Hotlinking the Vegetable

Blogissatva Numero Uno.

Snail's Tales is the best science blog I have found[1]. Aydin Örstan Effendi is a Research Associate in the Section of Mollusks at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA, U.S.A.

I discovered Snail's Tales by blog surfing via blogger's Next Blog button.

Snail's Tales displays true blogging nature, in that there regularly appear new and shiny tidbits, covering many aspects of what are clearly his natural inclinations as well as that of his profession: stories of field trips[2], descriptions of mullusk physiology and habitats, examinations of historical and current work, reflections on the culture of science, and more! And then there is an excellent seasoning consisting of reports on beer and food, pictures of grafitti on box cars and trees, articles about books, and, and more!

And all presented in an excellent voice: wise, humorous, and clearly exhibiting a love of the world and his work.

This is my idea of paradise. Why are there not more such science blogs? Snail's Tales can be read pleasurably by ignoramuses such as myself, and judging by the comments, by knowledgable professionals as well. He posts regularly; this is very important. Many science blogs read like they are grudging distractions, a chore and a bore, and this shows up in sporadic posts written in clunky jargon, posts that show no real awareness of audience. (Or so it seems to me, my apologies to those who are merely trying to grump at their colleagues in front of this big picture window we call the web.)

I tried to pick out some favorite posts, but it's impossible. It's all good. Go check him out, and get back regularly.

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[1] I say this not because of his Blogasattva Nature - that gracious blessing appeared later - but due to the inherent superiority of its content and style.
[2] My favorites, by an edge. I love to wander around the landscape, and doing it remotely via proxy is wonderful.

UPDATE 4: The trusted authority has begun to say "odd, a Chinese site with Japanese titles" and "the links [at the top] are Chinese usage." So... hmmm.

UPDATE 3: A trusted authority tells me this is Japanese text, and that many of the pictures are scenes of Japan. I added the Japanese to English, and have left the Chinese to English.


This hotlink is a bit intimidating. It's on a Chinese language forum, it's a long ways away, and it's on a page just jammed full of images.

UPDATE: This could be Japanese, I don't know. I thought the lack of kana indicated that it is Chinese, and below list some translations. I just ran the text through Babelfish Japanese to English, and the result makes about as much sense as that given below.

UPDATE 2: I've gotten one lukewarm assurance that this is Chinese. And, also, the domain name 'hklion.com' looks like Hong Kong, and sure enough, a whois search reveals it is registered in Hong Kong. That is hardly definitive, but it seems like a good clue.

Here's the URL I see:

http://www.hklion.com/viewthread.php?tid=24783&fpage=1

This is the page. Careful with that link, my machine is stunned by my audacity at downloading the page, and everything else on the box stops in wonder.

I have been using AltaVista's Babelfish frequently in the last few weeks. This page is in written in "Chinese-simp," which, as I understand it, is the result of a simplification of the traditional character set. Here are some parts of the page translated:

At the top, in what appears to be a thread title:

標題: [風景] 十国度の旋律+番外篇[完全版 504p]

Japanese: Title: [ Scenery ] melody + extra volume of ten degrees of countries [ complete edition 504p

Chinese: □□: [ □scenery ] ten states の melodies + outside [ complete version 504p ]

At the top of the first post:

﹝發短消息﹞﹝編輯文章﹞

Japanese: U 發 it is short news &U compilation 輯 composition &

Chinese: □□short news □□□□article □


Then, this list:

目录： 1楼 花の国度
2楼 树の国度
3楼 天空の国度
4楼 春の国度
5楼 夏の国度
6楼 秋の国度
7楼 冬の国度
8楼 瀑布の国度
9楼 海の国度
10楼 城市与家の国度
11楼 番外篇--小鱼居住の国度--加拿大西部美景

