This is where a surprise challenge brings out the best in a person, right? Like on Iron Chef America when the Chairman suddenly announces a special request in the middle of a hot celebrity chef cookoff countdown in Kitchen Stadium.
Xanga (my favorite blog host and where I keep my Lexx blog) announced a couple of days ago that it will either be folding or merge-relocating after July 15th (the latter looking highly doubtful). Users are already wailing to the unlistening heavens that the archive download option isn't working. Xanga is descending like a flaming Hindenberg amongst virtual food fights, blind believers bravely donating membership pledges in desperate attempts to kickstart, and thousands already abandoning and bailing with little "WordPress" and "LiveJournal" parachutes.
I've been with Xanga since 2004. My personal blog accidentally morphed into a Lexx fan blog and then shot to world fame when a rival fan evil schemed a plot to create a train wreck of me for morbidly curious onlookers (I still thank her for that), rocking Lexx fans worldwide as our weird chesslike forum jousting ricocheted out of control at MegaCon in Orlando in 2007, wherein Florida State Police became involved. I took PR advice and simply stopped responding to the ridiculous drunken escapades (which are still viewable online to this day), but I will say this- I still have in my private Xanga blogs a whole lot of stuff about what really went down privately, on ALL sides. And I will say the 'bad guy' was neither me nor her, but someone very surprising. In the end, I chose to side WITH THE FANS and declined to press charges, completely saving my arch enemy's personal identification from becoming public information (that's a lot of power to have in one's hands...). Seriously, to me that was a moral conundrum that could only be solved by taking the bullet, because I knew what we were on the cusp of being able to do if that had happened- I created a triangle out of a 2-sided problem and got axed on both sides, because fandom is about THE FANS. I made a choice that day that not only branded me public defamation that I've quietly lived with for 6 years now (still makes me pretty famous ), but also apparently has kept lurkers watching everything I do all this time. I cannot express the warm fuzzies I get when I see those continual weekly checkins on my trackers from all over the world going straight to Lexx.
So it's going to be a really big deal that my Lexx blog, freshly come out from underground for so long, is now going to have to very publicly MOVE. It's a *huge* deal, actually. Even barely getting the ball rolling I already have a solid start on what promises to become the biggest Lexx film study in internet history, already with nearly 1000 screen grabs in paid public hosting and I'm barely halfway into the first movie. This is all not for profit, a media study on a personal blog, and I've already spent over $300 out of pocket this year building it. This is hobby money that I don't expect to get back. Thanks to a medical condition, I cannot get out in the sun for any length of time without severe repercussions, among other things, so I spend a great deal of time entertaining myself by creating what I'd personally like to be able to find online for one of my favorite scifi shows, and it's just not out there (yet). At any rate, I've got 6 weeks to salvage and move reams of manually written html before it's gone forever.
In 2006 I was offered free hosting with the same people who host William Shatner's official blog (don't know if he's still got that same hosting). I turned it down. At the time I was afraid I would lose my autonomy. If I'd taken the offer, my Lexx stuff would never have disappeared and would be absolutely huge by now. Do I regret this? You bet. This starting over from scratch stuff is a lot of work, but I feel like I'm at least rising to the challenges I'm setting for myself.
The next 6 weeks for me are going to be a little hairy because I'm such a workaholic that I've already got a ton of stuff to move (and so much more besides Lexx, since I've been blogging with Xanga for 9 years now- can anyone say book material?). But since I was already headed in this direction, this outside force pushing me will only make me that much more polished. This is where having a little grit comes in handy.
I love you guys. My twitter elates me growing so fast like that, myke is so kind allowing me to run free on his forum and blog site here, and it's thrilling learning to play on the big kid playground, you know? This first year has been so much more overwhelmingly successful than I ever dreamed, I can only imagine the heights I can soar to by this time next year having fun and doing cool stuff on the webs.
