raloria

I just made this animated gif because I need it in my life. ;)



I'll be making a formal posting of this gif (and in other sizes) next week. Stay tuned!

♦ Who knew you couldn't use Spotify in the Safari web browser??? WTH??? *fumes* I looked into why, but then my eyes glazed over because apparently there isn't any solution. Grrr! Well, that's annoying! Especially since I'm trying to use my Safari browser more now, because for some reason when I watch online videos too long in any other browser, my CPU heats up. WTH is with that??? *sigh*

♦ I uploaded the above animation to one of my old Photobucket accounts. Yes, still trying to decide what to do about them - which account to sign up for with payments again, now that they've got more reasonable plans. I wouldn't have even uploaded it to PB, but I can't get into my account at PhotoLand.io!!!! That's where I've been uploading and posting my gifs from. All of a sudden there's no way to sign in with Twitter, which is what I used. Gah!!!! I've contacted them about it, but who knows if I'll ever get a response. Well, speak of the devil....just got this email from them:

Hello,

We are having issues with the twitter API and are working on fixing it. Will update you once it's working again.

Thank you
Photoland Team

Well, I'll give them points for getting back to me so quickly. Sad that I can't get into my account there though. Serves me right for going the shortcut way into signing into a site. *sigh* So I guess I'll be using my PB accounts again for now...

Ok. Wow! The PhotoLand Support Team literally just got back to me, saying the problem is fixed. Sure enough, I was able to log in w/Twitter and upload the gifs. Yay! Very impressive support at PhotoLand!

♦ For my artsy & craftsy friends, I got quite the deal this past week at Hobby Lobby. A Marvy waterbrush marked down to $1.24, a set of Faber Castell 24 Watercolor Pencils marked down to $3.74 (from $14.99), and a set of 25 Stabilo colored pens marked down to $7.49 (from $29.99!). I've always been curious about the Stabilo pens because I've heard such good things about them (they are good!) but the price always turned me off. No more! These aren't the first great deals I've found at HL. A month or so ago I finally got a Gouache set of paints that was marked way down. I do love saving money on supplies!

♦ I found a great site for free book PDFs! Check out Ocean Of PDF! I've already got a few of them loaded on my phone for reading there. Such a great selection.

♦ Since SPN is finished for the summer, it's time to start in on updating the Locations List (LL) with Season 13 for spn_locations. Problem is...looking up addresses on Google Maps really eats up my internet data. *heavy sigh* I could really use some help from volunteers, but I've failed to use people in the past so I'm pretty sure it's a waste of time. People don't want to risk it. Of course, this time I KNOW what I would have volunteers help me with! :(

♦ Late add-in Edit!!!! OMG Does anyone else play Candy Crush on their phone??? I've been stuck on a level before, but nothing like with Level 149! OMG!!!! I CANNOT GET THROUGH IT!!!!! I've lost track of how many times I've played that level. And I've had tons of help from the game, but alas....still stuck. Gah!

I'm in the process of saving some of my better old Fanarts from my PhotoBucket accounts and re-uploading them to SlickPic, and thought I'd better post them (again) for posterity.

These are small, but I still like them.

Seems like news of Photobucket's rotten and sudden change of their TOS is all over the internet now. I've found some new articles to join with the ones HERE.

Why is Photobucket holding the internet to ransom?
A very good article outlining how PB has effectively shot themselves in the foot with their actions. I totally agree. The way PB has done this almost guarantees they're going to lose nearly all their customers, not gain them. If they really wanted to make money, this was the worst possible way to go about it.

The big lesson from Photobucket’s ‘ransom images’ debacle via Yahoo!
In the article PB's CEO states he is 'blaming this shift on “the rise of ad blockers and the Company’s explosion of 3rd party hosting that generates zero revenue.”' Well, good luck making ANY REVENUE by charging people $400 a year. It's ridiculous! I can't imagine anyone paying that amount. If they offered a plan w/3rd Party Hosting for something reasonable, like $24 a year I think most people would gladly pay. But this huge jump is simply insane!

Another article by a blogger hit by PB's ransoming tactic:
http://www.xadara.com/the-cost-of-photobucket-image-hosting/

Photobucket accused of blackmail after quietly requiring users to pay $400 a year to hotlink via The Verge
Gotta love Photobucket's totally clueless response on Twitter at the bottom of the article.

Photobucket addresses complaints over new policy that charges heavy users $400 via The Denver Post (PB is based out of Denver)
More totally useless explanations from Photobucket's CEO.

