The Scrolls

Archive for the ‘Rants’ Category

What Stops Me From Loving Pinterests.

Besides all your stupid pins and lack of quality descriptions (this one is totally on you, guys!).

The fact that the front page, when I’m not signed in, has a lot of awesome stuff but I’m not sure why it’s there. If I click something and forget I’m logged out, it doesn’t return me to the same page after I do log in. How stupid. Then I have to try to search for the image, which is difficult because.. see above. I don’t even know what the front page is. Is it just random? Can I even return there when I log in?

The second thing is that the website does a horrible job of recognize dupes. If it would just check, based on image URL or website URL, the whole thing would run more smoothly. God, I hope that feature is coming.

3 Things You Probably Do On Pinterest (That I Hate)

1. Pinning shit with bad descriptions. Don’t leave it blank. Don’t simply say “Cool.” Use the description to describe exactly what we see in the picture. This is the only way this image can be found by searchers. Morons.
2. Linking to Google image search. Seriously. What the fuck is this happy horse shit? If you can’t find the actual source, you probably shouldn’t be pinning it, okay?
3. Multiple pins of the same text quote image in different fonts. What, you liked the quote so much but it wasn’t pretty enough, so you had to go make a different graphic? I kind of want to judge everything about you.

Let’s Use QR Codes Right

I am a fan of QR codes — partly because I have a smartphone that can scan them, woo. Also, I am lazy and anything that saves me effort is awesome. So the fact that everyone who seems to use them does it wrong is super frustrating.

The way I see it, QR codes make it extremely easy to import data to a phone so putting a QR code on any source that people would want to see on their phone is a smart idea. Using the QR code to access data that is not phone friendly is a pretty big fail. People have commented before how it’s bad marketing to use a QR code that directs the user to a website that’s non-mobile friendly. I cannot understand why anyone wouldn’t have the forethought to avoid such a useless effort. In fact, I once scanned a code that was part of a sweepstakes or other contest that led me to a Flash-based form that wanted me to register for the content. Um, hello? Why not just code your website so that each code links to a unique, dynamic URL that notifies winners of their status before making them register?

But it also bothers me that the only thing people seem to use QR codes for is URLs. Do people not realize that QR codes work with several types of data? I mean, you can use the code for an entire contact card. This is why using the QR code as part of a business card a great idea. Allow your associates to scan your information directly into their phone rather than having to remember it or keep another card in their wallet. Brilliant.

Other uses of QR codes include

• Phone Numbers
• SMS (text) Messages
• YouTube videos
• Google Map locations
• Social media links
• iTunes links
• Events (vcalendar format)
• WiFi logins
• PayPal buy now links

What a convenient way to invite people to your event or let them know where you live without giving directions than including a QR code on your poster or even as a part of your company or family calendar? Plus, anyone who creates and sells anything that they debut in person can include QR tags on products to facilitate sales directly from PayPal. Awesome, am I right?

But, no, what I see is the use of QR codes leading to websites that won’t work on my phone or catalogs that lead to the same same ad on a store’s site. Why?!?

And, unless you’re being facetious, there’s pretty much no use to use QR codes on a website that someone is only accessing from a computer. It makes no sense for me to have to break out my phone to read something on my computer.

Whatever. Stop pissing me off.

Shave Your Fucking Face

Everyone understands that October is breast cancer awareness month and, aside from the fact that awareness is no longer what we need, it’s all well and good. And toward the end of October, you start hearing about No Shave November or Movember as some folks like to do it. This even is also intended to raise awareness and money for worthy causes but, this time around, those causes center around men’s health. Usually prostate cancer is the focus but, if you’re like me, you don’t know much about it. And if you’re like most people, you have no idea that No Shave November is an awareness movement.

It seems like the guys just use it as an excuse to be lazy bastards and skip shaving. Or maybe they consider it a source of entertainment and hope some liquor company will award them money for having a funny mustache, it’s hard to say. There’s an entire Facebook group that has no idea why they’re doing it. It certainly doesn’t seem to be prompting any discussion on the streets and I know if I asked most guys why they’re doing it we’d be right back at the beginning of this paragraph.

For a yearly event that’s been going on longer than I’ve been an adult, Movember hasn’t raised a lot of awareness; although, last year they raised $7.5 million for Livestrong, the Prostate Cancer Foundation and other related charities. That’s not too bad when you consider that Susan G Komen raised a total of $35 million during the entire year of 2010. But the awareness just isn’t there. It’s almost the opposite of Pink For October, really. And this makes me sad because it’s a good cause and I don’t like how it’s become corrupt.

So what should the folks behind Movember do? Viral videos? Street teams? Shirts and merch? Television commercials? All of those things have certainly helped to spread the word about pink. Maybe CBS needs to get up in this and have Mark Harmon do one of those CBS Cares clips? All in favor say “Aye.”

But, in all seriousness, I just can’t help but feel irritated when my Internet is full of such ignorance. I may not be polite about it but consider this my way of raising awareness.

Go get a prostate exam. Yes, even you, Peter Griffin.

Ranty Thursday (Working on a new name)

Yesterday I posted a picture of a pony. It was facetious in several ways.

First, when I asked for suggestions of what sort of pictures I should put on this blog, Damita suggested ponies. I actually ignored her suggestion for some cat pictures. Sorry! Forgive me?

Second, I was irritated at a trend I’ve noticed lately regarding Wordless Wednesday posts. Here’s a hint: they aren’t wordless. This meme is simple. If you participate, you post one or more photos and nothing else, save for maybe a link to your Flickr or what-have-you. It’s about expressing yourself or simply showing something beautiful without words. I’m a wordy bitchy but I appreciate the sentiment, you know?

So how dense must a person be to post a “Wordless Wednesday” post and fill it with words. If the pictures don’t do all the explaining, then save them for another post and skip the meme. Someone I follow on Twitter keeps posting for this meme but doing it completely wrong and, in my opinion, cheapening it.

I usually don’t participate because I’m not a photographer. I don’t have a great camera or take amazing pictures, even if you all love Phantom. But that’s kind of the point. My photos are almost all of cats and I know people don’t want to see that all the time. I also don’t want to use others’ photos, even though I think that’s permissible. I’m not sure who started Wordless Wednesday so I can’t say.

But even if I only participated in it and used others’ photos, I’d still be participating in a way that is in line with the purpose. If your Wordless Wednesday has a word count, you’re doing it wrong.

Protected: Revelations

I don’t get it.

I do not like the word “get.” But it’s so versatile, you might say, and that is true. In fact, Google’s dictionary lists something like 32 different definitions of this verb. That’s a lot of definitions. But wait! Doesn’t that mean that we have replaced 32 different, possibly more interesting words with the word “get?” Oh right, it does. So this word has become so versatile because us English speakers are lazy fuckers. And you can’t be offended because I included me in it when I said “us.” Because I said so.

“Get” is like the linguistic version of the remote control or perhaps the iPad is a better example. It does everything and so we’ll continue to be lazy until, one day, the thing is so engrained in our society that we can’t even remember what it was like before we relied on it to do everything. Did that point in time ever exist?

Even if I didn’t prefer to use words like understand, receive, become, have, fetch or come in place of “get,” because it sounds more eloquent, the word itself just sounds trashy. Get. It’s a word that sounds rude and disrespectful even when you try to be respectful. Plus, on paper or screen, it just doesn’t look aesthetically pleasing (yes I am the type of person who looks for that sort of thing).

But you know what really gets me? That I know, as much as I despise the word, I use it more than I have a right to. Argh!