A matter of taste
So, I’ve discovered in my blogging of late that adding pictures to posts can really liven up a blog. It adds value at the margin.
Image via AMC Theatre's pinboard on Pinterest
I’m not sure if everyone will agree or not, but I have a request: Can we add more color to these digs? Or at least more black and white?
More attention to this detail, I suspect, would add quite a lot to this place, which can feel awfully stark at times. A blog is more than words, after all. It’s a sort-of multi-media experience. Or at least I think it ought to be.
On top of that, I have some redesign ideas swirling about that require pictures to function at all, so we’d best get practicing. And adding a picture to a post can add a double meaning or enhance or drive home the point of the piece – or even just give a visual to a book or a person you happen to be discussing. It can make a post show up in more searches, too.
So…as hands-off as I am, please consider sprucing up your lovely writing with some lovely images.
If anyone has a problem with this, of course, it’s not a huge deal. And feel free to yell at me in the comments. I know I’ve been very meta lately. I expect it will continue, for good or ill.
I love this plan. I’m excited to be a part of it.
Movie quote aside, I like it. Now I just have to find just the right image(s)…Report
Wonderful! Glad you like the idea. Ghost Busters quote is much appreciated. I’d start there and work backwards.Report
I actually like the process of finding pics for posts. And it can lead to me finding pics I really love. The picture of the kid-made toy gun from my last post was an especially awesome find; it felt like it captured so much of what I was trying to say in one simple, uncomplicated image.Report
I absolutely agree (and loved that pic also.) Have you tried out Pinterest yet? I think you might really like it. It’s a great way to search pics by following like minds. The image above is from AMC Theatres, and they have tons of cool stuff on there – and like mounds of Star Wars geekery which is just awesome.Report
What is pinterest?Report
It’s a photo site. http://pinterest.com/
Sort of hard to explain. It’s like the pictures from Facebook and nothing else. It’s like Google Image Search except that you follow pictures that other people have found rather than just search for them. I wrote something about it here.
It’s cool.Report
I have been told in no uncertain terms by a relative that it is Not For Boys.Report
It appears to be heavily focused on cooking and home decorating. I happen to like cooking and home decorating.Report
fffound! and but does it float are also good, though often those belong to someone.Report
EDK, since we have a “Comment Culture,” in the recently discarded format, it was easy to pop in a pic or a link. No more. It took me awhile to learn the rich HTML window [if that’s what it’s called], but eventually I did, and it was gold.
Comments could read like posts, but no more, unless you want to expend the effort of generating yr own HTML a href= etc. I don’t even know how to deposit a picture, and frankly, what I do know about it is that it’s too much trouble.
After undertaking the time to learn it, I liked that other window a lot as a frequent participant in our “Comment Culture.” Everybody knows that I comment and participate in discussions far more than I grab the Front Page, EDK. I think that’s what you meant by the LoOG comment culture, and I liked having the same tools available as a commenter as I do as a poster.
Consider it, anyway, Erik. Respectfully submitted.Report
It was a very buggy box. I’m looking into other options. In any case, pictures in the comments are fine, but I’m talking more directly about posts here.Report
It was buggy for a month with the jumps, EDK, but then smoothed out perfectly. Links, pics, blockquote, and un-linking, grabbing text and then unlinking its links to not exceed our default 2-link limit.
It was a beautiful thing. Typing out a href=”whatever, etc.” just to have it ignored, it just ain’t worth the trouble anymore. If you want the “comment culture” to be more fact than opinion, inserting links and pics needs to get easier not harder.
Respectfully submitted. Plus, we can’t preview or edit in comments and so if this works, I guess I’ll STFU.
I read somewhere that the family of the soldier in the above picture has been asking for years for the picture to be removed because he never consented to having his image used in this way. Of course the picture is owned by the government which isn’t acting, and it’s the internet so no one really cares about permissions….
Report
As a work of the US government, the picture may well be in the public domain, which would make this usage totally fair game (IANAL, however).Report
That’s what I meant. I might be wrong too, but yeah, because it was part of a propaganda poster it is public domain now, though even if it weren’t, I wonder if the whole “parody/ satire” thing would protect it.
Report
I suspect it is a drawing, not a photograph.Report
I’m guessing it probably wouldn’t under a court case I learned about today, <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_v._Koons“>Rogers v. Koons</a>.Report
Jeff Koons gets sued for pretty much every major work of art he “creates.” I’ve given up saying he’s not an artist, though, because he is very well able to provoke an emotional reaction from nearly everyone.
A friend of mine was a curator at LACMA and told me the story of trying to get one of Koons’ stainless steel balloon dog sculptures (which stands taller than a man and weighs over two tons) up three flights of stairs to display in the appropriate gallery. Two men almost died.