Japanese: Eye? : Degree of national 2 towers of 1 tower flower? Degree of national 11 tower extra volumes of degree of national 10 tower Ziyouiti giving houses of degree of national 9 tower seas of degree of national 8 tower cataracts of degree of national 7 tower winter of degree of national 6 tower fall of degree of national 5 tower summer of degree of national 4 tower spring of degree of national 3 tower skies -- small? Degree of country of residence -- adding 拿large western beauty scene

Chinese: Table of contents: 1 Lou Hua? state 2 Lou Shu? state 3 buildings sky の state 4 Lou Chun? state 5 Lou Xia? state 6 Lou Qiu? state 7 Lou Dong? state 8 buildings waterfalls の state 9 Lou Hai? state 10 buildings cities and family の state 11 Lou Fanwai west -- small fish housing の state -- Canada beautiful scene


The post is fill of flowers, perhaps 20 or 30 some. I think the list above is a table of contenst for just the first post, but I'm not sure. The next post starts:

[实拍照片精品自然写真系列之二] 树の国度

Japanese: [? Beat illuminating one spirit item natural photograph series 之 two ]? Degree of country

Chinese: [ Solid racket picture high-quality goods naturally draw a portrait second series ] the tree の state


There follow many tree pictures. In the next entry there are pictures of clouds on sunny days, then a post with a random selection of trees, flowers, water and clouds.

The fifth post starts out with my picture. The post is entitled:

[实拍照片精品自然写真系列之五]夏の国度

Japanese: [? Beat illuminating one spirit item natural photograph series 之 five ] degree of country of summer

Chinese: [ Solid racket picture high-quality goods naturally draw a portrait fifth series ] the summer の state


Doesn't look like summer to me, at least mine, and a few others. The rest could be summer pictures.

This is the poster identification associated with this entry:


訪客
LV:020-新　手

沒有頭像

積分：22
發表：73
狀態：Offline
注冊：2005-09-17

Japanese: The visiting customer LV:020- new hand 沒 possession head image Integral calculus: 22 發 charts: 73? Condition: Offline note volume: 2005-09-17

Chinese: □guest LV:020- novice □has □the picture □minute: 22 □tables: 73 □□: Offline note □: 2005-09-17


I should find someone who can read this site, and get help registering.

This picture is one of my oldest hotlinks. It is hotlinked from a few other spots as well.


Here is the original Middle-Fork post.
Here is the Middle-Fork Our Maple Tree archive.

Yesterday I discovered the hotmail hotlinks; today I went looking for other web mail hotlinks,
and checked to see if there were any Yahoo! Mail
hotlinks. There are 30 mail.yahoo hits out of 343279 total entries.

Here's the referer URL:

1) http://aa.f322.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?
2) MsgId=9446_387060_35844_1773_751_0_90_-1_0&
3) Idx=8&YY=8794&inc=25&order=down&sort=date&
4) pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox

This looks to be an inbox display, one that shows an initial snippet of each
letter. I have a yahoo account, but I'm stuffed to the brim and not very
ambitious at the moment. I'll be exploring the interfaces for the various
web mail over the next few weeks, but I really like this picture, and
wanted to show off something pretty today.

The Amtrak train is on the left, and the freight train is stationary on a side track.
I have a sequence of shots with the Amtrak train crossing the scene. This is the
only one in which the Amtrak is separate from the freight train.

This picture has been web mail fetched by two different IPs for a total of three hits.
Here is the original Middle-Fork post, entitled Amtrak Rainbow.
Here is the Middle-Fork Rainbow archive.

Merry Merry! Happy Happy!

I just stumbled on a world of hotlink that has somehow completely eluded my attention.
I glanced through the last few hours of the access log, and found the above image accessed from this URL:

1) http://by104fd.bay104.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/getmsg?
2) msg=D52D09D4-A2FD-47AD-928B-255A43A1DD29&
3) mfs=&_HMaction=move&tobox=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000002&
4) direction=next&
5) wo=&curmbox=00000000%2d0000%2d0000%2d0000%2d000000000001&
6) a=e4bd94b7feae98079d3deb5dd6d94579897a58852fd3693e63fa1b8cd663c5ae

Hotmail is a web mail service, the very first one. At first I though that the URL is what happens when an email with the hotlink to my picture is moved from one folder to another. But there is a direction=next on line 4. That may imply that this someone
is scrolling through the folder wherein the email with this hotlink occurs.

