shriekingviolet

Initial Impression:

Floral musk, with a hint of sweetness in the background.

 

After Wearing It:

Wet, this was very strong and heady on me. The Babylonian musk was prominent and nearly dizzying, wrapped with the springy notes of lilac and hyssop. I'm not entirely sure what kind of musk Babylonian musk is, but it seems to have more in common with white musk than red or black. It's not quite as light and airy as white musk though, which is fine as I'm not too fond of white musk (red's more my speed), but this is nice.

 

After the oil is given a few moments to settle down, the vanilla tea and coconut start to slide into the action. The fragrance is still that of a musky floral, but the vanilla tea wraps the blend in a sugared sweetness that's very appealing. The coconut is more subtle. I can definitely smell it, but it's more nuanced than the other notes. It's not the sweet and tropic coconut I get from scents like Elegba, more like the light, textured note in the sadly discontinued tarot blend The Star. It's slightly waxy, and it gives the blend structure.

 

Within an hour, the vanilla tea note takes center stage of this blend, and the floral notes move into the background. The musk tones down a bit to join the coconut in its role as fragrance support staff, and the tobacco finally pops up to help temper the sweetness down a notch. Its dry down reminds me of Dorian, though with coconut rather than lemon.

 

Final Thoughts:

Fabulous scent. Lovely and sweet, yet sophisticated. I think this one would please a lot of people, even the ones who are scared off by lilac. I'm not a big fan of springy floral notes, but its effect in this fragrance was beautiful.

Initial Impression:
Earthy patchouli spiked with cardamom and black pepper.

After Wearing It:
First applied, Clémence is a lotta patchouli. Not the sweet and smooth kind that I typically favor, but the really dirty kind that reminds me of head shops, sweat and raw hide. There was also a harsh shot of black pepper that runs through the blend like sharp slap across the face of the fragrance. It was very appropo given the imagery created for the blend and the painting's historical source of inspiration, Theresa Berkley. It was very raw and aggressive, to the point of being disconcerting, and one could very easily imagine a hot back room of an 19th century brothel smelling like this. The raw, almost leathery quality of the patchouli note was like the rub of a worn pair of leather cuffs, the pepper like the sting of the whip.

The initial stage of the scent, while wildly evocative and very appropriate for the theme of the set and the painting, wasn't very me. So I was very happy and a little relieved when Cleménce started to mellow out about twenty minutes after the first application. Slowly, the cardamom, carnation and clove started to come to the forefront, sweetening the blend and smoothing out all of its rough edges. The patchouli took on a more honeyed quality that I loved while retaining its earthiness, and Clémence evolved from a scent of harsh pleasures into something much more comforting. It became enticingly spicy and slightly sweet, but grounded in a rich earthiness. The tea note built slowly after the first hour as the patchouli grew softer, and by the end of hour two, the blend smelled like a really good cup of chai. Not too strong or foody, but warm and soothing with just the right balance of sugar and spice. The scent envelopes you like a fuzzy blanket. It's like the imbodiment of a rainy Saturday spent lazying around indoors. I love it!


Final Thoughts:
Love it and am proud to be its cover girl! It had a nice balance of sensations: pain and pleasure, stress and comfort. I'll be keeping this one for a long time and will likely get a back up. It'll be interesting to see how the patchouli note ages.

QS and I are poking around. There might be the occasional hiccup.

Hey lovelies! Just wanted to give everyone a heads up that about 75% of the mod staff of this forum will be away next week from October 30-November 3 to attend Ted & Beth's Pirate Nuptials in Vegas. And the celebrate my birthday on the 1st! Though I think a handful of us are bringing laptops (though not me), we likely won't be spending too much time checking in here and thus any questions, comments, etc. during this period should be addressed to one of the moderators still on duty (see list below). Obviously, I think they'd appreciate it if PMs were kept to a minimum so they're not inundated with cries for help, so if something comes up next week that can wait until everyone else gets home, we'd appreciate it if you waited. Patience is important as well as a smaller staff means it may take longer for PMs to be answered! They also cannot be used to cash in reward points, so any requests for titles, inbox expansions, etc. will have to be made before Monday or after Kate and I return.