I’m convinced that the obscene amounts of money he charges — and gets — for his “art” is part of the art itself.Report
Why don’t they just ask for $800,000?Report
Are you on Windows? If you’re uncomfortable with HTML, may I recommend the Coffee Cup free editor. It’s simple and obvious. And free. Me, I’ve been writing HTML since the dawn of the Internet and SGML before that, and I still can’t remember how to correctly put an IMG tag together.
How we all screamed when Netscape went ahead and implemented the IMG tag without anyone’s input. It’s been a horror ever since. It could have been so much more obvious.Report
Seriously E.D., what do you have against blind people.Report
Three issues:
1. Copyright. Let’s make sure that we have the right to use pictures someone else has created. Lots of pictures can be found that you can use, generally with only attribution and a link, at Wikimedia Commons.
2. Hotlinking. There are several people who don’t like it when you link your picture back to their site — when it pops up here, you’re using their bandwidth to use their picture. Once or twice back when I used blogger, I went back to an old post and found someone had been upset with me for hotlinking, so I try not to do that anymore.
3. Size. Not dimensional size, but memory and compression. Believe it or not, there are still people who use dial-up connections and if you embed a 2-meg photograph in your post, it’ll take them a painfully long amount of time to load and even for a high-speed connection it can take a while (especially true if you’ve hotlinked). Be sure that the picture you use is small enough that it can load up quickly.
But yeah, pictures add a lot. With a wider column for the articles, it should be easier to come up with a good looking format.Report
All good points! There’s lots of resources out there that are useful to avoid copyright, and I could probably get some plugins rolling that can auto-generate pictures, too. For the most part this doesn’t worry me. If we get our wrists slapped, so be it. It’s happened before. It’s a pain to take something down but the risk is minimal.
Hotlinking – yeah, don’t do it. Upload photos only. And size does matter, as you say. We will run out of room at some point and have to pay for more. I think all that being said it’s still worth it in the long run.Report
We can’t upload images from the comment box, it is all hotlinking nowadays. Few complain in the big leagues, far less than if you simply “appropriated” their image. Recognize that many of these sites get paid for eyeballs so anything that tweaks their packet counters is a good thing.
That said, I suspect img src isn’t going to work without the widget. Testing here:
Report
Yup, the asteroid isn’t going to hit the earth from the image source linked
http://asteroidapophis.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/asteroid-2011-MD.jpgReport
Burt made the same point I was thinking about. On my personal blog I am less diligent about attributing photos than I should be. Here though with a large readership it seems the polite thing to do.
Anyone know a way to imbed the source data in the photo without having it junk up the post?Report
MD, I’ll give it a go with the old buggy comment box here:
Wardsmith – did you do that through coding?
Report
No Mike, the comment box has a simpleimage.image_desc widget in the lower right hand corner, left of the toggle full screen widget and right of the omega symbol widget for inserting funky characters like ™. The other trick to this comment box is that you don’t want to finish with a carriage return, that’s what generates all the white space between comments.Report
Well that didn’t work. If you’re running Firefox ver 10 on Windoze and right click with your mouse you’ll see a selection called “View Image Info”. That selection will show you the image description I typed in that the buggy comment box doesn’t or can’t put on the page. Of course when I see an image I like I usually just right click on it, select the “View Image” option and I get to see where the image came from and visit the site if I want by playing with the URL box (usually deleting the .jpg text at the end and backing up to the .com or .org portion).Report
OMGwereallgonnadietheasteroidohnoes!Report
Related…sort of… Anyway, there was a funny sketch on Comedy Central’s “Key and Peele” about Republican reactionism to President Obama. If someone could post and/or comment on that, positively or negatively, I think it’d be interesting fodder for discussion. It will probably be up on the CC website by tomorrow. Photos are just half-assed movies anyway.Report
Key and Peele are brilliant IMHO. Have you seen the one where Obama wins a rap battle?Report
I haven’t seen all their stuff, but they strike me as prett goddamn smart. Not everything is LOL, but the humor is often deeper than that and is never cheap. They take on a lot of real issues and their racial humor is far more than the typical “white folks do this… Black folks do that.”Report
On the topic of site design, if this blog is going to be hospitable to long exposition, then it should perhaps not have two columns of blank space on the right and left.