I get too much email, webmail is useless for me, and so I am ignorant.

I've been trying to create this kind of URL in the access log using my spanking
new hotmail account - no luck so far. I may have to go find a windows box
and try it there. Maybe Windows-to-Windows, how kinky.

There may be a user identification buried in the URL, but I have my doubts as
there's no good reason to put it there. Then again, this is MS, and I
learned a long time ago that I don't think the same way they do.

I expect these hotlinks are very deep dark black holes.

Among the 342021 lines in the access log there are 44 hits from hotmail
URLs. Four of them are from email I sent to the ranger at Finley NWR
seeking the identity of the gopher snake I found at Woodpecker Loop - it
references otherwise unpublished photos. The others? I'll post them all
here as I putz around at understanding hotmail.

The original Middle-Fork post, entitled Fluxion And The Belly Of Love

This photograph is very popular. People call up the altar of Google Images and place the icon "Gumby" in the offering tray. Soon they are rewarded with these visions of the Annointed One. I think people select mine because of its weird coloring (sunlight film shot under incandescent lights,) plus the ambiguous nature of the scene tickles their curiosity.

A glance at current webalizer stats reveals the secret habits of Gumby seekers. They almost always load the entire monthly archive as well, which makes me wonder if perhaps Gumby Worship is the Path to Very Fast Download Speeds.

No one is hotlinking to this picture.

I succumbed to temptation, and posted Gumby Takes A Hike, but to be honest, no one has seen him since. (Rumor mumbles something about the compost bin.)

UPDATE 29Dec2005: dynamite has changed her name to b-i-t-c-h and moved the blog to a part of myspace.com that is accessible without logging in.
http://blog.myspace.com/gigugin.
Sabaki is till looking straight up in group 3, but really, that's not a "Who, me?" look, that's a "Whachu looking at?" look.


This is cool, the BREAKING! MySpace hotlink started cooking today. The first IP showed up a few times, and then a different IP accessed it. So I logged in and checked it out.

Sabaki shows up on dynamite's blog. This is her profile page. The blog is inaccessible unless you're logged in. Her post is entitled Cats' and Girls' stuff.... and has 20 some pictures of cute kitties. I posted a comment:

Hi,
Thank you for enjoying my picture of Sabaki Looks Staright Up and hotlinking to it in your blog, I love it! She's the black kitty in your #3. You should check out the Carnival of the Cats and my own kitty picture archives. There are 5 now, I do Friday Cat Blogging, in my archives list on my photoblog Middle-Fork.

Enjoy!

She said OK! and my reply is on the page. This is a first.

Thanks! dynamite!

Here's the original Middle-Fork post.
This is the Cats 2005 Summer Archive in which it appears.

This is a very popular image, there are at least 5 active hotlinks. Three of them are on soccer forums in .uk, another on a Dutch langauge social forum, and, um, somewhere else.

It's usually an illustration of a bad date. Ugh.

The original Middle-Fork paage.

Middle-Fork's Snails and Slugs archive.

A brand new hotlink appeared today. I registered, and now await approval. I'll post details on all of these hotlinks tomorrow.

Take It As Red is an interesting blog. Unfortunately the proprietor seems to have caught some dread disease and hasn't posted since 2 Nov 2005. I hope they're ok.

And, on top of that, I don't want you to verge from Enlightened to Blogisattva by not blogging anymore!

There're a number of Ceph Blogging posts, then a bit of a random selection of items, and a sad story. People keep visiting now and then, the photo has been fetched 18 times since the beginning of the month.

