Tag: howto

Howto: Crosspost from Tumblr to LiveJournal

https://www.tumblr.com/fiddlingfrog/42302608235/howto-crosspost-from-tumblr-to-livejournal

So there’s actually an easy way to crosspost your Tumblr posts to LiveJournal. It’s not automatic, but it’s not complicated either.

step 1

step 2
The first step is to copy the URL for the RSS feed of your Tumblog. Then, visit http://www.livejournal.com/syn to create a new LJ syndicated feed of your Tumblr. Note that creation of syndicated feeds is a paid account feature, but if you don’t have a paid account you can ask anyone who does to create the feed for you.

step 3
You’ll probably then be given the opportunity to name the new feed. If instead you go directly to the add feed page, that means that somebody else created the feed already. That person should be listed on the new-style profile page for the feed, so maybe get to know them.

step 4
Now take a look at the syndication page for your new feed. You’ll have to wait a little while before LJ grabs all of your Tumblr entries, but once it does everything you’ve posted or reblogged in the last couple of weeks will be listed here. You should only have to wait an hour or so, but if a whole day goes by without any of your Tumblr posts showing up, open up a Support request to ask about it.
When your entries show up, pick one from the list and visit its LJ home.

step 5
Once there you should click on the Share button at the top of the post, and then click on LiveJournal. If you’ve friended your own Tumblr feed, you should see a Share link when viewing your friends page.

step 6a
After you’ve clicked on Share a new tab should open up with the Update Journal page, pre-filled with your Tumblr post. What’s pretty neat is that this keeps photosets together, keeps quote pyramids at the bottom of the post together, and properly links everything just as it did on Tumblr. On the downside, YouTube videos and sound files won’t work when you Share them inside of LJ.
Before you post your entry on LJ, you can delete the very first line, the one that says where on LJ you shared it from. Syndicated entries on LJ only stick around for a couple of weeks before they evaporate, so there’s not a lot of point to keeping that information. It’s also not necessary to get rid of it, I just think it’s tidier.

Simpler ScrapBook backup bookmarklets

For anyone worried about the upcoming ScrapBook transition, and who is trying to back up your hundreds or thousands of photos, I’ve come up with a bookmarklet to make the job a bit simpler.
Edit, June 6: Now with bookmarklet for new Scrapbook
Edit, June 11: And now with a fix for leading/trailing underscore names.

Step 1

Old ScrapBook
Just copy this code:

javascript:var%20links=document.getElementsByTagName('a');for(var%20i=0,link;link=links[i];i++){var%20splits=link.href.split('/');link.href=splits.splice(0,splits.length-1).join('/');}void(0);

into a new bookmark on your bookmark bar and press it whenever you’re viewing one of your gallery pages in old ScrapBook. It’ll convert all the links that led to thumbnails, or image description pages, into direct links to the full-size image.

For instance, say I’m viewing this gallery page and want to quickly download all the images. After pressing the bookmarklet all the links that led to an image page will now lead directly to the full-size image.

New Scrapbook
Copy this code:

javascript:function%20sub100(s){return%20s.replace('100.','original.');}A='';var%20z=open().document;for(i=0;i<document.images.length;i++){A=document.images[i].src;var%20splits=A.split('/');if(splits[2]=="ic.pics.livejournal.com"){z.write('<a%20href="'+sub100(A)+'">'+sub100(A)+'<br>');}}z.close();

into a new bookmark on your bookmark bar and press it whenever you’re viewing an album page in new Scrapbook. It’ll open up a new tab filled with links to the fullsize version of all the images on that page of your album (plus the fullsize version of any cover images for the albums that appear on the right-hand side of the screen).

Step 2

And now that you have a page that is filled with links to the full-size images you can use lots of other webtools to quickly download all the images. I recommend using the DownThemAll!! extension for Firefox. Not only is it simplicity to download all the images off a page, but it keeps the original dates and times of the image and it’ll point out when it’s failed to save the full-sized image. I used this extension a few days ago to help a friend download her ScrapBook images; I downloaded almost a thousand images in under a couple hours and I knew instantly which images had already failed.


If you want a different option for saving the images there are plenty of ways to go about it. You could use a second bookmarklet to display all the images those links lead to and then you could save the webpage locally (see below). Or you could open all the images in new tabs and use the Save Images Firefox extension to save them all. And of course, there’s always the old standby of right click, clicking “save link as”.

Below: Okay, so I cobbled together an option for step 2 of the project: a way to display all those linked images on a single webpage. Paste the following code:

javascript:(function(){var x,z,i;function linkIsSafe(u){if(u.substr(0,7)=='mailto:')return false;if(u.substr(0,11)=='javascript:')return false;return true;}function htmlEscape(s){s=s.replace(/%26/g,'%26amp;');s=s.replace(/%3E/g,'%26gt;');s=s.replace(/%3C/g,'%26lt;');return s;}z=window.open().document;z.writeln('%3Cp%3EImages%20linked%20to%20by%20'+htmlEscape(location.href)+':%3C/p%3E%3Chr%3E');x=document.links;for(i=0;i%3Cx.length;++i)if(linkIsSafe(x[i].href))z.writeln('%3Cp%3E'+x[i].innerHTML+'%20('+htmlEscape(x[i].href)+')%3Cbr%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22'+x[i].href.replace(/%22/g,'%26quot;')+'%22%3E%3C/p%3E');z.writeln('%3Chr%3E');z.close();})();

into a new bookmarklet. This will display every full-size image that a gallery page links to and display it on a single page. If your computer is a bit older, or if you have a lousy internet connection, this could crush your browser so please try it on a smaller gallery first before you try downloading 25 or so images at a time.

