Preparing.~

It may be a little early, but I’ve already jumped on the Christmas bandwagon. No, screw that, I’ve taken over the reins and now I’m driving that bandwagon through my life. Yep. I’ve been thinking about the season so much that I have officially lost a little bit more of my mind. Oh well.

I’ve been browsing websites all afternoon. I’ve been planning what I’m getting my nearest and dearest. Amazon and Boots have become my most-visited sites.

I’m always excited for Christmas, but never this organised. I’ve written down what I need to buy, how much it’ll cost, how many hours I need to work to pay for everything… it’s insane. For the first time in my life I AM PREPARED.

Well, almost. I need money first. I sort of have a job – it’s not full time, but I give the occasional weekend or afternoon when I’m needed. Generally, my mum handles all my money and it all goes into a savings account. But this year I plan to change that.

Once I’ve earnt a bit more, I’m gonna start using my PayPal to buy the presents. I like packages in the post.

So, just a warning, expect many more Christmas-themed posts from now on. I am WAY TOO EXCITED to not talk about it .

Crediting: Is It Really So Hard?

Expect a word- and profanity-heavy post, kay? When I rant it helps to swear.

So, some of you may have noticed that Vicky’s site was down for a while yesterday. I can’t say I’ve ever spoken to her much, but after the shortest of conversations, I can’t help but feel so sorry for the poor girl.

It’s common knowledge that Vicky is a dedicated site owner. Her tutorials and resources are some of the best around. I think it’s because she’s so well known that a lot of her content gets stolen – some stupid little idiots must be thinking that they’ll get away with it because she gets so many hits that they won’t be found out. THEY’RE WRONG.

Vicky’s premade layouts, in particular, bear the brunt of the stealing. They all have a simple link in the footer to show who made the layout – a teeny tiny link. Nothing extremely noticeable like, say, “MADE BY AUDIORUSH NO STEALING © 2009″ plastered across them.

I guess, in a way, I can see why some of the users of these layouts would remove the link – a lot of them probably think that after editing the CSS to their liking it’s then totally unique and thus belongs to them. WRONG.

You could edit the CSS to your hearts content but the fact is you didn’t make it. Vicky coded the original stylesheet and you edited the shit out of it, but she still made it first. Her. Not you. Get that through your skull.

What I really admire about Vicky, though, is the fact that when she finds someone stealing her resources she tells them – nicely and gently – to put the credit back on. She doesn’t blow up straight away; she eases them back into her good books with as little trouble as possible. Most, I think, would comply and stick that link back up pronto with the general thought of holy shit she found me, I better save my ass from a pounding.

But there are constant re-offenders. People who do it again and again – and not just from Audiorush. Any well-known site is bound to have had stealers. So Vicky has taken extreme action and password-protected her premades, only giving the codes to people she believes she can trust. She’s so trustworthy! I would have just gone fuck it all, to be honest.

How would… Einstein feel if some other scientist came along, read his notes on the theory of relativity and then passed them on as his/her own? Einstein would go ape shit on their ass, right? And could you blame him? If you’ve spent your free time working hard on something, you wouldn’t want that taken away from you by a worthless asshole. Am I correct? I think I am.

Anyway, back to the topic of the post: I don’t see why it’s so hard to keep a link in the footer, or why it’s so hard to, y’know, LEARN TO MAKE YOUR OWN RESOURCES. I seriously don’t. I’m just really glad I don’t make visitor content.

So, the lesson we’ve learnt today? CREDITING = good. STEALING = bad. Choose the right path, my friend, or prepare to get your butt kicked.

Okay, rant over. Time for some coffee.

OMG & TweetDeck.

I got comments on my last post! From two website owners that I seriously admire! I’m having a fan-girly moment. This is way too exciting for words.

So… what was I going to say before I started screaming? Oh yeah. I remember now. After reading Georgina’s post a few days ago, I decided to download TweetDeck. And I love it so, so much!

It’s easy to use, and it looks pretty good too. Everything’s laid out easily in columns: you’ve got one for all the Tweets by the people you’re following, one for Tweets mentioning you, and one for direct messages. It’s easily customizeable, too, so you can add and remove these columns as you see fit.

I never used to use Twitter too much. Every so often I’d remember I had an account, so I’d post one Tweet and then forget about it all over again. Now I keep TweetDeck open and I’m always Tweeting. This may or may not be a good thing.

If you want to try out the TweetDeck for yourself, you can download it from here.

Now to reply to the comments in a non-fangirly fashion with as little screaming as possible. Calm, Emma. Calm.