 

Mods Still Available:

Clephan

Clover

Grrrlennyl

Jessica

Parrot_Suspect

Sheila

Shollin

 

Kate will be home a day earlier than me (Friday, Nov 2), and all of the mods on duty have both of our cellphone #s in case of emergency (hacking, hardware failure, etc.).

 

Mind the babysitters and be good kids! Everyone enjoy your Halloween and we promise to deliver pictures of the wedding when we return!

We finally got the upgrade behind us! Or at least behind us enough to reopen the forum. I'm still tweaking the gallery a bit, but not doing enough heavy lifting to where I need to keep everyone out of the rest of the forum to accomplish it. If you run across any bugs we might have missed, please send a PM to either quantum spice or myself. We'll try to get it fixed ASAP.

 

There's not too many new toys this time as the newest version of invision board focused more on optimization, security and behind the scenes stuff, but I still have a few things to point out. First of all, you can now go into your control panel and set what color, font, etc. you want your posts to be in by default. Those of you who have been around since the very early days of the forum will remember that we used to have something like this but had to do away with it one upgrade. I finally found another version of this modification that I was happy with and so it has returned. We've also finally been able to edit the board code so that the often-requested point reward of Unlimited Member Title Changes can be offered. It's price is 750 points, and if "purchased" you'll be able to change your member title however often you want through your member control panel.

 

Also Invision packaged a new default skin with 2.3 that I like waaaaaaay better than the old IPB Default (which I'm still keeping for those who do like it), and it's the new face of the work skin. It can be found on the drop menu under "IP.Board Pro."

 

Lastly, I wanted to post a reminder that it's important that people keep an eye on this announcements area. I know the forum downtime came as a bit of a surprise to people, even though I posted an announcement about it coming up this past weekend. Kate checked the stats and it showed that only about 1 in 5 of all members that have visited the forum since I posted the announcement actually stopped to read it. I don't want to have to subscribe everyone to this section of the forum, but I will if the next time we have scheduled forum downtime it's met with as much surprise and confusion. We don't make announcements often, but we do make them for good reason so we'd really appreciate it if you read them. It makes our job easier.

 

Welcome back!

 

ETA: OH I forgot one thing. We installed a new search engine, so you can now search for words smaller than 4 letters (than not ones with as few as just one). I know this has also been something people have been hoping for, so we're excited to release it. It also appears to be faster than our old one so that's also good news.

We're going to be doing some software and system upgrades this weekend, so the forum is going to be offline for at least part of this coming Friday. I'll probably take the forum down late Thursday night/early Friday morning when I get started. I'm not sure how long it will take, but I'll give the ballpark estimate of 12-18 hours. So back up any info on here you may need on Friday before then!

 

Thanks!

I (along with Sarah, one of our retail mods) will be without internet access for the next week as we travel down to sunny (and insufferably hot) Florida to vacation. If you have something in the meantime that needs admin attention, please contact Quantum Spice or Morrighana.

 

I'll be back Friday the 17th guys!

OK so this isn't technically a forum related announcement, but it's not every day our of our mods opens her own e-business! Jennifer Williamson (better known to us here as Macha, the Lab's soap maker and Doodle Goddess) has opened up The Silk Road Trading Company, her own soap site. She will still of course be making the BPAL scented soaps that sell on the BPTP website, but here she's selling soaps that are completely her own creation. The company has its own forum too, though you all are still welcome to discuss her soaps in our B&B area the same way you would for another etailer.

 

Let's make Macha's first day in business a profitable one! I've already got my order in!

For those of you who didn't check the status blog at anytime in the last 24 hours, yesterday the forum's database kept breaking due to resource issues on Monday and I took us down for fear of things getting worse and breaking to the point it'd be difficult to fix. The forum using even more processing resources, bandwidth, and RAM than it was a year ago when we were forced to seriously upgrade our hardware. Like at least 50% more, if not double that, so quantum spice had been talking about eminent hardware upgrades for a few weeks now and decided to go ahead and do it two weeks ago. I got the new server last friday and began (slowly) getting things set up over the weekend, hoping for a slow, smooth transition with minimal downtime.

