Archives: November
Wednesday, November 30th
When is a photo not a photo?
Soundtrack: System of a Down - Hypnotise
Picked this one up from Meri, who linked to some bloke called Anders who made some rather good points about a bizarre Flickr policy.
Basically the summary of it is that Flickr is about *photo*sharing, and with this in mind whenever their staff come across a stream with non-photos in (drawings, artwork, doodles, etc, etc), the entire stream is marked as 'NIPSA', which means none of that users photos will show up in public areas or searches. If you want to know more, then you could wade through this lengthy forum conversation on the matter.
Now I've only just started using Flickr, and in fact at the moment 100% of my (one photo) stream is not entirely unmolested by photoshop. Is it still a photo? Where's the borderline?
But to be honest I don't care too much about how it may or may not affect me, and it's not going to modify how I use Flickr (when I find the time). I doubt I'd notice if I did get NIPSA'd. I just think it is quite sad that it's happening. I don't see how it can do Flickr any good to say 'here's this amazing tool, use it, create, enjoy' and so on, and then spoil the experience by applying rules based on a fairly fuzzy border.
It's a reasonable trend throughout product development that if you give something to a usergroup, they will find all sorts of uses you didn't think of in the first place. Most of the time this is a good thing - including this in my opinion.
posted by David @ 09:00 PM [link]
Monday, November 21st
Ten Reasons....
Soundtrack: Rammstein - Rosenrot
Ten reasons why Gay Marriage should be Illegal does quite a good job of exploding a few arguments. Link via Meri
The above album is really rather good. Although....
- What is going on with Rammstein singing in Spanish? [Te Quiero Puta]
- Surely one of the last people you'd expect to be featured on a Rammstein track is Sharlene Spiteri from Texas? [Stirb nicht vor mir]
posted by David @ 05:55 PM [link]
Sunday, November 20th
Extreme Santa
We've just got back from spending a weekend in Devon visiting Sarah's family. While we were down there we bought me a new Santa suit for the BUMCC Christmas dinner and Santa ride in a couple of weeks.
However inspired by this, we have a new game to play over the Christmas period - Extreme Santas!
The idea is simple - go out, buy a Santa suit, and then partake in some extreme sport while wearing it. Since we're spending Christmas down in Devon the current plan is for some kiteboarding on Boxing Day. Sarah's brother is talking about going surfing as well which would certainly count as extreme - or very stupid.
Anyone else up for it?
I'm also quite excited because we have borrowed (one of) Sarah's mum's sewing machine(s) until we can find one for ourselves. This means some of the many projects which we have been laboriously hand sewing over the past month might actually get finished. Woo.
posted by David @ 09:10 PM [link]
Wednesday, November 16th
Random link of the day
Soundtrack: Queens of the Stone Age coming through the ceiling
Stumbled across this rather helpful guide entitled "What Should I Do If The Internet Goes Down". Very amusing if slightly too true for comfort.
posted by David @ 09:17 PM [link]
Monday, November 14th
Flickr'ing
After observing the phenomenon from afar for a bit I have finally signed up to Flickr. You can find my pictures here - actually that should be 'photo', as I have only put one up there thus far - i'm aiming more for putting photos up there as I take them than slavishly uploading my vast photo archive. A few old ones might make it up there as I stumble across them though.
Why the name? Just something that sprang to mind (someone already has wildchild as their Yahoo! username, hardly surprisingly).
posted by David @ 10:07 PM [link]
Friday, November 11th
How do you sleep at night?
Soundtrack: The Stranglers - Rattus Norvegicus
Today is the day when we traditionally remember those who have fallen in wars, when we think about the lives that have been wasted as a result of the vain ambitions of leaders, when we offer our gratitude to those who fought to ensure that our basic freedoms remain intact.
So for some strange reason seeing Tony Blair on TV talking about the need for tougher 'anti-terrorism' laws with a poppy pinned to his lapel makes me feel sick.
posted by David @ 08:17 PM [link]
Friday, November 4th
As promised
Soundtrack: Rancid - And out come the wolves...
I told you I was getting bored of the old layout/colour scheme.
posted by David @ 05:41 PM [link]
Thursday, November 3rd
This is quite worrying
Sony slated over anti-piracy CD
Also, I'm getting bored of this colour scheme. A redesign may be on the cards.