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One thing I keep seeing online is people saying stuff like, "Hey, it was a free service. You get what you pay for." Well, I WAS paying for it up until earlier this year! I had been paying for 2 accounts, but when PB started becoming so difficult to use, I started using SlickPic more and stopped paying for PB. It doesn't matter whether you paid for PB or not when they're now charging $400 a year for any 3rd Party Hosting (which is something they encouraged people to do up until now!).

I also keep seeing people thinking this is just about image hosting.
I don't need PB for image hosting. I have back-ups of almost all of the images on PB (I hope!). What I used PB for was for linking images to LJ. THIS is what upsets the millions of PB users. All those many, many, MANY posts online are now totally useless! Images that were online for years and years are gone! Yes, they're supposedly still on PB, but that doesn't solve the problem of them being visible on the sites people have linked them to. For many of us, we're talking thousands and thousands of posts. Years and years of work that are no longer visible online. That's what hurts! And there's no easy solution. None. Except to forget about them and hope nobody will ever look at those posts again. Considering I've been posting to LJ nearly every day for the past 9 years, replacing all those links is an impossible task.

I'm seeing my Flist making posts about an online petition to get PB to turn 3rd Party Hosting back on. While this sounds like a good idea at first, I've done some thinking about it and have decided not to sign the petition.

Why?

PB is not what it used to be. It used to be a site that worked, that didn't have tons of pop-up ads, that actually cared about it's users. That disappeared a few years ago. They ruined the site, they ruined the ease of use and posting to sites. This is why I started up with SlickPic (and I'm so glad I did).

Why on earth would we want to go back to the garbage that is Photobucket???
Plus, do you honestly think that a company that has deceived it's users to this extent is going to suddenly do a 180 and give all those images back due to a petition??? I think not. They want our money and nothing else. Of course, they're not going to get it from most of us as a mass exodus is happening of PB users.

I've even seen on Facebook where a few users who have signed up for the $400 a year plan STILL DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO THEIR IMAGES!!! Why pay that amount of money if PB still refuses to turn back on the 3rd Party Hosting??? Why even trust them with your money after all of this? Their customer service sucks and they clearly don't care about their users. Their actions, of course, will mostly likely mean the end of the company. I can only say, good riddance!

When I first noticed Photobucket blocking my images, I did a Google search and only found a few items about it. Now, I'm finding lots of Forums and Blogs that are being affected by PB's ransoming of images.

As the one person points out, this is having a huge impact online. If you visit lots of blogs, more than likely their images will be gone. DIY sites, same thing. Forums, etc. I suspect few will be forking over $400 a year to Photobucket to get their images back online, and if they had images numbering in the hundreds or thousands? Those aren't coming back anytime soon, if ever. It's just far too much work to re-upload them elsewhere and re-type the links.

Anyway, I thought I'd list some links here that I thought were very informative - and also help make me feel that I'm not alone in my pain and anger over PB's rotten practices.

PB's own Blog. Fascinating how they respond to simple problems people comment on, but about the 3rd Party Hosting Issue? Total silence.
http://blog.photobucket.com/status/comment-page-1/#comments

This blogger's situation is very similar to mine here on LJ. Hundreds of posts and thousands of photos just gone. I feel her pain.
http://www.laurenwayne.com/2017/06/photobucket-phail-how-to-ruin-host-site.html

This person equates PB with Angelfire, Geocities, and Tripods demise. If PB does indeed disappear due to this sudden betrayal of their users, it serves them right!
https://www.reddit.com/r/rant/comments/6jbyhp/photobucket_has_changed_their_tos_to_not_allow/

One of many forums I've found reporting this issue.
https://www.edcforums.com/threads/photobucket-restricting-everyone-for-image-hosting.137820/

More info. and another prediction that this will be PB's undoing.
https://www.ghacks.net/2017/06/30/photobucket-now-charges-399-for-third-party-hosted-images/

This is yet another person who brings up people being locked out of their PB accounts, unable to even download their own images off the site! I haven't run into that issue (yet), but it's yet another evil tactic by PB.
http://blog.norphil.co.uk/2017/06/photobucket-alert-new-sort-of-ransom.html

That's all for now, but I may add more as the days go by.

Apologies for how my journal looks right now. Most of the images in my sidebar and all my mood theme images are missing and replaced with an ugly-ass graphic from PB.

Here's what it's all about...


'Cause how dare I post images on another site! *heavy sigh*
This looks like PB is telling me pay up or screw you! Thanks a lot!
See, since I was easing up on my usage of my Photobucket accounts anyway (I have 4), I stopped paying and let them all revert to free accounts. Bleh.

So I guess I'll have to re-upload all the missing images over at Slickpic, which I do pay for (because it's way better than stupid PB). Grrrrr! It'll probably take me a few days though, so please be patient with me!

