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Hi Lynn.

I note this, and your previous post involving comment spam.

1)  You won't get even. All you can do is protect yourself. Spam in it's various forms is a fact of net life. If you protect yourself, you'll have nothing to get even about.

Spammers are very clever and so are the people who devise sophisticated methods to manage incoming spam. (Edit) Avail yourself of the expert work already done.

2)  This fella is looking for free ads and free backlinks. That's why he came to your free comment box.

You could try him for $5 a month, but I'll be surprised if you hear back.

If you do strike a deal, then you've got to deal with all the issues of getting your money. Not worth the hassle.

Comment spam is efficiently handled with a WordPress blog. See the Fighting Comment Spam section on this page: http://codex.wordpress.org/Working_with … mment_Spam

It would be an enlightening exercise for you to do a search on his URL and see how many records of it, there are.

And while your at it, do a search on your own URL. You've got quite a few posts up on SR. You should find hundreds of records of your signature link in SR. Ask yourself if you'd be prepared to pay Nic $5 a month for each one or for each time you get your teddy bear avatar on the site. Nah!

Regards,
Laurie.

Last edited by laurie_m (2007-11-14 20:15:10)

I did remove the ad, and then contact the manager of their site. Told them the better way of adding ads to blogs, and even suggested that I knew someone, who is very good at SEO, if they wanted help to get high up on the SERPs. Have received no response in two days.

The difference between this spam and the others are: 1.) these folks didn't spam a multitude of comment sections, just the one, AND 2.) their ad is within the same larger niche as mind, even one of the more common niches.

I guess I don't know how to check IBLs as well as I thought. I did the "linkto:" thing for their address (1) and for mine (101), but even though theirs was to a magazine ad, mine are mostly my outgoing links. So, how do I really check?

It would be fun to get a little money out of them each month, but I'd also wouldn't mind an IBL from them, too. Chances are good, since I received no response, this opportunity is over, but any way of bringing it back to life, and establishing a relationship with them would be appreciated. A breakaway company from Christie's isn't merely just a spammer. If they were on the stockmarket and I had some money, I'd invest a good 25% towards them. (I'd go with Exxon/Mobil for the sure thing, with the rest of the money. I'm not a big gambler. LOL) They're likely to go blue chip quickly, if they go public.

I know my blog isn't big, but, if their ad was paid for, it would go on a side column or on the top, where it would be seen each time someone read it.

As for Nic charging me money to write on here -- not gonna happen. BUT, if I included an ad on here, it ought to happen. If they wrote a "cute blog," or even a "interesting blog, can we do business together?" it would have stayed, complete with their name and link. I've done it for other businesses, one of which, I doubt will make it for very long, but the subject was within the niche.

I just have this feeling they can do something to help me out, even more then I can do something to help them out - but this should be a business relationship, not a try-and-sneak-one-over-on-me relationship.

Let's see if asking a different kind of question can get y'all thinking in or out of the box -- If someone slipped an ad into your site -- by comment section, or however you make your site interactive -- and that someone was broadly connected to your site, and known well within your broader field (like Paul Allen quitting Microsoft to start up another computer company, and adding an ad in your computer repairs blog's comments), what would you do to take advantage of the situation?

Laurie,
Thanks for writing back. I did google the phrases you suggested -- first one and last one gave a single result - posts on this forum, and the middle one reminded me of, at least one more stuffed animal blogger that I want to add to my list. (The rest were just me comment and adding my link, but, at least the comments were genuine, not ads, specfically.)

I feel like I got a spark to start a flame for a fire, but the spark fizzled out. Oh, well, they'll be profitable, and I'll continue to be fun (with maybe a little profit in the future, if I can ever catch up, and then load up my new site.) The blog may seem to be so behind, there is no catching up, but that's just cuz I'm doing photos on them, while keeping up in a doc, for once I'm done the photo section. Once pictures of the garden are done, I should zoom forward. Who knows?! Might even be up to Hallowween by Christmas! LOL

Eh - back to work. LOL

Laurie,
Sorry for the long delay in responding -- not only behind in the blog, but an American holiday that requires a LOT of cooking was approaching, and with two old foogies like hubby and me, that means getting as much done ahead of time as is possible for us (which ain't much! )