This is now a genuine working vacation (except I can't claim it on taxes, haha). I'm going to start it off RIGHT and go see Star Trek Into Darkness in 3D this evening. BOOYA!
Xanga (my favorite blog host and where I keep my Lexx blog) announced a couple of days ago that it will either be folding or merge-relocating after July 15th (the latter looking highly doubtful). Users are already wailing to the unlistening heavens that the archive download option isn't working. Xanga is descending like a flaming Hindenberg amongst virtual food fights, blind believers bravely donating membership pledges in desperate attempts to kickstart, and thousands already abandoning and bailing with little "WordPress" and "LiveJournal" parachutes.
I've been with Xanga since 2004. My personal blog accidentally morphed into a Lexx fan blog and then shot to world fame when a rival fan evil schemed a plot to create a train wreck of me for morbidly curious onlookers (I still thank her for that), rocking Lexx fans worldwide as our weird chesslike forum jousting ricocheted out of control at MegaCon in Orlando in 2007, wherein Florida State Police became involved. I took PR advice and simply stopped responding to the ridiculous drunken escapades (which are still viewable online to this day), but I will say this- I still have in my private Xanga blogs a whole lot of stuff about what really went down privately, on ALL sides. And I will say the 'bad guy' was neither me nor her, but someone very surprising. In the end, I chose to side WITH THE FANS and declined to press charges, completely saving my arch enemy's personal identification from becoming public information (that's a lot of power to have in one's hands...). Seriously, to me that was a moral conundrum that could only be solved by taking the bullet, because I knew what we were on the cusp of being able to do if that had happened- I created a triangle out of a 2-sided problem and got axed on both sides, because fandom is about THE FANS. I made a choice that day that not only branded me public defamation that I've quietly lived with for 6 years now (still makes me pretty famous ), but also apparently has kept lurkers watching everything I do all this time. I cannot express the warm fuzzies I get when I see those continual weekly checkins on my trackers from all over the world going straight to Lexx.
So it's going to be a really big deal that my Lexx blog, freshly come out from underground for so long, is now going to have to very publicly MOVE. It's a *huge* deal, actually. Even barely getting the ball rolling I already have a solid start on what promises to become the biggest Lexx film study in internet history, already with nearly 1000 screen grabs in paid public hosting and I'm barely halfway into the first movie. This is all not for profit, a media study on a personal blog, and I've already spent over $300 out of pocket this year building it. This is hobby money that I don't expect to get back. Thanks to a medical condition, I cannot get out in the sun for any length of time without severe repercussions, among other things, so I spend a great deal of time entertaining myself by creating what I'd personally like to be able to find online for one of my favorite scifi shows, and it's just not out there (yet). At any rate, I've got 6 weeks to salvage and move reams of manually written html before it's gone forever.
In 2006 I was offered free hosting with the same people who host William Shatner's official blog (don't know if he's still got that same hosting). I turned it down. At the time I was afraid I would lose my autonomy. If I'd taken the offer, my Lexx stuff would never have disappeared and would be absolutely huge by now. Do I regret this? You bet. This starting over from scratch stuff is a lot of work, but I feel like I'm at least rising to the challenges I'm setting for myself.
The next 6 weeks for me are going to be a little hairy because I'm such a workaholic that I've already got a ton of stuff to move (and so much more besides Lexx, since I've been blogging with Xanga for 9 years now- can anyone say book material?). But since I was already headed in this direction, this outside force pushing me will only make me that much more polished. This is where having a little grit comes in handy.
I love you guys. My twitter elates me growing so fast like that, myke is so kind allowing me to run free on his forum and blog site here, and it's thrilling learning to play on the big kid playground, you know? This first year has been so much more overwhelmingly successful than I ever dreamed, I can only imagine the heights I can soar to by this time next year having fun and doing cool stuff on the webs.
This is now a genuine working vacation (except I can't claim it on taxes, haha). I'm going to start it off RIGHT and go see Star Trek Into Darkness in 3D this evening. BOOYA!
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