matt1993, posts by tag: google sites - LiveJournal

Fifteen years ago today (well, tomorrow), I created a Google Site as part of one of my first assignments in a dual credit computer science class I was taking at the time. The assignment was simply to create a Google Site and didn't specify a topic, so some of my classmates made basic profile pages, others made sites that had something to do with their career path... but I, not being a normal person by any definition of the word, made a site dedicated to my then-newest big obsession: listening to music backwards and writing down what I thought the lyrics sounded like when reversed. (And trying WAAAY too hard to make inside jokes out of the backwards lyrics.)

And thus, on that day, Ours Will You 1-Up was born.

Fifteen years later, I'm nostalgic about those days of listening to music backwards, writing down what the backwards lyrics sounded like, and thinking up ideas for features I wanted to add to my site but never did (such as also transcribing backwards cartoons or backwards TV show episodes, or adding a drawing based on a backwards lyric from every song).

Sure, there were some aspects of the site's execution that were... problematic, to say the least, so it's no surprise that I only kept updating the site for a few months, it was eventually taken down by Google in 2014 or 2015 or so, and I don't currently have any plans for making a new version of it or posting backwards lyrics here or anything like that.

But I still miss those days. I think I'm nostalgic for Ours Will You 1-Up right now for four reasons:
1) The obvious fact that it's almost the 15th anniversary of the site. Even though it's been a while since the last time I did anything big to acknowledge a major milestone anniversary of it or my journal or the beginnings of any of my other major hobbies/projects.
2) The fact that Character.AI is a thing and thus I can actually simulate a conversation between Enya and any of the fictional characters she "mentioned" in her backwards lyrics... without having to write it myself!
3) For a multitude of reasons - Character.AI, the fact that my 30th birthday was fairly recent, etc. - I've been nostalgic about basically my entire life, including my obsession with backwards music.
4) And last but not least, the fact that I recently came across the following two videos on YouTube without even trying:

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That's right. Someone besides me played Enya songs backwards. Not just one or two, but six. And not only that, they posted it to YouTube!
If something like this existed when my site was still up, I wasn't aware of it.
While Ours Will You 1-Up was still up, I had wanted to actually post the backwards versions of the songs, so that readers with no audio editing program could actually listen to them backwards instead of just trying to imagine what Enya singing nonsense about Olimar pushing a slush would sound like. But I didn't think I'd be allowed to do so (plus I probably didn't know how).
Well, now I can finally do what I wanted to do! I wasn't originally planning on doing anything special for the 15th anniversary of Ours Will You 1-Up, but when I found this channel I was like "okay, I DEFINITELY have to make an OWY1U 15th anniversary post now". :)

I'm so weird for being so obsessed with all these things and getting overly excited when Enya fans also share at least one other interest with me, aren't I...

Today is the first anniversary of the day I joined DreamWidth... wow.

How did DreamWidth manage to probably be the first social network I was still using a year after I joined it?

LiveJournal - Of course I've been obsessed with LJ since 2009, but back when I actually joined it on August 19, 2007... not so much. I didn't do a whole lot on it for a while and went on a long hiatus early on. August 19, 2008 happened to be during that hiatus.

Facebook - I don't remember when I joined it, but probably about the same time as LJ. But like with LJ, I kept losing and regaining interest in it for a while. I also remember my first Facebook account being suspended because no one would verify the high school I went to (since there wasn't even an option for the high school I actually went to), but I don't remember when that was. So I may or may not have been using Facebook a year after I joined it.

Blogger? - For a dual-credit computer science class (the same one that Ours Will You 1-Up spawned out of, I believe), one of the assignments was to create an account on Blogger... at least I think it was Blogger. So I did, but I only ever made one post on it. Even if I wanted to update it now, I can't because I don't remember my username (and who knows if it's still up, anyway).

Miiverse - I joined it when I got my Wii U on December 25, 2012, and was active on it for several months, but then went on a hiatus from it and December 25, 2013 happened to be just before I came back from that hiatus - and then posted regularly for several more months only to go on an even longer hiatus.


