Yep. A Crayon Haiku #3 is up; go-go and enjoy.

I haven't gotten any e-mails about the images not working, so I think that the script is working properly. And I started posting tonight on a forum where one guy was using an image in his signature -- showed up as a broken image link, which also supports the "working properly" theory. I kinda hate to have to do it -- there was this one guy in a Spanish blog who linked a couple of the images but also linked the site, and from what I could understand it seemed like he genuinely enjoyed the piece and wanted others to check it out -- there's something that just seems rude about broken images. On the other hand, there's also something rude about people who ignore your e-mails to the effect of "please don't use link our images in your signatures; if you want to use them, download them to your own webserver and link them from there (there are plenty of free image hosting sites)" and continue posting away anyway, and unfortunately there's no way for the script to recognize who's using the images to promote articles on SC and who's just leeching without regard for the site.

So with the script firmly in place, today's bandwidth was down by 20 megs, too -- though that could be because today was a slower day than yesterday, with 117 unique visits versus 163. In any case, there certainly was no shortage of requests for images in the usage logs -- namely from the person who ignored the e-mail, who apparently hasn't noticed that the image is showing up as a broken link in his/her posts and therefore hasn't removed the link yet. Everyone else who tried probably discovered what was happening and removed the images accordingly. I'm hoping that people will just stop, so I may not have to do this, but there's also a way for me to make it so that the log files don't take down things like this (and I don't really have a need for the info, since I know they're just getting broken links and the requests themselves don't take up too much bandwidth). I could also set it not to log image requests at all, since I don't care for that info anyway. Apparently there's no way to delete logs manually -- they delete themselves after three months -- so it'd benefit the site to have smaller logs that contain information I actually use. Less space, less crap to wade through.

Well, hope you enjoyed that rousing report.

In other news, Amanda's got a new post up on why we should abolish the welfare system. Not modify it, not reform it, abolish it. I don't think it's a very interesting issue, so I can't say that I particularly enjoyed the post, but it also begs the following question: What kind of person would argue a position like that? Arguments like this are typical of fledgling philosophers and psuedo-intellectuals -- they seem to be raised for the sake of debate, rather than to get at anything really worthwhile (and I think that's Amanda's aim, not the least because of the title of her blog and the fact that she attempts to "lure" people into reading and discussing her material with her cute pictures). And even if she did genuinely believe her argument -- and for all I know, she does -- it's an argument easily refuted in 1/4 of the space she devoted to it. But it's useless to argue with people who argue for the sake of argument -- they'll always come up with something else to say to keep the dispute raging on. Also, these kinds of arguments are not new -- I imagine soon enough Amanda will be discussing the issue in a political philosophy course, perhaps as it appears in the writings of John Rawls and Robert Nozick. For the record, I prefer Rawls. And hm, apparently both of them died in 2002. They were still alive when I was reading them! I feel old now.

So I didn't do any writing on the story today. I didn't do much of anything today, now that I think about it. I mucked around with crazy glue and spent a while looking at one of my old Shredder figures. Might have been a couple of hours; I'm not sure. I just kinda zoned out. It was weird, like some esoteric meditation practice: "Look at the figure... examine the figure... empty your mind and let your eyes follow the paint over the plastic..." I also went into the basement and recovered a few figures from down there, one of whom starred in the feature that I "filmed" tonight... who knows when it'll actually be up, but the photos are taken for it. It'll be a good one. So yeah, I did that, and that's about it. Not sure whether I'll just sleep soon or do some reading/writing first, but I'm definitely making plans to make some serious headway with both of those tomorrow. Hopefully I'll finish the story, at least.

And then I'm going to sit down and really make the personal page. But first I need to dig up my social commentary articles... 🙂

By the way, I'm currently chatting with RPD (of Ice Anvil Online; check it out!) about the possibility of adding some articles of a rather different sort to SC. I'd still have the wacky stuff, of course, but in the course of writing these blog entries it's occurred to me that they also might make for good pieces -- the April post, for instance, would probably be "recycled" and become the first, along with relevant images and photographs (scans of the photos of me with the Turtles at Disney World, for instance, assuming I can find them). Maybe these long pontifications about the new action figures I acquire would become reviews too; I dunno. I may recycle the Shredder post too just to see how it turns out. I mean I'm writing the stuff anyway; may as well use it to contribute to the content on SC. 🙂 So if you've got any feelings about it one way or the other, write in; let me know! You could always wait until I get the April piece up to give me an opinion, but preliminary thoughts are welcome nonetheless, if you've got 'em. And I get so few e-mails. 🙁

So yeah, big things planned for SC. STAY TUNED!