 

Funny how things work. I was just telling Beth a little more than a week ago that I wanted to go ahead and get us moved as I was afraid that if we didn't act we'd see repeats of what happened back in march of 2006. In my head I was picturing issues popping up like in June or July, not 9 days later.

 

But it was fortuitous I guess because it meant that the move was well underway when I had to unexpectedly start the server evacuation, which means we were only down for 22 hours rather than a week or more the way we were last year.

 

 

As for the move, I think everything made it over okay. If there are any missing posts, topics or PMs that you notice, please PM me to let me know. I can't promise I'll be able to retrieve them, but if they're important I will do my best.

 

Also for the next 24 hours, I wouldn't be surprised if some people were still unable to access this new server using our domain address. Domain propagation relies on the ISP to update their records and point to the new IP address, and some ISPs are quicker to do so than others. The process can take up to 48 hours (I started the process at like 5am CST this morning FTR), but obviously it doesn't have to take that long. My ISP handled it about 9 hours, but quantum spice's ISP is still pointing the domain at the old server if that's any indication.

 

So sorry to inconvenience or disappoint anyone still unable to access the forum. It's out of our hands!

OK guys, I know this is going to be long, but I have a lot of new info to cover spanning five topics:

• What's New?
  
• What's Missing?
  
• What's Moved?
  
• Known BugsNew
  
• Policies
  

What's New?

 

New Skins

I designed a skin series for the different seasons. To access different skins, scroll to the bottom of the screen. There will be a drop down menu on the lower right.

 

Personal Profile Portal

Invision Power Board 2.2.0 has a totally redesigned portal page with the following features:

 

• Friends list - manage your friends for easier PMing, to see if your friends are currently online and display your friends on your profile.
  
• comments - allow visitors to leave comments on your profile. You can set to moderate all new comments before they're shown.
  
• Recent visitors - recent visitors are shown on profile.
  
• Your content - show your recent posts / blog entries / gallery uploads on your profile
  
• Personal statement - add a short bio for others to read
  
• Easy access to edit your location, age and IM details
  

 

New Text Editor

New Style

The text editors, both standard and rich text (WYSIWYG) have been completely rewritten to make them more intuitive and faster to load. Clutter has been reduced with the new dynamic menus.

 

Switch

You can now switch between the rich text editor and the standard editor without the need to reload the page or visit your User Control Panel.

 

 

Close Your Own Swap Topic

It's been requested, and it's finally here. You can now close your own swap topic when you're finished with it. And yes, you still will get that reward point! Further instructions here.

 

 

Beefed Up My Assistant

You can now read and reply to recent PMs from the 'assistant' draggable "window."

 

 

Forum Visibility

The main forum index too cluttered for you? Tired of the long scroll of areas you don't read? You can now specify which forums you want to appear on the main forum and which you don't. Settings for this feature are in your control panel (click the link marked "controls") under the heading "options" which is near the bottom of the column, as Forums Visibiltiy.

 

 

 

What's Gone?

 

Features No Longer Around:

The following features are no longer with us. Most of them were code modifications that were designed for the previous software, but were not updated for the new version and I couldn't get them to work. In the case of the similar topics, I just didn't take the time, though would consider bringing it back if people want it. I may put the others back them if they become available again.

• Delete PM After Forward/Reply (it was a check box that deleted a pm for you after you replied to it)
  
• Similar Topics
  
• Mark PM as Read-Unread
  
• PHPSpellChecker
  
• Specify Favorite Smilies (the new smilie setup is rather nice though so I hope that's some consolation!)
  

 

 

What's Moved?

 

As you may have noticed, the forum structure has changed a bit. No forums have been deleted but one was added (BPTP Chatter), one forum (Swaps) became a category, five subforums were promoted to forums (TAL Chatter, and all 4 swap subforums), and one forum (Beyond Perfume) was demoted to a subforum of BPAL Chatter. So be sure to poke around and become reacclimated!

 

Also in the topic view, a few buttons that were there before have been eliminated. Rather than having a button to pm someone, there's a link to PM someone in the drop menu that appears when you click their username. In that menu you'll also find other helpful links, so do take a peek. The member online indicator has also moved from being a button at the bottom of a post to an icon to the left of a member's username in topics, PMs, etc.

