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Some of my content has been stolen!

July 24, 2008 – 9:48 pm

***PLEASE NOTE*** I was made aware today that users of Internet Explorer 6 could not see the site menus (on the left and right) which means people can not see my Entrecard widget. I am in the process of hiring someone to repair this ASAP. Apologies for the inconvenience.

 

askfirst1 Some of my content has been stolen! I guess this was bound to happen at some point… I was surfing around on some blogs today when, much to my dismay, I discovered that someone had ripped off my "You Comment I Follow" Picture.

Now I have a gripe with this on two levels. The first is that this image was taken from my blog, without my consent and used elsewhere out of my control. The second (and the much more significant reason) is that this image was purchased from iStockPhoto which means that it is only licensed for use on my websites.

So I am really not happy on both counts, however I am not one to name and shame people without speaking to them first. Therefore I have sent a polite email to the blogger in question requesting that they remove the content from their website ASAP.

So I guess there is a couple of things I wanted to say/ask here. Firstly, to all my readers please be aware that the vast majority of images I use are from iStockPhoto and are licensed not public domain (just for future reference). The second is I am curious to hear your thoughts, have you ever had content ripped off your site (be it images, or text or the like), if so how did you go about approaching the person(s) in question and how did you prevent this from happening in future?

Stuart ;)

 

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By User ImageStuart | Posted in Site News | Comments (2)

The consumption of alcohol in modern society…

July 21, 2008 – 8:02 pm

drunk_woman_small The consumption of alcohol in modern society... This is a bit of a first for me, as I have been reading a lot more blogs lately I decided that I wanted to post something as my own sort of continuation to another blogger’s post.

Yesterday I was reading Getting drunk: acceptable yes or no written by a fellow Australian blogger. To sum it up, the question is posed “Why do we demonise pot smokers when people who go out and get severely drunk causing possible harm to themselves and others get of scot free?”

Now the point of this post is not to debate that particular question, I recommend you pop over to the aforementioned post and have a read of the comments and add in your two cents. My question that I would like to discuss and get some feedback on is this.. Society now not only accepts the excessive consumption of alcohol as commonplace however also gawks at people who choose not to drink or drink in excess. Do you find this is the case for you and if so what do you think has lead to this?

As a person that drinks alcohol very little, almost to the point of less than a litre of alcohol per year, I often feel pressured by peers to drink and get drunk while everyone else is. I am lucky that I am now at a stage of my life where all my friends know and accept that I will very rarely drink, however the peer pressure during the later years of high school and even in my early working career was the source of a lot of stress for me.

So why has society become like this, why do people feel the need to drink and/or drink excessively just to have a good time. I am hoping that someone can explain this to me, as I have only been drunk once and I *really* did not enjoy it much at all.

Thoughts?

Stuart

 

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3.6 (3 people)
By User ImageStuart | Posted in Random Thoughts | Comments (11)

Site News + Entrecard + SezWho

July 20, 2008 – 6:18 pm

Heya all,
I thought it was time that I gave everyone a site update on what is happening, what has been changing on here recently and a BIG change that came through Entrecard last week.

So firstly, I have been aware for some time that visitors using Internet Explorer 7 have issues when viewing my blogs. The issues that have arisen are mainly that some images display slightly out of alignment. Due to this, and due to the fact that in a week or so I will be releasing a massive tutorial on my GeekyHabitat.com Blog (read more about that below) I decided that it was time to get this fixed.

As I have no idea on how to do this myself (believe me I have tried), I decided to post a request for assistance on RentACoder. In short RentACoder is a secure environment for anyone from Joe Average to a large organisation to connect with programmers from around the world. I am pleased to say I now have a gentleman from the US working on the issue as I write this (ok… ok he is probably in bed now, but you know what I mean). So I hope this will be all resolved in the next few days. So if you are a fellow blogger and need some help getting some things worked out on your site I would really recommend a look, so far I could not be happier.

Onto the changes on Entrecard, as most of my reader base will know Entrecard recently partnered with SezWho. SezWho provides services for people to vote on comments and posts on blogs (and other services such as forums as well). For the full details please see this post on the Entrecard blog.

This was one of the main reasons I decided to get the Internet Explorer images issue fixed up, because it is also affecting the voting stars, so please bare with me while I get this fixed up.

Finally, the much awaited (and anticipated) OpenX tutorial is nearing completion. For those of you that don’t know I have been writing a tutorial on installing, configuring and using OpenX, the open source advertising management solution. I even had a staff member from OpenX comment on my GeekyHabitat blog as they are eager to see the tutorial as well (which I thought was really cool). I have worked on this solidly for pretty much the whole weekend. I have completed Parts one through three and estimate that there will be a total of six parts.

So if you have one or more blogs or websites keep an eye out on GeekyHabitat in the coming weeks for this full blown tutorial.

I would love to hear your thoughts on any of the site news, and especially the new Entrecard and SezWho partnership.

Stuart ;)

 

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1.6 (1 person)
By User ImageStuart | Posted in Site News | Comments (0)

An inspirational experience!

July 12, 2008 – 3:37 pm

I had the day off yesterday and decided that I wanted to get out and do something I had not done in a long while. I had no idea what this might be, so I armed myself with a digital camera and went for a walk to get some lunch.

On the way there I passed Camperdown Memorial Cemetery, I had not visited the cemetery since I was doing art in my early highschool days and so I decided I would go in.

As I was walking around, looking at the graves, some of which were in excess of 150 years old I was honestly in awe, there was a surreal and peaceful feeling that I cannot really describe to anyone unless you had been there. During my walk around and taking photos I bumped into a gentleman who (like me) was there to enjoy the peace and quiet and also take photos. Granted he was much more of a professional and was taking high quality shots focusing on things like light and shadow etc.

Anyhoo as I mentioned while I was walking around in between all the graves I felt something, a sense of peace and tranquility I guess would be the best way to describe it. So, I thought that I would share the photos with you all.

Click Here to take a look at the full album in my gallery and please let me know what you think.

Stuart ;)

 

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3.0 (1 person)

 

By User ImageStuart | Posted in Feelgood | Comments (6)

An interesting view of Chernobyl

July 7, 2008 – 8:07 pm

A while ago I saw an episode of Seconds from Disaster. It was showing the disaster that occurred on April the 26th 1986 in the Soviet Union, now most commonly known as the Chernobyl Disaster.

After getting intrigued about this tragedy in history I begun searching up on the topic on the Internet. I came across a site that I really wanted to share with you. A girl who calls herself KidOfSpeed went on a motorcycle to the town near the nuclear reactor (a.k.a. the "Dead Zone").

Anyhoo long story short it is one of the sites that I have viewed well over 10 times in its length and I still do not bore from reading it. So take a look at KidOfSpeed’s Look at the Ghost Town.

Stuart ;)

 

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2.5

 

By User ImageStuart | Posted in Random Thoughts | Comments (0)