And one of my photos is featured as a post, with appropriate attribution. It's one of my favorites. This is a jumping spider eating a little flower spider. I had been trying to get some shots of the flower spider, gone away for a few minutes, and when I returned I found this scene.

Thank you Take It As Red for posting my photo!

Someone is running this image through a MySpace editor function of some sort. The URL is such that only that person can make use of it, when I plug it in I get redirected to the login page. I should login.

Now that URL gets me to my own editor. That's good, I shouldn't be able to edit someone else's page. That assures me that the person whose profile contains my image is the one who put it there.

Updates as appropriate.

UPDATE 21 Dec 2005: There has been no further activity with this picture. They must have decided it wasn't the right image for their profile page. Or perhaps they just aren't anyone's friend. Who knows.

UPDATE TWO 21 Dec 2005: I spoke too soon - it's on their blog, and set to private.

The Hotlinking the Vegetable About file was just accessed via this search. (hmm, the about file is on the first page, that's a bit surprising as it's only been around a few days.)

I'd be curious if eventually they discover something. The solution provided by A List Apart is pretty good if you have the access and technical skill. Mostly access, he walks you through what to do. So perhaps reading the about file will be helpful.

This all seems very strange. I support the rights of a creater, but seriously, how can anyone expect that their way cool picture isn't going to end up bouncing around the net. Yes, it's best if attribution is given, but people simply don't understand what they're doing, and/or they don't really care. It won't change anytime soon, indeed, it will become more pervasive.

Putting a cool picture on the web seems like an attractive nuisance. An attractive pleasure, if you will.

I'll have to read through that google search, see if I can glean any bits of wisdom from among the dross.

There have been five hotlinks coming from MySpace.com. Three of them have been part of a profile page, and the other two in the list of friends comments. I've been unable to contact any of them, as far as I know. I haven't heard back.

I will describe the latest four. First up is an old friend.

---

This picture is on THE FA11EN TM's profile page. Apparently, he's a 21 year old male from Soledad, California. He started using this image on 23 Oct 2005 and it's been on his page ever since. I tried messaging to no avail - I will again eventually.

This picture certainly appeals to quite a range of people, from Mr. FA11EN TM to Miss ForgetfullyPink.

---

This orange rose was on Brittani's profile page for two days earlier this month, the 7th and 8th of Decemeber 2005. She's using a snowflake pattern now. I tried to contact her, maybe she got spooked. Anyway, thank you Brittani for using my picture for a few days!

---

Sabaki and my foot are in the friends comments on melody's profile page. The picture was included in a comment by Jess, who hails from the interestingly named Smithsoniantonville, Alabama. Is this for real? I think not, but it's cool! Points for wonkish creativity!

I had despaired of contacting people here by the time this showed up. It was posted on the 15th of December 2005, and I continue to serve the image up.
Thank you, Jess!

---

I photographed this snake at the trailhead of the Woodpecker Loop Trail at the William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge. It appeared in the friends comments of Mr. White's profile page, and in a particularly cool way. From 10 Nov 2005 to 6 Dec 2005 it was part of a slideshow which scroll a whole bunch of gopher pictures, and then the gopher snake. By the time I saw it, the effect was spoiled by the picture immediately preceding it having a "HEY! THIS IS MINE!" notice, and a few more strident sentences whose precise nature I have forgotten.

This is one reason it's okay with me for the picture to be sans credit: it would have spoiled the effect. I seem to recall that Katrin! was the friend commenting. Wow! Katrin! has a very nice flower spider picture as her back ground. I should point her at my Spiders archive.

And thanks! whoever it was that created the slideshow, very cool hotlink.

# posted by the Robot Vegetable @ 19:29 0 comments

After finding this in the rules at the EasternUSwx Forum:

You agree not to post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or by this bulletin board.

I realised I needed to have a hotlink policy, akin to shrinkwrap licenses. I've looked around some, but I can't find anything that describes what I want.

This is a collection of shrinkwrap language that various places use.