 

Lastly the gender indicator is something that the software now incorporates more into its layout and so it created a whole new mechanism for it. Because of this everyone's gender was reset but can be easily respecified in your profile.

 

 

 

Known Bugs

• Both the Spring and Summer skins look wonky in the blog area. I'll make another attempt to try to fix them when my eyes stop crossing when I look at code!
  
• The Fast Reply won't open for IE users on certain skins. No clue why, but it won't. To side step this problem, I recommend all IE users to go into their board settings (which can be found in your user control panel/ "Controls" under the heading "options") and for the "Open Fast Reply automatically when available?" setting, select Yes. Not a perfect solution but it should suffice while I figure out what the real issue is.
  
• The Quick Edit may act wonky at first. During our "bug hunt" we've found that it often acts up the first time you try it as the old javascript file from before is still in your cache. Refreshing once or twice seems to help. If you still have issues the full edit should still work.
  
• PM count may be wonky for some. This should correct itself over the next couple of days as the forum becomes active again.
  

New Policies

 

Reminders & Warnings

After an intense discussion with the moderators and member feedback (both officially and "word on the street"), we have decided to overhaul the warning system.

 

Automatic PMs. One of the comments made was that people didn't know when a warning had been issued because the individual issuing the warning didn't send a PM. Now, the warning system will automatically send you a PM with the text of the message if the contact fields are left blank.

 

Reminders. We now have official rule reminders, which will be used the first two times you break a rule (for instance, creating a duplicate topic, or swapping outside the swap area). Instead of issuing a warning, we'll just send you a PM letting you know that a rule has been broken and the reminder will be logged.

 

So, the first (and second) time you break a rule, you'll be reminded. The third time you break that same rule, you will warned - but if (say) you get reminded for swapping outside the swap area today, and you then make a duplicate topic tomorrow, you'll still get a reminder about duplicate topics rather than a warning.

 

Reminders will disappear 9 months after they are issued. So if you make two duplicate topics today, and then a third next March, rather than getting a warninng that third duplicate topic will earn a reminder as the previous reminders will be off of your record. But, if you had made the third duplicate topic tomorrow, you would have been issued two reminders and a warning.

 

The user notes log (formerly known as the warning log) now looks like this:

Warnings will still be issued on first offenses in the case of severe misconduct (things that are more behaviorally-based, like trolling or member abuse), and like under the old system, a warning's impact on your warning level (the number under your name next to "Warn: ") will degrade after 3 months.

 

Additionally, reminders may be used by the swap moderators as a way to communicate with you when we have received swaplift reports.

 

 

 

Official Mod Posts

In the past, we've had people say that they have a difficult time discerning when one of our moderators is posting as a moderator and when she is posting as a contributing memer. To help eliminate this confusion, all "Mod Posts" are to going to be posted under the account cheekily named "Voice of God." Not a reference to the status of course, but in the spirit of those loud declarations over the PA system that come out of no where when you're out shopping and make you jump. All mod posts automatically log who is posting them and display that information for everyone to see, so while this adds an official tone to some posts it doesn't confuse things by adding anonymity.

 

 

 

Well I think that covers everything. If you have any questions feel free to PM quantum spice or I. Missed you all!

Hey boys and girls! Invision Power Services, the dandy people who wrote the forum software we use, released a major upgrade last fall and Quantum Spice and I are finally ready to upgrade the software. The new software has a few new bells and whistles that we're excited about and I've got a couple of new skins to roll out at the same time. We think everyone will be pleased!

 

I'm giving you guys plenty of notice because this will require some downtime, hopefully not much, but I'd count on at least 9-12 hours if not a full 24 as after the upgrade script goes through converting the database to the new version, we'll still need to go through and upgrade skins and bug check everything. And obviously, if things go well less downtime will be necessary, if things get bumpy it'll take longer. I'll try to post progress reports at the status blog while I'm working.

 

The upgrade is planned for Wednesday, April 25th. The forum will go down at 12am EST om Wed (which would be late Tuesday night for many depending on their timezone) and stay down until at least midday on Wednesday. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to copy any contact info that may need for swaps and what not to someplace off forum if they don't do that already so that in the event the upgrade does take longer than planned, everyone can operate their swaps or other communications without access the forum for a few days.

