… then why make it so hard to link to?
Goddamn it, in the past I’ve just found the image I wanted via Google and selected “Copy image location”, pasted that into my WP and away I go. Now it seems that two things are happening more and more frequently with images posted online. The first thing that bugs the living crap out of me is GI-NORMOUS images! I mean, who in the name of all things holy needs a picture to be more than 2000 DPI?? But more and more now when I go looking for a picture I’m coming across resolutions that are just ridiculous. Not only can most monitors not display such an image without resizing it --- in which case you’re not going to get the detail you would have wanted when you created/scanned it originally, so why bother? --- the files themselves are huge, so if you download one or try to paste it into a forum, like here, it annoys everyone because it slows down the less speedy computers and also takes up way too much space. There’s no need to make an image that big. The human eye can only cope with so much detail, and although YOU might want to see the sweat on every pore on Springsteen’s nose, or every individual blade of grass on a field, I don’t, and I suspect most of us are the same. As long as you can see the image in reasonable clarity, I’m happy with a smaller size. It’s almost like a pissing contest now though: I can make my image bigger than yours! Who the **** cares? Other people may want to use these images you’re uploading, and while yes, many people don’t like or agree with hotlinking (the practice of linking to an image on the site on which it’s hosted rather than downloading it and reuploading it to where you want it and then linking to there), you know, it’s a fact of life here on the internet. Most of us ain’t got the time or patience to redistribute your pictures, and anyway it’s only one picture so what are you bitching about? Not to mention that it could end up getting you visitors to your site, if you want them, as people may follow the link if they really want to. So what’s the deal?
Well, that’s bad enough. But then you have the real problem, the “invisible problem”, the one that only shows up AFTER you’ve tried to paste in the link on an increasingly large number of images. Most times you’ll get something like this
“
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/i...a46-VeCghD8”
which is fine, but then a lot of the time you’ll get this
“data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2wCEAAkGBhQSEBQUExQVFRQWGBoaGBgVGBcXFxsVFBgVGhgYGR oaHCYfGxkjGhgUHy8gIycpLCwtGh8xNTAqNSYrLCkBCQoKDgwO Gg8PGiokHyQsLCwtLzApLC00NCwsKSwpKSosLS8sLCwsLCwsKS wsLCwsLCopNCwsLCwqLCwsLCwsLP/AABEIALQBGAMBIgACEQEDEQH/xAAbAAABBQEBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAgMEBQYBB//EAEMQAAIBAgMFBQUECAQGAwAAAAECEQADEiExBAVBUWETIjJxg QZCUpGhB2JysRQjgpKiwdHwM7LC4RUkQ2OT8RZU0v/EABsBAAIDAQEBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEAgMFAQYH/8QANBEAAQQABAQDBgYCAwAAAAAAAQACAxEEEiExBRNBUTJx8CJ hgZGhwRQVQlKx4TPxBiTR/9oADAMBAAIRAxEAPwDw2iiihCKKKKEIooooQiiiihCKKKKEIoo ooQiiiihCKKKKEIorqrNXO7tzKwDM2QzIGkdTNcJpVySNjFuVO qE6ClnZ2+E/KtnuTdpvsy2EGFILuQcIJmNJJbX5Hzqfs3s7tD3r9pcGK1ZN0E AwwkYRme6zAtEjUR1rlnsk/wAbbywDXfUrzrszyrhFaLbt0XBbs3WM9vjwc/1bBT/Ecqib13M9i4UuphYeRBHMEZEa5g1200JRsVT0U9cs8qZrqtBtF FFFC6iiiihCKKKKEIorpNcoQiiiihCKKKKEIooooQiiiihCKKK KEIooooQiiiihCKKKKEIooooQiiiuqsmhCmbq3e166ltBLMQB5 n+5rQ7V7Lut+1ZtuLhuZDIouMEgiSSCBkcQOhGhypv2HfBtQjx G3dCH (And it goes on for about five pages, but you get the idea I'm sure).
Yeah. Annoying isn’t it? Imagine trying to paste THAT into your document, or worse, into a forum. I’ve had image links like this that have, on their own, exceeded the maximum character count, and that’s twenty thousand characters! Twenty flaming
thousand! In one image!
The question I pose is: why? What’s the point? Is it to stop hotlinking? If so, then it works perfectly. Nobody in their right mind would paste this into anything. But if not, then what is the reason for the ridiculously long text string? What does it represent, and how come other images, often from the same site, have something more manageable, as in the first example, as their code?
I truly don’t get it.
And, with images using codes like this, I truly don’t get it. The image, that is. It is unusable. But even if it IS unusable, why is there no way (that I know of) to ascertain this BEFORE copying the damn link and trying to paste it? Why is there no way to read the code or see it beforehand, to know if it’s worth even trying? So far as I can see, it’s just pot luck. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve looked for a certain image, then groaned, raged and fumed, getting angrier all the time as each successive link turns out to be one of the “long” ones. Sometimes I’ve run out of examples: every single image of the type I need has come up unusable. Sometimes that means I have to go to the trouble of saving, downloading, reupping and relinking to my own site. I mean, I can do this, sure, but it’s a pain and why should I have to? Most people using these images didn’t create them; they don’t hold the copyright on them. So what gives them the right --- if it is them doing it, and I assume it must be --- to prevent others from using these images?
A picture may paint a thousand words, but if it has more than a thousand characters in its link, you’re not going to be creating any masterpieces with it any time soon.
“Adapt and survive?”
This had been meant to focus, as it almost always does, on one thing that really bugged me, but hell, it’s called “Pet hates” and this week has seen the emergence of another thing that has really driven me mad. So welcome to part two!
If you buy something in a certain territory, I think it’s not expecting too much that you should be able to use the damn thing! I mean, if you bought an iphone in the US you’d think it would be taken as read that you could connect to US networks with it, if you buy a ticket for Wembley Stadium you don’t expect the concert to be held in Dubai, and if you invest in a diesel powered car then you shouldn’t expect it to run on petrol, now should you?
All, I would think, reasonable and not unattainable goals. So why is it that when I opened my new (although I had had it for over a year I had never opened it) Western Digital external hard drive this week I should find that, despite the fact it was bought in Ireland (well, on an Irish website) the mains plug on it should be a two-pin, “battery shaver” style?
I can’t use that. Over here in Ireland we use the three-pin plug, and have since we got electricity I think. So where’s the adapter I ask? Every electrical product sold these days seems to come with a plastic connector you can snap on to the plug to make it the one you want to use, and I think it’s this way in the US too: if you get a three-pin and need a two, there’s the option of changing it with just a few clicks.
But no adapter could I see, as I searched through the box. Even though --- and this was the bit that really bugged me --- the bloody quickstart guide SHOWS you one being fitted! How is it that Western Digital, famed for totally overpricing their hard drives --- how they haven’t priced themselves out of the oversaturated market yet I don’t know --- could not be bothered to include a small piece of plastic and metal that would have made my life easier? They’re selling the damn thing to the Irish market: why not make sure it can be bloody well used when it’s been bought? But no. I had to go and buy one (only cost three euro but that’s beside the point; I had to go into the city and it added an extra day on to my project) before I could use their wonderful drive!
No point in me writing to them of course --- they couldn’t care less I’m sure --- but it really turned me off buying their products --- which I had always had an aversion to: this one was just too reasonably priced to pass up at the time --- and more to the point, has made me think twice before I buy another drive, or anything with an electrical lead. From now on, I’m not handing over my money until I know there’s a plug on the thing I can use! Thanks Western Digital: you’ve made me become a picky shopper, all because you’re too tight to include an adapter that would make your product work in the country in which it’s sold.