Leading/trailing underscore in usernames, Scrapbook won’t display

If your username starts or ends with an underscore, you may have noticed that your Scrapbook won’t display right now. This is because of the underscore. Everywhere else on the site, links that look like name.livejournal.com for everyone else look like users.livejournal.com/name for you. It’s for technical reason, and you can blame ICANN as much as anybody for it, but the upshot is that LJ long ago disallowed people from making new usernames that start/end with underscores. So long ago that it looks like the engineers working on new Scrapbook forgot that it was even an issue.
So until they get that fixed, if you want to see your Scrapbook you need to fix the URLs yourself. Click on the Scrapbook link in your profile and you’ll end up at a page with a big blue box promoting Scrapbook and a URL like this: [http://users.livejournal.com/_NAME_/pics/catalog . Change the URL so it reads [ http://_NAME_.livejournal.com/pics/catalog ]. Then, create a new bookmark in your toolbar and copy the following code in for the destination (after changing EXAMPLEUSERNAME to your own username first):

javascript:var links=document.getElementsByTagName('a');for(var i=0,link;link=links[i];i++){link.href=link.href.replace('users.livejournal.com/EXAMPLEUSERNAME','EXAMPLEUSERNAME.livejournal.com');}void(0);

Clicking this bookmarklet changes all the links on the page so that they all go to the http://name.livejournal.com/ version of the URLS. You’ll have to click the bookmarklet for every page you visit in your Scrapbook, but at least you’ll be able to look around and use it.

Technical notes:
The first bookmarklet for old ScrapBook is really a very basic JavaScript. It takes the URL of any link on the page and throws out the last slash and everything after it. It works here because of the predictable structure of old ScrapBook URLs.
The second bookmarklet, for new Scrapbook, takes the URL for the 100px thumbnails displayed in the albums, changes the “100” to “original”, and compiles a list onto a new tab.
The third bookmarklet, the one that displays all the linked images on a single page, is a bit more complex, but basically it checks to see if the link is safe to click (i.e. not javascript or mailto) and produces an image tag with that link as the source.
The last bookmarklet, the one that fixes beginning/end underscores, simply replaces the part of the URL that breaks Scrapbook with one that doesn’t.

All LJ-specific tags


This is a not-very-brief reference guide to every LiveJournal specific tag and markup that you can use in an entry. Many of them can be used simply by pressing a button in the Rich Text Editor, but some of them have to be added in via the HTML editor. This guide explains how to use them all with the HTML editor.

Please feel free to spread this around using the repost button you’ll find in the repost section.

Table of contents:

Howto: Impede logged-out users from reading your journal

Work in progress

Warning: This technique is not a guarantee. While this technique will prevent your journal from being read directly by logged out users, they can still read your public entries on the friends pages of your friends, or by using ?format=light on the end of the entry URL they were sent to. This technique is only a roadblock, not an actual stop. Do not rely on this technique to protect sensitive information.

This technique will display what looks like an LJ error page to anyone who visits your journal and is not logged in at LJ (log out and visit this entry again via this link). It gives the impression that there is a technical fault and they should try again later, but nothing will change until they log in.

Briefly:
1) Identify current layout and theme.
2) Create new theme layer.
3) Copy the contents of your current theme into the new theme layer.
4) Copy the code from the Page::print function in your current layout.
5) Paste the Page::print code from your current layout into the new code below, and then paste the entire thing into your new theme layer.
6) Edit your current style to use the new theme layer you just created.

Full instructions under the cut

How to eliminate “Share” on your journal

Work in progress.

This technique only applies if you have a paid/permanent account.

With LJ’s recent re-introduction of the Share function many people are again concerned with the un-attributed spreading of their own content. You can remove the link but it requires working with S2; you can’t remove it with CSS. Instructions for un-themed standard layouts (Smooth Sailing, Refried Paper, etc… Basically, any style where you accomplished everything through CSS instead of S2 coding.) will be at the end of this entry, with specific code replacements in the comments. If you’re already using a custom layout or theme please read on.

You need to be comfortable editing either your layout or your theme layer. If you’re not yet comfortable with that, please check out the tutorials available at , particularly Creating and Using a Theme Layer and Renaming edit and memories links.

Back already? Okay, here we go.

Making compost!

After a few months of marriage I decided to build a compost bin to reduce the amount of trash we were throwing out.  I got some materials, drew up a plan, and threw something together.  Well, that something has done spectacularly – we’ve reduced our garbage to a half-bag a week, we no longer have a horrible odor when opening the garbage can, and best of all we get great soil for our garden.  Our compost bin has worked so well that friends remarked that they wanted one.  So last year I made one as a gift for a friend who was expecting her first baby.  But this time I took pictures.

Continue reading Making compost!

Current Mood: accomplished