Sunday, March 25, 2007

Flickr Madness

I deleted my Flickr account this morning due to the stupid new filtering system they have introduced and they had the nerve to deem my account "unsafe" for some strange reason only known to themselves. Its just more media fascism you are seeing on the net just now which I hate. Someone had all their fruit labels blocked too which is eaven sillier! Fruit labels!

So anyway- I spent far too much time on Flickr anyway and I have other fish to fry. Hardly enough time to get round all me blogs! Also been trying to figure out how to publish using LULU which is a bit of a nightmare despite their "simple" demo and walkthrough. I had to ask ace animator Andy Sykes how he did it and he was kind enoughn to drop a few hints and links my way. Now all I have to do is figure out how to use Adobe In Design! This may take longer than I thought! No time for looking at fruit labels!

14 comments:

Jon said...

What new filtering system? what are they doing? why?!! I'd not heard of this and am confused.

Know what you mean about time-spent-freedom, as flickr is really quite addictive.

Anonymous said...

Oh we shall miss you on flickr.

Sorry to hear that you've deleted your account, although I understand your frustration. How on earth could they deem your photostream unsafe? I've never heard anything so ridiculous.

Apparently there's a lot of strange anomalies happening as they work this new filtering system in, and I'm not the only one to have perfectly innocuous images 'restricted' with no way to change them apart from mailing the staff and requesting a review (those fruit crate labels that are a danger to the young and innocent are mine!).

jon - the new filters mean that you can now decide on the 'safety' level of your images (safe, moderate or restricted), and also mark them as photos, screenshots or art/illustration. Before this, any 'non photo' images had to be excluded from searches because flickr is nominally a photo sharing site and 'real' photographs take precedence over the other (interesting) stuff like scans of fruit crate labels and collages and so on.

cemenTIMental said...

Ah I wondered what happened; I just got two emails from Flickr saying i've by default (due to being the longest surviving member) been promoted to administrator of Retro Records and Obscure Obverse! feels vaguely millitary! I will take good care of them :)

Bold move to delete yourself anyway! Congradulations, I can never bring myself to do things like that. :)

Good luck with Lulu stuff, I'm working on a couple of books thru them myself and it's fiddly but results are very nice once you figure it all out! I got a test book made a while ago to check the quality, was really surreal to get my random nonsesense back as a proper real book! :)

Can't wait to see (and buy!) whatever book(s) you make!

I keep thinking of new ideas for lulu books now, but I really need to actually finish some of the old ones firsT! I'm working on one that's just a total random assortment of doodles, old and new artwork, found stuff, cutup texts, odd archival public domain documents and images, etc etc, and another that's a kind of harsh noise graphic novel; a really weighty tome consisting soley of full-page headache-inducing digital noise/op-art patterns. :) Oh and just started a third one which is a collaboration with a friend and will be just a little book of comics and doodles..

I will let you know if/when i actually ever finish any of them! ^_^

Wastedpapiers said...

Thanks all for the positive feedback after all the negative stuff Flickr sent my way! I feel freed from its contraints now. Sorry to lumber you with the administratorial chore of the two groups you mention Tim. Good to hear you are doing some LULU books. We'll have to swap maybe? Are you making a paperback or hardback? Rinbinder or sewn with camel hair? So many decisions to make so I end up making none! I am hoping to sort out the test one at least and see where i need to improve my pages ( if any ). We have one Andy Sykes ( the animator ) made which is great though he said he had a lot of trouble getting it right too but LULU staff have sold him books cheap to make it up to him.

cemenTIMental said...

Yeah would be great to swap!

I'm doing mine as 6x9 paperbacks... The original idea was to make a really quick and absurd book of doodles... Kind of inspired by Spike Milligan books... But it's mutated into a totally random volume of all sorts of stuff and is taking ages.., I have lots of material finished, but compliling it is very daunting :)

I've been very inspired today tho, by your mention of Lulu and also because i bought Tom Phillips' "A Humument"... Have managed to format and make a load of pages today. I think i really will try and press on and get the thing finished soon, Maybe save some of the more involved/unfinished stuff for a second volume! :)

People are doing some interesting stuff on Lulu... a friend of mine who works at a comic shop in London is publishing a hardback graphic novel of this kid's crazy ninja comic... also Ramble House, who used to reprint the astonishingly astonishing works of Harry Stephen Keeler by hand are now moving production to Lulu as it's easier and cheaper...

Have you heard of Keeler by the way? He's my new favorite obscure author, I can't really begin to describe. I think you might like!? infos:
http://home.williampoundstone.net/Keeler/
http://www.ramblehouse.com/

Wastedpapiers said...

Sounds good to me Tim. I think the basic principal behind LULU is great and where else could you get your books of nonsense produced so cheaply and have control over the content and the look of the finished article? I know of no other company that would be foolhardy enough to do such a thing!

Now if only I could get my pages the right size and onto Word! Or maybe Adobe In Design? How did you transfer your files Tim? I'm baffled by the whole process being rather computer illiterate!

cemenTIMental said...

Indeed! :)

Hmm Indesign is much more adaptable, I did my test book in Word and it kind of worked but I had some weird issues (that won't apply to you probably so I won't go into them) that will be fine in Indesign... But the learning curve is steep if you've not done that kind of thing before.

One good thing i found is an indesign script that automatically imports lots of images at once, ie one image per page... It's designed for cataloging images etc but can be used to do what I needed for mine which is one full-bleed image per page mostly.

anyway yeah will help you out with such things if i can!

Wastedpapiers said...

Yes, well the trouble is I havent used In Design before so must find a good tutorial for it or go back and use Word.
Thanks for the advice Tim- much appreciated. I may be in touch if I run into any problems.

Unknown said...

:( I'm very sad that you've left Flickr, I will miss your photos and comments - you were my best Flickr friend.

Wastedpapiers said...

I'm sad too a smallprincess. nevermind, I'm sure it was for the best. I probably was looking for an excuse to leave and spend less time on the interweb - it can be very seductive like Jon says and before you know it you have spent hours online when you only meant to be five minutes!

Unknown said...

I agree with the 'too much time spent on t'web' thing: it takes me about an hour to delete all my junk mail, check all my fave links, respond to comments and so on and that's before I even start doing any work!

...and then I have to keep check throughout the day as well ;)

Marcia said...

I didn't know about the filtering system, but it's obvious the filter is not sophisticated enough to understand humor. Guess I will have to check in on your blog more often. I seem to be spending more time in the blogging world anyway.

Michael, I may have a brief InDesign tutorial on cd. If I can find it, if you want it, I'd be happy to send it to you. I think you can keep your original formatting when you import pages, especially from Word.

Wastedpapiers said...

Thanks for the kind words Fifi. I dont think the Flickr hiarchy have much of a sense of humour its true or they are just trying to get rid of all the creatives ? I feel happier now Ive left though sorry to leave so many friends behind. I'm always here in blogland ofcourse and I dont see myself giving these up for a while.

Thanks for the offer of the Cd. I may take you up on it though for the moment I've used Word and await the Proof Copy of my book to see what sort of mess Ive made!

I'll keep you posted!

Amanda Goode said...

Ah ha wasted,found you !
Art told me you were running here.This is good-amanda here to say how sorry i am to see that you have given Flickr the 'bums rush'.

I dipped into your blog and discover you haven't felt 100%. I hope you are feeling better of late and wish you every success with your blog.
PS Peter Edwards lives near me. When I next see him I'll mention Ivor Cutler improved'one of his paintings!
Best Wishes Good-Amanda