Edit: Crap, crap, CRAP! I just checked my other comms and they look fine EXCEPT for spn_locations!!! The pages of locations for Seasons 1-7 have ALL THE IMAGES MISSING!!!!! Friggin' hell! I do NOT need this with VanCon approaching fast!!!! Dammit all! Looks like I'm going to have to pay for the upgrade anyway, because I do NOT have time to re-upload all those many, many caps and map images to Slickpic. Crap! This sucks!!! >:[

And the price for getting the images back is $40 a month??? Crap! It's their highest plan! WTH???

I'm so sorry about my Just 'Cause - 8th Anniversary post being all screwed up with only some of the caps loading. Stupid PhotoBucket strikes again, I'm afraid.

I knew I should have gone with my first instinct and just upload the Year 8 caps over to SlickPic. I'm in the process of doing that right now. *sigh* I'll then fix up the links on the post and let you all know it's done.

Again, I'm so sorry about the mix-up. I was wondering why the post got barely any comments. Hard to comment when only half the caps are even showing up.

Edit: Okay, it's finally all fixed and all the caps are visible and clickable! Yay!!!!! HERE.

I was all excited about trying out the new beta version of Photobucket. It's a shiny, new, toy after all and I'm all over new things. *g* So when the option popped up tonight to preview it, I jumped right on board.

Well, I've gotta tell ya I'm a little underwhelmed.

:: No more info. about the images such as what their dimensions are.
:: No way to select images and then post thumbnails of them as I used to on LJ for my cap posts.

Two big features I've come to rely on are now gone. Not cool, PB, not cool at all.
What the hell am I going to do for my cap posts now? There won't be a lot of clickable thumbnail images for previewing anymore that's for sure. :(

Haven't tried to upload anything yet, so that will be next. I don't mind the new look and all, in fact, having the images as larger thumbnails in my albums is kinda nice, but why did they have to get rid of certain features? I realize, I can switch back to the original format, but I've gotta believe eventually they'll want everyone to use the new & improved version. So why fight it? Might as well try to get used to the new PB. *sigh*

I'm having all kinds of technological issues today.

The tally (so far):

- Facebook (can't get Words With Friends to load)
- Twitter (won't fully load most of the time or let me post a Tweet)
- Site Meter for my LJ (hasn't registered any visitors since 4 a.m. this morning)
- Photobucket (I can't log into my 2nd account - says the username & password are incorrect even though I know they are) Posted about it earlier.

This sucks out loud.

So if you see this post, will you please leave me a comment?
I need to know that LJ is working at least.

Crisis averted. Everything's working now. Still have no idea why they all seemed to go kaput at the same time.

Got bored & thought I'd change the look of my journal again. lol :P

raloria raloria raloria

It's a new, unseen collage header of Jensen & Jared with an old background & an even older S1 Dean Mood Theme. I also found out my headers were all over the place in Photobucket, so I did some organizing & rearranging so I can find what I want a little easier. Oh, and I think I also learned that Google Chrome doesn't like Photobucket too much. Heh. ;)

And this is what happens when you stay up (instead of going to bed like you should have) and then make a post and forget some things. Heh. :P

Bear with me flist, I'll be done rambling here soon.

Thank you! to aeryn11. I got your Christmas card (finally!) a couple of weeks ago on Jan. 11th. You weren't kidding when you wrote on the envelope about your mail being slow. Wow! Anyway, thanks for the lovely card, Sarah! *hugs* :D

Found out I actually LIKE all of the new changes to Photobucket. Yep, all of them. I like having my last visited albums right there, nice and handy on my main page.

Been using FireFox 3.6 on my MacBook Pro (laptop) for the past several days and I'm quite impressed. It really does seem to use less memory than the older versions. Hurray! I do eventually have to restart it, but it can go many hours now before I need to do so, much like the current version of Safari. And I must say, with thousands of Personas to choose from, why do we even need FF themes anymore? They're a breeze to install and there's something for just about everyone (and then some).

Speaking of FF...I just added the LJ Hook add-on. Not sure how handy it's really going to be for me, but I thought I'd try it out. It even works fine with my other FF add-on for LJ, Livejournal Add-Ons (gee, what an original name).

Had 2 random rock bands follow me on Twitter yesterday, which was really weird. I blocked them, of course, but what was that about? Usually there's some tie-in based on my latest Tweet, but not this time, as far as I can tell. I'm convinced weekends bring out the crazy Tweeps.

Okay, I think that covers it all this time. Thanks for reading & putting up with my rambling ways. *hugs flist* :)