Until I can get someone with legal training to craft some language, this what I will use:

By hotlinking to an image on Middle-Fork, Far Cartouche, or Hotlinking the Vegetable:

1) You have purchased the image for the limited use in the specific context of the hotlink;

2) I have your permission to attempt to contact you within the context of the hotlink to communicate the terms of this contract;
3) I retain my copyright in all other cases - specifically:

You do not have permission to host the image from another location.
You do not have permission to sell the image.

The Middle-Fork post: Light In The Forest 5

This is my most popular hotlinked photograph, and today it started be pulled in from:

1) http://forgetfullypink.proboards55.com/index.cgi?
2) board=hr&action=display&thread=1134872125&page=1

I went there and scanned for the image, but oddly, no image. I removed the filter that blocks my IP from my view of the access log, and reloaded. Hmm, nothing. So I started reading.

Ah ha! There is a link to the image, and the visible text is the URL itself. Very cool. No attributions, but by now you know that's okay with me. Seeing the URL is attribution in itself.

But I can't locate any search string, whoever did this knew to pluck the URL from image properties. But the where was the original?


The first IP gives

therobotvegetable@hosting ~ $ host -a 70.187.192.240
Trying "240.192.187.70.in-addr.arpa"
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 49969
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 3, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;240.192.187.70.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR

;; ANSWER SECTION:
240.192.187.70.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN PTR ip70-187-192-240.dc.dc.cox.net.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
192.187.70.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN NS ns.cox.net.
192.187.70.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN NS ns.east.cox.net.
192.187.70.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN NS ns.west.cox.net.

Received 150 bytes from 65.197.143.152#53 in 67 ms

Cox.net has a useless front page, but their animation is trying to sell me cable tv and webmail. So again, not much information about the subscriber. That's cool, I don't need to know.

I registered and said Hi and thanks! And promptly ran into one of the things that make this whole effort one in which diplomacy is important. Although I say thanks, and said nothing negative, the response seemed to be preloaded with suspicion. I blame the music companies who want to make their customers into criminals, and all those idiots out there who want to destroy fair use.

And now, reading more carefully, someone else in thread said

did you know that its against the law to use a pic with a copyright on it?

This is naive. You don't need to put the copyright notice on something for it to be copyrighted - you get that automatically. After that, I'm not sure how long it takes after abandoning something to the commons for the copyright to become so dilute that it doesn't exist. That's a (minor) part of what I'm up to, but really, I generate tons of good stuff. If I lose something by not saying That's Mine! that's okay by me.

So, a big Shout Out to the anonymous person who posted the link! I asked how they found the image, and posted the link to the Light in the Forest archive for their further viewing pleasure.


UPDATE: It doesn't make sense that they plucked the URL from image properties. If they did that, the image now lives somewhere else, and I wouldn't be seeing anything my my access log. It's the dark matter in this universe.

So, they have a connection which rotates among a range of IPs, or they use several connections. Persuing this theory, I find a Google Images search string at 18:16 from 68.224.29.162. The first hotlink occurs at 19:45. That's time to go eat, or something. Here's the referring search URL:

1) http://images.google.com/imgres?
2) imgurl=http://www.middle-fork.org/archives/lif5.gif&
3) imgrefurl=http://www.middle-fork.org/archives/2005/01/&
4) h=376&w=600&sz=189&tbnid=WeGGU2TqOQOBWM:&tbnh=83&tbnw=133&
5) hl=en&start=10&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlight%2Bin%2Bforest%
6) 26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26client%
7) 3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DG

The search strings are on line 5 again: light in forest
This is the search results page. It's on the first page, cool. Houdini's Big Yawn is buried so deeply I gave up looking.
Here's what you see after clicking on the thumbnail.

