So then this happened, and I knew my decision of last night was the right one.

So there I was, putting off the inevitable moment when I had to have a shower, which would involve taking off my three layers of clothes and exposing my vulnerable fleshy bits to the COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD. I was reading my flist, for although I am trying to wean myself off LJ, most of my friends are still there, so I'm still reading and commenting there.

I followed a link from rj_anderson's LJ to claudiagray's. I opened the link in another tab, as is my custom, and instead of going to claudiagray's LJ, I was sent to ... well, I don't read Russian, but it looked like this:

( Big screenshot within! )

Moving to DW

Following my post last night, I got a whole mass of circle-addings and access-givings on DW, and also a lot of comments saying, "Oh. I guess I should maybe actually use that Dreamwidth account I got last year and forgot about."

FEAR NOT, GENTLE N00BS! Here is a clear and useful guide to setting up on DW, including importing your entries, cross-posting, and generally making use of the place.

One thing I should say is that, from a cross-posting point of view, it's incredibly easy to use both DW and LJ. You don't even have to set up cross-posting on DW; you can just cue your Semagic (or whatever) to log into DW as well as LJ, and then select "post to multiple journals" from the file options instead of the main "post entry" button. I did this for a very long time before I sorted my DW settings so that it automatically sent all my posts from there to LJ. After that, I just logged my client into DW and let the rest happen automatically.

Now, Semagic only looks like it was put together using eggshells and rubber bands; it's actually one of the more sophisticated LJ clients. On Linux, I'm using LogJam, which doesn't have the "post to multiple journals" option. On the other hand, it was even easier to configure LogJam to log into DW than it was with Semagic. And at some point in the near future, I'm going to have a bash at iPhone apps for LJ.

Now, I wouldn't judge anyone who chooses to stay on LJ, for whatever reason -- I mean, I'm still on Facebook, which is ten times dodgier than LJ, because that's the easiest way to keep in touch with relatives and get new pictures of my nephew. (Okay, the argument that Dreamwidth is run by an evil cabal of BNFs is pretty hilarious, but I don't think I've seen that on my actual flist.) But if you're eyeing DW, but think it might be too hard, I am here to tell you that it is NOT.

(You know what else people think is hard, and that is totally a lie? LINUX. Apparently Ubuntu is like, Linux for girls people who just want to use their computers, without getting degrees in IT. It is AMAZING. It is a bit weird at first, but I have fallen in love. dvd::rip, which is ... actually pretty self-explanatory, now I think about it, is even better than FairUse Wizard, which is a really quite jolly good type of DVD ripper. The only thing that doesn't seem to exist for Ubuntu is a dedicated creative writing suite that's any good at all. If I ever become a Mac-user, it will be because (a) I suddenly found myself with a great deal of money and nothing better to do with it, which frankly seems unlikely and (b) SCRIVENER. I did find one similar program that worked in Linux, but it's profoundly ugly.)