Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

The Barbelith Dance Card

Page: 1 2 3(4)5

11:52 / 13.12.05

Charrelz & iconoplast: Excellent!

archraven: Even moreso!

I just mailed out the overseas ones last night -- hard getting that many stamps on the cards. I was using the original maillist, so the newer additions won't get one, while one lucky participant gets two (cruel geometry).

Good luck, Barbelith.

12:24 / 13.12.05

I've recieved a wunnerful Mohammed Ali postcard, but I've no idea who from.

Thank you, mysterious stranger! Thank you!

13:14 / 13.12.05

Thank you Anna for the lovely card.
I keep meaning to send stuff out, but my essential disorganisation keeps on getting in the way. I will try and get some stuff out before Christmas.

13:24 / 13.12.05

I keep posting to lj and forgetting to post here:

yesterday I received a lovely card from doozy floop - thank you, I love it!

this weekend I got a beautiful card from anna and one of the puzzle postcards. I will try to get a pic of it up soon.

in late november, I got a fun postcard from ms woo, a month before I got one from evil scientist, and for my birthday anna sent me a card and a mix cd! before that I also got a postcard from scrubb and a mask from anna. I think that's it, and I apologize if I've been posting there and not getting thanks over to here!

I've been a slacker and have not sent out anything lately, but post christmas will probably see me back on track. thanks to everyone!

08:45 / 14.12.05

Thanks for the card, Anna!

11:14 / 14.12.05

This has really taken off! Thank you Anna for setting it all in motion!

paranoidwriter waves hello

19:16 / 19.12.05

Erm... Sorry everyone... [*p.w cowers like a dirty dawg*]... Unfortunately, I'm REALLY busy at the moment and when I've had the time I've (shamefully) either been too knackered or generally apathetic to get round to finally sending stuff out to everyone. Unforgivable, I know. But all that typed, on my dear Mother's life, I swear you'll get something from me within the next few weeks (i.e. once Xmas has come and gone, etc). Hope y'all can forgive my tardiness.

20:42 / 19.12.05

Anna! you shouldn't have!
the card is beautiful... in all it's hand crafted glory.

it makes me feel guilty for not sending out a single thing since joining this dance card thingamabobbber. damn you college applications for robbing all of my time!

hopefully within a few months I'll have less on my plate (although I've been saying this for probably over 6 months now haha) and get a chance to send you all some pretty things as well.

P.S. - are we supposed to be using livejournal exclusively for thanks and acknowledgements and the like, or can we do it in the thread as well. I'm not very well versed in the ways of LJ, and don't have an account or anything, and just sort of shy away from the whole thing on mere principle.

P.P.S. - "Happy Winter"?! I suppose you're one of those liberal, athiestic, Christmas-secularizers? I jest, I jest. (I just realized you might not even get that joke, being that you're not a Yankee)

Tryphena Absent

21:19 / 19.12.05

Thank you for my puzzle card and Christmas card but tell me, am I still on the dance card list?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

02:44 / 20.12.05

Puzzle card in the post yesterday. I need to get my scanner back so I can get with the whole "putting them together" thing.

And (hangs head in shame) I've still yet to send anything out. I'm shit. I really am.

07:39 / 20.12.05

Thank you Grant for the puzzle postcard, I will try and scan it to put up on the flickr group thing (if I can figure it out), Am I right in guessing the brit barbelither's postcards will fit together in a bigger picture?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:47 / 20.12.05

So how many are there? Tis a wicked idea, grant, and no mistake.

15:18 / 20.12.05

Nina: No, you have not been on the list since you asked to be taken off. But grant said he was using an old list, so that's probably why he thought you were still on it. (why he was using an old list, when there have been two updates mailed since then, is beyond me... grrr, grumble, rassafrassin' people who don't pay attention to my efforts mutter mutter grump)

Can I remind people (if anyone actually bothers to read this) that we have a Flickr group, so it would be really cool if people could post images of things like the puzzle cards (both sides!) in that, so they're all in one place...

