Posts Tagged “Housekeeping”

I was just notified last night that today the server on which this site resides is moving, literally.
The server will be unplugged and shoved into a van for its move North in a few hours.
So, the site will probably not be accessible from later this evening until some time tomorrow morning.

In the meantime.
Other news
The Daily Mail is launching a dating website – Maildating.co.uk for straight and gay! readers.
I may set up an account – Polish plumber on benefits with large plunger looking to unblock pipes of a Guildford based lady/gentleman of leisure. Nationality and skin colour not an issue. Must have GSOH.

I’ve tried to extend the protection of my image server by inputting a range of IP addresses rather than individual IPs. i.e. stopping The Daily Mail and The Telegraph from easily obtaining free images to subsidise their editorial budgets.
If any regular non-media visitors have problems, can you let me know via email (and not using a non-traceable email address).

I’m sure most of this site’s visitors know how I feel about other sites running my images, but just to reiterate :
I don’t have a problem at all with images that have not been commissioned running on non-commercial sites and blogs.
In fact, I usually am OK with the images being run from my server.
All I ask is a proper credit “Beau Bo D’Or” and a link back to my blog (the blog, not the root of the site and not the specific blog post).
There are some sites who may mistakenly abbreviate links or accidentally cock-up the link – not a problem – these things happen.

So, what to do?
Well, I reckon if things don’t change soon, I’ll have to prevent hotlinking from my servers in the near future.
It won’t stop some of the dickheads mentioned above but it should reduce my frustration a tad.
This means that it’s best that the nice folk who are running images from my server (and who have been courteous and provided credits & links) copy those images to flickr or their own space and relink to ensure they still appear if I decide to switch the lights off.
It will involve a fair bit of work for me as I use a separate domain for my pics so I will have to copy over several hundred images.
For the technically minded, I’ve tried an htaccess file but there always seem to be unintended consequences.

Sorry to those who’ve been in touch recently and I haven’t got back to yet.
I’ve had quite a few things to sort out over the last few days and creating images has taken me into the wee small hours several times.
This means I’ve been kind of working in a different timezone.
Hopefully things should start to settle down now.
Looks like I’m able to stay in Camden for a few more months now, which is good – for me, maybe not for Camden.
Thanks to those who continue to visit. (the site, not Camden)

Apologies, I hadn’t updated the blog to reactivate the email this post facility.
It should be working again.
Any problems, please let me know.

Cheers

UPDATE !Tim is up and running on the Usmanov affair here (at a different domain from Bloggerheads)

I’ve removed my list of links and explained why in a previous post but I’ll repeat the reason here..

Why, solely because of a long list of links should this site benefit ratings-wise? – I’ve seen my Technorati rating rise by a few points already.
Chicken Yogurt encourages listing the sites and I think if people want to, then they should, but I just feel a little uncomfortable getting an audience from a bunch of hyperlinks rather than something I’ve done.
Yes, a bit of a contradiction but there you go.
I know the list might help spread the word but one less blog shouldn’t make any difference.
It’s not as if I’m doing a Guido or a Recessmonkey (or is it ostrich?) as I’m covering the subject by commenting, providing some links and posting images anyway – which anyone can use – no need for a hat-tip for any Usmanov related image if you don’t want to btw.
The sites that Usmanov ordered a hit on will no doubt be adversely affected on their return unless we all make it a point to help revive them as soon as they have new webhosts.
So when they’re back up, I’ll make it a point to check them regularly and link to them whenever possible.

I’ve updated the shop and added a couple of lady’s T shirts.
Click on the images to see the shop items (on my site). If you see anything you like, click on the item and you’ll be taken to the external site which allows you to choose size etc.

Please note that the ‘red socks’ item is a flex print which means that the wafer thin vinyl design is sealed onto the cloth. This makes for a very robust product.

The Chicago Tribune got in touch the other day and asked permission to run an image I’d done some time ago on its blog.

I agreed.

It’s refreshing when commercial sites ask, so many thanks to Mark Silva.

Here’s the link to the article.

As I hope most folk know, I quite like non-commercial sites running my images – no need to ask permission (just link back to my blog) – although that doesn’t mean that I agree with everything or anything on the sites which do use my ‘compositions’.