 

Thanks everyone!

As I've marked on the calendar, from the 18th until the 25th, I'm going to be out of town on holiday. And as my vacation this time is going to be on a cruise ship that charges extortionist rates at their internet cafe, I'll be completely without internet access during that time. Therefore any and all technical related questions and cashing in reward points PMs need to be sent to quantum spice unless their not time sensitive.

 

Also, I've asked Morrighana to help me and quantum spice by stepping in and helping some of the admin duties in my stead. She doesn't have a lot of forum tech knowledge so she won't be able to help anyone on that score, but if anyone has any comments, complaints or questions that need admin attention, you can send them to her and/or quantum spice.

 

And because my internet is acting up, this may or may not be my last time signing on before I leave, so if you've sent me any PMs and I don't respond by Sunday afternoon, please resend them to Morrighana or quantum spice if they can't wait.

 

Thanks!

 

 

Cruise fell through and I'm back home.

Pre-dunking:
A large white balm that had a herbal/floral scent. Smells like lavender and rose with a touch of lemon. It's just like sniffing Quietude oil straight from a 5ml, which is nice. You can't smell the "bomb" part at all.


In the bath:
I should say upfront that I've owned a bottle of Quietude and it didn't do a lot for me. I didn't care for the way it smelled (just not my taste), and I couldn't get it to do much for me as an aromatherapy treatment. So when I hopped into a tub of this, I wasn't expecting to like it much and was hoping the scent wasn't too strong. I was partially gratified. The intensity of the throw on this bomb was good. Strong enough to where there was a good cloud of scent coming up from the water and I could smell it without having tosink too low into the water or take ridiculously deep breaths, but not so strong that it was overwhelming. Still didn't care much for the way it smelled, but boy was the scent effective in what it was aiming to do. Without even really trying to get into the experience, I started to feel my mind blank after a few minutes of soaking. It was more than just the relaxation of body you'd expect with a hot bath, but I very nearly felt sedated. Not drowsy mind you, but so tranquil I almost felt a buzz in the back of my brain as if my cerebrum was being treated to a massage. All of the stress from my long day at work just melted off and I felt pleasantly numb.

After that, the smell of Quietude ceased to displease me.

Other things to note about the bomb in the bath: since it was a white bomb, the water was nice and clear. No murkiness whatsoever, and the water was soft and silky.

Out of the Bath:
I don't really remember smelling much of Quietude as I got out or after I was dry. But I wasn't feeling too sharp or observant afterward so I may have just missed it. My skin was very soft and moisturized. And there was nothing to clean up post bath, no oily residue left or anything so that was very nice. The bath didn't make me tired or sleepy, but just very relaxed. It was very nice. I think Quietude is my favorite bomb so far, and I expect to be buying plenty of these when I get paid next! They seem just the cure needed for a really hard day.

Just hopped out of a Zazzle bath! Very nice!

 

 

 

Pre-dunking:

The bomb's a light brown, the color of instant hot cocoa mix. Smells like hot cocoa too, mild and sweet. And maybe my nose was just playing with me (as my hot cocoa is usually flavored with a shot of peppermint schnapps or irish cream), but I did detect a hint of mint. Very faint, more of a nuance really.

 

 

In the bath:

Zazzle's really fizzy. I dropped it in almost as soon as the water started running and it didn't quit until shortly after I turned off the tap. My tub is by no means large, but it felt like it took a little more time than the other bombs I've used recently (Lush & Fantasy Bath). The brown coloring (cocoa powder I'm guessing. It's definitely a powdered color additive) dispersed through the bath giving the water the color of watered down cocoa. Not a deep enough brown to look like the lake of liquid chocolate in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, but enough brown so that the water doesn't look like it was simply dirty. The water itself felt nicely silky. I could feel the shea oil in the water, though not enough to where it felt slick. It was just nice and soft.

 

The scent of the bath was subtle. Not gooey/chocolaty or overwhelmingly foodie and sweet, but smelling mildly of fine cocoa powder. The throw wasn't too powerful in the bath, but my tub is shallow so my head is usually a good 12-16 inches above the water. It's about the same level of throw I get from a Lush bomb.

