Ow.

Previously.

For those not in the know, hotlinking is the act of displaying an image located on another web site by referring to it directly, as opposed to linking to the page on which it appears.

The upshot is that every time the hotlinked image is displayed on site A, it costs site B (the site hosting the image) the bandwidth required to serve it up. This is considered rude. Site B incurs a cost without receiving any benefit. The accepted alternative is to save a copy of the desired image and host it on one’s own site, or on one of numerous image hosting services. Not only is this polite, but it’s smarter, because when you hotlink to an image on someone else’s web server you don’t have control over it.

When John McCain was running for president, his campaign set up a MySpace page (remember MySpace?) using a common template. The template’s creator made it available for anyone who wanted to use it, but requested attribution and asked those who used it to host the associated images themselves. The McCain staffers did neither. The template’s creator responded by modifying one of the images that was being leeched from his own web server such that the following occurred:

The McCain staffers saw the light and quickly corrected their faux pas.

I bring up hotlinking because a lot of my blog posts contain images that a lot of people find via Google Image Search. Then they hotlink to them. The pages on which they are displayed are frequently in forums and, given the highbrow nature of the images I post, you can only imagine the levels of erudition present in the forums’ discourse. For example:

http://www.last.fm/group/I+Hate+Metal+Maiden+Hell/forum/124912/_/531272

There are methods to block hotlinking, and some of those who engage in hotlinking subscribe to the viewpoint of, “If a site lets me hotlink to its images, that’s tantamount to an invitation.” Well, fuckers, you are no longer invited.

One has choices when blocking hotlink requests. One can simply forbid the request, which usually results in a broken image icon appearing on the target site. One can also redirect the request so that an alternate image is served up. Given the potential humor value of the latter, which method do you think I chose?

Some people select an image like this:

Practical but boring.

Some serve up a transparent image that is very, very wide, which is designed to break the target site’s layout such that the left and right borders get blown out. I consider this somewhat malicious in that it punishes bystanders along with the culprit.

Being true to my nature, I decided to go with something offensive. My initial choice was this:

Then I was briefly taken with this:

Then I considered taking the scattergun approach and offending everyone imaginable:

Then, after reading an informative essay by Ryan “pizza” Flynn on what to consider when coming up with an irritating, disturbing or offensive hotlink replacement image, I embraced one of Mr. Flynn’s offerings for my very own. I think it strikes a tasteful balance:

I am well aware that by serving up an alternate image, I am still incurring the bandwidth cost associated with that image. That’s okay. Ever since I set this up, several times each day I feel a little zing of pleasure out of nowhere that I can only imagine is my replacement image appearing somewhere unexpectedly. So either the tumor has grown beyond the point of “Are you sure you don’t smell burning plastic?” or my investment is paying dividends.

My friends are very clever. Do yourself a favor and check out Dylvez’s blog:

http://dylvez.tumblr.com

Want another try at breakfast?

While doing a recent turn in stir owing to an unfortunate misunderstanding, I discovered a swell card game called “Oh Hell!” Played with 3 to 7 people, each player declares a bid per hand, immediately after the cards are dealt. A hand of 7 cards equates to 7 rounds, because only one card per player is put into play per round. The bid reflects the number of rounds each player thinks hu can win (referred to as “tricks”), with 2 through Ace values applying. For example, let’s say I am dealt 7 cards, 3 of which are Aces. I might declare in advance a bid of three tricks, because I am confident that each of those Aces will win a given round. There’s more to it, but that’s the essence. Details include things like the number of cards dealt per hand (ascending then descending) throughout play, and the presence of a trump suit per hand.

What really interests me is that scoring is based entirely on how accurately one bids (in Project Management parlance, estimates versus actuals). In other words, it doesn’t matter how many rounds I win in a given hand; I only win points for that hand if I estimated my bid accurately. For example, let’s say that I declared a bid of 3 tricks for the hand. If I win exactly 3 tricks, I get 3 points plus a 10-point bonus for estimating accurately. If instead I only won 2 tricks, I lose 10 points plus the difference between my estimate (3) and the number I actually won (2), for a total of -11. Therefore, as a hand evolves, one’s strategy sometimes involves playing to lose.

I had great fun when I played.

There are many variations to the rules and scoring of Oh Hell!, so I decided to create MrPikes’ House Rules, fundamentally based on Carter Hoerr’s rules (rulekeeper for the OH HELL! Club of America) with a couple of interesting differences, Rule 2 inspired by PJ O’Rourke’s Modern Manners:

1. When all players are ready to BID, they put a fist on the table. When everyone’s fist is out, the group says “One, Two, Three” while bouncing their fists on the table. On “Three”, everyone must stick out some number of fingers (possibly zero) to indicate how many tricks they will try to take. Of course, with this method, there’s no restriction against the total number of bid tricks being equal to the number of cards dealt. Since players cannot adjust their bids based on the other players’ bids, the total tricks bid can be wildly different from the tricks available – for example it is not uncommon for three or four players to bid “one” when only one card was dealt.
2. The PANTS rule: Any player who bids 5 tricks or higher and does not realize that bid precisely has to take off hus pants. For the especially shy or aesthetically repugnant, writing “Dumbass” in grease pencil or lipstick on the forehead is an acceptable substitute. The spirit of the rule is to add an element of risk (and corresponding thrill) to the game, similar to Russian Roulette but without the cleanup headaches. In addition, you can learn a lot about a person who willingly takes the gamble. The pants rule applies once per player.

amorize, v. [am·or·ize]

To pay down love gradually in a series of installments applied to interest and principal.

I recently came across “amorize” while doing quality assurance on a collection of definitions. It was just too good not to put here. By the by, the sound clip is from Steve Martin’s The Man with Two Brains. If you haven’t seen it, your life is not yet complete.

5/17/2009: Updated to add

I'm just not going to have as much time for this sort of thing once I rejoin the gainfully employed...