I need another volunteer, since I'm not getting online much more than once a week at the moment, and bitchiekittie's time online is restricted to working hours and she can't access her personal email account there. If anyone had actually read the message I added when I sent the most recent update out a few weeks ago, they would have noticed that I requested the assistance of someone to take responsibility for updating the FAQ online whenever I send the updated versions out to everyone via email. It's not fair to expect bedhead to do it, since bedhead isn't even on the dance card, and since that would also mean my having to remember to send it to him as well, and the whole point of me asking for someone else to do it is because I don't have the time as I'm hardly online.

This is meant to be a community project, but at the moment it feels like it's all mine, and I'm starting to not feel so much of the fun and more that it's a drag. I don't want to stop, since it's obviously a nice and fun thing to do as well, but I do need other people to help.

I'm also starting to think that the updates need to go monthly, because I keep getting requests that come in a day or two after the deadline, and it seems a shame to make them wait two more months to get on the list, but right now I don't have the time to update it monthly if I'm doing it on my own...

And please, PLEASE, I hate repeating myself, but READ THE FAQ. You're sending out your home address to a semi-public list of people, so you should pay attention to what you're getting into. Not that there is any risk with this one, it just bothers me that people are signing up their home addresses without paying any notice to what it is they're joining!

Tryphena Absent

15:23 / 20.12.05

No, it's cool I think the puzzle card is way good.

15:25 / 20.12.05

and now for my YAY! post...

Big thanks to betty woo and doozy floop for the FAB birthday cards, and thanks to gingerbop for the xmas card.

thanks also to psi_lock for the yummy goodies and the cards (amusng: the birthday card was the same design as the birthday card I sent to bitchiekittie earlier this year! heh)

Have a grand feasting holiday, people! I will talk to you in the new year...

15:28 / 20.12.05

Stoat: So how many are there? Tis a wicked idea, grant, and no mistake.

28. They form a grid. Americans, Canadians and Australians got them too.

Anna: (why he was using an old list, when there have been two updates mailed since then, is beyond me... grrr, grumble, rassafrassin' people who don't pay attention to my efforts mutter mutter grump)

I say this very sheepishly, but it's because it took me that long to get stamps. I had a pile of cards addressed, but they were pre-stamped for domestic, not overseas, but then, of course, I found these cool custom stamp things and it became its own sub-project, so I had to wait for those to arrive and...

I'm special.

15:30 / 20.12.05

Betty Woo, I name you JOYBRINGER, and my family holds you in HIGH PLACES OF HONOR.

15:51 / 20.12.05

I can update the wiki, if you'd like.

16:58 / 20.12.05

And thank you again to Grant for another card, I'll do my best to scan them and add them to the flickr group. (so there may be a 'please help, I'm crap with technology' post tomorrow).

01:39 / 27.12.05

I've been absolutely awful about both sending stuff and acknowledging the things I've received. My apologies to all...

I have goodies to put in envelopes (no envelopes as of right now), and individual thank-yous are winging their ways to the lovely and deserving folks who sent me stuff.

14:37 / 30.12.05

Um, y'know, it would be really helpful if someone just updated the wiki, like I asked, and then posted that they'd done it, instead of asking me if I'd like it. Do I have to do everything around here? [/snark]

Thanks for the postcard grant. I forgot to post an image of it on Flickr, what with the xmas stuff going on...

Not sure when I'll be online next, and still no one has answered some of my questions.

Speaking of questions, I neglected to answer TeN's. But he does have a copy of the FAQ, since I mailed it out at the same time I mailed out the address list. As for the "happy winter" thing, well, I just figure that winter is more than just Christmas, so why not extend the well-wishes?

Why is it every time I come onto this thread, I feel like I'm nagging again? Bah humbug.

12:29 / 03.01.06

Returning home from the ancestral manse was much improved by the sight of a piece of Grant's puzzle card on the doormat. All we need to do now is fit that sucker together.
Though I must admit my general lack of technology and know-how may prove an obstacle.

15:40 / 03.01.06

I have been BAD at acknowledging the lovely cards I have received. I am truly sorry and will endeavour to make amends in this new year. I owe thanks to:
Anna (though I think I said this in person) for the costume card
Evil Scientist for an spiffing Dalek
Grant for a piece of puzzle
and Archraven for a really lovely Christmas card, much the nicest I received this year
- thank you!

Unfortunately I have no means of taking photos of these yet - but (especially with the puzzle piece) if I meet another barbeloid who has that capacity I am sure we can work something out...

