Hotlinking the Vegetable

I should have known, as soon as I say that no one ever links to the other two pictures in the "Sabaki Pleasures Herself on my Big Toe", someone would use it, and such a place! What is this place? Hmm, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority Country Code page says that .si is Solvenia! How cool is that? Slovenia was the first nation spawned by the death of Yugoslavia, a brief war, almost no war if I recall correctly, and then it's free. Of all of the formaer Yuogoslavia, Slovenia is the
most akin to western Europe, and, drat, can't find it. I have a cool novel written about the time right after WWII when a campaign (of terror) led up to a potemkin vote and it ended up on the red side of the Iron Curtain to be.

They've got some picture game running in this thread, and Dr. Phil McGraw offered up the second Sabaki and my Foot photo. I don;t know what the Slovenian language is like, and , drat (looks at the time) I really should go to bed soon. This is even more intimidating than Chinese - omy omy, how to say Hi and Thank you? I must ponder.

Gracelyn has hotlinked this orange rose as the tiled background image of her profile page. She placed itthere on 12 Jan 2006 ans as of this posting has generated 23 more hits from almost as many differnt IPs.

I love this picture, it really turned out well. These crocuses were the very last flowers to appear this year in the yard. I've always thought of them as harbingers of Spring, but they have done double duty. The syrphid fly hung around for a day, and I haven't seen it since.

An access for this picture showed up yesterday from a thread in Misanthropist's Journal. It's a place where anyone can reply, I didn't need to register.

They're playing a game with these rules:

1. What’s the first word that comes to mind when you think of me?
2. Go to http://images.google.com and search for that word.
3. Reply to this post with one of the pictures on the first page of results (don’t tell me the word).


princessa125 searched for fork and here's the current results page. Two of my pictures are on the first page, neither one of them a picture of a fork. The spiders are picking up the name of the blog Middle-Fork. I like the serendipity, but it suggests that there is a lot of room for improving the situational semantics of the search strings. Blog titles are like band names, you can maybe assume that Lawnmower Puppies will be more radical than Winter Elk, but even that much is iffy.

Anyway, I replied to _itsjustme_ and princessa125:

My photoblog is named Middle-Fork (http://www.middle-fork.org/). I get a lot of hits from the image search engines for fork, usually with some other word, like "robot fork". Who searches for pictures of robot forks? Anyway, glad you like the picture, there are a couple more of this insect (a syrphid fly) at this insects on flowers archive (http://www.middle-fork.org/archives/insects_on_flowers/index.html).

the Robot Vegetable


I had placed the urls and associated text in hyperlink tags, and the LiVEJOURNAL interface disassembled them and displayed the constituent parts. LiVEJOURNAL enforces enlightenment! Is that cool or what? Probably or what, I'm not sure what I think yet. If you simply type in the url, the interface makes it a link and displayed the url as the link text.

princessa125 said:

ok... that was weird. how did that dude track us to LJ????? anyhoo, i just picked fork randomly. i wanted to send you a picture of a bracelet made of forks that was really pretty, but the page wasn't working. so i sent you the next weirdest thing.

to which I just responded:

Hi,
I didn't track you - you walked into my house and looked at a picture on my living room wall. That's how the web works, when you follow a link, like clicking on an url here, you ask some far away place to show you something, and the server gives it to you and jots down a note saying "so-and-so just looked at whatzit." I like it when people see my pictures, and try to say thank you. so, Thanks again!

veg

That's why I think maybe 'or what' people don't know they're being enlightened.

The original post.
Insects on Flowers archive

This picture again! It has popped up as a background image in a reply by Armedandprettyfull on the msn group Wolves of Serenity. This group is "a very literate, clean rpg."

In the rules I find:

Absolutely NO wolf art pictures.I dont want this group to be closed down.So.. no Golden Wolfen, Frisket etc.If I find anything of the such on this site in any of the albums.. I will delete them. e_e

In Microsoft's http://privacy2.msn.com/tou/en-us/default.aspx?PI=26283&DI=416 I find:

6. MATERIALS YOU POST OR PROVIDE; COMMUNICATIONS MONITORING
For materials you post or otherwise provide to Microsoft related to the MSN Web Sites (a "Submission"), you grant Microsoft permission to (1) use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate and reformat your Submission, each in connection with the MSN Web Sites, and (2) sublicense these rights, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. Microsoft will not pay you for your Submission. Microsoft may remove your Submission at any time. For each Submission, you represent that you have all rights necessary for you to make the grants in this section.

so Microsoft is saying they can do whatever with your post. This runs right into my stated permission that a hotlinker owns the specific use they make of my image, but may not sell it or otherwise make use of it.

Armedandprettyfull has posted my image in a place that states they can do what they like with it. Geez, what a quandary.

I have joined the group and posted this message:


Hi,
I like that picture a lot! It's my most popular hotlinked photo, and I encourage hotlinks to my artwork, I like it a lot when people use my pictures.