As for photography problems, gardening requires a lot of work at the beginning and end of the season. Work = exhaustion, so too tired to think to add to the blog, and no time even to work on the real upcoming site. And during the season, hubby and I enjoy the garden enough to take lots of pictures. Our cameras don't work well, necessarily, and both cameras are viewing screen varieties, which aren't too helpful on a bright sunny day -- I see my reflection in the viewing screen, not what I'm trying to see,

By the end of summer, we had 600-700 photos that I had to divide into "Worthless" or "Adjustable." Forgot to make copies of them before adjusting them, and then saved in bulk -- thus giving me interesting photos like this to try and make look normal again:

(That was as normal as I could make it again, but I do not have blue feet or concrete. LOL)
And finally dividing all the pictures into different sections, so they fit into the storyline of the different entries. To do that, I have to pick out the pictures that would go along with the story, and then write the story, making notes in another document as to which picture goes where in the storyline.

Just one more garden related entry to go!

So I don't get far behind on knowing what I want to write about in the blog -- whether in reality from a TB's POV, of course, like weather changes, a pumpkin caught in a chain link fence falling apart, our local American football team, holidays, etc., or in TB World, like the TB Pool closing, events at their Hotel for homeless "small city animals" and TBs, or how TBs celebrate holidays in their alternate universe without ever being noticed by "Peoples" -- not only do I write each entry to the blog in a word processing document (to proof and rework), but I add short explanations and references for all upcoming entries, so I don't forget what happened when. So, while I'm working on September 7th now, I also have notes and titles for entries once or twice a week through to yesterday.

Loving the Christmas season, I'm thankful that hubby has insisted that I take it easy for the next few days, in hopes that we can do some Christmas shopping together at our favorite flea market. Not many photos included in the blog between the end of gardening and now, so that means, as well as doing minimal chores, I can sit here and write, and catch up on the blog enough that hopefully, by the time I start decorating for Christmas, I'm caught up into November, because the TBs LOVE to have their pictures taken during the holidays! Hohoho

So, yes, having problems with photographs for the blog, but only because I'm not a photographer, and the pictures are used more like illustrations in a children's book, then the natural way most use them. I've already done the work-on-them-in-mass part, now placing them in storyline. (Eventually, I'm going to have to delete the raw copies, too, but thinking that's a problem for another year. LOL)

Did I confuse you more, confuse you less, or put you to sleep?! 

Welp, now, I hate to disappoint, but, you might not be getting your wish. Can’t afford fancy cameras, and, since I’m really not a photographer (thought my feet in the picture would give you an idea how bad I am,) I see what I want, and simply don’t notice anything else, until I’m looking at the photos carefully later, maybe.

1)  Shoot in JPEG, not RAW. For what you are doing, JPEG is quite adequate, in fact more suitable. Depending on the size of you camera's censor, you might decide to record your images at a smaller file size. Best to use maximum quality, though.

Both cameras only shoot jpegs and only at 72-96 dpi. Only time I change the format to something other then jpegs is when I’m “compositing”. (Our Teddy Bears haven’t actually gone to any flower shows, nor do they come with us, if we’re going some where with lots of people, for fear of them being bearnapped, so I super-impose them into some of the pictures. When it looks like what I want, I then change it back to jpeg, keeping the composite copy, in case, I finally notice something stupid showing in the photo and want to rework it.)

The cameras also give photos slightly shorter then a meter, so I do downsize them to larger photo sizes (5 X 7s), but, even when saving them at that size, and increasing the dpi to 600 (in case I want to actually have them developed), the next time I open the file up, it's back to original size.

I don’t know what a censor is, so can’t tell you if I have one, but neither gives a choice on size, nor a choice on quality.

2)  Set your white balance to auto. The computer in your camera can do a better job of this than you can, manually. Auto white balance will not be available in RAW.

Is this “white balance” thingy something your camera has? I don’t even recall ours having “auto” anything, even flash! If I mentioned the word “raw,” I never notice that’s a type of format, too. I was just talking about what my picture looked like, before futzing with them. On the other hand, I have no doubt my camera can do a better job then I can, since I can only do mediocre, at best.

3)  Set your light metre to evaluative, not spot.

Good thing I don’t have a light meter, cuz I would have no idea how to use it. Seriously, the only part of that sentence I could understand was, “Yup, all those words were English.” Still hard to believe they are, and I have no clue what you said. (Our cameras came from drug stores, and were bought, because they had the ability to do videos, too. So far, 4 videos have been taken. Two are on YouTube, because they were so bad, they were funny, and I have no idea how to edit videos. Apparently, Microsoft’s video editing system isn’t the right kind of file to use on YouTube. The only one I took spends half of the time looking at our tabletop at different angles, and my bare foot shows up again, as I looked at the back of it, through sun glare again, to try and figure out how to turn it off.)

4)  Natural light comes in all different colours. The colour of light is measured in degrees calvin. It's an exact science, but here are the basics that you can implement without a metre.

The light from the rising sun has a warm tone, much warmer than the tone of the midday sun. Warm toned light is yellow or orange The colour of light in the shadows is cold, the deeper the shadow, the colder the light. This is a blue tone.

If you try and photograph using light of different colours in different parts of the photo, you'll inevitable have weird colours in the image. You may not notice the colour temperature by eye, but it sure will show up in your photo. In your post processing, it's near on impossible to change change the colour of one part of the photo for the better, without changing another for the worse. Note that blue and yellow are at opposite ends of the blue slider on the RGB colour editor on your graphic arts programme. So what do you do?

My graphic arts program was as good as most of Microsoft’s new products – highly flawed! I use Picture It! 2002, because I know how to, and truthfully. Photo Shop, so far, has been one of those programs that makes me end up one of two ways – cursing out-loud at it, because I can’t figure out squat, or having this almost uncontrollable desire to toss my screen out a window in frustration. I bought a tape to learn how to use it, but, once again, too many things on my plate to even consider spending half a year figuring out how to use the dang thing!

I think it might be a female gene, or maybe because I make a lot of colorful things, but I’ve understood hot and cold colors, and how shading changes them, for a while now. (Evening light, also has the bluish tones, almost looking like a cloudy day, but it's the only time of day that we can take picture of the moonflowers.)

Unfortunately, since I only have a three hour window each day to do something physical, it is rare that I can see the same time of day in my garden more then once in a week. Rare to even get out to do work in it more then twice a week, excluding watering, a daily chore in the summer. Add to that, my living conditions are the exact opposite as yours. You have SPACE. I have CROWDED – the furthest away I can get from a house in my garden is 16 feet. (A little over 9 meters.) At that distance, I’m now within a little over 10 meters from 5 neighbor’s homes. No shadows at all in my garden, last, during the longer days of summer, maybe an hour, assuming we’re not talking about shadows cast by plants growing up my trellis or my umbrella isn’t up. I was quite excited about a topiary of a TB I made, and took a variety of pictures of it. Most of the pictures can be found on my blog now, but hard to see the whole topiary. My best picture was when it was completely in the shade, but it’s too dark. My intended pictures are half in and half out of the shade – too bright, and too dark!

5)  Selectivity. You're old enough, Lynn, to remember the Nancy Sinatra song, "These Boots Were Made for Walkin'." Well, you've got to move your position so that you exclude the unwanted area: the area illuminated by a different coloured light.

Get closer or zoom in, crouch down, move around, come back at a different time of day, use fill flash or a bounce board or whatever else is necessary.

There's a lot more to selectivity, but that will do you for now.

Boots are made for walking – stooping, squatting, and squishing into tight spots are tough on me. My ability to lean over has a shorter time allowance then waiting for the shot to be taken. I shouldn’t do any of it, suffer later, if I do, do it anyway with modifications (using chairs, tables, and at good moments, when he’s there and up to it, hubby taking the shot for me.) Sat on the thin side of our table to take the pictures of the little stuffies near the pumpkin they cut into, and took 15 minutes to get up – 5 trying, 5 laughing uncontrollably at myself, and then 5 trying with quick breaks for giggling between trying again! LOL

I do try to get the best angle. The one picture I showed, needed that angle for a reason. Ever see two sunflowers back to back like that? Would have gone for a side shot, but leaves, branches, and other sunflowers blocked the view. Too cool to miss, and like I said, never noticed my foot. LOL Squirrels loved the flowers even more then me. They stole the flowers on the second day, each time. Never did get to see the seeds, but glad I saw and recorded the flowers, blue foot and all. LOL

What’s a “fill flash” or “Bounce board?”