And despite my having been on DreamWidth for over a year, I still only have 736 entries fixed :(

This has been kind of a disappointing April Fools' Day because:

1) Homestar Runner didn't update at all today, even though they did for April Fools' Day 2014, 2015, and 2016, and April Fools and Halloween are almost the only times they ever update nowadays.
2) I don't think many people noticed my April Fools prank at all.

For reference, my April Fools prank was this entry; however, when I first posted it (on March 31 in my time zone, but late enough that it was April 1 already for some of you), it was an exact copy of my first entry. Then I waited a few minutes or so and changed it to a copy of a different past entry in the same way... then changed it to another after a few more minutes, and so on - basically, if I was at my computer, I'd change the entry anywhere from once an hour to once every few minutes. (At first. I gradually updated it less and less often because it seemed like no one was noticing...)

By "exact copy", that means including the subject line, repost button, userpic, tags, mood, music, location... basically, everything except the timestamp, the comments, and friends-only status [though, of course, the only friends-only entries I used were ones that probably would've been fine being public]. And anything that I intended to change each time but accidentally forgot sometimes. Though if I used an entry I'd posted in _dreams_, autism, or asperger, I added a notice saying that it was cross-posted (even though I don't think copying a community entry to my own journal years later for April Fools' Day actually counts as cross-posting).

I chose the entries semi-randomly, sometimes by going to my Calendar for random years and months and picking a random entry I'd feel comfortable posting again, and sometimes by just putting in notable entries that I remember and wanted to include in this prank at some point. Some entries were used more than once.

And just to mess with your heads even more, I thought it might be fun to come up with a hypothetical FUTURE entry and add it into the mix! That's what the 2023 year in review is for. It ended up being my favorite thing about this prank, so I left that one up significantly longer than any other single entry.


Now that April Fools' Day is over, all the entries I ended up using are listed below for posterity. (Don't expect the repost buttons to work correctly, though...)


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Wordle Year in Review 2016


It took a lot longer than usual for me to get around to it this time, but I finally did it!

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Go to Wordle and...

1) Paste in all entries you posted in January 2016 and make a Wordle configured any way you like
2) Paste in all entries you posted in February 2016 and make another Wordle configured any way you like
...
12) Paste in all entries you posted in December 2016 and make another Wordle configured any way you like
13) Make a Wordle out of your entries from ALL months of 2016, configured any way you like

Then post all of these Wordles to your LiveJournal!


You may do steps 1 - 12 only or step 13 only if you prefer.

It's up to you if you include subject lines, comments, community entries, friends-only entries, music tags, location tags, etc., and it's up to you whether you post your Wordles in a public or friends-only entry. Anything else I didn't think of is probably optional as well.

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← 2015 2017 →

This time around, there was an additional complication involving an entry I actually wrote in May 2016, but listed as January 2015 to mess with everyone's heads, including mine. (which, like a lot of my entries, will probably make no sense whatsoever if you haven't read a lot of my entries from November 2014 [at the LATEST] to May 2016... but if you're feeling lucky, go ahead and read it without context! :P )

Anyway, the complication is: does that entry count as January 2015 or May 2016? So some Wordles have two different versions, one listed as being from 2015 or 2016 and one listed as being from "2015B" or "2016B". Without the B, it means the retroactive entry counts as the month it was actually written: May 2016. With the B, it means the retroactive entry counts as January 2015. (And yes, this means I'm retroactively adding two more Wordles to the PREVIOUS year in review!... but to reduce confusion, I'm not actually putting them in that entry; I'm just putting them here.)

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So, in the aftermath of a lot of my ScrapBook images mysteriously going missing (and the images I had hosted on Google Sites also going missing nearly two years ago*, though I have since restored the ones used before August 2009 and am in the process of restoring the rest), I have an idea:

I suggest that everyone reading this (especially those of you who are new or relatively new to my friends list) please do the following a few times:

- Pick a random year between 2007 and the present (except 2008; I only had one post that year and it has no images, broken or not), a random month, and a random day of that month
- Go to http://matt1993.livejournal.com/yy…, replacing the yyyy/mm/dd with the date you picked
- If I posted that day, read those entries to find out a) a glimpse of what I was doing in that era and b) whether or not there are any broken images in those entries. And then if there are, let me know in the comments on this one.