 

 

Out of the Bath:

The water drained pretty cleanly without leaving any oily residue or color stains in the tub. There were a few remnants of cocoa powder on the tub floor, but they were easily flushed out with a few splashes of clean water. I noticed my bathroom smelled more of cocoa that I expected it to as I was getting dressed. My whole bathroom smells the same way it did when I was in the tub: a light fine cocoa scent. I can smell it a bit in my hair and wafting off my hands now too as I type. My skin feel lightly moisturized. Soft, but not at all greasy. It might not be enough to keep people with really dry skin from having to use lotion daily, but enough to keep them from feeling dry and itchy post bath which is something I consider to be a must from any bath product.

 

This was really nice! Not my favorite of the BPTP bombs I've tried so far, but I'd consider repurchasing.

Hey everyone! As I'm sure some of you have noticed the "members who have viewed this topic" today is missing. Quantum spice and I are trying to revise the way it work so that the data it creates doesn't take up quite so much room in the database (at last check it was taking up nearly as much room as our member table and was slowing our backup system a bit!). Hopefully we'll be able to get it back up in the next week or so (depending on how successful we are), but in the meantime when we're tinkering with the code, you may run into the occasional error. For this we apologize.

 

Thanks for your patience!

Big forum updates today folks! After a few months of working on them, we're finally ready to release our new projects:

• Swap Feedback
  
• Link Engine
  
• Community Gallery
  

Swap Feedback is a sort of review engine that enables people to leave feedback for their swap transactions. The forum has gotten so large that we understand that some people might feel less secure selling and swapping here than they might have when we were a smaller community. Now people will have a way to keep better tabs on the swap histories of others. We hope this new feature will give our members a feeling of additional security here.

 

The rules for the Swap Feedback are as follows:

Please be honest and polite, and leave meaningful feedback. Rude or false feedback may be deleted. Someone who repeatedly created rude or false feedback may have his or her ability to edit or create feedback revoked.

 

In the "comments" section, mention:

• The item(s) swapped/sold/etc. You don't have to go into great detail, but something like "I swapped with JoeUser for his bottle of Enraged Bunny Musk" or "I sold several decants (Rose Red, Snow White, Nuclear Winter, Sugar Cookie) to JoeUser."
   
  
• The affiliated dates -- "fast" and "slow" are relative terms, and it'd be more meaningful for other users to see that when you say "fast", you mean that you paid two days ago, and received the item(s) today! An example: "We finalized the details of the swap on 6/1/06 and the bottle arrived on 6/3/06."
   
  
• Do NOT leave identifying information. Real names, addresses, etc are not allowed. If the user wanted their location or country of origin public knowledge, there are slots in the profiles at the forum for that. If those profile slots are not empty, they are published in the "snapshot profile" on the upper-right hand corner of their swap feedback page. You CAN mention that it was an international swap, and use their forum handle.
   
  
• You will not ponder about the circumstances of the other party. An acceptable comment: "I ordered on 5/2 and didn't receive my package until 6/8 with no communication from the seller." An UNacceptable comment would be something like: "This stupid b**** f***ing promised to send my f***ing oil on 5/4 when I ordered on 5/2 and I didn't get anything JUNE!! June for Christ's sake!! WTF! I bet the b**** doesn't have cancer - I bet she's just a money grubbing whore." (Thanks to evanesce for these examples!)
  

Disputed feedback will be made invisible while the parties work things out. If we feel this is being abused (that is, that someone is repeating negative feedback for the sole purpose of hiding it), we may make them visible. As long as rules are broken, we will not otherwise become involved in disputed feedback.

 

While this feedback area is primarily for swaps/sales/circles arranged here on the forum, we allow leaving feedback for transactions arranged off of the forum (such as eBay auctions or other online communities). We know many of you swap and buy in multiple places.

 

The Community Gallery is a place where members can store images for use here at the forum. You can upload and link avatars, sig images, and other pictures to use in your posts or it can be used as your own online photo gallery. Most members will start out with about 500kb of space, with additional space available for "purchase" with reward points. See the guidelines section regarding reward points for details.

 

The rules for the Gallery are as follows:

Images that are not work safe must go in the "NWS Album". Since there's really no warning before viewing an image whether or not it's work safe until it's too late, all NWS images must be placed there by directly uploading into the album. Please report any out-of-place images to the moderator in charge of the gallery (parrot_suspect) via PM.

