raloria

Yep, PB is back to it's old tricks, even under new management which I reported on back in March of 2018.

They're still a bunch of greedy SOBs.

Because my accounts are over PB's bandwidth limit (25mb), pretty much all my images are blurred out w/a PB logo on them. Goody.


My options? Pay up for unlimited bandwidth at $75 a year or delete/download images to lighten the bandwidth & storage limit for Free PB accounts. Keep in mind that you can only download images from your albums INDIVIDUALLY! Are you friggin' kidding me?!?

I have 42,833 images in one account, 35,820 in the other.

Yeah. That ain't happening.

For comparison: I pay roughly $25 a year for my SlickPic account with unlimited storage & bandwidth.

I'm so over PhotoBucket's shenanigans. Truly.
And they've got the nerve to post to their blog how they lost & regained their customer's trust!
What a bunch of liars!

I can't afford $75 a year, especially for 2 accounts.
Which means all my old posts are going to look ugly. Sorry. There's no way I can re-upload thousands of caps , fanart, icons, etc. to SlickPic & then replace all the links. It's just not going to happen. If I even get back to doing my SPN Revealed posts, I'd be willing to go back & replace all those caps. That's the only exception. Thankfully, I only got through Season 1 & part of Season 2 with those.

Ooop. One exception...
Found out my SPN Episode Title Caps have been effected because most of them (Seasons 1-12) were hosted on PB. Damn. So now I'm going through & saving all those caps, one by one. 'Cause I want all those posts restored, dammit! Yeah, this will take a while...
And yeah, I probably have them all backed-up somewhere. I never delete anything like caps. I looked up when I started those posts and it was back in 2011. Well, a lot was going on back then, and I can't say where those caps are. So...saving from PB is the only way. *sigh*

I'm not one for swearing but...FU PhotoBucket!!!

Yesterday I found one of my VanCon 2010 photos of Jensen posted on Instagram with my watermark cropped off. Now keep in mind that the photo itself is square anyway, so there was no need to crop off my watermark to post it to Instagram. Anyway, I left a comment on the post about it being mine and the watermark being gone.

I then posted the issue to Twitter.

Spotted this #VanCon2010 photo w/my watermark cropped off. What happened to common fandom courtesy?
I choose to post my photos because I believe in sharing w/my fellow fans who can't attend cons. Just wish rotten eggs wouldn't ruin it.#SPNFamily #Supernatural pic.twitter.com/oZwh9p1zH0

— ScreencappingGoddess (@spndeangirl) April 13, 2018

Today, I'm looking at Instagram, see that account and take another look and that post is totally gone! They never responded to my comment, just deleted the photo....which in my mind makes me out to be the bad guy. "How dare you complain about your watermark being cropped out! I won't post your photos anymore!" Really?!?

So the person who posted my Jensen photo on Instagram has taken it down. No response to my comment.
How am I the bad guy in this?
Just because I want credit given for the photo I took???
I love that ppl enjoy my photos. Just leave the watermark. Why is that so hard?#SPNFamily

— ScreencappingGoddess (@spndeangirl) April 13, 2018

This is getting frustrating. I don't make my watermarks intrusive on my photos for a reason - I feel they'd detract from the beauty of the subject matter. But I'm seriously reconsidering taking more drastic action. I'm sick of this! Why is it so hard for people to give credit for things in this fandom anymore? Even if they didn't know who to credit...just say that in the post! Indicate that you at least are interested in finding out who to credit for the work! This is what I've done in the past. Because I want to give credit where it's due, even if I can't at the time I post something.

Maybe I'll have to start placing my watermark up by people's faces in con photos from now on. It sucks, but I've seen plenty of other photographers in the fandom doing it and now I know why. *sigh*

Well, that's 3 and a half hours of my life I won't get back. *sigh*

Got online tonight, opened my usual browser (Opera) and pretty soon, my GPU is running hot and the fans are loud. WTH??? I see this Opera Helper is using a lot of CPU. Weird. I try another browser - same thing. Either there's a Helper file using a lot of CPU or the browser itself is using a lot. What the eff???

I'm frantically searching online for whatever this problem is. Is it malware? I start doing a scan with my Avast software. But it's constantly monitoring me, so the system should be clean. What about that new download of PhotoScape I just got the other night? But that was from the Apple Store. It should be clean, right?

I couldn't figure it out. I tried a few suggested fixes. No change.
I could only stay with one browser open for a while and then I'd shut it down so my fans would get a break.
Then I started closing that Helper file process - that cooled things down, but when I re-opened the browser it would just run the CPU hot again. *sigh*

Eventually, I noticed something...in a couple of the browsers the site only2clicks.com (a visual bookmarking site) was shutting down with a white screen that said it had run out of memory. WTH??? Weird.

