Monthly Archives: July 2009

Women Pilots in Another Time

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A video.

One of my Twitter friends, keech560, shared a link to this YouTube video. Although I don’t usually embed the videos I like on my blog, this was “a keeper” — a video I want to watch again and remember. It reminds me that women weren’t always accepted in aviation — or many other professions — and gives me an idea of what it must have been like to be the first woman airline pilot.

As you watch this, think about all the fine minds we’ve held back because of gender, race, or other factors. We’re all people; we can all achieve the same dreams — if given the chance.

PLEASE Report and Block Twitter Spammers

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It’s getting completely out of control.

This afternoon, I received @ replies from three different Twitter users who do not follow me, all of which contained spammy content. All three messages were obviously automatically generated based on a key word I’d included in a tweet:

  • Spammer 1 invited me to a “Free Procrastination Seminar” after I used the word procrastination in a tweet.
  • Spammer 2 pointed me and a Twitter friend to a site that sells face masks after I suggested that my friend wear a face mask when cleaning out a dusty hay barn.
  • Spammer 3 pointed me and a Twitter friend to a site that sells MacBook Pro batteries after my friend and I had a Twitter exchange about his MBP battery.

It’s bad enough that everyone and his uncle is trying to use Twitter to promote themselves and their businesses. But now they’ve set up empty Twitter accounts and are using automated tools to send out Tweets that promote their products or services based on key word matches. That means they could be sending out hundreds or thousands of advertising tweets per day, clogging up your Twitter timeline with their crap.

I, for one, am sick of it.

There are two things you can do to help stop Twitter spam:

  • Follow @spam on Twitter. This is a special account monitored by the folks at Twitter. Once you follow @spam, it will follow you back. You can then send direct messages to @spam when you want to report a spammer. For example, you might compose a message like this:
    d spam @spamguy123 is sending me unsolicited advertisements.

    The folks at Twitter investigate legitimate spam complaints. In addition, @spam sends out periodic tweets about using Twitter safely, so you might pick up a few useful tips.

  • Block spammers. If you get followed by a spammer or received an @reply with spammy content, take a moment to block that Twitter user. The folks at Twitter take blocking into consideration when evaluating spam reports and account activity.

You can learn more about reporting Spam to Twitter here.

Please don’t just ignore the spammers. Do something to stop them. Only if we all act can we get a better handle on the situation. The folks at Twitter hate spam even more than we do. It clogs their bandwidth and stretches the resources of their servers. If we help them identify spammers, they’ll help us by suspending their accounts.

Spread the word.

October 16 Update: A new Twitter feature makes it quicker and easier to report spam. Learn more about it here.

WTF?

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Another commentary rant on the stupidity of people on the ‘Net.

Back in January 2007, I wrote a blog post titled “How to Contact Amazon.com Customer Support by Telephone.” As you might imagine, it provided step-by-step details for navigating Amazon’s Web site to arrive at a page where you could get them to call you.

Over the following years, that post has been a sort of central clearing space for Amazon.com technical support questions. People seem to think that even though the post appears on my blog, which has no Amazon.com branding and shares no design elements with Amazon.com, I can somehow answer their Amazon.com technical support questions and resolve problems with their orders. Sometimes I approve the comments, just to show how stupid the people posting them can be. Other times I just delete them as if they’re spam.

But this morning, I got an e-mail message from someone who obviously read the post there and decided to escalate her case. Keeping in mind that the only way a stranger can contact me via e-mail is through the use of a form that clearly states the kind of contact I’ll respond to, I find it amazing that she e-mailed me this, with the subject “phone”:

I order alot of books from amazon.com and i would love to contact them by phone because i have a question i would like to ask them, but maybe you would know. The book by richard laymon island and quake is that both books together? Or am i better off buying both books? Also what is the headline cover on the book? Is that the paperback books?

Pardon me, but WHAT THE FUCK does she think I do? Study the Amazon.com catalog? Have some kind of secret connection to Amazon.com staff? Have a relationship with all the listed authors and publishers? Have nothing better to do with my time than field questions from morons who can’t get the information they seek from people actually paid to help them?

Obviously, I’m not going to answer her question. She’s just lucky I didn’t include her name here, so everyone would know what a total idiot she is.

And maybe — just maybe — my link from that post to this one might clue in a few of the idiots so they stop wasting their time requesting Amazon.com technical support from me.

Washington Photo Galley

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An ever-growing collection of my favorite photos from summers in Washington State.

I’m a serious amateur photographer and thoroughly enjoy taking my camera to new places to shoot photos. I’m particularly fond of landscape and architecture photography and love finding patterns and textures in nature and man-made structures. My summers in Washington State have given me plenty of free time and new scenes to explore. I find that I make more photo excursions here than I do at home.

I’ve Been a Victim, Too
I’ve had at least one of my photos stolen, right from my Web site. Fortunately, the person who stole it did so innocently. Like most other people who surf the ‘Net, he thought that anything on the Internet was free to copy and use as he saw fit. He saw my photo, liked it, and displayed it on his site with a link back to mine. He didn’t think he was doing anything wrong, so I was gentle with him. He removed the photo when I asked him to. But if he hadn’t included the link, he could have easily passed off the photo as his own without me ever finding out.

So now I include obnoxious copyright notices on my best images and display the others in smaller sizes that make them mostly unusable.

Unlike a lot of other amateur and even professional photographers, I don’t want to put my photos of Flickr. I simply don’t like the idea behind the service: photographic social networking. At its best, it’s a good way for someone to share photos with friends and families. At its worse, its a source of images for copyright infringers, many of whom pass off the photos they steal as their own. Copyright is vital to my livelihood; although I’m not a professional photographer, I do write for a living. I have zero tolerance for copyright infringement of any kind.

But that’s only one of the reasons I don’t use Flickr. The way I see it, Flickr is a service where people upload and “share” all kinds of photographs, from the crappiest, out-of-focus cell phone shot to the most artistic professional photographs. It’s that range that I don’t like. Depending on how my photos are tagged, they could come up in a grab bag of photos of any quality. I don’t like that. I don’t want my work appearing among photos made by people who don’t feel the same way I do about photography.

Instead, I use a service called Zenfolio for my own personal photo gallery. Not only does it give me a lot of flexibility, but it makes it easy for folks who like my work to order prints and other products. It also has a great feature that makes it easy to embed that obnoxious copyright notice — and to change it any time I like with very little effort.

My Washington slide show. You can visit my entire photo gallery at FlyingMPhotos.com.

Today, however, I discovered a new Zenfolio feature: I can create a slide show from one of my galleries. So allow me to come full circle with this blog post by showing off my Washington photo gallery in slide show format. If I’m not mistaken, it will be automatically updated to include any new photos I add.

Enjoy.