 

Otherwise, images can be uploaded at your discretion, keeping in mind that images are generally available to the public via the gallery, and that the moderating staff can view all galleries (even the ones made private).

 

Images cannot be hot-linked. This isn't so much a rule as a statement of fact; we've set it up so images in the gallery can only be hotlinked here at bpal.org. Feel free to use your member gallery to host your avatar.

 

 

Lastly, the Link Engine is a place for members to share their favorite links with other members. Think of it as a collective bookmark list. At this time only members with 50 posts or more are allowed to add links (though people with less can still view, rate and comment on links), though this may change in the future.

 

The rules for the Links Area are as follows:

We welcome links to virtually any content that fits within the listed categories. As on the forum, please mention it when adding links whose content is potentially not safe for work or contains spoilers. This is best done both in the description and adding "(NWS)" or "(SP)" to the title of the link.

 

Everyone is welcome to add links to their businesses, blogs, and so forth. In the interest of full disclosure, please mention your affiliations in the description.

 

Please be honest and polite when describing or discussing linked sites.

 

If we have a topic discussing what's being linked, please add that to the description!

 

Any specific complaints about linked sites should be reported to the links mod team, headed by LiberAmoris. Things that might warrant reports would be inaccurate descriptions, lack of disclosure, lack of notice regarding spoiler/not work safe content, etc.

 

Complaints about a company linked here should be addressed in the "Buyer Beware" thread and mentioned in the link's comment section. If the company has an existing topic, feel free to add your complaint there.

 

 

Also, not sure how many of you noticed, but on Wednesday (I think) I installed a new hack on the forum that allows you to choose which emoticons appear for you on the "clickable smilies" box on the post/reply screen. This should give everyone the easiest access to the smilies they use the most. To access this feature, click the "Favorite Emoticons" link at the bottom of that smilies window and a popup window should come up that'll allow you to select/unselect different smilies. (if it doesn't launch the pop up the first time you click it, try refreshing the page and try again).

 

 

I think that's all! If anyone has any comments or questions feel free to contact quantum spice or myself. Enjoy!

The update appears to have gone really smoothly this time around and was done with minimal downtime. Three cheers for upgrading test areas first so all of the modifications can be added before I take things down!

 

I think everything went ok, but if you notice any new bugs that you didn't notice prior to this evening let me know via pm!

I have a day off tomorrow so I'm going to be installing the new security update for the forum sometime tomorrow afternoon which means the forum'll be down anywhere from 2 to 6 hours (but hopefully no more than that!).

 

Sorry for the inconvenience everyone, but obviously last time I put off upgrading the forum software my procastination bit us in the ass so I'm trying to get a move on!

As most of you have already heard, we were hacked yesterday which lead to some nasty virus spreading among a chunk of our users. A hacker used a known security flaw in Invision Board v. 2.1.5 to gain access to the admin control panel where it inserted iframes (an html element that allows the content of another website or page be displayed seamlessly on another page) into several (though apparently not all) skins. The offsite page it integrated into the forum contained the actual virus, no files on our server had viruses directly embedded into them.

 

Kate and I have gone through each of the different skins to removed the iframe insertions and checked the different upload folders for new files, so we're pretty confident that all malignant content has been removed. We've also upgraded the software so that the hacker could no longer take advantage of that flaw in the script (which is something I've been meaning to do, but hadn't found the time since the new version was release 3-4 weeks ago) and changed our passwords just to be safe. Hopefully this will prevent the hacker from reentering the admin center and reinserting any of his modifications.

 

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused! For more information on any possible information compromises that occured because of our breakin, please read Kate's announcement on the issue.

Just in case anyone's missed this, both admins and about a third of the mod staff will be away this weekend to attend Convergence in New Orleans. Communication during this time will be slow as those of us gone won't be checking in here and those of us staying behind will have more work to do than usual in our absense. Please be patient and cooperative with the mods that will still be around, I don't want them going crazy. I may never get to take another vacation if they do.

 

I myself will be gone from tomorrow until Monday, so any requests for my help will go unanswered until Tuesday!