In particular it makes comments several layers down the tree squashed rather badly.Report
I’m considering a more magazine-style layout and better integration of sub-blogs. Also, I’ve just added a different visual editor. We’ll see how this works.Report
Magazine style layout? Cool! I hope you’ll have liquor ads, and cover art with Lady Gaga, and scratch-and-sniff perfume samples.Snark aside, the sub-blog integration has been problematic here, and any improvements would be welcome. And if there are any tools that would help track ongoing conversations over time, that would be double-fantastic.One word about the formatting tool: it seems quite functional (athough I suspect you’ll regret the “font size” option), but when composing, there is leading between lines while composing (at least on my browser). This makes it rather difficult to read, but I suspect that a simple css tweak could resolve it.Report
Also, it appears that this formatting editor does not preserve line breaks, so that would be the end of paragraphs on this site…Report
Well that’s not going to work then.
Report
Hmmm… It likes your paragraphs, but not mine. Report
And so we’re back to this and it’s funky extra white space.Report
I post pictures for the increased traffic.Report
I heard Megan Fox pictures work well for this.Report
They really do.Report
Even giving a picture the title “Megan Fox” works pretty well. Not that I’ve done this.
I always throw in the word “alterity.” Aiming for a Google monopoly.Report
When I was growing up we had ascii characters. You know what we did in the absence of graphics? Ascii art.
You kids today have no idea of how good you’ve got it.Report
Oh, Grandpa! Tell me more!Report
Get grampa some bourbon and I’ll tell you about line printers.Report
Get me something better and I will tell you about ink pens.Report
INSERT SYSTEM DISK TO CONTINUEReport
When I was growing up, people had punch card computers. (a friend of mine got to work on one… in the 1990’s. no clue why CMU still had one lying around).Report
Yeah. Remember how cool it was when Thag invented fire? Man, things sucked before that.Report
“Fire will lead to breakdown of society! We no longer need to sleep holding each other! People will think that we don’t need each other to survive!”Report
“Behold! The wheel!”
“That is the devil’s work! It has no beginning and no end. We shall have none of it!”Report
Seeing as how someone has seen fit to delete at least two of my comments today, I’m going to presume that you made some pronouncement against me while I was not looking at conversations here.
Feel free to email me. That’s the email I usually use right there provided for you.
Report
Kenneth/Mike/Whoever-you-are: your comments are disappearing due to your use of banned IP addresses from previous accounts of yours that we banned.Report
First – I am not anyone named “Mike.” My name is Kendrick McCormack. I go by “Kenneth” because many of my friends have remarked of the similarity of my name to the South Park character and I happen to enjoy the show. That’s also why I use that phrase in email fields when I don’t want to get spammed.
Second – I like my online privacy, in case you haven’t caught on to it from the fact above. Therefore, I browse the internet primarily using the EFF’s TOR software.
Third – I resent the implication from you that I am someone else, and I resent your using it as a nonsensical and pretextual justification for your behavior.Report
Why would you resent the implication that you are someone else, when you don’t want anybody to know who you are?
Shouldn’t you *want* people to think you’re someone else?Report
I resent his implying that I am someone else he dislikes, which is his implying that I am someone’s sockpuppet or otherwise someone who it’s ok to treat in this manner.Report
Kenneth –
If you have any specific questions, you can email either myself, Erik, Mark or Jason. Or, if you prefer, I believe Mark will be making a post later. At this time, however, I would like to respectfully ask that even though you have the ability to get new IP addresses and post here that your please refrain from doing so.
Again, feel free to email any of us if need be.
Thank you.Report
No, apparently I can’t. Your “contact us” link only goes to a generic webform, which I’ve filled out already. Clicking on your names yields posts by you, but no contact email address.
You do, of course, have my email address. And I previously posted asking one of you to email me, above.
Dishonestly saying “well just email me” when your friend has disabled all ways to do so is ridiculous and you know it.Report
I’m all about respecting someone’s desire for anonymity. I’m not about going out of my way to adjust existing protocol to enable someone to use a site that isn’t theirs while they’re deliberately making more work for me.
Of course, I’m not Erik, and I’m not presuming to speak for him. But I’ve used TOR to get to the site before, and I know how TOR works… so if you’re getting blocked because “Mike” was using TOR and an exit node is on the list of suspicious IPs *and* you just happen to be routing out through that same exit node… well, this seems both highly coincidental (and very improbable) and perhaps unfortunate, but not really anything for which it’s Erik’s responsibility to go out of his way to compensate.Report
This picture sure is something. From what I’ve read, this is his third return from a tour overseas and the first time he has been able to greet his partner in the way he would have preferred.Report
I read a similar story about these guys. Apparently the Marine had a crush on the civilian guy, and the civilian guy had a crush on him back, but they were platonic friends for a long time who were both very shy about admitting their respective interest. (IIRC, I think the civilian guy was not out and the Marine was discreet about it; might be wrong about that.) So they corresponded while the Marine was on deployment, confessed their attraction to one another over e-mail, and this picture captured their first kiss ever. It’s incredibly romantic.Report
Wow, what a story!Report
I’m just going to keep it real here and admit that I am less disturbed by two guy’s kissing (hooray for personal evolution) but I am bothered by seeing the soldier in a submissive position. Call me a traditionalist…Report
… submissive position? That looks like “pounced da big guy” to me. Maybe it’s because I’m short, too…Report
Yeah, but it is usually the girl who does the pouncing and the wrapping of legs around the guy. Presumably then the soldier is the bottom in the relationship.Report
Three comments have been written in response to this comment and I’ve deleted every one.
