Greetings

[liv]

With some trepidation, I made a long post about abortion. I was slightly expecting that people would yell at me for diverging from everything that is Right and Good, and probably defriend me for my horrible opinions. In fact, the opposite occurred. Lots of people said very sensible things and even more were complimentary! It was linked fairly widely, and far from losing friends, I actually gained several new readers on the basis of that post.

So, welcome to you all. I'm afraid not all my posts are carefully thought out essays like that. If you want to stick around, great, you're very welcome. And if you don't, no hard feelings. I welcome comments; I don't always get around to replying to them quickly. I don't automatically add everyone who friends me, but I do read everyone I have on my friends list. If I don't friend you back it'snothing personal, just the perennial problem of having too much to read and not enough time. There's very little that I friends lock anyway, so you won't miss much.

Not only is every day drama-free defriending day here, every day is also commenting on old posts amnesty day. I get notifications of old comments and I sometimes bring a discussion back to the top if it gets really interesting. I do recommend people go back and read the comments on the abortion post that inspired this, even if LJ has annoyingly collapsed threads and let the post fall off friends pages.

Anyway, it occurred to me I should probably introduce myself. So I'll do the talking about my journal meme, which I have done in the past but years ago.

My journal's name is Livredor. It's pronounced as French, Livre d'Or, and it means "golden book". I wrote an explanation for why I chose the name, if you're interested. In some ways it wasn't a great choice, because (not understanding the nature of LJ) I intended to be the name of the journal, not a handle for my own identity. But there are a bunch of people now who know me as Liv, so why not? (It's also slightly unhelpful that livre d'or is French for guestbook, which makes it a bit of a pain to search for my journal without turning up every single French language personal or business site on the whole internet, but there you go.)

My display name is Not sheepish, but individ-ewe-al. It's somewhat of a weak pun on my real first name, which is Rachel, meaning ewe in Hebrew. Also reflecting the fact that I value individuality very highly.

I don't want to use my real name online because I'm pretty open but I don't want to be googlable. If you think you might know me IRL feel free to email me (@lj) explaining who you are and I'll confirm.

My subtitle is Feeding the Curiosaur. It comes from a remark made by taimatsu for asking a lot of questions about someone else's specialist area. Curiosity is a big driving force in my life and I really like the expression.

My friends page is called Fundamental Interconnectedness. It's a Douglas Adams reference, and it also reflects the fact that my friends list is people who are simply connected to me, some of them as friends and some of them as interesting writers or acquaintances.

My layout is widelines by cmshaw. It rocks. It was built with functionality in mind rather than prettiness but I do also like its clean lines.

My icons are somewhat thematic, though not as organized as they could be. Most of them are unique and not really for sharing, though I can't imagine why anyone would want a picture of me anyway! Here's a further explanation:

<td align="center"></td><td>Keyword: portrait. An actual picture of me. I use it when I want to be very present as myself, which often means serious or solemn stuff.</td>

	Keyword: teapot. darcydodo found a greetings card with an image of a woman looking amazingly like me. I use it for being welcoming and friendly and chatty.
	Keyword: teeeeeeeeea. darcydodo made it for my birthday. It represents my tea obession and my habit of stretching out vowels. Another Douglas Adams reference, too. I use it for celebratory or mildly geeky posts and comments.
	Keyword: letters. Another birthday present from darcydodo. It's for pretty things and linguistics geekery.
	Keyword: words. My Jewish icon. It's a snippet from the book of Deuteronomy written in the traditional script used for sacred writing.
	Keyword: ewe. I made this myself using a found image. I use it when I'm being argumentative or political.
	Keyword: p53. A representation of the protein I used to work on, used for biology, work-related stuff and science more generally.
	Keyword: likeness. Made using one of those online identikit toys, then tweaked by me and darcydodo to look more like me. I have in fact been recognized by it when meeting people in person for the first time! Long plait, purple clothes, tea obession. I use it to identify myself.
	Keyword: bunneh. I used to volunteer in LJ Support, and this is something of an in-joke. I use it for being helpful or for talking about LJ. wyntarvox made the bouncing bunny.
	Keyword: Amélie. My only fannish icon. I use it when I'm feeling mischievous, or for things that are endearing in the way the film is.
	Keyword: livre d'or. darcydodo found this image and she and emmavescence made it into an icon because it had my name on already! I use it for talking about books in general and how they're important to me.
	Keyword: yum. monanotlisa took the photo this is based on. More tea obsession, this one for talking about food and parties.
	Keyword: body. I never knew that Renoir painted nudes as well as clothed women, and his model looks a fair bit like me. I use it for talking about my body, my sexuality, my health and similar.
	Keyword: bookies. Didn't really need two separate icons for books, but darcydodo made this and it's too gorgeous to get rid of. For talking about specific books.
	Keyword: hands. I made this as a joke for rysmiel, but rysmiel didn't want it so I decided to adopt it myself. I use it for silliness that depends on intellectual humour, and for talking about connectedness.

What else? I'm very proud of the diversity of my friends list, not just geographical but in terms of age, background, opinion and so on. If you're new here you're welcome to introduce yourself, or to keep quiet and just lurk if you prefer. Oh, and if you have a topic you'd like me to write a proper thoughtful essay about, you're welcome to suggest. I will take you up if the topic grabs my attention. And that goes for people I already know as well as the newbies.

Comments

[emma]

Hee, I'd forgotten I helped make that icon. And mullenkamp is the actual creator of the bunnies, though Wyn may have been the one to put it on your icon.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

"I use it for silliness that depends on intellectual humour"

Such a shame I can't filter by icon :)

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

How can choose an icon? I know I can download different once but I am just able to put in one.

[liv]

OK. Go to the icon page, here: http://www.livejournal.com/editpics.bml.

Supposing you want to upload a new icon, let's say a picture of a banana. Open a new window and find the picture you want. Imagine it's this one, for example: http://www.inkart.com/pages/food/banana.html (That actual one won't work, it's far too big!). Now right click on the picture and choose "View image". You should get to a page with just the picture on it, such as this: http://www.inkart.com/images/lineart/banana.gif. Copy that URL and paste it into the box where it says "From URL:" at the top of the LJ icon editing page. Click the button beside that box to select it.

Now, immediately underneath that is a box that says "Keywords". Type the keyword "banana" (or whatever you want the name of your picture to be.) Click "Proceed".

Now if you go to your icons page, which is at: [http://www.livejournal.com/allpics.bml?user=curious_reader], you will see that you have two pictures, one of a kitten labelled Default, and one of a banana labelled banana. Go back to the editing page. This time, scroll down past the uploading section to where it says "Current Userpics". Find the kitten and type "kitten" in the keywords box. Go to the bottom of the page and click "Save settings".

Now, when you go to yoru icon summary page, you will see the kitten labelled "kitten" and the banana labelled "banana". Next time you go to update your journal, at the bottom of the form you will find an option called "Userpic". You will be able to select either "kitten" or "banana" from the dropdown menu. Same when you post a comment: where it says "Picture to use", you can choose from the names you have assigned.

Does that make sense? If not, poke me again and I'll explain further.

[sea-bright.livejournal.com]

Did someone mention userpics of bananas? :-)

(Not strictly relevant, I know... but I like this icon, but somehow always manage to forget to use it!)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

That is really very cute.

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

I am trying picking something else now.

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

My badger one now. The bearhug worked. So this should work as well. It is dead easy.

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

Whoops, I didn't change picture to use. I try again to do the fawn.