I'm in a quandary in regards to this use. I give people implicit contractual permission to hotlink my photos, but Microsoft says the following in their forum rules:

6. MATERIALS YOU POST OR PROVIDE; COMMUNICATIONS MONITORING
For materials you post or otherwise provide to Microsoft related to the MSN Web Sites (a "Submission"), you grant Microsoft permission to (1) use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate and reformat your Submission, each in connection with the MSN Web Sites, and (2) sublicense these rights, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. Microsoft will not pay you for your Submission. Microsoft may remove your Submission at any time. For each Submission, you represent that you have all rights necessary for you to make the grants in this section.

SO you see my problem: I want you, Armedandprettyfull to be able to use the picture this way. I didn't give Microsoft permission to do what they like with it, but that is the gist of their rule. Anything you post, they pretty much own from there on out. I think this is draconian and foolish, but it's their house, and they make the rules here.

This runs completely against my own rules, but if I don't say this, I'm giving MS permission to abscond with my image:

lif5.gif is the Robot Vegetable's photo, please don't give it to Microsoft by posting it in their forums.

Yuck, now I have to go wash out my mouth. I want people to hotlink my images, but I retain all other rights. Microsoft does not have my permission to use this image in any form as expressed by their rule listed above.

I've already reported on this hotlink, and it's still cooking away on Melody's profile page in a comment by Jess. The sad part about this hotlink is that this picture is the first of a sequence. I've tried a few searches, here's one, but I never see pictures two and three.

I sent Jess a message:

Hi,
Here's the whole set:






Glad you like it! You left it in a comment on Melody's profile. The first picture is popular, but I never see the other two anywhere. It's too bad that the image search engines don't put them together like they deserve.


veg


Here's the original Middle-Fork post, and the Cats 2005 Summer archive in which it appears.

OutdoorsPro is a cool blog. Mark S. Nelson is "a 40-year old Alaskan rafting, hiking and glacier guide and Oregon Pro Ski Patroller" who works at, um, one of those Skiing meccas in the Oregon Cascades. Willamette Pass? Bachelor? I just searched for job, new job, work and hired on his blog and came up with nothing. The About the OutdoorsPro link leads me to a page that claims he is "currently spending the winter far away from the snow in the Deep, Deep South" but I'm pretty sure he's just down the road in the ice and snow. One of the first posts I read was about his new job. Maybe it's that Ashland ski resort? Or, perhaps he means he's far from "the snow in the Deep, Deep South" - far from the snow in Antartica.

Forget all that, and go read a bunch of his work related posts, they're great, full of detail about his day, hiking up to the cone to get in shape for avalanche patrol, becoming encrusted with rime on the lift, participating in injury rescue drills, marveling at the wind gauge that pegged while he was safely ensconced below. And more and more! I love it.

OutdoorsPro is cool, especially as I'll never get anywhere near these locales while he is loving his job - I hate snow. But I love the idea of enjoying the cold, and peeking in remotely on a guided tour by an expert is great.

I'm pretty sure he's near Oakridge.

He was so gracious as to mention Middle-Fork in a 27 Dec 2005 post.

And, just for the love of the cold, read Independent People by Halldor Laxness. An Icelander, he won the Nobel Prize, and this is the best of his novels (that I've read.) It's COLD in Iceland in the winter. There's a scene where the protagonist is out in a blizzard and plunges into a thundering river, then goes home and... well. Read it, it's great, and brrrrrrr very cold.

Colophon: As any considerate friend would, the snow comes to visit me now and then. This is the small flurry of snow that came before the ice storm in January 2004. This is the scene looking out into the backyard, and is the first publication of this photo. No one is hotlinking it.

I've found some weird mailto accesses, I don't know what they are doing. There have been 11 of them since 16 Dec 2005, with 10 of them from 27-30 Dec 2005.

A mailto URL is not supposed to access the server, rather it should fire up your email client. Spiders should know not to try.

These all seem taken wholly from the mailto links, my own, and a handful of commenters. Here is an example, one with my address:

1) 66.252.133.170 - - [30/Dec/2005:13:30:56 -0800]
2) "GET /archives/2005/12/mailto%26#58;therobotvegetable@middle-fork.org HTTP/1.0"
3) 404 294 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;)"

I think this is a broken spider, except that these are the only lines from this IP address. A spider would be walking all over my site. I checked dropping the last number from the IP to see if it was working through a list, but this isn't the case.

Looking into the IP:


therobotvegetable@hosting ~ $ dig 66.252.133.170

; <<>> DiG 9.2.3 <<>> 66.252.133.170
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 28828
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;66.252.133.170. IN A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
. 10800 IN SOA A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. NSTLD.VERISIGN-GRS.COM. 2006010201 1800 900 604800 86400

;; Query time: 28 msec
;; SERVER: 65.197.143.152#53(65.197.143.152)
;; WHEN: Mon Jan 2 18:26:51 2006
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 107


...which doesn't reveal much. The IP resolves to a website w/ an Under Construction notive. I've tried a few standard pages and get 404ed. Telnet to the email port get rejected.

So, I'm clueless abut why these accesses are attempted.


Colophon: This image was created for this post and is not hotlinked.