Inner Solace

To people visiting my site and ‘liking’ my posts

If you are not a spammer, please continue as you were.

If you are a spammer, and/or are attempting to exploit this community by ‘liking’ peoples’ posts in a hope that they will click on your link, and go to your tumblr site which has been loaded with scripts which redirect them to porn and repeatedly refresh the location to more porn and ads and popups:

I hope you catch a disease or are subject to afflictions and conditions which don’t kill you, but will make your life uncomfortable and unpleasant due to any or all of the following:

• Warts - Either on exposed parts of your body or bottom so that it makes it unpleasant to sit.
• Boils and pustules - As above. If they weep either visibly or enough so that wet spots appear on your clothing and then dry so that your clothes stick to the boil so when you pull the fabric away it also rips the top of the boil off again, all the better.
• Acid reflux
• Papercuts - On the knuckles of your hands or feet
• Mosquito bites - As above
• Food allergies - The ones which cause the back of your throat to itch where you can’t scratch and all you can do is continue to swallow repeatedly or make that air biting face dogs make when they’ve tasted something unpleasant, in the vain hope that the motion will alleviate some of the irritation.
• Pimples - Just on the inside of your ears or nose
• Tooth sensitivity to hot and cold that Sensodyne and other similar toothpastes and mouthwashes won’t be able to assist with
• Carpal tunnel syndrome - Not because you’re a physical wanker, but because you’re a true wanker at heart for drawing traffic to your site in this ultimately tosser way

I also hope that every cat you see hisses at you, dogs bark and snarl at you as you pass, and that rodents will sneak into your home and take a whizz and dump on your pillow.

Stop making the photo small!

Aaaaaa!

I can’t believe how hard it is to get this to let you see the full size pano.  Uploading it to tumblr made it link through to a small ‘hi-res’ version.  Linking to flickr you can’t access the original size.  So I’ve had to force hard link it to the static url to the original.

Grrr…

So now you can click through to make the pano bigger. YAY.

How to Reblog Yourself

If you want to reblog yourself:

1. Copy this link into your address bar: http://tmv.proto.jp/reblog.php?post_url=
2. Append the link of the post you want to reblog
3. Hit enter

(via suitep)

‘Like’

If I happen to ‘like’ your post, even if it isn’t contextually appropriate to ‘like’ it, it probably means I am trying to express sympathy, empathy, appreciation or some similar sentiment that I am otherwise unable to communicate through a reply or comment. It is not very likely that I ‘like’ your post in the same way I ‘like’ a cute photo of a bunny or notes about delicious home-made food.

I’m sure this is obvious, but just in case, I wanted to clarify.

Travel Tech Tips: Reading and Tumbling on the Go

When I was on holiday to Thailand, Sydney and Melbourne I was without a laptop[1] and consistent Internet access.  But I had my iPhone, WiFi and a few little things that made minimal connectivity a little easier.

WiFi

Quite a few hotels in Thailand seem to provide free secure WiFi.  Either contact reception for the username and password, or check the documentation in your hotel room.  It’s not going to be terribly fast, and in some (several?) cases, unreliable, but it’ll be enough to check your email, social networks and RSS feeds.

While we were in Phuket, the sheer number of B&Bs and hostels around also ensured I was able to score some free and unsecured WiFi action when I was out and about.  Again, slow and kinda sketchy, but better than nothing and gave me something to do while waiting for food or just chilling out.

In Australia you’re kind of stuffed with that. Free WiFi isn’t that prevalent, though you might get some services in places like McDonalds or Borders. I managed fine with the modest data quota that comes with my phone plan, but I cut back on my youtube usage just in case.

Read It Later

When I came upon an article or site that I wanted the luxury of reading on a sensible-sized screen at my convenience, internal Safari bookmarks just doesn’t cut it.  I am presuming you can sync bookmarks between Safari mobile and Safari regular, but I use Firefox primarily and the idea of syncing bookmarks like that makes me a little queasy.

This is where a Read It Later account comes in handy.  It’s like a hosted bookmark service, but for bookmarks which are more than likely transient, unlike your regular bookmarks which you’ve intentionally kept for future reference.  I don’t use it very efficiently since it ends up being a dumping ground, but it serves its purpose as an inbox for bookmarks which don’t yet deserve pride of place in your actual bookmarks.

If you download the Read It Later app for iPhone, it provides instructions for how to add a bookmarklet to Safari so you can add those pending reading articles in-browser.  The bookmarklet lives in Safari’s bookmarks, and when you want to save a page to Read It Later, click the bookmark and the javascript it contains does some magic… et voilà.

Tumblr

Obviously, I like to Tumble. And one thing the iPhone Tumblr app doesn’t seem to do[2] is allow you to reblog.  There’s also no easy way, that I have found, to add the Tumblr bookmarklet to Safari the way Read It Later does.

When I first added the Read It Later bookmarklet, the process was rather painful.  You had to press and hold on a link, tap Copy to copy the javascript and paste it into a bookmark.

I tried to do the same thing to the bookmarklet on the Tumblr Goodies page, but they cunningly overrode that by adding a javascript pop-up telling you to drag it to your bookmarks.  Which you can’t do, because click-and-drag isn’t a valid interaction on the iPhone. ~_~

Frustratingly, the only way I could get the bookmarklet’s script contents was to wait until I had access to an actual computer, copy and paste the javascript into an email, open the email on the iPhone and copy the text from there to paste it into the bookmark.

Fortunately, you don’t have to go through as much pain as I did.  There’s still a little pain involved, but if you want to add the bookmarklet to your iPhone (or other similar device, I’ve added the bookmarklet to a snipt.

1. Browse to that page, copy the text from “javascript:” to “void(0)” in the snippet box. You’ll have to copy it the iPhone way because the snipt “copy” link doesn’t work on the iPhone.
2. Create a new bookmark called “Share on Tumblr” and save it.
3. Click on the bookmarks icon and edit your “Share on Tumblr” link, delete the address currently associated with the link and tap Paste to paste the text you copied in step 1.

Once you have this set up, when you want to reblog a page, click the “Share on Tumblr” bookmark and a new window will pop up with the familiar Tumblr bookmarklet interface.

I cannot begin to tell you how helpful it was to have both Read It Later and the Tumblr bookmarklet on my iPhone while I was away.

In any case, I hope this helps someone else to stay connected, even though they should be disconnecting if they’re on holiday. :P

[1] Well, technically I had my laptop with me in Sydney and Melbourne for work. But the display died halfway through the trip.

[2] That I know of.

Things I Learned from the Shark vs. Cat war

david:

By velvetrobots:

1. A lot of things about cats.
2. Cats are incredible animals that have been revered since the Egyptians.
3. It’s not that difficult to work with people with common interests.
4. Shark people can be mean, but Cat people can always keep their class intact.
5. 100,000 seconds takes a very long time.
6. 100 seconds during a war takes longer.
7. But, longest of all, is the calculation.
8. Sharks mostly emphasize how “awesome” they are because they can kill.
9. Cats mostly emphasize humor, cuteness, and cultural references. Cats are revered in human society. No one came blame us.
10. Competition is fun.