And the IP? It's another cox.net number.

therobotvegetable@hosting $ host -a 68.224.29.162
Trying "162.29.224.68.in-addr.arpa"
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 48598
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 3, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;162.29.224.68.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR

;; ANSWER SECTION:
162.29.224.68.in-addr.arpa. 70155 IN PTR ip68-224-29-162.lv.lv.cox.net.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
29.224.68.in-addr.arpa. 70155 IN NS ns.cox.net.
29.224.68.in-addr.arpa. 70155 IN NS ns.east.cox.net.
29.224.68.in-addr.arpa. 70155 IN NS ns.west.cox.net.

Received 148 bytes from 65.197.143.152#53 in 0 ms


Bingo!

UPDATE 18Dec2005: This is the response from the hotlinker in regards to my speculation about why two IPs:

i have no idea what your talking about. i found ALL of my BG images on google.

---

The Middle-Fork post: Houdini's Big Yawn

Okay, I've got a live one.
This morning shortly after 0600 PDT someone found Houdini's Big Yawn using Google Images.

Here's the URL which started it off (I've cut the monster up and numbered the lines.)

1) http://images.google.com/imgres?
2) imgurl=http://www.middle-fork.org/archives/HoudinisBigYawn.gif&
3) imgrefurl=http://www.middle-fork.org/archives/2004/11/&h=351&
4) w=600&sz=191&tbnid=viKoXFLogOEJ:&tbnh=77&tbnw=133&hl=en&start=39&
5) prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcat%2Byawn%26start%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%
6) 3D%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN


The search strings are on line 5: cat yawn
This is the search results page.
This is what you see after clicking on the thumbnail.

Here is where the picture is hotlinked.
It's part of Eastern US Weather Portal, which, hmm, looks pretty cool. Anything like that for the West?

Anyway, I wll now register an account, noting that their registration page contains some rules, one of which is:

You agree not to post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or by this bulletin board.

which is pretty draconian. I consider this fair use, but by these rules, they can't even use my image with my perrmission - clearly excessive and downright UnAmerican! OMIGAWD!
I better get in there quick and let them know, that for the pittance of a hotlink, I have sold to them the limited right to use this image in this specific context!

Roveg to the Rescue!


Ok, I have resgistered. I try to register as "the Robot Vegetable" everywhere. Some places, like the borg, require 2 names, in which case I am theRobot.



So who is this person who is so kind as to like and use my photograph? What can I discover?

The Pilgrim's IP is 69.165.108.230. Digging into it results in:

therobotvegetable@hosting ~ $ host -a 69.165.108.230
Trying "230.108.165.69.in-addr.arpa"
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 8250
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 3, ADDITIONAL: 2

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;230.108.165.69.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR

;; ANSWER SECTION:
230.108.165.69.in-addr.arpa. 86389 IN PTR 69-165-108-230.agstme.adelphia.net.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
108.165.69.in-addr.arpa. 86389 IN NS ns1.adelphia.net.
108.165.69.in-addr.arpa. 86389 IN NS ns2.adelphia.net.
108.165.69.in-addr.arpa. 86389 IN NS ns3.adelphia.net.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.adelphia.net. 5034 IN A 24.50.78.2
ns2.adelphia.net. 5034 IN A 68.168.224.177

Received 179 bytes from 65.197.143.152#53 in 1 ms


Adelphia.net provides High-Speed Internet connections "in 31 states and Puerto Rico."

This pretty much means that, without going to extremes which would be invasive I cannot find out anything more about this person.

Prior to the Dark Ages, I would have stopped here, but now I can go say hi.

Well, maybe I can't. although I was able to go to the page w/ Houdini before, now I can't. I will post this and then update it later.

UPDATE: IT's starting to look like a black hole. Even though I've registered and logged in, I can't actually do anything. I keep getting error messages that tell me to login (although the screen displays my status as logged in.) The Adminstrator link is dead. When I email to the address from which my registration letter came, it bounces. When I delete all cookies etc on my browser and try again, the same thing happens. alas.

This is the frustrating part. It's a $%&^$&*@ forum! Supposedly it's for people to post and reply. hmm, maybe if I shower and put on some clean clothes?

