Valleywag, that bastion of accuracy and careful sourcing in online journalism, is reporting that LiveJournal laid off most of its US-based employees and may be "a website...left on life support."

In general I find Valleywag about as accurate and unbiased as a lousy UK tabloid, so apply skepticism liberally as appropriate. (The LiveJournal employee they quote in the article says only that "a number" of employees were laid off. Valleywag is claiming 20 out of 28, but based on past history they're probably pulling that number out of their ass.) Still, it's worth creating a backup plan.

Per bryant via rmd, a few backup suggestions:

• LJArchive for Windows (more info here)
• LJBook
• Python script written by bryant, especially useful for OS X folks

Note that all of the LiveJournal backup sites are being hammered today, so be patient.

ETA: Better Python script here.

ETA 2: LiveJournal says Valleywag/Gawker exaggerated the number of layoffs. I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you. Here is LJ's press release. Lots more perspectives here.

Short version: No, LJ isn't going down this week. But if you're worried about it, start a backup anyway.

I'm a lot better about micro-blogging right now than I am about keeping up with LiveJournal. This probably says something about my attention span. Try finding me on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/waysofseeing/

I also post some on Plurk, too.

Only blog host in the world that doesn't provide you with a way to see the statistics of your blog. (Or if there is, I've never found it.)

Poll #767291 Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 38

Are you reading this?

For those of you who have my work and home address, please take note that I'm not checking my work e-mail account *at all*. If you need anything, drop me a line at my gmail account. (It's the same user name as work.)

This message brought to you by the American National Amanuensis League. Please resume whatever it was you were doing.

Handwriting an LJ entry is a bit like building a house without using any nails. You can do it, if you want, but it's more an artistic statement than a practical method.

This message is brought to you by the number 6 and a Tablet PC. Good night.

If anybody knows how to make LJ produce accented vowels and enyeas (sp?) let me know.

*growl*

I'm sensing a certain amount of well-deserved schadenfreude directed my way, particularly in reaction to stories like last night's post. Sample: "Well, now you'll have to save up for your toys like the rest of us." *g*

In case anyone was wondering, I agree with you one hundred percent. We've still got our health, our house, good food, decent clothes, transportation, and everything else we need. Life is good. I have no real complaints.

If I'm nostalgic about my bike, it's because riding a motorcycle was/is an important part of my own sense of myself, who I am. I promise faithfully that I will not be writing any rhapsodic paeons to the VW GTI that I'm trading in this weekend. I haven't entirely descended to that level of yuppie scum yet.

Apparently, my LiveJournal Friends page has recently decided to take up recreational crack smoking.

spoomeister's last post didn't show up at all. officialgaiman, Neil Gaiman's RSS feed, feels compelled to post five or six entries in a block. shadesong got dropped from my friends list without my assistance. And today's posts were apparently arranged in order of atomic weight rather than by posting time.

If anyone's said anything brilliant in the last forty-eight hours, kindly leave a comment and let me know. I may not have seen it.

Following hippybngstockng's excellent example, I updated my user info page a bit.