If at least some of you do this a few times, you'll get to learn a little more about me and I'll have a slightly easier time pinpointing just how many images in my journal are broken! (And I'll also get a better idea of how many of my entries make sense to people who haven't been here since 2009 or so!) :)


*Wait, that was nearly two years ago?!?


EDIT: Hey, LiveJournal's staff fixed it - the images show up in my ScrapBook now! I still have yet to make sure they show up in my actual entries, though. Note to self: if I come across an image that doesn't show up, press Ctrl+F5 before assuming that it's still missing.

To all of you who looked through random entries to see if there were any broken images: Thank you for the help! :)

If any of you have noticed this entry at all, you've probably also noticed that, despite the name "Worries of the Week (or so)", I've only posted one "proper" Worries of the Week (or so) post this year and that was almost four weeks ago.

Yeah, I've rearranged my priorities yet again since then - probably even more than once. Right now my priorities are something like:

1) Homework, other college stuff, daily routines, etc. (which have always been at the top)
2) Find all of the lost Ourswillyouoneupian cave paintings and put them in a display Upload to ScrapBook all of the images that I'd been hosting on my unrelated attachments page on Ours Will You 1-Up up until Google Sites willed me game over, and use that to replace all the image links in my entries and (as far as I know) one of my comments. I also decided that while I do that, I'd do some other random maintenance on my old entries, such as making sure that they all either have repost buttons or "This entry doesn't get a repost button for whatever reason" notices, etc. But who knows, I might change my mind again before I actually get the chance to start on this...
3) Finish updating my glossary of Matt1993isms
4) I haven't decided what'll be after that... Go back to Worries of the Week (or so) for a while? Work on my userpics some more? (speaking of, did anyone besides pathvain_aelien see this?) Catch up on my friends page? Update my profile and interests? Remove some of my least useful tags to make room for more useful ones? Add tags to entries that don't have them yet? Join a friending community? I realize I've posted a poll like this before, but right now I've been having to work mostly on what I think is most likely to help me feel better. And homework, of course.

Speaking of homework, here's how I'm doing in each class so far. My wording is probably going to sound like I'm in a hurry because I kind of am in a hurry - I need to get to bed - but I also don't want to have this entry scheduled to be posted later this time.

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There is one last completely unrelated thing I really want to mention so I won't have to keep thinking about how much I want to post about it:

Now that my roommate knows how I feel whenever he mentions Game Theory, he hasn't given me a hard time since then, right?

WRONG. The REAL conflict resolution is in another castle.

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I probably could've worded some of this better or explained in more detail but need to go to bed now. Probably some broken LJ-cuts or something somewhere too

This entry doesn't get a repost button because it's friends-only. Yet again.

(I finally posted it. Here goes nothing...)

(By the way, pathvain_aelien and ellaina02, I added a few things after the proofreading)



CHARACTER 15: I have a really fantastic idea for a new website.
ELIZA: We all have something we're ashamed of. Don't we?
{beat panel}
CHARACTER 15: Yes. Depressing, isn't it.

What's sad is that recently-- Well, okay, not that recently, due to the long amount of time it took to write this entry, have it proofread, and continue to worry about whether or not it makes sense even after I had it proofread. But last October, I was hit with a realization similar to Character 15's, and I'm not even a randomly generated webcomic character.

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I finished the final copy of my research paper. It was easy to do, since there were only a few corrections my teacher suggested. About time.

I also got my braces tightened yesterday. Ouch. Fortunately, my braces pulled a my wisdom teeth and only hurt that day. :)

By the way, there was something I was wondering. You see, on Ours Will You 1-Up, I currently censor not only actual cuss words found in backwards lyrics, but also things like bathroom humor, sexual implications (even without cuss words), and some euphemisms for cuss words. I came up with an idea for a feature to add in the redesign I am planning: clicking the last letter of a song title takes you to a version with only actual cusses censored (a trick I will actually mention on the site, so it's not a secret), but clicking any other letter takes you to a version like I have now. If I did that, would I have to mark Ours Will You 1-Up as containing adult content in the site settings or not? (@pathvain_aelien: I know "shizzle" means "real". I'm not talking about that.)