*eyes blearily half-open*

[deird_lj]

So tired... So very very tired...

But I have washed all my dishes, patted my cat, brought in my bins, paid my bills, and finished an insanely well-researched fic for still_grrr. I am very accomplished.

Bed...

Comments

[deird1]

Hooray!

[jl-in-the-lane.livejournal.com]

Yes, but LJ is being weird.

I try to get it to search my email to 'Find Friends' but it tells me my password doesn't match my email.

Hotmail, however, thinks they match.

?!?!?!?!

JLnowonLJ

[jl-in-the-lane.livejournal.com]

LJ is HARD WORK.

For example:

How does one go about doing funky cross-through thingies in the comments section?

I can't see any toobar...

Re: JLnowonLJ

[jl-in-the-lane.livejournal.com]

How do you do the big subject heading?

Or is that a paid account thingy?

Re: JLnowonLJ

[jl-in-the-lane.livejournal.com]

And why don't you have ads on your page?

I bet, I just BET this will be a paid account one.

And how on earth do I fix the userpics thingy?

AAAAAARRRRRGRRGHH!

This is insane!

The only reason I decided to give in and get a blasted account was so I would be able to track this stuff without trawling through vast amounts of garbage to find it.

THIS IS NOT HAPPENING.

WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

[deird1]

The ads are a paid account thing, yes.

Userpics, however, are much simpler.


So, question: have you looked at your Profile page?
You can get to it either by clicking "user info" at the top of your own LJ, or by clicking the little man next to your user name.

Here, have a look at mine, so that I can show you what's going on.

You'll notice, up the top, it's got a list of interesting (and not so interesting) info, like how long I've been here, and how many entries I have, and how many memories I've got, and so forth.

Ignore most of that, for the moment.

It also lists all of my friends, and people who have me friended, and all the communities I'm part of, and so forth.

Ignore all of that, too.

It looks like you've already figured out the "bio" part, so we can skip that.

Instead, head back up the page to near the top, where the list goes like this:
Journal Entries - Tags - Memories - Scrapbook Files - Virtual Gifts - Userpics

You want the "Userpics" one.

[deird1]

When you click on my Userpics link, you'll get to see a list of every icon I have (aren't they pretty!).

If you do the same thing on your own profile page, you'll probably get something saying that you haven't uploaded any yet, and a link saying "upload a new userpic" or something similar.

To do that, it's kind of important to have a userpic you want to upload.
We'll deal with that bit first.

Go and find an icon somewhere on LJ that you want to use (preferably a non-moving one, at least until you've got the hang of this).
If you left-click on it, one of the options will be Save Image As.
That will let you save the picture to your computer.

Once it's saved, go back to the "upload a new userpic" option in your profile.

There should be a button that says "browse". That's the one you want. Clicking that should take you to your computer files, and you should be able to find the icon you just saved, and upload it.

You also have the option of "keywords" and "comment".
Keywords is how you find the icon - when you make a post (or a comment), you can choose your icon from a scrolly list of keywords.

Comment is for anything else you want to say. The usual LJ etiquette is to say who created the icon. (You'll notice a lot of New Icons! pages say "Click, Comment, Credit" - which means "Take the icon you like, tell me you've taken it, and credit me in the comments section of your userpics".)

[deird1]

Are you free tonight?

If so, why don't I come over for a couple of hours tonight and look at this sort of stuff with you...

[deird1]

Not sure what you mean...

Your entry seems to have a subject heading.

Are you talking about where I've got "The Mezzanine"?

If so, it might be better to wait until we're both in front of the same computer, because I'm not sure I can describe it very well.

Re: JLnowonLJ

[deird1]

Okay. The formatting.
I'll show you some examples, but I'm going to use the wrong brackets, because if I do it properly they'll just format things rather than being visible. So, what you need to do is use the stuff I'm typing here, but instead of SQUARE brackets, you need to use DIAGONAL brackets. (Those being the ones on the comma and full-stop keys.)

To use italics, you write:
[i]words you want italicised[/i]

For bold:
[b]more words[/b]

For underlining:
[u]yet more words[/u]

For strikethrough text:
[strike]wordage[/strike]

For tiny fonts:
[small]words![/small]

For linkage:
[a href="http://www.website.com"]words again...[/a]

...hopefully that makes sense (and shows properly).

I had to learn it through trial and error, mostly by seeing what happened when people did it wrong.

Re: JLnowonLJ

[jl-in-the-lane.livejournal.com]

Hmmm.
So that would be: italics, bold, underline, strikethrough, teeny, and a linky one that I'm certainly not sophisticated enough to try yet.

Re: JLnowonLJ

[jl-in-the-lane.livejournal.com]

COOL.
What if I want to say something REALLY EXCITING? Or really secret?
Or possibly like THIS and this?

Re: JLnowonLJ

[jl-in-the-lane.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Can't tell whether that second one worked or not although part of it did...

[deird1]

You can actually use all that formatting in normal entries as well, and I usually do, because it makes it much simpler to go back and edit. Rich Text occasionally has issues.

Rich text

[jl-in-the-lane.livejournal.com]

Ummmm... what's this?

And, in fact, I don't get this entire answer.

Do you mean that it's easier to use that stuff rather than using the toolbar? Why? Can you not edit it back using the toolbar?

[deird1]

*sighs*

Okay. Let's take these one at a time.

With the "finding friends" function I have no idea, because I've never used it.