Open beta!

There will be official announcements with details forthcoming in the usual places, but:

AO3 Open Beta = this weekend

Existing users will get a very (and for now, probably VERY, VERY) limited number of invitations, but we'll have an automatic queue that you can add your email address to if you'd like to create an account. That should allow us both to add people at manageable rates and to guarantee that you don't need to know someone who already has an account to get one.

A couple of things:

1) If you have religious, family or social obligations on Saturday or Sunday and you're really eager to sign up, you can have someone else add your email to the list. You can have me add your email to the list! (By which I mean, type it into the form same as anyone else, not do anything adminy with it. *g*) We know weekends are better for some people and worse for others, and we don't want anyone to feel left out or inconvenienced.

2) Open beta is still beta, and many things are still under active development and construction.

3) User names are unique, so it's possible you may not get the one you want, depending on demand, but every user can have multiple pseuds (pen names, nicknames, RPG names, even), and those are names that appear alongside your content and can be searched for, etc. So I wouldn't worry unduly about the prospect of somebody else stealing your identity.

4) The AD&T committee had spirited debates about the exact mechanics, rates and ratios of inviting new users so that we can accommodate as many people as possible while keeping an eye on stability, but everyone has always been in strong agreement about wanting the archive to be open to a diverse community of people from every corner of every fandom, with every level of accessibility needs. So if you are interested, you are welcome! And we'll keep on trying to make the best site we can for everyone to use.

...and I should totally stock up on alcohol, shouldn't I?

Catholicism: UR DOING IT WRONG

Catholic Church gives D.C. ultimatum

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

WHAT? What kind of people think that's okay?

Here's what I never understand: to be married in the eyes of the Catholic Church, you have to be married *by* the Church. So technically, most of the world is living in sin anyway. The Church doesn't recognize civil marriages, and it doesn't recognize civil divorces. So who cares if the civil marriage law doesn't align with your religious teachings? It ALREADY doesn't. And I don't see too many Catholics out in the street trying to repeal the right to get divorced.

Oh no, you might have to provide benefits to people's partners. *rolls eyes* Because Jesus was big on hoarding money and sharing it only with folks you felt to be morally righteous. And you're going to stop serving the homeless and the sick over that? That just sounds like a temper tantrum born out of bigotry to me.

Make stuff!

From the Wall Street Journal:

( A High Tech DIY Renaissance )

And one of the posters from Geek Feminism was interviewed about open hardware.

I don't think this is a particularly new trend - it kind of feels to me like an increased interest in DIY of all sorts has been one of the hallmarks of this decade, and it's dovetailed nicely with the rise of blogging and social networking and user-generated video, etc. to bring people together in the shared pursuit of hobbies that are not remotely new (crafting, cooking, tinkering, home improvement). It does feel like the idea of hardware hacking has become a lot more accessible since the advent of the Arduino and things like Lego Mindstorms, both dating from ~2005/2006, which is also when Make started up.

Personally, I find all this stuff tremendously cool. I may not ever reprogram expensive pieces of electronic machinery to play the Super Mario Brothers theme music, but it warms my heart to know that somebody else out there has done it. Same goes for making a TARDIS cake that's bigger on the inside. I love reading through the Make blog just because it makes me think about all the things that are possible, how much power we have to create and to shape the world around us. And how easy it is nowadays to learn *how* to make a TARDIS cake or a knitted Dalek or a Cylon pumpkin or an Arduino thingy that checks your email or greets your visitors. How awesome is the world sometimes? Pretty awesome.