UPDATE 18Dec2005: I eventually got an email confirming my registration. This is a new thing, usually the first email with a confirmation link which, when clicked on, finishes the registration process. This time, I got the first letter, clciked the URL, and it acted like I was registered, but not this time. Well, live and learn.

Anyway, I've now posted my thank you, and people are starting to see the reply.

I share this mercurial journey through the Singularity to the Great Attractor and beyond with multitudes, this mosh pit of sound and fury. We are all kinds, but that's rather beside my point. The focus here are those who touch my access log.

I've thought about this a while, and have decided on how to slice my pie of companionship, and so in the course of this metamorphosis into the machine, I find these folk rubbing on my virtual parts:


Blogisattvas

Blogisattvas are enlightened bloggers, who have graciously listed my blogs in a relatively permanent fashion on their main page. These are truly superior beings: not only do they regularly produce excellent content, they work at improving the spiritual traffic on other blogs.

They are the world's most wonderful people.


The Enlightened

Next up are the Enlightened. These ascended beings shine internally just as much as the Blogisattvas, but their path does not include the laser focus intent on ushering others along. They have mentioned my blog in a post. This brings more light immediately, which their crafty collection of mirrors and lenses rubegoldberg into targeted appreciation. And, in general, they can craft much better sentences than I can.

Their grace inundates my access log for a few days, and usually leave a interested soul or two behind, who have found something worth returning to over and over.

They are the world's most wonderful people, behind door number two.


Then there are Pilgrims

Pilgrims are on the path. They intuitively ferret out the images which can lead them to a higher consciousness, but they're not there yet. These seekers are the innocent lambs who just might end up in Limbo for eternity: not only do they lack a clue, they are oblivious to the glut of clues which crowd our lives.

But something is moving them in the right direction, after all, the access log records their shadowy progress toward the light.

They are behind door number three.

Moral

Blogisattvas will hang out in the altar of the sidebar, entrenched in glory and instantly available for continuing lessons as to the nature of being.

Beyond that I don't know yet, I'll be posting about traffic from other sites, and spend the most time describing the hotlinks from black holes, places from which I can't get a twitch, no matter how I gladhand and wellmet.



I dedicate my hyperlinking pattern to all the footnotes compilers who have taught me to heavily annotate the first few chapters, and then slack off, for no apparent reason.

Prehistory

I started a blog, Middle-Fork about a year ago. I thought I was going to post hiking stories and photos, things with maps and pointers to cool stuff you might miss, and history - you name it. But a blog has a mind of its own, and MF quickly turned into a one-a-day photoblog.

I've been taking pictures for a billion years, but what happens to them? I hold the slides up to a light one time, go "ooooo," and then put them away. Safe, unseen. I take a lot of photos, and when I did manage to show anyone, people like them, mummble about getting prints. But really, they just sat.

No more! I love this medium. Now I've got the entire collection scanned, I'm slowly but surely putting them on display, and, a big bonus! I have a strong new motivation to take more.

And then I finally went digital, and the number of new pictures has multiplied by a order of magnitude or two. And, well, anyway: I have lots of photos I know people will like. Someone, somewhere will like each one, and the web lets me display them in such a way that there is no artist leaning over the shoulder wondering, hoping to see which ones they like. Hoping they are strong enough to look at enough pictures, in case they're that hard to please type.


Well, people do like them, and I'm very happy to share. That's why they're there.

I'm a software engineer, and by now I've spent years watching transaction logs in realtime, analyzing the behavior of system interactions. And now, what joy! I have the access log for Middle-Fork scrolling in a window whenever I'm online. It's great fun! So, many times, I'm still looking over people's shoulders as they leaf through my pictures. This is neat; I love it. It has helped me decide what pictures to post, and even more radical, what pictures to go take.

The Dawning of Civilization

If you know what hotlinking is, you kind of know where this is heading.

