web-goddess

OUTRAGE. This morning I was checking my Roald Dahl site statistics and noticed that I’m suffering from some bandwidth theft. Several jerks on various messageboards have linked directly to large images without asking me. Wait, let’s be clear here. They didn’t make a link like this. They created an HTML image tag that referenced an image on my server. In other words, every time another jerk viewed the message board, I had to pay for them to download the image. According to my server logs, I’ve had an extra 2000 hits this month alone from image thieves. My problem isn’t them claiming my work as their own so much (though that’s what nearly all of them are doing); it’s more that my work is being used to add value to another site and I’m being forced to pay for the privilege! But fine, whatever. I can configure my server to block them. The REAL PROBLEM however, is…

THE SNOOK THINKS IT’S OKAY. He thinks it’s perfectly reasonable that since I put something out on the Internet, other people should be able to use it however they want. I agree, as long as I’m not paying for it. He claims that since I don’t pay by the megabyte for bandwidth, I can’t claim that they’re stealing any money from me. I counter with the fact that once I breach my bandwidth cap, I will be, so it’s the same difference. And irrespective of the “theft” issue, I just find it completely rude. The argument went on for some time. It climaxed with:

Me: “Okay, so you’re posting to Slashdot and there’s this image you’ve found to illustrate your argument, so you just embed it directly from the source?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “That’s it. What if it was my site? YOU’D SLASHDOT ME? We’re breaking up.”

It’s a gorgeous day out today, but it’s pretty chilly here in the house.

Later: An uneasy truce has been called. I think we’ve got an unspoken agreement to disagree.

Notre Dame defeats #6 Michigan. Holy crap. They haven’t beaten a top ten team since they last beat Michigan in the first game of my senior year (1998). Now that was a game. Michigan had won the national championship the year before and we were itching to take them down. I remember about mid-way through the fourth quarter, when it was pretty clear we were going to win, my friend Brian announced to all of us in the stands, “I’ll see you guys on the fifty yard line.” We win, we storm the field, people are taking pictures, students run out the tunnel and play in the fountain… I’m not a big gung-ho sports fan by nature, but that was one of the most exciting days of my life. It was high drama and it was real. And they just did it again! How amazing would it have been to be there? Ahh, homesickness, my old friend.

Friday Five:

1. What was/is your favorite subject in school? Why?
Depends. I’d probably say English or Drama, because they came easiest to me and I always liked readin’ the books and watchin’ the plays. Math and Science were harder for me, yet (truth be told) I think I got more out of them. It’s hard to say since I went to such a small school. There weren’t enough resources to cater to everybody, so they took sorta a “lowest common denominator” approach. At the high end of the bell curve, I often found myself bored and frustrated.

2. Who was your favorite teacher? Why?
Mr. “Mont” Arnold, my AP Calculus teacher, was pretty cool. He was always trying to find new ways to interest us in a subject that (both we and he knew) most of us would never use again. He recommended sci-fi books to me and gave me extra credit for programming my TI-85. He was funny and he never talked down to any of us. We voted him to be our Commencement Speaker and he confounded all of our parents with a 15-minute speech on chaos theory. Pretty cool.

3. What is your favorite memory of school?
Pretty much all of my senior year of high school. I was the valedictorian, the #1 tennis player, the female lead in the musical; I went to the State Speech Meet and won third place in my event. I got into Notre Dame. I dumped junior year’s alterna-teen boyfriend in favor of someone a bit more fun and normal. (Granted, a bit of a doof, but no regrets there.) That was a charmed year.

4. What was your favorite recess game?
Up until about fifth grade, I was one of those girls who jumped rope every single recess. We had these great long jumpropes with purple and white plastic beads. Our most frequent game was “School”, where for each grade you had to do a certain stunt to progress. “Kindergarten” you just had to run through; “1st grade” was one jump; “2nd grade” was two jumps on one foot or something… That was fun. When I got a little bit older is wasn’t cool to jump rope anymore. You were supposed to do dangerous things. The fad was for someone to swing really high while another person ran under them from one side of the swingset to the other. You had to time your run just right and follow them as they came down past you. I gave up on that one on the fateful day Charity Martin miscalculated and buried her thick skull full speed into the middle of the swinger’s (i.e. my) lower back. I couldn’t breathe for fully a minute. After that, I think I mainly stood around with my friends and tried to act above recess.

5. What did you hate most about school?
Ugh. Lots. First of all, I absolutely hated riding the bus. It seems statistically impossible, but every bus route I ever had was filled with the county’s worst mouth-breathers and social deviants. The day I got my license was like being released from bondage. I also hated gym. I wasn’t terribly unfit; in fact I was sorta towards the high end of the normal, non-super-athlete girls. But I was uncoordinated and self-conscious which made it torture. I won’t even begin to describe the horrors of seventh grade gym with its units on gymnastics and square dancing. *repress, repress*

Yes, the man himself would’ve been 86 today. In honor of the occasion, I’m holding a Roald Dahl Trivia Quiz Contest. The winner will receive a copy of Mel Stuart’s forthcoming book Pure Imagination: The Making of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Feel free to enter, but don’t be expecting any personal-site-reading favoritism or hints! 🙂

That’s right, I got worms. Well, actually I don’t have the worms yet. But I do have a worm farm! Like Brigita, I’ve decided to turn my garden and vegetable waste into nutrient-rich fertilizer with the help of a couple thousand wriggly invertebrates. I can’t wait to get some lovely “compost tea” to use on my flowers. Now I just need the worms!

Looking forward, our next book will be Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. I’ve just discovered that there are two different versions. The US version has illustrations by Dave McKean, Gaiman’s long-time collaborator. The UK version (which is the version sold in Australia and perhaps elsewhere in the world) is just the text. Personally, I’ve put the US version on order because I’m betting that McKean’s illustrations will be worth the added expense. (If you’ve read it, can you tell me if that’s a good idea?) As for the rest of you, what do you think? Shall we all try to get the same version so we can discuss the illustration side of it as well?

Hooray! An actual boy has joined in the Back When We Were Grownups discussion. (Thanks, Jeff.) Who all is reading (or has read) The Lovely Bones? I have a feeling we’re going to get a lot more discussion out of that one…

Ebert has seen Eminem’s new film and, though he doesn’t say much about the quality of the picture as a whole, he notes that Eminem’s prospects for further film success seem much more likely than Britney Spears’s. Interesting. I had no idea that Curtis Hanson was directing and Kim Basinger had a role (as Eminem’s mom!). This thing has a much higher pedigree than I expected. And check out the classy poster! I figured it’d just be two hours of Marshall beating Brittany “Psycho” Murphy about the head and rapping.

I downloaded Apple’s new calendar application iCal the other day and I’m having a lot of fun playing around with it. It’s just so much easier to be organized when your schedule is so pretty! My favorite feature is the ability to subscribe to other calendars. I’ve got US and Australian Holidays, Notre Dame’s football schedule, and upcoming DVD releases. You can even “turn off” calendars that you don’t use so often so your daily schedule doesn’t look so cluttered. I’m going to add another one with my gym’s classes so I’ll be able to be punctual with my non-attendance guilt. 🙂

Wait a minute. So not only does the Earth have two moons, now they think they’ve discovered a third? My mind is blown.