Hey Guys,

Unfortunately with our last release, and its instability, we were forced to roll back releases. Unfortunately in doing so, it would seem that our notification system has been broken somehow. Our engineers are working on this issue as quickly as possible. We hope to have a patch within the next day, so we can deploy our code and fix the notification system at the same time. Please *bear* with us ;)

Currently all notifications are being queued up so they can be processed as soon as the fix is pushed and verified to be working correctly.

Thank you,

Tags: notification system
Current Location: Under a Rock
Current Mood: grumpy

freeskiers
While some of us long to escape the cold, dark stretch of winter for hot tropical beaches, for others, there's nothing quite like whoooooshing down those shimmering sugar alps. If you're fond of freestyle skiing, get ready to slide down the slippery slopes in good company. This passionate, international community shares travel/gear tips, anecdotes, photos, and videos for those who can't get enough of the sweet stuff.

Tags: freeskiers, skiing, snow, travel, winter sports

seasonal_icons
Need some extra twinkle to decorate your place? Check out these dazzling holiday-themed icons. If you're an artist, you can post your own creations, provided you abide by the simple rules (which is to say, all cheer and no politicking). Be sure to comment and give credit if you wish to borrow a little spirit (no direct links, please). If you're feeling a touch of humbug this season, this is an instant shot of festivity.

Tags: design, holiday icons, season_icons, userpics

handmade_gifts
High on creativity, but low on cash? You'll find tons of brilliant suggestions for do-it-yourself crafts sure to please everyone on your holiday gift list. Offering detailed instructions, photos, budgets, timelines, and active support, you'll soon turn spare remnants of fabric and time into cherished keepsakes. Be sure to search entries and read user guidelines before you post for help!

My fiance and I were wedding cake tasting a couple weeks back and we went to a place that had this tiramisu-like cake filling...It was amazing! Very subtle but it was soooooo good with the chocolate cake they paired it with! I was wondering if any of you have a tried and true recipe for tiramisu filling for a chocolate cake because I wanted to make one for his birthday this weekend and since he is extremely picky, I don't have many choices in the birthday cake area.

Thanks so much!! :)

( Read more... )

It's been *ages* since I posted to this group as I've not done any baking in months :o( However, it's my partner's Birthday on Monday and so it was time to get baking again :o) He requested a snowman using the same recipe I used last year (a coconut cake with coconut frosting) So here it is...



The buttons are Cadbury's chocolate buttons, and the nose is some marzipan with a little red food colouring worked through. It was made from just two normal circular cakes, with a bit of cunning cutting. There was even some leftover bits so I can vouch for its tastiness already ;o)

Current Mood: creative

We've been working on non-cake stuff lately; what you might call the "higher" level/quality goods that elevate a mere Baker to Pastry Chef/Chocolatier/Cake Decorator. ;o)

( Cut for massive photo explosion! )

Current Mood: accomplished

I had this idea to ice a cake in blue, then decorate it with a white snowman. I thought it might be a cool effect to cut some circles out of paper and use them as stencils for the snowman's body, and shake confectioner's sugar into the circles to make the snowman. Would the sugar stick well enough to show up? Would it just sink into the buttercream and disappear? Am I better off just piping the snowman?

Your thoughts and advice are appreciated!

**EDIT Thu Dec 3 23:24:15 UTC 2009 **

Hey Everyone, we are about to run the last alter job that we need to on our database servers. This will effect userpics / scrapbook / vgift images for the next few hours. Have no fear, your images aren't lost, there is just a really intensive process running on the servers which store the information for mogilefs. Thank you for your understanding and all the LJ love...

Hey LJers,

I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;)

Thanks,

Tags: mogilefs, upgrade, userpics
Current Location: Jumping out of a perfectly good plane
Current Mood: dirty
Current Music: Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction