Every so often I check through my website’s stats looking for hotlinking. Mostly it isn’t a big problem but sometimes websites or forums can really put a strain on my server, particularly if it’s a site with a lot of traffic such as Fark forums or another busy website. At other times it just annoys the crap out of me that a website would rather hotlink an image on my server instead of uploading it to their own.
If you know how, you can implement techniques that either
prevent hotlinking entirely, or serve up a different image to the offending site, as many who have inadvertantly displayed the infamous
goatse picture can testify
.
It was while checking for hotlinking I discovered I’m a ‘weather expert’. Imagine my surprise upon learning of this hitherto unknown talent!
During May of this year I wrote a blog post about how to predict summer weather using the leaves of garden shrubs. As it turned out, this year was the wettest summer on record but I digress…
A guy called Pat Timm, who, according to his website, weathersystems.com (Notice the link, Pat, should you happen to be reading this), is a free-lance writer, columnist, and a recognized expert on Pacific Northwest Weather, decided not only to rip-off my images and bandwidth but also my theory and make out like it was devised by an expert!
The one on the right is a new leaf that has grown this year. So, according to some experts, it would be a warmer than average summer
There are no other experts - I came up with the method! And I’m not an expert!
I really don’t know what has bugged me more about this - the fact that he’s hotlinking my images and stealing my bandwidth, the fact that he’s ripping off my homespun weather prediction method without any credits or the fact he’s claiming the method was devised by experts. Probably the latter, now that I think about it. At least now I’m an expert. 
Some screencaptures:
The hotlinker:
Hotlinking 1
October 13th, 2007
If you happen to be one of the few people on the planet who don’t know what happened, Madeline McCann vanished from an apartment in Portugal. That’s as much can be said with any certainty from an observer such as myself; that the little girl disappeared. Ever since then, we have had a daily barrage of media coverage shoved down our throats. Initially, this seemed appropriate as it is often through massive media attention that many child abduction cases are quickly solved and the children rescued.
I have been determined not to write a single word about this
cause célèbre as it has been written about
ad nauseum from the outset, mostly, in my opinion, because of the all-expenses-paid journalist junkets to the Algarve.
Aside from that my personal disdain for the parents who left three toddlers alone in a holiday apartment in a strange town in a foreign country while they went out for a meal, is something I preferred to keep to myself. So what has gotten so far under my skin that I’ve chosen to air my opinions? The latest reports that
Madeleine McCann detectives are to ask for British tourists’ DNA.
Picture the scene. You and your family had a lovely holiday in Praia da Luz in the Algarve in Portugal. While you were there, Madeline McCann went missing. A dreadful thing that makes you clutch your own children even tighter to your chest and carefully watch their every move even more closely than before (unlike the McCann’s). Some months later the police come to your home and ask you provide a sample of DNA and also your fingerprints because you are British and happened to be at the same complex.
Nothing to hide?
Of course, there will be people reading this who are foolish enough to believe that if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear. Unfortunately, even if you are innocent you could be misidentified. It has happened before - both in fingerprinting and with DNA.
Not only do you have that to fear but you also have the prospect of your DNA making it’s way into the apartment. How? Contamination of the crime scene, as more than two dozen people entered the Algarve apartment where she was taken before police arrived – including the parents, their friends, other tourists and staff at the Mark Warner complex.
Let’s say for a moment you are one of those people who irresponsibly discards chewing gum by spitting it out onto the pavement for others to step in and it was carried into the apartment on the shoe of one of those twenty-four people. Your DNA would have been trailed throughout the apartment. It would appear from DNA evidence that you had actually been there even though you hadn’t.
Not only that but simply because you happened to be unfortunate enough to choose the same holiday destination as the McCann’s you would be compelled to provide your fingerprints and DNA. You could refuse of course, but that would make you a suspect, which puts you between a rock and a hard place.
As much as I would like the little girl to be found, the likelihood of this happening is, in my opinion, zero. I don’t know whether she was abducted by a stranger, killed by her parents or wandered off on her own having somehow escaped the apartment where she was neglected by her parents, and fell into the ocean. What I do know is that I have had enough of the ‘McCann case’. The police are looking for a body, not a missing child, and they know it. Everyone knows it. The only people who refuse to accept it are the McCann’s, driven on by their public guilt at leaving three toddlers alone in a holiday apartment while they went out.
October 10th, 2007