21:19 / 08.01.06

I already PM'd but thank you Anna for the lovely Christmas card!

10:41 / 16.01.06

A marvellous late Christmas present arrived for me at the weekend in the shape of a CD from Toksik. Ensconced within a double layer of wrapping paper, and a page from a gossip mag.

Thank'ye Toksik! May hordes of atomic super-gorillas sing your praises from the high places of the world.

I must get on with sending my next assault of Dance Card mail out.

12:08 / 16.01.06

Umm. I don't think that dalek was from me. Unless I've been posting stuff drunk again (which is always a possibility). Did I sign it?

But now I have to send something equally as good!

15:44 / 18.01.06

Archraven and Anna, thank you, very belatedly, for the Christmas cards you sent me, and to Waxy Dan for the postcard. Mwuh!

14:41 / 14.02.06

Erk! I had to go to page 6 of the forum archives to retrieve this thread because I haven't been here recently, and my February update is now a whole fortnight late. (On the plus side, this means that I can include iconoplast's new address in the update. On the down side, it means you'll get it way too late to actually mail out any valentines)

As must be painfully obvious by now, I can't get updates out in a decently timely manner. I'm still not online very much, and on this board even less, and I feel terrible 'cos I'm letting people down. So, once again, I send out a plea for assistance from other people to get involved. It would be great if the list could get mailed out once a month, and on time, because people send requests to join all the time -- and now we have more members on the board, chances are we might have more people wanting to join the dance card.

So PLEASE, will some other people step up and volunteer to adminstrate it while I'm, not online so much? It is a community project, and it would be great if that could be reflected in how it's organised, instead of having to rely on me, when I keep flaking out on my duties. Believe me, it's not just me who would appreciate it, it's everyone else who's on the list or wants to join but has to wait forever and a day for their updates.

Anyway.

I finally got around to uploading images of the puzzlecard I got from grant:

puzzle card [1]

puzzle card [2]

Not very much to go on, though -- more people need to post theirs!

16:43 / 14.02.06

Ah rats! I totally forgot to upload mine, will do this week. *insert shamefaced smilie*

I'm willing to help out though.

19:28 / 14.02.06

Anna, you've just made my week.

Be

My

Valentine.

15:07 / 16.03.06

Um, hello. It's been over a month since I was on Barbelith, and I came straight to this thread first. I can't keep up to date at all on this Dance Card business! Now that I've started the ball rolling, I would love it if you took it off my hands. You know what to do, and how it works, you just need to be online more often than I am so that you can get people's addresses.

I suggest that more than one person takes the helm, to share the work, and the responsibility is rotated. So, for example (as I pluck names out of the ether), archraven could collect addresses and mail out the list in April, grant could do it in May, Kit-Cat Club could do it in June, Olulabelle could do it in July etc. Whoever was the last person to do it will have to take responsibility to remind the next person, but to give them enough time, not just a weekend to get themselves together and make sure they have all the addresses etc.

One way to do it would be to go down the list, in order, so that everyone gets the responsibility for one month, but I'm not sure if that would work if there are new members joining every month, unless the list stops being alphabetical. Also, not everyone can commit their time, so it would probably work better if, say, four people did it. They could rotate on a monthly basis, or even on a quarterly basis, but the information would go out every month so that the updates were more timely. So, if I could get three volunteers, one of whom was willing to take over right now, then that would be GREAT!

I was thinking it might be a good idea to set up a specific barbelithdancecard email address, say at Yahoo or Gmail, and people could email their information there, instead of via PMs, so they would all be collated in one place. I could give the password to the other people on the Dance Card "committee" so that they could get at the mail in the account, too, and then you wouldn't have to rely on me to do it all when I'm only getting online a few hours a week and spending all my time catching up on Livejournal and Flickr....

Not that this thread has gone anywhere in the last month. Maybe nobody cares one way or the other about a Dance Card if there isn't someone else (i.e. me) to organise it...

04:25 / 20.04.06

I would be happy to help but am also a bit squeaky new to be accessing people's Real Addresses, methinks.

Just stopped in to bump, and because I have an odd idea that might go along the same lines as the Dance Card.