I was watching the log scroll by one night, and saw a photo fetched from some odd site. I plugged the referrer url into a browser and went to see what was up. And there was my picture, one entitled Things fall Apart, on this person's homepage. Cool! I thought, then looked around for what I would have placed nearby, an attribution. But... No! No such beast anywhere in site. I was confused and appalled. How could they have forgotten?

I thought about it a few days, and then decided, what the heck, let's show a few more pictures off. So I picked some other picture, and swapped it in with the same file name. I did this for a few days, then got bored, and set it back to the original.

I decided that it was okay. I don't pay for bandwidth by the byte, so this is not an issue for me. People can check the image properties if they're curious, and see where a picture comes from. Maybe I'll get some hits that way. But I doubt that it happens at all, really. Who checks image properties except geeks?

I mentioned this to a friend, who also has a photoblog. He encounters the same thing, and was a bit peeved. He would swap in nasty messages, and he took to slapping his copyright notice on the image. I can see his point, but it's not me. I put the images up expecting people to see them. I naively didn't expect hotlinks, but I really don't mind. And I've never liked putting text, or even my signature, on any artwork, unless it was an integral part of the work. I would jot it on the back, if that.

I don't think it's a good idea to swap the images, what with so many image spiders crawling around: my pictures are indexed all over the place, I want them to make sense to people using the search engines.

So I've was merely noticing the hotlinks, and otherwise doing nothing.

The Dark Ages

One day my hit rate went through the roof (short roof, it's all relative.) I researched a bit, and discovered that a member of a popular band used a picture on their homepage. This was too much, I was jealous of my ability to watch stats and understand my traffic. This messed things up. But I was just annoyed, I didn't do anything, but it got me thinking about it again.

I decided I would track down all the hotlinkers, and publicly thank them for liking my picture enough to hotlink to it. That way, I could be polite, and make others aware that it is my picture. I waded in.

It's almost impossible. Some places work out well, forums and chat boards of various kinds. I would register, and join in the conversation. The reaction was neutral to enthusiatic. That's cool. Other places are ridiculous, such as myspace.com. It's difficult to get through to people, and when I have managed to get a message into a bottle that looks like it's floating in the right direction, I've never heard back.

Oh well. This isn't working. I looked around a bit, googling hotlink, to see what others thought. Most people have a pretty tight grip on some portion of their anatomy. I find this distasteful. The only link I found that presented a civilized approach is A LIST apart. But it's not an approach just anyone can take, you need to futz with your server and source, but it is at least polite. And, really, it's still not me. Things will resolve in ways people don't expect.

Still, I can't be bothered. All these solutions assume that the hotlinkers have a clue; not a good assumption. I want to share my pictures, and I want to know when people look at them. I would much rather have an unattributed hotlink, than for someone to take the file and put it on their own server, even with attribution. I want to know. And really, these are pretty low res images compared to what pops out of the camera. I lose nothing by letting people do this.

I needed a new approach.


The Age of Enlightenment

Inspiration Struck! I decided to start a blog to document the use of my images. Thus Hotlinking the Vegetable was born. As I discover people using my images, I intend to create a post documenting the use, link to the site, say who it is and what they're up to, maybe add some scripting to keep count of hits, maybe create a side file with the IP addresses listed. Stuff like that.


I want to be positive about it, which led me directly to realising I need to post pointers to people who do the right thing, and give an attribution for the images they use. And people who link to MF, either in a post or blogroll. They're being gracious, I should be the same.

MF is mute, and I've tried to link from Far Cartouche, my nonphoto art and babbling blog, but like MF, FC is an ongoing work of art - actually talking about things in a directed comprehensive way is impossible. I manage to squirt a few data points out, but it's always a little weird.

Hotlinking the Vegetable is my solution. I'll (slowly) catch up on what's come before, and then post anew as events warrant. It's an experiment, I don't really know what will become of it, but I'm having fun already! Perhaps someone out there will enjoy it, too.