly prevalent), books, films, or television.

The difficulty with download is access. When you purchase a physical copy of an item, the rights you have are reasonably straightforward and clear. However, most digital downloads - even as places like Amazon have gotten more realistic about content management - have fairly stringent rules for use.

In this case, the article is speaking specifically to albums that are only available as downloads and the conundrum the author presents is, I believe, a hugely important one to anyone who is interested in art. If we leave the preservation of artistic mediums in the hands of the publishers, you will soon run into the problem of out of print books, CDs, records. Need I say Disney vault here? When a film is in the vault the only way to access it is video rental, libraries, and others who own a physical copy of the film and are willing to allow you to borrow it and introduce it The Little Mermaid to your little girl. It's not unusual for items to go out of print either purposefully or because they simply are not seen as money makers. Without the libraries of the world, how does someone have access to that information?

And so, as we move head on into the digital world, these are the issues that I think we must grapple with and demand reasonable behaviour from the publishing companies.

A few non-spoilery overall sorts of comments. I really enjoyed this film. Pretty much, anything that is not as bad as Prisoner of Azkaban was, is a good film for me, and this one managed to be a good film. There is something nagging at me a little bit, but I can't figure out what it is so I'm going to ignore that for the time being.

I've read all 7 books so consider this to be spoilers for all books as well as for the film.

( HBP Spoilers Ahoy )

Overall, really enjoyed it. I have quibbles, but PoA remains my least favourite film, and I think this one remains pretty even with OotP in terms of having enjoyed it.

We interrupt your morning for some fangirlish squeeing.

Narcissa's hair aside, the WB set department seems to have done well. Particularly, they seem to have gotten Spinner's End precisely right. Look at all of the books!!

And now tea.

Okay this brainstorming tool is possibly the most awesome thing ever. I will never be able to complain about not knowing something for a writing prompt ever again.

I keep coming up with things about Dreamwidth that I really freaking like, such as, oh, the fact that I can actually code usernames to redirect to insanejournal (hafren) or livejournal (sabrinanymph). So far it's the little things that just make me go, oh, why hasn't someone thought of that before, thank you, and I am happy.

And yes, I know this has absolutely nothing to do with creative writing stuff, it's just a squee.

I've long been looking for a creative dump. I use my permanent account on LiveJournal for actual journaling, but so many of the older creative entries are now flocked, and I'd actually like to move my journal more towards a flocked status consistently.

So this seemed like a possibility that I wanted to play with.