psipsy

There will be a big honking mp3 (and possibly .avi) post coming soon, and due to the amount of stuff involved, I'll probably put it behind an ultra-rare FO post. For those that read this but either don't have an LJ or have one but stumble in occaisionally, you'll need to Make Arrangements. For those that I have on my friends list but not the other way around, you uh... don't know what you're missing.

Is there anyone that reads this that's on Gaiaonline? Or knows someone that is? There's a reason why I'm asking...

Recently, I decided to check out my traffic stats, and discovered that I was getting an awful lot of hits from Gaiaonline.com. Being highly curious as to what and why, I went into the access logs and found out why. Rewinding the tape a good bit to this particular entry, in my brief review of the anime "Final Approach", I posted a screenshot of Shizuka. Turns out that someone on Gaiaonline was hotlinking it as an example for the appearance of their character. Now, I figured, I could really be an asshole and throw something nasty on there, up to and including the Goatse man or Tubgirl. (If you must research either of those, please don't do so from work/school/etc.) But a little research turned up that it was being used by a girl that had just turned 15, and her character's name was Adrienne. So I decided to be a nice guy and wish her a happy birthday. A bit of a psychological twist, yes? So far no response or anything resembling one. For the hell of it, I recently changed it to this. Still subtle, but slightly less so. Anyway, I haven't bothered to get a Gaiaonline account, for a variety of reasons.

It's not to say that's the only image getting hotlinked, there are a couple others. I'm dealing with this one in particular because of the sheer quantity. Is it about the image? Feh. Anyone could have downloaded the same episode of Final Approach and grabbed the same screencap in the same minute or two. Is it about the bandwidth? Considering what else I put on this site intentionally for others to grab, the amount of bandwidth used is quite low, and the site never was in danger of going over the bandwidth limit. It's more of an exercise in letting others know exactly who's in control. The couple others that were getting hotlinked have been dealt with in a less-imaginative manner. A quick renaming, and presto! DeadLinks 'R Us. Take that.

For a bit of sheer irony, the image that I was going to use to counter hotlinking, this one in particular, is getting hotlinked itself. I haven't done anything to that one just yet, purely because of the reaction where it was linked from. When someone says "that made my dick fall off", then it becomes worth it.

But in the meantime, I'm starting to play with .htaccess. If anyone has any pointers/advice/random wisdom, I'm open.

In a complete 180 turn from what I just said, I would consider granting someone their own spot on The Shrine, if they need a couple megs or so for someplace to stash a small web page without having to jump through all the hoops of a typical freehosting service. Of course, even on my site I would still impose some limitations, although I'd be much more reasonable about it than someplace like say, Geocities or Angelfire. Before I move forward with that, I will have to whip up a Usage Agreement or something like it for the express purpose of covering my ass. I'll also make it easier to read and understand than the 70-line all-caps paragraphs typical of most agreements. You know, the ones where even if you try to read them, it gets hard because then all the words and letters start to blend in with each other and move around on their own. Wait, that's just me.

Stuffage happened, I guess.

aichan95 is back in the repair shop for now, because of that pesky rear-ending from last month. And right before that,

yamikochan had inspection done. Interesting story behind that, about getting home after dropping the first one off. It involved a local friend that worked in the area on second shift (

vampyre_miyu, you know exactly who I'm talking about), and I asked her to pick me up at the garage after she got out of work, at 11PM. Well, 11PM becomes 12AM, and it turned out that she simply forgot. Lemme tell you, that was the darkest three miles I ever walked. The moon and stars were all covered up by clouds, and whatever ambient light that was there was from the sporadic light mounted on someone's house. Being in the middle of nowhere, I wasn't worried about someone mugging me, but it was all the nocturnal wildlife that had me slightly concerned. So if I heard something, I'd simply growl. And since even during the day traffic was rare, walking down the middle of the road wasn't an issue, since I could literally hear any cars a mile away. It's not to say that it was unpleasant, as the brisk walk certainly refreshed me, and there was absolutely nothing like looking at a vast open expanse of field and seeing possibly hundreds of thousands of fireflies all blinking on and off.

Lately I have been watching something called "Ai no Epuron" ("Apron of Love"). It is a cooking show. It's like Iron Chef, much in the way that there is a theme ingredient and judges deciding which dish is better, but exponentially more insane. Whereas Iron Chef was about highly skilled chefs doing battle in the kitchen, Apron of Love is about pop stars pretending to be able to prepare food. Once in awhile, one or two of them show their skill and produce something edible, but it's more entertaining when they produce something that isn't. (I suspect one of them intentionally screws up for entertainment's sake.) For the judges, one of which is typically a guest celebrity himself, fear is the appetizer and disaster is the main course. At least when something simply can't be eaten, they have the option of spitting it out. I'm getting as much of this show as I can. It's a riot.

More random car stuff: I made a trip to a junkyard to get a couple things for Ai-chan, parts which I was directly responsible for breaking in the first place. Brandywine Auto Parts is much easier and nicer (and cleaner) than any other junkyard I've had to visit. (Especially the one that my dad used to go to for Chevy Caprice parts.) If I bought the parts direct from the dealer, it would have been over $700. $120 for the pair is a lot better. There's a few other things that I would still get straight from the dealer, such as gasket material or specialized light bulbs. But that's what Honda's eStore is for.

Ok, today is Saturday and I should pretend to do something. I am inclined to fire up a playlist of anime to watch all day, while supplying myself with a big sandwich or pizza or something similarly yummy. There's a bunch of shows I need to catch up on, and some new ones that are coming out that will be subject to my opinion.

Right then!