1. A while back, Xoc asked,
Anybody know if the dvd of Who's Afraid of Virignia Woolf can be got for Region 2 use? At first I was all, "What do you mean, that's not available on Region 2?" Then I took a look at British Amazon, and lo and behold, it's not. How silly is that?

2. Flash forward to today. I was just reading the Film / TV thread about This Life, and decided to look for it, perhaps buy it. Yet lo and behold, American Amazon doesn't actually carry what was apparently the biggest thing to hit British TV in the 90's. (Please prove me wrong.)

Which brings us to 3. I'd like to see This Life. I could always ask the pirate fairies, I suppose, and it would likely end up burned to DVD and slipped under my door. However, I have the sinking suspicion that I am not the only person with a yearning to watch cross-Atlantic TV and/or movies that don't manage the swim, and not everyone has pirate fairies to ask for these sorts of things.

Would there be any interest in arranging a DVD swap?

11:01 / 20.04.06

How's about a nice breeding project?
Um..

I mean:
Why not 'breed' the dance card project with the DVD-swap idea and make a film club?

People could add their names to a list, as with the dance card. Maybe they could add a little info on what kind of films they like. Then people could send DVDs (or divx files - people could say whether or not they have the equipment to play encoded movies on their pcs..) at whim.

This would lead (hopefully) to a nice situation where people get the odd cinematic surprise through the post based on what other 'lithers guess they would like to see...

With the cost of writable dvds being so low, people could make multiple copies of films and send them out to make a sort of 'film club' where everybody checks out the latest offering and goes and discusses it in an interlecshul fashion in Film, TV and Theatre. This isn't limited to films either - recordings of lives shows, concerts, local events and plastic bags floating in the wind could all be shared out, just like in some advert for microsoft or sony, but with more copywrite issues (i seem to remember that it's legal as long as you destroy the copy after 24 hours, but i'm no lawyer).

People could also make requests for films they want to see, as per Celane's idea.

I suppose it has its potential flaws (people receiving films they already have, Bittorrent being faster than international snail mail etc.) But it might work...

19:26 / 20.04.06

I dig it, but it's not legal, 24 hours or no, at least in the US. Which means it's probably not the best idea to plan such a thing seriously on an open forum, what with the recent trouble with libel and all.

At the same time, it really sucks that some things aren't available in some countries, and I don't think there'll be a whole lot of fuss about trading back and forth the sorts of movies, film, etc. that folks in, say, Britain can't purchase. The general tendency in the fansub community, at least, is to pirate until a legitimate copy comes up for sale, at which point pirated copies are taken down and destroyed and legitimate ones are purchased; this seems to be acceptable to US anime production companies, though I must admit to not following the situation closely for the past few years (during which much may have changed).

00:45 / 21.04.06

Ooops.
Yeah, a quick google seems to give agreement to that (tho your linked article seemed to be refering to software rather than film. Does a divx file count as software, or is it the same as a DVD? Either way...) Although it seems that we'd be fine if we all lived in Spain - not-for-profit copy and distribution is legal... It's alright for some, eh?

Obviously, we don't want to end up turning Barbelith into some kind of crime ring (the trade in low-caliber weapons and endagered species necessitates enough bribes as it is...) So we're best avoid any murky business with copies and such.

But you make an interesting point about the fansub community. As far as i know, the situation is the same as you mention. People copy and distribute Asain films that they have subbed without legal action being brought about (for the large part.) However, a lot of fansubbers stop working with series that have been licensed by English-speaking companies.

I don't know if this applies quite so well to our proposed situation though. The main reason fansubs are allowed is because they are inaccessible to people who do not speak Japanese (for example). Prior to the rise of internet shopping, it would also have been very difficult to get hold of imports as well. This case doesn't apply quite so well to us. Assuming we are planning on pirating between the UK and the US, we can't really argue that it is impossible for us to get hold of the movies, just that it is rather costly.

Perhaps the fact that DVDs are region-encoded might suggest that we are unable to watch a lot of each other's films in a legal fashion, in which case we may have a valid case.

But as you have said, we shouldn't leave Barbelith open to any kind of legal attack or inquiry (i'm intrigued about this libel case you mention), so it may be best to avoid the murky murky waters where the pirates sail and work out some kind of swap shop.

<Long John Silver Accent> Damned anti-pirating laws... </Long John Silver Accent>

Page: 1 2 3(4)5