This is the fourth.
Anyway.
Ever since I’ve found out that George Michaels is gay and all of my “who is dating whom in the ‘Wake me up before you go-go’ video” theorizing was for naught, I’ve tried not to imagine which one in the relationship is in charge of punching the other in the nose while they’re peeing on each other in the shower because I am inevitably wrong whenever I come up with a guess.
Best to leave those theories alone and just see two people who are delighted to see each other and say “awwwwww”.Report
I look at it this way; if I was goofily in love with a 6″9″ 265 lb powerlifting woman, I might jump on her like that, too. That’s what goofs in love do when they’re smaller, they jump on the bigger one and say “gotcha!”
The woman I’m goofily in love with is shorter than me and probably would not appreciate taking on the task of holding up my fat ass, as it currently stands.Report
I have 5″ and 50 pounds on my wife and I still try to pounce on her. Se is significantly less happy than the civie in this pic.Report
My kid is now much bigger than I am, an will leap on me. So now i have the lower back of an 80 year old .Report
How old are you?Report
Mid 40s. And the back thing was an exaggeration, but oh my god it’s crushing when my kid leaps into my arms… which he only does because he knows that it’s crushing. (he’s a little proud of being taller than I am)Report
We all know that in any same-sex relationship, one individual is the guy and one is the girl.
I mean, right?Report
My apologies, I didnt mean to stereotype (or apply heteronormative standards to situations where they did not necessarily apply)Report
No worries. It’s interesting though who assumes what, and from what, when it’s not like it should matter all that much anyway.
Some straight couples never have sex. Some have lots of sex. Some have kinky sex. Gay sex is complicated like that too. And — again, a similarity — most people probably don’t really want to know about it anyway. Well and good, they shouldn’t.Report
It’s not even a gay thing, or a sexy-sex thing. I’m amazed at how many people at work assume I do certain things and home and my wife does certain things just based on the fact that we’re married and non-gender-neutral.
I work with a guy, and maybe every few months he’ll ask something about what my wife cooks; I explain each time that I’m th cook, and each time he looks startled. And then blocks it out.Report
I get some of that, too. I’m the cook, although a number of other divisions of labor in the Likko household do break down along more traditional gender lines. Right on down to me cleaning up after the dogs and she cleans up after the cats.Report
So, out of genuine curiosity (if it is not insensitive for me to ask):
To what extent among gay couples is the stereotype of one half being more “butch” while the other half being more “swish” true?
And to what extent is it the case that the “butch” and “swish” halves respectively perform male and female gender roles?Report
To what extent among gay couples is the stereotype of one half being more “butch” while the other half being more “swish” true?
Think for a moment about the question. How would you even begin to quantify it?
Some same-sex couples have clear gender roles. Most I think don’t. Trying to determine who is the butch and who is the femme in a lot of cases is like trying to determine who is the bigger fan of Dostoyevsky vs Proust in the relationship: It’s not a terribly interesting metric for anything, and anyway, most couples don’t view their relationship through the framework that you’re trying to squash it into.
And that’s just gender. It’s well-known in the gay community that when you hit the bedroom, everything can change in an instant.Report
Some same-sex couples have clear gender roles. Most I think don’t.
Thanks, that’s all I needed. sorry again if I was insensitive in asking. This is just a part of the culture that is very well hidden where I come from.Report
Two words:
Power. Bottom.Report
Has the comment box changed recently? I haven’t noticed any difference. I know it changed some time ago from a purely coding view to one with the Visual tab. Bu that was many months agoReport
Murali, the content box went away and came back all while you were sleeping. It was just a dream, don’t worry about it anymore.Report
God I am so hot now after reading about peeing in showers and punching in the nose. Thank goodness there is a “Murder, She Wrote” marathon on Hallmark so I can take a hot bath while watching Angela.Report
oh to be young againReport
??? Where did you read this?Report
(my fault)Report
Got it. I was gonna say, that might be the best thread jack I have ever seen. (golf clap)Report
It’s a big tub, if any of you are near Golden Springs.Report
Speaking of pictures, the young Davey Jones in some photos looks just like Andrea Tantaros with shorter hair.Report