She's not Artemis, but Kali's a warrior goddess with her own BPAL blend. Oya (an orisha) is also a warrior goddess Beth has blended for.

BPAL Forum Raffle!

 

 

Just to clarify, the forum will end tomorrow at midnight CST. After that, no more will be sold and Kate & I will spend the weekend assigning numbers to each ticket and choosing the winners.

 

Thank you to everyone who's made the raffle so successful this far in!

As I'm sure many of you have noticed, the forum has been slow and down some since we came back up. It seems that our host put us on a machine with less RAM than I ordered and we're taxing the resources we have. They're going to install the RAM I ordered which will improve our performance but that's going to take some downtime. I'm currently waiting on a tech to get back to tell me how long we'll be down for and when we can do it. I'll get back to you guys when I get that information.

 

Also, as a reminder, this is the last week you'll be able to buy raffle tickets! The last day they'll be on sale is Friday (Saturday, for you Aussies!). Barring any complications, the drawing will be held this weekend and winners will be notified next week!

Hey everyone! After nearly two weeks of downtime, the forums are back up and finally on a server on our own! I didn't get nearly as much done as I would have liked, but a combination of time constraints, missing plug-ins and extreme fatigue have lead me to throw in the towel for the time being and open up without them. I know you guys want to be back just as much as I'd like to not spend ever spare minute on forum work for a few days, so this is best for everyone even if I do find it pretty disappointing. Hopefully though we'll get the proper plug-ins installed onto the server this week and get at least two of the three uncompleted projects up and running before a third of the mod team leaves to attend Convergence.

 

In the meantime, here are some of the changes that have occured since we went down:

• Live Chat!: The forum now has an official chat room! It's integrated into the forum so that everyone's forum log-in should work for it, AND it's tied into the "Who's Online?" list so that people can tell when our members are within, chatting away!
  
• Member Blogs: All Members now have the ability to create and maintain their own weblogs on site! This feature can be setup within your "My Controls" control panel.
  
• New Skin: I created a new skin which I'm very proud of while we were down. You can find it under the name "she devil."
  

Other Important Items of Note:

• Mata Hari skin temporarily down: Sarah's lovely red skin is down while she's making buttons to accommodate some of the forum's new features. Once she's finished it'll return. Feel free to bug her if she takes too long.
  
• Gallery not up: This is just a heads up to anyone who stumbles across the Invision Gallery links in your user control panels. A community gallery (where people could upload and share images) was something I had planned to have ready when we opened, but we're waiting on a module to be installed so it can work. Until then, just ignore than section. Once it'l ready, I'll make an announcement and explain how it works.
  
• New Moderators to Be Chosen: Over the next few weeks, we plan to adding several moderators to both help moderate the Politics subforum and the help staff some of our new projects. We don't plan on having a formal application process as we think that limits the pool of people we have to choose from, but it never hurts to inform us of your interest in a position as that will at least make sure you'll be considered. To the few of you who have already expressed interest during the past few months, I haven't forgotten you.
  

I think that's about it. It's very late and tired, so I've probably forgotten something. If you have any questions, concerns, or post crash errors to report, feel free to pm Kate (quantum spice) or I and we'll attempt to get back to you ASAP.

 

And no I'm going to go to bed. Welcome home guys!

The "Get New Post" feature is going to be buggy until traffic on the forum (and your participation!) goes back to normal. Some of you have already noticed that when you click on the "Go to New Posts" graphic (looks something like this though the color differs from skin to skin), you'll get an SQL error. This is because the forum (it seems anyway) hasn't completely acknowledged that the week's worth of posts that are missing are gone, so it tries to take you to posts that you hadn't read that are no longer there. When it tries to call up said posts, it runs into an error because the posts don't exist. This error will fix itself as you read the forums more and it counts all posts up to the present as read because you've visited that topic since we've been back up. For the new few days, for threads you haven't read since the forum went down, your the numbered page links rather than the "get new posts" button.

 

Or if you want to end the problem swiftly, hit the "mark forum as read" option in the option menu (it's on the title bar for all forums). It'll rest the "have read and have not read" settings for you so that the forum no longer tries to show you unread, no longer existing posts.

 

Thanks!