Then I opened Google Chrome and made sure only2clicks DIDN'T open with the browser's start.
I closed, then re-opened the browser...no more high CPU usage!!!!

I opened Opera again and instantly closed the tab for only2clicks and everything was fine.

So the problem is with that website, only2clicks.com! Geez!
Which sucks, because I use that site for all of my bookmarks, have for years now. It's had it's issues, but never anything like this! Crazy. So it looks like I'll be avoiding only2clicks for a little while. Hopefully, it gets fixed soon. Gah!

/ Returns you all back to your day/evening. :P

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!

More images on my journal are gone thanks to Photobucket. *sigh*
I figured this was going to happen. I have 4 Photobucket accounts - 2 that were my "main ones", the ones I used to pay for. They started with the 2nd one and now the first, older one has been hit with the "No 3rd Party Hosting" invasion. Grrrr.

Guess I know what I'll be doing later on today...re-uploading all those images over to SlickPic so I can re-link them. *sigh*

Btw, I've made a decision over this whole issue that is heavily effecting posts over at spn_locations. I'll be posting about it later.

Oh, why did I look at my lj comms???
The header and backgrounds are totally gone at positively_spn and spn_onthheeset! * Gah!!!! They look HIDEOUS!!! Thanks, Photobucket. Thanks for ruining my life. Thanks for giving me more work than I need right now.

* Thankfully, the actual images used in all the posts for spn_ontheset are in LJ's Scrapbook and unaffected.

You know what this means....all my old Just 'Cause posts are now gone. The ones made from when I began them 9 years ago until I switched them over to SlickPic a couple of years ago. Lovely. I'm so sorry for anyone who goes back and views those old posts, not that I expect many will, but still. OMG This is so upsetting! Hundreds of posts just GONE like that! Seriously, I'm tearing up just thinking of all those Just 'Cause posts that are totally worthless now - on top of Seasons 1-7 over at spn_locations! Friggin' Photobucket and their $400!!!!

Since when did Claire Novak become the most hated character on SPN?

( Behind a cut for spoilers about last night's episode... )

Was preparing to post another set of Season 11 Hi-Res Caps and I looked at my Mediafire account and someone has already gone in there and downloaded the sets of caps 1103 thru 1106!

Really???

Was that necessary? I work hard to make these caps, fix them, upload them, and then post them on my own schedule. You couldn't wait until I post them to my Livejournal? You had to go digging around in my account and get the other sets early because you have no patience. Thanks a lot.

Guess I've learned my lesson. I will no longer upload files to Mediafire in advance, even though it was convenient for me. :(

If you'd just been a little patient, I was working on posting the sets (and will continue to do so). But I guess this one person felt they were entitled and deserved to get the cap sets before everyone else.

Color me disappointed. :(

I overreacted. I'm so very sorry.

Has anyone been having problems viewing the caps, images, etc. on my LJ?
Namely for the Beginnings & Endings, SPN Name That Cap Challenge 5, Random Fanart, and the various "goodies" posts (like the Video & Caps posts I've been doing lately).

This was initially brought to my attention by sandy79 a few days ago on my Happy SPN Day post.

I checked things out and discovered that I could see all the images on my posts in Firefox, Chrome, and Safari browsers. However, they were missing when using Opera and Vivaldi.

Now I've had this issue in the past and usually it eventually corrects itself, but tonight I got to checking into it more (because I was using the Opera browser) and found out why the images aren't showing up.

The links were different in SlickPic. Like the coding had mysteriously been changed since I made the posts!
What. The. Hell???

I looked back and it all began after November 1st! Before that date everything's fine.

Now I've gone and edited some of the posts and fixed the problem, but it's a lot of posts to take care of so I thought I'd ask if anyone else is having this problem. If not, well maybe I won't go back and re-edit them all...maybe. *sigh*

So has anyone else been having problems viewing the caps/images on my Livejournal?

Please let me know. I always appreciate when people notify me of a problem because I want to fix it for you all.

Ran into a complication while working on the Season 11 Locations List over at spn_locations last night.

LJ's dreaded post-length limitations.

So I had to split the list into 3 posts instead of my original 2. Yeah, that's the easy part...sorta. At one point I had myself totally confused over which episodes I had copied and pasted into which post. Gah!

Now, of course, my banners for the posts are incorrect. Goody.
Have to make new ones. *sigh*

On the plus side, I'm almost done filling in the locations. Only 5 episodes left to do.
Which is good because the next step is to add all the Season 11 locations into Google Maps.
And I have a separate rant for Google Maps, because they've ruined so much of the site that it's almost un-usable for my list. Grrrr!
Hey, only a week until my deadline of August 19th. It's doable, right?