If you can get your head around these few basic tips, the quality of you're photography will be transformed and you're workload vastly reduced.

For your purposes, there shouldn't be any need for post processing apart from cropping, resizing and the occasional exposure correction.

My word, Lynn, in a week's time you'll be a photographer!

Less likely this will be a week’s time, now? My head has read your response four times now, and still not getting it. My goal, in a week’s time is to get that last group of photos up, and then zoom through the multitude of entries that require no pictures. Not as visual for visitors, but, my next batch of pictures (that I haven’t even loaded onto the computer yet) are a few for Halloween. After that nothing but writing until I start decorating for Christmas.

Might be hard to believe, but, despite appearances, I'm not an idiot. Only section of this forum that I feel confident about is the marketing section. Also, I'm no James Mitchner, but I can write. Between the length of time it has taken me to learn SEO, and, apparently, even a longer time to learn photography, I'm glad I can come up with writing info and marketing info, or I'd feel like a complete leech here. Good thing I keep going back to, "almost everyone has some form of knowledge, it's just rarely any two people have the same form."

I do appreciate your help. I just wish I understood it more!

Also, would pay to remember to save the originals, then work on copies. Blue feet don't look good on me.

Hi Lynn,

We're getting a bit here. Hope we don't get kicked, or sternly spoken to.

Great post. The photos and story go together well and the video is very clever. I don't normally go to YouTube because every time that I have in the past, my virus scanner comes up with one or two trojans on the next test.

Here's a little tid bit for you or anyone else who'd like to upgrade their camera without breaking the bank.

I've been looking for a digital camera for my father-in-law. In his 80s, his fingers aren't as dexterous as when he was younger. He needs something he can manage. I showed him my little point and shoot digital camera, (my spare camera), which has long been superseded by several newer models, and he thought it would be OK.

A suitable camera is a Canon A550.
*  7.1mp
*  Focuses from 18 inches to infinity in normal mode and 2 inches to 18 inches in close-up mode.
*  Will take short videos with sound
*  Thinks for itself sufficiently, when in auto mode, to overcome your blurring, camera shake and colour problems in most situations.

See: http://www.canon.com.au/products/camera … ta550.aspx

They're available on eBay at a reasonable price or shop around because the retail price varies enormously. (AU$159 to AU$360) Buy two for the price of one and still have some change.

Regards,
Laurie.

Laurie,
Have you ever seen a child over react when she got a Christmas present, she really, really, really wanted?! Cool! Then you've got a relative picture of what happened in our house this season! Dad sent his "present" early again (money), so we bought the Canon A560 (the store didn't have the A550, and hubby didn't hear me clearly, so had already researched the A560, so it's almost the same camera) early! I'm still a bit behind on the blog, but have caught up to past the day we got it. You got mentioned in the entry -- with a link to this thread.

Fixing up the pictures now means to simply resize them, and maybe cropping some! Soooo much easier! Thank you!

Teddy Bear blog readers -- want to see a real photographer? Go check out Laurie's websites! (It's not just having a good camera, even if the boys think it is.)

Your waves are about two or three meters higher then ours. Where we go to the beach, a strong wave might hit up above my ankle. LOL

I'm a bit slow on the uptake -- realized you're collecting "costal news," but have been picturing you living in a desert with the pictures I've seen from you. Can you also go snow skiing any time you feel like it? (Got a mountain near ya?) I think I'm now picturing you in real southern Californian near the Baji desert separating the ocean from the Rocky Mountains.

When I grow up (if there is any hope left), I want to take pictures like you, garden like Mr. Burpeee, sing like Celine Dion, and paint like Andrew Wyethe! No big plans. LOL