Wednesday, March 14, 2007

AND LET'S HEAR IT FOR BLOGSPOT HELP

Which I finally logged onto tonight after fruitlessly trying to upload pictures yesterday and today. Why? Well, this is the other thing that can happen on a research trip. Spending too much time alone can lead to staying up too late catching up on interesting blogs bookmarked but not really read yet. I was reading Crunchy Granola and I learned that if you go here you can make a portrait of yourself on this Japanese website. It's kind of like working with the police artist.

"Was his chin like that?'
"No. More pointed."
"Like that"
"Yeah, but with a little dimple."

Except that instead of making a picture of the man who picked your pocket on the subway you are making a picture of yourself, picking all the features one by one. Fortunately I re-checked the large list of facial features from beginning to end before I completed the portrait because I couldn't figure out why my forehead looked so big (although I had tried different foreheads.) Then I realized I had forgotten to give myself eyebrows. Anyway, it either looks like me or it looks like my idea of me in my head. Just like this blog is my idea of me in your head. When I was done I was very happy with it. So I wanted to upload it, along with a picture of Charlie Chaplin holding a little doll in his hand, to go with the theme of sexualizing relationships of unequal power (Chaplin was always scratching an itch for teenage girls) which I *can't* seem to let go. But the upload thingie on blogger wouldn't function. I tried and tried, and it kept giving me a severe little admonition about how I had to choose a picture, even though I had done so.

Of course, I thought it was me. Then, when I read in the paper that Google is getting sued by Viacom over clips that folks are uploading on YouTube, I thought, Oh dear -- they have disabled the picture upload because of people like me and Oso Raro who are always stealing Bette Davis pictures and such. And then I thought, Oh God, they are really after me because I went Too Far and stole pictures from Gone With The Wind, which everyone knows is a Sacred Movie, and used them in a sarcastic way. So I am being punished by having my picture privileges taken away.

Then I clicked on help and realized that many other people are having trouble uploading pictures on Blogspot too. So I am very relieved and my obsessive little mind has stopped spinning and I will wait until I get home to worry about this.

4 comments:

The Combat Philosopher said...

TR,
There is actually an important lesson here. One of the chief ways that people really mess up things computational is by trying to get things to work too hard. You would not believe the horror stories. This is one of the reasons that techie types (which I am sometimes) fear users who know a little bit (but not enough), much more than the utterly clueless.

A good rule of thumb with blogger (or any on-line thingy for that matter), is always give a 50% chance to the system being messed up. If you try something and it does not work, then (after doing the mandatory RTFM step -- 'Read The 'Famous' Manual'), check and see if it is a broader problem.

Will we get to see your self portrait when blogger gets better?

The Combat Philosopher

Lesboprof said...

Love the picture. I made one of myself. The gf doesn't think it looks like me. I was amused that my pic looked so much older than yours does! Ah, well. That may be true IRL as well. :-)

Glad you made it back home again.

Oso Raro said...

I do not STEAL images. I prefer to call it anticipatory socialism :-P

Dinero Online said...

Thanks for this great work is very useful for all readers, I thank you for allowing me to read this great blog