Explore me!

Flickr has this strange thing they call Explore. After a twisted set of calculations to do with which groups your photo is in, how many groups, how many tags, links to/from the photos, comments, favourites, views... they eventually class all photos by Interestingness. And if a photo is one of the 500 most Interesting for a particular day then it gets into Explore, which is like a showcase for the most Interesting pictures of the day.

Some people are Explore whores. All sorts of Groups exist for no reason other than to have more Groups to add photos to, in the hopes that enough Groups will guarantee a place in Explore. What many people don't seem to realise, of course, is that the Interestingness algorithms are constantly changing and since 2006 having a photo in more than 15 Groups (oh yes, some pictures are in 60+ Groups! I did say WHORE.) then it has a negative effect on the Interestingness. Fools.

My Mother has had a few pictures Explored, although they're all pictures of clouds and trees and other boring 'nature' stuff; she's as puzzled by this as I am. I finally entered Explore a couple of months ago - about time too - and was frightfully pleased when this photo went from posting to Explore in about 12hours:

See, I decided to do the 365 thing, and then found myself getting dragged into the Flickr Group Roulette Group, which challenges you to make your photo of the day fit into certain underpopulated Groups - in this case, Flickr Can Has Cheezburger which is for Flickr lolcats. I baulked at the idea, but eventually managed to do something (entailing the vile Comic Sans MS, which apparently people liked :D

Oh lordy what am I doing?

Well, that's the exam for this year over.

Since I clearly don't have enough to do (ha! Ahahahahahahahaha!! and further hysterical noises) I've given in to the nonexistent peer pressure and started a 365 thing. May the deity of your choice have mercy on me.

Here we go again...

http://cities.uk.com/edinburgh.php appears to have a small piece of Flickr API stuff at the bottom of the page, searching for Edinburgh. The outcome of this seems to be a display of the last five images tagged with Edinburgh being displayed. Shoddy.

No Videos! er, Yes Videos! well, actually...

I can't decide. Flickr have started letting 'pro' users upload 90second videos. This is causing a HUGE controversy amongst the people who care. There's the NO VIDEO ON FLICKR!!! group (currently 12,908 members)and the We Say NO to Videos on Flickr group (30,118) and the We say YES to Videos on Flickr group (260)... apart from feeling like the opening sequence for Battlestar Galactica I don't think this does anything useful. My first thought was, "Of course no videos on Flickr. that's what YouTube and stuff are there for. Flickr does all it needs to do!" But then it occurred to me that video is art (well, it can be) and that perhaps video has it's place on Flickr too. Except. Well, firstly the videos in question can only be up to 90seconds which, to me, is more restrictive than useful. Second, there are already an unending stream of video hosting sites. Each uses a slightly different encoding or has a new interpretation on the 'standard' player thing, so they're horrendously annoying at times. Third, this is just asking for a never ending stream of wedding videos, holiday videos, children-running-around-in-the-garden-aren't-they-so-ADORABLE videos... Oh god please no... Most importantly, of course, one needs the latest Flash player to make it work, which fucks it all up for anyone who might want to do anything in a restrictive work environment or who for any other reason can't get it. At least YouTube and Google Video are a bit behind the technology. So, really, I'm in favour of Flickr Video in principle but in actuality am horribly opposed. We have video sites multiplying like bacteria for video, places like abinoblacksheep etc. for animation, deviantart for, er, art, and Picasa and Flickr for photos. Generally. So I'd like to keep them a bit separated please. Please?

Here's a funny one

Someone is stealing my Helen Sivey. http://www.squidoo.com/Timetraveler A few scrolls down the page you will see this photo. I have no idea why they're done this; at least it links to my flickr as is (mostly) appropriate to the CC-license. It's not even mine, Ollie took the photo and when I took the old phone back I uploaded a few of his photos. The ownership of the image is very confusing. I've been playing with exposures and stuff. It's amazing the effects you can get with a digital camera that would be avoided on film because it seemed 'wasteful', but now it's clever and interesting.

London? no, No, NO!!!

I have Londonphobia. There was a time when just looking at a London phone number made me nervous. I'm mostly over it now, but I've been tagging and geotagging my Flickr and came to a small chunk in central London. I had managed to find the right places (I think) in Bordeaux but as I zoomed into London all I could think was "No," and next thing I had closed the tab. So it's clearly not completely gone.

Andrew's comedy life

Andrew likes to do things for kicks that most people would baulk at the very thought of. And so he spends endless hours scouring the interweb for people who are similarly twisted. These are the people your mother warned you about, although most of them are so timid outside the dungeon that they'd never dream of doing these things without written permission...

So today Andrew found some local 19year old (apparently!) on t'internet, who announced that he would pop up to Andrew's "office" imminently. This threw the poor chap into a tizzy because he doesn't really Do Coffee with people, especially not people he's scouted for dirty sticky fisty encounters. Black Medicine is where he spends most of his free time, and people he's Meeting usually provide a venue, whether it be hotel room, dungeon or suitable stainproofed boudoir.

This tied in with reports of a be-mohawked homosexual sighted in BM by Ollie. When I arrived Andrew was, for some reason, concerned that the mohawkee might be the 19year old. Of course when this person happened to turn up it transpired that he is a friend of Martha's and NOT 19.

It was mightily amusing.

This was, of course, at the point where I had skipped out of Maths early to do my Japanese homework. I had done all I could in the classroom so I felt fully justified, and it marks the exciting event of me actually doing my Japanese homework for the first time! Not that it takes more than about 2 minutes...

In other, surreal, news I got my Jane Eyre essy back and it had been a roaring success! God only knows how - I was convinced that I had entirely failed to answer the question. In the end the only criticisms were that I hadn't noted page numbers and had been occasionaly distracted by plot. Unnecessarily. I love the fact that plot takes a back seat in these situations - no sorry, I HATE that. Plot is what I want in a novel and if it's captivating enough then character development and writing style can F*** Off if need be.

This is why I avoid Literature whenever possible. Streetcar is SO much better, even five pages in. And Jean Brodie is amusing! I will, if I can, be disowning Brontë and Shakespeare henceforth.

UPDATE: When opening Flickr I discovered this greeting: I'm pretty much speechless. Is Lolcat now a recognised language!?